Reviewing the Mail: Week of 12/6

Last week's mail was light. No, really light, probably as a result of the Thanksgiving holiday before it slowing down the mail stream, though the effect of looming massive layoffs and other similar omens of doom & gloom can't be discounted.

So this usual weekly post will be shorter than usual -- insert potted explanation: I get books in the mail, because I review books, but I can't review everything, so I at least mention everything, hence these posts -- and we'll all be able to get back to work more quickly.

Before I dive into the (three) books I did see last week, I'll mention something else that came in the mail. Orbit US sent over a "concertina" -- a little fan-folded brochure -- of their Spring 2009 list. Things that looked interesting there included Orphan's Triumph by Robert Buettner (reminding me I still need to read #3 in the series), a book called The Dwarves by Markus Heitz, and A. Lee Martinez's Monster. So publishing is going on, despite anything you might have heard.

Coming a little more quickly than that are two different books in the very popular (and ever-expanding) young adult Warriors series by Erin Hunter -- first is Warriors: Power of Three #2: Dark River, a new novel by Hunter about a new generation of talking, battling cats, and second in the current series of six books. (It follows the original six-book Warriors series and the five-book Warriors: The New Prophecy.) Dark River is published by HarperCollins's young-readers group, and will be available in paperback on December 23rd -- just in time to fill some stockings, I expect.

Also in the Warriors universe is a new manga, co-published by Harper with Tokyopop, Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha, #2: Escape from the Forest. The cover only credits Hunter, but, inside, the book says that it's written by Dan Jolley and has art by Don Hudson. This one will be published January 1st, so it'll have to wait for all those kids and their Christmas money to descend on the bookstores.

And last for this week is Cherie Priest's new novel Fathom, her first hardcover and first novel unrelated to her Eden Moore series. Fathom is a big contemporary supernatural novel, with undertones of horror, and it reminds me that I've been meaning to read Priest for several years now. (Maybe this one!) Tor will publish it tomorrow in hardcover; it should be available pretty much everywhere right now.