Reviewing the Mail: Week of 7/4

This particularly patriotic installment of "Reviewing the Mail" will be short; I only have a handful of books to write about. Every week, I start this off by writing something like "I list all of these books because I know I won't manage to read them all," but, this week, I probably could read all of these books before next week...if I ignore all of the books that have been piling up from previous weeks.

Anyway, hope your 4th was full of fireworks and hot dogs (if you're American), and here's what I saw in the mail:

Amefurash: The Rain Goddess, Vol. 1 by Atsushi Suzumi is the beginning of another manga series, and was published by Del Rey on June 23rd. Suzumi is the creator of the previous series Venus Versus Virus and Haridama: Magic Cram School; I've never heard of the first one, but I did read and review the latter. This story is set in a s mall town, somewhere out in the desert, where the requisite "ordinary boy", Gimmy, meets the local rain goddess, who is the girl on the cover. Wacky hijinks, of course, ensue. (But what kind of name is "Gimmy," anyway?)

Libyrinth is a young adult SF novel coming from Tor in hardcover tomorrow. It's credited to Pearl North, though the jacket biography tells us that North has written "a number of science fiction novels for adults" under another name, and that she lives in Royal Oak, Michigan. (So anyone who really wants to figure out who "North" is could do so -- and I also suddenly wonder if the name is a reference to "Andrew North"?) Libyrinth is set far in the future, on an alien world, where human long before built a vast, half-uncharted library. The main character is a young clerk to a Libyrarian, who has a secret talent. And the antagonists appear to be the Eradicants, who want to burn all books. I trust Libryinth isn't as obvious as it looks.

And last for this week is something else again, a book called G.I. Joe vs. Cobra: The Essential Guide, by Pablo Hidalgo. Del Rey is publishing it on July 7th, precisely one month ahead of the big movie in August. It's another one of those four-color, large-format guides to a fictional world, with lots of "dossiers" about the various characters and their guns, cars, and other equipment. And when I opened it to a random page, I found the Dreadnoks, which I suppose is a good sign. For those of you who like this sort of thing, you'll like this very much.