Reviewing the Mail: Week of 8/8

They are sitting in a neat pile back in New Jersey. I, on the other hand, am in Montreal at the Worldcon. So the real post will be delayed by at least a day.

Thank you for your patience, and please stay in your seats until the ride comes to a full and complete stop.

Update: And here they are!

First is a new short novel by Kage Baker, The Hotel Under the Sand, from the folks at Tachyon. Looking more closely at it, I see that it's not only about a nine-year-old girl (and the magical hotel she discovers), but it's officially a middle-grade novel (ages 9-12, grades 4-7). I do wonder if Tachyon has the distribution and contacts to get this book into the right section -- it can be a hard and thankless thing, to publish a book when you have no relationship with the buyer for that section of the chain book store -- but good luck to them for trying it. The Hotel Under the Sand is a trade paperback, and was published last month -- it's also (as is common with books for younger readers) quite inexpensive, so, if you see it, you might as well buy it.

Patricia Brigg's "Alpha and Omega" werewolf series continues with Hunting Ground, a mass-market paperback coming from Ace at the end of this month. I note that the back-cover copy refers to the heroine being "mated to" another character -- in context, essentially the Prince of All Werewolves, and probably a big slab of man-titty, as the Smart Bitches would say -- which may be a fancy way of saying that they're "partners," in the modern no-strings sense, or may have a more early-Pern implication about the series. I dunno which, so I will hereby express my ignorance and see if anyone sets me straight.

From Ace's sister imprint Roc -- but several months later, in November -- is Devon Monk's urban fantasy Magic in the Shadows: An Allie Beckstrom Novel, the third in the Allie Beckstrom series. Is it catty of me to note that "Allie Beckstrom" is a more plausible name than "Devon Monk"? (And does that mean anything, when so many urban fantasy writers really do have unlikely names?)

I now have a finished copy of My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie, a middle-grade novel by David Lubar. And that means I can read one and give one to my sons, both of whom I think would really like it. Maybe we can all read it and give our combined thoughts? Let's see if I can organize that...some time soon. Anyway, My Rotten Life is an August paperback for all of the middle-graders (particularly boys) in your life.

I reviewed The Color of Earth, the first book in a manwha (Korean comics) historical trilogy of coming-of-age graphic novels by Kim Dong Hwa, for ComicMix back in April. I somehow missed seeing the second book, The Color of Water, because now I have the third one, The Color of Heaven, in hand. Heaven will be published in September by First Second, and I might just try to read it without the middle book, because the first one was a luminously specific story that really impressed me.

Nine Gates is the new Jane Lindskold novel, the second in the "Breaking the Wall" series, after Thirteen Orphans. It's a Tor hardcover publishing next week, and it's a fantasy novel set in the modern world in which the magic of Chinese folklore is real. (And that's about all I know about it.)

And last this week is Prospero Lost, the first novel by L. Jagi Lamplighter (and the first of at least two, since Prospero in Hell is promised). I met Ms. Lamplighter briefly at Worldcon, but forgot to mention to her that I'd just seen this -- she was very happy, in the way that only a first-time author who has very recently seen her own words in hardcover can be. It's a fantasy set in the modern world, in which the sorcerer of The Tempest and his family are still alive and active in the present day -- well, Prospero was recently alive and active, but you can see from the title that there is some doubt as to his current health. Prospero Lost has an interesting premise, a great cover, and glowing quotes from a whole bunch of people -- Kage Baker, Wen Spencer, Laura Resnick, James Stoddard, Lamplighter's husband John C. Wright -- so I hope to make time for it "soon." (I've hit the point where I can't say I'll read anything soon without sarcasm quotes, he said, glancing up at the pile of unread books literally looming over his head to the immediate right and threatening to fall on that very head.)
----------------
Listening to: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Today's Lesson
via FoxyTunes