Reviewing the Mail: Week of 12/5

Well, we're all one more week closer to death since the last time I typed one of these posts, which means it's time to do it all over again. As usual, this is a list of books that came in the mail last week -- which means that I haven't read any of them. But I have glanced at their covers, and the press releases/cover letters (where applicable), and I in many cases have a previous knowledge (cursory or not) of the author or series. So here's what I can say about some books that just showed up on my doorstep.

(This week is less art-heavy than usual; two of the four books this week are bound galleys from Tor in March, and neither of them has cover art posted anywhere on the web that I can find. Given what I know about publishing schedules, I'm going to blame somebody's ONIX feed. One of the two bits of art here I had to scan myself from the book, since it, too, isn't anywhere on the web I could find.)

Kage Baker's "Company" series, about time-traveling immortal cyborgs -- though it's much better, and more fun, than that makes it sound -- officially ended in 2007 with The Sons of Heaven, after eight novels and two short story collections. Well, maybe it's not completely done, since Tor will be publishing a sidebar novel, Not Less Than Gods, in March. It's the story of Edward Fairfax, who isn't one of the Company's cyborgs but is not precisely human, either, and his adventures in "a secretly steampunk version of Victorian England, and in a Europe filled with covert and hidden advanced technologies." I'm looking forward to this one.

The other Tor bound galley is another book to look forward to: Gene Wolfe's new novel, The Sorcerer's House, a contemporary fantasy about a man who mysteriously inherits a magic house. Of course, since this is Wolfe, the story won't go in any obvious directions. Even more interesting, this is an epistolary novel -- told entirely in letters. Wolfe does sometimes get too hermetic and convoluted for his own good, but he's also one of the few writers who could really do a great, modern epistolary novel.

The one book this week that actually had an accessible cover online is the final book in Mike Resnick's "Starship" series, Starship: Flagship, which Pyr will officially publish tomorrow. I haven't read any of the earlier ones, but I'm sure it's the kind of serviceable space adventure that we've all come to expect from Resnick, probably with at least hints of the greater depth that he shows now and then.

And last for this week is a new edition of a book I sold many copies of back at the book clubs: Luis Royo's second collection, Malefic. Royo's work is definitely stylized, and I know many people will consider that his "sexy" shades pretty heavily into "sexist." (I don't agree, exactly, though I can see the point.) I've always liked his work, both aesthetically and with a publishing insider's appreciation of how it can really help a book sell like crazy. This edition is "remastered" -- whatever that means in book publishing, particularly applied to a book from 1996 that likely was digitally produced to begin with -- and has a new cover. It will be published by NBM -- which has published nearly all of Royo's work in North America for two decades -- in February.
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