Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/25

I'm getting to this post several hours later on Sunday than expected -- with deleterious effects on all of the other things I want to accomplish today -- so this may be shorter and more succinct than usual. Thus I'll run through the disclaimer -- these books arrived in my mailbox last week; I haven't yet read any of them, but here's what I can tell you about them -- and jump right in:

GTO: The Early Years Volume 11 is the latest volume reprinting a manga series by Toru Fujisawa, originally called Shonan Junai Gumi and published before his more famous Great Teacher Onizuka, but featuring the same main character. I insist on the traditional meaning of prequel -- that it was created later than another work, though set earlier in the fictional timeline -- and so this is not a prequel. But it is what Fujisawa was doing for the half-decade before he created his most famous series, and it's about what his most famous character was doing before he decided to become a great teacher. And this new volume comes from Vertical (hitting stores last week), after a several-year hiatus after earlier volumes in the Early Years series were published, and then abandoned, by another house.

The next two books are both from Tachyon, and I've already seen them once, so they get just quick notices, since I don't have anything new to say about them:

• Eyes Like Leaves is a secondary-world epic fantasy by Charles de Lint, originally published in 2009 by Subterranean, and now available in trade paperback.
• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall is a dystopic time-travel SF novel from Nancy Kress, coming in April.

Fair Coin is a young adult fantasy novel from E.C. Meyers, and appears to be a first novel. It's about a young man who discovers a coin that makes his wishes come true when he flips it -- but, of course, the first rule of wish stories is that you never get exactly what you want, or want what you think you want. It looks like fun, and it's coming March 6th in hardcover.

Songs of the Earth is another first novel, from the British (from Northumberland, actually, which makes her Northumberlandish?) writer Elspeth Cooper. It's an epic fantasy, and the beginning of the series "The Wild Hunt." And Tor (the US version) will publish it officially tomorrow in hardcover.

And last is another book from Tor: Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One, by Phil and Kaja Foglio (who else?). It reprints the first ten issues of the Girl Genius comic, which were in turn originally reprinted as the first three (very slim) trade paperbacks from the Foglio's own publishing empire. So the whole thing now makes a three-hundred-page-plus slab of multiply-Hugo-winning steampunk comics, and I guess I've got to make another try at reading this. (I was a Phil Foglio fan from way back -- had all the Buck Godot and What's New collections, and even Xxxenophile comics, books and card game, back before the flood -- but I've never managed to get into Girl Genius.) This also is officially published tomorrow, so you can run right out and get it immediately.