Reviewing the Mail: Week of 5/12

It's a short stack this week, which is good because this is Mother's Day weekend -- and you don't know how much Mother's Day you can have until you're married (adding in the mother-in-law) to the mother of children (making her Mother #3, and the one you need to spend the most time & attention on). So, before I rush off to a gala luncheon with the MIL (and after running out for the obligatory breakfast-in-bed for The Wife, and while doing the laundry I'd usually have all day to complete), here's the scoop:

These four books all arrived in my mail last week, sent by publishers eager to have them better known to the world. Since my day job often is little more than a long series of depressing phone calls with my colleague the publicist, learning that no one responded to our most recent media mailing, I'm eager to do what little I can for these books, even though I haven't read them yet.

So first up is SecondWorld, a novel that can't even afford a single space for its title. It's an apocalyptic thriller -- the kind that has SF in its genes, but dares not speak the name -- in which resurgent Nazis use some sort of red-rain-causing, atmospheric-oxygen-destroying doomsday machine to threaten the entire world. But not if One! Tough! Man! With! A! Manlier-Than-Thou! Name! (ex-SEAL Lincoln Miller) has anything to say about it. Your author is Jeremy Robinson, your publisher is Thomas Dunne Books, and the hardcover has a QR code right on the front cover. How can you resist this when it hits stores on May 22nd?

To switch gears entirely, how about the first volume of a manga series about disaffected teens that's also inspired by the poetry of Charles Baudelaire? That would be Flowers of Evil, Volume 1, by Shuzo Oshimi (who previously created the series Drifting Net Cafe), coming from Vertical any day now.

Also from Vertical this month is Toru Fujisawa's GTO: The Early Years, Vol. 12, collecting the original Japanese stories that came before his GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka series, detailing Onizuka's exploits as a member of a biker gang looking for women.

And last is Ian C. Esslemont's Orb Sceptre Throne, his fourth fantasy novel set in the Malazan Empire world he created with Steven Erikson, coming as a trade paperback from Tor on May 22nd.