Reviewing the Mail: Week of 9/28

I'm busy working on the big anniversary post -- Antick Musings turns 8 this Friday -- so this will be brief. These two books were sent by publicists from their respective publishing companies, to me and to lots of other media outlets of various types across the country (and maybe around the world). I haven't read either of them, but here's what they look like to me -- one of them might turn out to be a book you love.

Kakifly's K-ON! High School continues one half of the main K-ON! story, which was about a group of teen girls in high school banding together to form a band (more specifically, to form a band as part of a pop-music club in school, because every experience in the life of a Japanese teen, at least in manga, must be mediated through a wholesome official school club). K-ON! College, which came out in July, followed the three members of the band who graduated, and this one tracks Azusa, who has another year or two to go. The whole series is in 4-koma style -- gag strips like US newspaper comics, presented vertically -- so I imagine it would be pretty easy to jump in here if you wanted to. This is from Yen Press, and is out in October.

And the other thing I have to write about this week is the new novel from Maze Runner author James Dashner, The Eye of Minds. It's a near-future thriller for teen readers, like Maze Runner and its sequels, and Eye of Minds begins a series called "The Mortality Doctrine." This time out, the center of the story is the new flavor of cyberspace -- here called VirtNet -- where a cyberterrorist has recently discovered a way to kill people in real life. Our protagonist is a teen boy who gets caught up in this somehow, and I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up saving the world -- or, at least, the virtual portion of it.