Reviewing the Mail: Week of 10/11

More books! These came in serendipitously, sent by their respective publishers. So I hope you will clasp them to your bosoms and love them entirely, because that will help me get more free books in the future. To further that aim, I'll now try to make them sound enticing, based on my past knowledge and a quick glance at the packaging:

Hawk is the fourteenth novel in the "Vald Taltos" series by Steven Brust. I've been reading and enjoying this series for probably thirty years at this point -- so I can direct you to my reviews on this blog of the recent novels Tiassa, Iorich, Jhegaala, and Dzur. (In reverse-chronological order.) For the elevator-pitch version: it's about a semi-reformed crimelord in a secondary-world fantasy that secretly isn't exactly secondary world and might not really be fantasy; Brust is a great writer of dialogue and generally keeps his tendency to be arch and elliptical in check in this series. Hawk is a hardcover from Tor, arriving October 7th.

And then there's No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!, Vol. 5 by Nico Tanigawa, the latest in a series about a very geeky and very socially inept young Japanese woman. I've reviewed this one as well: see my posts on volumes 1 and 2, three, and IV. This is a manga from Yen Press, available right now in the usual paperback format for such things.

(Both of these books are also available in the usual panoply of electronic editions; do I need to say such things?)