Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/7

I'm feeling utterly filled with ennui this week -- being unemployed will do that to you, but I know I can push through it and it will pass -- so I don't have anything clever to say up top here. As always, these are new books that arrived on my doorstep this past week, and I'll try to describe them accurately or entertainingly or both.

First up is Pacific Fire, by Greg Van Eekhout, the sequel to last year's California Bones. It's a contemporary fantasy with a crime-novel flavor, set in a Southern California full of secret wizards and their equally secret battles. The main character is a golem, which means all of those wizards want him for the magic he embodies -- except for the one who has protected and kept him safe for ten years. But now that one wizard is severely injured, and the golem thinks he's the only one who can stop a huge weapon of magical destruction currently under construction -- and he might just be right. Pacific Fire is a Tor hardcover; it hit stores just about two weeks ago.

Also from Tor in January (also hardcover) is the latest book in L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Imager Portfolio series, Madness in Solidar. It is pretty deep into this particular series -- book nine -- but sounds like it could stand alone, as it follows a talented provincial Imager (the magical types of this particular secondary fantasy world) as he settles in as the new head of the Collegium of Solidar, where there are, of course, many secret plans and obvious problems and knives in the back (definitely metaphoric, and don't bet against literal).

And here's another continuation of a fantasy series: Fortune's Blight is the second book in Evie Manieri's epic Shattered Kingdoms series, after last year's Blood's Pride. It looks to be widescreen, big-picture fantasy, with a big cast, a big map, and a side helping of grimdark. It's a Tor hardcover, coming on February 17.

And last for this week is Arwen Elys Dayton's Seeker, the first novel in a big-deal YA fantasy trilogy. (It's already been optioned by the Columbia for a movie, and the publisher is announcing a 150,000 copy first printing -- so you'll be hearing a lot about it for some time.) Since it's a modern big YA novel, it's obviously about a strong young woman who's hitting a major transition in her teenage life, and then learns that Everything She Knew Is Wrong. In this case, her name is Quin, and her one dream was to be a knightly Seeker and help people -- but, once she does become one, well, the ESKIW stuff starts hitting. Seeker is available right now from Delacorte in hardcover: read it now so you can explain how the eventual movie is deeply inferior.