Reviewing the Mail: Week of July 1

Here I am again, with a list of books that came in to my mailbox over the past week, hoping that some of you will find something new and fun to read. I haven't read these books myself -- I may, someday, but I don't read as fast as I did when I did it for a living.

This time out I have two books: one paperback and one hardcover. I'll take them in that order, purely because that's how they're currently stacked.

The paperback is Rajan Khanna's Raining Fire, coming from Pyr on July 18th. It's the finale of his post-apocalyptic trilogy about Ben Golds, one-time airship pilot. The first two books are Falling Sky and Rising Tide. If you like steampunk but aren't crazy about the Victorian era, this series might be exactly right for you -- why not give it a try?

The hardcover is the start of a new trilogy from Nancy Kress: Tomorrow's Kin. It's from Tor, coming July 11th, and expands on her Nebula-winning story "Yesterday's Kin." Kress expanded another award-winning story into a trilogy some time ago with Beggars in Spain, which turned out pretty well: I wouldn't be surprised if she does it again. This one is a first contact novel: an alien ship has touched down in New York harbor, speaking English in a mechanical voice, willing to speak only to the United Nations, and demurring to leave their ship at all. As usual, one obscure scientist, called to meet with the aliens, is our viewpoint character.