Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/9/18

This week, we're back to the traditional purpose of Reviewing the Mail: listing books newly published that people sent to me for free. (And, obviously, I want to strongly encourage that behavior: people should feel empowered to send me free stuff whenever they feel like it.)

So I have two new books, both SFFnal, from different publishers, and here's what I can tell you about them.

The Freeze-Frame Revolution is slim, so it might actually be a novella than a novel, technically. It's the new book from Peter Watts, which means sunshine and flowers will be bursting forth from every page! (No, sorry -- the opposite, rather. Watts is possibly the SF writer most likely to induce depression in a clinical trial.) The set-up isn't entirely clear, but there's some kind of large starship, traveling at relativistic speeds, with a crew that's in some kind of suspension (as software or traditional coldsleep or something else) the vast, vast majority of the time. It also seems to be some sort of Panopticon, if not a completely simulated environment.

And our main character, Sunday Ahzmundin is planning a mutiny, even though crewmembers are only awake one day in a million, and rarely work with the same people. Just your typical happy Peter Watts plot! Free-Frame is a trade paperback, available right now from Tachyon.

The other book I have is from Pyr, and is a more traditional book for these modern days: fat, clearly the first in a series, mostly fantasy with a flavor of detective/thriller in the plot. The Last Sun begins "The Tarot Sequence" by K.D. Edwards, and is some manner of contemporary fantasy, I think more on the alternate-world side than the hidden-elves side, and our hero is, of course, the True Heir of the Sun Court, one of the (magically powerful?) Atlanteans who have been exiled since humans smashed their stuff and killed a whole lot of them. He is gay, though, so if you like diversity in character running through a familiar plot structure, it may be for you. It officially hits stores on Tuesday, but you could probably buy it today.