Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/8/19

Three books this week, all of which came in the mail. (One of them is a repeat, though -- I'll start with that one.)

The Last Tsar's Dragons is a new fantasy novel by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple, who also happen to be mother and son. I still have the copy I got in early February, and have not yet read it. (There's a lot of books I have but haven't read yet, and I seem to be reading more slowly now than ever.) See the older post for more details, but it seems to be pretty much what the title promises, and that is intriguing. This is a trade paperback from Tachyon Publications , officially publishing a week from tomorrow.

Ivory Apples is also from Tachyon, and is the new novel from the always-interesting Lisa Goldstein. (She only comes out with a novel every three years or so, but they're each individual books that no one else could have written.) This is a contemporary fantasy, about a family that shares the secret of magic and that hides their Great-Aunt, who wrote a famous fantasy novel (also called Ivory Apples) many years ago but still attracts smart, devoted, sneaky, obsessive fans. The novel is set in motion by the arrival of one such fan, which I presume threatens to reveal whatever magic actually is in this book. (It's probably not a friendly or controllable thing, knowing Goldstein.) Ivory Apples will be published as a trade paperback on September 17th.

Starship Repo is the second novel by Patrick S. Tomlinson, after Gate Crashers, but it doesn't seem to be a sequel. (That's rare enough, these days, to be called out specifically. It may be set in the same universe, though: I haven't read Crashers yet, since it is on the same shelf referenced above.) Tomlinson seems to be doing light SF adventure -- not quite humorous SF, but not-particularly-hard SF with funny character bits and a mildly absurd universe -- that looks appealing, so I'll have to read one of them one of these days before he's got thirty books out and a shelf-full of awards. Repo is the story of Firstname Lastname (not her original name, but the result of a clerical error that is sticking harder than she expected), a refugee/budding con-woman wandering out into the wilder reaches of this multi-species galaxy and finding a new job implied by the title. Repo is also a trade paperback, from Tor, and it came out in May.