Giveaway! Enter to win 1 of 3 copies of Breach Zone by Myke Cole!

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

BreachZone

This giveaway ended on Sunday, February 9th.

Still need to get your copy of Breach Zone by Myke Cole? Well, you’re in luck! Thanks to the generosity of the kind folks at Ace, I have three copies of the excellent third installment in Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series to give away to three lucky readers in the US and Canada.

If you’re not familiar with the series, check out my reviews here: Control Point, Fortress Frontier and Breach Zone. (Spoiler: they’re great, and you should read them!)

To enter the giveaway, simply send an email with subject line “BREACH” to fbrgiveaway AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address. One entry per person, please: multiple entries will result in immediate disqualification, but please feel free to tell your friends! Please note again that, at the publisher’s request, this giveaway is limited to the US and Canada.

The giveaway ended on Sunday, February 9th.

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Dreamwalker by C.S. Friedman

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

DreamwalkerThere are two unusual things about Jessica (“Jesse”) Drake, the teenage protagonist of Dreamwalker, C.S. Friedman’s first foray into Young Adult fiction and the start of what’s billed as a new, “open-ended” series.

First of all, Jesse has bizarre dreams about other worlds, some similar to her own, some completely alien. Many of those dreams feature doors or gates of some sort.

And secondly, after a DNA test meant to confirm that her paranoid absentee dad is actually her biological father, it turns out that she doesn’t share any DNA with either of her parents. Since she wasn’t adopted, and the hospital provides incontrovertible proof that she wasn’t swapped at birth, this is somewhat of a mystery.

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that these facts turn out to be related.

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Arcanum by Simon Morden

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

ArcanumWhat happens when the magic goes away? More specifically, what happens when a small but strategically located region that has relied on its hexmasters for centuries is forced to deal with the sudden disappearance of its all-powerful magic? Simon Morden explores the answer to these questions in his new fantasy novel Arcanum.

So far, Simon Morden is best known for his neo-cyberpunk trilogy-plus-one starring Samuil Petrovich. The original trilogy won the 2012 Philip K. Dick Award. I bounced off its first book Equations of Life (my review) and never went back, but decided to give Arcanum a try anyway, mainly to see how the author would handle this very different genre. Despite some reservations, I’m glad I did.

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Some Notes on Two Novels I Didn’t Finish

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

BladesoftheOldEmpireI frequently pick up novels by authors I’ve never heard of. I pride myself on seeking out new voices and debut novels, or just authors I wasn’t familiar with yet. Sometimes this leads to some wonderful discoveries, and sometimes… Well, sometimes it doesn’t.

Here are some notes on a couple of books I ended up putting on the did-not-finish shelf: Blades of the Old Empire by Anna Kashina (Angry Robot, Feb. 25th) and Three Princes by Ramona Wheeler (Tor, February 2nd.)

These are not meant to be proper reviews, mainly because I didn’t read the entire novel in both cases, and partly because I’m just not trying to write with the same depth and detail I expect from a good review. What follows are just some notes and thoughts about these two novels and why they didn’t work for me.

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Shadow Ops: Breach Zone by Myke Cole

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Breach ZoneBreachZone is the third entry in Myke Cole’s contemporary military fantasy series Shadow Ops, after series opener Control Point (my review) and last year’s Fortress Frontier (my review). “Contemporary military fantasy” is probably not the most evocative way to describe these books. Peter V. Brett’s blurb “Black Hawk Down Meets The X-Men” is much better—and the publisher seems to agree, as this line has now been featured prominently on the covers of all three books in the series.

You see, in the world of Shadow Ops, random people suddenly discover they have supernatural powers. Some can control fire, or water, or air. Some can control the dead or create portals between our dimension and the Source, a realm filled with alien creatures that also appears to be where all the magic actually originates from.

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Lookin’ Good: Academic Exercises by K.J. Parker

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

AcademicExercisesIf my experiences with author K.J. Parker and publisher Subterranean Press are any indicator, Academic Exercises will be a gorgeous book in every sense of the word. As far as I know, this will be the first ever collection of K.J. Parker’s short fiction. These thirteen stories and essays were, until now, scattered across separate magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks. Now, they’re all available in one volume.

My advance copy says the publication date is July 31, 2014. If I were you, I’d preorder now.

Here are the publisher’s book description and the full table of contents:

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Tooth And Claw by Jo Walton

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

ToothandClawJust for fun, I decided to round out what’s somehow turned into an official “Jo Walton Week” here at Far Beyond Reality by posting my old review of Tooth and Claw, following my earlier reviews of Among Others and Walton’s brand new collection of Tor.com blog posts What Makes This Book So Great.

Note: When I say “old review”, I mean it. It goes back about five years now. I merely present it here to complete my trio of Jo Walton reviews, and maybe partially to show how much my style as a reviewer has changed over the years.

(Also note: I read this book well before the whole Pride And Prejudice And Zombies/Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter trend started. Looking at it now, it’s clear that Jo Walton was on to what turned out to be a very popular concept with this novel.)

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Among Others by Jo Walton

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

AmongOthersI just realized that I never posted my old review of Jo Walton’s Among Others here. With the release of the author’s essay collection What Makes This Book So Great (my review), I thought this would be a good time to remedy that. (You’d think I would have remembered to do this when it won the Hugo Award, right? Ah well.)

Kids nowadays have it easy. If you’re into fantasy, there’s a good chance that the books you like have a devoted following and a few dedicated web sites. There may be movie franchises and/or an HBO series about them. You can buy Team Jacob/Team Edward shirts, Harry Potter glasses and a Game of Thrones calendars. There may be book release parties, even people sleeping in front of the bookstore when the next book is due out. There’s GoodReads, Shelfari and Librarything, and even if you’re not on one of those sites, it’s never been easier to connect with other fans and with the authors themselves. (Note: funny how dated the references in a review can sound just three years later, no?)

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What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

WhatMakesThisBookSoGreatFirst of all, if you’re looking for the new Jo Walton novel, What Makes This Book So Great is not it. That would be My Real Children, due out from Tor in May of this year.

Instead, What Makes This Book So Great is a collection of Jo Walton’s blog posts on Tor.com between mid 2008 and early 2011, presenting the author’s essays about science fiction and fantasy in one cover.

Personal side-note/detour: Jo Walton’s writing is probably the biggest reason I became a regular Tor.com reader. When the site was originally announced, I dutifully added it to my Google Reader (ahhh… remember Google Reader?) and scanned the daily posts for interesting bits. Soon, I began to notice that many of the titles I clicked on were written by the same person: Jo Walton, whose novels I hadn’t read at the time but whose name I remembered from the venerable Usenet community rec.arts.sf.written (ahhhh… remember r.a.sf.w?)

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Rex Regis by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

RexRegisRex Regis is the eighth overall novel in L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s Imager Portfolio and the fifth one in the series-within-a-series about Quaeryt. The first three novels, with Rhennthyl as their protagonist, were set later in this fictional world’s timeline. Scholar, the first Quaeryt novel, moved the story several centuries into the past, initially making these books feel somewhat like prequels that mainly served to show the origins of the world of Imager, Imager’s Challenge and Imager’s Intrigue.

However, five books later, this second series of Imager books actually feels more solid than the first one. Quaeryt has become a more interesting character, and the plot has slowly but inexorably gained momentum. Even though I was initially sceptical about benching Rhenn, I now feel that the five Quaeryt novels are stronger and more rewarding than the initial three Imager books.

In case it isn’t clear by now, this review is about the eighth book in a series. What follows will contain spoilers for earlier volumes. If you’re not up to date on the Imager Portfolio, you can read my overview of the first three novels about Rhenntyl here, and my reviews of the first four Queryt novels here, here, here, and here. (In case you’re interested, I also conducted an interview with L.E. Modesitt Jr. that focused heavily on the Imager Portfolio.)

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