Excerpt: The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley Beaulieu

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

FlamesofShadamKorehAs some of you may already know, author Bradley Beaulieu recently announced that he and Night Shade Books have parted ways. Beaulieu will be self-publishing The Flames of Shadam Koreh, the third book in his Lays of Anuskaya series, as well as rebranding the previous two installments (The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh) with brand new covers. To help fund this venture, Beaulieu has launched a Kickstarter, which, at the time I’m writing this, has already reached its initial goal. However, you can still help the author reach some of the (very neat) stretch goals and score all three books at a very reasonable price.

If you’re not familiar with the author or series yet, I invite you to read my reviews of The Winds of Khalokovo and The Straits of Galahesh, as well as my review of the excellent Strata novella Beaulieu co-wrote with Stephen Gaskell and the interview I conducted with Beaulieu and Gaskell.

And if that’s not enough, I’m also very proud to share the following excerpt from The Winds of Khalakovo. Here’s “The Dance” – one of the most memorable scenes of the entire Lays of Anuskaya series so far.

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The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination by John Joseph Adams (Ed.)

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

MadScientistsGuidetoWorldDominationThe Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination is the latest themed anthology edited by John Joseph Adams—and it’s another good one. This time, Adams has collected a set of short stories featuring the hero’s (or often superhero’s) traditional antagonist: the mad genius, the super-villain, the brilliant sociopath who wants to remold the world in his own image—or occasionally, maybe, just be left alone in his secret lair to conduct spine-tingling experiments that, as an unfortunate side-effect, may cause drastically rearranged geography, rampant mutation, or major extinction events.

Under the editorial direction of John Joseph Adams, this anthology offers an impressively varied view on this archetypical character. Some stories refer back to mad geniuses you’ll be familiar with (Frankenstein, Lex Luthor). Some of them feature wholly original villains. In some stories, you’ll feel sympathy for them; in others, it’s hard to find a shred of positive. There’s fantasy, SF, steampunk, humor, horror, stories referring back to historical events and fictional characters. This is one of the few themed anthologies that escapes the risk of monotony by changing direction so often that it rarely feels like too much of the same thing.

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When We Wake by Karen Healey

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

WhenWeWakeI read some great YA novels last year, but also a few less than impressive ones. In my reviews, I explained my reservations about the novels I didn’t like in some detail. At one point, I started to wonder whether I was being too hard on them, because, after all, those books are aimed at a younger audience. Is it fair to set the same expectations for YA as for books aimed at mature readers? Looking back, I even mentioned in some reviews that I clearly wasn’t the target demographic for these novels and that someone who is closer to the YA age range would probably enjoy them more.

So, thinking about those reviews now, I’m wondering: was I just making excuses for poor writing? Shouldn’t a novel feature interesting, complex characters and an original plot whether it’s YA or not? There are good books and bad books in any genre. Letting YA get away with predictability, poor characterization or sloppy plotting means lowered standards. It means confusing reading level with quality.

You only need to look at some great YA novels to see what’s possible. Karen Healey’s When We Wake is a wonderful example of such a novel.

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The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Robin Hobb

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

WillfulPrincessPiebaldPrinceOver the years, Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings has become one of fantasy’s most beloved settings. So far, the series consists of three completed trilogies (Farseer, Live Ship, and Tawny Man), as well as the Rain Wilds Chronicles, a four book cycle whose final installment is due out in March. In addition, there are a number of shorter works set in this fantasy universe. The most recent of these is the brand new novella The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince.

It’s best to think of The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince as a prequel to the Farseer Trilogy, and like almost all prequels, it’s better to read it after you’ve read the books that take place later in the internal chronology. So, if you’re new to the Realm of the Elderlings, grab a copy of Assasin’s Apprentice instead.

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Lookin’ Good: The Alteration by Kingsley Amis

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

TheAlterationYes, I know doing a Lookin’ Good post for a novel that was originally published more than 35 years ago may seem a bit odd, but the forthcoming new edition of The Alteration by Kingsley Amis looks just lovely. This novel, which I somehow never read, looks almost tailor-made for me.

From the publisher:

In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into alternate history, it is 1976 but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. After all, any sacrifice is worth it for the perfection of art.

How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction to equal Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.

This edition of The Alteration, due out on May 7th from NYRB, also features a new introduction by William Gibson.

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Doughnut by Tom Holt

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

DoughnutTheo Bernstein accidentally put a decimal point one place to the left instead of the right and, thusly, caused the Very Very Large Hadron Collider to explode, thereby disintegrating an entire Alp and becoming one of the most hated men alive. Coincidentally, Shliemann Brothers, the company that held all his investments, went bust at just about the same time, so, well, things aren’t going great for Theo.

After Theo receives an apple, a seemingly empty bottle and a small pink powder compact as part of an inheritance from his friend and former physics professor Pieter van Goyen, he ends up working at a huge but mostly empty hotel. There, he accidentally stumbles into what appears to be a parallel universe, and from that point on, things start getting weird…

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Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Six-GunSnowWhiteIt doesn’t happen to me very often, but ever so rarely I come across a book that’s so purely brilliant that it almost stuns me, a story that’s so gorgeous and rich that I feel paralyzed: not just unable to verbalize how much I love it but actually almost reluctant to, because trying to encapsulate it in a review feels like sullying it, like tacking on extraneous words that it really doesn’t need.

In the case of Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente, which is—in case it wasn’t clear yet—one of the most gorgeous works of speculative fiction I’ve read in years, that odd reluctance is even stronger, because it’s such a short, tight piece of writing. No word is wasted. I am frequently impressed by an author’s facility with words, but in the case of Valente, I feel almost intimidated. Here is a novella that carries within itself more depth and richness than lesser authors manage to bring to a series.

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Excerpt: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

TheRithmatistHere’s an illustrated excerpt from The Rithmatist, the forthcoming YA novel by #1 NY Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

In The Rithmatist, a 14-year-old boy named Joel wants nothing more than to become a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to give life to two-dimensional figures called Chalklings. They’re also the only defense humans have against Wild Chalklings, who have recently taken over Nebrask and are on the verge of overrunning the entire American Isles.  

Joel, the son of an ordinary chalkmaker, can only watch from the sidelines as Rithmatist students practice their art. But when students start disappearing, Joel and his friend Melody end up helping with the investigation. This will lead them to a discovery that will change Rithmatics—and their world—forever…

Please enjoy the prologue and first chapter of Brandon Sanderson’s The Rithmatist, complete with illustrations by Ben McSweeney.

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American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

AmericanElsewhereMona Bright used to be a cop. She was married. They were expecting a baby. Then, abruptly, everything fell apart and her life collapsed. Since then, she’s been drifting from town to town, taking short term jobs, drinking heavily, looking for oblivion… until she learns that she’s inherited her mother’s house, somewhere in a small New Mexico town called Wink.

When Mona starts trying to find Wink, it turns out that the place is incredibly hard to track down. Resolved to grasp the chance at stability that this house represents, she digs in and finally manages to reach the isolated little town. Wink turns out to be picturesque and quiet, a quintessential American Small Town complete with lovely houses, healthy lawns and white picket fences, but it soon becomes clear that there’s something very odd about the people who live there….

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Excerpt: The Mongoliad, Book Three

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Mongoliad Book ThreeFirst of all – spoiler warning! This is an excerpt from The Mongoliad: Book Three. You’ll find out things that happened in the previous two books. If you haven’t read those books yet and don’t want your reading experience affected, don’t read further in this post. (Trust me on this, as someone who saw this excerpt before finishing Book Two.)

Second, I was originally planning to write a separate review for each book in The Mongoliad trilogy, but as soon as I finished Book One I figured out this isn’t really a trilogy — it’s a very long novel chopped into three parts. Book One doesn’t really have an ending — it just kinda stops. So, I’ll review the entire thing. Soon.

Please enjoy this excerpt from The Mongoliad: Book Three by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Nicole Galland, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey and Cooper Moo.

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