Giveaway winners!

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

The winners of last week’s giveaway are:

Talitha L. of Phoenix, AZ  won the first prize (copies of Thief’s Covenant and False Covenant by Ari Marmell)

Francis L. of Gainesville, FL won the second prize (a copy of False Covenant)

Congratulations to both winners, and thanks to Pyr for generously providing these wonderful prizes!

And – if you didn’t win, make sure to check back here regularly. I’ll have more giveaways of books I review coming up, including, in just a day or two, a handful of copies of The Hollow City by Dan Wells…

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The Hollow City by Dan Wells

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Michael Shipman, the main character of Dan Wells’ newest novel The Hollow City, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and lives with horrible hallucinations and delusions. He is convinced that Faceless men are following him everywhere. They can monitor him through any electronic device: televisions, mobile phones, even alarm clocks. It’s all part of a Plan that’s been going on for years. Michael doesn’t take the medication his personal psychiatrist prescribes because he isn’t convinced that the doctor isn’t part of the Faceless men’s Plan himself.

But then Michael wakes up in a hospital, with only scattered fragments of the past two weeks’ worth of memories. He soon learns that, in that time, several people have been murdered by a serial killer called the Red Line killer, whose macabre calling card is the way he leaves his victims: he removes all the skin on their faces, making them… Faceless.

Continue reading →

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How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Next week sees the US release of Some Kind of Fairy Tale, the new novel by one of my favorite authors, Graham Joyce. I just received my copy, so the review will be coming in a bit later. Meanwhile, as a warm-up, here’s a review of one of the author’s recent novels.

Reviewing Graham Joyce for fantasy readers can be tricky, because his novels are often firmly set in our contemporary reality, with only minor fantasy elements. In addition, those fantasy elements are often only visible to the narrator of the novel, creating the impression that they may be figments of the narrator’s imagination. Regardless of the fact that Graham Joyce has won a handful of British Fantasy Awards, you could label his books as magical realism, literary fiction, fantasy, or a mixture of all three. The author himself calls his style of writing “Old Peculiar,” which is a perfectly fitting way to describe the atmosphere of novels such as The Tooth Fairy (one of my favorite novels of all time) and Dark Sister.

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False Covenant by Ari Marmell – includes giveaway!

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Giveaway time! Thanks to the kind people at Pyr, I have one copy of False Covenant and one complete set (Thief’s Covenant AND False Covenant) to give away to two lucky readers. Details on how to enter this worldwide giveaway are at the end of the review…

In the mood for some fun YA fantasy? Meet Widdershins, formerly known as Adrienne Satti: a young woman who grew up as an orphan on the streets of Davillon, escaped poverty to join the city’s powerful aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story, and then shockingly found herself cast down to the bottom rungs of society again. After clawing her way back up to the life of a successful thief in the city’s Finders Guild, she then discovered that the ghosts of her former life—or, more accurately, former lives—are coming back to haunt her…

Ari Marmell introduces the world to this character in Thief’s Covenant, the opening volume of the Widdershins Adventures series, by skipping back and forth in time, from her days as a street urchin to her brief time as a young aristocrat and finally to her current (in)famous life as a thief. The novel is an impressive feat of storytelling: it bounces back and forth between the different phases of the protagonist’s life, giving the reader just enough background about Widdershins to follow the story while at the same time introducing a plot that connects the different phases of her life.

Continue reading →

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Giveaway winners!

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

The winners of last week’s Existence giveaway are…

Deirdre M. of Milwaukee, WI

Wesley A. of Sacramento, CA

Congratulations to the winners! Your brand new copies of Existence are on their way, courtesy of Tor.

If you didn’t win this time, make sure to keep reading Far Beyond Reality, because I hope to have many more giveaways in the near future!

(And again, I’d like to apologize for the lack of new reviews here lately. Without going into details too much, life’s a bit hectic here. I expect everything will settle down later this Summer. Meanwhile, I hope to post at least one review per week here, and maybe some other SFF-related posts whenever possible.)

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The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Last month, N.K. Jemisin treated the world to The Killing Moon, a brilliant new fantasy novel set in a strikingly original world and populated by some of the most fascinating characters I’ve met in years. Now, barely a handful of weeks later, here’s the second and (for now) final novel in the Dreamblood series: The Shadowed Sun.

If you haven’t read The Killing Moon yet, you should probably stop reading this now and instead go take a look at my review of that first novel (or better still, just read the book) because the rest of this review contains spoilers for The Killing Moon. If you’re just curious whether this second novel is as good as the first one before committing, rest assured: it is. Actually, it’s even better. Just don’t read the rest of this review if you haven’t read that first book yet.

Continue reading →

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Giveaway! Existence by David Brin

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Thanks to the kind folks at Tor, I have two hardcover copies of Existence, the long-awaited new novel by David Brin, to give away. At the request of the publisher, this giveaway is only open to residents of the US and Canada.

To enter the giveaway, simply send an email with subject line “EXISTENCE” to fbrgiveaway AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address. One entry per person, please: multiple entries will result in disqualification, but please feel free to tell your friends!

The giveaway will end on Wednesday, June 27th at 11:59 PM, and I’ll contact the winners the following day. Void where prohibited by law, rules are subject to change, may impair your ability to operate machinery, and of course, do not exceed recommended dosage.

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Existence by David Brin

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

The opening scene of Existence, David Brin’s long-awaited return to novel-length science fiction, is a great set piece that’s meaningful in a number of ways: astronaut Gerald Livingstone is working on the border of Earth and deep space, literally between heaven and earth—and helped by a monkey, no less. The symbolism couldn’t be clearer if he waved a flag depicting the Sistine Chapel’s God’s-hand-reaching-down-from-Heaven scene.

What Gerald actually does in orbit seems, at first, much less uplifting (sorry): he’s essentially a glorified garbage collector, gathering pieces of floating space junk for disposal—until he finds a mysterious glowing stone, which soon proves to be an alien artifact. This sets off a long and complex plot that will change life on Earth forever.

Continue reading →

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Giveaway winners!

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

The winners of last week’s The Dragon Griaule Giveaway are…

Susan M. of Tulsa, OK

Rob W. of Klimmen, The Netherlands

Congratulations to the winners! Your brand new copies of The Dragon Griaule are on their way, courtesy of Subterranean Press.

If you didn’t win this time, make sure to keep reading Far Beyond Reality, because I hope to have many more giveaways in the near future!

(I also hope to have some more actual, you know, reviews here too… It’s been a crazy few weeks, so I haven’t been as diligent as I should be in getting new content up here at FBR. I’m hoping that will improve soon. For now, thanks for sticking around while it’s a bit quiet around here…)

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Giveaway! The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Stefan (Far Beyond Reality)

Thanks to the kind people at Subterranean Press, I have not one but TWO copies of The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard to give away. This is truly a gorgeous book, so I’m extremely happy that I can offer this giveaway to my readers. Even better, thanks to the publisher’s generosity, this is a worldwide giveaway – so no geographic restrictions this time! If you’re not familiar with the author or with Griaule, please take a look at my review first.

To enter the giveaway, simply send an email with subject line “GRIAULE” to fbrgiveaway AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address. One entry per person, please: multiple entries will result in disqualification, but please feel free to tell your friends!

The giveaway will end on Thursday, June 14th at 11:59 PM, and I’ll contact the winners the following day. Void where prohibited by law, rules are subject to change, may impair your ability to operate machinery, and of course, harmful if swallowed.

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