Extract from James S. A. Corey's LEVIATHAN FALLS

The final installment in James S. A. Corey's The Expanse, Leviathan Falls, will be released next week. You can pre-order it via these Amazon Associates links: Canada, USA, Europe.

Here's the blurb:

The biggest science fiction series of the decade comes to an incredible conclusion in the ninth and final novel in James S.A. Corey’s Hugo-award winning space opera that inspired the Prime Original series.

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.

As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.

But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.

The folks at Polygon.com have posted an extract from the novel. Follow this link to read it!

The Wheel of Time Soundtrack: Season 1, Volume 1

Hard to believe, but in addition to the soundtrack which was posted a few weeks back, Lorne Balfe produced 4 volumes of musical score for the first season alone!

Here's volume 1.

For those who'd like to buy it, follow this link.

More inexpensive ebook goodies!

You can now get your hands on the digital edition of Tamsyn Muir's Harrow the Ninth for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath — but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

More inexpensive ebook goodies!

You can now download Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .

More inexpensive ebook goodies!

You can now get your hands on the digital edition of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary for only 4.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

The Dreaming Kind

You should know by now that C. S. Friedman is one of my favorite SFF authors out there. So when I learned that she was releasing a collection of short stories, I knew I had to read it! It's been available in digital format since last spring, but you can now also get it in hard copy.

Here's the blurb:

Acclaimed Science Fiction and Fantasy author C. S. Friedman invites you to take eight journeys into the deliciously disturbing worlds of her imagination.

A bank clerk struggles to deal with malware inside his head…A woman is required by law to let her dying mother take over her body…A writer meets the man of her dreams (or perhaps her nightmares)…A time traveler seeks scalped tickets to the Sermon on the Mount…A telepath must abandon her humanity to negotiate with alien predators…A visiting extraterrestrial chooses a down-and-out junkie for its first human contact…

From humorous to dark, witty to lyrical, these stories showcase the versatile talent of one of the genre’s most creative writers. If you're not already a fan of C. S. Friedman, you soon will be. And if you're already a fan, you'll enjoy reading these rarely-seen shorter works.

What I loved the most about this collection is that it showcases the length and breadth of Friedman's imagination. The book is comprised of eleven short stories and poems, a couple of extracts from her novels In Conquest Born, This Virtual Night, and a poem she wrote for an RPG. Every piece comes with an intro or an afterword which provide context and other interesting tidbits. Given the fact that all of these stories were originally published in a variety of anthologies, it's the first time that fans can find them collected in one book. Some are recent and others date from the beginning of Friedman's career.

Although there are no specific themes linking these stories, all of them were quality reads. There is no filler material in this collection. The only one I was familiar with was the one Friedman wrote for the anthology I edited for Subterranean Press over a decade ago. I was aware that "Soul Mate" was solid, and was surprised that some of the other pieces were even better. Some stories are weird and quirky, while others are thought-provoking. All of them are compelling and well worth your time.

Apart from "Soul Mate," other favorites include "Downtime," "Terms of Engagement," "Eye of the Needle," and "The Dreaming Kind."

The final verdict: 8/10

You can download The Dreaming Kind: Short Stories and Fantasies by following these Amazon Associate links: Canada, USA, Europe.

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (October 31st)

In hardcover:

Stephen King's Billy Summers is down two positions, ending the week at number 11.

More inexpensive ebook goodies!

You can now download Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy by award-winning author Megan O'Keefe.

Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction.

However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe.

Now, separated by time and space, Sanda and Biran must fight to put things right.

You can also get your hands on Peter McLean's Priest of Gallows for only 0.99$ here. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

Gangster, soldier, priest. Queen's Man. Governor.

Tomas Piety has everything he ever wanted. In public he's a wealthy, highly respected businessman, happily married to a beautiful woman and governor of his home city of Ellinburg. In private, he's no longer a gang lord, head of the Pious Men, but one of the Queen's Men, invisible and officially non-existent, working in secret to protect his country.

The queen's sudden death sees him summoned him back to the capital - where he discovers his boss, Dieter Vogel, Provost Marshal of the Queen's Men, is busy tightening his stranglehold on the country.

Just as he once fought for his Pious Men, Tomas must now bend all his wit and hard-won wisdom to protect his queen - even when he can't always tell if he's on the right side.

Tomas has started to ask himself, what is the price of power? And more importantly, is it one he is willing to pay?

The Expanse, Season 6: Official Trailer

The Wheel of Time: The reviews are in!

Now that media screenings have taken place, reviews of the first three episodes have begun to appear across the internet.

The Good:

Decider, TVLine, The Verge, IGN, Collider, Radio Times, Bloomberg

The Bad:

Variety, IndieWire, io9

The Ugly:

Rolling Stone, The Independent, The New Statesman

I'm going into this series with the lowest possible expectations. And yet, after reading all those reviews I'm filled with even less confidence. Only 3 days to go. . .

More inexpensive ebook goodies!

You can now download Alastair Reynolds' scifi classic, Revelation Space, for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. There is a price match in Canada.

Here's the blurb:

The highly-acclaimed first novel in the Revelation Space universe.

When human colonists settled the Amarantin homeworld, few of them bothered to question the disappearance of its native population almost a million years before. But in the year 2551, one man, Dan Sylveste, is convinced that solving the riddle of the Amarantin is vital to human survival. As he nears the truth, he learns that someone wants him dead. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason. And if that reason is made public, the universe—and reality itself—could be forever altered. This sprawling operatic novel ranges across vast gulfs of time and space to arrive at a terrifying conclusion.

Alastair Reynolds, who holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy, has written a vivid and action-packed story that will linger in the minds of its readers.

You can also download Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas for only 2.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

You can also download Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, the 2016 winner of theArthur C. Clarke Award, for only 2.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel.

Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed, stand-alone novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

Who will inherit this new Earth?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?



Finally, you can download James S. A. Corey's excellent Leviathan Wakes for only 2.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

Welcome to the future. Humanity has colonized the solar system – Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond – but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for – and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer, Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations – and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

The Wheel of Time soundtrack

I didn't expect the oddly discordant Turkish influences, nor all the singing in the Old Tongue. It's not as epic as I thought it would be, but it remains a solid score.

The Wheel of Time: Wolfbrother trailer

If you've seen the teasers and followed the discussions regarding each of them, it seems obvious that production elected to make LOTS of changes that steer clear from the source material. Only a few more days to go until the premiere.

The more we see and learn, the more it looks as though WoT will be like GoT when Benioff and Weiss decided to do their own thing. . . =(

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (October 24th)

In hardcover:

Stephen King's Billy Summers maintains its position at number 9.

V. E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue returns at number 14.

Stranger Things, Season 4: Teaser Trailer

Can't wait for Spring Break! =)

Terry Brooks contest winners!

Thanks to the generosity of the folks at Del Rey, these lucky bastards will receive advance reading copies of Terry Brooks' Child of Light. For more info about this title, follow these Amazon Associate links: Canada, USA, Europe.

The winners are:

- Brett Rodgers, from Jacksonville, Florida, USA

- Steve Granger, from Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Many thanks to all the participants!

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (October 17th)

In hardcover:

 
Naomi Novik's The Last Graduate debuts at number 5.

Stephen King's Billy Summers is down four positions, ending the week at number 9.

North American cover art for Guy Gavriel Kay's ALL THE SEAS OF THE WORLD

Guy Gavriel Kay just unveiled the North American cover art for his upcoming novel, All the Seas of the World. Once again, it was designed by Lisa Jager. You can pre-order the book through these Amazon Associate links: Canada, USA, Europe.

Here's the blurb:

Returning triumphantly to the brilliantly evoked near-Renaissance world of A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky, international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay deploys his signature ‘quarter turn to the fantastic’ to tell a story of vengeance, power, and love.

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.

One of those arriving at that beach is a woman abducted by corsairs as a child and sold into years of servitude. Having escaped, she is trying to chart her own course—and is bent upon revenge. Another is a seafaring merchant who still remembers being exiled as a child with his family from their home, for their faith, a moment that never leaves him. In what follows, through a story both intimate and epic, unforgettable characters are immersed in the fierce and deadly struggles that define their time.

All the Seas of the World is a page-turning drama that also offers moving reflections on memory, fate, and the random events that can shape our lives—in the past, and today.

The Book of Boba Fett: Official Trailer

This looks like it's going to be one Star Wars show too many. :/

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (October 10th)

In hardcover:

Stephen King's Billy Summers maintains its position at number 5.

US cover art for Mark Lawrence's THE GIRL AND THE MOON

Thatthornguy.com just posted the US cover art for Mark Lawrence's The Girl and the Moon. The cover was done by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme.

Here's the blurb:

The green world exceeds and overwhelms all of Yaz’s expectations. Everything seems different but some constants remain: her old enemies are still two steps ahead, bent on her destruction.

The Corridor abounds with undreamed of plenty and with unsuspected danger. To stand a chance against the eyeless priest, Eular, and the god-like city-mind, Seus, Yaz will need to learn fast and make new friends.

The Convent of Sweet Mercy, like the Corridor itself, is packed with peril and opportunity. Yaz needs the nuns’ help – but first they want to execute her.

The fate of everyone squeezed between the Corridor’s vast walls, and ultimately the fate of those labouring to survive out on ice itself, hangs from the moon, and the battle to save the moon centres on the Ark of the Missing, buried beneath the emperor’s palace. Everyone wants Yaz to be the key that will open the Ark – the one the wise have sought for generations. But sometimes wanting isn’t enough.

The Wheel of Time: Main Trailer

A much better trailer, no question.

I'm still concerned about the fact that it remains extremely Pike-centric and we barely hear the leads say a few words. Moiraine is an important character, but she's not one of the main protagonists.

Those five will make or break the tv series and we have yet to see them act in any meaningful way.

Still, now I'm very, very cautiously optimistic.