Coming Attractions

Hey guys,

Now that I'm officially flying away to Eastern Europe and the Balkans on June 12th, here's what I have on tap for the next couple of weeks. . .

Book Reviews

I'll be reviewing the two Malazan novellas by Steven Erikson I hadn't read yet, The Healthy Dead (Canada, USA, Europe) and Crack'd Pot Trail (Canada, USA, Europe) shortly.

I've also read Naomi Novik's latest Temeraire adventure, Tongues of Serpents (Canada, USA, Europe). So a book review should be posted prior to my departure.

Having enjoyed Stephen King's The Gunslinger (Canada, USA, Europe) a while back, I gave the sequel, The Drawing of the Three (Canada, USA, Europe), a shot. Almost done and I'm loving it!
I've got Ian McDonald's The Dervish House (Canada, USA, Europe) staring at me, and I don't think I'll be able to hold off much longer. Once I'm done with the King, I should immediately jump into this one.

I'll have to determine how many more books I can read before boarding that plane, but the remaining contenders include Jim Butcher's Grave Peril (Canada, USA, Europe), Swords & Dark Magic edited by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan (Canada, USA, Europe), and Jasper Kent's Thirteen Years Later (Canada, USA, Europe).

Since I won't be packing in as much beach time, and since I'll be staying at hostels instead of stylish guesthouses as was the case in Southeast Asia, I won't be spending as much time reading this time around. I'll probably be bringing three or four lightweight ARCs, just in case. Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds (Canada, USA, Europe) is a given. But I haven't decided what else to pack and bring along. Leviathan Wept and Other Stories by Daniel Abraham (Canada, USA, Europe, and Subpress) figures among my choices. So are L. E. Modesitt, jr.'s Imager's Challenge (Canada, USA, Europe), K. J. Parker's The Folding Knife (Canada, USA, Europe), Ian McDonald's Ares Express (Canada, USA, Europe), and China Miéville's Kraken (Canada, USA, Europe). We'll have to wait and see. . .

Interviews

The interview Adam, Larry, Ken, and I did with Brandon Sanderson last December should hopefully see the light in the near future. Brandon has already answered all the questions, but he wants to go through them again to make sure that he's happy with everything. And since working on Towers of Midnight keeps him rather busy, well we don't yet know when he'll get back to me with the final Q&A.

Excerpts

I have an extract from Jacqueline Carey's Naamah's Curse (Canada, USA, Europe) coming up this weekend, and another excerpt from Ian McDonald's The Dervish House coming up later this month. The same goes for Mark Charan Newton's City of Ruin (Canada, USA, Europe).

I was supposed to get an extract from Swords & Dark Magic (either from the Cook, Abercrombie, Erikson, or Lynch short stories), but it looks as though this one went down the crapper. I'll keep you posted if that changes. . . The same can be said of Ian Tregillis' Bitter Seeds. . .

Finally, one lucky winner will receive an Advance Reading Copy of Speculative Horizons (Subpress), edited by Yours Truly!

Giveaways

There will be contests for copies of Jacqueline Carey's Naamah's Curse and Ian McDonald's The Dervish House in the coming weeks. I have a few others in the pipeline, so stay tuned for more!

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but that's about it in a nutshell.=)

RIP: Anonymous

I'm persuaded that by now you have discovered that anonymous comments have been disabled. Too bad, for most comments in the past came from people without a Google account. But a stupid dumbass from Slynt's board spammed the Hotlist a little over a week ago, so I had to step in. For those interested, it only takes a minute to register your email address and get a Google account. . .