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You can now download Joe Abercrombie's The Wisdom of Crowds for 4.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now the Breakers have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds.

Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age. Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke runs out of allies . . . while Black Calder plots his vengeance.

The banks fall, the sun of the Union is torn down, and in the darkness behind the scenes, the threads of the Weaver’s ruthless plan are drawn together . . .


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You can now download Robert R. McCammon's Bethany's Sin for only 1.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Several other McCammon titles such as They Thirst, The Hunter From the Woods, Gone South, I Travel by Night/Last Train From Perdition, Mystery Walk, Nightcrawlers, Makeup, and Night Calls the Green Falcon are also on sale.

Here's the blurb:

A family moves to a small town dominated by a murderous cult.

Despite its eerie name, Bethany’s Sin is a pleasant place. After a life of grim poverty, this new community seems like heaven to Evan Reid and his family. With its quaint shops, manicured lawns, and fresh summer smell, the town charms the Vietnam veteran, his wife, and their daughter like nowhere else they have ever been. But beneath that cheerful façade lurks something deadly. As soon as they enter their new house, Evan is consumed by fear. He can’t place its source, but there is something about the town’s mayor, Kathryn Drago, which makes him uneasy. By day she is a harmless retired archaeologist. But at night she leads an Amazonian cult whose next ritual calls for a secret ingredient: the blood of Evan Reid.


Smoke and Mirrors


If I remember correctly, I bought the paperback edition of this book the year I created Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. So yeah, it's been a while. Seventeen years, for those of you who are keeping track. Why wait this long before reading it? I have no idea. Like so many other speculative fiction works I should have read long ago, I figure that Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors somehow found a way to always fall through the cracks and I never got around to reading it.

A few weeks back, as I was rereading my Sandman omnibus editions prior to watching the Netflix TV series (no, I haven't watched it yet), I realized yet again just how good Gaiman could be. In the mood for more, I turned my attention to his collections of short fiction pieces. There are a few of them now, and the only one I ever read and reviewed was Fragile Things. Hence, it was high time to give his very first collection to be published a shot.

Here's the blurb:

The astonishing and impressive first collection of short stories from New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman

An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat in a second-hand store . . .

A stray cat fights and refights a nightly battle to protect his adoptive family from an unimagiable evil . . .

A young couple receives a wedding gift that will reveal a chilling alternate history of their marriage . . .

Beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks, a frightened little boy bargains for his life with a most persistent troll . . .

Such miraculous inventions and more await within Neil Gaiman’s first collection of short fiction, a gift of wonder and delight from one of the most unique literary artists of our day. In his capable hands, magic is no mere illusion, but a powerful means to reveal the nature of our humanity obscured in the smoke of our fears and anxieties . . . and reflected in the funhouse mirrors of our dreams.


Every time I review an anthology or a collection, I bemoan the fact that such works are almost always filled with lackluster filler material, with only a few quality short stories that manage to rise above the others. The rest, unfortunately, is always ordinary or forgettable stuff that fail to make an impression on the reader. I believed that it would be different with Neil Gaiman, that every single piece found throughout the pages of Smoke and Mirrors would be worth a read. Alas, it appears that in my excitement I forgot that this was the author's first collection and that he wasn't yet the powerhouse he would soon become.

Still, some of the short stories were awesome and showed Gaiman's brilliance and weirdness to their full extent. Pieces like "The Wedding Present", "Troll Bridge", "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories", "Murder Mysteries", and "Snow, Glass, Apples" were memorable in various ways. Others, like "Chivalry", "Changes", "Looking for the Girl", "We Can Get Them for You Wholesale", "Foreign Parts", and "Tastings" were good, but there was something missing from each of them. That little something that would have made them as special as the other tales.

Sadly, the rest of the collection was made up of pieces that for some reason failed to resonate with me, or else bored me from the first page to the last. Thankfully, some of these are quite short.

In the end, Smoke and Mirrors makes for a decidedly uneven reading experience. When it's good, you eat it up with a spoon and can't wait to read the next story. The pieces that fall into the second category, though they don't quite manage to enthrall you, nevertheless manage to keep you interested. Those that I considered duller and a bit uninspired, even if blessedly short, quickly make you lose interest in this book. Which is why it took me so long to finish it. The way the stories have been arranged forces the reader to go through a few of the bland ones before reaching the more notable tales.

Hence, your mileage may vary.

The final verdict: 7/10

For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country.

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You can now get your hands on the digital edition of Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. She sent them out into the galaxy to observe and document the rise and fall of countless human empires. Since then, every two hundred thousand years, they gather to exchange news and memories of their travels. Only there is no Gathering. Someone is eliminating the Gentian line. And now Campion and Purslane -- two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences -- must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence . . .


You can also download The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction for only 0.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

From a literary perspective, this will certainly be the best collection of the year in science fiction and fantasy. Gene Wolfe, of whom The Washington Post said, "Of all SF writers currently active none is held in higher esteem," has selected the short fiction he considers his finest into one volume.

There are many award winners and many that have been selected for various Year's Best anthologies. Gene Wolfe has produced possibly the finest and most significant body of short fiction in the SF and fantasy field in the last fifty years, and is certainly among the greatest living writers to emerge from the genres. This is the first retrospective collection of his entire career.

It is for the ages.


This week's New York Times Bestsellers (September 4th)

In hardcover:

Beth Revis' Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel debuts at number 12. For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link.

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You can now download Adrian Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls for only 1.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

The sun is bloated, diseased, dying perhaps. Beneath its baneful light, Shadrapar, last of all cities, harbours fewer than 100,000 human souls. Built on the ruins of countless civilisations, Shadrapar is a museum, a midden, an asylum, a prison on a world that is ever more alien to humanity.

Bearing witness to the desperate struggle for existence between life old and new is Stefan Advani: rebel, outlaw, prisoner, survivor. This is his testament, an account of the journey that took him into the blazing desolation of the western deserts; that transported him east down the river and imprisoned him in the verdant hell of the jungle's darkest heart; that led him deep into the labyrinths and caverns of the underworld. He will meet with monsters, madman, mutants.

The question is, which one of them will inherit this Earth?


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Once again, you can now get your hands on the digital edition of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

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.



You can also download Andy Weir's "Randomize" for only 1.99$ here.

Here's the blurb:

In the near future, if Vegas games are ingeniously scam-proof, then the heists have to be too, in this imaginative and whip-smart story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house—unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.


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You can now download Anna Stephens' Godblind for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

The Mireces worship the bloodthirsty Red Gods. Exiled from Rilpor a thousand years ago, and left to suffer a harsh life in the cold mountains, a new Mireces king now plots an invasion of Rilpor’s thriving cities and fertile earth.

Dom Templeson is a Watcher, a civilian warrior guarding Rilpor’s border. He is also the most powerful seer in generations, plagued with visions and prophecies. His people are devoted followers of the god of light and life, but Dom harbors deep secrets, which threaten to be exposed when Rillirin, an escaped Mireces slave, stumbles broken and bleeding into his village.

Meanwhile, more and more of Rilpor’s most powerful figures are turning to the dark rituals and bloody sacrifices of the Red Gods, including the prince, who plots to wrest the throne from his dying father in the heart of the kingdom. Can Rillirin, with her inside knowledge of the Red Gods and her shocking ties to the Mireces King, help Rilpor win the coming war?


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You can now get your hands on the digital edition of James S. A. Corey's Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection for only 3.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

From Leviathan Wakes to Leviathan Falls, James S. A. Corey's Hugo Award-winning Expanse series has redefined modern space opera. Now, available in print for the first time comes the complete collection of short fiction set in the Expanse universe, including both a brand-new novella set after the events of Leviathan Falls and author’s notes on each story.

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars.

On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them.

On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet.

On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home.

All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection of short fiction set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Contents:
The Expanse Short Fiction
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
The Churn
Gods of Risk
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of our Fathers

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (August 28th)

There are no speculative fiction bestsellers this week.

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You can now download Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns - 30th Anniversary Edition for only 3.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

There seems to be a shitload of other Batman omnibus editions by Frank Miller, Chuck Dixon, Alan Moore, Jeph Loeb, Scott Snyder, etc, that are also on sale. You might want to browse around a little. =)

Here's the blurb:

Celebrate 30 years of one of the most influential stories ever told in the comics medium with the anniversary edition of the undisputed graphic novel masterpiece and NEW YORK TIMES bestseller BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

Writer/artist Frank Miller completely reinvents the legend of Batman in this saga of a near-future Gotham City gone to rot, 10 years after the Dark Knight's retirement. Forced to take action, the Dark Knight returns in a blaze of fury, taking on a whole new generation of criminals and matching their level of violence. He is soon joined by a new Robin--a girl named Carrie Kelley--who proves to be just as invaluable as her predecessors.

But can Batman and Robin deal with the threat posed by their deadliest enemies after years of incarceration have turned them into perfect psychopaths? And more important, can anyone survive the coming fallout from an undeclared war between the superpowers--or the clash of what were once the world's greatest heroes?


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You can now download Lev Grossman's The Magicians trilogy for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb for the first volume:

Quentin Coldwater is a brilliant but unhappy young man growing up in Brooklyn, NY. At 17, he remains obsessed with the fantasy novels he read as a child, set in the magical land of Fillory. One day, returning home from a college interview gone awry, he finds himself whisked to Brakebills, an exclusive college for wizards hidden in upstate New York. And so begins THE MAGICIANS, the thrilling and original novel of fantasy and disenchantment by Lev Grossman, author of the international bestseller Codex and book critic for TIME magazine.

At Brakebills, Quentin learns to cast spells. He makes friends and falls in love. He transforms into animals and gains powers of which he never dreamed. Still, magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he thought it would, and four years later, he finds himself back in Manhattan, living an aimless, hedonistic existence born of apathy, boredom and the ability to conjure endless sums of money out of thin air.

One afternoon, hung over and ruing some particularly foolish behavior, Quentin is surprised by the sudden arrival of his Brakebills friend and rival Penny, who announces that Fillory is real. This news promises to finally fulfill Quentin’s yearning, but their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than Quentin could have imagined. His childhood dream is a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, THE MAGICIANS pays intentional homage to the beloved fantasy novels of C. S. Lewis, T.H. White and J.K. Rowling, but does much more than enlarge the boundaries of conventional fantasy writing. By imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions, Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.


Conan the Barbarian: 20 Adventure Tales of Conan


I downloaded Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian: 20 Adventure Tales of Conan years ago and never actually got around to reading it. Back in the late 90s, when I was a huge WoT fan, I tracked down every single Robert Jordan Conan title, but at the time I never gave any thought to giving Conan's creator a shot. The more fool me, I know. But hey, better late than never, right?

I began Howard's "The Hyborian Age" essay during a road trip once, but never went beyond that. Fast-forward to this year, as I was reaching the end of my Camino de Santiago and was running out of reading material, on my day off in Santiago de Compostela I finally elected to give it another go. And never looked back!

I took my time to go through each short fiction piece and I enjoyed this omnibus edition a lot more than I thought I would! Considering that these stories were all written in the 1930s, I have to admit that the material has aged particularly well. Couldn't resist and went for one of Frank Frazetta's iconic depictions of Conan the Cimmerian instead of the regular cover.

Here's the blurb:

Conan The Barbarian is the original stories about adventure stories of conan the cimmerian written by Robert E. Howard in 1934-1936. In this book contains 20 stories of Conan The Cimmerian.

1.The Hyborian Age, first published in The Phantagraph, February-November 1936.
2.Shadows In the Moonlight, first published in Weird Tales, April 1934.
3.Queen Of the Black Coast, first published in Weird Tales, May 1934.
4.The Devil In Iron, first published in Weird Tales, August 1934.
5.The People Of the Black Circle, first published in Weird Tales, September, October and November 1934.
6.A Witch Shall Be Born, first published in Weird Tales in 1934.
7.The Jewels Of Gwahlur, first published in Weird Tales, March 1935.
8.Beyond the Black River, first published in Weird Tales magazine circa 1935.
9.Shadows In Zamboula, first published in Weird Tales, November 1935.
10.The Hour Of the Dragon, first published in Weird Tales, December 1935-April 1936.
11.Gods Of the North, first published in Fantasy Fan, March 1934.
12.Red Nails, First Published in Weird Tales, July, August-September, October 1936.
13. The Shadow of the Vulture, First published in the pulp magazine Magic Carpet Magazine, January 1934.
14.The Phoenix on the Sword, First published in 1932.
15.The Scarlet Citadel, First published in 1933.
16.The Tower of the Elephant, First published in 1933.
17.Black Colossus, First published in 1934.
18.The Slithering Shadow, First published in 1934.
19.The Pool of the Black One, First published in 1934.
20.Rogues in the House, First published in 1935.

From the get-go, I knew I wanted to read these stories in chronological order. Otherwise, they feature a Conan as young as eighteen and as old as fifty-ish and are all over the place. I wasn't aware that several writers/editors have attempted to organize Howard's Conan stories into a chronological timeline and that there is no consensus among them. After perusing a few articles, I settled on the Miller/Clark/de Camp chronology because it seemed to be the one that has garnered a more general approval among aficionados.

What surprised me the most was the quality of the worldbuilding. These stories visit most kingdoms/regions of Howard's Hyborian Age universe and the author impressed me with his eye for detail. Add to that a disparate cast of men and women of every walk of life, body type, creed, skin color, as well as his depictions of this panoply of cultures and their traditions, myths, and legends, and you have something I couldn't believe was written nearly a century ago. I mean, critics applaud half-assed non-medieval European fantasy backdrops created by authors like S.A. Chakraborty or Wesley Chu, but there's no denying that, for all his faults, Robert E. Howard was already doing it, and doing it better to boot, back in the 30s. There is a lot more depth to Howard's writing than I expected. This is no generic hack-and-slash sword and sorcery fare.

Interestingly enough, I found that I preferred the author's shorter works. Indeed, the short stories and the shorter novellas worked better for me than their longer counterparts, or the novel-length The Hour of the Dragon. This last one was actually overlong and is probably one of my least favorite Conan tales found in this collection. Reading them in chronological order came with a number of issues, chief among them the difference in quality of the stories that were written earlier but occur much later in the timeline. "The Phoenix on the Sword" is a case in point in that regard.

Another thing that surprised me was the fact that there is no filler in this collection. While the quality and originality of each piece differ, not a single tale is a waste of time. Some of my favorites included "Red Nails", "Beyond the Black River", "The People of the Black Circle", "Tower of the Elephant", "A Witch Shall Be Born", and "Rogues in the House".

Just a note regarding this omnibus edition. There are a lot of typos and formatting screw-ups throughout. But having paid 0.99$ for it, I can't really complain much.

Highly recommended. If only to discover that Conan the Barbarian is a more multilayered protagonist than you ever thought possible.

The final verdict: 8/10

For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale. 1740 pages featuring Conan the Cimmerian for less than 1$, it doesn't get much better than this!

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You can now download Unfettered III, an anthology edited by Shawn Speakman, for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

The two previous Unfettered anthologies are also on sale.

Here's the blurb:

From the editor of the award-winning anthology Unfettered comes the newest installment in the science fiction and fantasy series, Unfettered III.

Lacking health insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, Shawn Speakman asked friends in the science fiction and fantasy writing community to donate short stories he could use to counter mounting medical debt. The result was Unfettered, an anthology offering tales from some of the best authors working today.

Now, in Unfettered III, Speakman continues to pay forward the aid he received, raising money to combat medical debt for SFF artists and authors. He has gathered together a great mix of new and favorite writers―free to write what they like―the result a powerful new anthology perfect for all readers.

Be haunted by the chilling ghost story of Megan Lindholm. Revisit the Magicians world with Lev Grossman. Return to Osten Ard in an epic first look at Tad Williams’s Empire of Grass. Share a heartfelt story of loss and gain with Callie Bates. Cross the sands of the desert planet Dune with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Travel the Ways in a new Wheel of Time novella with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Enter the amazing potter city of Seven with Naomi Novik. And many more stories, all wondrous alongside beautiful art by Todd Lockwood!

- Callie Bates
- Terry Brooks
- Delilah S. Dawson
- Jason Denzel
- David Anthony Durham
- Lev Grossman
- John Gwynne
- Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
- Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
- Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb)
- Mark Lawrence
- Todd Lockwood
- Seanan McGuire
- Naomi Novik
- Peter Orullian
- Cat Rambo
- Robert V.S. Redick
- Ken Scholes
- Scott Sigler
- Anna Smith Spark
- Shawn Speakman
- Anna Stephens
- Patrick Swenson
- Ramon Terrell
- Marc Turner
- Carrie Vaughn
- Tad Williams
- Deborah A. Wolf

Unfettered III is sure to astound with the magic bound within its pages. All the while raising money for a charitable cause.

Because protecting our artists and authors is as important as the stories they tell.


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You can now download Chris Wooding's The Ember Blade for only 3.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

Empires rise, civilisations fall and one culture comes to subsume another. It's the way of the world . . . sometimes ways of life are improved, sometimes they are not. But the progression of change is huge and - usually - unstoppable.

In this story, the Ossian way of life is fading and the Dachen way is taking its place and Aren is comfortable with that. Even when his parents are accused of treason he supports the establishment and maintains there's been some mistake . . . which is all it takes to get himself and his best friend arrested . . .

Thrown into a prison mine they plan their escape - only to be overtaken by events when they're rescued, and promptly find themselves in the middle of an ambush. By the time they've escaped, they're unavoidably linked to Garric - their unwelcome saviour - and his quest to overturn to Dachen way of life.

If they leave Garric now, they'll be arrested or killed by their pursuers. If they turn him in, Garric will kill them. If they stay with him, they'll be abetting a murderous quest they don't believe in. There are no good options - but Aren will still have to choose a path . . .

Designed to return to classic fantasy adventures and values, from a modern perspective, this is a fast-moving coming-of-age trilogy featuring a strong cast of diverse characters, brilliant set-pieces and a strong character and plot driven story.


This week's New York Times Bestsellers (August 21st)

There are no speculative fiction bestsellers this week.

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You can now get your hands on the digital edition of George R. R. Martin's excellent Fevre Dream for only 1.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

Abner Marsh, a struggling riverboat captain, suspects that something’s amiss when he is approached by a wealthy aristocrat with a lucrative offer. The hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet; nor does he care that he won’t earn back his investment in a decade. York’s reasons for traversing the powerful Mississippi are to be none of Marsh’s concern—no matter how bizarre, arbitrary, or capricious York’s actions may prove. Not until the maiden voyage of Fevre Dream does Marsh realize that he has joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare—and humankind’s most impossible dream.

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You can now get your hands on the digital edition of Robert V. S. Redick's The Red Wolf Conspiracy for only 3.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

Already a publishing sensation in England, The Red Wolf Conspiracy marks the debut of a remarkably gifted young writer. Robert V. S. Redick has been compared to Philip Pullman, George R. R. Martin, and China Miéville, among others, and like them he is a spellbinding storyteller, unafraid to sail his imagination into uncharted waters. With The Red Wolf Conspiracy he launches the first book of a trilogy destined to take its place among the classics of epic fantasy.

The Imperial Merchant Ship Chathrand is the last of her kind. Six hundred years old, the secrets of her construction long forgotten, the massive vessel dwarfs every other sailing craft in the world. It is a palace with sails, a floating outpost of the Empire of Arqual. And it is on its most vital mission yet: to deliver a young woman whose marriage will seal the peace between Arqual and its mortal enemy, the secretive Mzithrin Empire. But the young woman in question-Thasha, the daughter of the Arquali ambassador-has no intention of going meekly to the altar. For the ship's true mission is not peace but war-a war that threatens to unleash an ancient, all-consuming evil.

As the dark conspiracy at the heart of the voyage unfurls, Pazel Pathkendle, a lowly tarboy with an uncanny gift, will find himself in an unlikely alliance with Thasha and her protectors: Hercól, a valet who is more than he appears; Dri, the queen of a race of tiny stowaways who have their own plans for the great ship; and Ramachni, a powerful sorcerer from another world. Arrayed against them are the Chathrand's brutal captain, Nilus Rose; the Emperor's spymaster and chief assassin, Sandor Ott; and the enigmatic Dr. Chadfallow, a longtime friend to Pazel's family whose kind words may hide a vicious betrayal.

As the Chathrand navigates treacherous waters to complete its mission, Pazel, Thasha, and their allies-including a singularly heroic rat-must also navigate a treacherous web of intrigue to uncover the secret of the legendary Red Wolf.


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You can now download Brandon Sanderson's The Alloy of Law for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning are also discounted.

Here's the blurb:

Fresh from the success of The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson, best known for completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time®, takes a break to return to the world of the bestselling Mistborn series.

Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds.

Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history—or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice.

One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn, who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will. After twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.

At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

This week's New York Times Bestsellers (August 14th)

In hardcover:
 
Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility returns at number 15. For more info about this title, follow this Amazon Associate link.

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You can now download Andy Weir's Artemis for only 2.99$ by following this Amazon Associate link. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

Here's the blurb:

The bestselling author of The Martian returns with an irresistible new near-future thriller—a heist story set on the moon.

Jasmine Bashara never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich.

Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity’s first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she’s owed for a long time.

So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can’t say no. Sure, it requires her to graduate from small-time smuggler to full-on criminal mastermind. And it calls for a particular combination of cunning, technical skills, and large explosions—not to mention sheer brazen swagger. But Jazz has never run into a challenge her intellect can’t handle, and she figures she’s got the ‘swagger’ part down.

The trouble is, engineering the perfect crime is just the start of Jazz’s problems. Because her little heist is about to land her in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself.

Trapped between competing forces, pursued by a killer and the law alike, even Jazz has to admit she’s in way over her head. She’ll have to hatch a truly spectacular scheme to have a chance at staying alive and saving her city.

Jazz is no hero, but she is a very good criminal.

That’ll have to do.

Propelled by its heroine’s wisecracking voice, set in a city that’s at once stunningly imagined and intimately familiar, and brimming over with clever problem-solving and heist-y fun, Artemis is another irresistible brew of science, suspense, and humor from #1 bestselling author Andy Weir.


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. This OneLink will take you to the nearest Amazon site serving your country and you'll see if you can take advantage of this sale.

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 . . .