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New Books March #1
Neil Barron
Orson Scott Card
Jack Dann
Greenberg & Koren
Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Francis Hertzog
John Meaney
Richard K. Morgan
George Pendle
John Maddox Roberts
Sharon Shinn
Lisa Tuttle
Scott Westerfeld

New Books February #4
J.G. Ballard
Gunn & Candelaria
Ben Jeapes
Michio Kaku
Leena Krohn
John Ringo
Theodore Sturgeon

2005 Archive


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This page lists selected newly published SFFH books seen by Locus Online (independently from the listings compiled by Locus Magazine).

Review copies received will be listed (though reprints and reissues are on other pages), but not galleys or advance reading copies. Selections, some based only on bookstore sightings, are at the discretion of Locus Online.

Key:
* = first edition
+ = first US edition
Date with publisher info is official publication month;
Date in parentheses at paragraph end is date seen or received.


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Your purchase of books through Amazon.com and Amazon UK links (click on titles or covers) helps support Locus Online!

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New SF, Fantasy, and Horror books seen : March 2005 Week 2


* Blaschke, Jayme Lynn : Voices of Vision
(University of Nebraska/Bison Books 0-8032-6239-6, $14.95, 194pp, trade paperback, April 2005, cover design R.W. Boeche)

Collection of 17 interviews with SF writers, editors, and comic books creators, subtitled "Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak".
• Subjects include Gardner Dozois, Stanley Schmidt, Patricia Anthony, Elizabeth Moon, Neil Gaiman, Samuel R. Delany, Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison, and Jack Williamson. All but one (Scott Edelman) are credited to prior print or online publications (Interzone, SF Site, Green Man Review, etc.)
• The publisher's site has this description (also on the Amazon page) and a couple quotes.
• Blaschke has a blog, with several posts about the book and its cover.


(Fri 11 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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+ Hemingway, Amanda : The Greenstone Grail
(Ballantine Del Rey 0-345-46078-2, $16.95, 360pp, hardcover, March 2005, jacket illustration Greg Spalenka)
First US edition (UK: HarperCollins/Voyager, April 2004).

YA fantasy novel, first of a trilogy, about an 11-year-old boy who has dreams of a green stone cup and a magical world called Eos.
• Del Rey Online has this description and an excerpt.
• The author also writes under the pseudonym Jan Siegel. Locus interviewed her in March 2002 -- excerpt.


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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+ Joyce, Graham : The Limits of Enchantment
(Simon & Schuster/Atria 0-7434-6344-7, $22, 263pp, hardcover, February 2005)
First US edition (UK: Gollancz, January 2005).

US edition of Joyce's latest novel, appearing one month after the UK edition from Gollancz, listed here. It's a fantasy novel set in 1966 Britain about the adopted daughter of a Midlands witchwoman who helps out local girls in trouble.
• SimonSays, the parent publisher's site, has this brief description.
• Amazon has Publishers Weekly's starred review, from its Jan. 24th issue: "Shaped by reverence for the feminine mystique and leavened with a dash of fantasy, this enthralling novel from British author, Joyce (The Facts of Life) offers a poignant appraisal of an English household steeped in folk traditions and its uneasy transition to contemporary times."
• Gary K. Wolfe reviewed the book in the February issue of Locus Magazine, saying it is "as solid, balanced, and finely tuned as anything Joyce has written, and that is tantamount to saying it's about as finely tuned as any recent fiction we have."


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Lee, Tanith : Metallic Love
(Bantam Spectra 0-553-58471-5, $6.99, 301pp, mass market paperback, March 2005, cover art Kinuko Craft)

SF novel, sequel to Lee's relatively early novel The Silver Metal Lover (1981) in which a teenage girl falls in love with a robot; in this book, the robot named Silver is updated and reborn.
• Bantam's site has this description with an excerpt.
• Amazon has the publisher's description, plus reader reviews.
• The book is Faren Miller's lead review in the upcoming April issue of Locus Magazine; Miller concludes "Generic absurdity and its critique, reckless passion and counterexperience, alternate throughout Metallic Love (a title considerably more ambivalent than The Silver Metal Lover). Such 'somersaults' may induce vertigo and a bit of queasiness in the reader, but the author seems to know exactly what she's doing."


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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(Golden Gryphon Press 1-930846-31-2, $25.95, 13+199pp, hardcover, April 2005, jacket painting Bob Eggleton)

Collection of 19 stories, first published from 1954 ("The Joy of Living", the author's first sale) to 2002, by the author best known as coauthor of the novel Logan's Run and its sequels.
• The introduction by the author provides background notes for all the stories.
• Golden Gryphon's site has this description, with links to the complete table of contents and the wraparound cover. (Note the cover shown here is scanned from the review copy; earlier versions with different typography appear on Amazon and other sites.)


(Fri 11 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Stackpole, Michael A. : A Secret Atlas
(Bantam Spectra 0-553-38237-3, $15, 460pp, trade paperback, March 2005, cover art Stephen Youll)

Fantasy novel, first in the "Age of Discovery" series, about royal cartographers used by the principality of Nalenyr to build an empire.
• Bantam's site has this description, with an excerpt.
• The author's website provides an mp3 download of the author reading Chapter One. There's also a glossary and pronunciation guide.
• Amazon has the Publishers Weekly review -- "This satisfying story has it all--wild magic, the excitement of epic fantasy and the adventure of exploration in the age of sail." -- the Booklist review, and reader reviews.


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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(Overlook 1-58567-620-9, $24.95, 469pp, hardcover, February 2005)
First US edition (UK: Orion, March 2004).

Historical fantasy novel set in 1st century Scotland during the Roman invasions; first book in the "Dalriada" trilogy.
• Overlook's site has this description.
• The author's website has information about the author, news, historical background, excerpts from reviews, etc.
• Amazon has the PW review: "In addition to an appealing love story, well-researched settings and an interesting take on goddess worship rooted in Neolithic times, Watson provides some mystical moments that confirm that '[h]istory can turn on many things. On a word. On a sword blade. On a girl, running up a mountain path, amber hair flying in the wind.' "


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Westerfeld, Scott : Uglies
(Simon Pulse 0-689-86538-4, $6.99, 425pp, trade paperback, March 2005, cover art Carissa Pelleteri)

Young adult SF novel, first of a trilogy, set in a world where everyone has an operation at age 16 to make them beautiful. The next volume will be called Pretties.
• The SimonSays site has this brief description, and an excerpt.
• The author's site has this description.
• Amazon has the publisher's description, and rave reader reviews.


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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* Witcover, Paul : Tumbling After
(HarperCollins/Eos 0-06-105285-X, $24.95, 328pp, hardcover, March 2005, jacket illustration Jim Burns)

SF novel concerning contemporary twins, one of whom gains the power to alter reality, a role-playing game, and a post-holocuast far future that mirrors the world of the game.
• The HarperCollins site has this description, and a chapter excerpt.
• The author's webpage has an informal description: "a novel about growing up, about playing games, about what is and isn't real. It's a novel of sexual awakening and magical transformation." Also offered is part of the Mutes & Norms Player's Guide.
• Amazon has the PW review: "The increasingly disquieting parallel stories amount to an audacious toss of some complex dice, but the result is a winning, entertaining cross-genre roll." Faren Miller reviewed the book in the February issue of Locus Magazine.


(Wed 9 Mar 2005) • Purchase this book from Amazon

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Opening lines:
I caught it! he thinks. I actually caught it!

As the wave swells beneath him, Jack looks out over the windswept, all-but-deserted beach (where his sister Jilly stands watching, dwindled to doll size) and surrenders to the same mix of elation and terror that makes roller coasters irresistible. The cry that bursts from his lips is the primordial cry of the ocean: raw, fierce, and proud. Jack's up so high that he can see over the crest of the dunes to the houses beyond -- even to his own house, where the antlike figures of his father, Bill, his older sister, Ellen, and Uncle Jimmy are hard at work taking down the porch screens. It seems entirely possible that he might fly to them, joining the gulls angling through the air on the knife-edge gusts and thrusts of wind preceding Belle like the outriders of an advancing army. Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird; it's a plane; no, it's Super Jack!
Opening lines:
You're not going to like me.
I apologize for that.
It was Jane; she was the one you liked. I liked her, too.
And I--am not Jane. Not in any single way. But one.
And that one single way is perhaps the only thing you and I also have in common.
Because if we liked Jane, we loved Silver.
Didn't we.
Opening lines:
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
Opening lines:
Moraven Tolo reached the crest of the hill a few steps before his traveling companions. The half-blind old man who wheezed up behind him gasped involuntarily. He looked back as his grandson and great-grandson joined him, then gestured at the city in the distance. “There it is, Moriande, the grandest city in the world.”

The swordsman nodded slowly in agreement. The road ran down the forested hillside and glimpses of it could be seen twisting through the Gold River valley to the city. It had been years since he’d seen Nalenyr’s capital, and it had grown, but was still easily recognizable. Wentokikun, the tallest of the city’s nine towers, dominated its eastern quarter, and using that as a landmark made fixing the other places easier.


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