New Books, 21 April
* Christopher, Adam : The Machine Wakes
(Tor 978-0-7653-7640-4, $25.99, 416pp, hardcover, April 2015)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781466851344
• UK edition: Titan 978-1783292035 (Fri 24 Apr 2015)
• Spider War #2
SF novel, second book in a trilogy following The Burning Dark (March 2015), about a far future war against machine intelligences.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review is mixed: “There are still plenty of entertaining action sequences (an interrogation interrupted by yet another assassination is staged particularly well), and the rest isn’t bad so much as underwhelming.”
• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound
• (Directory Entry)
* Johnson, Suzanne : Pirate’s Alley
(Tor 978-0765376978, $26.99, 352pp, hardcover, April 2015)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781466852846
• Sentinels of New Orleans #4
Urban fantasy novel, fourth in a series following Royal Street (April 2012), River Road (Nov. 2012), and Elysian Fields (2013), set in post-Katrina New Orleans.
• Macmillan’s website has this description with an excerpt.
• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound
• (Directory Entry)
* Martin, Gail Z. : War of Shadows
(Orbit 978-0-316-27802-7, $16, 640pp, trade paperback, April 2015)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780316278003
• UK edition: 978-0356504933 (Thu 23 Apr 2015)
• Ascendant Kingdoms #3
Fantasy novel, third in a series after Ice Forged (2013) and Reign of Ash (2014), about colonists in a northern wasteland who return to the kingdom that exiled them.
• Hachette’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “Colorful descriptions of vivid battle and magic scenes, complete with terrifying fantastic creatures, and complex familial and political relationships will reward the motivated reader, but when characters speculate on the actions of their adversaries it slows an already unwieldy story.”
• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound
• (Directory Entry)
* Sakuraba, Kazuki : Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas
(Viz/Haikasoru 978-1-4215-7857-6, $15.99, 300pp, trade paperback, April 2015)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
Fantasy novel about an abandoned Outland People baby girl who becomes an Akakuchiba family matriarch, her manga artist daughter, and her granddaughter Toko.
• Haikasoru’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The book was first published in Japanese in 2006 and won a Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2007.
• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound
• (Directory Entry)
* Wilson, Robert Charles : The Affinities
(Tor 978-0-7653-3262-2, $25.99, 300pp, hardcover, April 2015)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781466800779
• Audiobook ISBN [link to Amazon]: 9781427262592
Near-future SF novel in which increasingly powerful social media groups, called Affinities, threaten traditional social and political institutions.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• The Publishers Weekly review concludes, “Wilson’s trademark well-developed characters and understated but compelling prose are very much in evidence in this quietly believable tale of the near future.”
• Gary K. Wolfe reviews it in the April issue of Locus Magazine: “Wilson has always written strongly humanistic tales of relationships within SF frameworks, and sometimes the SF itself is mostly a way of exploring the ways in which we cope, or fail to cope, with change. This may be Wilson’s grand theme, and it’s no less skillfully handled here than in his more spectacular slingshot novels.”
(Tue 7 Apr 2015)
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• (Directory Entry)
* Wright, John C. : The Architect of Aeons
(Tor 978-0-7653-2970-7, $27.99, 396pp, hardcover, April 2015, cover art John Harris)
• Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Apr 2015
• Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781429951685
• Count to a Trillion #4
SF novel, fourth in a series following Count to a Trillion (2011), The Hermetic Millennia (2012), and The Judge of Ages (2014), about rival efforts to counter an alien menace that will arrive at Earth in another 4000 years.
• Macmillan’s site has this description with an excerpt.
• Publishers Weekly gives this a starred review, calling it a “galaxy-spanning extravaganza with nods to the Odyssey, Shakespeare, and Japanese legend, as well as classic visionary and military SF.”
(Thu 9 Apr 2015)
• Purchase this book from Amazon | Indiebound
• (Directory Entry)