"Brasyl" by Ian McDonald.
© Prometheus Books
The New Brasyl
By: Pat FerraraDate: Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Good day to all of you Maniac readers and welcome to this week’s edition of the Buzz. After a staggeringly huge release last week, the genre book schedule is settling back into its usual pace with a relatively light load this Tuesday.
I know the release of the first blockbuster behemoth, SPIDER-MAN 3, has officially kicked off the summer box-office season, but don’t neglect the written word entirely cuz we’ve got a handful of interesting new releases hitting the shelves this week.
Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child makes its paperback debut through Knopf Publishing and Alex Archer’s The Lost Scrolls continues the supernatural adventures of archaeologist Annja Creed through distributor Gold Eagle Books.
Thomas M. Reid opens the Forgotten Realm’s The Empyrean Odyssey series with The Gossamer Plains on paperback today. Wizards of the Coast overall has a slew of new releases coming out this Tuesday including a hardback D&D supplement unveiling the evil Drow race of the Forgotten Realms universe ( …maybe to compliment their umpteenth re-release of one of R.A. Salvatore’s Legend of Drizzt novels).
Although seemingly related, Ian McDonald’s Brasyl isn’t the novelization for Terry Gilliam’s brilliant cinematic homage to 1984, rather it’s a visionary new novel from distributor Prometheus Books that’s gobbling up rave critic reviews. Set in, you guessed it, Brazil, McDonald’s plot follows three storylines interwoven across time. Generally I find this temporal narrative device to be a little tired, but McDonald’s cerebral rendering of a far-fetched past, present, and future Brazil sounds as refreshing as my read of Gibson’s Neuromancer a few weeks ago. Check out Brasyl’s description and see for yourself if this new hardback is worth your precious reading time.
New in Hardcover:
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Prometheus Books)
Think Bladerunner in the tropics... Be seduced, amazed, and shocked by one of the world's greatest and strangest nations. Past, present, and future Brazil, with all its color, passion, and shifting realities, come together in a novel that is part SF, part history, part mystery, and entirely enthralling. Three separate stories follow three main characters: Edson is a self-made talent impresario one step up from the slums in a near future São Paulo of astonishing riches and poverty. A chance encounter draws Edson into the dangerous world of illegal quantum computing, but where can you run in a total surveillance society where every move, face, and centavo is constantly tracked? Marcelina is an ambitious Rio TV producer looking for that big reality TV hit to make her name. When her hot idea leads her on the track of a disgraced World Cup soccer goalkeeper, she becomes enmeshed in an ancient conspiracy that threatens not just her life, but her very soul. Father Luis is a Jesuit missionary sent into the maelstrom of 18th-century Brazil to locate and punish a rogue priest who has strayed beyond the articles of his faith and set up a vast empire in the hinterland. In the company of a French geographer and spy, what he finds in the backwaters of the Amazon tries both his faith and the nature of reality itself to the breaking point. Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, all linked together across time, space, and reality in a hugely ambitious story that will challenge the way you think about everything.
Drow of the Underdark, Robert Schwalb, Anthony Pryor & Greg Vaughan (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
At last, dark elves get their due! Drow of the Underdark is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement that provides the definitive treatise on the drow, arguably the D&D game's most evocative evil race. Everything you want to know about drow and their subterranean homeland - as well as some things you didn't want to know - can be found in this tome. This supplement is intended for players who want to play drow characters and Dungeon Masters who want to run D&D adventures and campaigns featuring drow.
New in Paperback:
Streams of Silver, R.A. Salvatore (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
The fifth in a series of premiere editions of Salvatore's classic dark elf tales. This new release of the classic R.A. Salvatore novel continues the tale of Salvatore's signature dark elf character Drizzt' Do'Urden. Although this was the second title actually published about Drizzt, it has now been placed in its proper chronological order as fifth in the series. Each title in The Legend of Drizzt series showcases the classic dark elf novels in new deluxe editions. Each title features all new cover art and new introductions written by those who have become familiar with Salvatore and Drizzt over the years.
The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue (Knopf Publishing Group)
The Stolen Child is the story of Henry Day, a seven-year-old kidnapped by a strange group living in the dark forest near his home. He is stolen by changelings—ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness—now and forever, he will be seven years old. In keeping with tradition, the group has left another child in Henry's place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry's duplicate, must adjust to a completely new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the real Henry never displayed), and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world. Narrated in the alternating voices of Henry Day and his double, The Stolen Child is a classic tale of the search for identity and leaving childhood. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue creates a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights. The result is a bedtime story for adults, which will appeal to readers charmed and captivated by such recent bestsellers as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, andThe Confessions of Max Tivoli and by the classics of Tolkien and J. M. Barrie.
Night of the Long Shadows, Paul Crilley (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
Explore the dark under-belly of Khorvaire with Eberron's version of the private detective - The Inquisitives! Nights of the Long Shadow: the three nights of the year when the darkest powers of the world gain strength and rise to prey upon the unwary. When one of Sharn's most famed Inquisitives is hired to investigate a brutal murder at Morgrave University, his brilliance may be his damnation, as he uncovers a trail of blood leading from the seediest neighborhoods of the City of Towers to the highest reaches of power. Book two in the Eberron: The Inquisitives series.
Skull Throne, James Axler (Worldwide Media Service, Inc.)
The calculated new bid for planet Earth by the Supreme Council has changed the face of war for the Cerberus rebels. As the enemy's avarice invokes total damnation of the human race, the battle plan now extends far beyond disarming a group of power-hungry god kings. Now it's a fight for survival against powerful interlopers—fully prepared to finish what they started eons ago…. Buried deep in the Mayan jungle amid a civilization of lost survivors and emissaries of the dead is an artifact that hides secrets to the prize—planet Earth. In sinister hands, it guarantees complete and absolute power. Kane and the rebels have just one chance to stop a rogue Overlord from his furtive grab for glory, but it means joining an unholy quest with an old enemy in a race to stop the skull throne from revealing answers to malevolent factions. A novel set in the Outlanders series.
The Gossamer Plains, Thomas M. Reid (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
Ever wonder what could bring a demon to the gates of heaven? Aliisza and Kaanyr Vhok have returned from their attempted invasion of Menzoberranzan and turned their sights on Sundabar. But before she can complete a mission in that besieged city, Aliisza finds herself in the one place a demon would never want to go, no matter how sure she is of her wits and cunning: the very heart of Celestia! Join everyone's favorite succubus and her half-fiend boyfriend, introduced in the War of the Spider Queen series, in the first installment of their own exciting new trilogy! Book one in Forgotten Realm’s The Empyrean Odyssey series.
The Past Is Gone, James Valentine (Aladdin Paperbacks)
The adventure begins… When Theodore Pine Four suddenly appears in the bedroom of Genevieve Corrigan just as her friend Jules Santorini is about to ask her out on a date, the only thing they can all agree on is that it is highly unordinary. Things get even more complicated when we find out that Theo is a teenager from the year Fourteen Billion and Seventy-Three with multicolored hair, a talking coat, and the hottest new time machine on the market: the TimeMaster JumpMan Pro. And little do they know that this chance encounter is going to kick-start an epic adventure—one that will take Jules, Gen, and Theo through history, from the Big Bang all the way up to 14,000,000,073 and everywhere in between. Along the way, our heroes are going to have to figure out how to get Theo and his malfunctioning time machine back home without undoing the fabric of time itself. And, if he's lucky, Jules might just manage to ask Gen on that date. The first installment in the Timejumpers series.
Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
Tanis Half-Elven... Flint Fireforge... Tasslehoff Burfoot... the classic Dragonlance characters are back! Picking up where the first book of the classic Dragonlance Chronicles left off, this tale follows the Companions of the Lance on their adventures following the rescue of the refugees of Pax Tharkas. Flint and Tanis Half-Elven travel to the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin, while the rest of the Companions confront challenges of their own. The first volume in the Dragonlance: The Lost Chronicles series.
The Lost Scrolls, Alex Archer (Gold Eagle Books)
Ancient papyrus scrolls recovered among the charred ruins of the Library of Alexandria reveal astonishing texts that detail the wonders of Atlantis—knowledge that could shatter the blueprint of world energy. Archaeologist Annja Creed confronts shadow figures determined to preserve empires built on power, greed and global manipulation, finding unlikely allies in a mysterious American with connections in high places, and a young linguistics prodigy with attitude. Dodging a petroleum conglomerate and their pet killers on a high-speed chase that leads from Egypt to the North Sea oil fields to the urban battlegrounds of China, Annja becomes an unwilling conspirator in a bid for power to control the beating heart of the world's energy. The sixth novel in the Rogue Angel series.
The Best of the Realms III, Elaine Cunningham (Wizards of the Coast Publishing)
Arilyn. Danilo. Liriel. Cunningham. A collection of stories drawn from the pages of over a decade's worth of Forgotten Realms anthologies, plus new surprises in three previously unpublished stories from one of the defining voices of this great fantasy setting!
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