Weekly Book Buzz

"Spook Country" by William Gibson.
© Penguin Group USA

Spook Country

By: Pat Ferrara
Date: Monday, August 06, 2007

The man hailed as the father of cyberpunk is back on the bookshelves with a follow-up to 2003’s Pattern Recognition, a novel Publisher’s Weekly named one of the best books of the year.

Good start of the work week to all of you Maniac readers and welcome to August’s first edition of the Buzz. Despite the slew of paranormal romance coming out this week, we’ve got more than a dozen solid new hardcover releases by some of the genre’s best contemporary writers.

Jean Rabe, author and editor of the Forgotten Realms and BattleTech universes, returns to the world of Dragonlance this week with the paperback debut of a new series. The Rebellion, the first installment of the Stonetellers sequence, takes advantage of a unique protagonist perspective by focusing on a band of hobgoblin slaves and their trials in becoming their own independent army.

Jean Rabe, along with Martin H. Greenberg, has also taken editorial reigns over Pandora’s Closet,a 19-story collection centered on the legend of Pandora’s Box.

Kat Richardson, the author of last October’s Greywalker, continues the Greywalker series with Poltergeist. Anne Bishop unveils the middle volume of The Black Jewels Trilogy with Heir to the Shadows out on paperback as well.

Amidst a release schedule highlighted by such genre giants as Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, Eric Flint, and Stephen Baxter, William Gibson’s Spook Country takes top honors this week. Sporting all the literary facets that’s made him an SF legend (lots of computer hacking, military conspiracies, and of course boatloads of mind-altering drugs), Spook Country continues off where the critically acclaimed Pattern Recognition left off almost four years ago. Though I don’t know how Spook Country could be any better than Neuromancer, I can’t wait to check out this new installment. Cuz c’mon, William Gibson is the shite.

New in Hardcover:

Spook Country, William Gibson (Penguin Group USA)

Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer. Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to. Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms. Bobby Chombo is a "producer," and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him.

Spaceman’s Blues: A Love Story, Brian Francis Slattery (Tor Books)

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults. Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.

The Mirador, Sarah Monette (Ace Hardcover)

The dashing wizard Felix Harrowgate has reclaimed his sanity, magic, and position in society. But even as he returns to his former place in the Mirador-the citadel of power and wizardry-there are many who desire his end. Mildmay the Fox is an ex-assassin, a cat-burglar, and Felix's half-brother. Tied to Felix by blood and magic, Mildmay goes where Felix goes-even into the Mirador. There, Mildmay finds himself drawn to an alluring spy of the Bastion, a rival school of wizards. The Bastion desires above all else to bring down the Mirador, and Felix is the key to its destruction. But Mildmay cannot let Felix stand alone, and will fight to save both his brother and his city from certain ruin.

Miles, Mutants, & Microbes, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen Books)

Two complete novels and a short novel in one large volume: Falling Free, The Nebula Award, winning novel: Leo Graf was just your typical efficient engineer: mind your own business and do the job. But all that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat, where children had been bio-engineered to have four arms (and no legs) to function in zero gravity. Now that they're no longer needed, a heartless mega corporation is getting rid of them before they eat into the profit margin. Leo Graf adopted 1000 quaddies… now he had to teach them to be free. Labyrinth: When Miles Vorkosigan is captured while on a secret mission to a lawless world, his only hope of escape is an unlikely pair of allies: a quaddie and a teenage werewolf. Diplomatic Immunity, Miles Vorkosigan and his wife were heading home for the births of their first children, but a major diplomatic disaster is looming at Graf Station, colonized by the descendants of the original quaddies, and duty calls. Unfortunately, diplomatic immunity doesn't carry over to immunity from a very nasty biological weapon. The downside of being a troubleshooter comes when trouble starts shooting back…

The Aftermath, Ben Bova (Tor Books)

In the wake of the Asteroid Wars that tore across the solar system, Victor Zacharius makes his living running the ore-carrier Syracuse. When the Syracusestumbles into the middle of a military attack on the habitat Chrysalis, Victor flees in a control pod to draw the attacker’s attention away from his family. Now, as his wife and children plunge into the far deeps of space, Victor has been rescued by the seductive Cheena Madagascar. He must do her bidding if he’s to have a prayer of ever seeing his family again. Elverda Apacheta, the solar system’s greatest sculpter, and the cyborg Dorn, the ruthless military commander responsible for the attack on Chrysalis, are linked by their joint discovery of an alien artifact. Similarly transformed by the artifact’s mysterious powers, Apacheta and Dorn now prowl the Belt, determined to find the bodies of the many victims of Harbin’s atrocities so that they can be given proper burials. Kao Yuan is the captain of Viking who’s determined to kill Dorn and Elverda because they know too much about the artifact and its power. But Viking’s second-in-command appears to have the real power on board ship. When Viking catches up to Apacheta and Dorn, their confrontation begins a series of events involving them, the Zacharius family, and the transformation of the human solar system… The fourth installment of the Asteroid Wars series.

The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace Hardcover)

Joe Haldeman "has quietly become one of the most important science fiction writers of our time" (Rocky Mountain News). Now he delivers a provocative novel of a man who stumbles upon the discovery of a lifetime-or many lifetimes. Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when, while measuring subtle quantum forces that relate to time changes in gravity and electromagnetic force, his calibrator turns into a time machine. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who has left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose taking a time machine trip himself-or so he thinks.

Radio Freefall, Matthew Jarpe (Tor Books)

In the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress but with a healthy dose of cyberpunk: Radio Freefall is about a plot to take over the Earth by power-mad, sociopathic computer-geek billionaire, Walter Cheeseman. It's up to a strange cast of rock stars and oddballs to stop him. Aqualung, a mysterious blues musician who also has superhuman tech skills, might be the catalyst for the resistance--or he might just be the pawn of artificial intelligences. To thwart the takeover, the orbitals and the moon colonies secede from Earth. And then something like the Singularity happens, but no one is quite sure. This is a novel of cyberpunk and rock and roll, of technology, artificial intelligence, and wild riffs off of Heinlein all mixed into an explosive debut. Matthew Jarpe launches his SF career with a bang!

Pyramid Power, Eric Flint & Dave Freer (Baen Books)

The Pyramid is baacckk! Well, actually, it never went away-but it had seemed to be inactive, still sitting in the middle of Chicago but no longer growing and wiping out buildings as it grew. The pyramidal device sent by the Krin to dominate the Earth had suffered a severe setback when the motley crew of ivory-tower academics, paratroopers, and one resourceful maintenance man had not only survived the worst that both the gods and mortals of Classical Greece and ancient Egypt could do, but had managed to escape from the ur-mythological world that the Krin pyramid had somehow brought to deadly life in a parallel dimension, bringing several beings out of myth along with them. The Krin device would have been thwarted, if things had been left as they were-but a V.I.P., who knows too many state secrets to be allowed to be missing, was left behind in the world of Greek mythology. So a power-mad Washington bureaucrat has press-ganged several of the survivors of the first excursion into the pyramid's worlds and sent them, along with a team trained in “surgical strikes,” to either bring back the V.I.P. or, if that's impossible, terminate him with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, instead of returning to mythological Greece, they find themselves in the world of the Norse gods. Even if they manage to survive the enmity of Odin and his warriors, can manage to free Loki (a potential ally) and can keep the hard-drinking thunder-god Thor off the sauce long enough to help them, Ragnarok is coming, with the end of the world. And even a hard-headed maintenance man may have trouble fixing that problem!

Conqueror, Stephen Baxter (Ace Hardcover)

The second novel in a thrilling alternate-history series-from national bestselling author Stephen Baxter. Three centuries have passed since Rome fell, as The Prophecy foretold. Now The Prophecy's scroll is in the hands of a young girl, the last surviving member of the family who received The Prophecy. She lives in tranquility, disguised as a boy among the monks on the isle of Lindisfarne-until the Vikings come, deliberately destroying the final copies of the scroll. But it remains in her memory, and when William of Normandy, who history will call the Conqueror, rises to power, once more the fate of the land rests on actions inspired by those age-old words. But as time passes, memory of The Prophecy dims… and the veiled girl struggles to understand her heritage before all knowledge of the future will be lost to the past. Of the Time’s Tapestry series.

The Fox, Sherwood Smith (DAW Hardcover)

Attending the King's Military Academy had been Inda's greatest dream. But Academy reality is far from what he'd imagined-for by defending the second son of the king, Inda becomes embroiled in a vicious political struggle among the nobility that he has no hope of winning. But these petty squabbles are only a faint shadow of what is to come. His future holds betrayals he cannot even imagine, and before growing to manhood, his fate will sever him from all he holds dear, thrusting him away from friends, family, and the life he thought he'd been meant to live, onto the perilous decks of pirate ships and beyond...

New in Paperback:

Thin Air, Rachel Caine (Roc)

After preventing Mother Earth from destroying the planet, Joanne Baldwin lost her memories thanks to Ashan the djinn-and they will remain lost forever unless Joanne can recover her identity-and destroy the demon who is impersonating her, fabulous shoes and all... The sixth installment in the Weather Warden series.

The Trouble with Humans, Christopher Anvil (Baen Books)

Humans-there's no understanding them, and no dealing with them either. Or even their planet. Pity the poor aliens, whose shape-changing ability should let them take over the planet Earth before the humans even know they're there-if it weren't for all that omnipresent pollution. Or consider another set of invaders, from a planet where the weather is always mild and the changing of the seasons is hardly noticeable. They land in force and their weapons are more powerful than those of the primitive humans-but they've never before had to deal with below-zero temperatures, flash floods or tornados-not to mention volcanoes. Then there were the aliens who noticed how belligerent humans were, and gave them the “gift” of TV-like devices which would show anything anywhere on Earth, which was sure to lead to war. Imagine how surprised the aliens were when the humans took the gadgets apart, improved them, and started spying on everything the aliens were up to, all over the galaxy. Humans don't make sense, they don't fight fair, and they're making aliens throughout interstellar space think seriously about pulling up stakes and moving to another galaxy! Edited and fleshed out by Eric Flint.

Heir to the Shadows, Anne Bishop (Roc Trade)

In this violently passionate, "darkly fascinating world," the Blood rule: a race of witches and warlocks whose power is channeled through magical jewels. Ambitions unfurl in this second novel of The Black Jewels Trilogy, as the realm's dreams of a liberator have finally been made flesh… Jaenelle, singled out by prophecy as the living embodiment of magic, is haunted by the cruel battles the Blood have fought over her-for not all of them await her as their Savior. Nothing, however, can deflect her from her destiny-and the day of reckoning looms near. When her memories return. When her magic matures. When she is forced to accept her fate. On that day, the dark Realms will know what it means to be ruled by Witch.

The Sleeping God, Violette Malan (DAW Trade)

Masters of weapons and martial arts, Mercenaries Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane have just saved one of the Marked, those gifted with special powers, from a mob that appears to be under the influence of a priest of the Sleeping God. Learning that this is not an isolated incident and realizing that Dhulyn's own unique gift will make them a target, the two take ship for safer climes. Once ashore the partners take on a seemingly simple mission of escorting a young woman to distant relatives. But not even Dhulyn's talent can warn them of the threat that awaits at the far end of their journey. A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno.

The Rebellion, Jean Rabe (Wizards of the Coast)

Jean Rabe returns to the world of Dragonlance with a tale of slavery, rebellion, and the struggle for freedom! When a series of earthquakes strike a Dark Knight mining camp, goblin and hobgoblin slaves take advantage of the bedlam and revolt. A fast and deadly rebellion erupts, pitting the Dark Knights against their slaves... and against the still-rumbling ground. Casualties on both sides climb as a leader emerges among the slave force: Direfang, a hobgoblin foreman with deep scars and a long, brutal history of servitude. He must rally the surviving goblins and hobgoblins and lead them out of Neraka, turning his rag-tag force into an army that will not allow itself to be enslaved again. The first novel in the Dragonlance: Stonetellers series.

Poltergeist, Kat Richardson (Roc Trade)

Harper Blaine was your average small-time PI until she died-for two minutes. Now she's a Greywalker-walking the thin line between the living world and the paranormal realm. And she's discovering that her new abilities are landing her all sorts of "strange" cases. In the days leading up to Halloween, Harper's been hired by a university research group that is attempting to create an artificial poltergeist. The head researcher suspects someone is faking the phenomena, but Harper's investigation reveals something else entirely-they've succeeded. And when one of the group's members is killed in a brutal and inexplicable fashion, Harper must determine whether the killer is the ghost itself, or someone all too human. The second volume in the Greywalkers series.

Pandora’s Closet, Ed. by Martin H. Greenberg & Jean Rabe (DAW)

Nineteen original tales of the pandora legend-as no one has ever imagine it before. When Pandora's Box was opened, so the ancient tale goes, all the evils that would beset humanity were released into the world. When the box was all but empty, the only thing that remained was hope. Now some of fantasy's finest writers have taken on the task of opening Pandora's closet. It is naturally chock full of an assortment of items, including a ring that can bring its wearer infinite health, a special helmet found in the most unlikely of places, a mysterious box that holds a legendary piece of cloth, and a red hoodie that transforms a woman's world. These stories are of items claimed by people, but only at their own peril. After indulging in these stories, readers will certainly look at their own closets in a whole new light.

On the Prowl, Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, & Sunny (Berkley)

These all-new paranormal romances from today's hottest authors feature a female werewolf who comes into her own; a Lord who crosses paths with a fiery mage; a mixed-blood Child of the Moon who faces an uncertain future; and a woman whose sixth sense proves to be a dangerous talent.

The Mirror Prince, Violette Malan (DAW)

Max Ravenhill was perfectly happy with his life as a history professor until he met Cassandra. Told that he was more than a thousand years old and had known Cassandra and her fellow Wardens all that time, that his life as Max was pure fiction implanted in his mind, and that he was being pursued by the Hunt and his only chance for survival was to flee to the realm of Faerie, Max can only assume that Cassandra is crazy-or he is. But soon it becomes all too clear that at least part of what she says is true. And unless he goes with her, he won't live long enough to separate the truth from the lies.

Inda, Sherwood Smith (DAW)

Acclaimed author Sherwood Smith's first adult fantasy novel, set in the bestselling world of Crown Duel. Indevan-Dal is the second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer, destined to become his elder brother Tanrid's Shield Arm-his military champion. Like all second sons, he is to be privately trained at home by Tanrid, the brother whose lands he will one day protect. When the King's Voice comes to summon Inda to the Military Academy, he might well feel foreboding, or even fear-war is imminent-yet youthful Inda feels only excitement. But there are things that Tanrid hadn't prepared him for, and Inda will soon learn that the greatest threats to his safety will not come from foreign enemies, but from supposed allies within his own country.

Black Wolf, Dave Gross (Wizards of the Coast)

Talbot Uskevren, the second son of one of Selgaunt's most powerful families, fights a deadly battle within himself. Like most men of his station, Talbot spends his days honing his sword fighting skills, and unlike others, practicing the art of acting. Now, Talbot will put both of these talents to the test when a rival House comes looking for blood. The only way for Talbot to survive against the Black Brotherhood is to let the inner wolf loose, and the only way for him to live in Selgaunt's society is to keep the wolf chained. Black Wolf continues the story of the Uskevrens' second son, introduced in the story "Thirty Days" from The Halls of Stormweather. An exciting tale of werewolves in the Forgotten Realms, this is the fourth book in the Sembia series.

New in Audiobook:

Sandworms of Dune, Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Andersen (Audio Renaissance)

At the end of Frank Herbert’s final novel, Chapterhouse: Dune, a ship carrying a crew of refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. The fugitives used genetic technology to revive key figures from Dune’s past—including Paul Muad’Dib and Lady Jessica—to use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them. Based directly on Frank Herbert’s final outline, which lay hidden in two safe-deposit boxes for a decade, Sandworms of Dune will answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades: the origin of the Honored Matres, the tantalizing future of the planet Arrakis, the final revelation of the Kwisatz Haderach, and the resolution to the war between Man and Machine. This breathtaking new audiobook in Frank Herbert’s Dune series has enough surprises and plot twists to please even the most demanding listener.Narrated by Scott Brick.

That wraps up this week’s edition of the Buzz, be sure to check back next Tuesday for all the latest on new sci fi, fantasy, and horror book releases. Questions or comments? Hit me up at PFerrara.mania@gmail.com.

Spook Country

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