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The Books That Have Just Come Out: New Release Thread


Maester Llama

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So we have threads for the books coming out in the upcoming year, and they're among my favourite features of the discussion here. But often they highlight books that are some distance out; that's part of their appeal. My idea for this thread is to make a space to discuss / make people aware of / remind people of books that have just become available that we could, at least in theory, get pretty much right now.



If this is a thread that we end up using I'm sure it'll evolve on its own, but I'm thinking that it might be good to focus on things that really are "new releases," things from no further back than the last couple months -- with flexibility of course, to make the thread a place where people can come to learn about new stuff they might not have run across otherwise, as well as things they might have thought looked cool when they were a long way off and then forgotten about. If you've read whatever it is and want to explain its awesomeness / advise us to stay away from it that'd be great, but I figure we should maybe keep detailed discussion and spoilers for monthly reading threads and individual book threads respectively. I see this as a resource focused mostly on "what just came out" with hopefully a slight side-order of "is it good or not?"



My apologies if this thread is a repeat. I've never seen one quite like it and the search function appears to be borked right now.


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There are two books that have come out in the last two weeks that look quite interesting to me and seem to be flying somewhat under the radar. Both are by authors whose stuff I've read before and enjoyed pretty well. Both are standalone:



Corsair, by James L. Cambias: Near-future sf thriller about space pirates. I only see online marketing in the course of browsing around so I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing but based on my limited exposure Tor doesn't seem to be pushing this much at all, which is weird since Cambias' quite good A Darkling Sea seemed to have at least a bit of an impact last year. Came out last week and I haven't yet seen any pro reviews. Amazon link:



http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Science-James-L-Cambias/dp/0765379104/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431533037&sr=1-1&keywords=corsair



Dreams of Shreds and Tatters, by Amanda Downum: Lovecraftian horror set in Vancouver, featuring the Yellow King mythology that's originally from the writings of Robert Chambers and most recently showed up in True Detective. Downum's first novels were the Necromancer Chronicles gothy secondary world fantasies, the first of which seems to have gotten a resounding "meh" from the interwebs [i haven't read it] but the last two of which are very good. This is her first novel-length contemporary fantasy / horror work. Amazon:



http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Shreds-Tatters-Amanda-Downum/dp/1781083274/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1431534676&sr=1-1&keywords=dreams+of+shreds+and+tatters


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There were five fantasy novels that came out in April that I read and found to be really, really good. It's unusual for me to find so many fantasy books coming out in a single month, that I enjoyed this much. Some of these have been discussed in other threads, but I'll mention all five anyway: Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo; The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu; A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall; The Vagrant by Peter Newman; The Vorrh by Brian Catling (this is a US debut, not a worldwide one). Another April novel that looks good so far (I've only just started it) that I may have to add to this list later is Hunt for Valamon by DK Mok.



Of the May novels that I've bought so far, there are three I am most looking forward to getting to (besides the already mentioned Dreams of Shreds and Tatters, which is also high on my list): The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies by Martin Millar; The Sword of the North by Luke Scull (another US debut); and Lord of Ashes by Richard Ford. I had also bought an eBook collection of three short stories called Three Slices which has a new Kevin Hearne Iron Druid Chronicles story (the other two stories are by Delilah S. Dawson and Chuck Wendig), and an eBook short story (bought in April) by Elliott James called Bulls Rush In—I am eager to read these as well.


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Heh, you pick up the books at about the same rate I do it seems.

Those are just the books I'm psyched about. I picked up a few others in April and May that I didn't mention for various reasons, such as: books that don't yet look as interesting and I'll probably get to much later on (like Vermilion or The Shattered Court); books that I read and disliked intensely (like Desert Rising); books that I'm annoyed about because I think they could have been done much better with some good editing (e.g., Blackguards); etc.

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There were five fantasy novels that came out in April that I read and found to be really, really good. It's unusual for me to find so many fantasy books coming out in a single month, that I enjoyed this much. Some of these have been discussed in other threads, but I'll mention all five anyway: Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo; The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu; A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall; The Vagrant by Peter Newman; The Vorrh by Brian Catling (this is a US debut, not a worldwide one). Another April novel that looks good so far (I've only just started it) that I may have to add to this list later is Hunt for Valamon by DK Mok.

I've read 3 books from the April list, with one addition :

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

The Vagrant by Peter Newman

Clash of Iron by Angus Watson

to-read:

The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy

A Few Words For The Dead by Guy Adams

When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord

Out of the 3 above,i might read the Gaylord book since i've previously read and liked his work written under the pen name Alden Bell.

May: Looking at the ISFDB forthcoming books for May list,these look interesting:

Valkyrie's Song by M.D. Lachlan

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

The Damned by Tarn Richardson

The Border by Robert McCammon

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

Lord of Ashes by Richard Ford

Dreams of Shreds & Tatters by Amanda Downum

The Watchman of Eternity by Paul Witcover

The Tabit Genesis by Tony Gonzales

Mother of Eden by Chris Beckett

The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day In May by Mark Z. Danielewski

The Subprimes by Karl Taro Greenfeld

Love Is Red by Sophie Jaff

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Radiant State by Peter Higgins

When The Heavens Fall by Marc Turner

The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker

If You Could See Me Now by Peter Straub

Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe

The Iron Ship by K. M. McKinley

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalup

Out of these,i'm reading Lord of Ashes by Richard Ford right now,i'm only a few chapters in.This is the final book in the trilogy.After i finish this,i will probably either start Sword of Destiny or Valkyrie's Song.

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Jonathan Strahan's Best SFF of the Year Vol. 9 came out on Tuesday, and the few stories I have had time to read have been awesome. Caitlin Kiernan's Interstate Love Song alone made the book worth it for me, it was that good (though it's not actually SFF unless I am missing something, but who cares, it's brilliant). Rachel Swirsky's novella Grand Jete is in it too, I've read it before, but it's also excellent.


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I've read 3 books from the April list, with one addition :

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

The Vagrant by Peter Newman

Clash of Iron by Angus Watson

I have Clash of Iron, but didn't mention it because I am holding off on reading it until the third book in the series, Reign of Iron, comes out in September, so I can read them one after the other. I did like the first book, Iron Age.

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Hannu Rajaniemi has a collection of his short stories out this week called Collected Fictions. I really enjoyed his Jean le Flambeur books so I'll be picking this up at some point.

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I have Clash of Iron, but didn't mention it because I am holding off on reading it until the third book in the series, Reign of Iron, comes out in September, so I can read them one after the other. I did like the first book, Iron Age.

If you liked Iron Age,then you'll probably like book #2 even more.The story expands beyond Britain as some characters travel to Gaul,the Germanic tribes are introduced,including their crazy leader King Hari the Fister (Ariovistus) :D

Two characters are off to Rome,and Julius Caesar is introduced and becomes one of the main protag.

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I just received, as part of my Kickstarter contribution, the just-released paperback edition of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology. Interesting so far. It's published by PM Press, for those curious about such things.


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This is a great thread! Just grabbed The Mechanical. I don't think I've ever had a miss with an REG rec.

Uh oh, the pressure's on. I hope you enjoy it! If When you do check out his earlier trilogy - The Milkweed Triptych. I liked it even more than The Mechanical.

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