New Procurements

What with Steampunk Month going strong and my trip to NYCC I've been behind with cataloging my latest acquisitions. By the way if you haven't been paying attention to Steampunk Month please do. There have been a lot of very good guest essays going on.  This month also marks me falling off my book buying hiatus pledge.  It was a good run while it lasted.  I'm still not going to go back to my old habits just yet, but the pledge was broken and here we are.  First up is from a very large package I received from Angry Robot for their official US launch.

I believe this is every AR title for their first 2 months of releases in the US with the exceptions of Moxyland and The Bookman, which I read upon their UK releases.  The pile on the left are the books I'd like to get to first, especially Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner and Sixty One Nails by Mike Shevdon.  After all the Steampunk some Urban Fantasy will probably be in order.  The pile on the right has soon good looking books as well. Slights comes particularly highly praised.  The next batch is a mix of purchased and review copies.

Hawkwood and the Kings by Paul Kearney - This is the first of The Monarchies of God omnibuses from Solaris. After the Wertster talked up the series I had to take note and grabbed a copy on my last trip to the bookstore.

Stories of Your Life: and Others by Ted Chiang - This was on my must buy this year what with everyone and their mother say how Chiang is a living master.  I was planning on buying the Small Beer re-release, but spotted this HC first edition on the shelf and couldn't pass it up despite liking the SB cover better.

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld - This is the book that broken my pledge as it was sitting next to a Terry Pratchett book I was buying for a friend's birthday. Despite finding Leviathan a bit shallow I'm still eager to see more of Westerfeld's world and damn but if those illustrations don't make it worth buying alone I don't know what will.

The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg - This is the second book in the Collegia Magica sent by the publisher.

Autumn by David Moody - Moody has been garnering quite a bit of praise the last two years.  Autumn is the book he originally gave away for free on his website before landing a publishing deal for Hater and Dog Blood.  I'll definitely be taking a closer look at this one.

A bastard hybrid of War of the Worlds and Night of the Living Dead, Autumn chronicles the struggle of a small group of survivors forced to contend with a world torn apart by a deadly disease. After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. Animated by "phase two" of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities... sight, hearing, locomotion... As well as the instinct toward aggression and violence. Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead seem to have only one single goal - to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1...

Without ever using the 'Z' word, Autumn offers a new perspective on the traditional zombie story. There's no flesh eating, no fast-moving corpses, no gore for gore's sake. Combining the atmosphere and tone of George Romero's classic living dead films with the attitude and awareness of 28 Days (and Weeks) later, this horrifying and suspenseful novel is filled with relentless cold, dark fear.

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi - This is the much sought after short story collection from the recent National Book Award finalist and winner of the both the Hugo and Nebula awards.  This collection was originally released in hardcover and quickly became a collectors item still selling for over a $100. Everything seems to be coming up Bacigalupi. I've read a few of the stories in this volume before, but I definitely want to read the rest.

Star's End by Glen Cook - The last in the Norse inspired Sci-Fi Starfishers Trilogy sent by the publisher. It is the Norse part that makes me most curious, but I'm not sure about diving into book 3.

At the Queen's Command by Michael A. Stackpole - The first in a new series called The Crown Colonies, which I'm quite happy was sent to me. I usually love Alternative History novels that mix in Fantasy elements. With this we get Dragons in the Revolutionary War.


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