My Vacation Pile and New Procurements

I'm on vacation starting tomorrow so I may not be quick to comment back or respond to an e-mail. But don't worry yourself as I've scheduled a few posts for the week, which even includes a new review.

Below is the huge stack I'll be bringing with me on vacation. I always bring more than I know I can finish in a week. Variety. It is the spice of my reading life. I brought a lot of mass markets because I usually ignore them in lieu of paperbacks and hardcovers, which is my preferred format.

I'm sure those Pratchett books stand out to a lot of you, which means I'm finally taking the Discworld plunge after promising a friend to start on it this summer.  These were the 3 he picked to set me off on this journey.  Only one of these is a book sent for review (No Hero) as I tend to go with books I've purchased or borrow on vacation to catch up on those. If you'd like me to review any of these in particular please chime in. The next pic shows what joined the stacks the past couple weeks, which does include quite a few duplicate copies I've been receiving lately. I'll have to do a contest to clear things out a bit.

First came a package with two delightful books from Angry Robot.  Debris by Jo Anderton is her debut which looks to be a fun melding of Sci-Fi and Magic. Guy Haley's Reality 36 is one I've mentioned before. Than there is Bricks by Leon Jenner, which looks all kind of strange. It is hard to describe so here is the blurb:

This is the story of a bricklayer. A master of his craft, he keeps its sacred teachings secret. For him a house is the dwelling place of a soul, and a house must be built in the right spirit or the soul inside it will suffer. The building of an arch is a ritual to obtain a right relation with the earth and a connection with the truth. The bricklayer also recalls his previous life as a Druid priest. He talks about the creation of the sacred landscape of these islands; how even a simple stick lying on the ground would tell people the direction they needed to go in; how when people stared at the stars, they were staring at their own mind. This Druid was also a builder of worlds, one of a group of higher beings able to move in an infinite number of universes that create and end constantly. These higher beings are eternal, know everything, and hold everything together. The speak mind to mind. They can prevent battles simply by walking between the two charging armies. The reader sees the world through the eyes of this great, magical being at the time of the Roman invasion, and learns how he tricked Julius Caesar and set in train the series of events that would lead to Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March. But as the bricklayer continues, he worries he is losing his ancient, sacred powers. The vision begins to fray at the edges as we learn how he has recently taken violent revenge on yobs who have mocked him. Is he really connected to a once living Druid priest, or is he gradually losing himself in his own fantasies?

Next are two anthologies from Edge publishing. Rigor Amortis edited by Jaym Gates and Erkia Holt is a mash-up of Horror and Erotica while Evolve Two edited by Nancy Kilpatrick takes on vampires in future settings. George Mann's latest Newbury & Hobbes investigation The Immortality Engine looks ever delightful as the series always does, but I still have to catch up with book 2 before I can dive in. Last, but not least is French Quarter Fiction edited by Joshua Clark with stories by Poppy Z. Brite, Richard Ford, and many others. I picked this up for my wife as she caught the Nawlins bug on our trip there a couple years back. I've already had the bug for a decade. The only thing holding me back from moving there is the humidity and job prospects. I once lost a roommate in New Orleans and still haven't found him... Ryan wherever you are I hope you're having fun.

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