October 8-14 Book Porn

Seven books this time (there'll be another post later today for today's arrivals, which should end up being four, unless UPS or FedEx is bringing more to me than my Amazon orders), with six being review copies and the final book being one I bought. Interesting mix of styles here, including one of a rather repugnant storyline.

Left: Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, & Stephen R. Bissette, Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman (this looks to be more akin to Tigerbeat than to The History of Middle-Earth, but there is a place for short essays and interviews that explore the ins and outs of Gaiman's writings); John Birmingham, Without Warning (the story blurb left me tempted to send this to some John Birch Society member, as it deals with 99% of the American population (and some of its military not already stationed abroad) suddenly being wiped out by a mysterious energy force field and how those survivors and America's enemies deal with the aftermath. Needless to say, I highly, highly doubt I was the intended audience and I know there is no way in hell that I could give this sort of book a fair shake, since I would cringe and then become irritated at the jingoism, the rather extreme nationalist sentiment, and so forth. It would be akin to asking Rush Limbaugh to review favorably one of Karl Marx's books).




Top: Jack McDevitt, The Devil's Eye (I've only read excerpts of his SF, so I might browse through this in a few months when I'll have more reading time again).

Left: Steven L. Kent, The Clone Elite (apparently this is part of a series, called Clone Republic and outside of that, I know nothing about the author or series); Mike Shepherd, Kris Longknife: Intrepid (again, this is part of a series of novels dealing with the same protagonist, so no opinion on these, to be honest).



Left: James Luceno, Star Wars: Millennium Falcon (a Star Wars novel, something I haven't read in two decades now?); Matthew Stover, Caine Black Knife (I've loved his first two Caine novels and while I know he's probably better known for his own Star Wars novels, his Caine books have been uniformly outstanding. Expect a review of this one before the week is over.)