This week brought 1 ARC, 3 books I ordered ridiculously cheap from the Book Closeouts Black Friday sale, and 1 book won in a giveaway! As usual, I’m including some information on each book this week in case there are any here that sound interesting that you want to check out.
This is definitely the book I’m most excited about this week! It’s a signed, out of print hardcover that I was lucky enough to win when Martha Wells recently gave away a few copies on her blog. Since I loved The Cloud Roads, I’ve wanted to read some of the author’s previous books and this is one I’d thought I might have to miss since it is out of print. I did just notice that there is a Kindle edition for only $2.99, though.
Wheel of the Infinite is a stand alone fantasy novel, and an excerpt is available to read online.
Every year in the great temple in the city of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel. With chaos in the wind, Maskelle, a woman with a shadowy past—a murderer, exile, and traitor—has been summoned back to help put the world right. For if she cannot unearth the cause of the Wheel’s accelerating disintegration, all that is, ever was, and will be, will end.
This is a massive omnibus containing the entire Abhorsen trilogy – Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen. I have heard excellent things about Sabriel so when I saw this available for only $6.50 I couldn’t resist! This is also currently a bargain book on Amazon.
Garth Nix is currently working on a prequel set 300 years before, Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen. His website says it will probably be released in 2013.
Sabriel
Every step brings Sabriel closer to a battle that will pit her against the true forces of life and death—and bring her face-to-face with her own destiny.
Lirael
With only her faithful companion, the Disreputable Dog, Lirael must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil, which threatens the fate of the Old Kingdom.
Abhorsen
The Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone are missing, and Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the evil Destroyer—before it is too late.
This is another stand alone fantasy book that I’ve been wanting to read for a while. I haven’t read anything by Jo Walton yet, but I enjoy her posts on Tor.com and I’ve heard this book is really good.
A preview is available on the publisher’s website.
A tale of love, money, and family conflict–among dragons. A family deals with the death of their father. A son goes to court for his inheritance. Another son agonises over his father’s deathbed confession. One daughter becomes involved in the abolition movement, while another sacrifices herself for her husband.And everyone in the tale is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.Here is a world of politics and train stations, of churchmen and family retainers, of courtship and country houses….in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. In which the great and the good avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.You have never read a novel like Tooth and Claw.
I’ve actually been interested in this one ever since I saw the sequel, The Boy From Illysies, was nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction. So when I saw a signed hardcover copy available for $4.50 I snatched it up. Oh, and it is about a library that sounds awesome!
A preview is available on the publisher’s website. The hardcover is also currently available as a bargain book on Amazon.
In her debut novel, Pearl North takes readers centuries into the future, to a forgotten colony of Earth where technology masquerades as magic and wars are fought over books.
Haly is a Libyrarian, one of a group of people dedicated to preserving and protecting the knowledge passed down from the Ancients and stored in the endless maze of books known as the Libyrinth. But Haly has a secret: The books speak to her.
When the threat of the rival Eradicants drives her from her home, Haly learns that things are not all she thinks they are. Taken prisoner by the Eradicants, who believe the written word to be evil, she sees the world through their eyes and comes to understand that they are not the book-burning monsters that she has known her entire life.
The words of a young girl hiding in an attic—written hundreds of years before Haly’s birth—will spark the interest of her captors and begin the change necessary to end the conflict between the Eradicants and Libyrarians. With the help of her loyal companion Nod, a creature of the Libyrinth, Haly must mend the rift between the two groups before their war for knowledge destroys them all. Haly’s life—and the lives of everyone she knows—will never be the same.
A powerful adventure that unites the present and future, Libyrinth is a fresh, magical novel that will draw in young readers of all genres.
The Isis Collar by Cat Adams (aka C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp)
This is the fourth book in the Blood Singer series, following Blood Song, Siren Song, and Demon Song. I haven’t read any of the books in the series or even heard of them before this showed up in the mail this week. There are some descriptions and excerpts from the first three books on the authors’ site if you are interested in learning more, though.
The Isis Collar will be available on March 13, 2012.
Celia Graves was once an ordinary human, but those days are long gone. Now she strives to maintain her sanity and her soul while juggling both vampire abilities and the powers of a Siren.
Warned of a magical “bomb” at a local elementary school, Celia forces an evacuation. Oddly, the explosion seems to have no effect, puzzling both Celia and the FBI. Two weeks later, a strangely persistent bruise on Celia’s leg turns out to be the first sign of a magical zombie plague.
Finding the source of the plague isn’t Celia’s only concern. Her alcoholic mother has broken out of prison on the Sirens’ island; her little sister’s ghost has possessed a young girl; and one of Celia’s boyfriends, a powerful mage, has disappeared.
