The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week – old or new, bought or received for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included.
Midnight Blue-Light Special (InCryptid #2) by Seanan McGuire
Midnight Blue-Light Special will be released in mass market paperback on March 5, 2013. Though it’s not listed yet, I’d imagine it will be available in ebook format as well since the first book is.
I’m excited about this one since I really enjoy Seanan McGuire’s books, which have been getting better and better. Also, I had a great time reading the first book in this series, Discount Armageddon (my review). I love the concept of this series, Verity and the entire Price family, and the sense of humor.
There doesn’t yet seem to be a description of this book available online, so here’s the series description from the InCryptid page on Seanan McGuire’s website instead:
The Covenant of St. George was founded to uphold one simple ideal: anything that was not present on the Ark—anything they deemed “unnatural”—needed to be destroyed. Monsters. Creatures of myth and legend. All of them would be wiped from the Earth in the name of Man’s dominion. Unfortunately for them, not all the monsters agreed with this plan…and neither did all the human beings.
After their rather abrupt departure from the Covenant, Alexander and Enid Healy found themselves alone in the world, but with a simple mission of their own: to protect the cryptids of the world from those who would harm them without just cause. It was a cause that would eventually claim both their lives, leaving their children, and their childrens’ children, to take up the fight. Now in the modern day, their descendants struggle to stay beneath the Covenant’s radar, while defending the cryptids from humanity—and humanity from the cryptids.
Hellhole Awakening (Hellhole #2) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
This science fiction novel will be released in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook in March 2013. Tor.com has an excerpt containing the first 100 pages of Hellhole, the previous book.
General Adolphus knows the Monarchy crackdown is coming. Now he needs to pull together all the resources of the Hellhole colony, the ever-expanding shadow-Xayan settlement, and his connections with the other Deep Zone worlds. On Sonjeera, Diadem Michella Duchenet has collected a huge fleet, led by firebrand Commissar Escobar Hallholme, son of the man who originally defeated Adolphus.
Uniting themselves and pooling their minds, the shadow-Xayans send a power surge along the original stringline path that links Hellhole with the Monarchy’s hub on Sonjeera. All of the Diadem’s battleships are currently approaching on that route, and when the mental blast wipes out all the substations, the battleships are effectively stranded.
A bigger threat appears. Three asteroids come in from the outer reaches of the Candela system. On Hellhole, the awakened Xayans finally reveal information that has been hidden even from their own followers. A large group of powerful, rogue telemancers split away from the main race. Now that the Xayan civilization is reawakening, these violent fanatics have come back to destroy them once and for all. They are coming for Hellhole, and this time they will completely destroy it.
