Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Roc Hardcover (February 7, 2012) ISBN-10: 0451464370 Available: February 7, 2012 Official Description: Having survived Jehal’s betrayal, former Queen Zafir is determined to take back control of the kingdom. To that end, she seizes Jehal’s wife and son as hostages. Desperate to save his queen and his heir, Jehal makes a […]
The Providence Rider by Robert McCammon Available: May 2012 ISBN: 978-1-59606-466-9 Length: 416 pages Publisher: Subterranean Press From the Subterranean Press website: The Providence Rider is the fourth standalone installment in the extraordinary series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver. The narrative begins in the winter of 1703, with Matthew still haunted […]
Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Roc Trade; 1 edition (January 3, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0451464346 Official Description: Dante the necromancer is the most reviled man in Sabria, indicted by for crimes against the living and the dead. He salves bitterness with a magical puzzle – a desperate soldier’s dream of an imprisoned sorceress […]
The scene is Budapest, Hungary in the late 1930’s. Hitler’s saber rattling over in Germany is becoming more and more bellicose, and there is the scent of war in the air. The quasi-fascistic pre war Hungary is not the most pleasant of places, especially for a Jew like Magda. The fact that she is not […]
A Stark and Wormy Knight by Tad Williams Available: June, 2012 Publisher: Subterranean Press ISBN: 978-1-59606-461-4 From the Subterranean Press website: Tad Williams is an acknowledged master of the multi-volume epic. Through such popular series as Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and Otherland, he has acquired a huge and devoted body of readers who eagerly await […]
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Roc; Original edition (December 6, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0451464311 Official Description: Matt Lowell is in hell-and there’s no place he’d rather be. At a training camp on the backwater planet of Earth, he and his fellow cadets are learning to ride Mechas: biomechanicals sporting both incredible grace and […]
Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers (February 7, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 1442420294 Available: February 7, 2012 Editor: John Joseph Adams Authors: Peter S. Beagle Jonathan Maberry Catherynne M. Valente Tobias S. Buckell Joe R. Lansdale Robin Wasserman Austin Grossman Garth Nix Celebrate 100 years of John Carter of Mars […]
So, I have to start this out with a moment of honesty: I’ve been biased against novels published by gaming companies for…as long as I’ve been buying books. There’s no particular reason for it, and I really should have known better, but I just didn’t see myself as the target market. I don’t know the […]
Strange Embrace/69 Barrow Street by Lawrence Block Dust jacket illustrations by Robert McGinnis Publisher: Subterranean Press A Hard Case Crime Hardcover Length:330 pages ISBN: 978-1-59606-489-8 This book has a double cover you flip to read the other story, which is cool. Will be available in May, 2012 From the Subterranean website: Strange Embrace They […]
Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Ace (January 31, 2012) ISBN-10: 1937007243 Official Description: Army Officer. Fugitive. Sorcerer. Across the country and in every nation, people are waking up with magical talents. Untrained and panicked, they summon storms, raise the dead, and set everything they touch ablaze. Army officer Oscar Britton sees the worst of […]
Kafkaesque Adjective Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity e.g. Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka. There are precious few writers whose names have transcended their status as a proper noun. Dickens has become an adjective to […]
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card may possibly be the best novel I’ve ever read. That’s not a statement I make lightly. While my other favorites – Stranger in a Strange Land, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Death World – have all effected me in different ways, none has moved me as much as this […]
Charles Stross’s latest novel, Rule 34, is one of the notable books of 2011, a cyberpunk novel for the social media age. Gone is the notion of revolutionary computers and technologies just out of reach: this futuristic Scotland is a recognizable world that’s just around the corner, one that shows just how scary a high-technology […]
The Worker Prince by Bryan Thomas Schmidt takes the Biblical story of Moses to the stars and beyond. When Prince Xander Rhii – Davi to his friends – graduates from the Borali Military Academy at the top of his class, his horizon looks clear and bright. Privileged enough to grow up in the […]
Lucy Stone works as a game designer in Edinburgh. Digital Damage is making a Massively multiplayer online role playing game based on dark ages Britain. With Zombies and other odd things. Slaving away at this game, Lucy gets a call from her mother, a fellow émigré from a troubled region in the Caucaus. Her mother […]
Sing, Muse!: Moses Siregar III‘s The Black God’s War Two very different realms have struggled against each other for years. The Rezzians, worshipers of ten deities, have engaged in a holy war against their godless neighbors, the Pawleons. With the birth of a royal son who is also a prophesied holy leader with divine powers, […]
I love living in the future. I get woken up in the morning by my hand-held personal computer / communications device, which is programmed to notify me via sound and vibration at the exact moment I want to be awake. Without getting out of bed I can slide my finger across the touch-sensitive screen, and […]
hierophant noun. 1. (Historical Terms) (in ancient Greece) an official high priest of religious mysteries, esp those of Eleusis 2. a person who interprets and explains esoteric mysteries Back when I wrote a review of Finch, I called Jeff Vandermeer the “Hierophant of the New Weird”. I used that unusual word on purpose, then, and I use […]
Take a captain of a beat up old ship that sometimes can barely fly, but he loves it to death. He’s a veteran of a recent war, has no love for the Navy, and seeks freedom and profit, from trading between ports to a bit of light piracy and theft now and again. He […]
The creature stalked forward, bent, its talon like hands flexing, and Burton saw that his first impression was accurate: the thing walked on two-foot-high stilts. Its lanky body was clad in a skintight white scaly suit that glittered in the dim light of the single guttering gas lamp. Something circular glowed on its […]
Cowboy Angels A novel by Paul McAuley Review by Paul Weimer “There are white-tailed deer and woodland caribou and mule deer. Wolves and black bears, and short-faced bears too-those are as big as grizzlies. A few panthers.” “Pretty good hunting in Manhattan” “We call the island New Amsterdam here…If you want to hunt something […]
BLACK HALO Sam Sykes PYR ISBN:9781616143558 602 pages One primary element that makes Sword and Sorcery a distinctive genre of the fantastic is the choice of protagonists. They are not Farmboys of Predestination, nor are they dethroned monarchs fighting to restore order and status to their stolen kingdoms (although for enough coin or favors they’ll […]
Subscribe to The Functional Nerds Podcast on iTunes and never miss an episode!