Books in the Queue – The Review Copy Edition

I don’t think I’ve ever received as many review copies as I have since January 2014. I did get occasional offers to read self-published works, or traditionally published books that just didn’t interest me much. But this year seems to be a great one – at least judging by the pile next to me and the ebooks on my Kobo.

Seeing as I’m really looking forward to most of these books and I want to keep up my end of the bargain (a free book for an honest review is more than fair, in my opinion), I intend to read all of these in time for publication day. For organizational purposes, and your TBR-note-taking pleasure, I made a list:

MARCH 25th

Karl Schroeder – Lockstep

I finished reading this one last weekend and my review will be up tomorrow. I didn’t love it. I even hated some aspects of it. But overall, it was an okay read. Something light and fun for in between meatier novels, a story with bland, stereotypical characters, but a story with some great ideas.

When seventeen-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he’s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he’s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still—that he’s been asleep for 14,000 years.
Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millennia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own.
Toby’s brother Peter has become a terrible tyrant. Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother, whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime. Now, with the help of a lockstep girl named Corva, Toby must survive the forces of this new Empire, outwit his siblings, and save human civilization.
Karl Schroeder’s Lockstep is a grand innovation in hard SF space opera.

APRIL 1st

Katherine Addison – The Goblin Emperor

Now this is such a pleasure to read. Sure, it’s chock full of names I won’t even try to pronounce, but it’s also got insane court intrigue, a young boy suddenly being the ruler of an entire empire, learning to grow up and put his past behind him. The language is lovely, the characters are multi-layered, the story got me hooked, and I have no idea where it’s going. I’m not even halfway through it, but I suspect this book will demand a rather glowing review. (And airships! Did I mention the airships?)

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an “accident,” he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.
Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.
Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend… and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne – or his life.

APRIL 10th

Nnedi Okorafor – Lagoon

I’ve been looking forward to this ever since it was announced. Okorafor’s Who Fears Death still gets at me after more than a year, her short stories in Kabu-Kabu were mostly wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what she does with this subject matter.

When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria’s most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself… from itself. Lagoon expertly juggles multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives with prose that is at once propulsive and poetic, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself.
At its heart a story about humanity at the crossroads between the past, present, and future, Lagoon touches on political and philosophical issues in the rich tradition of the very best science fiction, and ultimately asks us to consider the things that bind us together – and the things that make us human.

APRIL 15th

Rjurik Davidson – Unwrapped Sky

Cover appeal, anyone? This book had me at minotaur. Not even the word minotaur, just the one on the cover. Apart from being gorgeous, it also sounds So Good. Magic, minotaurs, assassins.

A hundred years ago, the Minotaurs saved Caeli-Amur from conquest. Now, three very different people may hold the keys to the city’s survival. Once, it is said, gods used magic to create reality, with powers that defied explanation. But the magic—or science, if one believes those who try to master the dangers of thaumaturgy—now seems more like a dream. Industrial workers for House Technis, farmers for House Arbor, and fisher folk of House Marin eke out a living and hope for a better future. But the philosopher-assassin Kata plots a betrayal that will cost the lives of godlike Minotaurs; the ambitious bureaucrat Boris Autec rises through the ranks as his private life turns to ashes; and the idealistic seditionist Maximilian hatches a mad plot to unlock the vaunted secrets of the Great Library of Caeli-Enas, drowned in the fabled city at the bottom of the sea, its strangeness visible from the skies above.In a novel of startling originality and riveting suspense, these three people, reflecting all the hopes and dreams of the ancient city, risk everything for a future that they can create only by throwing off the shackles of tradition and superstition, as their destinies collide at ground zero of a conflagration that will transform the world . . . or destroy it. Unwrapped Sky is a stunningly original debut by Rjurik Davidson, a young master of the New Weird.

JANUARY 16th

Simon Ings – Wolves

This is already out but I’m still sitting on my review copy. I’ve been staring at the cover for weeks. It’s definitely on my read-very-soon list. Because it may look like fantasy, or even a fairy tale retelling, but it sounds like a crazy science-fiction ride.

Augmented Reality uses computing power to overlay a digital imagined reality over the real world. Whether it be adverts or imagined buildings and imagined people with Augmented Reality the world is no longer as it appears to you, it is as it is imagined by someone else. Ings takes the satire and mordant satirical view of J.G. Ballard and propels it into the 21st century.
Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and when they are offered backing to take the idea and make it into the next global entertainment they realise that wolves hunt in this imagined world. And the wolves might be them.
A story about technology becomes a personal quest into a changed world and the pursuit of a secret from the past. A secret about a missing mother, a secret that could hide a murder. This is no dry analysis of how a technology might change us, it is a terrifying thriller, a picture of a dark tomorrow that is just around the corner.

You’ll be seeing my opinions on all of these soon, although I am still catching up with some reading for this year’s Hugo nominations. Between April and whenever the nominees are announced I will have All The Time for new books. Because, see, if I read newer titles right when they come out, I won’t be in the same dilemma next year as I am now – not having read enough titles to make good decisions about what to nominate for a Hugo. Lesson one learned. On to the next one. 🙂