Upcoming: “Jupiter War” by Neal Asher (Tor)

The highly-anticipated third book in Neal Asher’s Owner Trilogy…

Alan Saul is now part-human and part-machine, and our solar system isn’t big enough to hold him. He craves the stars, but can’t leave yet. His sister Var is trapped on Mars, on the wrong side of a rebellion, and Saul’s human side won’t let her die. He must leave Argus Station to stage a dangerous rescue – but mutiny is brewing onboard, as Saul’s robots make his crew feel increasingly redundant. Serene Galahad will do anything to prevent Saul's escape. Earth’s ruthless dictator hides her crimes from a cowed populace as she readies new warships for pursuit. She aims to crush her enemy in a terrifying display of interstellar violence. Meanwhile, The Scourge limps back to earth, its crew slaughtered, its mission to annihilate Saul a disaster. There are survivors, but while one seeks Galahad’s death, Clay Ruger will negotiate for his life. Events build to a climax as Ruger holds humanity’s greatest prize – seeds to rebuild a dying Earth. This stolen gene-bank data will come at a price, but what will Galahad pay for humanity’s future?

Jupiter War will be published by Tor UK, on September 26th, 2013.

NEAL ASHER finally coming to the USA! (Night Shade Books)

Neal Asher, British Sci-Fi author extraordinaire, is finally coming to the US! Properly. Night Shade Books, “in an attempt to catch up with the British” (as it was told to me), are publishing Asher’s Owner series in quick succession in 2013. Starting with The Departure in February, and followed by Zero Point in May, and Jupiter War in August. Therefore, to celebrate this news, here are some details about the first two novels…

Book Indecision: March 2012

Ok, I feel like reading something a little “older” than usual. CR has focused predominantly on newer titles – partly because I am myself relatively new to reading genre fiction – but there are hundreds of novels that were released before I really started paying attention to the fantasy and sci-fi genres at large. There are a few in particular that have caught my eye, and while they are not necessarily old by, say, Tolkien or even Gemmell standards, they’ve nevertheless been around for a fair while. (Actually, speaking of Gemmell, I should try Legend at some point, too…)

I’ve narrowed the choices for the next round of Latecomer reviews down to three titles, and I’d like you to help me choose which to read and review first. Here are the choices:

Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice (Book One in the Farseer Trilogy)

James Barclay’s Dawnthief (Book One in The Chronicles of the Raven)

Neal Asher’s Gridlinked (the first Agent Cormac novel)

Which one should I read first, and why? I’ll probably go with the one that gets the most recommendations, unless someone writes a particularly compelling reason to read another.

Best Book-Week EVER…?

Quite probably. This week I have received (and bought) perhaps the most number of Highly Anticipated books than any week previously. Am I gloating by writing about it here? Well, maybe a little bit, but I do also want to take advantage of the opportunity to tell everyone a little bit about these books that are coming out in the near future. So, let’s start first with a photo of The Big Pile O’ Exciting Books:

Here’s why we should be excited about them…

[Please Note: Some of these novels are sequels, so there may be some spoilers in synopses.]

Upcoming: “Latecomer” Reviews on CR

As some readers may already know, I’ve not been reading fantasy or science fiction for very long. Because of this, most of my SF/F reviews have been of newly or recently released titles.

In 2011, this will change.

I’m not going to stop reading and reviewing new titles (far from it – there are just too many exciting novels published this year to forgo), but I am going to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time now – that is, catch up on the ‘classic’, ‘great’, and established fantasy titles and series. The reviews will all be prefixed as “Latecomer”, so should be easy to find as and when they start arriving.

I haven’t got them all picked out, yet, but here is a first selection of titles I’ll be reading (please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments):

James Barclay, Dawnthief (Gollancz)

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (Voyager)

Tad Williams, Shadowmarch & The Dragonbone Chair (Orbit)

Neal Asher, Gridlinked (Tor)

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Empire in Black and Gold (Tor)

Joe Abercombie, The Blade Itself (Gollancz)

Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice (Voyager)

Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire (Gollancz)

Tom Lloyd, Stormcaller (Gollancz)

Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World (Orbit)

Steven Brust, The Book of Jhereg (Ace)

Whether or not I get to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series will depend on how much I like the latter’s The Way of Kings, which I have already bought for my Kindle.

So, there’s the selection I’ve come up with for the moment. I’m sure there are others, and there’s no set order in which I’m going to read them, and there’s no guarantee that I will end up in the mood for them, but they’re all series I’ve been meaning to read for some time, and I just don’t want to keep putting them off for much longer. If I had to put money on it, I’d say James Barclay and Joe Abercrombie are the certainties, with Tom Lloyd and Adrian Tchaikovsky the two most likely after them.

Anyway, watch this space…