Looking forward to 2009

Yes, Viljamur for certain in June. It promises to be a fine work ( more than just guesswork on my part for this one).

The James Enge book sounds interesting btw, and due in the 1st half of the year apparantly. Time for Pyr to update it's catalogue anyway.

Wolfe: very divisive author. I'm not personally looking forward to the next book per se. I still have loads of his material to read, including his major work.
 
Mith,
Thanks again for the tips on the advanced search at Amazon. I was looking through Orbit's upcoming lineup, which looks good, and noticed something peculiar. They are releasing some installments of Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy and then there is this:

The Accidental Sorcerer (Rogue Agent), by K. E. Mills

About the author
K.E. Mills is a pseudonym for bestselling author Karen Miller.
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Can anyone explain to me why a person would release competing series under different names simultaneously? It would seem counter-intuitive. Don't get me wrong, if the pans out as a good read, I'd be willing to go and get it since it sounds like an interesting tale.

Product Description
Gerald Dunwoody is a wizard. Just not a particularly good one. He's blown up a factory, lost his job, and there's a chance that he's not really a Third Grade wizard after all. So it's off to New Ottosland to be the new Court Wizard for King Lional.

It's a shame that King Lional isn't the vain, self-centered young man he appeared to be. With a Princess in danger, a talking bird who can't stay out of trouble, and a kingdom to save, Gerald soon suspects that he might be out of his depth. And if he can't keep this job, how will he ever become the wizard he was destined to be...
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The two reasons that I most commonly see advanced for an established author using a pseudonym are:

1. Crossing genres. If one book/series is a very different type from another book/series, the author will sometimes use a different name so that fans who only like the first type of book won't pick up the second one and be disappointed, or fans of the second genre won't avoid an author they associate with the "wrong kind" of book. For example, if a military SF author decided to take a shot at Regency romance, that author would probably do so under a pseudonym.

As far as I can tell, this seems to apply mostly to midlist authors. Nora Roberts published some books under the pseudonym J.D. Robb because of the crossing-genre thing, but when she became a blockbuster bestseller, a lot of them were reissued with "Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb" on the front cover, so as to get the boost from having a bestseller's name on there.

2. Author's had some low sales figures and needs to change names to shake off the burden of those numbers. I'm not a publishing professional so I have no idea what counts as "low sales figures" sufficient to trigger this.

Going by that synopsis, it sounds like it could be humorous fantasy, so maybe that's why the pseudonym? I've never read any Miller, so I don't know how her other work would compare.
 
Miller's books have sold very well, which doesn't always speak to quality. I thought Empress, the first book in her Godspeaker series, was the worst book I read this year.

But yes, this new book seems to be a humorous fantasy which is probably why she is using a variation on her name.
 
Drood arrived last week and when I picked up off of my porch, a small cat was squashed underneath it. This thing is gigantic and I'm really looking forward to reading it.
 
Amazon tells me Midwinter by Sturges comes out in March and Blood of Ambrose in April.

Most notable delays we know of sofar for 2009 are Martin, Lynch and Rothfuss.

Re; Drood

It's still unclear to me how that book is Fantasy but perhaps when more details become clear I'll found out what supernatural element there is. The Terror is basically straight up historical novel with a vicious creature thrown in, perhaps this is just straight up historical ( not a value judgement btw as I read plenty of historical fiction myself).
 
RE: RE: Drood

I get the sense there is a ghost story in there somewhere, but I could be wrong. From the material available online:

Were his [Charles Dickens] nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research … or something more terrifying?
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If this novel has a horror tinge to it, then great. Simmons really spooked me with Summer of Night, a novel similar to King's IT except more subtle in its creepiness.
 
Mithfânion said:
Re; Drood

It's still unclear to me how that book is Fantasy but perhaps when more details become clear I'll found out what supernatural element there is. The Terror is basically straight up historical novel with a vicious creature thrown in, perhaps this is just straight up historical ( not a value judgement btw as I read plenty of historical fiction myself).
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Without spoilers - Drood being a fantasy is in the eyes of the reader, unreliable narrator and all. But that is somewhat beside the point since the book is about Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins their times, lives, friendship, rivalry and much more. There is so much in this book that even now two months since I read it and did a reread and it stayed with me, though I still cannot focus enough to write a review to capture the essence of it. If you like Victoriana, you will like this one in spades, whatever you think about its fantasy or horror elements.
 
Amazon has a short synopsis for China Mieville's upcoming novel The City & the City. It sounds really intriguing.

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Bes el, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlu must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.

With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984 , "The City & The City" is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
 
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Hadn't seen this before, but it interested me as it contains the UK covers for Wise Man's Fear and Best Served Cold.

Amusing that the cover to the new Abercrombie features a map, after all the debate about the lack of one in the first law trilogy...

Glad that the previously shown cover for Republic of Thieves seems to have been shelved, too.

http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/extras/Catalogues/Gollancz_Jan2009-July2009.pdf
 
Interesting catalogue that. Lynch and Holdstock still scheduled for July then. OTOH they still have Rothfuss on for April as well, which we know is incorrect.

Can't find that catalogue on the Gollancz site, just like I couldn't find it last year.
 
Pyr just released their Spring/Summer 2009 catalogue with more details on both Sturges's and Enge's forthcoming novels, as well as the US releases of Chadbourn's series.

James Enge, Blood of Ambrose
Behind the King's life stands the menacing Protector, and beyond him lies the Protector's Shadow... Against this evil, Morlock Ambrosius--stateless person, master of all magical makers, deadly swordsman, and hopeless drunk.

Matthew Sturges, Midwinter
Mauritaine once heroic Captain in the Seelie Army, now accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole, is offered one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor in the secrete service of Queen Titania.

Mike Resnick, Stalking the Dragon (A Fable of Tonight)
It’s Valentine's Day and private detective John Justin Mallory must undertake a nocturnal hunt for the miniature dragon that takes him to some of the stranger sections of his magical Manhattan.
 
I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson yet. It may not be that highly anticipated because it's being overshadowed by that other book coming out by him in 2009, or that it's because you can already read the entire thing online (I haven't), but from what I've seen, he seems to be getting better every book, and this should be a very good novel.
I think it involves something about humans being worshipped as Gods.
 
molybdenum said:
I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson yet. It may not be that highly anticipated because it's being overshadowed by that other book coming out by him in 2009, or that it's because you can already read the entire thing online (I haven't), but from what I've seen, he seems to be getting better every book, and this should be a very good novel.
I think it involves something about humans being worshipped as Gods.
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Check out Sanderson's site, I guess he's releasing this book online as he writes it. You can download the book in word format.
 
Greetings all,

I'm hoping to be back around here a little more regularly in a couple weeks, but for now I'm just dropping by to note that Pyr's finally updated their "forthcoming" page with a couple of the titles you can find in the spring/summer catalogue they released last week. In particular, they have a full synopsis up now on their website for Matthew Sturges's Midwinter, [which I forgot to copy over here ... curses]. 'Tis lookin' fine. Think they've got final cover art too, though I don't quite remember. No full synopsis for the James Enge novel yet, just the bit in the catalogue.

Oh, and I know that we're not supposed to send people galloping off across the webs too much, but an exception: For any who don't know yet, the honourable Pat of the Hotlist has recently posted an excerpt from R Scott Bakker's The Judging Eye. I'm sure most of you know, but if anyone doesn't I thought it was my civic duty to tell you. I wasn't going to read it, on account of wanting to wait until the book came out, but I caved and it is awesome.

And Warbreaker's done and comes out in June, according to Sanderson's site. I read one of the free online drafts, and it's very much a Sanderson novel. What I mean by this is that it is mighty fine, but doesn't step outside the niche he's starting to carve for himself.
________
Website Design
 
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Some superb updates from Robert at Fantasybookcritic here:

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2008/08/upcoming-2009-releases-part-one.html

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2008/11/upcoming-2009-releases-part-two.html

Looks to be an incredible year.

P.S. Mjolnir

Agreed on you needing to check in more and on the splendour of the Judging Eye prologue. I told myself I could wait till late January for my Penguin trade paperback but the prologue was just too interesting. All the advance reviews sofar speak of a magnificent return.
 
Mithfânion said:
Some superb updates from Robert at Fantasybookcritic here:

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2008/08/upcoming-2009-releases-part-one.html

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2008/11/upcoming-2009-releases-part-two.html

Looks to be an incredible year.

P.S. Mjolnir

Agreed on you needing to check in more and on the splendour of the Judging Eye prologue. I told myself I could wait till late January for my Penguin trade paperback but the prologue was just too interesting. All the advance reviews sofar speak of a magnificent return.
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Robert does a great job both with the upcoming 09 releases and with the monthly new releases. When he emails me the next month list, I feel kind of "what can I add to that??", though sometimes there are titles that interest both of us to add - especially from more "obscure" small publishers that attracted my attention for a reason or another.

I got seriously into Judging Eye yesterday - had the arc courtesy of Robert for about two weeks, but read some other books first since this one is one not to be rushed - and it's indeed quite good as everyone said.

I dusted a bit PoN 1-3 from my shelves with a quick reread here and there to remember the setting since I read all the books pretty much on original publication, and Robert should put up my review soon since I plan to do it by this weekend.
 
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