The BoSS for 13/02/10

Welcome, fine ladies and handsome gentlemen - a good day to you, one and all!

Let's get started on the busiest installment to date of the Bag o' Speculative Swag, wherein one humble blogger previews the various proofs and review copies which have gallanty overcome the postman's most wicked wiles since the last time I took account of an increasingly intimiating stack of novels still to be read.

Click through to read Meet the BoSS for an introduction and an explanation as to why you should care about the Bag o' Speculative Swag.

So, what's going to be keeping The Speculative Scotsman's nose buried in one book or another over the next few weeks?

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Walking the Tree
by Kaaron Warren

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

04/02/10 by Angry Robot Books

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "Botanica is the island, but all of Botanica is taken up by the Tree.

"Lillah has come of age. She is now ready to leave her community and walk around the Tree for five years, learning all that Botanica has to teach her. Before setting off, Lillah is beggen by the dying mother of a young boy to take him with her. But if anyone suspects he carries the disearse himself, he and Lillah will be killed."

Commentary: For my money, the most distinctive thing about Walking the Tree is the pseudo-sidequel Morace's Story, available as a free ebook download to readers of the novel. It's an interesting move and I've always found the notion of the other side of the story a fascinating one - kudos to Kaaron Warren for having the tenacity to pull it off. I'm perhaps a little put off by the bright red highlighting on key phrases on the back of the actual book, but then the buzz thus far on Walking the Tree has been very positive, and I've never been one to begrudge a good story simply because of its the marketing. TSS readers can expect a review of this one shortly.

Hyddenworld: Spring

by William Horwood



Release Details:

Published in the UK on

05/02/10 by Macmillan

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "It has lain lost and forgotten for fifteen hundred years in the ancient heartland of England – a scrap of glass and metal melded by fierce fire. It is the lost core of a flawless Sphere made by the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon CraeftLords in memory of the one he loved. Her name was Spring and contained in the very heart of this work is a spark from the Fires of Creation.

"But while humans have lost their belief in such things, the Hydden – little people existing on the borders of our world – have not. Breaking the silence of centuries they send one of their own, a young boy, Jack, to live among humans in the hope that he may one day find what has been lost for so long. His journey leads him to Katherine, a girl he rescues from a tragic accident; it’s a meeting that will change everything. It is only through their voyage into the dangerous Hyddenworld that they will realize their destiny, find love and complete the great quest that will save both their worlds from destruction."

Commentary: The return of a classic fantasy author after a 15-year absence from the genre, Hyddenworld: Spring purports to be the first installment of a quintology in the making, and I've heard both very good and very bad things, so I'm not at all sure what to make of it. There's only one way to find out for sure, and that's to bury my nose in Hyddenworld: Spring and see for myself - though I'm loathe to begin another saga that will take me years before I see completed. Still, isn't that just a lovely cover? It's all embossed and everything!

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

by Jonathan L. Howard

Release Details:

Published in the UK on

08/02/10 by Headline

Review Priority:

2 (Fair)

Plot Synopsis: "Johannes Cabal has never pretended to be a hero of any kind. There is, after all, little heroic about robbing graves, stealing occult volumes, and being on nodding terms with demons. His purpose, however, is noble. His researches are all directed to raising the dead. For such a prize, some sacrifices are necessary. One such sacrifice was his own soul, but he now sees that was a mistake – it’s not just that he needs it for his research to have validity, but now he realises he needs it to be himself. Unfortunately, his soul now rests within the festering bureaucracy of Hell. Satan may be cruel and capricious but, most dangerously, he is bored. It is Cabal’s unhappy lot to provide him with amusement.

"In short, a wager: in return for his own soul, Cabal must gather one hundred others – in one year.

"One year to beat the Devil at his own game. And isn’t that perhaps just a little heroic?"

Commentary: The low review priority isn't, I assure you, any indication of how excited I am to have recieved a copy of Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, but rather an admission that I expect I'll wait till we're a little closer to the publication date of Jonathan L. Howard's still-untitled sequel, set for release in May, if Amazon is to be believed, before running a write-up on TSS. I'll be reading it the first chance I get, though. The reviews from my bloggy colleagues were great upon its hardcover debut last year, and you can only imagine how pscyhed am I at the prospect of a full novel from one the masterminds behind the Broken Sword games; personal favourites of mine.

The Extra
by Michael Shea

Release Details:

Published in the US on

02/02/10 by Tor Books

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "Imagine the Roman Coliseum expanded to encompass the whole of Rome with the Christians replaced by thousands of extras, who volunteer in search of enough wealth to escape their poverty, and with gladiators replaced by animatronic aliens. All the action in this artificial set designed by the head of Panoply Studios, Val Margolian, is filmed continuously and turned into mega-grossing vid entertainment for the masses.

"Attempting to survive the chaos and reap bonuses dropped by payboat pilots for alien kills are L.A. book lovers Japh, Curtis, and Jool. They're aided by a group of pilots, who are secretly sabotaging Margolian's spiderlike machines."

Commentary: Although I've never come across Michael Shea in the past, raves from Patton Oswalt and Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm make The Extra sound like a great time - and you know what? Perhaps despite appearances, I do like a quick bit of fun between my epic fantasies. This short, high-concept action comedy with designs on The Running Man should be just the trick. Wait... what? Giant mechanical spiders? Well, surely that's all I need to say!

Dark Life

by Kat Falls

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
29/04/10 by Simon & Schuster Children's

Review Priority:

3 (Moderate)

Plot Synopsis: "Ty has lived under the ocean for his entire life. Following global warming and the rise of the seas, his family joined an underwater community in hopes of living in the new frontier of the ocean floor. But When Ty meets Gemma, a girl from "topside", who is searching the seas for her brother, she quickly makes his life very complicated. Together Ty and Gemma face dangerous sea creatures and venture into the frontier town's rough underworld as they search for her missing brother.

"But the deeper they dig, the more attention they attract, and soon Ty and Gemma find themselves being hunted by a gang of outlaws who roam the underwater territories causing havoc, and who seem to have eerie abilities. But Ty has a secret of his own, living underwater for his entire life has meant he has also developed a "special" power. Can he keep it a secret from Gemma and his family or is it time for him to finally tell everyone the truth?"

Commentary: With the Alex Bell love-in over the weekend and a review of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan as well as a select few others in the works, I seem to be covering more YA here on TSS than I'd honestly meant to. Not that I'm complaining! I hadn't devoted much of my reading time to young adult literature before starting this blog, but I find such novels to be perfect palette-cleansers at the least, and often much more substantial than that description indicates. Dark Life isn't due till the end of April, so it's not currently high on my agenda, but I'll certainly be reading and reviewing Kat Falls' debut before the release date. I'll confess, furthermore, to being pretty drawn in by the sales pitch. Bioshock has, years later, left me still ravenous for anything set in an undersea community.

Farlander

by Col Buchanan

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
05/03/10 by Tor

Review Priority:

4 (Very High)

Plot Synopsis: "The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators.

"The Mercian Free Ports are the only confederacy yet to fall. Their only land link to the southern continent, a long and narrow isthmus, is protected by the city of Bar-Khos. For ten years now, the great southern walls of Bar-Khos have been besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army.

"Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the Rōshun - who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink.

"When the Holy Matriarch’s son deliberately murders a woman under the protection of the Rōshun; he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfil the Rōshun orders – their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports . . . into bloodshed and death."

Commentary: And so comes another exciting fantasy debut - and February's hardly even halfway through. I'd truly be hard pushed to remember of a better year for new SF&F than 2010 has been so far. As with Hyddenworld, what little criticism I've read of Farlander has been split evenly down the middle, but everyone seems to agree the magic system at its heart is an incredible thing to behold. That's enough for me. I've got loads of stuff on the roster between now and the release date of Farlander, but I fully intend to read it through and get some further coverage up on TSS before then. Here's hoping for good things!

Salute the Dark

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Release Details:

Published in the UK on
05/02/10 by Tor

Review Priority:

2 (Fair)

Plot Synopsis: "The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual - a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality - but Uctebri has his own plans both for the Emperor and the Empire.

"The massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived. This time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold's own home city of Collegium.

"Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, but that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand - but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honour, or manipulated by something more sinister?"

Commentary: The trouble with all the ARCs is that occasionaly, someone sends you something from the middle of a series that isn't likely to make any sense to you unless you've read the previous entries. And so, to Salute the Dark, the fourth novel of ten projected installments in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt sequence. Thusly, I've just bought books one through three and can't wait to get a start on the first. Given everything else, I'm afraid to say it'll be ages before I can run a review of this latest volume, but rest assured, readers: I will - and hopefully before the fifth part comes out later this year.