Science Fiction & Fantasy

October 2009

The title-underlined links will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Wanderlust, Ann Aguirre. (c2008)
Broke and unemployed, 'Jumper' Sirantha Jax accepts a diplomatic mission for the government, only to find herself up against Syndicate criminals, man-eating aliens, and her own grim-space-weakened body. (Amazon)

Orbus, by Neal Asher. (2009)
In charge of an old cargo spaceship, the Old Captain Orbus flees a violent and sadistic past, but he doesn't know that the lethal war drone, Sniper, is a stowaway, and that the past is rapidly catching up with him. His old enemy the Prador Vrell, mutated by the Spatterjay virus into something powerful and dangerous, has seized control of a Prador dreadnought, murdering its crew, and is now seeking to exact vengeance on those who tried to have him killed. Their courses inexorably converge in the Graveyard, the border realm lying between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom, a place filled with the ruins left by past genocides and interplanetary war. (Amazon)

Ark, by Stephen Baxter. (2009)
Sent out into deep space on an epic journey centuries before, generations of crew members carry the hope of a new beginning on a new, incredibly distant planet. But as the decades pass knowledge and purpose is lost and division and madness grows. Back on earth, nature and man, find a new way. This is the epic sequel to the acclaimed FLOOD.

Dust of dreams ; a tale of the Malazan book of the fallen, by Steven Erikson. (2009).
On the Letherii continent the exiled Malazan army commanded by Adjunct Tavore begins its march into the eastern Wastelands, to fight for an unknown cause against an enemy it has never seen. The fate awaiting the Bonehunters is one no soldier can prepare for, and one no mortal soul can withstand, the enemy is uncertainty and the only weapon worth wielding is stubborn courage. Destinies are never simple. Truths are neither clear nor sharp. (Amazon)

Green, by Jay Lake. (2009)
She was born in poverty, in a dusty village under the equatorial sun. She does not remember her mother, she does not remember her own name, and her earliest clear memory is of the day her father sold her to the tall pale man. In the Court of the Pomegranate Tree, where she was taught the ways of a courtesan and the skills of an assassin, she was named Emerald, the precious jewel of the Undying Duke's collection of beauties. She calls herself Green. The world she inhabits is one of political power and magic, where Gods meddle in the affairs of mortals. At the centre of it is the immortal Duke's city of Copper Downs, which controls all the trade on the Storm Sea. Green has made many enemies, and some secret friends, and she has become a very dangerous woman. (Amazon)

A princess of Landover : a magic kingdom of Landover novel, Terry Brooks. (2009)
Princess Mistaya Holiday hasn't been fitting in too well at Carrington Women's Preparatory. People don't seem to appreciate her using her magic to settle matters in the human world. So when she summons a dragon to teach a lesson to the snotty school bully, she finds herself suspended. But Mistaya couldn't care less; she wants nothing more than to continue her studies under Questor the court magician and Abernathy the court scribe. However, her father Ben Holiday, the King of Landover, has rather different plans in mind for her. (Amazon)

The light of burning shadows, by Chris Evans. (2009)
The Iron Elves, shunned by their own people for bearing the mark of the Shadow Monarch, and desperately wanting to forever erase this shame, became legendary for their prowess on the battlefield as the Calahrian Imperial Army's elite shock troops. But when their commanding officer, Konowa Swift Dragon, murdered the Viceroy of Elfkyna, he was exiled, and these brave elves were banished to a remote desert outpost, doomed and leaderless, their honour in tatters. Recalled to duty to reform his regiment from the dregs of the Imperial Army Konowa must cross storm-tossed seas to seek out the lost elves. The fate of every living creature will come to depend on a small band of ragged and desperate soldiers; whose very loyalty to the Empire they have sworn to serve is no longer certain. (Amazon)

Wastelands : stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams. (c2008). (c2009)
Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon. From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. (Amazon)

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