Cool Covers Of The Future

First spotted at this website via Angry Robot.  Love the covers for Chris F. Holm's The Collector series in that they look like old classics covers you find in second hand bookshops.  I bought the first book, Dead Harvest, because of the striking cover and also have a copy of  the second book, The Wrong Goodbye, on my tablet but have yet to read either as my library addiction has been hard to give up.  The Big Reap isn't out until August 2013 (birthday present for moi?), so I've got plenty of time to get reading, and hopefully what is inside it equally as marvellous as the cover. 

Seven Wonders

Tony Prosdocimi lives in the bustling metropolis of San Ventura - a city utterly gripped by fear, a city under siege by the hooded supervillain, the Cowl.
  When Tony develops super-powers and acts to take down the Cowl, however, he finds that the local superhero team, the Seven Wonders, aren't anything like as grateful as he had assumed they would be...

 Adam Christopher's homage to the super hero genre could never be accused of being dull.  Seven Wonders is jammed packed with action sequences and various characters that you'd normally find in various graphic novels - some have gloriously funny names - and all of the core players have their chance to shine and their potential explored.
  
  My scatter brain benefited from the overall structure of short chapters that proceeded rather long ones and I also felt that the jumps in narration allowed more freedom to explore how certain characters viewed themselves and then how others viewed them which further emphasised the central theme that power corrupts, even if you don't intend for that to happen...Seven Wonders is exactly as advertised, yet it never keeps in the direction you think it's going to head in.  I thought I had it all figured out and then half way in everything changed!  A fantastic stand-alone novel (but in true superhero fashion, the ending leaves plenty open for a sequel) that would be a great Christmas gift!    

I *heart* post!

Cool Covers of the Future

Spotted this today over at Angry Robot's website  I've got the first book, Empire State, but haven't read it yet.  I picked that up as part of a 'buy one, get on half price' offer purely because of the cover (and okay, the blurb sounded mighty interesting too) and I might have to purchase this to have a matching set of awesomeness.

Cool Covers of the Future

Just spotted this on the Angry Robot blog for the third book in Matthew Hughes To Hell and Back series. 

Costume Not Included

As I've mentioned in a previous review, I was disappointed with the first book in Matthew Hughes' To Hell and Back series.  I had ordered the sequel, Costume Not Included, at the same time from the library and I wasn't over enthused to begin reading.  So after a break of a few weeks I decided with trepidation to go on another adventure with Chesney ' Actionary' Arnstruther and and his demon sidekick Xaphan.

Chesney Arnstruther's efforts to Save the Day and Get the Girl are making slow progress.  This superhero stuff is more complicated than he first thought, even with a cigar-chomping demon for a sidekick.
But while Chesney is trying to learn the ropes, Boss Greeley has made a deal with the Devil, a pact that is making the villain stronger by the minute.  Meanwhile, the Reverend Hardacre has been doing some research into matters spiritual and has found that not everything in the Garden (of Eden) is rosy.

For me, Costume Not Included was a marked improvement, and I wish that this was the first book in the series.  I found it easy to read and finished within a day.  Hughes grapples with the same concepts of good and evil and everything in between as before, but has moved the story in a different direction; focusing more on his characters relationships with each other and the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre's intentions for writing The Book of Chesney.  While slightly plot light, the cast of characters are all written well, and there has been plenty of development between the two books, with Chesney dealing with his new relationship and introducing Melda to his his somewhat hypocritical uptight mother.  Then there's Xaphan, who, as always, was fantastic as the chain cigar smoking, constant rum drinking fiend.
  I look forward to more Hell and Back Adventures, and hope that Hughes can find an even better way to utilise his characters through a stronger plot.
 

vN

I first saw this on the Angry Robot website and, as usual with most of my book picks, fell in love with the cover.  I was a little put off by the blurb as technical SF can go right over my idiot brain.  However, the copy of vN I got my mitts on was waiting for me on the 'just in' shelf in the library, calling my name ever so seductively. 

Amy Peterson is a von Neumann machine, a self-replicating humanoid robot.

For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, little Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.

Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she’s learning impossible things about her clade’s history – like the fact that the failsafe that stops all robots from harming humans has failed… Which means that everyone wants a piece of her, some to use her as a weapon, others to destroy her.

I was so enchanted by Ashby's world that I had to stop myself from devouring this book, and savour each page.  The momentum of vN is relentless, only pausing for a few pages before Amy is flung in another direction in her quest to rescue her mother and rid her own body of the remnants of her grandmother.  Ashby certainly has a knack for creating intriguing characters, who felt as if they didn't belong to a debut novel but had a whole series behind them.  I never felt like an idiot either, as Amy herself is learning about her 'clade' having only just 'grown up' and is the perfect voice through which I could learn about the complexities of life as a von Neumann robot.

I was sorely tempted to never return vN to the library.  However, the overriding need for other people to read, and hopefully enjoy, this fantastic book won out in the end.  If you have the time, search this extraordinary debut out. I promise you won't be let down.

The Damned Busters

After accidentally summoning a demon while playing poker, the normally mild-mannered Chesney Anstruther refuses to sell his soul… which leads through various confusions to, well, Hell going on strike. Which means that nothing bad ever happens in the world – and that actually turns out to be a really bad thing.

There’s only one thing for it. Satan offers Chesney the ultimate deal – sign the damned contract, and he can have his heart’s desire. And thus the strangest superhero duo ever seen – in Hell or on Earth – is born!

Chesney's tale has everything that I should love in a book: Super Heroes, God and the Devil, Angels and Demons.  But, for me, Matthew Hughes' The Damned Busters is a mash up that follows too closely to the rules.  Funny in places, and I liked the ending, but I can't say this was one of my favourite books and I'm not even sure if half of it was processed through my melon.  However, my melancholy attitude towards The Damned Busters could be explained partially because I started this directly after finishing Blackbirds, which is probably my book of the year, maybe even decade.  Despite my lack of enthusiasm about the book, I did eventually finish The Damned Busters (which is always a good thing) as there was potential for it to be great and I've got book no.2, Costume Not Included, waiting to be read.