Book Pimpin

Blood Kin (The Half-Light City, #2) by M.J. Scott
Imagine a city divided. A city where human and Fae magic rests uneasily next to the vampire Blood and the shapeshifting Beasts. A city where a fragile peace is brokered by a treaty that set the laws for all four races… a treaty that is faltering day by day. 
I didn’t plan on becoming a thief and a spy. But options are limited for the half-breed daughter of a Fae lord. My father abandoned me but at least I inherited some of his magic, and my skills with charms and glamours mean that few are as good at uncovering secrets others wish to hide. Right now the city has many secrets. And those who seek them pay so well… 
I never expected to stumble across a Templar Knight in my part of the city. Guy DuCaine is sworn to duty and honor and loyalty — all the things I’m not. I may have aroused more than his suspicion but he belongs to the Order and the human world. So when treachery and violence spill threaten both our kind, learning to trust each other might be the only thing that saves us. 
But even if a spy and a holy knight can work together, finding the key to peace is never going to be easy…
Drops June 5, 2012


Chrysanthe by Yves Meynard
Christine, the princess and heir to the real world of Chrysanthe, is kidnapped as a small child by a powerful magician and exiled in a Made World that is a version of our present reality. In exile, supervised by her strict "uncle"(actually a wizard in disguise), she undergoes bogus memory recovery therapy, through which she is forced to remember childhood rape and abuse by her parents and others. She is terribly stunted emotionally by this terrifying plot, but at seventeen discovers it is all a lie. Christine escapes with a rescuer, Sir Quentin, a knight from Chrysanthe, in a thrilling chase across realities.
Once home, the magical standoff caused by her exile is broken, and a war begins, in spite of the best efforts of her father, the king, and his wizard, Melogian. And that war, which takes up nearly the last third of the work, is a marvel of magical invention and terror, a battle between good and evil forces that resounds with echoes of the great battles of fantasy literature.
Drops March 13, 2012

Link Love

Posting will be a little light here at So I Read This Book... for the next week or so.  But once things are up and running at work, I'll be back with lots o' book fun.  In the meantime, here's some links. Prepare to have your mind blown.
Or your interest piqued.
And try not to miss me too much.

• Ways of Struggling with Gender

• 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now)

• Cory Doctorow: A Vocabulary for Speaking About the Future

• Barnes & Noble May Spin Off Nook Business

• Goodreads Reviewers Attacked by Authors

• In The Flame Alphabet, children kill their parents with language

• JRR Tolkien's Nobel prize chances dashed by 'poor prose'

• Kindle case maker M-Edge sues Amazon for patent infringement, unfair competition

• Amazon Ends Lawsuit Over Kindle Fire

• Romantic fantasy, fiction and reality

• James L. Sutter: The Gray Zone: Moral Ambiguity in Fantasy

• Bryan Thomas Schmidt: The Problem with Moral Ambiguity in Fiction

• A form of blindness where you can see everything but recognize nothing

• The Ten 'Sexiest' Stories of 2011

• Dave Eggers Publishes Shower Curtain

• Christopher Hitchens: Charles Dickens's Inner Child

• 2012 List of Banished Words

• Archie Comics Feature First Ever Gay Wedding

Book Pimpin

God, there are too many books that were written in 2011 that I still haven't read yet but I keep looking ahead to this year's upcoming releases to add to my mountainous TBR pile.  If I don't get moving, I'll have to change the name of this joint from So I Read This Book... to So I Didn't Read This Book But I Will As Soon As I Get Some Time But Don't Ask Me When I'll Actually Have Time To Write The Review.  
Hope I can fit that in the header.  
Anyway.  Here are a few upcoming releases to stick on your radar.


Tricked (Iron Druid Chronicles, #4) by Kevin Hearne
Druid Atticus O’Sullivan hasn’t stayed alive for more than two millennia without a fair bit of Celtic cunning. So when vengeful thunder gods come Norse by Southwest looking for payback, Atticus, with a little help from the Navajo trickster god Coyote, lets them think that they’ve chopped up his body in the Arizona desert.
But the mischievous Coyote is not above a little sleight of paw, and Atticus soon finds that he’s been duped into battling bloodthirsty desert shapeshifters called skinwalkers. Just when the Druid thinks he’s got a handle on all the duplicity, betrayal comes from an unlikely source. If Atticus survives this time, he vows he won’t be fooled again. Famous last words
Drops April 24, 2012


Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse, #12) by Charlaine Harris
With Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), in town, it’s the worst possible time for a body to show up in Eric Northman’s front yard—especially the body of a woman whose blood he just drank.
Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.
Drops May 1, 2012

Review: Dead on the Delta by Stacey Jay

In a genre overrun with dark, tortured heroines, it is still rare to find those that are truly fucked up. Dark and tortured is often used as wallpaper, an interesting background but with little depth. One thing missing from these types of characters is the self-destructive behavior that can accompany a horrible past.  So, it is invigorating when an author takes into account how tragedy manifests in behavior and goes beyond the angry loner character with a taste for smart ass quips.


Dead on the Delta by Stacey Jay
Annabelle Lee, #1
ISBN13: 9781439189863
ISBN10: 1439189862 
Published May 31st 2011 by Pocket
Grade: B
Blurb: Once upon a time, fairies were the stuff of bedtime stories and sweet dreams. Then came the mutations, and the dreams became nightmares. Mosquito-size fairies now indulge their taste for human blood—and for most humans, a fairy bite means insanity or death. Luckily, Annabelle Lee isn’t most humans. The hard-drinking, smart-mouthed, bicycle-riding redhead is immune to fairy venom, and able to do the dirty work most humans can’t. Including helping law enforcement— and Cane Cooper, the bayou’s sexiest detective—collect evidence when a body is discovered outside the fairy-proof barricades of her Louisiana town.
But Annabelle isn’t equipped to deal with the murder of a sixyear- old girl or a former lover-turned-FBI snob taking an interest in the case. Suddenly her already bumpy relationship with Cane turns even rockier, and even the most trust-worthy friends become suspects. Annabelle’s life is imploding: between relationship drama, a heartbreaking murder investigation, Breeze-crazed drug runners, and a few too many rum and Cokes, Annabelle is a woman on the run—from her past, toward her future, and into the arms of a darkness waiting just for her. . . .

Link Love

It was slow on the internets this week.  Maybe because real life is so busy what with the holidays and all.  Or maybe folks are too busy reading all the books they received as gifts. But if you're at a loss for what to read, here are some links to ring in the New Year with.

• Ursula K. Le Guin on Literary Bests

• Predicting Future War: What H.G. Wells Got Right and Wrong

• Three Dragons

• Ker-Pow! Women Kick Back Against Comic-Book Sexism

• Multi-Career Celebrity Genre Heroes

• SF Gate picks Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2011

• The Power List: 23 Movers and Shakers in Science Fiction and Fantasy

• Confused By the Stop Online Piracy Act?  SOPA for Dummies

• Three Movie Deals for SF/Fantasy by Lauren Beukes, Cherie Priest, and Charles Yu

Free Kate Daniels Novella!

If you're like me, you spent at least part of your holiday reading the new Kate Daniels novella, Magic Gifts.  Wait, what?  You hadn't heard?  Well, Ilona Andrews released it online as gift to readers and its free!  But it is only available for a limited amount of time, so get it while you can.  Two weeks after December 24th, it will no longer be offered.  (It's going to appear as a bonus at the end of Gunmetal Magic but that's not coming out till later in 2012.)  This is a fantastic series that gets better with every book.  SInce the next Kate Daniels book won't be out until 2013 (!!!), this should help take the edge off.


Magic Gifts - Ilona Andrews' blog

Link Love

Hey, remember my last post when I said nothing gets in the way of my book obsession? Well, this week the holidays kicked my book-lovin ass.  Still, I managed to gather some links for you all.  Read 'em.  Enjoy 'em.  Have a great holiday. As far as I'm concerned, the best gift is a gift certificate to your favorite book store.  Hope you get lots!

• Literary Devices I'd Like to Put on the Naughty List

• Five Types of Books I Want for Christmas

• What's up with marketing, DC and female readers?

• Nerds and Male Privilege

• Lesbian Fiction/Romance Sells Well, and Here's How I Know

• The overlooked sci-fi of 2011 - Salon

• Year's Best Reading 2011: Editor's Picks - The Barnes & Noble Review

• Omnivoracious: 2011 Overlooked Books?

• When Self-Publishing Goes Wrong

• Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits

• Thinning and Accusations of Nostalgia in Fantasy

• Postcolonialism and Science Fiction: An Introduction

• Thea Harrison: The Terribleminds Interview

• Your Idea for the Great American Novel - The Idea Funnel

• The Year of Equal Consumption

2012 Book Pimpin

Too busy with the holidays to think about 2012?  Don't worry.  Nothing slows my book obsession down.  Here's a few books of note coming out next year to stick on your radar.


Blue Magic (Astrid Lethewood, #2) by A.M. Dellamonica
This powerful sequel to the A.M. Dellamonica's Sunburst Award–winning contemporary fantasy Indigo Springs starts in the small town in Oregon where Astrid Lethewood discovered an underground river of blue liquid—Vitagua—that is pure magic. Everything it touches is changed. The secret is out—and the world will never be the same. Astrid’s best friend, Sahara, has been corrupted by the blue magic, and now leads a cult that seeks to rule the world. Astrid, on the other hand, tries to heal the world.
Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots, with the fate of the world at stake.
Blue Magic is a powerful story of private lives changed by earthshaking events that will ensnare readers in its poignant tale of a world touched by magic and plagued by its consequences.
Drops April 10, 2012


The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff Vandermeer
From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.
Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won’t find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled.
The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.
Drops May 8, 2012

Link Love

Holidays got ya stressed out?  Still trying to get your gift shopping done?  Well, don't ask me, I've got my own gift giving problems.  (At least Macy's will be open 24 hours so, if all else fails, there's that.)  But when you need to take a break from the materialistic crazy, why not kick back, have a drink and read a selection of some of the more interesting posts that have appeared around the web this week.

• Daniel Abraham's Private Letter from Genre to Mainstream

• Amazon's Jungle Logic

• Mary Sue, what are you? or why the concept of Sue is sexist

• Female Comic Heroes Featured in Breast Cancer Detection Ads

• What It Means To Be A Geek Girl

• Gender Bias, Case Number #219067

• Villains: Evil and Otherness

• The Importance of Heroines

• Writing Male Point of View

• Blogging a Review of the Bible - section by section

• The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections of Year-End Lists

• Technological Change in Steampunk Worldbuilding

• Welcome to World Book Night

• Gifts for the Weirdie in Your Life

• Malinda Lo: Top Favorite Things of 2011

• Doctors with Dalek Bumps: Femme Doctors

• Doctor Who - Missing Episodes Recovered

• Hark A Vagrant: Wonder Woman

• JR Comics Debuts Adaptations of Classic Chinese Prose Novels

• NPR: The Years Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

• A Straw Man Argument I Am Tired Of

• Neil Gaiman: Hanukkah with Bells On

Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

At BEA 2011, there was a lot of buzz about Tahereh Mafi's debut novel, Shatter Me but because YA is not really my genre, I didn't pay too much attention.  But the buzz continued to grow, reverberating around the blogosphere, with folks swooning left and right over this book and when I happened upon the author signing copies at the New York Comic Con, I snagged one, ready to see if it lived up to the hype.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Shatter Me, #1
ISBN13: 9780062085481
ISBN10: 0062085484
Published November 15th 2011 by Harper/HarperCollins
Grade: B/B-
Blurb: Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.
The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.
The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.
Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.
In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting asThe Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices,Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel—with a paranormal twist—that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.

Book Pimpin 2012

My TBR pile just keeps getting larger and larger.  So why do I keep seeking out new and upcoming titles?  What drives me to see what's coming up on the horizon instead of being happy with what I have?  It's 'cause I'm a dreamer, some even say - a visionary.  

(Ok, nobody says that.  Yet.)  

Or maybe it's just that I'm just paranoid I'll miss out on a fabulous book.  Whatever it is that drives my crazy, the end result is what truly matters.  So, here they are - some more upcoming books for 2012.                                                                                                                                                                            

Hex Appeal by P.N. Elrod (editor), Jim Butcher, Carrie Vaughn, Ilona Andrews, and More!

In the magical world that lies hidden beneath our own, witches and conjurers exact sweet revenge on those who dare to cross them. They know just the right spell to punish an ex-boyfriend—and the perfect hex to bring rivals to their knees. But what if you’re the unlucky soul who falls victim to a conjurer’s curse? And if you had the power to cast a magic spell of your own, would you use it?
In this bewitching collection, nine of today’s hottest paranormal authors tell otherworldly tales featuring spell-spinners who cast deadly hexes—and stories of their hapless, and not-so-hapless, victims. Chock full of paranormal hijinx, this fantastic collection will hold readers spellbound—and enchant readers everywhere with its irresistible hex appeal!

Drops June 5, 2012

Wicked City: A Zephyr Hollis Novel by Alaya Johnson

In this page-turning follow up to Moonshine, it’s summer in the city and most vampires are drunk on the blood-based intoxicant Faust. The mayor has tied his political fortunes to legalizing the brew, but Zephyr Hollis has dedicated herself to the cause of Faust prohibition--at least when she isn’t knocking back sidecars in speakeasies.
But the game changes when dozens of vampires end up in the city morgue after drinking Faust. Are they succumbing to natural causes, or have they been deliberately poisoned? When an anonymous tip convinces the police of her guilt, Zephyr has to save her reputation, her freedom and possibly her life. Someone is after her blood--and this time it isn’t a vampire.

Drops April 10, 2012

Best Books of the Year Round-Up

So, as the year starts to come to a close,  Best of Lists start popping up everywhere.  Personally, I like reading Best of Lists.  Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I wonder what the choosers were smoking, and sometimes, I discover a new-to-me author.  (They can also be a good source for holiday gifts.)  So, I thought I'd post some links to various lists around the web. Consider it my gift to you.

• Best Fiction of 2011 - Kirkus Book Reviews

• Best Books of 2011 - Science Fiction & Fantasy - Amazon

• The Years Most Fantastic SFF Art - Tor.com

• Best Books 2011: SF/Fantasy - Library Journal Review

• Publishers Weekly Best Books 2011

• The Best Book of 2011: The Complete List - NPR

• 100 Notable Books of 2011 - NY Times

• Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Books of 2011

• The 20 Best Comic Books of 2011

• The Best Fiction of 2011 - Salon.com