The Great Book Haul - July 2015

I thought I’d share the status of my current book haul, the novels that I’m currently reading at the moment, and the next few on my TBR pile to give you an idea as to what to expect with reviews in the upcoming month or so. As well as these books I’ll be working my way through the Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off, and you can probably expect the next status update either late July or early August with the next round of books that I’ve cut. So without further ado, if you want to know what's in store, keep reading.

What I’m Currently Reading:

GO SET A WATCHMAN by Harper Lee (Harper Collins)

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill A Mockinbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set A Watcman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past – a journey that can be guided only by one’s own conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s Go Set A Watchman, imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humour and effortless precision – a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to a classic.

STAR WARS: DARK DISCIPLE by Christie Golden (Lucas Books)

When the Jedi decide to target Count Dooku-Darth Tryanus- himself, they turn to his ex-apprentice, Asajj Ventress, for help in getting close to the slippery Sith Lord. But when unexpected sparks fly between Ventress and Quinlan Vos, the unorthodox Jedi sent to work with her, the mission becomes a web of betrayal, alliances, secrets, and dark plotting that might just be the undoing of both Jedi and Sith - and everything in between!

What’s Next:

DEPTH by Lev Ac Rosen (Titan Books)

 In a post-apocalyptic flooded New York City, a private investigator’s routine surveillance case leads to a treasure everyone wants to find—and someone is willing to kill for.

Depth combines hardboiled mystery and dystopian science fiction in a future where the rising ocean levels have left New York twenty-one stories under water and cut off from the rest of the United States. But the city survives, and Simone Pierce is one of its best private investigators. Her latest case, running surveillance on a potentially unfaithful husband, was supposed to be easy. Then her target is murdered, and the search for his killer points Simone towards a secret from the past that can’t possibly be real—but that won’t stop the city’s most powerful men and women from trying to acquire it for themselves, with Simone caught in the middle. 

THE CHILD EATER by Rachel Pollack (Jo Fletcher Books)

Two boys, worlds and centuries apart. 

In a time of magic, a penniless boy named Matyas runs away to the Academy of Wizards to pursue his dream - to discover the secret of flying. Along the way he will become the greatest Master of his age, only to lose everything. 

Is the modern day, Simon Wisdom struggles to hide his psychic abilities while his father Jack lives in fear that those powers will destroy his son. But nothing can stop Simon from hearing the cries of dead children pleading for his help. 

Matyas and Simon will never meet. But they are bound together, for only their combined strength can hope to overcome the monster that haunts existence itself - the Child Eater.

REGENERATION by Stephanie Saulter (Jo Fletcher Books)

The gillungs - waterbreathing, genetically modified humans - are thriving. They've colonised riverbanks and ports long since abandoned to the rising seas and the demand for their high-efficiency technologies is growing fast.

    
But as demand grows, so do fears about their impact on both norm businesses and the natural environment.

Then, a biohazard scare at Sinkat, their colony on the Thames, fuels the opposition and threatens to derail the gillungs' progress. But was it an accident, or was it sabotage?

DCI Sharon Varsi has her suspicions, but her investigations are compromised by family ties. And now there is a new threat: Zavcka Klist is about to be released from prison - and she wants her company back.

MORIARTY by Anthony Horowitz (Orion Books)

Sherlock Holmes is dead.

Days after Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty fall to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls, Pinkerton agent Frederick Chase arrives from New York. The death of Moriarty has created a poisonous vacuum which has been swiftly filled by a fiendish new criminal mastermind. Ably assisted by Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes's methods of investigation and deduction, Chase must hunt down this shadowy figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, a man determined to engulf London in a tide of murder and menace.

The game is afoot . .

JOYLAND by Steven King (Titan Books)

College student Devin Jones took the summer job at Joyland hoping to forget the girl who broke his heart. But he wound up facing something far more terrible: the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and dark truths about life and what comes after that would change his world forever. A riveting story about love and loss, about growing up and growing old and about those who don't get to do either because death comes for them before their time JOYLAND is Stephen King at the peak of his storytelling powers. With all the emotional impact of King masterpieces such as The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, JOYLAND is at once a mystery, a horror story, and a bittersweet coming-of-age novel, one that will leave even the most hard-boiled of readers profoundly moved.

THE GHOSTS OF HEAVEN by Marcus Sedgewick (Roaring Book Press) 

A cleverly interlinked novel written in four parts by PRINTZ AWARD-winning author, Marcus Sedgwick, about survival and discovery, and about the effect of the spiral, a symbol that has no end, on all our lives.

The spiral has existed as long as time has existed. Follow the ways of infinity to discover its meaning.

It's there when a girl walks through the forest, the moist green air clinging to her skin.

There centuries later in a pleasant green dale, hiding the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who they call a witch.

There on the other side of the world, where a mad poet watches the waves and knows the horrors they hide, and far into the future as Keir Bowman realises his destiny.

Each takes their next step in life. None will ever go back to the same place.

And so their journeys begin...

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doeer (Simon & Schuster)

WINNER OF THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR FICTION

A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II

When Marie Laure goes blind, aged six, her father builds her a model of their Paris neighborhood, so she can memorize it with her fingers and then navigate the real streets. But when the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, is enchanted by a crude radio. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent ultimately makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

THE TABIT GENESIS by Toby Gonzalez (Gollancz)

They left Sol in two great ships, carrying with them the last hope for humankind. Destined for different stars, their mission was to ensure the survival of our species. One ship was never heard from again. Decades later, the other arrived at a lifeless world, where the survivors learned that Earth was lost not to famine, but to an alien species determined to eradicate humans from existence.

Man is not alone in the universe, and the last of us are hunted. Driven by strong characters facing tremendous odds, Tony Gonzales delivers SF in the grandest tradition: an epic adventure full of colossal ships, vast battles and unimaginable challenges.

ROBOTEER by Alex Lamb (Gollancz)

The starship Ariel is on a mission of the utmost secrecy, upon which the fate of thousands of lives depend. Though the ship is a mile long, its six crew are crammed into a space barely large enough for them to stand. Five are officers, geniuses in their field. The other is Will Kuno-Monet, the man responsible for single-handedly running a ship comprised of the most dangerous and delicate technology that mankind has ever devised. He is the Roboteer.

                                                 

Roboteer is a hard-SF novel set in a future in which the colonization of the stars has turned out to be anything but easy, and civilization on Earth has collapsed under the pressure of relentless mutual terrorism. Small human settlements cling to barely habitable planets. Without support from a home-world they have had to develop ways of life heavily dependent on robotics and genetic engineering. Then out of the ruins of Earth's once great empire, a new force arises - a world-spanning religion bent on the conversion of all mankind to its creed. It sends fleets of starships to reclaim the colonies. But the colonies don't want to be reclaimed. Mankind's first interstellar war begins. It is dirty, dangerous and hideously costly.

Will is a man bred to interface with the robots that his home-world Galatea desperately needs to survive. He finds himself sent behind enemy lines to discover the secret of their newest weapon. What he discovers will transform their understanding of both science and civilization forever... but at a cost.

So we have a lot of interesting stuff there. A bit of literary fiction, science fiction, history, young adult and horror that should make each of these books nice experiences, and as usual, I’ll try to review as many as possible for this blog, so you can probably expect to see reviews when I finish them. I'll have one for James Patterson's Cross My Heart up by the end of the weekend, though.