Greedy about my new stuff!
Posted on: November 24, 2013
New goodies! Received from the publisher:
The Book of Apex Volume 4 – edited by Lynne Thomas, this features original fiction published in Apex magazine. Ken Liu, Catherynne Valente, Elizabeth Bear. . . it’s so pretty. No, really, it is. The photograph doesn’t do it justice. Everything about this book looks absolutely fricken’ gorgeous. i’ve barely had time to crack it open, and I’m already falling into the cover art.
And from Orbit, we have Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach and Malice by John Gwynne. Looking through the promo material that came with Fortune’s Pawn, I kept wondering why they were also advertising Rachel Aaron’s Eli Monpress series. Ahh, because they are the same person. She writes under both Rachel Bach and Rachel Aaron. I don’t know much about Malice except that at first glance it looks to be in the Joe Abercrombie military epic fantasy mold.
Anyone read any of these? what do you think? what looks interesting to you?
Goodies from the publisher isn’t enough for me, cuz I iz greedy. Had to visit the bookstore too!
We’ve been trying to cull the book collection. It’s either that or buy more bookshelves. As it is, I’m afraid the floor of our apartment is going to cave in under the weight of all these books, and give our downstairs neighbor one helluva surprise. I took a grocery bags worth of books to the usedbook store for trade (a few older paperbacks, a few brand new books that weren’t catching my attention, even a glossy photo filled cookbook or two). turned in a tall stack of books, got a shorter stack of more interesting books in return.
For Vintage Scifi Month:
I have such a weakness for these Doctor Who books. The new ones haven’t done much for me, but oh, these old ones, I adore them. They are candy to me! I’m woefully underread when it comes to Zelazny, so found what looked to be a stand alone novel from him. Hoping the local used bookstore would just happen to have the first Amber book was pushing my luck!
but I did feel mightly lucky when I found these:
there’s no such thing as having enough Kage Baker! The Life of the World to Come is a Company novel, Sky Coyote is I think a stand alone.
Hey Baker and Zelazny experts: help a girl out. Can I read the Company novels out of order, and what’s the recommended reading order for the Amber books?
and not that anyone cares, but the digital camera on my new smart phone is insanely awesome. compared to the photos my older model digital camera takes, these new photos look practically 3-D!
15 Responses to "Greedy about my new stuff!"
November 24, 2013 at 11:40 am
I read the Company series a couple of years ago, and I’d really say you should keep them pretty much in order. Info about the Company and the Silence comes out bit by bit, and by the last few books it’s all so complicated that the story wouldn’t even make sense if you hadn’t read the others. Great stuff!
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November 24, 2013 at 11:00 pm
after some research I *think* Sky Coyote comes after Garden of Iden? we shall see. i’m about to crack this baby open!
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November 26, 2013 at 5:42 pm
I think that’s right, Red.
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November 26, 2013 at 7:54 pm
finished Sky Coyote this morning. remember how much I liked Iden? I liked this one about ten times more.
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November 24, 2013 at 4:04 pm
I loved Fortune’s Pawn. Not deep at all, but then neither was the first Eli Monpress book and that series really got better and better. But, I must admit I like Warhammer and that obviously inspired her a bit, and this is like a WH4K book with actual people instead of over the top cartoons.
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November 25, 2013 at 4:49 pm
Doorways in the Sand is stand alone. It’s interesting, not at all what I expected. I read the Amber books in a two volume set, one had a yellow spine and the other green. I think it was The Chronicles of Amber vols. 1 and 2.
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November 26, 2013 at 12:38 am
I will definitely be reading Fortune’s Pawn and The Book of Apex. I seriously wish I could get on Orbit’s list. Oh well – le sigh, I’ll just keep plugging away! muuuwhahaha!
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November 26, 2013 at 10:46 pm
I second Jean’s vote that you really should read the Company books in order. I normally am not a huge stickler for this kind of things, but there’s just a lot of plot points in each book. You could, I suppose, skip In the Garden of Iden if you absolutely had to, but you can’t skip from Sky Coyote straight to Life of the World to Come. You won’t, will you? It will make Life of the World to Come approx 1000 times less awesome for you.
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November 27, 2013 at 8:17 am
i promise, i won’t read them out of order 😀 I requested Mendoza in Hollywood from Paperback swap, if that doesn’t pan out I’ll try to find a used copy.
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November 27, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Good deal on the Doctor Who books. I might do one of those myself for January…or an Iain Banks book?
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December 1, 2013 at 7:33 am
I’ve read both Baker and Zelazny. I’m lazy so I use Wikipedia or fantasticfiction.co.uk for reading orders.
Baker: After “Mendoza in Hollywood” there’s “The Graveyard Game”, then “The Life of the World to Come”, then “The Children of the Company”, then “The Machine’s Child” (which I’m currently reading), and finally “The Sons of Heaven”. There seems to be three short story collections which I think can be read at any time but which I haven’t read so I’m not 100% sure: “Gods and Pawns”, “Black Projects, White Knights”, and “In the Company of Thieves”. “Empress of Mars” is also a stand-alone and similar to “The Children of the Company” in structure (made up of short stories). It’s set in the future part of the time line when Mars was first colonized. I also haven’t read “Not Less Than Gods” but the main character is introduced in “Mendoza in Hollywood”.
Zelazny: I’ve read the Great Book of Amber which has ten Amber books.
They are divided into two five-part series with different (first person) POV characters.
The first Amber series: “Nine Princes in Amber”, “The Guns of Avalon”, ”
“The Sign of the Unicorn”, “The Hand of Oberon”, and “The Courts of Chaos”.
The second Amber series: “Trumps of Doom”, “Blood of Amber”, “Sign of Chaos”, “Knight of Shadows”, and “Prince of Chaos”.
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January 7, 2021 at 3:45 am
I would suggest that you read the Amber books in order of publication, which Mervih has been kind enough to list in the preceding post. Zelazny packed information into each book that built on knowledge gained in the previous volumes in the series. If you read them out of order, you might miss something that would explain why a particular character does something or feels that emotion so intensely.
Regarding Kage Baker, I’ve never read, but you folks have got me interested. Where do you recommend I start?
Thanks for the post!
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January 7, 2021 at 7:20 pm
my goodness, thank you for reviving this post! Since I wrote this post, I’ve read 10+ Kage Baker novels, and dabbled a smidge with Zelazny (sadly, have not read Amber books yet)
regarding Baker, I recommend starting with In the Garden of Iden (drama, adventure, cyborgs, #allthefeels) or The Empress of Mars (scifi, humor, snark, #allthelaughs), to see if you like her voice and writing style. Those titles both function as stand-alones, but also exist within a larger series.
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the Little Red Reviewer 
November 24, 2013 at 9:36 am
I’ve read some nice reviews for Fortune’s Pawn and so I added it to my library queue recently. Sounds like a good one.
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