Welcome to guest dare! For those new to the feature, our Guest Dare is a monthly endeavor in which we invite an unsuspecting victim to read a book totally outside of their comfort zone. You can read all previous Dare posts HERE

This month’s daree is Fantasy writer Sam Sykes, author of the recently released Tome of the Undergates. This dare happened as many things do these days, on Twitter when an unsuspecting Sam asked Ana which book she was reading when she posted “OMG this book is AWESOME”. The book was A Conspiracy of Kings fourth book in the series that starts with The Thief and one of Ana’s ALL TIME favorites. Sam showed some interest and here we are: DARED!

Let’s see what Sam thought of The Thief:

Title: The Thief

Author: Megan Whalen Turner

Genre: YA/Fantasyl

Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Publication Date: This edition – 2005 (1st ed. 1996)
Paperback: 304 pages

Stand alone or series: First book in the Queen’s Thief series

The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the theif’s abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

Why did we recommend this book: This is quite possibly, Ana’s favorite book series of all time.

Sam Sykes’ Review:

The Thief
Megan Whalen Turner

Review by Sam Sykes

I can sum up The Thief in the following phrase: if this book was a girl, it’d be one of those pretty girls that wears frumpy clothes and doesn’t bathe.

To go a little deeper: I started this book two months ago and only finished it two nights ago. It is two hundred and eighty pages long.

If that’s not enough for you: The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner, is a hugely puzzling book. It’s a good book with some really bad parts. It’s an excellent story cursed by some really dull moments.

It’s a unique world and I found my enjoyment of it marred by the fact that the author really, really loves olive trees (read the book, you’ll see what I mean).

The Thief is basically exactly what it sounds like: a thief. Namely, Gen, a thief talented enough to steal the royal ring of the King of Sounis and dumb enough to boast about it to everyone, landing himself in prison. The King’s magus (he never gets a name; let that be a warning to you who plan to pursue administrative careers…in a fantasy world) comes forward and offers him a deal: a stay of execution in exchange for putting his talents to use for the good of Sounis.

This deed, apparently, is to steal Hamiathes’ Gift: a stone that is said to confer immortality and, more importantly, be used as a token of binding marriage between Sounis and a rival city, thus securing more land and treaties for the kingdom. Gen reluctantly agrees and is spirited off with three fairly unimpressive characters who remain pretty unimpressive throughout the story.

The Thief’s problems become quite clear off the bat: absolutely nothing happens for one hundred fifty pages. This is an exaggeration, but not a big one. Apart from Gen accepting the deal (which takes about twenty pages), the only thing that the characters do for one hundred fifty pages is eat, walk and tell stories. That’s it.

Remember my comparison of this book to a girl who doesn’t bathe? This is about the time you start to smell her. The beginning is astonishingly dull. I can see that there are attempts to set the scene and that there are efforts to establish the characters, but there’s a problem with this: the characters are pretty unremarkable and the scene is olive trees. Nothing but olive trees for nearly half the book.

The main characters are the magus (grumpy dude), Sophos (young dude who whines), Ambiades (older dude who whines) and Pol (soldier dude who…I think he cooks a chicken at one point). And Gen, of course. Gen is a lot more remarkable than these characters, but only in the same way that a glass of three-day-old wine is a lot more remarkable than a glass of three-week-old Diet Coke. He’s witty, he’s charming, he’s clever…but never in a really impressive way like you might expect from the standards set by many rogues in fantasy and YA literature. He’s watered-down a lot and tends to just resign himself to the situation at hand.

As a result of this, the quest goes very expectedly. Absolutely everything goes as planned.

Until the final third of the book.

And then, my friends, shit gets real.

I’m not going to spoil the ending. I’m not even going to spoil the climax. And while it may be supremely unsatisfying for you to hear this: they do get Hamiathes’ Gift and the plot takes a couple of very cool turns that I was really impressed to see happen.

From there, the book only ramps up until it’s about ready to blow. By the end, it’s very impressive and I was left with the feeling that I really wanted to see more of Gen and this world.

However, this only adds to the puzzlement of the whole thing.

Turner is obviously a supremely talented author. She’s got a firm grasp on her main character (arguably a firm grasp on the other ones, if only with her little finger), she’s got a pretty vivid imagination, she clearly knows what makes a scene work and, while her prose didn’t move me to tears, it’s very fluid and makes the book a swift read.

So why is the beginning so freaking boring? Why is Gen so watered-down? Why are the other characters essentially pointless? What’s going on here?

“Ah-hah,” you might say, “you big dope, Sam. Didn’t you know that there is a twist? Surely, you ugly son of a bitch, it explains everything! Your short-sightedness and literary lack of curiosity make me sick. I have your website on another tab in my browser and as soon as I am done typing this, I will click over to it and SPIT ON YOUR GODDAMN WEBSITE, PTOOIE!”

First of all: ow.

Second: yes, there is a twist. Twists are tricky things, though, as noted cinematic Lucifer M. Night Shyamalan has proved with every movie he’s ever made, ever.

A twist cannot really explain away things. It can’t excuse wooden characters, a boring opening or other failed plot devices. Those are still failures and just because they happened that way to fulfill the twist doesn’t really excuse them. Ideally, a twist is just a clever little icing on the cake, a moment which really tops off a book that we really liked. It can’t be the plot itself.

A good twist makes an audience gasp. A bad twist makes an audience groan.This particular twist made me go “oh, hey” in the same soft, gentle tone I once used to tell someone they peed themselves.

In the end, The Thief cleans up pretty nice: she takes a shower and maybe puts on some nicer clothes and when she farts she tells you about it so you can open a window and maybe you want to go out with her again sometime.

All in all, a very good book that left me wanting more, even if the beginning wanted me leaving less.

A huge thank you to Sam for accepting to be dared. We (reads: Ana) hope that you will pick up the next book in the series!

Next on the Guest Dare, is’t Erika from Jawas Read Too, reading of one our fave reads of 2010 so far:

Until May!

Hope you are all having a great Sunday, here’s what we learnt last week and what we have prepared for this one:

DRAMA! Mayhem! Blogging!

In the past few weeks we have seen a plethora of articles about blogging and reviewing which sparked great discussion – and drama – all over the blogosphere.

There was for example Persnickety Snark’s post on blogging conflicts and staying out of brouhahas and Lenore’s post about Bloggers Behaving Badly;

The Speculative Scotsman talked about Niche Blogging and how it should be cause for celebration. Paul Smith from the new (and MOST EXCELLENT) blog Empty Your Heart of its Mortal Dream muses about which books to review, old or new and comes to a cool conclusion:

As incredibly cheesy as it sounds, I do think in the big picture these sorts of questions are just semantics, and the important thing is that we talk about our love of books and share that with others. The Internet is great in a way because between places like Amazon and The Book Depository, and others like Abebooks, we have access to more books than ever, both old and new. The downside is that it has created a situation where there is almost too much to read, speaking from experience my wishlist has 300 books on it and I wasn’t even trying. Regardless of what we review, genre or literary, new or old, we are all in our own way providing a little direction in this massive ocean of books, and that can’t be a bad thing.

James from Speculative Horizons took issue with an old Dear Author post and blogged about how blogging should not be about getting free books, and it really HAS to be a hobby and if it’s not, guess what: You ‘r’ Doing It Wrong.

On the other side of the spectrum The Book Lady’s Blog talks about blog professionalism and marketing and creating awareness for ones blog. Her post is followed by Jessica’s thoughtful reflexion raising further questions about the subject and then The Book Chick City talks about blog promotion and whether it is a positive aspect of blogging or not.

Definitely on the negative side of blogging lies plagiarism though and the internets saw cases of Plagiarism all over the place.

Meanwhile, author Mark Charan Newton goes all controversial – and perhaps a little insulting – and talks about how reviewers probably should not criticise the editing of a book:

As an related aside, I do find it amusing when some reviewers say “the book could have done with more editing”. An editor (not mine) commented on this at Eastercon recently – it’s ridiculous for people to say that, because have they any idea just what work went into that manuscript in the first place? That an editor could have reduced a novel by half to have some clown still say it needs a good edit (when they might also mean, for example, that they didn’t agree with the pacing).

(It seems Mr. Newton is confusing criticism of the final edited product with criticism of the editing process. A book may have undergone the most amazing editing process for months and months; it may have been trimmed in excess of thousands of pages! But if the end result is still laden with grammatical/spelling errors, plot and character discontinuities, and endless, pointless repetition, it’s not such a…comic stretch that a reviewer might say the book could have used a bit more editing. Obviously, (most) reviewers don’t know what has happened during the editing process. The only thing (most) reviewers see – and, thus, review – is the final product.)

The greatest drama though came from a blog called Farm Lane Books Blog with its article about the difference between UK and US book bloggers and who creates the “Best Blogs” which ended up with a whopping – heated – 273 comments.

Then there are those who think that blogging should be all about the books and not blogging about blogging and that there should be a special place for the discussion. Hence Book Blogging Forum has been created: “A place to keep the discussions about blogging off the blogs”. Athough we like the idea of a forum for bloggers we are in the camp of those who think that people should and can blog anything they want, including blogging about blogging.

We loved seeing all these posts – we might not agree with all of the ideas behind them (understatement of the century) but we embrace discussion, opinions and the very act of reflecting about what it is that we are doing here. Carry on blogosphere!!!

Giveaway Winners

We have a few winners to announce:

Steampunk Giveaway – The winner of a copy of Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti is:

Gillian(comment#69)

The ten winners of the Master of None by Sonya Bateman giveaway are:

Danielle Yockman (comment#14)

Cindy C. (comment #28)

Julie Swaney (comment #31)

Kale L (comment# 29)

Christine M (comment #49)

Aik (comment #57)

Bethie (comment # 41)

Lexie (comment# 51)

Breia Brickey (comment #3)

Audra Holtwick (comment #38)

The ten winners of autographed copies of Embers by Laura Bickle are:

Myra C (comment#63)

care (comment #12)

Sara M (comment #43)

Elizabeth (comment# 36)

Christa (comment #24)

Tina (comment #45)

Etta (comment # 41)

meredith g (comment# 55)

Lindsay Elizabeth (comment #52)

Falling Off The Shelf (comment #76)

You all know the drill. Email us (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we will get your winnings out to you as soon as possible. Thanks again to everyone that entered, and congratulations to all of the winners!

Speaking of contests:

Rose Lerner author of the GLORIOUS romance novel In For a Penny is currently running a contest on her website. Here is the deal:

I want to write a short story for my website set in the In for a Penny universe, but I’m low on ideas. This is where you come in! Send me your ideas and I’ll write a story based on my favorite suggestion. Anything goes!

The winner will receive a signed presentation hard-copy of the story and the story will be available for free on her website. Go here to read more about it.

This Week On The Book Smugglers

On Monday, Thea writes her report on The LA Times Book Festival which is taking place this weekend. She gets to attend panels, see authors, meet loads of bloggers and then tell us all about it! She then later reviews the much acclaimed Fantasy novel Spellwright by Blake Charlton.

On Tuesday, we post our April issue of Cover Matters. This time we chat with author Celine Kiernan about the different, numerous covers her Moorehawke trilogy has and then analyze the results of our recent Survey.

On Wednesday, we post author Sam Sykes’ review of The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner as this month’s Guest Dare. His post is followed by this month’s A Dude Reads PNR entry when Harry, our resident, honorary smuggler, posts his review of The Shattered Sylph by L.J.McDonald.

On Thursday, Ana reviews the romance novel Wicked Becomes You by one of her favorite romance novelists: Meredith Duran. Later in the day, Thea reviews The World Inside by Robert Silverburg (for reals this time).

Finally, on Friday we post our joint review of White Cat By Holly Black.

And, this is it from us today!

We remain, as usual:

~ Your friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers

Title: Tome of the Undergates

Author: Sam Sykes

Genre: Fantasy (Epic Fantasy)

Publisher: Gollancz (UK)
Publication date: April 15 2010
Hardcover: 612 pages

Stand alone or series: 1st in a planned trilogy

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.

Why did we read the book: Numerous reasons, really. First there is the incredible hype surrounding its release: Gollancz, the house that found and published Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch amongst others has publicly declared that this is THE book to read in 2010. We also happen to be quite friendly with Sam Sykes: Ana met the guy at the Gollancz party last year, he has guest blogged for us here during our Smugglivus celebration. In turn, Sam interviewed us at his blog, not to mention, we are avid followers of his on Twitter.

Needless to say, we really wanted to read this.

How did we get the book: Review Copies from Gollancz

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: When I started Tome of the Undergates, I was excited. Really excited. Like, really gorram, gonna pee my pants excited. With publisher name drops like Rothfuss, Abercrombie, and Lynch, the hype around Tome of the Undergates grew a life of its own – and I happily lapped it all up.

Unfortunately, as almost always seems to be the case with hype, the let-down was brutal. These publisher comparisons are more than a tad….licentious.

Though undeniably imaginative and featuring a band of characters that amusingly hate each other, I found myself growing tired, very quickly, with this book. Unnecessarily long, unfathomably repetitive, and ultimately pointless, I could not find much to love in Tome of the Undergates (and this hurts me to say, since Sam Sykes is a stand up guy).

Ana: Like Thea, I approached Tome of the Undergates with excitement and yes, high expectations coming not only from the hype surrounding its release but from experience as well: I have read a short story by the author in The Dragon Book anthology and well, I loved it.

Thea is right though, hype can be such a pernicious device when publicising a book, because it can create unreasonably high expectations and when those are not met, when the promise is not upheld, the fall from grace comes from a much higher place.
Regrettably, that’s exactly what happened to me when I finished the book for the same reasons that Thea stated. I did however enjoy it a little bit more than she did and that’s because I dig Sam Sykes’ writing style and I actually liked the characters – when they were on their own (more on that later).

On the plot:

Thea: The plot is simple – a group of adventurers (not to be confused with their more reputable siblings, mercenaries) is traveling across the seas on a mission to protect the equivalent of a high priest, and to find a hoity-toity sounding gateway. The pay sucks, but hey, they’re adventurers. Hence, they can’t really complain as they’re the dregs of the by-the-sword wage earning community. Then, their ship is attacked by pirates and a formidable demon. After hacking a lot of the crew down to so much mincemeat, the demon shakes down the emissary and steals the titled Tome of the Undergates – the book that will, well, unleash hell. Lenk and his band of…er, colleagues (they aren’t really “friends”) are given the opportunity to hunt the demon down and save the Tome and the world – for an exorbitant sum.

The biggest problem with Tome of the Undergates is how wasteful the book is. It is a tome in itself, yet despite its substantive girth, nothing really happens in this book. It is literally much ado about nothing. Allow me to explain with an example. The first two hundred pages of Tome of the Undergates details a single battle sequence.

That’s right. ONE battle. Two hundred pages.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if this was some scintillating Steven Erikson or Paul Kearney style of epic battle or something. Unfortunately, it’s not. The first two hundred pages are just a lot of pointless, poorly-conceived action. The whole concept verges on the ludicrous; these characters are snarling at each other about how they are going to run away/kill each other, meanwhile what sounds like a never-ending pirate hoard is seizing the boat. (How the boat stays afloat in this chaos and supposed onslaught of destruction is quite beyond me) Even worse, however, is that this battle doesn’t even provide the visceral entertaining thrill that such hyperbolic carnage should otherwise offer! What begins as a mildly entertaining skirmish at sea becomes a protracted nightmare of bland tedium – and that, dear friends, is a hard thing to do when you’re racking up a body count.

This is basically the story of the entire book. Characters trade insults (humans suck! shict suck! I will stab you in the back!) – the same insults, mind you – over and over and over again, only to have that constant stream of monotony interrupted from time to time with sporadic, uninspired action and plot progression.

On the plus side, Sam Sykes does have a sense of humor which translates nicely in his writing, and there are the sporadic glints of promising plot seeds throughout the tome. Too bad the humor wears thin very quickly – there are only so many jokes one can make about making water – and while I very much liked the watery setting (as I do like the general feel for the cover), any interest sparked by a glimmer of background mythology, geography or politics was immediately squashed under the unrelenting weight of mindless tedium (humans suck! non-human monsters suck! KILL!).

There were also some odd, offsetting writing choices and awkward, cliched descriptions. For example, “Despite the oppressive heat, Kataria felt her blood run cold,” or “Asper could feel Lenk’s eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull,” or “He had felt it once before, so keenly, when he held two bodies not his enemies’ in his arms, stared into their eyes as rain draped their faces in shrouds of fresh water,” or “The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn,” (how exactly does a book make a reverberating crashing sound on sand?), etc. You get the picture.

And for a book so obsessed with the most tedious of minutae, I have to remark that I only saw the characters eat and sleep once (on page 395). Just sayin’.

Ana: There isn’t much to be said about the plot – as it is very simple: there is a Tome which opens the doors to the undergates and this bunch of adventurers must try and rescue it before all hell breaks loose. Of course, there are complications (and unexpected twists) and gritty battles and adventure in their way to get the tome. For what it is, for what it proposes to do, yes, Tome of the Undergates is a wasteful book in need of serious editing.

Going back to the first two hundred pages and the infamous battle scene that lasts forever. When I started reading it, I actually enjoyed the opening sequence. I thought it was a clever, ingenious idea to start the book by showing us the characters doing what they do for a living – “here, there is a bunch of adventurers and this is what they do and this is who they are.” I liked that, I liked getting to know the main characters in the thick of battle and seeing what they thought, how they reacted to what was happening and to each other. But the novelty wore off really soon. How many pages does one really need for this exposition without becoming repetitive? Furthermore, the battle itself reads…not entirely right. Mostly because at times, the characters would start having lengthy dialogues in the midst of it all, cutting the action off.

After the battle ends, the story progresses a little bit further but again, it is bogged down by repetition – dialogue, motivations and even the bad guys, repeat themselves in their discourse. I grew tired of it all pretty soon. Which is a shame because as I mentioned before, I quite enjoy Sykes’ writing and sense of humour. Some of the interactions between the main characters were downright hilarious and amusing but again, how many times does one have to read the same thing to realise the author’s point: that the characters are together for reasons other than camaraderie and friendship.

Which brings me to my main point: is the book really about the search for the Tome of the Undergates? I don’t think so – to me, the book is about the characters and what motivates them. The second part of the novel reads more like a character piece than anything else and that was actually what kept me reading.

Through the fog of repetition and seemly pointless scenes I saw sparks of true brilliance. In my opinion, if you cut away about 100 pages from the opening battle scene, edit out another 100 pages or so here and there voila, this book would have been much better. The premise, the general idea of the book is good, the interesting background of different peoples (a dragon man? Cool! ), mythologies, religions and politics are there: it is just really, really hard to actually see and care about them.

Having said that, a couple of interesting developments towards the ending of the novel (again, character-driven ones) , guarantee that I will be back for seconds.

On the characters:

Thea: Like the plotting, the characters of Tome of the Undergates begin this journey as interesting, only to grow tiresome in a hurry. Our introduction to the characters is good fun, and I loved the initial wit and banter between the snarky adventurers – they clearly hate each other, which is a welcome novelty in a group of traveling adventurers. Lenk, as the leader, is clearly mentally unstable from the outset, struggling with the commanding voice in his head. Kataria (whom I cannot help but compare to Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar) is a strong, vocal character that discriminates and feels discriminated against by disgusting humans. There’s a pacifistic priestess, a hotshot wizard, a cruelly powerful dragon-man, and a funny coward. It’s a ragtag team that has a lot of potential.

And then…

It all becomes the same. Repetitive. Monotonous. Everyone sounds identical – which is to say, they are funny and witty and hate each other and the snark is cool, but when it’s nonstop hundreds upon hundreds of pages of the exact same conversations, it’s coma inducing. I hate to be so harsh, but someone’s gotta say it. No one develops, no one grows, and these characters feel very much like caricatures. I just could not bring myself to care, after the four hundred page mark.

Ana: Now, this is what I really liked about Tome of the Undergates: the characters and I will have to disagree with Thea. I don’t think they sound identical, quite the contrary. I thought they were unique and interesting, each having different issues to be dealt with. Even though they all fit into Fantasy stereotypes, they each have something that marked them as different. Lenk, their leader is struggling with a voice inside his head and what exactly does it mean – his inner battle to accept it or not is rather interesting. As interesting is his relationship with the non-human Kataria – there is a budding romance there even though, they are supposed to hate each on principle. Kataria’s race absolutely abhors humans and I loved to see how she too, struggles to accept herself as someone who doesn’t really hate them all as her father hoped. Denaos (who is probably my favourite character) is the “rogue” and obviously someone who has a carefree façade that is far from being true. There is Asper, the Healer (or is she?) hoping to find a place in the world, then there is Dreadaeleon, the magician and Gariath, the dragonman, possibly the last of his race.

Individually these are rather complex characters but their complexity is undoubtedly simplified when they spend any amount of time with each other. The premise is this: they are adventurers – they have freedom and they work for whomever pays them more. They belong to no place and uphold no ideal. They have been together for about one year, even though they hate each other. We are told that they hate each other, every other page. They bicker and they snark and they fight. The humans hate the non-humans, the non-humans want the humans to die a miserable death. Yes, it is monotonous and some of the conversations are exact replicas of previous conversations. As much as I loved the Lenk-Kat interactions for its potential, every single time they are together reads the.same.way.

And yet. Their animosity is not what is shown all the time. In fact, they all present, at one point or another, loyalty to the group and especially to Lenk (in the end of book, I understood why) . I am not sure if this difference between what they seem to think or feel and what they do is on purpose as part of their development. I prefer to think so. Or in the words of Fox Mulder: I want to believe.

Final Thoughts, Verdict & Rating:

Thea: Tome of the Undergates is a victim of its own hype – because while Sam Sykes has a lot of potential, The Name of the Wind this ain’t. The book feels very much like manuscript from an exuberant young author, attempting to write epic fantasy for the first time. There are moments of creativity and flashes of what might one day be brilliance (especially towards the ending of the book) – but they are soon lost to so much noise and nonsense. In my opinion, Tome reads like a decent first draft – but one that needs a lot of cutting down, cleaning up, and development of a sharper focus. And for this, I don’t blame the author at all. Rather, I wonder how did someone not step in at some point and blow the whistle? Is it like Entourage when the guys were making “Meddellin” – being too close to the source material, not seeing the forest for the trees sort of deal?

Bottom line, I wasn’t crazy about Tome of the Undergates. Though it ends on a high note, by that point I simply did not care. I won’t be reading the sequel, but I will give Sam Sykes another try in the future.

Ana: I agree with Thea’s final, overall assessment to a “t”. But even though I didn’t fall in love with the book as much as I hoped and wanted to, I do think there is still great potential in the trilogy. I love the idea that the characters choose to live as adventurers because of the freedom it provides them whilst at the same time they are basically chained by their past and beliefs – this is super compelling to me and I do want to see how it all progresses.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: From the official excerpt:

“Contrary to whatever you might have heard in songs and stories, there are only a few productive things a man can do once he picks up a sword.

“He can put it to use for his country, if he’s got any pride. He can use it to defend his loved ones, if he’s got any. And if he’s got any intelligence at all, he can put it down.

“For those who are lacking all three, the only viable option is to embrace that meanest and most disrespected of professions: adventuring. Falling somewhere just below the rank of mercenary and just above the classification of scum, adventurers are chiefly a source of cheap labor, providing with violence and misfortune what they lack in standards.

“And I count myself among the cheapest.

“Amongst my allies I count a murderer, a zealot, a heretic, a savage and a monster. Amongst my problems I count demons that shouldn’t exist, pirates with a loquaciously murderous bent, a society that wouldn’t care if I was rotting in the earth and my allies. Amongst my dreams…

“I count survival.

“I’ll get to the others after that one’s taken care of.”

Rating:

Thea: 5 Meh, take it or leave it

Ana: 6 Good, recommended with reservations

Reading Next: The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan

Happy Sunday everyone!

If you could kindly tear yourselves away from THE MADNESS, we’d like to make a few announcements. (Don’t worry, we’ll be quick. We need to know what happens next in this insanely, awesomely messed up bracket-smashing tourney too)

Hot Dog, We Have A Wiener!:

Our NUM8ERS giveaway has officially come to a close, and we have three lucky winners to announce!

The two runner-up winners, each of whom will be taking home a copy of NUM8ERS are:

And the grand prize winner – taking home a copy of the book AND Dual Alarm Clock Radio for iPhone and iPod – is:

Congratulations to all the winners! Now you know the drill – send an email to us (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address and we’ll get your prizes out to you as soon as possible! Thanks to all that entered!

Simon & Schuster’s Urban Fantasy Sampler:

Simon and Schuster have put together a truly AWESOME sampler of their upcoming spring titles. These include: MASTER OF NONE By Sonya Bateman, EMBERS By Lauren Bickle, SHADOW BLADE By Seressia Glass, AMAZON QUEEN By Lori Devoti, SPIDER’S BITE By Jennifer Estep, WEB OF LIES By Jennifer Estep, BAD TO THE BONE By Jeri Smith-Ready, NECKING By Chris Salvatore, and DEMON POSSESSED By Stacia Kane.

The sampler includes sample chapters from each of these books and exclusive author and bonus content – and the best part of all is that it is completely free.

Intrigued? Want to learn more? You can get your own exclusive access to the Spring Sampler HERE. Here’s the official release:

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, we have our Guest Victim – er, Guest for March, the wonderful Peter from the amusing, awesomely acerbic blog Bitterly Books. Peter reviews Vertigo title Scalped Vol. 1: Indian Country, getting outside his comfort zone with this graphic novel from Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera. Later in the day, Thea reviews Hourglass by Claudia Gray, the third novel in the ongoing supernatural YA Evernight series.

On Tuesday, Ana reviews another supernatural YA novel, Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkings (the first book in a planned new series).

Wednesday, we are so very proud to have a joint review planned for Mind Games, the exciting Urban Fantasy debut novel from the uber-talented, incredibly super cool Carolyn Crane (whom you might know from the blogosphere as CJ – or her supercreepypainting alter-ego, Little CJ). We also are joined by Carolyn as she guest blogs about her first novel, her sources of inspiration, and her influences.

Thursday, Thea reviews Young Adult-friendly graphic novel The New Brighton Archeological Society by Mark Andrew Smith and Matthew Weldon. Recently voted the Best All-Ages Graphic Novel of 2009 by MTV’s Splash Page, and featured on the likes of WIRED and Boing Boing, The New Brighton Archeological Society has won over comic readers, but also holds a massive appeal to fantasy fans (such as ourselves). Later in the day, we have Mark Andrew Smith over for a guest post about the state of comics in general and the crossover-appeal of works like his own graphic novel.

Friday, we close out the week with a veritable bang – with a joint review of one of our most highly anticipated novels of the year, the debut fantasy title from the talented (and hilarious) Sam Sykes, Tome of the Undergates.

We cannot freaking wait. It’s another one of those crazy weeks, and we hope you enjoy!

Heidi-ho! It’s another Sunday, and another stash. We hope everyone’s having an awesome Valentine’s Day, whether you’re out doing romantic crap, enjoying your time with friends, or happily on your own!

(We are loving these dorky Valentine’s Day Cards – and so want to share you with you, dear readers.) Now, down to business!

Lisa McMann’s Gone Winners:

We have TEN lucky winners to announce! Drumroll please…

Flash Giveaway: The Valentine’s Day Edition Winners:

And the winners are:

Congratulations to the winners! You know the drill. Send an email to contact AT the book smugglers DOT com with your snail mail address, and we will get your winnings out to you as soon as possible. Thanks to everyone that participated!

Around the Interwebs and Other News:

This week, we were interviewed over by author Sam Sykes, debut novelist of the forthcoming Tome of the Undergates. He asked us about book standards, covers, and – most interestingly – about what women expect out of their reading. You can check out our answers over HERE.

Jessica, the ridiculously intelligent and eloquent woman behind Racy Romance Reviews has a great article up right now: “Feminist Critique of Romance: Ur Doin It Wrong.” Jessica takes a look at Rochelle Hurst’s “THE BARRISTER’S BEDMATE: Harlequin Mills & Boon and the Bridget Jones Debate” (Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 24, No. 62, December 2009) and has some very interesting findings. In addition to misattributed and out-of-context quotes, Ms. Hurst’s fundamental analysis, argument and logic are shockingly flawed. Make sure to check it out, if you haven’t already.

Also, it’s been all over the place, but we have to reiterate because we are just that. damn. excited. The title and cover of the third and final volume of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series has been officially revealed! Feast your eyes on this gorgeous beauty:

According to Scholastic’s On our Minds blog and an interview with Scholastic’s VP Editorial Director, David Levithan, we can expect the following of Mockingjay:

I am not, under any circumstances, allowed to divulge the contents of the third Hunger Games book. Nada. Nothing. Not a peep. I can, however, share with you five things that will not be appearing in the new book:

- Panem is not shaken up when District 9 is nominated for a best picture Oscar.

- At no point does President Snow utter the line, “This is Snowmageddon, baby.”

- Despite internet rumors to the contrary, it is not revealed that Cinna has been secretly designing outfits for a Capitol operative known as “Lady GaGa.”

- All rumors of a crossover appearance by Geronimo Stilton are false.

- In a tough editorial call, we decided not to have Katniss win the Hunger Games…only to be interrupted by Kanye West.

Ok, so that’s not very helpful. But holy crap, it’s the third book in the series! Mockingjay comes out on August 24th – guess we’ll just have to wait until then.

Also:

That is all.

Finally, in TVlandia news, we Smugglers have an announcement to make. Ahem. Episode 2 of the Sixth and Final Season of LOST – “What Kate Does” – totally, unconscionably SUCKED. Who cares about Kate any more? She’s gorgeous and we love Evangeline Lilly, but good god is Kate the most ridiculously stupid character ever. Also, no more mystical Japanese dude. Please. Only fifteen episodes to go (if you count the two-part finale is as two separate episodes). Let’s get back on the ball, writers. Please.

(Next week, “The Substitute” is a Locke-centric epi. We are pleased. Bring it!)

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Thea kicks off the week with a review of Jen Nadol’s debut young adult speculative fiction novel, The Mark. Later in the day we interview Jen Nadol about her new book, her influences, and her favorite authors and titles.

Tuesday, it’s time for another Alert Nerd Mega-Crossover-Linkup-Bonanza! We posted about it briefly before, but Tuesday is the official day for our very own “True Geek Confessions,” in which we reveal our deepest, darkest, geekiest secrets. Everyone can participate – all you need do is post your own Geek Confessional on Tuesday, and add your link to the Alert Nerd list. You can read all about the official event HERE. Later in the day, Thea reviews Rachel Caine’s newest, the second book in her Outcast Season spinoff series (in the Weather Warden universe) Unknown.

Wednesday is another huge day – it’s our official stop on the Harper Teen 28 Days of Winter Escapes Blog Tour & Book-a-Day Giveaway! We will have a joint review of Delia Ephron’s The Girl With the Mermaid Hair, and also an exclusive Q&A with the author. Make sure to stop by the official Winter Escapes website on Wednesday too, for a chance to win The Girl With the Mermaid Hair and an iTouch.

Thursday, Ana gives her review of Blood of the Demon, Diana Rowland’s highly anticipated sequel to last year’s Urban Fantasy novel Mark of the Demon.

Finally, on Friday we close out the week with Ana’s review of historical romance novel In For A Penny by Rose Lerner. Plus, we’ll have Rose over later in the day to talk about her Inspirations & Influences!

It’s another suicidal hectic week here – we hope you enjoy it!

Welcome to Smugglivus – Day 28!

Throughout this month, we will have daily guests – authors and bloggers alike – looking back at their favorite reads of 2009, and looking forward to events and upcoming books in 2010.

Today’s Guest: Gav of the speculative fiction blog NextRead. Gav is an avid reader and blogger, and even on occasion reviews books here for us at The Book Smugglers! Of course, we had to have him over for Smugglivus.

Please give a warm welcome to Gav, folks!

I’ve been struggling writing this post as I’ve suffering a little book burnout over the last few weeks. It’s an occupational hazard with blogging I guess that you end up being made aware of more books than anyone (including you) is going to be able to read in a lifetime never mind a year! And when you love reading Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Crime, and Lit Fic and their various sub-genres you end up having to filter through a rather scary volume of books.

I am getting back to form now. I think I just needed a bit of a rest from new books and a bit of comfort reading. So I’ve been reading Terry Pratchett, the man that lit this fire in me and Jim Butcher one of my favourite Urban Fantasy withers.

What always makes choices of books difficult is how do you choose what to read? I could spend all my time comfort reading, by that I mean reading authors that I know and love and I know I’m going to enjoy, or I could push myself and try to read someone new.

And that’s mostly what I’ve done on my blog, NextRead. I’ve read around 70 authors and reviewed 100-odd books. I have a soft spot for debut authors and try to feature as many debuts as I can. It’s a trend I want to continue in 2010.

So here are three debuts I’m looking forward to in 2010:

Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett

It is the time of the Great Depression. The dustbowl has turned the western skies red and thousands leave their homes seeking a better life. Marcus Connelly seeks not a new life, but a death – a death for the mysterious scarred man who murdered his daughter. And soon he learns that he is not alone. Countless others have lost someone to the scarred man. They band together to track him, but as they get closer, Connelly begins to suspect that the man they are hunting is more than human. As the pursuit becomes increasingly desperate, Connelly must decide just how much he is willing to sacrifice to get his revenge.

Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates – a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century

Spellwright by Blake Charlton

Nicodemus is a young, gifted wizard with a problem. Magic in his world requires the caster to create spells by writing out the text . . . but he has always been dyslexic, and thus has trouble casting even the simplest of spells. And his misspells could prove dangerous, even deadly, should he make a mistake in an important incantation.

Yet he has always felt that he is destined to be something more than a failed wizard. When a powerful, ancient evil begins a campaign of murder and disruption, Nicodemus starts to have disturbing dreams that lead him to believe that his misspelling could be the result of a curse. But before he can discover the truth about himself, he is attacked by an evil which has already claimed the lives of fellow wizards and has cast suspicion on his mentor. He must flee for his own life if he’s to find the true villain.

But more is at stake than his abilities. For the evil that has awakened is a power so dread and vast that if unleashed it will destroy Nicodemus… and the world.

And some seconds novels I’m excited by:

Horns – Joe Hill

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples. Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned American musician, and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more – he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone – raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances – with Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, Ig was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed with a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look, and he means to use it to find the man who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It’s time for a little revenge; it’s time the devil had his due. HORNS: It’s moving, sad, often funny, redemptive, and filled with hope.

The Midnight Mayor Kate Griffin

It’s said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, then the Tower will crumble and the kingdom will fall. As it happens, that’s not so far from the truth …One by one, the magical wards that guard the city are failing: the London Wall defiled with cryptic graffiti, the ravens found dead at the Tower, the London Stone destroyed. This is not good news. This array of supernatural defences – a mix of international tourist attractions and forgotten urban legends – formed a formidable magical shield. Protection for the City of London against …well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What could be so dangerous as to threaten an entire city? Against his better judgement, resurrected sorcerer Matthew Swift is about to find out. And if he’s lucky, he might just live long enough to do something about it …

City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

Viliren: a city of sin that is being torn apart from the inside. Hybrid creatures shamble through shadows and barely human gangs fight turf wars for control of the streets.

Amidst this chaos, Commander Brynd Adaol, commander of the Night Guard, must plan the defence of Viliren against a race that has broken through from some other realm and already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of the Empire’s people.

When a Night Guard soldier goes missing, Brynd requests help from the recently arrived Inqusitor Jeryd. He discovers this is not the only disapearance the streets of Viliren. It seems that a serial killer of the most horrific kind is on the loose, taking hundreds of people from their own homes. A killer that cannot possibly be human.

The entire population of Viliren must unite to face an impossible surge of violent and unnatural enemies or the city will fall. But how can anyone save a city that is already a ruin?

—

And a few more on my I gotta read list:

by William Horwood

The adventure of a lifetime is just beginning . . .

It has lain lost and forgotten for fifteen hundred years in the ancient heartland of England Ð a scrap of glass and metal melded by fierce fire. It is the lost core of a flawless Sphere made by the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon CraeftLords in memory of the one he loved. Her name was Spring and contained in the very heart of this work is a spark from the Fires of Creation.

But while humans have lost their belief in such things, the Hydden Ð little people existing on the borders of our world Ð have not. Breaking the silence of centuries they send one of their own, a young boy, Jack, to live among humans in the hope that he may one day find what has been lost for so long. His journey leads him to Katherine, a girl he rescues from a tragic accident ÂÐ it’s a meeting that will change everything. It is only through their voyage into the dangerous Hyddenworld that they will realize their destiny, find love and complete the great quest that will save both their worlds from destruction.

Their journey begins with Spring . . .

Wolfsangel M D Lachlan

The Viking King Authun leads his men on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village. Men and women are killed indiscriminately but Authun demands that no child be touched. He is acting on prophecy. A prophecy that tells him that the Saxons have stolen a child from the Gods. If Authun, in turn, takes the child and raises him as an heir, the child will lead his people to glory. But Authun discovers not one child, but twin baby boys. Ensuring that his faithful warriors, witness to what has happened, die during the raid Authun takes the children and their mother home, back to the witches who live on the troll wall. And he places his destiny in their hands. And so begins a stunning multi-volume fantasy epic that will take a werewolf from his beginnings as the heir to a brutal viking king, down through the ages. It is a journey that will see him hunt for his lost love through centuries and lives, and see the endless battle between the wolf, Odin and Loki – the eternal trickster – spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history, and over into our lives. This is the myth of the werewolf as it has never been told before and marks the beginning of an extraordinary new fantasy series from Gollancz.

The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

Bob Howard is an IT specialist and field agent for The Laundry, the branch of Her Majesty’s secret service that deals with occult threats. Overworked and underpaid, Bob is used to his two jobs overflowing from a strict 9 to 5 and, since his wife Mo has a very similar job description, he understands that work will sometimes follow her home, too. But when ‘work’ involves zombie assassins and minions of a mad god’s cult, he realizes things are spinning out of control. When a top secret dossier goes missing and his boss Angleton is implicated, Bob must contend with suspiciously helpful Russian intelligence operatives and an unscrupulous apocalyptic cult before confronting the decades-old secret that lies at the heart of The Laundry: what is so important about the missing Fuller Memorandum? And why are all the people who know dying …?

The Swords of Albion: Bk. 1 by Mark Chadbourn

1588: The London of Elizabeth I is rocked by news of a daring raid on the Tower. The truth is known only to a select few: that, for twenty years, a legendary doomsday device, its power fabled for millennia, has been kept secret and, until now, safe in the Tower. But it has been stolen and Walsingham’s spies believe it has been taken by the Enemy. This Enemy is not who we usually think of as our traditional opponent. No, this Enemy has waged a brutal war against mankind since time began, and with such a weapon they might take terrible toll upon England’s green and pleasant land…And so it falls to Will Swyfte – swordsman, adventurer, scholar, rake, and the greatest of Walsingham’s new breed of spy – to follow a trail of murder and devilry that leads deep into the dark, venomous world of the Faerie. As Philip of Spain prepares a naval assault on England, Will is caught up in a race against time in pursuit of this fiendish device…

The Restoration Game – Ken Macleod

There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know – she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organisers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game? Lucy, who works for a start-up games company in Edinburgh, has a project that almost seems made for the job: a game inspired by The Krassniad: an epic folk tale concocted by Lucy’s mother Amanda, who studied there in the 1980s. Lucy knows Amanda is a spook. She knows her great-grandmother Eugenie also visited the country in the ’30s, and met the man who originally collected Krassnian folklore, and who perished in Stalin’s terror. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace to slot into the game, she finds the open secrets of her family’s past, the darker secrets of Krassnia’s past – and hints about the crucial role she is destined to play in The Restoration Game …

Empire of Light by Gary Gibson

The nova war has begun to spread as the Emissaries wage a fierce and reckless campaign, encroaching on the area of space occupied by humanity and forcing the Shoal into a desperate retreat. While Dakota goes in search of the entity responsible for creating the Maker caches, Corso, left in charge of a fleet of human-piloted Magi ships, finds his authority crumbling in the face of assassination attempts and politically-motivated sabotage.

If any hope exists at all, it lies in an abandoned asteroid a thousand light-years beyond the Consortium’s borders, and with Ty Whitecloud, the only man alive with the skill to decipher the messages left behind by an ancient race of star travellers. Unfortunately Whitecloud is locked in a prison cell aboard a dying coreship adrift in space, awaiting execution for war crimes against Corso’s own people. But if humanity has any hope of survival, Corso is going to have to find some way to keep him alive – and that’s only if Dakota doesn’t kill him first …

Kraken by China Mieville

Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes along much less often than once in a

lifetime: a perfect, and perfectly preserved, giant squid. But what does it mean when the creature suddenly and impossibly disappears?

For curator Billy Harrow it’s the start of a headlong pitch into a London of warring cults, surreal magic, apostates and assassins. It might just be that the creature he’s been preserving is more than a biological rarity: there are those who are sure it’s a god.

A god that someone is hoping will end the world.

—-

And as I’m always behind a few books that I haven’t managed to read from 2009 and earlier:

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin

‘For several hours I believed that my daughter had drowned and my wife as alive, when in fact the reverse was true’. It is bitter mid-winter when Katrine and Joakim Westin move with their children into the old manor house at Eel Point on the Swedish island of Oland. But their new home is no remote idyll. Just days later, Katrine is found drowned off the rocks nearby. While Joakim struggles to keep his sanity, Tilda Davidsson – a young policewoman fresh out of college- becomes convinced that Katrine was murdered. Then, on Christmas Eve, a blizzard hits Eel Point. Isolated by the snow, Joakim does not know that visitors – as unwelcome as they are terrifying – are making their way towards him. For this is the darkest night of the year, and the night when the living meet the dead.

Waters Edge by Karin Fossum

Walking through the woods one warm September day, Reinhardt and Kristine Ris pass a man who is in a state of agitation. Unusually in a small town, he does not return Kristine’s smile and drives off in a hurry. Near the end of their walk they make a terrible discovery: lying in a cluster of trees is the lifeless body of a young boy. It is a moment that will change their lives for ever. Inspector Sejer is called to the scene, but can find no immediate cause of death. As the weeks go by, the appeal for the man seen in the woods to come forward remains unanswered. A once peaceful community is deeply shaken and the children lose the sense of complete freedom they had enjoyed. Then a second boy goes missing.

The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg

For the first time in English, the second psychological thriller from No 1 bestselling Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg. In the fishing community of Fjallbacka, life is remote, peaceful — and for some, tragically short. Foul play was always suspected in the disappearance twenty years ago of two young holidaymakers in the area. Now a young boy out playing has confirmed this grim truth. Their remains, discovered with those of a fresh victim, send the town into shock. Local detective Patrik Hedstrom, expecting a baby with his girlfriend Erica, can only imagine what it is like to lose a child. When a second young girl goes missing, Hedstrom’s attention focuses on the Hults, a feuding clan of misfits, relgious fanatics and criminals. The suspect list is long but time is short — which of this family’s dark secrets will provide the vital clue?

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick

The Chathrand – The Great Ship, The Wind-Palace, His Supremacy’s First Fancy – is the last of her kind – built 600 years ago she dwarves all the ships around her. The secrets of her construction are long lost. She was the pride of the Empire. The natural choice for the great diplomatic voyage to seal the peace with the last of the Emperor’s last enemies. 700 souls boarded her. Her sadistic Captain Nilus Rose, the Emperor’s Ambassador and Thasha, the daughter he plans to marry off to seal the treaty, a spy master and six assassins, one hunderd imperial marines, Pazel the tarboy gifted and cursed by his mother’s spell and a small band of Ixchel. The Ixchel sneaked aboard and now hide below decks amongst the rats. Intent on their own mission. But there is treachery afoot. Behind the plans for peace lies the shadow of war and the fear that a dead king might live again. And now the Chathrand, having survived countless battles and centuries of typhoons has gone missing. This is her story.

The Rats of the Ruling Sea by Robert V.S. Redick

THE RATS AND THE RULING SEA begins where THE RED WOLF CONSPIRACY ended; Thasha’s wedding is hours away. It is a wedding that will both fulfil the promise of a mad god’s return and see her murdered. Pazel has thwarted the sorcerer who would bring back the god but both sides now face deadlock. Can Thasha be saved? Can the war between two Empires be stopped? THE RATS AND THE RULING SEA is, once again, focused on the giant ancient ship, the CHATHRAND, but now she must brave the terrors of the uncharted seas; the massive storms and the ship swallowing whirlpools and explore lands forgotten by the Northern world, all the time involved in a vicious running battle with a ship half her size but nearly her match. Robert Redick’s new novel takes the reader further into the labyrinthine plots and betrayals that have underscored the trilogy from the beginning. We learn more about the Ixchel as they fight for survival against the Chathrand’s rats, discover more about the true motives of conspirators, live with Thasha and Pazel as they face death and deceit, and as the Chathrand sails into the infamous Ruling Sea. Robert Redick’s sequel to the acclaimed THE RED WOLF CONSPIRACY is a masterpiece of plotting and adventure. As each page turns the reader shares with the characters the dawning realisation that nothing is at it seems.

Destroyer of Worlds by Mark Chadbourn

It is the beginning of the end . . . The end of the axe-age, the sword-age, leading to the passing of gods and men from the universe. As all the ancient prophecies fall into place, the final battle rages, on Earth, across Faerie, and into the land of the dead. Jack Churchill, Champion of Existence, must lead the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in a last, desperate assault on the Fortress of the Enemy, to confront the ultimate incarnation of destruction: the Burning Man. It is humanity’s only chance to avert the coming extinction. At his back is an army of gods culled from the world’s great mythologies – Greek, Norse, Chinese, Aztec, and more. But will even that be enough? Driven to the brink by betrayal, sacrifice and death, his allies fear Jack may instead bring about the very devastation he is trying to prevent . . .

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Blending fairytale, fantasy, horror, myth and mischief in a delicious cocktail, Kelly Link creates a world like no other, where ghosts of girlfriends past rub up against Scrabble-loving grandmothers with terrifying magic handbags, wizards sit alongside morbid babysitters, and we encounter a people-eating monster who claims to have a sense of humour. With more than a pinch of macabre humour, this is writing to come back from the dead for.

Tender Morsels by Margo Langan

Liga endures unspeakable cruelties at the hands of her father, before being magically granted her own personal heaven, a safe haven from the real world. She raises her two daughters in this alternate reality, and they grow up protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever …Magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga’s refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

Frey is the captain of the Ketty Jay, leader of a small and highly dysfunctional band of layabouts. An inveterate womaniser and rogue, he and his gang make a living on the wrong side of the law, avoiding the heavily armed flying frigates of the Coalition Navy. With their trio of ragged fighter craft, they run contraband, rob airships and generally make a nuisance of themselves. So a hot tip on a cargo freighter loaded with valuables seems like a great prospect for an easy heist and a fast buck. Until the heist goes wrong, and the freighter explodes. Suddenly Frey isn’t just a nuisance anymore – he’s public enemy number one, with the Coalition Navy on his tail and contractors hired to take him down. But Frey knows something they don’t. That freighter was rigged to blow, and Frey has been framed to take the fall. If he wants to prove it, he’s going to have to catch the real culprit. He must face liars and lovers, dogfights and gunfights, Dukes and daemons. It’s going to take all his criminal talents to prove he’s not the criminal they think he is …

Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley

The first intelligent species to encounter mankind attacked without warning. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invasion, Earth’s last roll of the dice was to dispatch three colony ships, seeds of Earth, to different parts of the galaxy. The human race would live on …somewhere. 150 years later, the planet Darien hosts a thriving human settlement, which enjoys a peaceful relationship with an indigenous race, the scholarly Uvovo. But there are secrets buried on Darien’s forest moon. Secrets that go back to an apocalyptic battle fought between ancient races at the dawn of galactic civilisation. Unknown to its colonists Darien is about to become the focus of an intergalactic power struggle, where the true stakes are beyond their comprehension. And what choices will the Uvovo make when their true nature is revealed and the skies grow dark with the enemy?

Every Last Drop by Charlie Huston

After a year hiding out in the Bronx, Joe Pitt is given an assignment he can’t refuse. One Clan needs Joe to inform on another, but he’s playing them both while keeping his eye on the main prize: his girl Evie is on the Island somewhere and he’ll do anything to get her back. And in this case, ‘anything’ means coming face to face with the horrendous secret that lies beneath the Vampyre world. It’s a quest that will drive him to the heart of the two most perplexing mysteries of the Vampyre community: how were the Clans originally formed, and where do the powerful ones get all that blood? The search for the answer takes Joe to a dark corner of Queens, puts him face to face with a mythic and savage Clan, and leaves him in possession of a vision he’ll never scrape off his retinas – as well as a bargaining chip that redefines his place in the Vampyre universe.

My Dead Body by Charlie Huston

As the concluding volume of this highly acclaimed series opens, Joe has spent a year splashing around in the city’s sewer system, protecting the perimeters of the ground on which his love, Evie, now lives. Above ground, Manhattan’s Vampyre clans have at last abandoned any claims on civility and have finally sprung fully for each others’ throats. But as Vampyre civil war rages, Joe is tracked down by an old acquaintance and pulled back to the surface. At last, the many questions that have driven him will be put to rest – and the many friends and foes who have defined his world will either be put in the ground or will claw their way to survival. The carefully maintained peace is forgotten. When the stakes are this high, there can be no neutrality – only winners and losers. But when the blood stops flowing, what side will Joe Pitt be on?

Deep Water by Pamela Freeman

As unrest stirs across the Eleven domains, subversive questions lead to unexpected answers. And ghosts of the dead walk in increasing numbers – for those few that can see. In a land where stonecasters foretell destinies for a fee and gods talk to those who can listen, the future is uncertain and is built on a bloodsoaked past. So what did happen one thousand years ago, when Acton’s people came across the mountains? Was Acton himself a hero and liberator, or a bloodthirsty invader and scourge of the travelling people? Wild magic gives Bramble some dangerous insights into a land’s disturbed history. And why did Ash’s Traveller father not teach him the secret songs of his people? The ultimate answers to all these questions are hidden in time, where perhaps they should stay.

Full Circle by Pamela Freeman

Saker has devoted himself to dark enchantments and desires nothing but vengeance. And vengeance he has in abundance. His ghost army is slaughtering those of the new blood, fuelled by an ancient wrong. But while Saker had thought revenge would be simple, he’s now plagued by voices foreshadowing a calamity beyond his comprehension. Ash and Bramble raise the warrior spirit of Acton, mighty in life and powerful in death. Only he can stop Saker’s rampage. But is Acton, Lord of War, murderer or saviour? And why would he help strangers protect a world he’s never known? Bramble has been marked as Saker’s nemesis, but will be challenged by deeper powers than Saker can command – as well as by her own feelings for Acton. As the living fight the dead, strange forces will shape an uncertain future from pain and suffering.

—

Well that’s 26-odd books already and seeing as I’m planning on reading 6 books a month in 2010 there’s 50 or so spaces left to fill. And that’s the exciting thing about the world blogs.

You never quite know what you’re going to find when you read them and you never quite know what is going to fall through the door and those are usually the most surprising ones.

I hope there is a couple of books on that list that your want to read as much as I do. Look for review sof a large chunk of them on NextRead in the first half of 2010.

Have a great 2010 and thanks to the Book Smugglers for inviting me to show off some old and new books that I’m looking forward to reading.

Thanks Gav!

Next on Smugglivus: Carolyn Crane of The Thrillionth Page

Welcome to Smugglivus – Day 28!

Throughout this month, we will have daily guests – authors and bloggers alike – looking back at their favorite reads of 2009, and looking forward to events and upcoming books in 2010.

Today’s Guests: Liz and Mark of the speculative fiction/horror/fantasy blog My Favorite Books. Liz and Mark are quite the married couple – they promote a lot of the finest up and coming books in the UK and KNOW EVERYONE. It’s staggering! So, naturally, we had to have ‘em over for Smugglivus.

Please give it up for Liz and Mark!

Retrospection and the Future

Events 2009

2009 for MFB (read for Mark and myself) has been a very interesting year. We set out to become as active as we possibly could within the blogging and reviewing community. We attended as many signings as we could, we created an autograph book and took it around to every event we attended, we took photos and we reported on various events.

It’s been a blast. When it comes to the adult events, the highlight was definitely the unexpected and very flash invite to attend the Gollancz Autumn party which was a fantastic evening. We got to hang out with some of the coolest and most creative people in the industry today – I got to say “hi” again to the amazing Robert Holdstock and found him to be as gracious and friendly as ever. I got to embarrass myself utterly by having the most cringeworthy conversation with Sam Sykes, debut Gollancz author, ever and then got rescued by Ana, Gav and Mark. Thank the gods.

Here it is to illustrate why I should not be left alone with people:

ME: You look a bit like Jack Black. I agree with Alex. (that would be Alex Bell)
HIM: Really? I am not sure I am happy with that…should I be insulted?
ME: You shouldn’t be – Jack Black was hot when he was younger.
HIM: !!!!
ME: Actually, more like Leo Di Craprio now, to be honest. It’s the eyes.
HIM: !!! What, I hate him.
ME: Oh, look at that: the earth just cracked open to swallow me. *dies*

On the kids’ side, the coolest event has to be a tie-up between Random House Three Author evening and the Puffin event. Both totally exceeded my expectations and I’ve now become fans of even more authors and am now unhealthily fascinated by Jason Bradbury…

The largest event we attended this year was definitely Eastercon. It. Was. Amazing. And for the record, I booked our tickets for 2010 already. Not only do you get to hang around with some cool writerly types, publisher types, and readers and fan-types, there is the traders hall and zomg, the lovely beautiful books they were selling was just ace!

Here are some choice photos from various events and some photos of some autographs from our autograph book.

2009 in retrospect

I read my first ever Eoin Colfer novel: Airman – and loved it. I thought that if this was the way the new year is starting, things are only going to get better. Mark discovered Brent Weeks and fell in love – embarrassingly he’s now quite a fan-boy but is still torn about his Joe Abercrombie/Brent Weeks allegiance. Mark also got the chance to get stuck quite heavily into his Black Library books and keeps raving at me about them and all you have to do is look at his reviews and you can tell that he’s a fan of the authors and their writing. He’s currently reading Gav Thorpe’s The Shadow King and it does sound simply amazing.

One of my many highlights for 2009 was Tom Lloyd’s The Stormcaller. I couldn’t believe the complexity and depth of character, political plotting and force of storytelling. It blew me away. I’ve not read the other novels as yet – I’m waiting for them to be in travelsized editions as lugging the oversized books around is just way too heavy. But I’d heartily recommend Tom’s writing. Definitely an author who deserves a larger profile for writing proper epic fantasy that makes you want to swing a sword yourself.

Probably one of the most illustrious people we got to meet this year was Raymond E Feist. Who sushed me. Yes, you read that correctly. I got all fan-girly and got him to sign my various books and I took photos and I then stood to the side, giggling with Danie Ware from Forbidden Planet and Kaz-Mahoney-soon-to-be-very-famous-author, and we made so much noise he looked up from his signing, scowled deeply and said “Can you please be quiet?” we were dumbstruck. Then he laughed and said “only kidding” and then did the rest of the signing whilst chatting to us and his various fans. *phew*

In May I tackled one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read and although I didn’t want to, I decided to put the review up regardless. The Atlantis Code by Charles Brokaw just did not sit well with me at all. It broke my heart because it was badly written, the story was unrealistic and the characters were flat and awful. He had managed to destroy one of my favourite genres. I have subsequently had a great number pop by the blog to leave their own negative comments and although it’s not something I’m proud of, I’m just relieved to have found that I’m not the only one who has issues with it.

We had the chance to attend – as volunteers – The Gemmell Awards. The event was a stunning celebration of one author’s strength of personality and determination to write larger than life fiction. So many authors and publisher peeps were there and we all felt very glamourous, swanning around in our fab outfits. Naturally, we got to swing axes around after the fact and needless to say, it’s been grand and if the inaugural Awards were this well received, we’re hoping for an even better year in 2010.

Looking at this entire year’s reading and things we got up, we’ve had a bumper year. I’ve read and reviewed in excess of a hundred books. Which I’m quite proud of but I know others out there who have read vastly more than that!

Goals for MFB for 2010:

Read more books to review, run even more competitions and stalk authors mercilessly for interviews.

On a personal level I want to read more fantasy. I’ve not read much fantasy this past year and I feel the need to sink my teeth into big books and experience some epic battles. I also want to read / try to read science fiction regularly – I’ll try a book a month, I think! I can see Ana and Thea laughing their heads off already. Shush! I also want to try and establish a level playing field for myself when reviewing. At the moment I’ve been swept off my feet by so many great childrens’ and YA books coming up that I’ve completely let all my adult reading fall by the wayside. Not good! Mark mentioned that he’ll be focussing on reading more sci fi this year too, along with some non-fiction books, which will be interesting for us as we tend to share books we’ve read and then we have little arguments about them…maybe I take a leaf out of The Book Smuggler’s forest and we do co-reviews!

Something I’m also thinking of bringing onto the blog is relishing “older” books and authors we’ve somehow managed to miss reading. I think highlighting these authors we feel passionate about, and who we owe our love of reading to, is a good idea! If we can garner these guys a new audience, then we’ve won a little bit, at least.

We’ll be doing as many events as we can in 2010 and we’ll try and blog about as many as we can and give away random goodies from these events, if there are any to be had. Stay tuned for that.

Overall, I’m incredibly excited about 2010 as a reader – forget reviewing, that’s accidental (and a happy accident) – but having had the chance to see some of the amazing novels coming out from the big names and the indies, I can’t wait for it all to happen soon dammit! One of the crowning moments for 2010 – for me personally as a big fan and reader of his books – is the publication of Phil Rickman’s novel: The Bones of Avalon with the main character being Elizabeth I’s conjuror and alchemist and maybe the original 007, John Dee. I’ve read the opening chapters and people, it’s amazing.

I can go on and on and on about upcoming books but to be honest, it’s going to get tedious and dull. All I want to say is: support your authors and bookshops. Without us, their readers and clients, these talented people won’t have jobs. Show your love by buying books from independents bookshops too, keep talking about authors and where you buy, and challenge yourself by trying a new author or a new genre and to just keep on reading!

Thanks Liz & Mark!

Next on Smugglivus: Gav of Next Read

Welcome to Smugglivus 2009 – Day 19!

Throughout this month, we will have daily guests – authors and bloggers alike – looking back at their favorite reads of 2009, and looking forward to events and upcoming books in 2010.

Today’s Guest: Sam Sykes, fantasy author who debuted this year with a short story in the anthology The Dragon Book.

Recent work: Humane Killer, in The Dragon Book (a story written with Diana Gabaldon!). This was one of Ana’s favourite shorts in the anthology, reviewed here. Sam’s first novel, Tome of the Undergates, is going to be published in 2010, and we cannot wait!

Please give it up for Sam with his top reads of 2009, what he is looking forward to in 2010 and an exclusive except of his book!

Bonjour, Smugglets! After the long and gruesome “Decade of Broken Dreams” (as dubbed by Time magazine), a New Year is finally upon us. Personally, I found it to be a pretty good year for me, but damn if I’m going to pass up the chance to be a part of a length of time that feeds on shattered hope and possibly the tears of orphaned kittens.

As to what’s been new and exciting this year, specifically, I can’t comment entirely. After being accepted to Gollancz Books, I began voraciously devouring their authors, in lieu of their tender hearts and sweet brain meats, to gain their knowledge and courage. To that end, though, I’d certainly like to share what I found to be some fairly substantial moments of good tidings this year.

Chief among my favorites was Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie (that is the last time I’ll mention his name, since he is summoned if anyone speaks his name thrice and attempts to steer the blog toward discussions of himself). I’m an immense fan of that guy’s style and violently consumed The First Law trilogy.

His decision to produce standalone novels, I feel, is an excellent way to experiment with a variety of other styles and I would wholeheartedly urge anyone at all interested in stabbings, garrotes, poisons, murder, love unrequited and love obscene, as well as a fine aroma of suggested incest to get in on the ground floor with this book.

You probably shouldn’t tell him I said any of that, though. You can tell him that I’m going to knock his ass flat with fists made of hate, though.

It may be the penultimate sin in Science Fiction and Fantasy, but before The Steel Remains, I hadn’t even heard of Richard Morgan.

Suffice to say, I was pretty pleased to find out what I’ve been missing with this book. Having several friends in the military, the concept of what happens to heroes when there are no more dragons to slay or armies to turn back interests me greatly. If said heroes are frequently involved in various acts of sodomy, steel or combinations of both, well, so much the better, no? It’s also worth noting that the phrase “whorl of his anus” ranks among one of the most memorable combinations of words I’ve ever read in a book.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick (the V.S. stands for Versus Sea monster, I’m told) was also pretty pleasant to discover.

For something that the genre was built on and named for, we rarely get to see elements of pure imagination and instances of the fantastic in fantasy novels these days. Any author that thinks up floating cities, luminescent fish-people and loquacious rats can probably safely consider himself one of the more imaginative ones.

Now, 2010 promises to be a pretty cool year, and not just for the fact that it’s when my own piece comes out!

A lot of people have compared my style to that of Scott Lynch, author of the supremely fantastic The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies. A lot more have asked me if I’ve ever considered eating his brains to steal his ideas. These latter people, whom I will call “the police,” may have good cause to worry if his third book, Republic of Thieves comes out in 2010, as predicted. To say I’m frothing at the mouth to find out what happens (and more importantly, what happened) is horrifying…but accurate, in this case.

Like all people possessed of good morals and time on their hands, I’m looking forward to Wise Man’s Fear, the next work by Patrick Rothfuss, and I daresay it’ll probably shape a lot of opinions about the series as a whole.

Alex Bell, the most talented young lady to ever have refused me the request to hurl her like a javelin, has her new Lex Trent Versus the Gods coming out, too, I believe! She’s got style, humor and flair to spare, as well as a dog the size of a goddamn BUICK! How could you not like her?

I’ve heard tell that the one dude’s next book, The Heroes, might be out in 2010. If so, I’ll probably do my best to get my hands on it without having to pay for it, since that guy doesn’t need my money. If not, I suppose I’ll send him an envelope full of farts, because he seems like he might like that.

I suppose there might be one or two people wondering what they can expect from me in this upcoming year, though. I suppose, therefore, that I should probably tell you to expect Tome of the Undergates in April of 2010. But what exactly should you expect, beyond a cover possessed of exceedingly badass water?

Tome of the Undergates, more than anything, is a book about exploration and discovery. It’s a story about discovering friends, the kind of friends who are there for you…or not…or maybe they stab you in the back, or perhaps kill you to fulfill their cultural mandate, or possibly hide something that could kill you all.

It’s a story about discovering faith, and of always being possessed of the wonder if they’re there and listening to you, or if you should listen to the giant fish-demon telling you they aren’t as he strangles the life out of you.

It’s a story about discovering love, the kind of love that makes your creed of genocide suddenly in question, that makes you wonder if the screaming will ever stop, that makes you want to punch rocks, cut throats open and feel people up in the night.

None of that is hypothetical, by the way. It’s all in the book. But probably the best way to prove that I’m not a tremendous liar is to show you a brief excerpt…

“So,” Denaos spoke loudly to be heard over the sound of hammering, “why the sudden interest in the fairer sex?”

Lenk paused and looked up from his duty of nailing wood over their wrecked boat’s wound, casting his companion a curious stare.

“Sudden?” he asked.

“Oh, apologies,” the rogue laughed, holding up a hand. “I didn’t mean to suggest you liked raisins in your curry, if you catch my meaning.”

“I…really don’t.”

“Well, I just meant you happened to be all duty and grimness and agonizing about bloodshed up until this point.” Denaos took a swig from a waterskin as he leaned on the vessel’s railing. “You know, like Gariath.”

“Does…Gariath like raisins in his curry?”

“I have no idea if he even eats curry.” Denaos scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose he’d probably like it hot, though.”

“Yeah, probably.” Lenk furrowed his brow. “Wait, what does that mean?”

“Let’s forget it. Anyway, I’m thrilled to advise you on the subject, but why choose now, in the prime of your imminent death, to start worrying about women?”

“Not ‘women,’ exactly, but ‘woman.’”

“A noble endeavor,” Denaos replied, taking another swig.

“Kataria.”

There was a choked sputter as Denaos dropped the skin and put his hands on his knees, hacking out the droplets of water. Lenk frowned, picking up another half-log and placing it upon the companion vessel’s hole.

“Is it that shocking?” the young man asked, plucking up a nail.

“Shocking? It’s immoral, man.” The rogue gestured wildly off to some direction the aforementioned female might be. “She’s a shict! A bloodthirsty, leather-clad savage! She views humanity,” he paused to nudge Lenk, “of which you are a part, I should add, as a disease! You know she threatened to kill me back in Irontide?”

“Yeah, she told me.” Lenk began to pound the nail.

“And?”

“And what?” He glanced up and shrugged. “She didn’t actually kill you, so what’s the harm?”

“Point taken,” the rogue said, nodding glumly. “Still, that’s the sort of thing you’re lusting after here, my friend. Say the Gods get riotously drunk and favor your union, say you’re wed. What happens when you leave the jam out overnight or don’t wear the pants she’s laid out for you? Do you really want to risk her making a necklace out of your sack and stones every time she’s in a mood?”

“Kat doesn’t seem like the type to lay out pants,” Lenk said, looking thoughtful. “I think that might be why I…” He scratched his chin.

“Approve of her.”

“Well, listen to you and your ballads, you romantic devil.” The rogue sighed, resting his head on folded arms. “Still, I might have known this would happen.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, you’ve both got so much common,” he continued. “You, a grim-faced runt with hair the color of a man thrice your age. And her…” Denaos shuddered. “Her, a woman with a lack of bosom so severe it should be considered a crime, a woman who thinks it’s perfectly fine to smear herself with various fluids and break wind wherever she pleases.” His shudder became an unrestrained, horrified cringe. “And that laugh of hers…”

“She has her good points,” Lenk replied. “She’s independent, she’s stubborn when she needs to be, doesn’t bother me too much…I’ll concede the laugh, though.”

“You just described a mule,” Denaos pointed out. “Though, you grew up on a farm, didn’t you? I suppose that explains a lot. Still, I suppose this particular match was meant to be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’re both vile, bloodthirsty, completely uncivilized and callous people and you both have the physiques of prepubescent thirteen-year-old boys.” The rogue shrugged. “The sole difference between you is that you choose to expel your reeking foulness from your mouth and she from the other end.”

“Glad to have your blessing, then,” Lenk muttered, hefting up another log. “So, what do you think I should do?”

“Well, a shict is barely a step above a beast, so you might as well just rut her and get it over with before she tries to assert her dominance over you.”

“Uh…all right.” Lenk looked up, frowning. “How do I do that?”

“How’d you do it the first time you did it?”

“What, with Kat?”

“No, with whatever milkmaid or dung-shovelstress you happened to roll with when you first discovered you were a man, imbecile.”

Lenk turned back to the boat, blinking. He stared at the half-patched wound for a moment, though his eyes were vacant and distant.

“I…can’t remember.”

“Ah, one of those encounters, eh?” Denaos laughed, plucking up the waterskin from the sand. “No worries, then. You might as well be starting fresh, aye?” He brushed the dirt from its lip and took a swig.

“Really, there’s not much to it. Just choose a maneuver and go through with it.”

“What, there’s maneuvers?”

“Granted, the technique might be lost on her…and you, but if you’ve any hope of pleasing a woman, you’ll have to learn a few of the famous arts.” A lewd grin crossed his face. “Like the Six-Fingered Suldana.”

“And…” Lenk’s expression seemed to suggest a severe moral dilemma in continuing. “How does that go?”

“It’s not too hard.” The rogue set down the waterskin, then folded the third finger of each hand under it, knotting the two appendages over themselves. “First, you take your fingers like this. Then, you drop a gold piece on the ground and ask the woman if she wants to see a magic trick, then you—“ He paused, regarding Lenk’s horrified expression, and smiled. “Oh, almost got me to say it, didn’t you? No, no…that one’s a secret, and for good reason. If you tried it, you’d probably rupture something.”

“Maybe all this is for nothing,” the young man said, turning back to the boat. “I mean, it’s not usual to…do this sort of thing right after confessing your feelings, is it?”

“Love has nothing to do with feelings, you twit. Or at least, love-making doesn’t. It’s an art, created to establish prowess and technique.”

“I’m…I’m really not sure I want to do that, then.”

“Fine,” the rogue sighed dramatically. “I was trying to spare you some embarrassment, since I severely doubt your capabilities of conveying anything remotely eloquent to her. Then again, she is a barbarian, so perhaps just grunting and snorting will do.”

“I was planning on something like that,” Lenk said, grinning. “But, out of curiosity, if Khetashe does smile upon me…what maneuver do I use?”

“Something simple,” Denaos said, shrugging. “Like the Sleeping Toad.”

“The Sleeping Toad?”

“A beginner’s technique, but no less efficient. You simply request that your lady wait until you’re asleep, then have her do her business with such delicate sensual eroticism that you barely even stir.”

“Huh…have you ever tried it?”

“Once,” the rogue said, nodding.

“Did it work?”

Denaos looked out over the sea thoughtfully, took a long sip from the waterskin. “You know, I really have no Gods damned idea.”

So, how about that? Pretty intense, huh? I bet the guy who wrote that is a total stud and probably solves mysteries with a sentient motorcycle and a chimpanzee sidekick.

Watch for the rest of it in April! And Happy Smugglivus!

And a happy Smugglivus to you too, Sam!

It’s Adios! to week 2 of Smugglivus and Hola! to week 3. But before we tell you the line-up for another MUY LOCA week, we need to announce last week’s giveaways winners!

Simon and Schuster UK giveaway (swag with titles for 2010):

The winner is……..Peta

The Julie James Giveaway:

The winner is…Susan Laura (Comment #11)

The Nalini Singh Giveaway

The winner is…….Donna S (Comment # 23)

The Sherrilyn Kenyon Giveaway:

The winner is….SaraC (comment #34)

Flash Giveaway

Winner of batch 1: Ginny
Winner of batch 2: Debbie (comment # 62)

Congratulations! You know the drill – send an email to contact AT the booksmugglers DOT com with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your winnings out to you as soon as possible! Thanks to all that entered, and if you didn’t win this time, don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from!

This Week on The Book Smugglers

The week starts later today with a guest post from Linnea Sinclair, one of our favourite Sci-fi Romance writers.

On Monday, we have Historical romance writer Kate Noble with her fave reads (and other cool stuff) of 2009

Later on Monday, Thea will post reviews of Vampire Haiku by Ryan Mecum and I am Scrooge – A Zombie Story for Christmas by Adam Roberts.

On Tuesday, our Smugglivus guest of the day is Ilona Andrews, followed by our joint review of Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

On Wednesday, we have two more Smugglivus guests: writers Carrie Ryan and Diana Peterfreund tell us all about their top reads of 2009 and…

…then on Thursday, Fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson tells us all about his upcoming book The Way of Kings and Alice Morley from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers with what we can expect from the publisher in 2010 with a fabulous ARC giveaway!

On Friday it is Sarah Rees Brennan’s turn to tell us about her Favourite Things of 2009 (with a special giveaway), followed by Thea’s review and giveaway of Raiders Ransom by Emily Diamand.

Finally on Saturday, Fantasy writer Sam Sykes talks about what books he loved best in 2009 followed by a post by Historical Fiction writer Susan Holloway Scott with her own list.

Then FINALLY (phew), on Sunday, our last author/publisher guest, Erin Galloway, publicist for Berkley and NAL, tells us all about the upcoming books from the imprint.

And after that…it is guest bloggers’ time to dish about their favourite reads of 2009!

So buckle up, we have only just started!

~Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

So, while Thea is on a Thanksgiving break and I am left on my own, I decided to take over (Muwahaha) and do this stash, Ana style.

What was on my mind last week?

First and foremost: I was immersed in Smugglivus’ (upcoming event to celebrate reading and books!) preparations.

Drooling over the pretty poster, organising our crazy schedule, contacting our guests, etc. If you missed our Smugglivus’ announcement last Thursday, you can read it here.

I also spent some time trying to decide which books to read next month. Because of Smugglivus and the end of the year , I will be able to read those books I wasn’t able to read so far. One of those was The Magicians by Lev Grossamn and that did not work out as expected.  Alas, I do hope my next reads will be better. I have high expectations for those in particular:

I also spent some time musing and fawning over this one here:

I think the cover is fabulous; I like the blurb; I read one story by Sam Sykes in the Dragon Book and I liked it; The twitter buzz around this novel is growing; The book is not out till April though and it is KILLING me that I have other books I need to read before I can read this one.

Speaking of new authors: not a new author per se, but new author to me, I think I have a new author-crush for Jim C. Hines. I loved his Princess books, which I reviewed this week

….and I have been reading his livejournal. On top of interesting posts about writing, there is one about Rape in Fiction which I thought was fabulous.

Speaking of  rape in fiction. Kate, from What Kate’s Reading posted her thoughts on The Windflower and ended up writing a great post about rape and

why Rape is not romance. Rape is not a laughing matter. Rape is not a cheap literary device.

Her post is part of The Windflower World Tour, which by the way, is getting back on track!

For those who do not know, The Windflower World Tour is an across-blogs event in which a copy of the out of print The Windlower by Laura London is going around the world from blogger to blogger. The book is an old school romance and the reactions to it are all over the place. You can read more about it here and here. Next stop on the tour is at Literary Escapism.

Also on my mind last week, were the series of great posts that author Jackie Kessler wrote about the whole Harlequin Horizon debacle (in which publisher Harlequin opens a Vanity Publishing on the side). You can read more about it here and here. Also, here.

Great is also the word I would use to describe a post by Sarah Rees Brennan where she reviews some books she loved (including a couple of wonderful romance novels by the ever magnificent Meredith Duran) and mentions the Blank Page Heroine. Justine Larbalestier picked up the term and talked about it on her own blog . Make sure to read the comments – they are great too.

Speaking of heroines – and heroes and “great” , I jump right into Super-heroes ( am I trying too hard? LOL) : I saw this at Harry’s blog and loved it! The Super Emo Friends:

Seriously, how cute is that? And so, so true.

Anyways, this is what I have been up to. On Tuesday, we kick-off Smugglivus and we will post a special Week One Schedule tomorrow right after my review of Deep Kiss of Winter (Kresley Cole’s story) goes live.

What else? I think I need to do something important. Ah! Giveaway winners! I saved the best for last!

Tainted Giveaway:

Carolyn H (comment # 3)

Flash Giveaway:

Batch 1 – Jenny N (comment #63)
Batch 2 – Sarah (comment #80)

Congratulations! You know the drill – send an email to contact AT the book smugglers DOT com with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your winnings out to you as soon as possible! Thanks to all that entered, and if you didn’t win this time, don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from.

And that is it from me today! Have a great Sunday and until tomorrow!

~ Your friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers