They're Here! Blade and River!

Ian McDonald's Hugo and Clarke nominated River of Gods is now out in trade paperback. It'll be in stores in early September, and is already listed as in stock at Amazon.com.

What's more, Joe Abercrombie's extraordinary fantasy debut The Blade Itself is also out. I just got my copies day before yesterday. Like River of Gods, its also on Amazon already. And Blood, Blade & Thruster magazine just posted this tremendous review. They introduce The Blade Itself in this manner: "Desperately in need of some genre fiction with character driven plot, plenty of violence, and strong anti-hero protagonists, but tired of waiting for George R. R. Martin to finish his epic Game of Thrones series?" Which is as nice an intro as I could ask for.

Reviewer Lucien Spelman goes on to say that Joe's novel is "a fantasy novel full of enough ironic and slightly self-deprecating humor and Scorcese-esque violence to make the average hipper than thou non-fantasy reader want to learn more about the genre (my favorite kind to convert), yet filled with enough touchstones to make your average Tolkien weaned fantasy reader quite happy indeed."