True Fame: The Blade Itself Immortalized as a Comic

Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes's Unshelved, "the world's only daily comic strip set in a public library, "has just done a comic strip devoted to Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself.

Now, that's true fame!

Metatemporal Detective: Best of 2007

Claude Lalumière has posted his SF, Fantasy, and Horror in 2007: Recommended Reading list for LocusOnline.

One of ours pops up under Collections:

"Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective(Pyr) is good pulp-fuelled fun, filled with stories that deftly pastiche many modes of popular fiction, though these tales might be somewhat arcane for readers not overly familiar with Moorcock's multiverse and his recurring cast of dimension-hopping characters and doppelgangers."

Locus Online: Best of 2007

Jeff Vandermeer has posted his 2007: The Best of the Year list over on LocusOnline. I'm thrilled to see a few Pyr mentions.

From the Best Novels list:

"On the science fiction side, Ian McDonald reaffirmed his excellence with Brasyl,which contains three separate narrative strands describing the Brazil of past, present, and future. The novel is a tour de force of storytelling momentum, with a level of invention that represents a master at the top of his form. McDonald is an amazing stylist, yes, but here it’s all about motion. He does a wonderful job of including his trademark detailed and inventive description while making sure nothing in this complex, often beautiful novel is static."

and

"Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky,after a slow first seventy pages, knocked my socks off with its brilliant evocation of a quest through a parallel universe that has a strange river running through it. Unique in conception, like Larry Niven's Ringworld, this is the beginning to what should be an amazing SF-Fantasy series."

From the Best Anthologies list:

" Another first volume of a new original series, the Lou Anders-edited Fast Forward 1 featured thought-provoking speculative takes on making sense of our (post)modern world by, among others, Ken MacLeod, Gene Wolfe, and Nancy Kress. Consistently interesting, this SF anthology fills a gap, as most of the current spate of anthologies seems skewed toward the fantasy side of things."

And from Notable Reprints:

"...The Blade Itselfby Joe Abercrombie, a rough-and-tumble, bold new voice in the heroic fantasy ranks."

All good to read!

Tides: One of the Best Novels in Print

"If you pass this novel up, you will have missed what I think is one of the best novels of speculative fiction currently in print."

Yup. That's Grasping for the Wind.

On Scott Mackay's Tides.A novel from our first year.

'Nuf said.

Kay's New Website

Kay Kenyon has a totally revamped website, rebuilt around her Entire and the Rose series. Check it out here. And if you like what you see, drop by her livejournal and let her know. As she says, the new site features:

• Inside views of the Universe Entire (Universe Extras)
• How to get signed copies of Bright of the Sky in trade paper.
  
• Full color artwork of the series covers by the phenomenal Stephan Martiniere.
  
• Where Kay will be showing up around the country.
• Sample of Kay's e-newsletter.

Mercenary has Mass

Don D'Ammassa's Critical Mass, on Mike Resnick's Starship: Mercenary:

"Wilson Cole and his crew are back for their third outing. ...The story is very episodic, chronicling their adventures as they perform a rescue mission, foil an extortion plot, and evacuate hospital, among other things. In each case, Cole is able to prevail through his wits as much as his gunnery, but of course the author has set the situation up that way. Although in a sense this is somewhat contrived, it isn't obvious and Resnick has come up with some clever ploys for outsmarting the bad guys. The characters are flimsier than in his more serious novels, but the storytelling is as good as ever and we genuinely regret it when he and his former ally, the Valkyrie, find themselves on opposite sides. The ability to write good space opera is increasingly a misplaced, if not entirely lost art, but Resnick knows how to draw on a hidden lode of it. Lightweight but genuine fun."

Before They Are Hanged: Beating the Middle Book Syndrome with a Starred Review

Before They Are Hanged (The First Law: Book Two)

Joe Abercrombie

This grim and vivid sequel to 2007’s The Blade Itself transcends its middle volume status, keeping the reader engaged with complicated plotting and intriguing character development... Abercrombie leavens the bloody action with moments of dark humor, developing a story suffused with a rich understanding of human darkness and light. (Mar.)

--Publishers Weekly, starred review, January 21, 2008

Paragaea: Old Fashion Aventure!

Comic book scribe Ron Fortier has posted a review of Chris Roberson's Paragaea: A Planetary Romanceon his Pulp Fiction Reviews site, and seems to have liked it.

"Hold on to your hats! When you open this book you are in for a rip-roaring, old fashion adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burrough’s planet stories... Their quest is a lively action filled romp that I enjoyed to the max and was sorry to reach the end all too quickly. It does end with several unresolved plots that I hope will be handled in forthcoming sequels. Heironymous, Leena and Balam are three of the best adventure heroes ever created and I’m so happy to have made their acquaintance. It’s an experience I’d like to repeat and soon. So will you."

SciFiNow: Best of 2007

Just got the news that SciFiNow magazine, one of Britain's premiere sf media mags, has released their Best Books of 2007. And among the list, Ian McDonald's Brasyl,and Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective.

Here's the full list:

1) Halting State (Stross) - ORBIT
2) Stealing Light (Gibson) – TOR UK
3) Brasyl (McDonald) – PYR/GOLLANCZ
4) The Metatemporal Detective (Moorcock) - PYR
5) Helix (Brown) - SOLARIS

Congratulations to Ian and Mike! We're very proud.

Time-Drinking Never Tasted So Good

Author, editor, commentator Jeff Vandermeer interviews Michael Moorcock for Amazon's Omnivoracious blog today, talking about the origins of the Seaton Begg character in his recently released The Metatemporal Detective. The interview is a hoot, and well worth checking out in full, but here is a taste:

Amazon.com: Which of the following best describes your metatemporal detective, Seaton Begg (and why): “time-drunk slave to his insatiable appetites”, “linear successor to the hardboiled eccentrics of Dashiell Hammett,” “debonair ladies man who hardly has time out of the sack to solve crimes.”

Michael Moorcock: All of them.