It's News To Me #19 - World Fantasy Award

I couldn't resist these bits of news, so here's a Friday post. :)

New Covers from Ian Tregillis: I think I like the old cover to Bitter Seeds better, but these work too.

The Coldest War:



Locus has the Nominees for the World Fantasy Award:

Best Novel

Zoo City, Lauren Beukes (Jacana South Africa; Angry Robot)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc; Harper Voyager UK)
Redemption In Indigo, Karen Lord (Small Beer)
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)

Best Novella

Bone and Jewel Creatures, Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean)
The Broken Man, Michael Byers (PS)
“The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon”, Elizabeth Hand (Stories: All-New Tales)
The Thief of Broken Toys, Tim Lebbon (ChiZine Publications)
“The Mystery Knight”, George R.R. Martin (Warriors)
“The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”, Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer 2010)

Best Short Fiction

“Beautiful Men” , Christopher Fowler (Visitants: Stories of Fallen Angels and Heavenly Hosts)
“Booth’s Ghost”, Karen Joy Fowler (What I Didn’t See and Other Stories)
“Ponies”, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 11/17/10)
“Fossil-Figures”, Joyce Carol Oates (Stories: All-New Tales)
“Tu Sufrimiento Shall Protect Us”, Mercurio D. Rivera (Black Static 8-9/10)

Best Anthology

The Way of the Wizard, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Prime)
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, Kate Bernheimer, ed. (Penguin)
Haunted Legends, Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas, eds. (Tor)
Stories: All-New Tales, Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio, eds. (Morrow; Headline Review)
Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, S.T. Joshi, ed. (PS)
Swords & Dark Magic, Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders, eds. (Eos)

Best Collection

What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, Karen Joy Fowler (Small Beer)
The Ammonite Violin & Others, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean)
Holiday, M. Rickert (Golden Gryphon)
Sourdough and Other Stories, Angela Slatter (Tartarus)
The Third Bear, Jeff VanderMeer (Tachyon)

Best Artist

Vincent Chong
Kinuko Y. Craft
Richard A. Kirk
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

Special Award, Professional

John Joseph Adams, for editing and anthologies
Lou Anders, for editing at Pyr
Marc Gascoigne, for Angry Robot
Stéphane Marsan & Alain Névant, for Bragelonne
Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi, for ChiZine Publications

Special Award, Non-Professional

Stephen Jones, Michael Marshall Smith, & Amanda Foubister, for Brighton Shock!: The Souvenir Book Of The World Horror Convention 2010
Alisa Krasnostein, for Twelfth Planet Press
Matthew Kressel, for Sybil’s Garage and Senses Five Press
Charles Tan, for Bibliophile Stalker
Lavie Tidhar, for The World SF Blog

SDCC pics and commentary: Blood of the Muse has a couple posts about their adventures at the San Diego Comic Con.

It's News To Me #18

I found a couple interesting articles in the last week or so and thought I'd better share them.

John Scalzi makes an observation: While we've been spoiled by authors like Steven Erikson and Brandon Sanderson who can pump out 400,000 words every other day or so, John Scalzi compares his publication record from the last 6 years to Martins.

(This one's not a winner if you were wondering)

Wertzone's Wheel of Time Art-off Parts I and II: Sweet actually fairs much better than I would have thought. I also liked this post about authors being famous for the wrong book.

(Audiobook) Review - The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan (ReRead)

I'm continuing my reread, in preparation for next year's grand finale, but I'm sorry to have gotten a bit behind in my reviews.

It's crazy to think that the events from this book, book 3 in the Wheel of Time, The Dragon Reborn [US] [UK], were actually supposed to be the conclusion to the first book in the trilogy. With that in mind, it's not too hard to fathom how things have come to be. This is a turn off for a lot of people, but really, you can't go wrong with more is better, not with The Wheel of Time. (We'll see if my mind ever changes in this regard).

The Dragon Reborn was a frustrating book for me the first time around. I obviously didn't know what I was getting myself into the first time did I? :) It really drove me crazy that the main protagonist, THE Dragon Reborn, hardly makes 3 pages worth of an appearance in his own named book. The main character who actually moves this series forward is off in la-la land for the majority of the book. How does that even happen?!?!

And then Rand is what is featured on the cover of the new ebook. Cracks me up, just a bit. The Sweet cover makes sense on the first one, it being a pretty big event, but I really don't get the ebook. What about Perrin or Mat or Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve... so many more could make such a better cover.

To top it all off, I actually didn't even really like Mat the first time through. Who does that? I think I really just wanted to see the next thing to happen and in the Wheel of Time, you have to be in it for the long run, you have to want to know everything about everyone. I think I'm there... finally.

On reread, it's a whole new ballgame. I've not only grown to enjoy the other characters much more, but it's a good possibility that I like them even more than I do Rand. Learning about their story arcs, their impressions, their place in the grand scheme of things was really fun and I can't wait to see what huge roles they will play in the end. Let's be honest here, there's no way Rand can handle everything on his own. He can't even handle the brewing love triangle.

I've been trying to include a description of each of the books in every review, but I can't really get myself to do this anymore when such a better one can be found at Tor.com, viewed here.

I make a lot of jokes about this series, but it's all in good fun. There are very few books I love as much as The Wheel of Time.

5 out of 5 Stars

Prior Wheel of Time Rereads:

The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

Where is David Gunn?

Is the Death's Head series cancelled? Multiple emails to the author and to his publishing house have gone unanswered. Those of you familiar with the series will know that there is very little to know about David Gunn. He writes incognito and his brief bio on the back cover asks more questions than it answers.


In his last interview Mr. Gunn said that he planned a number of further installments to the series. Given the long delay and lack of news one can only speculate that the series is, at the very least, on hold. Fare thee well Sven, or are you just on vacation?