I enjoyed Maria V. Snyder’s previous two fantasy series, which were both set in the world of Ixia and Sitia (the Study trilogy and the Glass trilogy). With this new series though, Snyder brings us a whole new world, with new characters, new cities and new magic.

Here’s the book’s description from Amazon:

What s the cost of a deal with the devil when you have the powers of a god? When Avry was growing up, Kazan was a prosperous land, rich in resources and served by a respected tribe of healers. Until the plague came. Developed by the poor territories to the north and west, the terrifying disease ravaged the people of Kazan and drove Avry s family away. Four years later, imprisoned for using her powers, Avry’s beginning to lose hope, when a band of strange men break into her cell and steal her away. They need her special magic to save their prince. The Prince who ordered the plague’s first release. Avry’s freedom now rests on using her healing touch to save the very man who took away everything she loved…

Book of Lust is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.87 and on Amazon.com for $10.00.

It’s time for some book coveting! We’re getting a bit swamped with zombie-themed books, but this one I love the sound of and seems to have its own unique perspective. The twist: the protagonists are the zombies.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

From a tropical resort where visitors can become temporary zombies, to a newly-made zombie determined to protect those he loves, to a cheerleader who won’t let death kick her off the team, to a zombie seeking revenge for the ancestors who died on an African slave ship– Zombiesque invites readers to take a walk on the undead side in these tales from a zombie’s point of view.

There are 15 stories in total and it looks like they’ve gotten a great bunch of authors: Nancy A. Collins, Charles Pinion, Tim Waggoner, Richard Lee Byers, Robert Sommers, Seanan McQuire, G.K. Hayes, Jim C. Hines, Sean Taylor, Jean Rabe, Del Stone Jr., S. Boyd Taylor, Loaszlo Xalieri, Nancy Holder and Donald J. Bingle. I’m mainly looking forward to Seanan McGuire’s story, but there are a couple of other ones that look great. I haven’t read most of the other authors, but a lot of them are still on my To Read/Want list.

Zombiesque is £6.29 on Amazon.co.uk and $7.99 on Amazon.com.

I just started this book last night and so far it’s pretty cool. It’s the first in a new series from Seanan McGuire, who has previously done the October Daye series and the Newsflesh trilogy (but under the Mira Grant name). McGuire writes awesome female protagonists and her new character Verity Price seems kick-ass; she’s a professional ballroom dancer/cryptozoologist (read: monster hunter).

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night… The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity-and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she’d rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren’t for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family’s old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone’s spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city…

It’s available on Amazon.com for only $7.99.

Hot and Steamy is such an awesome name for a steampunk romance anthology! I haven’t read much steampunk yet (but I want to) and this looks like the perfect place to start.

There are 16 stories in total, but I can’t find descriptions online for any of them. Here are the titles though:

Chance Corrigan and the Queen of Hearts – Michael A. Stackpole
Absinthe-Minded Archaeologist – Vicki Johnson-Steger
The Problem of Trystan – Maurice Broaddus
Clockworks – Jody Lynn Nye
In the Belly of the Behemoth – Matt Forbeck
Automata Futura – Stephen D. Sullivan
Love Comes to Abyssal City – Tobias S. Buckell
For the Love of Byron – Mickey Zucker Reichert
For Queen and Country – Elizabeth A. Vaughan
Grasping at Shadows – C. J. Henderson
Go Forward with Courage – Dean Leggett
Her Faith is Fixt – Robert E. Vardeman.
Kinetic Dreams – C. A. Verstraete
For the Love of Copper – Marc Tassin
Cassandra’s Kiss – Mary Louise Eklund
Dashed Hopes – Donald J. Bingle

Hot and Steamy is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.90.

I’ve always been more of a fantasy/romance reader, but ever since reading Feed (you can still enter the giveaway I’m holding) I’ve got a craving for near-distant non-apocalyptic but-set-in-the-future stories. Daybreak Zero looks interesting and has a very intriguing description:

A year has passed since the catastrophic event known as “Daybreak” began.

9 months since Daybreak killed seven billion people
8 months since Daybreak vaporized Washington
6 months since rival governments emerged in Athens, GA and Olympia, WA
4 months since the two governments of what was formerly the United States went to the brink of war
3 months since war was (barely) avoided
2 months since Athens and Olympia agreed to work together
1 month since they discovered that Daybreak isn’t over…

Simple, but it makes me really want to read it!

It’s out in hard cover next month, but I think I should wait till it comes out in paperback (can’t find out when that is, though). I wish I could have a library full of hard cover books, but I’m already running out of space as it is!

Ooh, a book from Amber Benson! If that name sounds familiar, chances are you’ll remember her from her role on Buffy as Tara.

I’m normally not that excited about books written by actors, but Death’s Daughter looks like it could be fun. Here’s the description from Amazon:

Calliope Reaper-Jones so just wanted a normal life: buying designer shoes on sale, dating guys from Craig’s List, web-surfing for organic dim-sum for her boss…

But when her father—who happens to be Death himself—is kidnapped, and the Devil’s Protege embarks on a hostile takeover of the family business, Death, Inc., Callie returns home to assume the CEO mantle— only to discover she must complete three nearly impossible tasks in the realm of the afterlife first.

Death’s Daughter is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.06 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

I loved the first part of this fantasy series! It was a great mix of romance and fantasy, and some awesome world building with its own unique mythology and gods. I’ve been waiting for the second book for some time, and now I can’t believe I manage to miss its release back in November!

Here’s the description from Amazon:

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a homeless man who glows like a living sun to her strange sight. However, this act of kindness is to engulf Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. Oree’s peculiar guest is at the heart of it, his presence putting her in mortal danger – but is it him the killers want, or Oree? And is the earthly power of the Arameri king their ultimate goal, or have they set their sights on the Lord of Night himself?

Suffice to say, you should start with the first in the series (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms).

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.27 and on Amazon.com for $11.19.

Isn’t this cover gorgeous?

The book is a reissue of a 1995 book, so it’s not really ‘new’ (although I don’t think it’s been in print for a long time). It’s about Niviene, the daughter of the Lady of the Lake, and retells the Arthurian legend from the perspective of the faerie folk.

Merlin’s Harp by Regina McBride is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.99 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.

One of my favourite books this year has been Feed from Mira Grant (here’s my review). Well, the cover of the sequel has been released and it looks awesome!

I don’t want to mention anything of the plot here, cause otherwise I’m just going to spoil the first book for you. So go read the first book if you haven’t already!

I tried to do a bit of book shopping in San Francisco, but the books weren’t as cheap as I expected them to be (the UK Amazon is most of the time cheaper). I did come across a couple of books though of which I wonder whether I would have found them here in the stores.

I had to groan when I saw the title of this book, but it actually looks pretty interesting:

The NorseCODE genome project was designed to identify descendants of Odin. What it found was Kathy Castillo, a murdered MBA student brought back from the dead to serve as a valkyrie in the Norse god’s army. Given a sword and a new name, Mist’s job is to recruit soldiers for the war between the gods at the end of the world—and to kill those who refuse to fight.

Journeying across a chaotic American landscape already degenerating into violence and madness, Mist hopes to find her way to Helheim, the land of the dead, to rescue her murdered sister from death’s clutches. To do so, she’ll need the help of Hermod, a Norse god bumming around Los Angeles with troubles of his own. Together they find themselves drafted into a higher cause, trying to do what fate long ago deemed could not be done: save the world of man. For even if myths aren’t made to be broken, it can’t hurt to go down fighting…can it?

Near future, Norse gods, sounds good to me!

Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout is available on Amazon.co.uk for £5.06.