Some More 2011 Books Read: Mark Newton, Joe Abercrombie, David Weber and co-authors, Alan Campbell (by Liviu Suciu)

I did one post earlier with the first two of my high expectation 2011 books, so I want to update with 4 more high expectations 2011 books that I've read. All will have full reviews here in due course, but for now just a reminder with a short comment and links to Goodreads impressions.

In order of reading:

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Summer 2011: Tor.UK

The Book of Transformations by Mark Newton

#3 out of 4 in the Legends of the Red Sun series; mostly new characters and back to Villjamur

FBC Reviews Nights Villjamur (#1, LS) and City of Ruin (#2, LS) , FBC Interview with the author (2009, several FBC contributors)

A new and corrupt Emperor seeks to rebuild the ancient structures of Villjamur to give the people of the city hope in the face of great upheaval and an oppressing ice age. But when a stranger called Shalev arrives, empowering a militant underground movement, crime and terror becomes rampant.

The Inquisition is always one step behind, and military resources are spread thinly across the Empire. So Emperor Urtica calls upon cultists to help construct a group to eliminate those involved with the uprising, and calm the populace – the Villjamur Knights. But there’s more to Knights than just phenomenal skills and abilities – each have a secret that, if exposed, could destroy everything they represent.

Investigator Fulcrom of the Villjamur Inquisition is given the unenviable task of managing the Knights, but his own skills are tested when a mysterious priest, who has traveled from beyond the fringes of the Empire, seeks his help. The priest’s existence threatens the church, and his quest promises to unravel the fabric of the world. And in a distant corner of the Empire, the enigmatic cultist Dartun Súr steps back into this world, having witnessed horrors beyond his imagination. Broken, altered, he and the remnants of his order are heading back to Villjamur.

And all eyes turn to the Sanctuary City, for Villjamur’s ancient legends are about to be shattered…

Short Comment: Just awesome and continues the very high level of a series that is already in my top-top level; the best characters of the author so far, especially Lan and Fulcrom.

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February 2011 Orbit USA:

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

#5 in his First Law universe, standalone set ~4 years after Best Served Cold and ~8 years after the end of the First Law trilogy.

FBC Reviews of The Blade Itself (#1, RT), Before They Are Hanged (#2, RT), Best Served Cold (#4, LS), Interview with the Author (RT, 2007)


They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbour, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them. Bremer dan Gorst, disgraced master swordsman, has sworn to reclaim his stolen honour on the battlefield. Obsessed with redemption and addicted to violence, he’s far past caring how much blood gets spilled in the attempt. Even if it’s his own. Prince Calder isn’t interested in honour, and still less in getting himself killed. All he wants is power, and he’ll tell any lie, use any trick, and betray any friend to get it. Just as long as he doesn’t have to fight for it himself. Curnden Craw, the last honest man in the North, has gained nothing from a life of warfare but swollen knees and frayed nerves. He hardly even cares who wins any more, he just wants to do the right thing. But can he even tell what that is with the world burning down around him? Over three bloody days of battle, the fate of the North will be decided. But with both sides riddled by intrigues, follies, feuds and petty jealousies, it is unlikely to be the noblest hearts, or even the strongest arms that prevail… Three men. One battle. No Heroes

Short Comment: A battle is still a battle, but Mr. Abercrombie does it pretty much the best from all such fiction I've read, whether in sff or based on real battles. (Goodreads minireview)

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February 2011 Baen:

In Fire Forged by David Weber with Jane Lindskold and Timothy Zahn

#5 Honorverse anthology and #21 Honorverse book, 3 novellas and one essay on starship armor in the Honorverse, e-arc available to buy now, first novella free as sample

FBC Invitation to the Honorverse, FBC Reviews of At All Costs (AAC) (HH #13, LS), Storm from the Shadows/Mission of Honor (SftS, MoH) (HH #14, #16, LS), Safehold #2(BSRA), #3(BHD), #4(AMF) (LS), standalone Out of the Dark (RT), Interview with the author, (2009 LS)


"Honor Harrington is arguably the most popular character in modern science fiction, but there are many other stories in the Honorverse besides those in which she has the central role. This fifth volume in the popular Worlds of Honor series explores some of those stories with the help of such top writers as best-selling author Jane Lindskold, New York Times best-selling author Timothy Zahn, and more—including an all-new Honor Harrington adventure, set in her younger years, when a mob of space pirates made the mistake of tangling with Commander Harrington. That was a fatal mistake—for the pirates . . . "

Short Comment: I enjoyed this a lot especially for the first two stories, while the Honor story makes a great introduction to the series, though it does not bring much new for veteran readers.
(Goodreads minireview)

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April 2011, Tor.UK

Sea of Ghosts by Alan Campbell (series debut)

FBC reviews of previous author series The Deepgate Codex: Scar Night (#1, RT), Iron Angel (#2, RT), God of Clocks (#3, RT), the related novella Lye Street (RT)
Interviews with the Author (2008 RT, 2009 MW)

When the last of the Gravediggers, an elite imperial infiltration unit, are disbanded and hunted down by the emperor they once served, munitions expert Colonel Thomas Granger takes refuge in the unlikeliest of places. He becomes a jailer in Ethugra – a prison city of poison-flooded streets and gaols in which a million enemies of the empire are held captive. But when Granger takes possession of two new prisoners, he realises that he can’t escape his past so readily.

Ianthe is a young girl with an extraordinary psychic talent. A gift that makes her unique in a world held to ransom by the powerful Haurstaf – the sisterhood of telepaths who are all that stand between the Empire and the threat of the Unmer, the powerful civilization of entropic sorcerers and dragon-mounted warriors. In this war-torn land, she promises to make Granger an extremely wealthy man, if he can only keep her safe from harm.

This is what Granger is best at. But when other factions learn about Ianthe's unique ability, even Granger's skills of warfare are tested to their limits. While, Ianthe struggles to control the powers that are growing in ways no-one thought were possible. Another threat is surfacing: out there, beyond the bitter seas, an old and familiar enemy is rising – one who, if not stopped, will drown the world and all of humanity with it . .

Short Comment: While I liked this one somewhat less than I expected based on its many goodies, that is due to a very personal "author's style is at some angle with my taste"; impressive world building. Definitely in for the sequel and very high potential.
(Goodreads Minireview)

"Fear: 13 stories of Suspense and Horror" Edited by R.L. Stine (Reviewed by Cindy Hannikman)

Order Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror from Amazon Here

Fear is a YA anthology filled with 13 stories of suspense and horror. Each of the 13 short stories were contributed by some of the top names in the YA/adult literature. There are stories written by James Rollins, R.L. Stine, Meg Cabot and other big names in literature.

Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror was published by Penguin Young Readers on September 2, 2010.

Here is a detailed overview of all 13 stories contained in the anthology.

Welcome to the Club by R.L. Stine

This is a typical R.L. Stine story. A bit of suspense with a twist at the end. For long time readers of R.L. Stine the story will probably be a bit predictable but overall it really set the mood for the anthology and gives it a nice kickoff.

She's Different Tonight by Heather Graham

She's Different Tonight was by far not one of my favorite stories within this anthology. It is told from a werewolf POV and there's a bit of twist. I just couldn't get into the tone, story line and felt it was very rushed (for a short story).

Suckers by Suzanne Weyn

If I had to pick a favorite story in this anthology it would be Suckers. It's unique, fun and has a bit of a "scary" undertone to it. A famous family moves to a new planet looking for a new life but they find out that something odd has happened on this planet. What is odd about the planet is so unexpected and just a really fun story.

The Perfects by Jennifer Allison

What would happen if you moved next door to the perfects. That's what this is about. A babysitter volunteers to watch the next door neighbor's children but something just isn't right about the children. They watch surgery channels and eat raw meat. This was a pretty "creepy" story in terms of creepiness of the stories. I really thought it had a perfect ending and I could easily reread it.


Shadow Children by Heather Brewer

This is the first heart pounding, action filled story. It tells a tale of what happens after the lights go out in a little boys room. What is REALLY lurking in the shadows. It was chilling and left off with my all time favorite cliffhanger endings that are so famous in scary stories.

Poison Ring by Peg Kehret

This was the first suspense story in the anthology. Maybe I was just in the mood for creepy, horror stories but I wasn't feeling this story. It tells of an older lady who comes into an antique store and sells goods to the family. These goods lead to a whole lot of trouble and then the story ends.

Dragonfly Eyes by Alane Ferguson

Another one of my favorite stories in this book. A shoot comes into a classroom and picks 2 girls to hold as hostages. This story is told from the point of view of one of the girls that got shot. Only she's a ghost. It's one of those make you think stories and for teens (which is who this book is marketed too) serves as a compelling life lesson type story but it's done in the right way.

Jeepers Peepers by Ryan Brown

From the title I really thought this was going to be a run of the mill story with a same old same old style but Ryan Brown really impressed me with it. Another babysitter story, only this time the child she babysits has to be left in the dark and ends up causing a lot of trouble. It was a bit heart pounding and scary but it had the greatest unexpected twist at the end. I loved it!

Piney Power by F. Paul Wilson

A story about rough justice taken by fellow people who live on the outskirts of society. I don't have any feelings for this story one way or the other. It didn't wow me and it didn't make me dislike it. I sorta felt it was out of place in this anthology though.

Night Hunter by Meg Cabot

Meg Cabot is a huge name in YA lit. Sadly, this short story took a bit of a predictable twist. It had a bit of suspense but there was a girl pining away for a guy and it just didn't work in this story. Between that and the predictable twist it didn't reach my top list of stories in this anthology.

Tuition by Walter Sorrells

Another suspense/action story about a boy who breaks into safes. Only today is his birthday and he is trying to get out of the business so he can go to school. Nice slow pace story that had an interesting (but foreseeable) ending.

Tagger by James Rollins

James Rollins writing style is so completely different from every other writer in this anthology. He brings a bit of an action/suspense short story that really winds up the whole anthology. It was my first taste of his writing style and I enjoyed it a lot.

Ray Gun by Tim Maleeny

This short story took a twist to a sci-fiy type story. It was so far off what I normally read that I couldn't honestly review it. I got through it but I wouldn't have anything to compare it to to make the review fair.

OVERALL: Overall I found Fear an interesting anthology. There were definite hits for me with the stories that they included and there were massive misses. The misses usually included extremely predictable plot lines or just oddball stories that didn't seem to fit. Even though this is an anthology geared to the YA market I really feel as if the YA audience would have still guessed a lot of the plot elements in the stories.

"The Distant Hours" by Kate Morton (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official Kate Morton Website
Order The Distant Hours HERE



INTRODUCTION: Last year more or less by chance, I opened the author's 2008 (UK/US) debut The House at Riverton originally published in Australia as The Shifting Fog (2006). I was hooked from the first page and the novel has become a big time favorite. Her somewhat similar second novel The Forgotten Garden made a bit less of an impression on me - I read it back to back with The House at Riverton and I should have left some time to pass in-between so maybe a reread is in order, but any new Kate Morton novel has become a big asap and of course I ordered "The Distant Hours" for its UK publication date last month, though I decided to have the review for its publication here in the US.

"Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Millderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie’s mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond. In the grand and glorious Millderhurst Castle, a new world opens up for Edie’s mother. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, the dangers.
Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother’s riddle, she, too, is drawn to Millderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiancé in 1941 plunged her into madness.
Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Millderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it . . . "

FORMAT/CLASSIFICATION: "The Distant Hours" stands at about 575 pages divided into five named parts, a prologue from The True History of the Mud Man and an epilogue. The action alternates between Eddie's narration in 1992 and the events of 1941 narrated in third person from the three Bltyhe' sisters POV's, while the even more distant past of their father's fateful actions and decisions is slowly peeled apart too.

So as a ghostly shadow hovering over the novel, there is the celebrated writer Raymond Blythe whose dark children's book The True History of the Mud Man excerpted in the prologue, has appeared out of nowhere towards the end of the Great War in 1918 to propel him to fame and wealth after he seemingly had forsaken writing following the tragic 1910 fiery death of his first wife, the twins' mother.

"The Distant Hours" is modern literary Gothic and as close to sff as it gets without any element of the supernatural.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "The Distant Hours" starts innocuously when a fifty year old letter finally makes its way to Meredith Burchill and her daughter is intrigued and banters with her about the war years when the 13 year old working class Meredith, evacuated in 1939 from London to the countryside, is picked up by the imperious 17 year old Juniper Blythe to live with her and her 33 year old twin sisters at the Milderhurst Castle. What Eddie does not know at the time is how important those years have been for her mother...

Because in 1939, Meredith gets so well on with the eccentric and talented Juniper who has been groomed for a literary career by her now recluse and decrepit father, that she refuses to return to London and her parents until Spring 1941. Meredith also sort-of introduces Juniper to her handsome teacher Tom Carvill - her secret first crush - only for the two to fall in love and prepare to marry. Feeling herself abandoned by Juniper when the important missing letter does not arrive in London 1941, Meredith assumes Juniper married Tom and forgot all about her and she puts the past behind... Until now.

Eddie has her problems too - dumped by her well off longtime boyfriend who gave her as a parting gift a six month lease on their expensive London apartment, she now needs to move since she cannot afford it anymore, but as an editor at a cottage publisher she wants to stay close to her work, so she temporarily camps out in her boss and surrogate "old uncle" Herbert's living room, without of course telling a thing to her family... When a countryside job and a chance road sign with "Milderhurst 3 miles" on it happen, Eddie is intrigued but on arriving at the castle's gate she remembers stopping by as a child with her mother, so she realizes that the letter is way more important for her mother than she thought, so she decides to nose around a bit. And so it starts...

"The handle was black and smooth, shaped like a shin bone and cool beneath my palm. Indeed, a general coldness seemed to leach from the other side of the door; though how, I couldn’t tell.
My fingers tightened around the handle, I started to twist, then—
‘We don’t go in there.’
My stomach, I don’t mind saying, just about shot through the roof of my mouth.
I spun on my heel, scanned the gloomy space behind. I could see nothing, yet clearly I wasn’t alone. Someone, the owner of the voice, was in the corridor with me. Even if she hadn’t spoken I’d have known: I could feel another presence, something moving and hiding in the drawing shadows. The rustling was back now, too: louder, closer, definitely not in my head, definitely not mice."

"The Distant Hours" has four main strengths. It is a Kate Morton novel, so nothing is quite as it seems, secrets abound, twists and turns galore and there were one or two that truly surprised me since while I could dimly see where the book goes and have an inkling of its general thrust, the author still managed to smoothly drop a bomb or two...

The atmosphere is pitch perfect - a combination of suspense and waiting for the momentous with little domestic details, present day happenings and other mundane stuff. Alternating between "holding your breath" and relaxing, "The Distant Hours" keeps one turning page after page and while it has a clear and definite conclusion, I strongly regretted that it ended since I could happily have read another 575 pages.

"The Distant Hours" also has the fascinating characters one expects from Kate Morton. The likable, "girl next door" Eddie, her somewhat distant mother of unexpected secrets and of course the three Blythe sisters: strong Percy, delicate Saffy and very talented but highly strung Juniper come out fully alive in the pages of the novel and they are quite unforgettable. Though seen only in the background and through the eyes of others, Raymond Blythe is as important a character as any, though for the why and the how you have to read the book.

Where "The Distant Hours" shows a marked improvement over the first two Kate Morton novels is in the interpersonal-relationships between the characters which are very complex and tangled. With its back and forth in time-line and events, the novel's tapestry takes a while to assemble, but the page turning style of the author hides this so well, that when you start getting the "big picture", you wonder how she sneaked all the details that seemed so innocuous before...

"The Distant Hours" (A++) is a superb novel of literary suspense that delivered all I expected from it and more, fully justifying my very high expectations and huge excitement when I found out about it not that long ago.

“Surrender to the Will of the Night” by Glen Cook (Reviewed by Robert Thompson)

Official Glen Cook Wikipedia Website
Order “Surrender to the Will of the Night” HERE
Read An Excerpt HERE
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s Review of “Lord of the Silent Kingdom”

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Glen Cook is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for The Black Company fantasy series. His bibliography also includes the Garrett, P.I. paranormal mystery novels, Dread Empire, Starfishers and The Instrumentalities of the Night.

PLOT SUMMARY: Piper Hecht’s first and greatest secret is that he knows how to kill gods. It is knowledge that makes him dangerous, but also puts him in danger—from his enemies, who fear what he might do, or who want revenge for what he has already done; and from his friends, who want to use his knowledge for their own purposes.

For example, Piper’s sister Heris and his living ancestor Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Hecht part of their fight against the return of the dark god, Kharoulke the Windwalker. At the same time, the half-mad Empress Katrin wants him to lead the armies of the Grail Empire eastward on a crusade into the Holy Lands against his fellow Pramans.

Meanwhile, all around them, the world is changing. The winters are growing longer and harder every year, and the seas are getting shallower. The far north and the high mountain ranges are going under the ice, and fast. The Wells of Power, everywhere, keep getting weaker. And the old evils, the Instrumentalities from the Time Before Time, have begun to ooze back into the world...

FORMAT/INFO: Surrender to the Will of the Night is 496 pages long divided over forty-four numbered chapters. Narration is in the third-person, mostly via the main protagonist, Piper Hecht. Other viewpoints include the Ninth Unknown, Cloven Februaren; the Maysalean Perfect Master, Brother Candle; Nassim Alizarin, the Mountain; Helspeth Ege, Princess Apparent of the Grail Empire; and Piper’s sister, Heris. Considering the scope and complexity of The Instrumentalities of the Night, it’s highly recommended that readers finish The Tyranny of the Night and The Lord of the Silent Kingdom before attempting Surrender to the Will of the Night, the third volume in the series. Expect an ending in Surrender to the Will of the Night that wraps up most of the major plotlines in the book, but also acts as a cliffhanger/tease for the next volume in the series.

November 23, 2010 marks the North American Hardcover publication of Surrender to the Will of the Night via Tor. Like the previous Instrumentalities of the Night novels, cover art is provided by Raymond Swanland.

ANALYSIS: After reading The Tyranny of the Night and The Lord of the Silent Kingdom, I felt The Instrumentalities of the Night was developing into some of Glen Cook’s best work yet, and Surrender to the Will of the Night only confirms that thought...

Once again marrying the no-nonsense characterization, military action and dark humor of the author’s Black Company novels with the epic scope and inventive magic of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen, as well as the complex medieval European/Middle Ages-influenced religion and politics of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire and Kate Elliot’s Crown of Stars, Surrender to the Will of the Night is another hugely rewarding entry in The Instrumentalities of the Night series.

Plot-wise, politics remain front and center, this time revolving around the Grail Empress’ desire to launch a crusade to purge the Holy Lands of the Praman infestation with Piper Hecht leading the charge as the Commander of the Righteous army; Bronte Doneto’s ascension to Patriarch; secret documents declaring the surprising heir to the End of Connec; and Indala al-Sul Halaladin’s attempt to unify the kaifates of al-Minphet and Qasr al-Zed in order to undertake his own crusade. But overshadowing all of the world’s political matters is the looming threat of the powerful Instrumentality, Kharoulke the Windwalker.

Of these numerous storylines, I most enjoyed the one with Kharoulke the Windwalker and those tasked with defeating the Instrumentality, including the Ninth Unknown, Cloven Februaren, Piper Hecht’s sister, Heris, the Aelen Kofer (dwarves), and the ascendant, Asgrimmur Grimmsson, who was largely responsible for freeing the Windwalker in the first place. Mostly taking place in the magical Realm of the Gods where the Old Ones were imprisoned by Asgrimmur in The Tyranny of the Night, this particular storyline felt similar to reading a Tad Williams fantasy novel. However, true to form, Glen Cook provides his own unique spin on such familiar epic fantasy trappings as magical worlds and mythical races, while keeping the reader unbalanced with unexpected twists & turns, like the surprising way Kharoulke the Windwalker is handled. For most of this storyline, narratives are provided by the entertaining Cloven Februaren and the resourceful Heris, who are highlights of the novel.

That said, Piper Hecht remains my favorite character in the series, and once again is awarded center stage in the third volume of The Instrumentalities of the Night. What I love most about Piper is his grounded, no-nonsense approach to everything in his life—his job, family, friends, co-workers, enemies, the Instrumentalities, et cetera—which, more than any other character in the series, embodies the spirit of Glen Cook’s timeless Black Company novels. More than that though, Piper Hecht is just an incredibly interesting individual who has to deal with a ton of intriguing complications in his life from leading a double life as Piper Hecht—complete with a fake wife, fake children and a fake history—that feels more real than his actual life; to enduring the burden of being the Godslayer; harboring a dangerous attraction to Helspeth Ege, the Princess Apparent of the Grail Empire; and being related to a family of powerful magic-users; while new complications include Piper finding a way to prevent Empress Katrin—who becomes more insane over the course of the novel—from launching a crusade into the Holy Lands; Krulik & Sneigon selling godshot and falcons (the weapons used to kill Instrumentalities) to anyone who can afford it; and even more assassination attempts.

Of the other main characters, Brother Candle is once again mainly an observer, resulting in the most boring chapters in the novel, but thankfully the Maysalean Perfect Master is not given very much face time. Nassim Alizarin’s narrative meanwhile, is somewhat similar to Brother Candle’s, as his chapters act primarily as a window for what’s happening in the Holy Lands, including setting up what could be future confrontations with Gordimer the Lion and the sorcerer, er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen. Disappointingly, the novel only dedicates a few short chapters to Helspeth Ege, but considering what happens to her sister Katrin, the Princess Apparent is primed for a much larger role in forthcoming sequels.

Comparatively, Surrender to the Will of the Night possesses many of the same strengths that are present in The Tyranny of the Night and The Lord of the Silent Kingdom, including a rewardingly elaborate story, unforgivingly complex politics, a huge & diverse cast of characters, and epic action sequences. Unfortunately, Surrender to the Will of the Night also possesses many of the same weaknesses, including a noticeable lack of a map or glossary to help readers process the immense amount of information that is available, a writing style that occasionally does too much telling rather than showing, and prose that is sometimes too sparse for it’s own good: “The children smirked and giggled at breakfast. Hecht ignored them. It was a fine day. He had no obligations. He planned to stay right here and do nothing.” However, because of the increased roles of Cloven Februaren and Heris; the entertaining Windwalker storyline; and a number of exciting developments involving the discovery of Ferris Renfrow’s secret identity, the deaths of five powerful rulers, and the revelation that Piper Hecht/Else Tage might not be the Godslayer after all; Surrender to the Will of the Night is the best Instrumentalities of the Night novel yet.

In the end, Surrender to the Will of the Night and The Instrumentalities of the Night series is required reading for anyone who loves Glen Cook or considers themselves a true fan of fantasy literature...

Top 10 Books at Amazon US/UK with Comments (by Liviu Suciu)

Recently Amazon UK's Top 10 SFF Books of 2010 came out

1. Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (FBC Rv DC)
   
2. Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (FBC Rv LS)
3. Against All Things Ending by Stephen Donaldson
4. The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton (Goodreads minireview LS)
5. The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan
6. Kraken by China Mieville
7. The Passage by Justin Cronin (FBC Rv LS)
8. The Technician by Neal Asher (FBC Rv LS)
9. The Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding (FBC capsule Rv LS)
10. The Tree of Seasons by Stephen Gately

****************************************************The Amazon U.S. version is here, while the Amazon Top 100 Books has quite a different selection of sff with only few overlaps.

1. The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz
   
2. How to Live Safely in A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
3. Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
   
4. The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman [FBC rv LS]
5. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin [FBC rv RT, FBC rv sequel The Broken Kingdoms LS]
6. The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich
   
7. The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer [FBC Rv RT]
8. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
9. The Fixed Stars: Thirty-Seven Emblems for the Perilous Season by Brian Conn
   
10. Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey (FBC Rv RT soon)

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Looking at the two lists and their disjointness, one reason is of course that very few of the Amazon US list books have been published in the UK so far, while conversely I think that at least 7 novels from the UK list have been published in the US.

I actually like both lists a lot - the UK list is core-genre, while the US list is more of fringe genre though there are some core genre ones on it like the Gilman, Jemisin and Kadrey books - so in a way it is not surprising I read more from the UK list, but I think that offering exposure to less well known and more offbeat books in such a popular venue as Amazon is great too.

From the UK list I read #2,4,7,8,9 and Surface Detail is the uncontested top sff of 2010 for me, while The Technician and The Evolutionary Void are also in my (provisional) top 20 sff. I am still stuck around page 200 in Kraken, while of the rest I have no interest in 1,3,5 and have not heard of 10, though seeing that is portal fantasy, it has a very low priority for me since I dislike the sub-genre in its fantasy incarnation, though surprisingly I like it to a large extent in its sfnal incarnation as alt-history with time travelers from the present - whether both ways or stuck there...

From the US list and keeping in mind its more taste-specific flavor, I read #4, #5, #7, fast read #10, decided I have no interest in #2, #3, #8, while I would try #1, #6 or #9 if a copy comes into my hands but I am not sure if I would buy them based on the small samples I saw.

Overall, I think that both Amazon US and UK did a great job with these two lists - of course with the caveat of being limited to books published only till early November.

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On the Literature and Fiction side, the UK top ten has also five books read by me, with three of them in my provisional Top 5 non-sff novels of 2010 (and provisional Top 25 overall which has 20 sff)


Sister by Rosamund Lupton
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Goodreads minireview LS)
Fall of Giants (Century Trilogy 1) by Ken Follett (Goodreads minireview LS)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Room by Emma Donoghue (FBC Rv LS)
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton (FBC Rv LS soon)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Sunset Park by Paul Auster
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell (FBC Rv LS)
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Myths) by Philip Pullman

While in the Amazon US Top Ten Fiction/Literature there is no book of clear interest to me and I browsed many of them, in the Amazon US 100 extended list there are 7 novels read by me and again three of my top 5 non-sff (Invisible Bridge - FBC Rv LS, De Zoet and Room), while The Distant Hours will be released in the US only on Nov 9, so it could not have been there.

Here the clear UK-list bias of mine is also not of a surprise since as exemplified in the list of 15 awesome literary fiction novels (series) I recommended for the sff reader where there is no US author, but 3 Japanese/UK (including an Anglo-Japanese one)/Russian, 2 German and 1 French, Romanian, Chilean and Canadian each, I tend to overwhelmingly prefer international literary fiction over US literary fiction as I do in music and movies for that matter, though of course I much prefer the US in politics, organization of society and not surprisingly the fiction that deals with that, namely sff.