USBooks2002

February 2003
© 2003 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu
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February 2003 US Releases by Ernest Lilley Last Month / Next Month

Outside, March is doing its traditional dance of fickle weather, warm and seductive one day, then whammo! Winter's back faster than you can say, "who dropped that asteroid?" Fortunately, you can pull over a pile of really good books and lose yourself in them until the weather makes up its mind.

Index: Ace · Avon/Eos Baen · Bantam/Spectra/Dell · Daw · Del Rey · Golden Gryphon · Forge · 4W8W · Pocket · Roc Scholastic · Star Trek · Star Wars · Tor · Warner/Aspect · Wizards of the Coast · Art/Reference · Other Publishers

Avon/EOS While it's not an especially big month from EOS, their re-release of Denis Danver's The Watch, is worth watching...er...keeping an eye out for. We reviewed it in our Jan 01 issue and liked its Faustian mix of time travel and anarchy. If you'd rather consider a military solution to your political woes, Ian Douglas' Star Corps should be just the ticket. I enjoyed his Heritage Trilogy a while back, and I'm looking forward to this tale of liberation in the way off future. If you're a fan of John Ringo or other contemporary Mil-SF writers, you owe it to yourself to check out Ian Douglas.

Baen Books And speaking of Mil-SF, Baen's putting out some tired and true works in new collections of daring do and other stuff. In Empire from the Ashes we get David Weber's Mutineer's Moon trilogy all in one place, which kicks off when someone discovers the moon has been replaced by a planetoid class warship and an alien invasion is on the way. Of course, the switch was made about 50 thousand years ago, so that might be why nobody noticed. On the other hand, there's the final compilation of David Drake and S.M. Stirling's Mil-Alt-Hist "The General" series: Conqueror, which takes up where the previous collected volume, Warlord, leaves off.

In trade, there's Darkeness and Dawn, by Andre Norton which collects post apocalyptic classics Starman's Son and No Night Without Stars, and Here There Be Dragonnes in the first combined publication of Mary Brown's The Unlikely Bnes, Pigs Don't' Fly and Master of Many Treasures.

If you'd prefer your stories one at a time, there's also The Isle Beyond Time by L. Warren Douglas (The Sacred Pool, The Veil of Tears...) and James P. Hogan's The Genesis Machine to round out their offering for the month.

Random House Bantam - Del Rey- Spectra - Two exceptionally strong trades lead off for Del Rey this month: Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear and Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. Both were excellent when they came out last year in hardcover and both lead into the release of a sequel. We'll be reviewing Darwin's Children next month and you can see John Berlyne's review of Richard Morgan's second book, Broken Angels, in this issue. It's a UK release, so you'll have to wait to read it yourself.

Victoria McManus gives a rave review of Ann Tonsor Zeddies Steel Helix this month (see review) while those of you who can't wait for X Men 2 to hit the screens this May can read Chris Claremount's novelization now.

Four Walls, Eight Windows - Though they're taking a month off, be sure to keep an eye out for Witpunk next month from Four Walls Eight Windows. I've been reading the galley and it's painfully funny...just what April fools need to read.

Golden Gryphon Press - Also taking a breather, you can look forward to two books from Golden Gryphon in April: Custer's Last Jump, a time travel collection, and Louisiana Breakdown by Lucius Shepard.

Lucas Books keeps feeding Star Wars fans something to chew on, this month with Tatooine Ghost by Troy Denning Lucas (Hardcover) and Force Heretic I: Remnant by Sean Williams. Next month they release Attack of the Clones in paperback, which makes it cheaper than the movie...and you can skip over all those Jar Jar bits.

Penguin Putnam: Ace - Daw - ROC

Simon&Schuster: Star Trek (Pocket Books) While we didn't get any actual Star Trek Books this month, we went out of our way to review something with romance in it as a belated tribute to Valentitne's day. It was my idea, so I guess I can't complain, but I feel uneasy just looking at the cover of Not So Innocent by Laura Lee Guhrka, the first of our two romance picks (read the review or see Contact in "Other Publishers" for our alternate) while Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe seems a whole lot more comforting. I guess I'm just not ready for a kinder, gentler world..

St. Martins Press: Tom Doherty Books - Tor - ORB - Forge - As usual, Tor has a fine brace of hardcovers out this month, starting with Poul Anderson's last work: For Love and Glory, which I review this issue (see review). Also reviewed is Risen Empire by Scott Westerfield (see review), which Paul Giguere takes a look at. I've just started The Return of Santiago by Mike Resnick, and hope to review it next issue, but you don't have to wait for my permission, it's as adventurous a piece of lawless space frontier living as you'll find. Binder's Road by Terry McGarry follows her first book, Illumination, which came out in August 2001. Terry picks up the thread of her first book six years later while a handful of mages are trying to relight their powers after the Lightbreaker destroyed the magic in Eiden Myr. In The Standing Dead, Ricardo Pinto also continues a fantasy world, one he started in two years ago in The Chosen.

From Thomas Dunne, located a light up from the Tor offices, comes: The Aftermath by Samuel C. Florman in trade. Somewhere off the coast of Africa a cruise ship full of engineers survives an asteroid impact that wipes out pretty much everyone else on earth. Would that make this the Engineer's Handbook to the Lord of the Flies? Not likely. What I want to read is the story of the world 100 years later...

Warner/Aspect has to be pretty happy to release Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton in paperback. Though his Reality Dysfunction series took the world by storm, it never quite grabbed me, but I'm betting that this Mil-SF-Corporations-In-Space standalone is more my style and having it in paperback makes it more accessible.

Art/Reference Two books on SF Filme out this month caught my eye: Science Fiction Films by John Costello (Trafalgar Square, Paperback) at $6.99, it's intended to be an entry into the a larger world of criticism, and included references to weightier works. The British Film Institute Companion to Science Fiction by Phillip Stuck (Cassell Academic, Hardcover) On the other hand, at $80, this would be one of those weightier works.

Received from Other Publishers (We try to at least list all the books we receive, though small press often does not arrive in its month of publication.)

Part of our investigations into SF-Romance, Contact by Susan Grant (Lovespell, Paperback) is a story of alien airline abduction by an author who can certainly get the airline pilot details right. Whether Susan Grant has a handle on alien love affairs remains to be seen.

Titles are (hopefully) linked to Amazon.com pages for each book and buying through our links to support our site costs. Amazon offers these titles at up to 30% off and gives free shipping for orders over $25. If you were to pop over to Amazon.com and do a search of all the SF and Fantasy they have listed for being published this month, you'd come back with more titles than moonwatcher could shake a stick at, so we mostly limit ourselves to what we've actually received from publishers. If you've sent us something and it didn't get in here, feel free to mention it to us at: usbooks@sfrevu.com.