March  2004
© 2004 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu
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March kicks in with me finding even less time for reading all the fantastic genre releases here in the UK. With a house move and a change of (real life) career, the time I can devote to reading is severely diminished right now. Likewise these circumstances account for the recent lack of a UK column here on SFRevu – it is with great pleasure (and some relief) that I can at least put that right here. As for reading, I’ll catch up soon enough, I’m sure. Luckily we’re all spoilt for choice at the moment. 

Given that time is precious at the moment, I chose wisely when I picked up Neal Asher’s new novel Cowl which is published this month by Macmillan’s Tor UK imprint. This, Asher’s first hard back release, was worth every moment I spent on it and you’d be well advised to similarly invest your own time. Cowl is priced at £17.99 and do take at look at my review elsewhere in this issue. Tor also follow up the success of Juliet Marillier’s Wolfskin with the second title in this Nordic fantasy saga – Foxmask is a smart hardcover release priced at £17.99. Another follow-up is released in the shape of Limbo II : The Final Chapter, a madcap comic fantasy by Andy Secombe (son of Sir Harry of The Goon Show fame and a successful actor in his own right – he played Watto in the latest Star Wars movies!) – Limbo II is a trade paperback priced at £10.99. Look out too for the mass market releases of Asher’s The Line of Polity and Jonathan Carroll’s White Apples, both of which are released this month priced at £7.99 and £6.99 respectively. See Iain's review

A nice clutch of quality works is offered by Orbit this month, the lead title of which must undoubtedly the brand new Ken Macleod Novel, Newton’s Wake. This is a hard cover release priced at £17.99 and is reviewed most favourably in this issue by our own Iain Emsley (see review). Also reviewed this month is The Portable Door, the most recent novel by the perennially popular Tom Holt. Antony Wagman gives us his thoughts here (see review) on this mass market paperback release which is priced at £6.99. More Tom Holt is issued, this time in omnibus form – Two Knights Only – this is a trade paperback release featuring the novels Overtime and Grailblazers and is priced at £8.99. Also in trade paperback (at £12.99) comes Ian Irvine’s Alchymist, the third novel in The Well of Echoes series. Gregory Benford’s Beyond Infinity is given it’s first UK outing – this is a paperback original priced at £6.99, and at £5.99 is Dead Until Dark, a vampire novel in the vein (ha!) of Robin McKinley’s recent novel Sunshine – at least in that it is contemporary and has a likeable female lead. 

Simon & Schuster offer up The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker. There’s already a buzz about this debut fantasy novel that suggests it’ll be well worth looking at. A trade paperback release, it is priced at £10.99. Check out also the re-issue of John Courtenay Grimwood’s Lucifer’s Dragon, a trade paperback priced at £6.99 and published by S&S’s Pocket imprint. Pocket also release the mass market edition of Michael Cobley’s Shadowgod at £6.99. 

Bantam have a big title this month in the form of Steven Erikson’s latest Malazan Book of the Fallen. Midnight Tides is book number five in this massive fantasy saga (ten volumes in all!!) and is released in both hard cover (£20.00) and trade paperback (£12.99) editions.

HarperCollins/Voyager published the trade paperback edition priced at £12.99 of Fool’s Fate by this month's SFRevu feature author Robin Hobb – you can catch Iain Emsley’s review of the UK hard cover release and the author interview by following the links.  In mass market comes The Lord of Lies by David Zindell (£7.99),  Journey into the Void by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman, and finally the Arthur C. Clark award short listed Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear (6.99). See our Apr '03 review.

As well as the hard cover release of Richard Morgan’s excellent Market Forces (£9.99) which I reviewed in last month’s issue , Gollancz have a fine crop of novels for us this March. Not one, but two Mark Chadbourn fantasies are issued – The Queen of Sinister is the latest in the Dark Age sequence and is published in both hard cover (£17.99) and trade paperback (£10.99) editions. You can also catch the previous title in the series, The Devil in Green, which is published in mass market paperback format priced at £6.99. More big fantasy in the form of John Marco’s The Devil’s Armour – this too is a simultaneous hard cover (£17.99) and trade paperback (£10.99). Cartomancy is a collection of short fiction by Mary Gentle – one of the best writers at work in the genre anywhere on the planet. If you missed the recent 1610: A sundial in a Grave, you missed out! (See Iain Emsley's review). Pick up this collection (a mass market edition priced at £7.99) to make amends as soon as you can. Finally from Gollancz come two mass market editions that would be well worth your time – check out The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint (£6.99) and Dan Simmons’ Ilium (£7.99) – this latter title is required reading for any self respecting genre fan. For more on this see  SFRevu's July'03 feature author Interview/Review.

Finally, a NEL title worthy of your attention – look out for the mass market paperback edition of Dune: The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert & Kevin J Anderson, priced at £7.99. 

More next month.
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© 2004 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu