Small, and presumably an early draft, but this should give us a good idea of what will be gracing the final volume of Newton’s Legends of the Red Sun. Also, obviously meant to tie in with the trade paperback release of The Book of Transformations, though, again, a different artist/style from the previous volumes of the series. This is, I believe, the first time that the title of the novel has been mentioned.
My thoughts: another hooded figure, but the execution looks decent.
Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.
Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. Thousands of tiny mirrors floating in the air can create a giant sunshade, capable of redirecting heat and cooling the earth’s surface. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.
Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She’s intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice.
Tobias Buckell first came to my attention with the release of Crystal Rain (REVIEW), a crackin’ SF adventure with a Caribbean flare. The sequel, Ragamuffin (REVIEW) proved that Buckell was no slouch by expanding his universe and showing nice versatility as a writer without relying on ballooning word counts. Since then, his novels have always been firmly on my radar.
His newest novel, due out Feb. 28, 2012, is called Arctic Rising and presents another side to Buckell’s storytelling. While it’s not related to his previous novels, Arctic Rising is sure to be a smart eco-thriller with no lack of frenetic action and a torrid pace. I’m eagerly awaiting my change to jump in.
Centuries ago, the fifty-mile-wide mouth of the Lancaster Sound imprisoned ships in its icy bite. But today, the choppy polar waters between Baffin Island to the south of the sound, and Devon Island on the north, twinkled in the perpetual sunlight of the Arctic’s summer months, and tons of merchant traffic constantly sailed through the once impossible-to-pass Northwest Passage over the top of Canada.
A thousand feet over the frigid, but no longer freezing and icechoked waters, the seventy-five-meter-long United Nations Polar Guard airship Plover hung in a slow-moving air current. The turboprop engines growled to life as the fat, cigar-shaped vehicle adjusted course, then fell silent.
Inside the cabin of the airship, Anika Duncan checked her readings, then leaned over the matte-screened displays in the cockpit to look out the front windows.
You can read the first two chapters of Arctic Rising on Tor.com.
When I got [to Charleston] and I sat and read that alone quietly, actually, in Robert Jordan’s chair, in his room, just a few feet from the computer he’d written much of the books on, I felt immensely and deeply satisfied with this conclusion, that he wrote himself. It feels right to me.
It’s hard to imagine Sanderson saying anything other than that he was satisfied by the ending, but one has to expect that, given how long and hard Jordan working in constructing the labyrinthine storyline of The Wheel of Time, that he’d have given a lot of thought to how it should end. Frankly, if there’s anything I’m worried about, it’s the reaction of the fans if the volume plays out too closely to what we all expect. Fans have had nearly 20 years to sit and ponder all the secrets of the series, and, given that Tarmon Gai’don is the ultimate battle between good and evil, as black and white a confrontation as you can get, it’s hard to imagine that things won’t fall into place just as we all expect them too. Fans have constantly been surprised by this series, but I expect surprises will be lacking if Sanderson stays close to the script laid out by Jordan 20+ years ago.
Via The Wertzone:
From China Miéville, New York Times bestselling author of Un Lun Dun, a thrilling new young adult novel that reimagines Moby-Dick in an unforgettable and fascinatingly imagined setting.
Sham Yes ap Soorap, young doctor’s assistant, is in search of life’s purpose aboard a diesel locomotive on the hunt for the great elusive moldywarpe, Mocker-Jack. But on an old train wreck at the outskirts of the world, Sham discovers an astonishing secret that changes everything: evidence of an impossible journey. A journey left unfinished…which Sham takes it on himself to complete. It’s a decision that might cost him his life.
Sounds fun. Mieville’s adult novels often weigh me down with their complexity and self-indulgence. I’m glad to see him returning to YA. Now, where’d I put my copy of Un Lun Dun?
Has any one had as high a book release:cover art ratio as Mark Charan Newton over the past two or three years? Seems like every couple of months I’m posting new covers for his novels! This time around it’s the (beautiful) cover for the German edition of Nights of Villjamur and the upcoming UK paperback cover for The Book of Transformations. We all know how I feel about hooded dudes on the covers of Fantasy novels, but I think it works fairly well this time around; it’s simple, the typography is good and it’s a mile better than the ninja girl that almost graced the cover of the hardback. The cover for the German edition of Nights of Villjamur is probably my favourite of all of Mark’s covers (though the Great Wall of China does seem to stick out like a sore thumb.)
All in all, good covers.
