Archive for January, 2010
Book some time with Lavie
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As well as being a great storyteller, Lavie Tidhar (author of The Bookman – out now, fact-fans!) is one of the hardest-working bloggers around! In addition to writing guest posts for a whole bunch of other interesting folk, and for his own website, Lavie runs the World SF Blog.
Fan-favourite site io9 recently picked up on a post at the World SF blog, which asks: Why is English the language of SF?
Meanwhile, over at SF Signal, Lavie asks: What do we talk about when we talk about steampunk?
And at the Shine Anthology site (yes, we know it’s for a different publisher, but we’re all mates, really) Lavie talks about Optimism in Israeli SF.
Go. Read. Enjoy.
Guy Adams – The World House trailer
Posted by: | CommentsThe World House
by Guy Adams
Published 4th Feb (UK/Aus), November (US/Canada). More details here.
The Sacred Precinct – Aliette de Bodard
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Today sees the penultimate article written by Aliette de Bodard about the research she has conducted for her new book, Servant of the Underworld. Like the two feature before it, it’ a fascinating insight into the history of the Aztec culture, and it’s has some fabulous illustrations, too.
If that’s not enough to whet your appetite for the book itself, how about this review by Candyman:
This book is beautifully written and a pleasure to lose oneself in. I wasn’t familiar with de Bodard before but reading this book has me looking forward to her next one AND I was also happy to find a story of hers in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy! Please see for yourself and pick up a copy!
Yes. Please do.
Backgrounds to the books
Posted by: | CommentsYou know, we’re not ones for blowing our own trumpets, except on special occasions, such as when we’re awake and blogging, but I must say, the Angry Robot authors are a brilliant bunch. Funny, smart, interesting, and always worth reading, whether it’s their fiction or their non-fiction.
Take Aliette de Bodard, for instance. A brilliant novelist, an acclaimed short story writer, and an all round good egg. The second part on her series outlining the truth behind the fiction in her debut novel Servant of the Underworld is now online at her website. Fascinating reading, even if you haven’t yet read the novel. Today’s piece is entitled The City of Tenochtitlan and the Migration Myth.
So, why Tenochtitlan? I briefly touched on Tenoch in the previous post, the semi-mythical leader of the Mexica who gave his name to Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Empire. In reality, it’s a little more complex: like the name “Mexica”, there are several interpretations of the name Tenochtitlan. One of those is “The place of the prickly pear cactus”, and this refers to the founding of Tenochtitlan.
Over at Book Chick City (great name for a blog!) our other January debut novelist, the equally wonderful Lavie Tidhar begins his blog tour; he talks about heroes and villains, and how they fit in and around his steampunk romp, The Bookman.
Part of the fun of writing a steampunk novel – and it is a lot of fun – is visiting – or re-visiting – familiar characters not only from the fiction of the period but from the fiction that followed. No one does the sly cameo better than Kim Newman, of course – his Anno Dracula and sequels remains a venerable Who’s Who of Victorian literature, not to mention Italian horror movies and so much more besides – but in writing my own The Bookman I took great joy in introducing, sometimes in significant roles, sometimes only in passing, some of those loved characters that still draw us to read books long after their authors have died.
Plenty more good Heroes ‘n’ Villains reading, here.
And over at Torque Control, the website for the editor of Vector (the British Science Fiction Association journal of critical review), Niall Harrison lists some of the books he’s particularly looking forward to in 2010. Three of the first 9 listed are Angry Robot titles. Which is nice. 
Aztec Research
Posted by: | CommentsAs you know, the fantastic Aliette de Bodard‘s equally fantastic debut novel Servant of the Underworld is published this week in the UK (Australia will have it imminently, and it’s scheduled for September in the US and Canada).
An enormous amount of research went into the writing of the novel, and it’s been a fascinating process. Aliette has just posted the first of a series of articles covering the setting of the book.
Who are the Aztecs? The first question you’ll ask yourself when you read the book is why I refer to them by the name of “Mexica”. What’s with that, you ask? Well, the Aztecs never called themselves Aztecs. That was a name foisted on them later by the Spanish: it comes from Aztlan, the White Place (which the Aztecs listed as their place of origin and which you can find in hymns within Servant of the Underworld), but they never used it that way.
A new rave review for Book of Secrets
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Head on over to SF Crows Nest and you’ll find, nestled in between a review of David Tennant’s final outing as the Doctor, and a demonstration of a rather cool steampunk computer keyboard, a rather spiffing review of one of our early titles – Chris Roberson‘s wonderful Book of Secrets.
This is a very enjoyable novel of speculative fiction. It’s a rip-roaring read with a multi-layered plot and an original and surprising conclusion. I can see myself re-reading it for pleasure in future. What more can you ask of a book?
What more, indeed? Head on over here for the full story.
Meanwhile, for those US friends who really, really can’t wait to read this sensational book (yet can’t bring themselves to order the British edition off Amazon on dodgy import ahem-hem) you’ll be delighted to hear that its street date has come forward from September to a very tasty July 2010. Yes, in this time of delays and hold-ups, once more Angry Robot bucks the trend and shows the rest how it’s done, etc etc.
Lavie Tidhar – Blog Tour
Posted by: | CommentsLavie Tidhar is appearing as a guest on a number of blogs over the coming weeks. He’ll talk about World SF, his inspirations and influences and of course, his debut novel The Bookman, released in the UK and Australia from January 7th-ish. Here are a few dates to whet your appetite:
5 Jan
Book Chick City
6 Jan
SF Signal
7 Jan
My Favourite Books
8 Jan
The Book Smugglers
11 Jan
Falcata Times
12 Jan
SFF World
More news, as it happens…
Our first post of the New Year
Posted by: | CommentsGoodness me! Is it that time already? You know, I had every intention of posting every other day or so over the Christmas break, but family stuff happened, and I never did, so this post is a summary of some of the great reviews etc we’ve had over the last week or so.
Ok, first up – the first reviews for our January titles are in! Servant of the Underworld by the brilliant Aliette de Bodard, and Lavie Tidhar’s steampunk romp, The Bookman. Both reviews are by LoudMouthMan.
First up, The Bookman:
The punkgenre has a new term, BookPunk. The Bookman pokes at the fat and waddled body of steampunk with its walking cane and leaves it on the roadside with its fresh take on Victorian London without loosing any steam on its way.
Next up: Servant of the Underworld:
Forensic science and methodical investigation are not the first things to spring to mind when you consider the Aztec Empire, though with all those human sacrifices and heart ripping ceremonies I am guessing their priests would eventually have taken some intersting in how bodies stop functioning… Magic and Gods become tools of forensic divination and there is no easy get out in the plot here… This is Book 1 in a trilogy and I am eager to get my hands on the next book when it is released.
Another Servant of the Underworld review up at Fantasy Book Critic:
The world-building is exquisite and we *believe* we are transported to the 15th century Tenotichtlan and together with the superb voice they formed the main reason I enjoyed this book so much… Highly recommended… Ms. de Bodard is a writer to watch.
We think so, too. Winter Song by Colin Harvey was praised by Keith Harvey of Red Rook Review:
I felt that same attention to world-building in the myriad of details that Harvey sprinkled within the text to intimate or to suggest that a larger canvas, a more complex super-structure of culture, was operating somewhere behind the action of the characters of his novel on the icy world of Isheimur… Harvey seems to follow the Asimov model. That is he describes the most fantastical things in a clear precise way; he uses short declarative sentences to tell a most outlandish tale… As a result I found Winter Tale quite convincing and entertaining.
Over at Deadwood, Andy Remic’s fantastic Gemmell-esque gore-fest, Kell’s Legend gets the review treatment:
Kell’s Legend is an admitted homage to the tradition of David Gemmel’s Druss novels and the Sword and Sorcery stories that proceeded it. Andy treats us to a bit of the modern tendency for multiple narrators ala GRR Martin in his Sond of Ice and Fire… In telling the story his writing is crisp and not over descriptive but at times the ideas seem to come at you fast. As a reader you have to be willing to go along with him – he may make you wonder if you missed something so sometimes you have to be patient… he will explain there is just some violence that needs be done first.
Angry Robot has hit another genre nail on the head here and they have found something worthy of a read. Now I’ll have to find his other books…
That must be one of my favourite interpretations so far: “there is just some violence that needs to be done first”. Another favourite is from Donna Hanson’s World Con Cavalcade:
Weird unstoppable monsters and buckets full of dog shit, gore and intrigue.
Yeah – that sounds about right. Over at Exiled from Groggs, Moxyland gets a great review:
commentators have muttered things like “Post-cyberpunk”… But Beukes has certainly captured the zeitgeist and sharpened it… This is good SF – the extrapolations are all too real, all too obviously deriving their heritage from the world we see around us.
Angry Robot itself comes in for some New Year’s Eve lovin’ over at The World In the Satin Bag where we win their Best Publisher of 2009 award! Go us, go us, go us…
As well as the reviews listed above, a bunch of Angry Robot books appeared all over the blogosphere on various “Best of 2009″ posts – far too many to list, so to all those of you who loved our books enough to tell others about them, we salute you.
Here’s to 2010 being even more awesome than the preceding year!
