January
17
2009 Edgar Awards
Have been released by The Mystery Writers of America and can be seen here.
January
16
Welcome to the Jungle by Jim Butcher
Art by Ardian Syaf
*This is set before Storm Front, the first book in the series
Hardback: 0345507460, $19.95
“There’s a killer loose in the Lincoln Park Zoo, and I’m going after him. Though if you ask me, it seems a little unprofessional of him to come after me first. I’ve barely had time to stick my nose into anything.”
A trademark blend of magic, noir and sarcasm Welcome to the Jungle is a full color example of why Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden is so popular.
A special consultant to the Chicago police, Harry is called in when a man is found dead at the zoo under mysterious circumstances. The brass wants to blame Moe the gorilla, put him down and be done with it. Special Investigations lead Karrin Murphy knows the evidence isn’t adding up so she leaves the legwork that she can’t explain to her bosses to Harry. After all, the list of things that can choke a man bare handed has to be small, right?
But before Harry can put the monster who did this down, he has to dodge great cats under compulsion spells (to kill him, of course) and supernatural dog assassins, save the girl and save the gorilla.
Spiked with humor, fast paced and fabulously drawn, Welcome to the Jungle is a welcome addition to the Dresden mythos and a must-have for Dresden fans.
January
16
Titles?
I’m not feeling terribly enthusiastic about Moon Madness as a title. I mean, I completely rewrote it so I’m thinking it deserves a new title too. So, here’s the blurb I wrote for the query. Please take a moment to vote for which title you like better.
- Nika Thompson never had a problem being a werewolf until Rick came into her life. The alpha and his family fill a hole left by her own uncaring family and sucker her out of her life as a free wolf and into pack life. Then, as her luck would have it, Rick and his family hand off their territory, and Nika, to the dark, handsome, incredibly sexy alpha, Maeul.
- But the life of a werewolf is often a vicious, brutal thing. As Nika struggles to come to terms with the responsibility Maeul wants to give her when he asks her to be his mate, a dark force is gathering in their woods intend on taking everything from them. When the dusk settles Nika must figure out for herself who the heroine and hero of her story really are before her pack is lost to the greed that can only come from from a human heart.
January
15
Watchmen Settlement reached?
All indications are that a settlement has been reached in the Fox lawsuit over the Watchmen movie. Details c/o G4. We’re pretty much just waiting for a public affirmation at this point.
January
13
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher
Book Three in the Dresden Files series
Hardback: 978-0451462343, $23.95
Paperback: 0-4514-5844-3, $7.99
Harry Dresden (wizard for hire) often refers to the Nevernever in the first books of the Dresden Files series, but in this book he pulls the reader straight into it. A realm of all sorts of spooks and even fairies, the Nevernever follows an esoteric sort of dream logic that might make some readers shy away. But this journey is one of hard, willful and fantastic magic, set in motion by a complicated twist of plotting that only immortal beings would have the patience for.
Readers are thrown right into the action, which at times can make them feel as if they are missing something (they are, as far as I can tell some of the events referred to aren’t experienced by the reader except for as flashbacks and Dresden’s nightmares.) Harry and his friend, a true Knight of the Cross, Michael, are in their fourth or fifth night of hunting down a series of powerful ghosts who are attacking the real world with a strength that seems unprecedented, even so close to Halloween. But fighting specters that are trying to punish people long dead, for deeds long lost to history, is only the beginning as Harry discovers a strange spell, woven into the very being of the ghosts, that appears to be manipulating them into their attacks.
What follows is an almost painful series of events with so many possible bad guys that one has to wonder how Harry has survived so long at all. An iron will and indomitable stubbornness are threaded into Harry as firmly as the barbed wire-shaped torture spells are threaded into the human and ghostly victims of this book’s Big Bad. A book that revels in loose ends, it leaves more than a few set ups for further books but it also brings the Nevernever solidly into the Dresden world, giving reader’s imaginations and Dresden more territory to play in.