Notes From the Bookroom

April 14, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I just got in the review for Invisible Fences, a debut horror novella by Norman Prentiss. My reviewer noted that Cemetery Dance is publishing it as a 170-page, $30 "deluxe hardcover" as part of their novella series. That's roughly 17.6 cents per page. By way of comparison, Stephen King's Duma Key, a 592-page $28 hardcover, costs only 4.7 cents per page (and that's before the Amazon discount, which drops the per-page price to 3.1 cents). Stephen King is easily the best-known horror writer in the world, a bestseller many times over. Norman Prentiss is apparently a short story writer, and I only know that because I searched around a bit, as the galley and publicity letter contain absolutely no information about him.

David Niall Wilson, an author and reviewer who's usually pretty in touch with the horror writing community and has himself contribute...Read More

April 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (5)

Thanks for all your fascinating comments on last week's "Strictly for the Fans" post! It sounds like readers mostly end up in one of these categories:

"Straight through" readers, who read every series in order, first book to last book. The extreme version of this is to avoid reading any books in a series until all of them have been published and are simultaneously accessible. Pros: Read it as the author intended. Cons: Takes a fair amount of time and/or money to track down all the books.

"Laissez-faire" readers, who are willing to start a series in the middle or read it out of order, acknowledging that there may be some confusion or catching-up. Pros: Less work looking for books. Cons: More work understanding books.

"S...Read More

March 31, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (23)

I have one reviewer who only reads stand-alone books, and I'm starting to understand why. This past week I had not one but two reviewers return installments of very different fantasy series with almost identical comments. "I am finding [title] completely impenetrable," the first one said. "It's the seventh book in the series and the author assumes that the reader is familiar with the book's background setup." The second wrote in desperation, "I've just been having a very difficult time following [other title], have to keep restarting because I get partway through and still nothing is making sense to me. I'm concerned because the prior one got a starred review... but really, truly cannot figure out what the hell is going on in this book. I didn't read the first in the series but that theoretically shouldn't make a difference."

I rescued the re...Read More

March 24, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (4)

We just got a package from Ace containing ARCs of Charles Stross's Saturn's Children, due out in July. Ace has fairly nondescript ARCs, so they thoughtfully included cover flats.

This image of the front cover, courtesy of Amazon, doesn't really do justice to the honeycomb-stockinged legs that stretch across the back cover, with pointed toes extending just past the edge of the flap. The entity pictured is Freya, a "femmebot" left struggling to make ends meet after humankind's extinction. Perhaps the novel centers around her quest for non-human sources of the futuristic femme fatale's required quota of unzipped zippered jumpsuits. I am immediately reminded of the cover image on ...Read More

March 17, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Having gone to some lengths to get my greedy hands on an advance copy of Cory Doctorow's forthcoming novel Little Brother, I found myself pondering the mystery of what is and is not a YA book. Elizabeth Devereaux, our lovely Children's reviews editor, occasionally comes by my desk with new YA books that she thinks I'll like, because books written for older teens are often perfectly suitable for adults and vice versa. She and I also occasionally argue discuss which section a borderline book should be reviewed in. When in doubt, we tend to go by imprint, which is why Anne McCaffrey's most recent Petaybee twins book (Del Rey) was reviewed under SF/F/H while Little Brother (Tor Teen), which arguably has an older target audience, wound up covered in the Children's section.

I...Read More