Portada y sinopsis de Thunderbird

Nueva entrega de la serie de Miriam Black, de la mano de Chuck Wendig.

Este cuarto libro se llamará Thunderbird. Aquí tenéis la sinopsis:

In the fourth installment of the Miriam Black series, Miriam heads to the southwest in search of another psychic who may be able to help her understand her curse, but instead finds a cult of domestic terrorists and the worst vision of death she’s had yet. Miriam Black is being developed as a TV series by Starz with the producers of Breaking Bad.

Y la portada.

thunderbirdLa portada rompe con el estilo que habían tenido las tres anteriores y me gusta menos. ¿Qué os parece a vosotros?

Finalistas premios Baen Fantasy Adventure

Se han hecho públicos los finalistas de los premios Baen Fantasy Adventure, dedicados a relatos cortos fantásticos. El ganador será publicado en la web de Baen.

Los finalistas son los siguientes:

“Saurs” de Craig DeLancey

“Unfound” de Rhiannon Held

“Shell Game” de Joseph L. Kellogg

“Victor the Sword” de Robin Lupton

“Trappists” de Katherine Monasterio

“Burning Savannah” de Alexander Monteagudo

“Kiss from a Queen” de Jeff Provine

“An Old Dragon’s Treasure” de Robert Russell

“The Triton’s Son” de Keith Taylor

“Adroit” de Dave Williams

Portada de Empire Ascendant

Se ha desvelado la que será portada de la segunda entrega de la saga Worldbreaker, titulada Empire Ascendant, de la premiada Kameron Hurley.

Sinopsis:

Loyalties are tested when worlds collide…

Every two thousand years, the dark star Oma appears in the sky, bringing with it a tide of death and destruction. And those who survive must contend with friends and enemies newly imbued with violent powers. The kingdom of Saiduan already lies in ruin, decimated by invaders from another world who share the faces of those they seek to destroy.

Now the nation of Dhai is under siege by the same force. Their only hope for survival lies in the hands of an illegitimate ruler and a scullery maid with a powerful – but unpredictable –magic. As the foreign Empire spreads across the world like a disease, one of their former allies takes up her Empress’s sword again to unseat them, and two enslaved scholars begin a treacherous journey home with a long-lost secret that they hope is the key to the Empire’s undoing.

But when the enemy shares your own face, who can be trusted?

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Portada y sinopsis de Medusa’s web

Me acabo de llevar un alegrón, con estas noticas sobre la nueva novela de Tim Powers, un autor que me encanta.

La nueva novela se llamará Medusa’s web y aquí tenéis la sinopsis y la portada.

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family

In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time—to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years—an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.

As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

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Hijos del dios tuerto

Cabecera vikingosMe decidí a darle una oportunidad a Hijos del dios tuerto, porque la mitología siempre me ha llamado la atención y lo cierto es que la nórdica es para mí una gran desconocida.

Cuando me di cuenta de la extensión de la novela y de los comienzos titubeantes, pensé que quizá había cometido un error, pero seguí confiando en que mejorara con los capítulos.

Ciertamente, cuando ya has avanzando un tercio aproximadamente en la narración de Hijos del dios tuerto, el libro mejora, aunque no llegó en ningún momento a engancharme.

Existen varios problemas con esta lectura. Está dividida en dos puntos de vista, uno se narra en el mundo de los mortales, Midgard, mientras que en el otro asistimos a las vivencias de los dioses en Asgard. El primero no resiste la comparación con el último, resulta aburrido y previsible. Realmente, la autora utiliza recursos muy procaces para dar interés a la historia del jarl Harek. Todas las conversaciones acaban teniendo referencias sexuales sin venir muy a cuento y los diálogos son chocarreros a más no poder. No sé cómo sería el día a día de los vikingos, pero no me lo imagino así.

Cuando la acción se centra en Loki, sin embargo, la diferencia es clara. La arrolladora personalidad del dios de las mentiras consigue que avance una narración que de otro modo quedaría bastante estancada.

También me he encontrado con un problema de sobreadjetivación, aunque no sé si esta será la forma habitual de escribir de la autora. No sé cuántas veces prueban los personajes el sabor de la bilis, pero ya deberían estar más que acostumbrados porque les pasa cada dos por tres.

Me gusta la labor de documentación que ha llevado a cabo Virginia. Como ya digo, no soy una experta en el tema, pero me parece que ha conseguido introducir en el libro varios concepto mitológicos de forma inteligente, evitando la sobrecarga de información.

En resumen, no puedo recomendar este libro, está claro que yo no era su público objetivo.

Portada y sinopsis de Children of Earth and Sky

Por fin tenemos más datos sobre la nueva novela de Guy Gavriel Kay, que se llamará Children of Earth and Sky, como ya habíamos anunciado.

Aquí tenéis la sinopsis:

The bestselling author of the groundbreaking novels Under Heaven and River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay is back with a new novel, Children of Earth and Sky, set in a world inspired by the conflicts and dramas of Renaissance Europe. Against this tumultuous backdrop the lives of men and women unfold on the borderlands—where empires and faiths collide.

From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request—and possibly to do more—and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.

The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.

As these lives entwine, their fates—and those of many others—will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world…

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