Patrick Rothfuss may be getting best known for the amount of time he takes editing his novels—he spent seven years editing The Name of the Wind, and it has been three years since its publication, with still no solid date set for the sequel—but judging by his first novel, it is time well spent. His is one of those rare fantasy genre novels that focuses strongly on the human element and only a little on the fantasy. For instance, Rothfuss, following in the great tradition begun by Tolkien, provides a map of his fictional continent, complete with cities, kingdoms and oceans; it is to his credit that I never once had to reference it. Magical powers and strange beasts also have their place, but it is subordinate to the memoirs of one Kvothe, the greatest hero still alive.

Kvothe is the storyteller, and he is telling the story of himself. From his young childhood as the son of traveling performers, to his Dickensian days in a monstrous city, to his unlikely admission into The University as a mid-teenager, he is certainly not the kind of man who doubts his own strength. If he were not so well-accomplished, he would be justly called a braggart. Indeed, one of the most fantastic parts of this fantasy novel is how easily he learns and grows. An arcanist falls in with the troupe, and the young narrator quickly learns all of the man’s basic lessons and even some that he had never considered as possibilities. Kvothe is a prodigy similar to Ender in Ender’s Game or Will in Good Will Hunting, and his quick rise is one of the few disappointments of the story. As a teacher himself, one would expect Rothfuss to be more sympathetic to the hard grunt work required to learn anything worthwhile, but Kvothe just makes it look a little too easy.

While some parts of the story are of higher quality than others, none of it is bad, and none of it is even particularly boring. The quick movement of the first half of the book grinds down when Kvothe joins The University, but that is only because Rothfuss is carefully building up a world of characters and relationships, not to mention the various sciences being taught and learnt. We learn almost nothing of this world’s vast history or its varied geography, but by the end of the first novel it feels like we know the world intimately. That is not a mean feat.

Rumor has it that 2010 will finally see the publication of book two, The Wise Man’s Fear, and hopefully that is the case. Reading this novel will leave you wanting more, and it will be all you can do to keep from writing nagging comments on Rothfuss’ blog.

Dune, by Frank Herbert, is a book that's been on my list for ages.  I kept putting it off because there was a movie and a mini series at hand and there are so many other books on my list.  What put me over the edge was the Mind Voyages reading challenge.  I decided that this was the year I would finally read Dune so I could cross it off my list.

Let me start by saying that I really love this book and wish I had read it years ago.  Going in I was concerned I would be let down after all this time and all the hype.  Dune is on top of just about every "best of" list I\'ve ever seen and people would boggle when I told them I hadn't read it yet.   I was expecting something amazing and in the back of my head I thought it would end up being a let down.

As it turned out my concerns were unfounded.  I love all the detail in this story: the Fremen culture, the political intrigue in the Empire, the Arrakis ecology, the Bene Gesserit manipulations and on and on. Dune is an excellent example of world building.  I find it nigh impossible to separate the book from the movie so it was great to see some characters I knew from the movie fleshed out.  The film version relegated some great characters to the side line.  My familiarity with the movie had me seeing Kyle, Jurgen, Patrick, Sting and all in my head as I was reading which turned out to enhance my enjoyment a great deal.

I understand why so many fans of the book don't like the movie but there are some scenes in the movie that turned out to be better than what was in the book.  The Water of Life scene in particular. In the book Paul goes off by himself to drink the water and falls into a coma for weeks.  Not very cinematic, or indeed dramatic, at all and frankly a bit of a let down. Give me the awesome "Shai-Hulud Salute" over "Muad 'Dib unconscious in the cupboard" any day.  The movie did sacrifice a lot as is the case with most movie adaptations but the feel was right.  The richness of a layered story like Dune gets lost in translation.  I've grown to accept the trade off as the price you pay to see this kind of stuff on the silver screen but I have been wondering what David Lynch could have done with Dune had it gotten the LOTR treatment.  Three films back to back to back to tell the story in full?  That would have been amazing.

The book fully deserves the accolades that have been heaped on it.  Indeed, I'll be able to add my voice to the chorus now but best of all, I can take my turn to stare with incredulity and gasp "You've never read Dune?!" when some poor soul admits the flaw.  I just have to find someone who hasn\'t read it.  The Sleeper has awakened.

This week I've added 20 more books to the WWEnd DB to finish out 13 series.  My thanks to member mkearl who told me about The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik.  There are now 5 books available (of a projected 9) beginning with 2007 Hugo nominated His Majesty's Dragon.  Napolean era with dragons!  Thanks also to whargoul for pointing out the missing books from the Takeshi Kovacs Series.  Broken Angels and Woken Furies have been added to 2003 PKD winner Altered Carbon.  Don't know how I missed the Kovacs series... Altered Carbon is one of my favorites!

• The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik
• Takeshi Kovacs Series by Richard K. Morgan
• Psycho Series by Rober Bloch
• Rama Series by Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee
• Abarat by Clive Barker
• Andrea Cort by Adam-Troy Castro
• The Russian Stories by C.J. Cherryh
• The Great Alta Saga by Jane Yolen
• The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
• Apotheosis by S. Andrew Swann
• The Moties by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell
• Dream Park by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes
• The State by Larry Niven

Happy reading and keep 'em coming.

The nominees for the 2009 British Science Fiction Association Award have been announced.  They are:

• Ark by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
• The City & The City by China Mieville (Macmillan)
• Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin (Gollancz)
• Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

The winner will be announced at Eastercon, Odyssey 2010 in London.  You can get the entire list of nominees in all categories at the official BSFA web site.  Congrats and good luck to the all four authors, and congrats to Gollancz for grabbing 3 of the 4 spots!

So, has anybody read the nominess?  Which author/book do you think will win in April?  Which do you want to win?

This week I've added 17 new books, mostly one's and two's, to finish out 8 series.  The largest addition is Ursula K. LeGuin's Hainish Cycle.  I've added the 4 volumes that fall between The Dispossessed (1974 Nebula, 1975 Hugo & Locus SF winner and 1975 Campbell nominee) and  The Left Hand of Darkness (1969 Nebula and 1970 Hugo winner).

• Hainish Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin
• The Answered Prayers Sextet by Jonathan Carroll
• The Von Bek Trilogy by Michael Moorcock
• Chet Kinsman by Ben Bova
• The Finnbranch Trilogy by Paul Hazel
• Marîd Audran Series by George Alec Effinger
• The Godhead Trilogy by James Morrow
• The Legends of Camber of Culdi by Katherine Kurtz

There are some great books in this new list so check 'em out.

On a side note, I'm running out of series to update.  This is mostly a good thing.  It means I'm almost done and I can move on to some other books.  The bad news is that there are many series that I'm unaware of and I need your help.  If you find any books that you know to be part of a series and we don't have the series info listed please let me know.  There is an email link in the series dropdown on the novel page that you can use to set us straight.

Happy reading.

Karen Hellekson, one of the 2009 PKD jurors, has reported on her blog that the nominees for the 2009 Philip K. Dick Award have been announced.  They are:

• Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
• The Prisoner by Carlos J. Cortes (Ballantine Books/Spectra)
• The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia (Harper)
• The Devil's Alphabet by Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
• Cyberabad Days by Ian Mcdonald (Pyr)
• Centuries Ago and Very Fast  by Rebecca Ore (Aqueduct Press)
• Prophets by S. Andrew Swann (DAW Books)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 2, 2010 at Norwescon 33 at the Doubletree Seattle Airport Hotel, SeaTac, Washington.

Anderson, Cortes, Garcia and Swann are new authors to WWEnd.  Anybody familiar with these authors or read any of the nominated books?

We've got 28 new books for you this week to complete 10 more series. We added 8 new books to The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson (love the cover art for this series) and 5 volumes to Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga bringing the total to 13 books.  We've also got the 4-part Rifters Trilogy from author Peter Watts.  Book 3, Behemoth, is in 2 parts so you get a bonus book if you read it.  The rest are one's and two's to finish out.

• The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
• The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Era of Rapprochement by C. J. Cherryh
• The Rifters Trilogy by Peter Watts
• The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham (schweet covers on these too!)
• The Jump 225 Trilogy by David Louis Edelman
• The Viriconium Sequence by M. John Harrison
• Old Man's War by John Scalzi
• The Gene Wars by C. J. Cherryh
• Songs of Earth and Power by Greg Bear

Happy reading.

Well, the holidays are over and it's back to work.  This week I've added 38 new books to complete 11 different series by 10 authors.  We've got a wide variety of new books for you to check out including a whole coven of vampire books:

• The Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
• The Vampire World Trilogy - Brian Lumley
• A Princess of Roumania - Paul Park
• The Starbridge Chronicles - Paul Park
• The Majipoor Cycle - Robert Silverberg
• The Merchant Princes - Charles Stross
• Return to Nevèrÿon - Samuel R. Delany
• The Nova Trilogy - William S. Burroughs
• The Nulapeiron Sequence - John Meaney
• The Saga of Pliocene Exile - Julian May
• The Trigon Disunity - Michael P. Kube-McDowell

This week has been a bit hectic with the Holidays coming on so we don’t have a lot of additions to talk about but what we lack in quantity we make up for in quality.

Robert Holdstock passed away last month unexpectedly at the age of 61.  From all accounts he was a genuine and lovely man in life and an excellent writer with a loyal following.  There are some nice articles about his life and writings including this one from David Barnett in The Guardian.

Holdstock is perhaps best known for his multiple award-winning Mythago Cycle.  The first book, Mythago Wood, won the British Science Fiction Association award in 1984 and the World Fantasy Award in 1985.  He followed that up with Lavondyss which also won the BSFA award in 1988.  Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn, book 6 of the series, was nominated for the British Fantasy Society's August Derleth Award in 1999.  We\'ve just completed the cycle with the addition of The Bone Forest, The Hollowing, Merlin's Wood and the last volume, Avilion, which came out just this year.

Last week we completed a bunch of trilogies including Gwyneth Jones’s Aleutian Trilogy.  This week Gwyneth makes another appearance with her Bold As Love Cycle.  The first 3 books in the series all had nominations starting with Bold as Love which won the 2002 Arthur C. Clarke Award and also garnered nominations from the BSFA in 2001 and the BFS in 2002.  Castles Made of Sand (2002 BSFA nominee) and Midnight Lamp (2003 BSFA and 2004 Clarke nominee), books 2 and 3 respectively, have been joined by 2005's Band of Gypsies and Rainbow Bridge from 2006.

These two series would make excellent gifts for any SF/F fan you've got on your last minute list... including yourself.  Happy reading.

I've been thinking about doing a reading challenge here on WWEnd for some time but just never got around to it.  I was just planning to start one for the New Year when I found Mind Voyages.  Mind Voyages is a yearlong reading challenge and blog set up by Robin of My Two Blessings that focuses on the Hugo and Nebula award winners and noms.  A perfect fit for me and WWEnd members as well, methinks.

The challenge is divided up into several "voyages" of differing lengths and themes.  You choose the books you want to read within the loosely defined parameters of each voyage rather than having to read from a pre-determined list.  You can set yourself a modest goal like the Moon Voyage, which is to read 6 Hugo winners, or you can go for a bigger challenge like Jupiter which is all the 1990's winners.  Of course you can go for as many voyages as you like throughout the year if you want a bigger challenge.

The savvy reader will find lots of ways to get max value out of the books they choose.  Look for the books that overlap voyages like dual Hugo and Nebula winners (two birds, one stone) or pick 2 Philip K. Dick books for your Moon Voyage and knock out the Venus Voyage at the same time.  Someone will eventually figure out the least number of books you would have to read to complete all voyages.  I'm going for the Moon and will try for Mars as well.  Along the way I'll knock out Venus, Mercury and the Slingshot Back to Earth by reading 12 books.  Here's my list as it stands:

• Dune by Frank Herbert (1965 Nebula and 1966 Hugo winner)
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1975 Nebula and 1976 Hugo winner)
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1992 Nebula and 1993 Hugo winner)
• Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman (1999 Hugo and Nebula winner)
• Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (2004 Hugo and Nebula winner)
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1963 Hugo winner)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968 Nebula nominee)
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (1962 Hugo winner)
• Have Space Suit - Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein (1959 Hugo nominee)
• Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (2002 Hugo and Nebula nominee)
• Kiln People by David Brin (2003 Hugo nominee)
• River of Gods by Ian McDonald (2005 Hugo nominee)

There are shorter ways to get there I think but many of those books I've already read so I had to dance around a bit to get to this list.  The best thing about this challenge is that almost all these books were on my list anyway and I'm still trying to read all the Hugo and Nebula winners so this will bring me closer to that goal as well.

So who's in and what does your list look like?

C. J. Cherryh is one of the most accomplished and popular names in the business. As you can see in our database, Ms. Cherryh has earned many plaudits for her work including 18 nominations across the 10 awards we cover here on WWEnd.  Downbelow Station won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1982, a feat she repeated in 1989 with Cyteen which also won the Locus SF award that same year.  Her Fortress Series and 9 volume Foreigner series have garnered many nominations and remain some of her most popular books.

Earlier this week, Ms. Cherryh was kind enough to answer a few questions on behalf of WWEnd readers. Here's what she had to say:


CW: We seem to be moving toward a world where books are changing into e-content, and the old familiar paradigm of author, publisher, bookstore, reader seems to be evolving. With many of your titles available now as e-books (or free downloads, thank you for that!) what do you think this means for the author- end of the food chain?

CJC: We eat better. Right now many publishers have the notion that, short-term, they can cut out the trucks, the warehouse, the printing, and all of that, yet still pay the author 8-10% of cover price---when I can do the same job myself and get 100% of cover price. I'm not even a bad cover artist, I live with a better one, and my brother is one.  The publishers need to take a good hard look at this situation and make some meaningful proposals for the survival of New York Publishing as we know it, or something is going to give, and soon.

Not only that---the oil companies that bought the publishing houses in the 70's are now thinking they can just shove real science fiction aside and we'll just wilt and fade away. Wrong. We're the very people with the very readership who are most dangerous to their way of doing business.

CW: Are there any non- Science Fiction/Fantasy authors that have influenced your work?

CJC: Publius Vergilius Maro, Conan Doyle, if you can count him, and Jeffrey Farnol.

CW: What great new authors have you discovered recently?

CJC: None recently, but I've been re-reading. Project Gutenberg is a great resource.

CW: Do you have any advice for the new writers coming up through the ranks?

CJC: Get published in paper first, get a readership and THEN go e-book.

CW: Charles Dickens famously arranged objects into exact positions whenever he wrote. Stephen King took a vitamin with tea or water whenever he sat down to write. What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

CJC: I write to disaster documentaries on Science and Discovery.

CW: Can you please tell the readers of WWEnd about your latest projects, what is forthcoming, etc.?

CJC: Closed Circle is a joint e-publishing venture with Jane S. Fancher and Lynn Abbey: we are recovering our backlist and bringing it out ourselves, and we may be doing new work specifically for our own publishing venture---as well as continuing traditional paper publishing via our usual publishers.

CW: Lastly, part of what we do at Worlds Without End is track the Science Fiction and Fantasy awards. If you could have your own award, the much-coveted "C.J. Cherryh Award", what would your criteria be?

CJC: Interesting question: I would say innovation, scientific information, accuracy, and literary quality.

Those are the very things that are evidenced in her own work.

We'd like to thank Ms. Cherry again for her time.  She's obviously very busy these days with her new publishing venture.  We look forward to checking out her Closed Circle work and her other new titles soon.
 

In past weeks we've been seeing a lot of big series coming into WWEnd with The Grand Tour, Discworld and  The Dragon Knight counted among them.  This week the magic number is three.  Three for trilogy.  We've added 22 new books to the WWEnd database completing nine trilogies.

Let's start with The Well-Built City Trilogy by Jeffrey Ford.  The Physiognomy won the 1998 World Fantasy Award and to that we've added Memoranda and The Beyond in the reprint editions from Golden Gryphon Press.  The cover art for this edition is a superb triptych from artist John Picacio.  Very nice indeed.

Spider Robinson and wife Jeanne Robinson bring us The Stardance Trilogy with 1980 Locus SF Nominated Stardance and its 2 sequels Starseed and Starmind.

Gwyneth Jones' Aleutian Trilogy is complete with the addition of Phoenix Café to 1992 Clarke Nominated White Queen and 1994 BSFA and 1995 Clarke nominated North Wind.

Jeff Carlson's Plague Year Trilogy is now complete.  We already had the middle volume, 2008 PKD Nom Plague War, to which we added Plague Year and Plague Zone.  I'm feeling a bit woozy all of a sudden.

The Broken God, 1994 Clarke Nominee, is the first book of David Zindell's A Requiem for Homo Sapiens.  We've added The Wild and War in Heaven, books 2 and 3 respectively.

The Marathon Trilogy by D. Alexander Smith is all in with Marathon and Homecoming added either side of 1988 PKD Nom Rendezvous.  Never judge a book by its cover they say.  Well these covers are pretty bad ass so be sure to check them out anyway.  I love big spaceships.

We've finished out The Jewelfire Trilogy by Freda Warrington with The Sapphire Throne and The Obsidian Tower.  They join 2000 BFS Nominated The Amber Citadel.

The Grigori Trilogy by Storm Constantine is made up of Stalking Tender Prey,     1997 BFS Nominated Scenting Hallowed Blood and Stealing Sacred Fire.  Fallen angels live among us... interesting.

Last, but not least, we have The Minotaur Trilogy by Thomas Burnett Swann.  This trilogy is different from most in that for reasons unknown Mr. Swann wrote the stories backwards.  He started with book three 1967 Hugo Nominee Day of the Minotaur, then followed it with book two The Forest of Forever in 1971 and ended with book one Cry Silver Bells in 1977.  How's that for confusing?