Matthew Hunter

Micah didn’t really do much for me. About equal parts sex, relationship angst, and supernatural spook. Nothing really to recommend it especially, though the sex didn’t grate nearly so badly as in the last full-length novel.

Nine years after Dies the Fire, an unsteady truce reigns over western Oregon. Mike Havel’s Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie’s Wiccan clans, along with some other loose federations, are strong enough to have prevented the despot Norman Arminger from overruning them - so far. Occupying the rich farmlands south of Portland, these groups have quickly adapted to life after the Change, and have thriving societies with bustling economies. Their cultures are starting to take root, too - the younger generations know nothing of gunpowder, electricity, or gasoline beyond stories from the adults.

The latest and long-awaited book in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast For Crows, was released on November 8. The book’s delivery represents the end of a long wait for fans of the series, although – prodded most likely by the degeneration of Jordan’s Wheel of Time series – most fans seem to prefer to wait long enough for Martin to get it right rather than demanding a quick release; and in the face of continuing difficulty with the scope of the work, Martin eventually split the book he had planned into two, publishing what he was done with and leaving the remainder of what he had planned for the next book.

Incubus Dreams is the latest Anita Blake book, and weighs in at a surprising 600+ pages; most of the prior books in the series have been 300-400 pages. The Anita Blake series has been having difficulty lately, with many of the fans hanging on desperately to the hope that the current trends – that is, towards more sex and less of everything else – will reverse themselves. Unfortunately for those with such hopes, the cover does little to suggest improvement; a woman in lingerie, blindfolded and bound to a chair.

Cassandra Kresnov, the lovable combat android with an electronic copy of a human soul, is back. But her old masters, the League governments, want her dead, and they may just have left an off-switch hidden in some part of her electronic brain. When your own brain can be hacked over a wireless network, being almost as strong as Superman won’t help much. To thwart them, Cassandra will have to go into hiding while she searches for the enemies trying to turn her off permanently.

A couple years ago, I started to have an idea for a novel. It wasn’t the first such idea; I have several kicking their way around my head. I don’t have time to write more than a chapter or two in brief spurts, but I let the ideas percolate and refine. Eventually, I will have that time, and hopefully the ideas will be timeless by then. Or something. But at least one of those ideas is now out of the running, thanks to S.

Cerulean Sins continues the annoying tradition of more sex and angst, less violence.

Meet April Cassidy. She’s just applied to a software development firm on Tanusha, one of the most advanced planets in the Federation. She wants to work as a programmer, studying the intricacies of artificial intelligence – or as close as the legal restrictions will allow her to get. She is a very good candidate for the position, very familiar with the latest algorithms. Good enough to analyze them at a glance in her job interview.

The novel opens with Anita being called upon to rescue Nathaniel, her house leopard, from a local S&M club. After months of enforced separation from Jean-Claude and Richard, months spent learning to control her powers, Anita is suddenly thrust back into the world of the monsters and forced to contend with her enemies once more. And with her allies, as well, for not everything has been peachy with her boys while she was gone.

A Storm of Swords continues the groundbreaking series that began with A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. It’s a massive tome that weighs in at almost 1,000 pages and continues Martin’s tradition of shaking up the characters and the world with momentous and surprising events. Rob, King in the North, continues his fight against the Lannisters – winning great victories on the battlefield, but conscious of his two sisters held as hostages.