Woody’s Roundup
By
Temple Library Reviews are running an Angry Robot marathon – interviews, features and reviews of our books. They kicked off yesterday with a great interview with Walking the Tree author Kaaron Warren.
When Marc Gascoigne was asked to set up a new imprint of Harper Collins, he knew he wanted to seek far and wide for authors. He wanted an international cast of characters. So he asked writers he’d worked with when he was with The Black Library to give him the names of writers they respected in their own countries.
Matthew Farrer, a Warhammer 40,000 novelist, included me on his list.
From there, I nervously emailed Marc to tell him I had three novels and he asked me to send him proposals for all three. His response to the proposals was to ask for sample chapters and his response to the sample chapters was to ask for full manuscripts.
That was a nervous time, waiting for his final response.
Then I got an email, telling me that Angry Robot would buy all three novels. I had to get my husband to read the email for me, to check I wasn’t dreaming!
Today they followed up with a review of Kaaron’s first book, Slights:
Perhaps one of the most disturbing psychological horror stories imbued with withering decadence and written as a memoir. This story haunted me and froze my blood in a manner I have yet to encounter.
Talking of Slights, Bookish Ardour tells us:
Sometimes I finish reading a book and I swear it’s like I’m shell shocked. I’m dazed, I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t really want to listen to anyone. I feel like I’m stuck in some sort of limbo that only happens after certain stories. The thing is, it’s not always the story that leaves me shell shocked, but that the story is over…
The story actually deals with a lot of death, and hints at some pretty obscene and horrific acts, and yet in all that darkness I found quite a sense of humour. I don’t usually laugh when I’m reading. I’ll smile, maybe, but not laugh and I did with this one. I think the character Stevie is great and hilarious even though she is so crude. I even had to write down some of the lines because they entertained me so much.
Over at Fantasy Book Critic Ian Whates’ fabulous fantastical adventure (and brilliant debut) City of Dreams and Nightmare is reviewed:
“City of Dreams & Nightmare” grabs you pretty much from the first page and then you really do not want to put it down since it just twists and turns and the threads following the main characters above are all deftly handled with very smooth jumps and several crucial interludes following the “true movers and shakers” of the novel…
Highly recommended as a strong A and a fun, page turning sff adventure that will enchant all fans of such.
Falcata Times has just reviewed Lavie Tidhar’s The Bookman:
Angry Robot is fast building a reputation for bringing new talent alongside the less explored area’s of fiction to the fore. With this offering, they not only give the reader a new area to explore but a unique and novel storyteller to the masses…
Not only an interesting read but also one that leads the reader to ask more questions than is answered within the text supplied… A promising start and I hope that the follow-ups are just as interesting.
