I’ve been woefully tardy on posting my new arrivals recently, so here’s the beginnings of my attempt to catch up.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Raising Steam 

by Terry Pratchett
Cover by Justin Gerard

Promo copy:

Steam is rising over Discworld, driven by Mister Simnel, the man with a flat cap and a sliding rule. He has produced a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and it’s soon drawing astonished crowds.

To the consternation of Ankh-Morpork’s formidable Patrician, Lord Vetinari, no one is in charge of this new invention. This needs to be rectified, and who better than the man he has already appointed master of the Post Office, the Mint, and the Royal Bank: Moist von Lipwig. Moist is not a man who enjoys hard work—unless it is dependent on words, which are not very heavy and don’t always need greasing. He does enjoy being alive, however, which makes a new job offer from Vetinari hard to refuse.

Moist will have to grapple with gallons of grease, goblins, a fat controller with a history of throwing employees down the stairs, and some very angry dwarfs if he’s going to stop it all from going off the rails…

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Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Blood and Iron
The Book of the Black Earth
Part One

by Jon Sprunk
Cover by Jason Chan

Promo Copy:

This action-heavy EPIC FANTASY SERIES OPENER is like a sword-and-sorcerySpartacus set in a richly-imagined world.

It starts with a shipwreck following a magical storm at sea. Horace, a soldier from the west, had joined the Great Crusade against the heathens of Akeshia after the deaths of his wife and son from plague. When he washes ashore, he finds himself at the mercy of the very people he was sent to kill, who speak a language and have a culture and customs he doesn’t even begin to understand.

Not long after, Horace is pressed into service as a house slave. But this doesn’t last. The Akeshians discover that Horace was a latent sorcerer, and he is catapulted from the chains of a slave to the halls of power in the queen’s court. Together with Jirom, an ex-mercenary and gladiator, and Alyra, a spy in the court, he will seek a path to free himself and the empire’s caste of slaves from a system where every man and woman must pay the price of blood or iron. Before the end, Horace will have paid dearly in both.

Continue reading →

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Empty Hearts
Stories by Mark Finn

Cover by Sharon Nash

 Promo copy:

A young woman alone in the big city, a mobster looking to make a fresh start, an old monster hunter with one last job to do, a magical grocery store where love grows like tomatoes on a vine… These are just some of the people and places you’ll meet in Empty Hearts, a new collection of stories by Mark Finn. Set in and around the magic-steeped city of San Cibola, the characters come to life in Finn’s deft prose with humor, warmth, and compassion. Even the unlikeable people have strange and fascinating stories that make them compelling. The stories in Empty Hearts all turn on the theme of love, passion, and desire. Whether it’s a misguided crook’s tributes to an underworld organization, a passionate academic’s pet theory, or a child’s love of Christmas, the characters and stories in Empty Hearts ultimately reflect ourselves with humor, horror, and a dash of magic.

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Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Crown of Renewal
Paladin’s Legacy

by Elizabeth Moon

Promo copy:

Acclaimed author Elizabeth Moon spins gripping, richly imagined epic fantasy novels that have earned comparisons to the work of such authors as Robin Hobb and Lois McMaster Bujold. In this volume, Moon’s brilliant masterwork reaches its triumphant conclusion.

The mysterious reappearance of magery throughout the land has been met with suspicion, fear, and violence. In the kingdom of Lyonya, Kieri, the half-elven, half-human king, struggles to balance the competing demands of his heritage while fighting a deadly threat to his rule: evil elves linked in some way to the rebirth of magic.

Meanwhile, in the neighboring kingdom of Tsaia, a set of ancient artifacts recovered by the former mercenary Dorrin Verrakai may hold the answer to the riddle of magery’s return. Thus Dorrin embarks on a dangerous quest to return these relics of a bygone age to their all-but-mythical place of origin. What she encounters there will change her in unimaginable ways—and spell doom or salvation for the entire world. Continue reading →