Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
Dead Like Me: Life After Death
Promo copy:
When George and her colleagues get a new boss whose focus is on moving souls quickly and enjoying life without consequences, the team begins to break the strict reaper rules. While her friends fall victim to their desires for money, success, and fame, George breaks another rule by revealing her true identity to her living family. As the reapers struggle with their roles on Earth, they each find that death can be just as complicated as life. Through its strong storyline, Dead Like Me delves into the intricate mythology and dark comedy created by the TV series and appeals to the show’s legions of fans as well as those new to the world of the reapers.
I first heard about this movie nearly three years ago. Glad it’s finally available!
Blood of Ambrose by James Enge
Promo copy:
Behind the King’s life stands the menacing Protector, and beyond him lies the Protector’s Shadow…
Centuries after the death of Uthar the Great, the throne of the Ontilian Empire lies vacant. The late Emperor’s brother-in-law and murderer, Lord Urdhven, appoints himself Protector to his nephew, young King Lathmar VII and sets out to kill anyone who stands between himself and mastery of the Empire, including (if he can manage it) the King himself and his ancient but still formidable ancestress, Ambrosia Viviana.
When Ambrosia is accused of witchcraft and put to trial by combat, she is forced to play her trump card and call on her brother, Morlock Ambrosius–stateless person, master of all magical makers, deadly swordsman, and hopeless drunk.
As ministers of the king, they carry on the battle, magical and mundane, against the Protector and his shadowy patron. But all their struggles will be wasted unless the young king finds the strength to rule in his own right and his own name.
Private Midnight by Kris Saknussemm
Promo copy:
By the author of Zanesville, a seductive story of grit, gunplay, vampirism, and a bit of bondage.
Detective Birch Ritter is a man on the edge-of himself. His past is filled with secrets, shadows, guilt, and ghosts. Then a dubious police buddy he hasn’t seen in a year introduces him to a mysterious woman who says her business is shadows. What she knows about what lies between the darkness and the light inside men is more than Ritter may want to find out, and much more than he can resist learning. It’s said that to try to forget is to try to conceal, and concealing evidence is a crime. But maybe revelation is another kind of crime-against nature.
Kris Saknussemm, the widely acclaimed author of the sci-fi smash Zanesville, now delves into another genre, and another world-a world where even the sunlight is shadowy and where deviancy is the norm. Private Midnight is a journey into the seedy, sexy, underbelly of life-crime noir for a new generation.
Two of the six Private Midnight back jacket quotes, appearing under the heading of CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Zanesville, are from me, though the quotes credit their original publications.
"Kris Saknussemm has created the most original novel of the year." — Austin Chronicle
"The most original and daring novel of the year… a wildly imaginative near-future satire." — RevolutionSF