Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
Shadow Valley by Steven Barnes
Promo copy:
In Great Sky Woman, “daringly epic in scope,” (Publishers Weekly), Steven Barnes’s Great Sky Woman unveiled the world of a prehistoric people in the shadow of modern-day Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, in Shadow Valley, the astounding sequel, we follow the Ibandi people’s odyssey through a land where everything has changed-a land from whose ashes will grow the roots of civilization and the enduring truths of love, family, forgiveness, and faith.
After the catastrophic eruption of Father Mountain, the Ibandi are divided, desperate, and afraid. Most have followed the only person in whom they still believe: young Sky Woman, who was on the great mountain when it exploded and who, along with Frog Hopping, returned to tell the tale. Nurtured by an elder whose searing visions have left her blind, Sky Woman nonetheless doubts her own visionary powers as she follows a path she can hardly discern-across savannah and parched plains-to find a valley of plenty for a people on the brink of collapse.
But in fact, Sky Woman and Frog were not the only survivors of the mountain’s explosion. Another man has emerged from the destruction, vengeance pulsing in his veins, to lead a separate group of Ibandi into a vicious and reckless act of war. Soon these two strands of survivors will meet, through chance, desperation, and sheer willpower. In a world in which every moment is lived on the edge between life and death, where animal and human predators can strike in an instant, where the gods themselves seem lost, and dreams entwine with reality, a people’s destiny rushes toward them. The Ibandi must make a last, violent stand against complete destruction.
In this hypnotic, thrilling, and beautiful novel, Steven Barnes explores relationships between friends and lovers, leaders and followers, strangers and allies. At once visceral and soaringly insightful, Shadow Valley is about who we are as human beings today as seen through the wondrous prism of our distant past.
Death’s Head: Day of the Damned by David Gunn
Promo copy:
The third installment in the Death’s Head military science fiction series, charting the adventures of Sven Tveskoeg and his band of the baddest military enforcers in the universe
David Gunn returns with his compulsively readable military science fiction series, continuing a story that has the scope of a Philip K. Dick novel-turned movie adaptation—think Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report, or A Scanner Darkly. Death’s Head: Day of the Damned is action-packed, with high-tech weaponry, violence, great set pieces, a compellingly conflicted hero, and a Star Wars-like evil empire.
Kings and Assassins by Lane Robins
Promo copy:
Controlled by an aristocracy whose depraved whims bow to neither law nor god, the kingdom of Antyre is under siege from the only man who can save it. He is Janus Ixion, the new Earl of Last, a man whose matchless fighting abilities and leadership strike terror in Antyre’s powerful noble houses.
For Janus is the illegitimate son who has returned from the brutal slums to reclaim his birthright, and will go to any lengths to become king and reverse his country’s decline. But with a conquering foreign prince sowing chaos throughout the kingdom, Janus must battle the terrifying power of Antyre’s forgotten god, one who has gifted Janus’s vengeful wife with mysterious and dangerous skills. As Antyre nears irrevocable collapse, Janus’s manipulations and all-consuming ambition will force him and his country to choose between the rule of resurgent gods, or a victor’s throne of ashes.