![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51peu56%2BsJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLet\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived at the Geek Compound. <\/p>\n
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Embassytown<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n China Mi\u00e9ville doesn\u2019t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer\u2014and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field\u2014with Embassytown<\/span>, Mi\u00e9ville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war.<\/p>\n In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.<\/p>\n Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.<\/p>\n When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties\u2014to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.<\/p>\n \n Moon Over Soho<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n BODY AND SOUL<\/p>\n The song. That\u2019s what London constable and sorcerer\u2019s apprentice Peter Grant first notices when he examines the corpse of Cyrus Wilkins, part-time jazz drummer and full-time accountant, who dropped dead of a heart attack while playing a gig at Soho\u2019s 606 Club. The notes of the old jazz standard are rising from the body\u2014a sure sign that something about the man\u2019s death was not at all natural but instead supernatural.<\/p>\n Body and soul\u2014they\u2019re also what Peter will risk as he investigates a pattern of similar deaths in and around Soho. With the help of his superior officer, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, and the assistance of beautiful jazz aficionado Simone Fitzwilliam, Peter will uncover a deadly magical menace\u2014one that leads right to his own doorstep and to the squandered promise of a young jazz musician: a talented trumpet player named Richard \u201cLord\u201d Grant\u2014otherwise known as Peter\u2019s dear old dad.<\/p>\n \n The War That Came Early: The Big Switch<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n In this extraordinary World War II alternate history, master storyteller Harry Turtledove begins with a big switch: what if Neville Chamberlain, instead of appeasing Hitler, had stood up to him in 1938? Enraged, Hitler reacts by lashing out at the West, promising his soldiers that they will reach Paris by the new year. They don\u2019t. Three years later, his genocidal apparatus not fully in place, Hitler has barely survived a coup, while Jews cling to survival. But England and France wonder whether the war is still worthwhile.<\/p>\n Weaving together a cast of characters that ranges from a brawling American fighter in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain to a woman who has seen Hitler\u2019s evil face-to-face, Harry Turtledove takes us into a world shaping up very differently in 1941. The Germans and their Polish allies have slammed into the gut of the Soviet Union in the west, while Japan pummels away in the east. In trench warfare in France, French and Czech fighters are outmanned but not outfought by their Nazi enemy. Then the stalemate is shattered. In England, Winston Churchill dies in an apparent accident, and the gray men who walk behind his funeral cortege wonder who their real enemy is. The USSR, fighting for its life, makes peace with Japan\u2014and Japan\u2019s war with America is about to begin.<\/p>\n A sweeping saga of human passions, foolishness, and courage, of families and lovers and soldiers by choice and by chance, The Big Switch<\/span> is a provocative, gripping, and utterly convincing work of alternate history at its best. For history buffs and fans of big, blood-and-guts fiction, Harry Turtledove delivers a panoramic clash of ideals as powerful as armies themselves.<\/p>\n Books received 5\/7\/11 Del Rey edition<\/a> was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived at the Geek Compound. Embassytown by China Mi\u00e9ville Cover by David Stevenson Promo copy: China Mi\u00e9ville doesn\u2019t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer\u2014and in … Continue reading
\nby China Mi\u00e9ville
\nCover by David Stevenson<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/511aAZwT9kL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg\"){kind=icon}
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\nby Ben Aaronovitch
\nCover by Wes Youssi<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/61fq9ZqhN3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
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\nby Harry Turtledove<\/span><\/p>\n