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<\/p>\nLet\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. <\/p>\n
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Kraken<\/span><\/a> by China Mi\u00e9ville<\/span><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n With this outrageous new novel, China Mi\u00e9ville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this\u2014or any other\u2014year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about\u2014or prevent\u2014the End of All Things.<\/p>\n In the Darwin Centre at London\u2019s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre\u2019s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux\u2014better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy\u2019s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.<\/p>\n As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens\u2014human and otherwise\u2014are adept in magic and murder.<\/p>\n There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity\u2014and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC\u2014the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit\u2014a branch of London\u2019s finest that fights sorcery <\/p>\n with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city\u2019s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London\u2019s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying\u2014yet darkly charismatic\u2014demonic duo.<\/p>\n All of them\u2014and others\u2014are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.<\/p>\n \n Transformers: Exodus: The Official History of the War for Cybertron<\/span><\/a> by Alex Irvine<\/span><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n For twenty-five years the colossal battle between Megatron and Optimus Prime has captivated Transformers fans around the world. Yet the full story of the conflict between the two most famous Transformers\u2014everything that happened before Optimus and Megatron arrived on planet Earth\u2014has always been a mystery . . . until now. Here, for the first time told in its entirety, is the thrilling saga of Optimus and Megatron before they were enemies, before they even knew each other. <\/p>\n \u201cFreedom is every Cybertronian\u2019s right!\u201d After Megatron utters these immortal words, the caste-bound planet of Cybertron is rocked to its foundations. Megatron, an undefeated gladiator thug, gives voice to the unspoken longings of the oppressed masses\u2014and opens the mind of an insignificant data clerk to possibilities previously unthinkable. What happens between Orion Pax and Megatron forever changes the destiny of all Transformers. This gripping, action-packed novel reveals all the loyalties and treacheries, trust and betrayals, deadly violence and shining ideals, as well as the pivotal roles played by other characters, including Starscream, Sentinel Prime, Omega Supreme, and one of the thirteen original Primes, the last link to Cybertron\u2019s glorious Golden Age.<\/p>\n Discover how meek disciple Orion Pax becomes the fearless leader Optimus Prime; follow the tantalizing clues about the lost Matrix of Leadership and the lore surrounding it; find out why the two allies fighting a corrupt regime suddenly turn on each other, and what triggers their epic war. Transformers: Exodus<\/span> provides everything fans ever wanted to know about one of the fiercest rivalries of all time.<\/p>\n \n Flinx Transcendent<\/span><\/a> by Alan Dean Foster<\/span><\/p>\n Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n Flinx is the only one with any chance of stopping the evil colossus barreling in to destroy the Humanx Commonwealth (and everything else in the Milky Way). His efforts take him to the land of his mortal enemies, the bloodthirsty AAnn, where chances are excellent that Flinx may be executed. And he must also seek out an ancient sentient weapons platform wandering around the galaxy and then communicate with it, a powwow that could very well fry his brain. Then there are the oblivion-craving assassins determined to stop Flinx before he can prevent total annihilation. With a future that rosy, it\u2019s no surprise that Flinx is flirting with disaster. Still, he\u2019s no quitter. Now he\u2019s going to need every ounce of his know-how, because he\u2019s venturing to places where no one\u2019s ever been, to do what no one\u2019s ever done, and where his deadliest enemy is so close it\u2019s invisible.<\/p>\n \n The War That Came Early: Hitler’s War<\/span><\/a> by Harry Turtledove<\/span><\/p>\n A stroke of the pen and history is changed. In 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, determined to avoid war, signed the Munich Accord, ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. But the following spring, Hitler snatched the rest of that country, and England, after a fatal act of appeasement, was fighting a war for which it was not prepared. Now, in this thrilling alternate history, another scenario is played out: What if Chamberlain had not signed the accord? <\/p>\n In this action-packed chronicle of the war that might have been, Harry Turtledove uses dozens of points of view to tell the story: from American marines serving in Japanese-occupied China and ragtag volunteers fighting in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain to an American woman desperately trying to escape Nazi-occupied territory\u2014and witnessing the war from within the belly of the beast. A tale of powerful leaders and ordinary people, at once brilliantly imaginative and hugely entertaining, Hitler\u2019s War<\/span> captures the beginning of a very different World War II\u2014with a very different fate for our world today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. Kraken by China Mi\u00e9ville Promo copy: With this outrageous new novel, China Mi\u00e9ville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51yetfZeH9L._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
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\nLong before becoming the honorable Optimus Prime, Orion Pax is a mere office underling, an unlikely candidate to answer an outlaw\u2019s call to revolution. But Orion is determined to meet this defiant enemy of all that Cybertron stands for, no matter what he has to do, or how many laws he has to break.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51tRVo8XBrL._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
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