Kindle Spotlight: Novels on the Locus 2008 Recommended Reading List, Part 1

What was great in 2008 and possibly early 2009? This year’s Locus Online recommended reading list is up.

Here’s what’s available on the Kindle.

Science Fiction Novels

Matter by Iain M. Banks

Buy: Kindle Store

Available on February 10th, the eight novel in his acclaimed Culture series. If there’s a “high science-fiction”, then this is it.

Weaver by Stephen Baxter

Buy: Kindle Store

The last book in an alternate history Time’s Tapestry series that began with Emperor in Rome, continued with Conqueror (Dark Ages) and Navigator (late 1400s), and now ends in World War II.

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

Buy: Kindle Store

Telepathic communication between two groups eons upon eons apart, between three Seattlites now and two ultra-evolved beings near the heat-death of the Universe.

Incandescence by Greg Egan

Buy: WebscriptionsPaperback

Sample chapters available from Webscriptions.

Lovely beginning:

“Are you a child of DNA?”

Rakesh was affronted; if he’d considered this to be information that any stranger wandering by had a right to know, it would have been included in his précis.

Marsbound by Joe Haldeman

Buy: Kindle Store

You would never have guessed it from the cover, but this is a tale involving a strong young adult heroine who lives in a Mars space colony, and stumbles across real Martians. Nevertheless, this is not YA.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Buy: Kindle Store

A very big book. Good thing it’s available for the Kindle. Jo Walton has a spectacular post on Tor.com about the book, Anathem: what does it gain from not being our world?

Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross

Buy: Kindle Store

I reviewed it here. (Note: not a Tor.com review, and rather shorter.)

Rolling Thunder by John Varley

Buy: Kindle Store

Military science fiction, the sequel to Red Lightening, and it name drops Podkayne. (And yes, the character is a third-generation Martian. What is it about that name? Ah, Heinlein.)

Implied Spaces (Paperback) by Walter Jon Williams

Buy: WebscriptionsPaperback

Sample chapters at Webscriptions.

The following summary paragraph put this book on my radar:

Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmessa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.

Fantasy Novels

An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham

Buy: Kindle Store

The third book in the Long Price Quartet, preceeded by books 1 and 2, A Shadow in Summer and A Betrayal in Winter (the latter not yet on the Kindle).

The last in the series, The Price of Spring, is forthcoming later in 2009.

The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak

Buy: Kindle Store

Another haunting novel, split up into multiple stories set in Japan (“Realer Than You”, “The Suicide Club”, “If You Can Read This You’re Too Close”).

The Ghost in Love: A Novel by Jonathan Carroll

Buy: Kindle Store

Ben Gould slips and dies—or should have died. Due to a technical problem, Heaven has placed him and others on indefinite hold, as it were. Which leaves them free to explore the space between life and the afterlife. ((Yes, my own copy from late October.))

The Island of Eternal Love by Daina Chaviano

Buy: Kindle Store

The first English translation of one of Chaviano’s works, it’s supernatural historical fiction involving hauntings, imps, and clairvoyants. Winner of the Best Spanish Language Book prize in the 2007 Florida Book Awards.

The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford

Buy: Kindle Store

The children in a dysfunctional family cope by developing their own alternate reality through a miniature Botch Town, populated with models of people in the neighborhood.

Yes, that venture doesn’t turn out well for them, or at least, it turns out creepy spooky murder mystery.

Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost

Buy:
Kindle Store (Shadowbridge)
Kindle Store (Lord Tophet)

Shadowbridge and its sequel, Lord Tophet, focus on the adventures of Leodora, an orphaned 16-year-old with a talent for puppetry and storytelling, who walks through a world of mythical creatures and dark chaos energy.

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Buy: Kindle Store

Lavinia, Aeneas’ second wife, is barely mentioned in the Aeneid. Le Guin takes the tale of Lavinia and spins it out fully, as you would expect.

The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. Mckillip

Buy: Kindle Store

Romance, intrigue, and mystery in a mansion by the seaside where an unseen magical bell haunts the town.

The Engine’s Child by Holly Phillips

Buy: Kindle Store

According to Meredith Schwartz in Library Journal: “Her lush prose and dark fantasy cityscape will appeal to fans of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station and Sarah Monette’s Melusine, but her manipulative, scarred, sexual, unapologetic antiheroine recalls Elizabeth Bear or Melissa Scott.” ((From New on Kindle: Black Friday.))

The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel by Salman Rushdie

Buy: Kindle Store

Featured in Amazon’s Best of June 2008.

An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe

Buy: Kindle Store

I reviewed it here. (Note: not a Tor.com review.)

To be continued next time with First and Young Adult novels.