Reviewing the Mail: Week of 5/19

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to receive more free books in the mail than his fellows and has assumed among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the nature and type of those books that he hath received.

And who am I to deny that?

So, here, as I've done every Monday for several years, is an annotated list of the books that came into my mailbox last week -- books I have not yet read, I must add, so my opinions on them may be even more suspect than usual.

This week's four books divide neatly into two groups: books I've seen before (and haven't read), and books I'm seeing for the first time (and really haven't read). The first group comprises:

• Chris Roberson's new novel Further: Beyond the Threshold, coming as a trade paperback from Amazon's new SF imprint 47North on May 22nd, which I looked at in my 4/28 post
• and Paul Melko's novel The Broken Universe (sequel to The Walls of the Universe), coming as a Tor hardcover on June 5th, which I looked at in my 3/31 post

First of the books I'm seeing for the first time is L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Princeps, the sequel to Scholar in Modesitt's larger "Imager Portfolio" series (I believe the first three books were a trilogy, and these newer two are prequels. Princeps sees the hero of Scholar with new responsibilities (and the problems that go along with them), and hits stores as a To hardcover on May 22nd.

And last this time is Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's second textbook about creating comics, Mastering Comics, the follow-up to their acclaimed Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. This is from First Second, and appears to be available right now -- so, if any of you want to make comics, you'll want this book.