I signed up a couple of weeks ago for Tor’s “Watch the Skies” promotion, where they send you a dozen of their books, once a week, in PDF format. I’m always on the look for more books to put on my Sony Reader, but PDF files are usually formatted to a much larger page than on the Reader, and this was no exception — the text, even zoomed, was unreadable to these old eyes. It displays well on my faithful Linux box, Baphomet, in fact very well.
The first book is Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson.
I don’t often trust fantasy books that come with detailed maps. I don’t really care where your continents are, or what the street layout of your city is, or whether there are sufficient parks per square furlong. I guess it’s nice you went to all that trouble to draw it, it must have taken quite a long time, but unless your book is about young Penwise the plucky map-maker, I really don’t care. I’m never going to turn back to it trying to follow the main characters as they turn right at the corner of Potter’s Way and the Boulevard of Tears and head south to the Executioner’s Plaza.
Just tell me. It’ll be okay. Don’t need a map. Just cuz Tolkein did it doesn’t mean you have to.
What I am looking for in a book are words, sentences, paragraphs of startling ingenuity and creativity. Just bring me somewhere I’ve never been and I’ll be a fan forever.
Aside from the map, the book itself in its first dozen pages looks fun, reminds me of Asprin’s old Thieves World anthologies.
More news about that later. I am still finishing up China Mielville’s “Perdido Street Station”. I don’t know why that book is taking me so long to finish. It must be huge in real life. But there are still some sympathetic main characters who aren’t dead yet. I hope enough of them survive to kill off the slake moths. When last I left them, they were about to spring upon the brooding matriarch of the moths.
You can join this program by going to Tor’s website.
I didn’t realize that Brandon Sanderson is the writer tapped to complete the late Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” series, so if you’re unfamiliar with his work and want to know how he will fill the great master’s shoes, here’s a free chance to see for yourself.
Um…. I hate to break it to you Tipa but Perdido Street is actually the most up-beat of the New Crobuzan novels. Mieville is a terrific writer but he obviously has issues 🙂
Thanks for the tip on this- I’ve actually almost quit reading new books lately except for the authors I know and love (like Pratchett) because I am not dropping $8 a pop to be disappointed.
More and more authors are finding that exposure of ANY sort is money in the bank, and so they throw some or even all of their stuff up on the Internet for free. And now that people know they will like an author, they BUY MORE BOOKS. It’s counter intuitive but it works.
You’re absolutely right. Books these days are to expensive to take chances with. It’s leading to the death of reading as a leisure time activity. A short-sighted eye to profits kills the bigger profits you might realize if people could read a book or two first.
So far I’ve gotten Old Man’s War by Scalzi (which I already owned), Spin by Wilson (which was mind-blowing) and something by Mercedes Lackey (whom I have no use for). So far I’m ecstatic just because of Spin.