Bond, Lu, Condie, Doerr and Holmberg: a pack of interesting books

Il titolo, lo so, è un po’ criptico e così com’è non dice molto…ma risolviamo presto il mistero. Questo post è un sunto delle scoperte di questa settimana (e anche di un po’ prima, ok) che ritengo interessanti e vi voglio far conoscere.
Alcune sono novità fresche fresche del mercato americano, altre “vecchie” di qualche mese ma magari non ne avevate ancora sentito parlare. Sfortunatamente per i non anglofoni, sono tutti libri in inglese che ancora non sono stati pubblicati in Italia…credo, correggetemi se sbaglio (per color che non leggono i inglese buone notizie anche per voi nei prossimi giorni). 😉
Sono tutti interessanti a partire dalla cover fino alla trama, seguitemi in questa breve carrellata di copertine prima di passare alla scheda di ognuno…

Atlanta Ally Condie The Young Elites Marie Lu Girl on a Wire Gwenda Bond Paper Magician Charlie Holmberg All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr
Sono un mix eterogeneo di generi. Dal fantasy young adult (Atlantia e The Young Elites), al magico e circense per adulti (Girl on a Wire e The Paper Magician) ad un romanzo che, dalle premesse, sembra un crogiolo di tante cose, tutte bellissime (All The Light We Cannot See). Tutti e 5 i romanzi, comunque, sono accomunati da un pizzico di mistero e magia che li rende speciali e li ha fatti risaltare al mio sguardo. Partiamo per ordine…
Ally Condie, dopo la conclusione della precedente trilogia young adult dispopica, torna negli store con questa nuova ed originale serie sempre indirizzata ad un pubblico giovane. Per chi non se la ricordasse Ally Condie è l’autrice della serie Matched, di cui trovate il mio commento al primo volume qui.

Atlanta Ally Condie
Editore Dutton Juvenile (Penguin)
ISBN 9780525426448 harcover
Pagine 368
Prezzo $ 18.99 (9.49 on amazon) hardcover
$ 10.99 (7.73 on amazon) ebook
Uscita 28 ottobre 2014
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Atlantia
Ally Condie

Book 1

Can you hear Atlantia breathing?

For as long as she can remember, Rio has dreamt of the sand and sky Above—of life beyond her underwater city of Atlantia. But in a single moment, all her plans for the future are thwarted when her twin sister, Bay, makes an unexpected decision, stranding Rio Below. Alone, ripped away from the last person who knew Rio’s true self—and the powerful siren voice she has long hidden—she has nothing left to lose.

Guided by a dangerous and unlikely mentor, Rio formulates a plan that leads to increasingly treacherous questions about her mother’s death, her own destiny, and the complex system constructed to govern the divide between land and sea. Her life and her city depend on Rio to listen to the voices of the past and to speak long-hidden truths.

Anche Marie Lu riparte con una nuova avventura dopo aver concluso una serie di genere dispotico YA che ha ottenuto molto successo negli States. Qui in Italia è stata pubblicata da DeAgostini ma, se devo essere sincera, non mi ci sono mai soffermata particolarmente sull’idea di leggerli…anche se i commenti di colleghi blogger non sono per niente scoraggianti, anzi. Comunque anche questo romanzo ha elementi molto interessanti e fuori dagli schemi che promettono bene.

The Young Elites Marie Lu
Editore Putnam Books
ISBN 9780399167836 harcover
Pagine 336
Prezzo € 18.99 harcover (11.49 on amazon)
€ 10.99 ebook
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The Young Elites
Marie Lu

The Young Elites #1

I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside.

Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family’s good name and standing in the way of their fortune. But some of the fever’s survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars—they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites.

Teren Santoro works for the king. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, it is his job to seek out the Young Elites, to destroy them before they destroy the nation. He believes the Young Elites to be dangerous and vengeful, but it’s Teren who may possess the darkest secret of all.

Enzo Valenciano is a member of the Dagger Society. This secret sect of Young Elites seeks out others like them before the Inquisition Axis can. But when the Daggers find Adelina, they discover someone with powers like they’ve never seen.

Adelina wants to believe Enzo is on her side, and that Teren is the true enemy. But the lives of these three will collide in unexpected ways, as each fights a very different and personal battle. But of one thing they are all certain: Adelina has abilities that shouldn’t belong in this world. A vengeful blackness in her heart. And a desire to destroy all who dare to cross her.

It is my turn to use. My turn to hurt.

I prossimi due sono romanzi dagli elementi magici e, per quanto riguarda Girl on a Wire, molto intrigante essendoci l’ambiente circense di mezzo.

Girl on a Wire Gwenda Bond
Editore Skyscape
ISBN 9781477847824
Pagine  386
Prezzo $ 16.00 (10.19 on amazon) hardcover
$  9.99 (5.14 on amazon) ebook
Uscita 17 ottobre 2014
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Girl on a Wire
Glenda Bond

A ballerina, twirling on a wire high above the crowd. Horses, prancing like salsa dancers. Trapeze artists, flying like somersaulting falcons. And magic crackling through the air. Welcome to the Cirque American!

Sixteen-year-old Jules Maroni’s dream is to follow in her father’s footsteps as a high-wire walker. When her family is offered a prestigious role in the new Cirque American, it seems that Jules and the Amazing Maronis will finally get the spotlight they deserve. But the presence of the Flying Garcias may derail her plans. For decades, the two rival families have avoided each other as sworn enemies.

Jules ignores the drama and focuses on the wire, skyrocketing to fame as the girl in a red tutu who dances across the wire at death-defying heights. But when she discovers a peacock feather—an infamous object of bad luck—planted on her costume, Jules nearly loses her footing. She has no choice but to seek help from the unlikeliest of people: Remy Garcia, son of the Garcia clan matriarch and the best trapeze artist in the Cirque.

As more mysterious talismans believed to possess unlucky magic appear, Jules and Remy unite to find the culprit. And if they don’t figure out what’s going on soon, Jules may be the first Maroni to do the unthinkable: fall.

Paper Magician Charlie Holmberg
Rating: ★★★½☆
Editore 47North
ISBN 9781477823835 paperback
Pagine 224
Prezzo $ 10.99 (on amazon) paperback
$ 5.14 (on amazon) ebook
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Paper Magician
Charlie N. Holmberg

The Paper Magician Trilogy #1

Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

Quest’ultimo romanzo non è classificabile a mio parere, è veramente ricco di tante cose…e va preso così com’è e letto. Punto. E’ anche il vincitore del Goodreads Choice Award 2014 nella categoria BEST HISTORICAL FICTION.

All the Light We Cannot See  by Anthony Doerr
Editore Scribner
ISBN 9781476746586
Pagine 531
Prezzo $ 27.00 hardcover (16.00 on amazon)
$ 12.55 (on amazon) ebook
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All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.choice-logo-goodreads

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr’s gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

PATRICIA BRIGGS: Shifting Shadows – Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

Tornando a parlare di Patricia Briggs, fra poco più di un mese potremo trovare in libreria (chiaramente solo in inglese dato che in Italia è stata interrotta) questa raccolta di racconti brevi (alcuni nuovi altri vecchi, tra cui l’inizio della storia tra Charles e Anna) collegati al mondo di Mercy Thompson, serie principale della Briggs (di cui Alpha and Omega è uno spin-off).

Speaking again of Patricia Briggs, in just over a month we will find at the bookshops this new collection of short stories, connected to the world of Mercy Thompson… some of them new and some of them old. Hovewer, the real treat for me is that, finally, we will have the novel of the beginnings of Charles and Anna in an all Mercyverse anthology. 😉 (ok, and the beautiful, incredible and fantasmagorical cover painted by the faboulous Dan Dos Santos, yay!)

 Shifting Shadows: stories from the world of Mercy Thompson by Patricia Briggs
Editore Penguin, ACE
ISBN 9780425265000 hardcover
Pagine 464
Prezzo $ 26.95 hardcover
$ 13.00 kindle ebook ?
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Mercy Thompson’s world just got a whole lot bigger…

A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends…

Previously Published Stories

  • Alpha and Omega The first novella about Anna and Charles, which led to a whole spin-off series.
  • Gray An vampire buys the home where she lived with her husband, which has fallen into disrespair. She begins remodeling the place, only to find that old and beloved ghosts still linger.
  • Fairy Gifts Mining towns are rough and human life is cheap. In the turn-of-the-century Butte Montana, a young man, turned to a vampire, struggles with his nature and eventually finds a measure of redemption in an unlikely place.
  • Seeing Eye White witches are rare, and seldom as powerful as their morally-compromised counterparts. In this story, a blind witch teams up with a werewolf on a mission.
  • The Star of David Being a werewolf can wreck havoc on family relations. This is a story of how murder and deception can bring a family together…
  • In Red, with Pearls Warren is a werewolf, and a private detective. This is a noir-flavored story about some truly terrible neighbors and why you should always treat a werewolf nicely.

New Stories

  • Silver This is probably the only depressing story I’ve ever written, and it was a hard story to write. This covers how Bran and Samuel were first made into werewolves, and how Samuel first fell in love with the Ariana. Of course, as we learned in Silver Borne, things have to take a tragic turn.
  • Outtake One After the tragedy of Silver, I had to remind myself that with long life comes the opportunity to overcome the past, and forge a better future. Samuel and Ariana have another chance at love, and they’re determined to make it work. This is an outtake from Silver Borne
  • Roses in Winter A young girl survives a werewolf attack, and is transformed into a werewolf. When she wasn’t able to control the wolf, she was moved to Bran’s pack. The law is absolute: if a werewolf cannot learn to control the wolf, they must be destroyed for the safety of all. With hope fading, Asil intervenes.
  • Redemption Ben’s got a quick temper, and a quicker tongue. He’s also made a bet that he can stop swearing for a week, and it just might change his life.
  • Hollow A wealthy recluse is haunted by a terrible ghost, and asks Mercy for help. What could possibly go wrong?
  • Outtake Two A bit that I wrote in Adam’s viewpoint for Night Broken.

Cover Reveal: DEATH HEAT by Patricia Briggs – Alpha and Omega #4

Ok, I usually don’t do cover reveal but this book is really special for me so, here we go…

THE NEW CHARLES AND ANNA NOVEL

Praised as “the perfect blend of action, romance, suspense and paranormal,”* the Alpha and Omega novels transport readers into the realm of the werewolf, where Charles Cornick and Anna Latham embody opposite sides of the shifter personality. Now, a pleasure trip drops the couple into the middle of some bad supernatural business…

Dead Heat (Alpha and Omega #4) Patricia Briggs
Editore Penguin, ACE
ISBN 9780425256756 hardcover
Pagine 304
Prezzo $ 26.95 hardcover
$ 13.00 kindle ebook ?
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For once, mated werewolves Charles and Anna are not traveling because of Charles’s role as his father’s enforcer. This time, their trip to Arizona is purely personal, as Charles plans to buy Anna a horse for her birthday. Or at least it starts out that way…
Charles and Anna soon discover that a dangerous Fae being is on the loose, replacing human children with simulacrums. The Fae’s cold war with humanity is about to heat up—and Charles and Anna are in the cross fire.

 

The previous books in the Alpha and Omega series:
Cry Wolf (Alpha and Omega 1) patricia Briggs Hunting Ground (Alpha and Omega #2) Patricia Briggs Fair Game (Alpha and Omega #3) Patricia Briggs

LAURELL K. HAMILTON: A Shiver of Light – Meredith Gentry #9

Ebbene si, dopo anni di attesa finalmente è uscito in America il 9° volume di una delle serie che più ho amato. Una delle primissime arrivate in Italia del genere paranormal/romance/fantasy.
Con A Shiver of Light ritorniamo nel fatato mondo di Merry Gentry, dove la nostra protagonista, incinta degli eredi della Corte Unseelie, è in attesa assieme ai loro padri (si, vi ricodro che sono multipli) della loro nascita.
Come potete vedere non soo riuscita a resistere e l’ho letto pochi giorni dopo l’uscita.
Bene.
Non so cosa dire, seriamente.
Notizie poco positive filtravano già da anni relativamente all’altra serie della Hamilton, quella della negromante Anita Blake, che ormai è diventata un crogiolo dove la trama è  inesistente e l’unica cosa di cui parlano i romanzi sono le scene erotiche con gli ormai infiniti amanti di Anita.
Bene, nonostante la serie di Merry sia sempre stata improntata su di un ampio eroticismo perchè la cultura Faerie creata dall’autrice lo pretendeva (e quindi c’era un motivo e un senso per i romanzi) non era comunque il punto principale dato poi che ogni storia aveva una bella trama, alle volte più investigativa (essendo Merry questo, un’invesigatrice), altre più improntata sul mondo Faerie e i suoi cambiamenti.
Quest’ultimo romanzo non ha niente di tutto ciò. E’ vuoto davvero.
La storia si regge in piedi solo perchè chi la legge ha letto i romanzi precedenti e vuole sapere cosa stà succedendo ai personaggi che ha imparato ad amare. Insomma, alla fine si  prosegue solamente perchè si stà ricordando il passato.
Ma seriamente, non ho mai avuto la sfortuna di leggere qualcosa di tanto inutile e che oltretutto rovina con scene/azioni gratuite una storia che, a questo punto, avrebbe avuto un perfetto fine con il libro precedente e una breve scena in più a concluderlo.

A Shiver of Light Laurell K. Hamilton
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Editore Penguin – Berkley
ISBN 9780425255667
Pagine 384
Prezzo $ 17.80 hardcover
$ 11.99 ebook
Uscita 3 giugno 2014
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A Shiver of Light
Laurell K. Hamilton

Meredith Gentry #9

I am Princess Meredith NicEssus. Legal name Meredith Gentry, because “Princess” looks so pretentious on a driver’s license. I was the first faerie princess born on American soil, but I wouldn’t be the only one for much longer…

Merry Gentry, ex–private detective, now full-time princess, knew she was descended from fertility goddesses, but when she learned she was about to have triplets, she began to understand what that might mean. Infertility has plagued the high ranks of faerie for centuries. Now nobles of both courts of faerie are coming to court Merry and her men, at their home in exile in the Western Lands of Los Angeles, because they will do anything to have babies of their own.

Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, is a more dangerous problem. He tried to seduce Merry and, failing that, raped her. He’s using the human courts to sue for visitation rights, claiming that one of the babies is his. And though Merry knows she was already pregnant when he took her, she can’t prove it.

To save herself and her babies from Taranis she will use the most dangerous powers in all of faerie: a god of death, a warrior known as the Darkness, the Killing Frost, and a king of nightmares. They are her lovers, and her dearest loves, and they will face down the might of the high courts of faerie—while trying to keep the war from spreading to innocent humans in Los Angeles, who are in danger of becoming collateral damage.

I precedenti romanzi pubblicati in Italia da NORD: