Maya Culpa

Dragon Virus (Science Fiction)
Laura Anne Gilman
November 27, 2012      $4.99      ISBN:  978-1-61138-178-8


It began soon after the Millennium. Reports of newborns with strange malformations…. a widespread genetic mutation that the press quickly dubbed  the Dragon Virus. Scientists predicted that it was an evolutionary dead end; that the mutation would burn itself out quickly; that it was nothing to be worried about.

They were wrong.

Every racial type. Every continent. No known cause. Human-created, maybe. Or just God, throwing the dice. Infecting humanity, warping it. No known treatment. No idea where even to begin.

Everything was about to change.


Laura Anne Gilman is the author of the Cosa Nostradamus novels, including (most recently) Dragon Justice, and the Nebula Award-nominated Vineart War trilogy.  She is also the author of Practical Meerkat’ 52 Bits of Useful Info for the Young (and Old) Writer.

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The Impossible Cube by Steven Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, darn. Now I’m ready for the next one!

When I finished reading the first book in this series (The Doomsday Vault), I was already hot to have the sequel and nagged the author (known to denizens of Book View Cafe as “Igor”) on his Book View Cafe blog to hurry up and write it, already! This is what happens when a writer creates a story finale that ties up some things and cleverly leaves others for the next book.

Well, I just finished the impossible Cube, and it was worth the wait. I loooooove steampunk and this novel delivers. At times it reminded me of Tim Powers’ work in Anubis Gates, though perhaps without the metaphysics. There was adventure, romance, and the sense of a gradually unfolding bigger picture. What I especially love about the series is the way Steven has so carefully described and defined the nature of the clockwork plague that drives the plot. The very progression the disease takes—which the reader gets to watch in all its wonder and horror—creates a ticking time bomb that the characters are desperately working to defuse.

And then there are the characters. In our cynical age “virtue” has become a laughable concept, but Steven Harper’s characters are virtuous and noble. In fact, I’d even call his male protagonist, Gavin, sweet. And I do not mean that mockingly or sappily. The cool thing, to me, is that that sweetness is a key facet of Gavin’s manliness and heroism. And his female counterpart, the irrepressible Alice, is his equal in nobility. So thanks, good sir, for this marvelous antidote to anti-heroes.

The Impossible Cube is a grand adventure, but is it not a light read. Bad things happen to good people and there are terrible losses as well as unexpected gains. But this creates a problem for me. I had promised myself I would not nag Steven further about the series, and I’m pretty sure that’s a promise I’m going to have to break. So, “Igor”, get crackin’ on that third book.

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The email can bring such marvelous news. Yesterday morning it brought the news that Prime Books is publishing an anthology in which they wish to reprint my novelette, “Distance”, which was previously published in Analog Science Fiction. 

Why is there a picture of my literary hero, WP Kinsella (author of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the novel that became the blockbuster movie, Field of Dreams) attached to this article?

Well, if you didn’t read the story in Analog, you’ll have to buy the anthology—which will be entitled Future Games—and find out.

Sartor (Fantasy)
Sherwood Smith
August 14, 2012      $4.99      ISBN:  978-1-61138-192-4



In this sequel to The Spy Princess, Lilah, newly made a princess, teams up with Atan, the hidden princess of the oldest country in the world, Sartor. The girls set out to free Sartor from a century of enchantment. 

Capture, escape, a forest beyond time, ancient beings, civilizations secreted in caves, and a deadly enemy await the girls. Atan knows that if she survives, the challenges facing a fifteen-year-old queen are only beginning.

 
Sherwood Smith was a teacher for twenty years, working with children from second grade to high school, teaching history, literature, drama, and dance. She writes science fiction and fantasy for adults and young readers. Her most popular book, Crown Duel, is currently in its 16th printing. The ebook edition available here at Book View Café contains extra material not available in the print edition. Though she is known primarily as a fantasy writer, Sherwood and fellow BVC member Dave Trowbridge have collaborated on Exordium, a five-volume space opera.

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Cops drink coffee.

They don’t belong in Ellen Rosings’s Victorian tearoom. But when her opening day thank-you tea ends in the murder of the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust, the police invade her haven. Enter Detective Tony Aragon: attractive and unsympathetic, with a chip on his shoulder that goes beyond the murder investigation, and Ellen’s delicate bone china cup is full. Is the murderer one of her honored guests, or the ghost rumored to haunt the building? Will Ellen solve the mystery, or will the Wisteria Tearoom’s premiere turn out to be its—and Ellen’s—finale?


Patrice Greenwood was born and raised in New Mexico, and remembers when dusty dogs rolled in the Santa Fe plaza.  She loves afternoon tea, old buildings, gourmet tailgating at the opera, and solving puzzles.

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