3/31 is a particularly great--and particularly diverse--pub date for us. Three wildly different books, all of which we love for different reasons. Please give a warm welcome to these new books, available at bookstores and online! Also, New Yorkers, there's still room at Ludmila Ulitskaya's event at Columbia on Tuesday--the rest are sold out. Learn more here!
And without further ado, hello to...
DANIEL STEIN, INTERPRETER Ludmila Ulitskaya
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Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew, miraculously survives the Holocaust by working in the Gestapo as a translator. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, becomes a priest, enters the Order of Barefoot Carmelites and emigrates to Israel. Despite this seeming impossibility, the life and destiny of Daniel Stein are not an invention, the character is based on the life of Oswald Rufeisen, the real Brother Daniel, a Carmelite monk.
STREET KNOWLEDGE King Adz
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An encyclopedia of street culture for those who love Banksy or Irvine Welsh and want to know about the cutting-edge talents, past and present who have shaped urban cool.
THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR: THE ASPECT-EMPEROR, BOOK TWO R. Scott Bakker
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Widely praised by reviewers and a growing body of fans, R. Scott Bakker has already established his reputation as one of the few unique new talents in the fantasy genre. Now comes the second book of the Aspect-Emperor series. As Anasûrimbor Kellhus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the wastes of the Ancient North, Esmenet finds herself at war with not only the Gods, but her own family as well.
This week, the second book of R. Scott Bakker's Aspect-Emperor series, THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR, hits shelves nationwide. Thanks to Publishers Weekly and Library Journal for these sneak peeks!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The White-Luck Warrior
R. Scott Bakker. Overlook, $25.95 (608p)
ISBN 978-1-59020-464-1
Even fans of 2009's The Judging Eye who haven't reread it recently may be confused by the dense and complex infodump that opens this ponderous sequel. Those who persevere will be richly rewarded as the plot and characters are slowly refined. Mimara, stepdaughter of the Aspect-Emperor, outgrows revenge in favor of love; Achamian, former friend of (and cuckolded by) the emperor, undertakes a dangerous quest for truth; Cleric is a nonman whose drive to feel and remember twists attachment into terrible forms; Sorweel must decide whether to believe in the Aspect-Emperor's quest or kill him for the gods. The reader cannot tell heroes from villains, and neither can the heroes and villains themselves; all are sympathetic and horrific at once. A cliffhanger ending builds suspense for the final volume.
LIBRARY JOURNAL
Bakker, R. Scott. The White Luck Warrior.
Overlook (The Aspect-Emperor, Bk. 2). c.608p.
ISBN 9781590204641. $25.95. FANTASY
Anasûrimbor Kelhus, the Aspect-Emperor, leads the Great Ordeal, an army of troops and hostage-kings, into the unknown wastes of the Ancient North while at home his queen, Esmenet, struggles with internal strife. An expedition to the ruins of Sauglish, in search of a lost city, brings Esmenet’s daughter, Mimara, into possession of The Judging Eye, which allows her to see the good or evil in a person. Finally, the White Luck Warrior appears, a figure who is assassin as well as savior. The second volume in Bakker’s series (The Judging Eye) brings more complications to an already complex tale of ambition, prophecy, love, and betrayal. VERDICT The author of “The Prince of Nothing” series (The Darkness That Comes Before; The Warrior-Prophet; The Thousandfold Thought) understands the art of crafting fantasy epics spiced with exotic trappings and should attract fans of epic fantasy.
R. Scott Bakker is profiled in SciFi Wire: "Fantasy author R. Scott Bakker says that his latest novel, The Judging Eye, is epic fantasy, but that it avoids many of the traps of the genre. "Long epic series notoriously suffer from the 'bushing effect,' where writers continue to multiply viewpoint characters and so transform initially clear narrative arcs into thickets of parallel action," Bakker said in an interview. At a certain point, Bakker realized that he had fallen into the same trap. "Even though my readers only spend a few hours with my main characters, I spend thousands of hours with them, which makes the temptation to 'freshen things up' with new viewpoints well nigh irresistible," he said. "Luckily I caught myself, scrapped everything and started afresh, this time faithfully sticking to my original cast."
The Judging Eye is part of an epic fantasy sequence, which began with
The Prince of Nothing. It tells the story of Kellhus, who can manipulate men the way men can manipulate children, and his brutal and troubling rise to mastery over the Three Seas—all in the name of saving the world. "In
The Judging Eye, his power is complete, and he at last embarks on his great military expedition to prevent the destruction of the world," Bakker said. The central protagonist is a broken-down sorcerer named Achamian, who used to be Kellhus' tutor but has since become his sworn enemy. "Achamian has spent years sifting through his dreams of the First Apocalypse, looking for clues to Kellhus' origins," Bakker said. "In
The Judging Eye he enlists a company of Scalpers, half-mad men who make their living hunting Sranc in the northern wilds, to help him find the secret birthplace of the Aspect-Emperor."
