I checked out Rich’s recommend, and some of these are free as Kindle ebooks on Amazon. Just search for Drake’s author page and sort by price and kindle, and you will see them. He has some fantasy too. Just saying.
Stephen Hunter’s book Point of Impact is on sale right now for $1.99
This is the first of the Bobby Lee Swagger books and is a very good story. It has been loosely adapted for both a movie and a TV series but neither do the book justice. Its also a complete story on its own so don’t feel you need to dive into a book series by reading it.
OMG I loved the movie and have been hoping to get the book on sale. Thanks!
With Luc Besson’s Valerian coming to theaters, I thought I’d check and see how much the graphic novel collection was going for, as I’ve never read it.
Well, right now Amazon has the first volume of Valerian & Laureline on Kindle for free, if you want to sample it:
http://amzn.to/2qgT6sf
Gonna check it out and see if I want to order the Complete Collection (which is not complete, it’s Vols. 1 and 2) which comes out next week.
Ohhh, thanks Denny, I really wanna see the movie, so this is great.
Nice catch. I can usually do free.
Thanks DennyA. Free is good!
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for the heads up, somehow I also got a promotion from them (from this free order) that got me another free graphic novel. They had a selection of 100 Marvel books and I grabbed the first Punisher Max collection. So check your email if you grabbed Valerian you might be able to get another freebie.
I got that promo too, but when I chose a book it appeared to be charging me. Does it discount it at checkout?
It discounted at checkout for me. I also picked the Punisher anthology.
Hope this link works. Early Bird Books is one of the aggregating services like Bookbub. Today they have a bunch of Poul Anderson’s ebooks on sale at $1.99.
http://link.theportalist.com/view/58f3994ecbcf48a15e8b57495t348.9h5/b50cc288
Heads up Zelazny fans. Jack of Shadows is available for .99 at Amazon. For some reason you do not see a lot of Zelazny in ebook format so this is a pleasant surprise and hopefully the start of seeing more of his works republished.
Is that a good introduction to Zelazny, if I’ve never read him? One of his better works?
No and no. For a hardcore Zelazny fan, it’s worth a buck. If you want to get into him may I reccomend:
Lord of Light
Roadmarks
Dorways in the Sand
These are one off books that give you an idea of his chops. If you like them then start with the first book of the Amber series and go from there.
Its well regarded but not one of his very best. Its absolutely worth a buck. Its probably a good introduction to his tone and style and it is a stand alone novel. I believe its just over 200 pages so it also a quick read. Its tough for me to rate it because I am a major fan of Zelazny but I will say that its been years since I read and and I am looking forward to revisiting Shadow Jack. I do agree with RichVR on one thing, Lord of Light is the novel to discover Zelazny, soon followed by the Amber Series.
A thing about the Amber series. If you intend to read it, read it right through. It has all of the twists and turns of medieval court politics. If you did what I did while it was being written, and take some time off between books… well I had to go back and read the first books again to remember what was going on. Well worth the effort and one of my favorite series.
I liked Jack of Shadows but after reading the Amber Series, I read everything he wrote.
Yeah. That would be the ideal progression.
Oh and I’d strongly suggest Deus Irae. That would be Roger Zelazny and Philip K Dick collaborating. Good shit. Or maybe pee?
Dick began the book but realized he did not know enough about Christianity to finish it. He asked Ted White to collaborate on it with him, but after reviewing the manuscript White never got started. Zelazny discovered the manuscript in White’s home in early 1968, read it, then contacted Dick and agreed to work on it with him. Work proceeded sporadically over several years as each author forgot about it in turn (and Zelazny’s cat took the opportunity to urinate on the original manuscript). But they finished it quickly in the spring of 1975 when the publisher demanded the manuscript or repayment of the advance paid to Dick. The editor discovered Zelazny had sent photocopies of some pages and demanded the originals as per Doubleday’s policy; much to Zelazny’s chagrin, he had to send in the urine-stained pages and he always wondered what the editor made of them.[1][2][3]
If you don’t mind, I’m going to point in a different direction: for all of his excellent novels, such as you mentioned, Zelazny’s best work is his short stories. Find a copy of “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” and read it. Your only regret will be that you didn’t discover it years ago, so you could be rereading it now instead of for the first time.