Thanks all. I appreciate the info!
Recommended, especially at $2:
The problem I’ve had with the Mazalan series is that it jumps around in time a lot. They established a basic premise in the first book and then threw it all out the window at the start of the second. That made it really hard for me to get into book 2 because it seemed most of what I knew from book one was pointless, including the characters. Now Ive heard that this is only a temporary issue as things tie together but it does make it tough on the reader.
Worth sticking the discomfort out for that one at least. Deadhouse Gates is my favorite book, full stop, no qualifiers, and the “Chain of Dogs” storyline alone is worth the full cost of the book.
M.R. Carey (Mike Carey, slightly disguised)'s fantastic novel The Girl With All The Gifts is $3 on Amazon today:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CO7FLFG/#nav-subnav
It’s apparently part of a “books adapted to the screen” promotion so you can also get things like Orange is the New Black (the original book), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, etc.
Hope no one minds this, but it is an eBook and it is a bargain. My short short story “Slamming on the Brakes” is published in a new flash fiction anthology that is now available on all major eBook outlets. And best of all – its free!
Here’s the official blurb
From a creepypasta horror farm to a bullish love tale and from the bloody metal deck of the ESS Arclight to superhero octopus food trucks, you can transform your shortest stolen moments into utter delights with this diverse collection of 33 flash fiction stories.
Commuting to work? Grabbing a quick coffee? Each story tells a complete tale in but a few short minutes with the added promise of a lifelong introduction to new indie writers.
You never know, you might just find your next favorite author.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZIUFIW
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/bite-sized-stories
https://books.google.com/books?id=SV0ZDQAAQBAJ
Again, sorry for the pimpage, but its free!
I think free definitely qualifies as something that could be posted in a bargain thread.
Congrats for getting in the anthology!
Also, I’ve never heard of ‘Flash Fiction’ before. Interesting.
The latest free book for October is Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear.
I see what Tor is up to now. They want to get you hooked to these series! I see on Amazon that this book has generally positive reviews, and that it’s the first of a series.
Considering its seems like everything is a series these days, thats kind of unavoidable. But yeah, its clearly a marketing strat. You know kind of like a drug dealer. Give them a free taste, get them hooked and BAM, you own them!
Amazon does the same thing, fyi, though a lot of the time they only discount the book to 99 cents or 2.99 (but sometimes free).
I’ve gotten really used to reading book 1 of a series and not reading any more of them!
For series that bloat beyond 3 volumes that is frequently a good strategy!
cough George RRRRRRRR M… cough
Available on both Kindle and Nook, Lord Valentine’s Castle a true classic by Robert Silverberg, is on sale for $1.99
Wow, Robert Silverberg. I haven’t heard that name in forever. Throughout the 90s, I would go to the science fiction/fantasy section of every book store I ever came across. Mostly that was Waldenbooks, but in later 90s it was also Barnes & Noble and Borders. And one author who would be in every one of these sections was Robert Silverberg. I never knew anyone personally who had read any of his books. I don’t think he had ever won a Hugo or Nebula for any of his works, and I always wondered if it was worth taking the risk. My idea was that if I ever ran out of Hugo or Nebula award-winning novels, then I might one day try him out.
When the internet age got into full gear, I’d already forgotten about him until I read this post. So is he a science fiction author or fantasy or both? IIRC, when I read the back of his books, he sounded like he wrote books in both genres.
I guess the best way to describe Lord Valentines Castle is as a hybrid. It has a fantasy feel to it but takes place on a distant world with alien species. The book is actually the first in a trilogy but it stands quite well on its own.
Silverberg was quite versatile. He wrote sci-fi, historical fiction, horror and fantasy.
Up The Line was one of my favorite time travel novels back in my voracious high school scifi days. Right up there with The Door Into Summer.
Fellside, the latest novel from M.R. (Mike) Carey (the author of The Girl With All The Gifts, the amazing Lucifer series of comics that’s been sortakindaish adapted to TV recently and various other excellent works) is currently $2 for Kindle, today only:
https://www.amazon.com/Fellside-M-R-Carey-ebook/dp/B013HA6WAG/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
EDIT:
Price is back to normal, must’ve been a one day thing…
I think I read both this and Lord Valentine’s Castle (though I think I gave up after the 2nd book on the world), as well as Dying Inside - which was pretty good, IMHO.
The novel’s main character, David Selig, is an undistinguished man living in New York City. David was born with a telepathic
gift allowing him to read minds. Rather than use his ability for any
greater good, however, Selig squanders his power, using it only for his
own convenience. At the beginning of the novel, David earns a living by
reading the minds of college students so that he can better plagiarize
reports and essays on their behalf.
As the novel progresses, Selig’s power becomes continually weaker,
working sporadically and sometimes not at all, and Selig struggles to
maintain his grip on reality as he begins to lose an ability on which he
has long since grown dependent.
I read a fair bit of Silverberg when I was younger. I always really loved ‘Downward to the Earth’, but it’s been a while and I’m not sure how it holds up now.
This month’s Tor free book is Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. That’s a Hugo winning book from the era where I still used to read all Hugo winners. It’s sometimes oppressively melancholy, but that’s pretty appropriate for a book about the possible end of the world. As with any good science fiction book, it made me look at the world around me differently after reading the book. Recommended.