The Thousand Names by Django Wexler (Book Review)

Django is one of the authors that I discovered through Twitter. And I meant to read his debut last year itself, but didn’t really get a chance to do that. Which is why The Thousand Names is one of the first books that I read this year. I’d long been interested in it, especially given the premise and since it had been getting a lot of positive buzz in the part of the blogosphere that I frequent. And that’s actually quite important to me. If my friends like something, then I am much more liable to check it out, just because of all that buzz.

And with The Thousand Names, the first in Django’s The Shadow Campaigns series, I was quite impressed with it. I’ve been noticing, among all the debuts I’ve been reading in the last two years, that the quality is often quite high indeed. Some really talented authors are making themselves known and I feel really excited to say that Django is right up there too. The Thousand Names is easily one of the best novels that I’ve read since becoming a reviewer and thinking about books and stuff critically. So that’s quite an achievement on a personal level, all things considering.

12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #7

The seventh book cover that I pick for the “12 Days of Best Covers of 2013″ list is Gene Mollica’s (again) excellent cover for Jean Johnson’s third Theirs Not To Reason Why novel, Hellfire, published by Ace Books. I discovered Jean earlier this year, that is, I started reading her books earlier this year but actually heard of her work last year through an SF Signal podcast. Jean made a switch from writing romance fantasy novels to writing military space opera with this series and all the three books in this series have been quite excellent. I’m definitely a fan of her work now, and I may even give one of her (many) romance fantasy series a chance, just to see how those books hold up.

The seventh comic cover that I pick is actually a splash art for DC’s (at the time) three Justice League titles. With Justice League #22 (Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis), Justice League of America #6 (Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke), and Justice League Dark #22 (Jeff Lemire, Mikel Janin), DC kicked off its Trinity War crossover that saw all the three different Leagues go up against each other, manipulated by a villain none of them could have been foreseen. The event got me to start reading Justice League Dark and right now under writer J. M. DeMatteis it is currently one of my favourite DC monthlies. All three issues were quite fantastic, and they set a great tone for the crossover as well.

Without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

The Cover Art Mega-Post Part 3

So this is the third such post I have done for the blog. I took a 2-month break in between posts so that I could have some more material to showcase here, and it certainly has helped. There were a lot more books I wanted to cover, but I chose to stick withe magic number 17, the number of books I’ve covered previously.

A lot of the books on this list are next year’s releases, and just as before, they all sound great, even some of the ones that are second or third (or else) in their respective series. I’m not sure if I can put aside the time to catch up to them any time soon but I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get around to some of them at least. We’ll see how that works out.

In the meantime, enjoy all these great covers and these books! Hope you liked the previous posts and that you’ll like this one as well.

NANP: Naming Verisimilitude

Joining me today on Names: A New Perspective is one of this year’s most promising authors, Django Wexler. The first book in his Shadow Campaigns series, called The Thousand Names interesting enough, was released earlier this month and has generated quite a big buzz both before and after its release. I’m definitely interested in picking it up because I like both editions of its cover and because I like the premise of it. I’m buried under ARCs at the moment and am behind my reading as well so I won’t get around to the book anytime soon, but I’m definitely reading it this year. Till then, there’s Django talking about names in fiction.

Best of 2013 Part 1

I did two “Best of the…” lists last year, one for the half-year from January to June, and the other for the half-year from July to December. The lists proved to be quite popular, and I was recently asked if I was going to be doing any more. To which I said yes. I like putting together lists like this. It gives me a chance to reflect a bit on all the good stuff I’ve been reading in novels and comics, or listening to in terms of audiobooks, audio dramas and so on.

You can check out my top-of-the-month lists on my Reading Awards page and this list is both an extension, and a continuation of what goes on there.

Let’s see what makes the cut and which comes close then!