NANP: Naming For Names

Joining me on the blog today for the final guest post of the 4th edition of Names: A New Perspective is this year’s debut author Liz de Jager, with her novel Banished which comes out very soon from Tor, less than a month in fact! It is one of the novels of the year that I’m very excited about. Liz is a great friend and a fellow, albeit former, book blogger, so that’s even more reasons for the excitement. Its always great to see bloggers and friends get a start on their publishing careers like this. Plus the concept of the book is extremely promising so I have very high hopes for it. Anyways, in one of her first blog posts for the book’s promotion, here’s what Liz has to say on the topic of names.

25 Series I Want To Read in 2014

Last year, I blogged over at The Founding Fields about 25 book series from various genres, science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, space opera, etc that I wanted to read in 2013. The intention behind that particular reading challenge was to read a broad variety of some of the most popular names in those genres as well as to try out several new authors and revisit some favourite classics. While I wasn’t as successful in the challenge as I might like, I’ve made it a new year resolution to make sure that I do indeed repeat the challenge in 2014 with new books, new authors, and finish it this time.

To that effect, here are the 25 book series I’ve picked for this reading challenge for this year. You can see the previous list for 2013 here.

NANP: The Name Trail

Joining me on the blog today for the new edition of Names: A New Perspective is fantasy author Alex Bledsoe, scribe of the Eddie LaCrosse series and the Tufa novels among others. His fourth Eddie LaCrosse novel Wake of The Bloody Angel was the first of his books that I read around its time of release last year and just a few days ago I finished the fifth installment He Drank, And Saw The Spider. They’ve been very fun reads both of them, and he’s certainly one of my favourite authors to date. The genesis of the names in the Eddie LaCrosse novels sounds rather intriguing and fun, so here’s what Alex has to say on the matter.

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.

The Cover Art Mega-Post Part 2

Two weeks ago I did the first of these kind of posts, which can be found here. There were some really fun-looking books on that list that I would love to read (all of them) this year, but given how these kind of things work out for me, especially of late, that is probably not going to happen any time soon. My only consolation is that these covers are so bloody damn good!

Hope you liked the previous post and that you’ll like this one as well.

NANP: The Entonomicon

Today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective, after the recent 4th of July day-off, is Adrian Tchaikovsky, the author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series from Tor. I recently got to read the first book, Empire In Black and Gold, and one of the high points of the book was how the world was presented as one where insects are dominant, and are all divided into different “tribes” known as kinden, with their own regional variations on each. The idea of these insect-kinden as characters (presented as pseudo-humans of sorts) was quite interesting, and so was Adrian’s naming convention, which is what he talks about here. While not my favourite book of the month, Empire In Black and Gold is definitely among the better ones I’ve read this year and I’m definitely on to read the sequel. Fingers crossed! In the meanwhile, here’s Adrian on names in Shadows of the Apt.

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!

NANP: Word, Weird, Wyrd

Stopping by the blog today for the first Names: A New Perspective post for June is Elizabeth Bear, author of numerous fantasy novels of all varieties and also the winner of a fair few awards, the kind that make you go all “I wish that I was that good”. We can all dream right? Anyway, Elizabeth is an author that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now, and her The Edda of Burdens trilogy is on my reading list this year, since I put it on my “Top 25 Series I Want To Read In 2013” earlier this year. I will hopefully be getting to it either in July or August, and I’m looking forward to it. Also Range of Ghosts at some time, which has one of the most beautiful covers on a fantasy novel I’ve seen in a long time. Amazing stuff. In the meantime, here’s Elizabeth to talk about names.

June Reading Poll Results

The voting process on my latest reading poll closed last night, after two weeks of intense excitement and record after record. Once again, just as with the previous two polls that I’ve run, this was a humbling experience given the tremendous response from the authors and their fans and everyone else who helped make this new poll such a success.

June Reading List Poll

In January and February, I ran two highly successful polls where I asked all the readers of the blog to help me pick my reading list for the following months. The first one was for novels, the second one for comics. I managed to meet the reading goals for the first of those polls, but am still progressing through the second one, mostly because I’ve been traveling a bit too much of late, and reading time has generally been at a premium due to work and more time devoted to my writing.

However, I should be done with it by the end of this month, so keep an eye out for updates on that.

In the meantime, here’s my next reading poll, and this one is for novels once again. Hit the break to find out more.

NANP: Naming Swords, Defining Themselves

Really excited to welcome today’s guest Evie Manieri for Names: A New Perspective, author of Blood’s Pride, released last year in August through Jo Fletcher Books and in February this year by Tor. I read the book earlier this year, and I thought it was a pretty good start to what promises to be an excellent series (my review). It certainly is a different and innovate approach to epic fantasy, and I can’t wait to read the sequel, Fortune’s Blight. The naming conventions used by Evie in Blood’s Pride are really interesting, and in this guest post she goes into some detail about them.

NANP: Cultures and Obsession

Today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective is Marie Brennan, author of numerous urban fantasy novels such as the Doppelganger and Onyx Court series, and more besides. Her latest novel is A Natural History of Dragons: The Memoir of Lady Trent, from Tor, and something I’m looking forward to reading quite soon. I came across her name on a fellow reviewer’s blog, and her book sounded really interesting so I sent her an invite for this series, and was really excited when she said yes. Here’s what she has to say on the topic of names.