The End Of The World
Hardcover | Kindle
By Don Hertzfeldt
Publisher: Random House
Release date: October 1, 2019

With a title like The End Of The World you’d think I’d know what’s to come, yet somehow, I was still blindsided by this book. Perhaps it was the whimsical hand-drawn stars that lined the top of the stark yet classy hardcover that gave me a glimmer of hope. Or maybe the back cover’s humorous blurbs, boasting “Full of pages, from cover to cover…” and “This is practically a book” that lulled me into a false sense of security. Or possibly that the unexpected heft I felt as I removed the book’s shrink wrapping led me to believe that a product of this outward aesthetic must surely have a matching interior. But after opening the book, I realized I was in for something completely different.

Dragon’s Code
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern
Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook
By Gigi McCaffrey
Publisher: Del Rey | Random House
Release Date: October 2, 2018

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books were, beyond a doubt, extremely influential to me and others as a source of world building and empathetic writing. My first foray into the world of Pern was The White Dragon, the pivotal third book that resonated deeply with me. I will not claim to have read everything in the series, but I consumed them year after year as they released, with few exceptions. Therefore, I was elated when I discovered Gigi McCaffrey, daughter of the legendary wordsmith herself, was writing a new book. In fact, Dragon’s Code, as it was titled, was to be a new expansion on this previously massive universe of man, dragon, and threat. A new generation of readers could potentially experience what I did!

Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View
Star Wars Expanded Universe
Audiobook | Hardcover | Kindle
Narrated by Jonathan Davis, Ashley Eckstein, Janina Gavankar, Jon Hamm, Neil Patrick Harris, January LaVoy, Saskia Maarleveld, Carol Monda, Daniel José Older, Marc Thompson
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Release Date: October 3, 2017

What a spectacular collection of talent, this audiobook has! Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View is loaded to the brim with amazing stories and has a star-studded cast of voices, each one chosen specifically to create the most presentable experience possible for the listener. Whomsoever is responsible for dreaming this up should be rewarded handsomely.

The Conjurer’s Riddle
Hardcover | Kindle
Sequel to The Inventor’s Secret
By Andrea Cremer
Philomel Books | Penquin Random House Young Readers
Release date: November 3, 2015

What would have become of North America had the British won the Revolutionary War? That’s the premise of Andrea Cremer’s The Inventor’s Secret book series, which creates an alternate 19th-century history where the British Empire has dominion over the New World as an underground Resistance rebels against it. The exiled children of the rebellion reside in the Catacombs in the New York Wildlands, where they stay in hiding from the Empire as they grow up without their parents until they come of age and can join the fight.

In The Conjurer’s Riddle, the second book of the series, 16-year-old Charlotte returns to the Catacombs after the caverns are set ablaze, leaving the children no shelter. She has no idea what happened to cause the destruction of their home, but there’s no time to figure it out, as she now must lead the young refugees to safety. Her final destination is New Orleans, the rendezvous point for the Resistance, but first she must find a way to get there.

The Aeronaut’s Windlass
Book 1 of The Cinder Spires
Hardcover | Kindle | Paperback | Audible Audiobook | Audio CD
by Jim Butcher
Roc | Penguin Random House
Release date: September 29, 2015

Jim Butcher‘s long-running supernatural hard-boiled detective series The Dresden Files has had fans clamoring for more, while his more traditional fantasy books of Codex Alera have been well-received over the past decade. Now the best-selling author is launching a new series called The Cinder Spires, which combines fantasy and steampunk for a high-flying adventure, starting with the first book, The Aeronaut’s Windlass.

In The Aeronaut’s Windlass, the world is engulfed in a dangerous mist that caused humanity to move up above the clouds to Spires, divided into multi-tiered Habbles, where noble houses vie for power and airships are the main mode of transportation, shipping, and military. When the children of noble houses come of age, they enlist for a year’s service in the Spirearch’s Guard. On Spire Albion, Gwendolyn Lancaster — who’s House is the most prestigious — is a new Guard trainee, joining cousin Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster, one of the warriorborn, humans who possess feline-like characteristics. At the Academy, the cousins meet Bridget Tagwynn, who’s of a lower, dying house (it’s just her and her father left in their line), and Bridget’s protector, Rowl, a cat who is the first of his kind to be accepted into the service.

The Secrets of Blood and Bone: A Novel
Sequel to The Secrets of Life and Death
Paperback | Kindle
by Rebecca Alexander
Broadway Books | Crown Publishing
Release date: September 1, 2015

Author Rebecca Alexander follows up her 2014 page-turner The Secrets of Life and Death with its sequel, The Secrets of Blood and Bone, which once again splits up the narrative between modern-day events surrounding the fictional Jackdaw Hammond and her mixed clique of revenants and witches, and the 16th century adventures of Edward Kelley, the real-life assistant to famed Elizabethan alchemist Dr. John Dee.

In present day England, Jackdaw Hammond is living on borrowed time…literally. Technically, she died when she was 11, but thanks to the help of witches and their use of magic sigils, her life on earth has been extended while she lives as what’s known as a “borrowed timer.”

Meanwhile, Edward Kelley is on a secret mission traveling from his English homeland to the mean streets of 16th century Venice where lone travelers are targets for thieves and the Inquisition holds the city in a reign of terror.

Armada
Audio CD | Audible Edition | Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle Edition
Written by Ernest Cline
Read by Wil Wheaton
Random House Audio
Release date: July 14, 2015

Armada is the much anticipated follow-up to Ernest Cline’s first novel Ready Player One and he travels much of the same territory as his first novel. Armada is a novel that positively overflows with references to the movies and video games of the 1980’s, and Cline’s passion for the cultural items of the period can be found on every page. Cline weaves a story that feels familiar, largely because it is rooted in movies and games that you’ve seen before.