The State of the Art, by Iain M. Banks

Rating: 4/5
216
1991
Publisher: Orbit
Source: My collection

Description: This first ever collection of Iain Bank's short fiction includes a novella never before published in Britian-- The State of the Art. A Striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, it adds definition and scale to the previous works by using Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in this collection, all previously published in magazines and anthologies, range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks staggering talent. (from the back cover)

Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher

Rating: 4.5/5
446 pages
2002
Publisher: Roc
Source: My collection

Description: Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out in Chicago. He can't pay his rent. He's alienating his friends. He can't even recall the last time he took a shower.

The only professional wizard in the phone book has become a desperate man.

And just when it seems things can't get any worse, in saunters the Winter Queen of Faerie. She has an offer Harry can't refuse if he wants to free himself of the supernatural hold his faerie godmother has over him--and hopefully end his run of bad luck. All he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Queen's right-hand man, the Summer Knight, and clear the Winter Queen's name.

It seems simple enough, but Harry knows better than to get caught in the middle of faerie politics. Until he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case. No pressure or anything... (from the back cover)

Twilight's Dawn, By Anne Bishop

Rating: 3/5
435 pages
2011
Publisher: Roc
Source: Library book

Description: Anne Bishop's "darkly fascinating" (SF Site) Black Jewel novels have enthralled readers and critics alike with their mixture of fantasy, intrigue, and romance. Now in Twilight's Dawn, Bishop returns to the Blood realm with four all-new captivating novellas. (From Goodreads)

A Feast For Crows, by George R.R. Martin

Rating:3.5/5
976 pages
2005
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Source: My Collection

Description: After centuries of bitter strife, the seven powers dividing the land have beaten one another into an uneasy truce. But it's not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters of the Seven Kingdoms gather. Now, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—emerge from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges of the terrible times ahead. Nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages, are coming together to stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors. (from the back cover)

Review: This books greatest weakness isn't that its half a book, its that its this half. 

Discount Armageddon, by Seanan McGuire

Rating: 5/5
344 pages
2012
Publisher: Daw
Source: Present

Description: The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and to protect humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. 
Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George.
To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city.... (from the back cover)

Karma Girl, by Jennifer Estep

Rating: 4/5
372 pages
2007
Source: Amazon.com

Description: Investigative reporter Carmen Cole gets the surprise of her life on her wedding day when she discovers that her fiancé and best friend are sleeping together—and that the two of them are her town's resident superhero and ubervillain. Shocked and hurt, Carmen reveals their secret identities and then decides to devote her life to unmasking every superhero and ubervillain who crosses her path.

A series of successful unmaskings lands Carmen a job at The Exposé, one of the biggest newspapers in Bigtime, New York, a city that's full of superheroes and ubervillains. Carmen is in her element—until she gets kidnapped by the Terrible Triad, Bigtime’s most dangerous ubervillain team.

The Triad orders Carmen to uncover the secret identity of Striker, the leader of the Fearless Five, Bigtime's most popular superhero team—or else they’ll drop her in a vat of radioactive goo. With that threat hanging over her, Carmen sets out to unmask Striker, but what she doesn’t count on is falling for the sexy superhero. But with the Terrible Triad lurking around, this is one story that just might be the death of her....(from Goodreads)

Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines

Rating: 4.5/5
279 pages
2007
Publisher: Daw
Source: My collection

Description: After barely surviving an adventure he never wanted, the scrawny little nearsighted goblin called Jig is now known as Jig Dragonslayer, and has the power of healing, thanks to the forgotten god he worships. But being a hero isn't all it's cracked up to be. Not when the goblin leader wants him dead, and everyone else actually expects him to keep doing heroic-and incredibly dangerous-things. (From Goodreads)

The Dark Tower, by Stephen King

Rating: 4.5/5
830 pages
2004
Publisher: Grant
Source: My collection

Description: The final volume in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Roland Deschain's quest for the tower comes to an end.

Review: Full disclosure, The Gunslinger was one of the first Stephen King books I fell in love with. I really can't completely separate myself from that.

Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines

Rating: 5/5

184 pages

2006

Publisher: Daw

Source: Amazon.com

Description: Jig is a scrawny little nearsighted goblin-a runt even among his puny species. Captured by a party of adventurers searching for a magical artifact, and forced to guide them, Jig encounters every peril ever faced on a fantasy quest. (From Goodreads)

Fledgling, by Octavia E. Butler

Rating: 3/5
Publisher:BBC Audiobooks America
10 discs
Narrated by
2005
Source: Library book

Description: Fledgling, the late Octavia E. Butler's final novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted--and still wants--to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human. (from the back cover)

The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers

Rating:4.5/5
Publisher: Tachyon
427 pages
1989
Source: My collection

Description: When Michael Crawford discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed, he is forced to flee not only to prove his innocence, but to avoid the deadly embrace of a vampire who has claimed him as her true bridegroom. Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey that crisscrosses Europe, Crawford desperately seeks his freedom from this vengeful lover who haunts his dreams and will not rest until she destroys all that he cherishes. (from Goodreads.)

The Mermaid's Madness, by Jim C. Hines

Rating: 4.5/5
Publisher: DAW
339 pages
2009
Source: Birthday present

Description: There is an old story — you might have heard it — about a young mermaid, the daughter of a king, who saved the life of a human prince and fell in love.

So innocent was her love, so pure her devotion, that she would pay any price for the chance to be with her prince. She gave up her voice, her family, and the sea, and became human. But the prince had fallen in love with another woman.

The tales say the little mermaid sacrificed her own life so that her beloved prince could find happiness with his bride.

The tales lie. (From the back cover.)

The Well of Lost Plots, by Jasper Fforde

Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Viking
373 pages
2003
Source: Library book sale

Description: Protecting the world's greatest literature—not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham—is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliché-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books—like Caversham Heights—are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe—least of all Thursday. (Copied from LibraryThing )

American Elsewhere, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Publisher: Orbit
662 pages
2013
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers


Note: I read an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC), so there may be some differences between my copy and the final version.

Description: Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map.

In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things.

After a couple of years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's house in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different... (From the back cover.)

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Rating: 4.5/5
Publisher: Daw Books
662 pages
2007
Source: Library

Description: The tale of Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as "quothe") from his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, to years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-riddled city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a difficult and dangerous school of magic. In these pages you will come to know Kvothe as a notorious magician, an accomplished thief, a masterful musician, and an infamous assassin. But The Name of the Wind is so much more-for the story it tells reveals the truth behind Kvothe's legend. (Slightly edited bit from the end of the book jacket description.)

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

Rating: 3.5/5
Publisher: Penguin
374 pages
2001
Source:Library book sale

Description: Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide. (Copied from Goodreads.)