Giveaway : Wolfhound Century (29/1/2014)

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It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book giveaway or indeed said much at all here. November was eaten by NaNoWriMo and December was eaten by The Silver Kings and copy-editing The Splintered Gods and editing Empires and and and . . . and mostly by the looming spectre of having to go back to having a day-job. But that’s all behind now. The Silver Kings is sitting at about 120k words and will grow to about 220k. The tentative schedule for 2014 is this:

March: Sekkrit project comes out. I think. Who can say? I have no idea. I haven’t seen the proofs yet so who knows…

April: Dragon Queen comes out in mass-market paperback and you’re ALL GOING TO BUY IT, RIGHT?

June: The Splintered Gods comes out and The Silver Kings is supposed to be delivered

August: Sometime around here the novella Bulldog Drummond: Dead Man’s Gate might happen.

November: The Royalist comes out. Maybe Empires comes out. Who can say…?

So this week’s freebie is Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins which I still think is awesome and yes, i know I’ve already given it a couple of airings on the blog but it deserves another. If you haven’t heard me say it before, this is a wonderfully atmospheric espinonagey politically thrillery thing but what really sets it apart is the setting that feels so like an alternate inter-war Russia that you don’t really notice that it never actually says so and yet has giants, space-angels (I think), sentient rain and sentient forests. And it’s gloomy and broody and rains all the time and I like that sort of thing. Something Graham Greene might have written except after the first draft he got smacked round the head by a sentient walking hut and it was rewritten in a Siberian forest by Baba Yaga. There’s a bit of an undercurrent of quantum uncertainty and the overlapping of many worlds too. And then just when you’re really getting into it, some bastard (and I think I have to point a finger at the author here) shows up with a garotte and practically executes the novel mid-sentence, calls that an ending and we all have to wait until Spring next year for the next installment. Nevertheless, this is SF that sits beside Dune for me. It was wonderful. You can visit Peter’s site here.

Usual deal – comment on this post before February 3rd  and I’ll randomly select a lucky victim for a free copy of the book. No game this week since it’s the first time back for a while, simply comment to enter.

Although, though no one has yet complained about how long it takes me to get to the post office and post things, it can take a while and if you live abroad then it can take even longer. Sorry about that, but they do get there eventually. Well, so far. Recent winners, I have cleared my backlog – they’re all in the post!