returned and forthcoming

I'm back from a four day weekend trip to South Carolina and since I spent a fair amount of time in airports and on planes, I was able to do copious amounts of reading.

As such, I was able to finished five books.
Imaro, by Charles Saunders
Seven for a Secret, by Elizabeth Bear
Ace in the Hole, by George R. R. Martin (editor)
Jhereg, by Steven Brust
The Living Dead, by John Joseph Adams (editor)

I also expect to finish Robert Jordan's Knife of Dreams tonight. See, while I was away a little birdie dropped a copy of The Gathering Storm in my mailbox (the day I left for SC, no less), and even though I won't be reading it well before everyone else, I do plan to make a decent dent in it tonight.

I expect I may end up with one of the more gushing reviews Aidan pointed out recently. I'm a Wheel of Time fanboy at heart. This is one of the most formative series of my reading life and even the volumes that have serious flaws still provide me with hours of enjoyment. I may (or may not) notice some of the flaws which are likely in The Gathering Storm, but I will be as honest as possible in reviewing the book - which will also include a clear disclaimer of my bias. It's not going to be an impartial reading. It can't be. That's okay.

In other news, on vacation I picked up a copy of Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. That's one of my more anticipated volumes of the year. Also, Barnes and Nobles had the two volumes of GRRM's Dreamsongs retrospective collection for $6 each. In hardcover. Yeah, I pounced on that and damn near doubled the weight of my luggage.

In terms of blogging this week, I've got a couple of ideas of how I want to proceed but nothing definite.

The World Fantasy Awards will be given out this weekend and I want do a bunch of posts about the nominees, but I'm a little behind on what I want to do. I can adequately cover the short fiction, but I don't know if I'll get The House of the Stag done before the awards are given. There's no chance to catch up on the anthologies and collections.

Otherwise, I've got a host of reviews lining up which should provide a couple weeks worth of content. After I write them, of course, but that's something to look forward to. Real content!!