More Brent Weeks NIGHT ANGEL TRILOGY online coverage
The Night Angel Trilogy by debut author Brent Weeks is continuing to create a bit of a buzz-storm around the genre-blogs as the amount of online coverage of his first two books – The Way of Shadows [US | UK | AUS] and Shadow’s Edge [US | UK | AUS] – continues to build up. And with the official publication date of the series-concluder Beyond the Shadows [US | UK | AUS] right around the corner, we’ve already seen an early review for that one as well…
Here’s the latest batch of content we’ve spotted in our RSS readers, to be added to our first round-up item, posted a few weeks ago.
A couple of interviews to tell you about first: Brent talks to Gav over at NextRead.co.uk about big fantasy and his approach to writing the Night Angel Trilogy. And he’s on the spot at BookSpotCentral.com as Damon asks Brent about everything from world-building to characterisation to cover art.
Reviews now, and we’ll start with a plethora of new ones for The Way of Shadows: Rob Bedford covered the book for SFFWorld.com and declared it “the most impressive debut novel [he’s] read this year”. Graeme Flory says The Way of Shadows “will grip you with its intrigue and swashbuckling exploits” at Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review. Mark at My Favourite Books says that Weeks’ debut is “deft and clever story, skillfully delivered”. Jessica from Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstores writes, at Sci-Fi Fan Letter that this one of those kind of books: “You know the kind – that book you can’t put down even though you have to eat, sleep or work.” And Hagelrat, posting at Un:Bound was full of high praise, concluding: “It’s a wonderfully rich traditional fantasy and it’s a delight to finally read a novel of this sort that not only stands alone as a story whilst leading on to a trilogy, but actually delivers that extra finesse of handling and realism of character and motive that lacks in a lot of books.”
Shadow’s Edge is up next, with Jeff C at Fantasy Book News & Reviews finding it not quite as hot as the first instalment, but still one that left him excited to read the conclusion. Rob Bedford is back with a second review at SFFWorld.com and concludes that volume two is perhaps more of an introspective look at the character development of Weeks’ protagonist than the first, hence the contrast. But Paul Stotts, writing for Blood of the Muse declares it to be a terrific middle-trilogy instalment, with an ending that offers an “unforgettable conclusion” as well as “intriguing new directions for the next book to explore”.
So far, we’ve seen a couple of mentions for Beyond the Shadows, both of them from the same reviewer: Jeff C at Fantasy Book News & Reviews dropped an early mention, saying it was… well, the second word he used was “excellent”. He then came back later on with a full review, in which he concluded that The Night Angel Trilogy was “probably [his] favorite series of the year”.
Brent Weeks has been collecting reviews over at his own website as well, so do double-check there in case there are a couple we haven’t spotted ourselves. And do drop us a line if you’ve covered these, or any other Orbit titles, on your own blog or website so we can give your piece a mention in a future coverage or links round-up.
With Dark Space (Book One of the Sentients of Orion series), I began small. Most of the narrative focused on one planet with tantalizing glimpses (I hoped!) of a much grander storyline. In Chaos Space I step firmly into that wider landscape, delving deeper into the psyches of the less-developed characters and increasing the stakes for the heroine.
An easy thing to tell you about Orphan’s Alliance is that Jason Wander – high school dropout, accidental Major General, terminal wise ass and reluctant hero – returns, and so do the Slugs. But Alliance shows you things military SF usually doesn’t, like Paleozoic swamps and monsters, and Parisian sidewalk cafés. Alliance also shows you things military SF often does, like gravity-bending fighters, vast battles for galactic crossroads, and trench warfare.
Who is the Numinator, the never-seen figure who has manipulated the world of Santhenar for more than a hundred and fifty years, for some unknown, terrible purpose?
From its conception, I pictured Astropolis as three fundamentally different books: Saturn Returns is about Imre putting the pieces of his mind and team back together; The Grand Conjunction is a chase novel ranging far and wide across the Milky Way. Earth Ascendant, then, is the “empire” section of Imre’s story, taking a long, hard look at how difficult it would be for someone like us to rule the galaxy, especially someone literally warring with another version of himself.