Sunless Countries, de Karl Schroeder é o quarto volume da trilogia Virga, que se iniciou com o Sun of Suns e que melhorou no segundo, Queen of Candesce. Sim, não me enganei – quarto volume da trilogia. Sunless Countries constitui, segundo o autor, um livro isolado que poderá ser lido independentemente, ainda que decorra no mesmo Mundo que Virga.

A série decorre num mundo gasoso em que as nações se constroem em torno de sóis artificiais e o poder é determinado pelo acesso à gravidade e à luminosidade das estrelas artificiais. Sunless Countries decorre exactamente nas nações que a luz solar nunca atingiu:

In an ocean of weightless air where sunlight has never been seen, only the running lights of the city of Sere glitter in the dark. One woman, Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, history tutor and dreamer, lives and dreams of love among the gaslit streets and cafés. And somewhere in the abyss of wind and twisted cloud through which Sere eternally falls, a great voice has begun speaking.

As its cold words reach even to the city walls—and as outlying towns and travelers’ ships start to mysteriously disappear—only Leal has the courage to try to understand the message thundering from the distance. Even the city’s most famous and exotic visitor, the sun lighter and hero named Hayden Griffin, refuses to turn aside from his commission to build a new sun for a foreign nation. He will not become the hero that Leal knows the city needs; so in the end, it is up to her to listen, and ultimately reply, to the worldwasp.

The Very Best of Gene Wolfe é um dos próximos lançamentos da PS Publishing, um volume que reúne algumas das melhores e mais conhecidas obras, cerca de 32 histórias, de entre as quais se destacam:

  • The Fifth Head of Cerberus
  • The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
  • The Hero as Werwolf
  • Seven American Nights
  • The Detective of Dream
  • La Befana
  • The Eyeflash Miracles
  • The God and His Man
  • And When They Appear
  • Bed and Breakfast
  • Petting Zoo
  • The Tree is My Hat
  • Christmas Inn

Para os aficcionados em histórias de zombies, a Subterranean Press lança The New Dead, uma colectânea ilustrada com histórias de autores de vários géneros, desde mainstream, fantasia, mistério, histórico e claro, horror.

Entre os autores podemos encontrar Joe Hill, Tad William, David Liss, Tim Lebbon e Kelley Armstrong.

The 21st century has brought an explosion of interest in zombie stories. Tales of death and resurrection have never been so popular, from massive bestsellers like Max Brooks’ World War Z to dozens of young adult novels to comic book series like Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and films like Shaun of the Dead. George A. Romero may have spawned the last century’s “modern” zombie story with Night of the Living Dead, but four decades have passed since then. So what accounts for the current zombie craze?

That is the question that the contributors to The New Dead were asked to ruminate upon while writing the stories in this volume. Do we turn to tales of intimacy with death to deal with its constant presence in our media and our lives? Do zombie stories provide a way to process our feelings about the horrors of war and torture? Or is it merely that death is the final frontier available to us in this new millennium, and we cannot help but explore?

Pela Dalkey Archive Press chega-nos chega-nos uma obra checa de Michal Ajvz – uma história em que a cidade de Praga é populada por fantasmas, animais que falam ou estátuas impossíveis – The Other City.

Este é daqueles livros que após ler a descrição, entrou directamente para a minha Wishlist:

The Other City is a guidebook to this invisible, “other Prague,” overlapping the workaday world: a place where libraries can turn into jungles, secret passages yawn beneath our feet, and waves lap at our bedspreads. Heir to the tradition and obsessions of Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the long and distinguished line of Czech fantasists, Ajvaz’s Other City—his first novel to be translated into English—is the emblem of all the worlds we are blind to, being caught in our own ways of seeing.