Orbit Reviewer Party 2012

Last Wednesday evening saw me poring over books and hovering near a table full of sandwiches, beer and those little flying saucer sweets that are filled with sherbert (it was like I was five all over again). Yes, it was the Orbit Reviewer Party :o) James Long has also covered the party (I say 'also'... he totally got there first) over Here; a lesson for me to 'suck it in' a little when there are people taking photos... dammit.

Thanks to Orbit for inviting me along on Wednesday. I'm sure that the sandwiches were lovely but my house was a 'sugar free zone' at the time so I was paying more attention to other areas of the table... I had a great time catching up with some people and meeting others for the first time. I also enjoyed the presentation very much; always interesting to see how things work on the publishing side as that's not something you often get a look at. It was very cool to see a bunch of people extraordinarily passionate about the books they are publishing. I mean, I know it's their job but I've been in a number of jobs that I've been indifferent to at best. These guys clearly enjoy their work and this blogger went home just a tiny bit envious of that...

I'd be very surprised if you didn't see the event covered elsewhere so I'll just focus on some of the books, in the presentation (and the publishing schedule for this year/early next year), that caught my eye in particular. There are a few and they all look pretty good to me (cover art was hard to come by for obvious reasons...)

May and June will see David Gemmell's Orbit back catalogue re-issued with some rather nice looking new cover art to bring the series up to date a little bit. These are already on my shelf but it's always good to see Gemmell on the shelves, his works are timeless as far as I'm concerned. I'm also interested to see if Orbit submit any of these titles for the Gemmell award; I don't think there's any rule that says you can't... ;o)

October will see the arrival of Jesse Bullington's new book 'The Folly of the World'. I still need to read his last book but 'The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart' was an awesome read so I'm expecting great things here too.

Next month sees the release of Ian Irvine's 'Vengeance', book one of the 'Tainted Realm' trilogy. I've never read any Ian Irvine (any good?) and the first book in a trilogy is always a great place to jump on board. Expect a review sometime soon(ish).

Ian Tregillis' 'Bitter Seeds' gets its UK publication in December although the enthusiasm of a rather large UK bookseller could see publication jump forwards by a few months. No doubt a few of you have already read the US edition (and is it a co-incidence that Tor are finally getting their act together releasing the books in the States?) but hang around for the UK edition if you can ;o) I'll be posting my review this week but will sum the book up with one word in the meantime... glorious.

We got a tiny little peek into 2013 with Francis Knight's debut fantasy 'Fade to Black' due to be published in February next year. 'Fade to Black' sounds very promising indeed and I'll be keeping an eye open for it around the time. The book that really piqued my interest though didn't feature in the presentation at all... In August, watch out for Tim Lebbon's 'The Heretic Land' which I'm hoping will be a sequel to 'Echo City'. If it isn't then I'll be happy if 'The Heretic Land' is as good...

Thanks again to Orbit for having me along, same time next year?