Bestseller: The Name of the Wind

Patrick Rothfuss es parte de la nueva hornada de escritores de fantasía, bien acompañado por Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson y unos cuantos más. The Name of the Wind es la primera parte de una saga, y los fans están esperando impacientes la publicación de la continuación: The Wise Man's Fear, que todavía no tiene fecha.

THE POWERFUL DEBUT NOVEL FROM FANTASY'S NEXT SUPERSTAR
Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.

Protocolos para un Apocalipsis

Para los amantes de la Teoría de la Conspiración.

¿Se ha parado alguna vez a pensar qué es verdad y qué no de todo lo que ve por televisión? ¿Cuenta usted con tiempo para asimilar las oleadas informativas que surgen todos los días, machaconamente, en periódicos, radios y televisores? ¿Tiene usted la sensación de que realmente importa más la noticia que el contenido, la imagen más que el suceso, y que detrás de todo ello hay una clara intención no revelada?

Más allá de un simple libro sobre Teoría de la Conspiración, Protocolos para un Apocalipsis analiza desde insospechados y genuinos puntos de vista todo aquello que está conformando nuestro presente y nuestro futuro, configurando un momento único en la historia y en el que las imágenes arquetípicas e indiscriminadas, la inestimable ayuda de la televisión y las ideas pergeñadas desde mucho tiempo atrás nos han colocado en lo que vivimos: un Apocalipsis mediático, con el único fin de impactar sobre nuestras mentes y llevarnos a una nueva era de manipulación y control sin parangón en la Historia. El enemigo, el único que hay, está ya en nuestra mente.

The Graveyard Book: premio Hugo de novela de 2009

No es exactamente una novedad, pero finalmente sale en tapa blanda.

Nobody Leaves.

Hear this tragic tale: a sleeping family, a talented murderer, and an adventurous toddler — orphaned, but not assassinated. Small and alone, by accident and luck he escapes the scene of the crime and climbs a grassy hill to safety. At the top of the hill the boy finds a fence, and on the other side, a dark, quiet place.

And what is to become of him?

Nobody Stays.

The boy is welcomed on the hill where the dead do not sleep, and the graveyard residents rally to protect him. For outside the fence that separates a city from its ghosts, a dastardly killer is patient and persistent. The danger is real, and it is alive. It is hunting, and wise, and evil. A little child must not be left to the merciless knife of a professional fiend.

But who will watch over him?

Nobody’s Home.

The chattering dead make a pact. A decision is made, and shelter is granted to the tiny fellow, who has no inkling of his peril. He has no parents, no place, and no name. But the kind-hearted spirits will not let him freeze, or starve, or meet his end by a murderer’s blade. They wrap the breathing boy in a shroud. They call him Nobody, for he looks like nobody but himself.

The Magicians, de Lev Grossman

Una novedad de fantasía que está cosechando muy buenas críticas por la blogosfera.

Quentin Coldwater's life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter: when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead - but a strange envelope bearing Quentin's name leads him down a very different path to any he'd ever imagined. The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it's a world that seems to answer all Quentin's desires. But the idyll cannot last - and when it's finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected...

Dracula, la secuela official

Escrita por un descendiente de Bram Stoker.

At last, the first Stoker family- supported sequel to one of the bestselling and most influential novels of all time

Bram Stoker's Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic - in books, television shows, and movies - only the 1931 Bela Lugosi film bore the Stoker family's support. Until now.

Written by a direct descendant of Bram Stoker and a well- known Dracula historian, Dracula: The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula 'crumbled into dust.' Van Helsing's protégé, Dr. Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, son of Jonathon and Mina, leaves law school for the stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of Dracula, directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is there another, far more sinister force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula?

Fast-paced, full of suspense, and rich with historical detail, Dracula: The Un-Dead is the answer to every vampire fanatic's prayers. is a bone- chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Written with the blessing and cooperation of many members of the Stoker family,

True Blood: Los vampiros sureños de Charlaine Harris

Uno de los fenómenos literarios de los últimos años ha sido la aparición de un nuevo género literario. En realidad, más que aparición debería decir transformación, ya que se trata de una adopción, por parte de la novela romántica/porno blando de toda la vida, de parte de la iconografía que hasta ahora se asociaba con el terror. Así, el apuesto y misterioso desconocido de aquellas, se convierte ahora en un vampiro atormentado, un hombre lobo, u otro especimen de la imaginería tradicional.

En la actualidad, una de las series más populares gracias a su exitosa adaptación a la pequeña pantalla, es la protagonizada por la camarera Sookie Stackhouse, que añade un poco de policiaco a la trama. Su creadora, Charlaine Harris, ya tenía una carrera como escritora de novela policiaca más tradicional.

La serie de Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampires/True Blood consta de las siguientes entradas, publicadas a razón de una por año:

1. Dead Until Dark (2001)

 
2. Living Dead in Dallas (2002)

3. Club Dead (2003)

4. Dead to the World (2004)

 5. Dead As a Doornail (2005)

6. Definitely Dead (2006)

 7. All Together Dead (2007)

8. From Dead to Worse (2008)



















9. Dead and Gone (2009)

Las ocho primeras novelas están disponibles en edición de bolsillo, mientras que la última sólo está en tapa dura, de momento.

A Touch of Dead (2009)

Antes de final de año, tiene que salir una nueva entrega (también en tapa dura). No es una novela, sino más bien una recopilación de relatos que ya han aparecido publicados en otros lugares, pero recopilados en un volumen único:

Her Fearful Symmetry: Un cuento de fantasmas

Audrey Niffenegger dio la campanada hace unos cuantos años con La mujer del viajero del tiempo. Ahora vuelve con una historia moderna de fantasmas.

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers – normal, at least, for identical ‘mirror’ twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ... but have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother – and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat....
With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger’s familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.

Una crítica en otro blog.

Transition, una apocalíptica de Iain Banks

Iain Banks es la identidad secreta de Iain M. Banks. Donde este último publica ciencia ficción al amparo de esa protectora M, el primero publica eso que algunos llaman mainstream. En este caso es un thriller catastrofista ambientado en la actualidad tras la doble caída del Muro de Berlín y de las Torres Gemelas, con la actual crisis económica como telón de fondo.

A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? On the Concern's books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher. And then there's the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.

Podéis leer una crítica (en inglés) en un blog muy recomendable.

... ¿y esto?

Pues nada, trabajo en una tienda que especializada en narrativa fantástica, tebeos y  juegos, de modo que por mis manos pasan cosas muy interesantes..

En un principio, no esperéis encontrar aqui ni críticas, ni polémicas. Tampoco hay la intención de sentar cátedra. Lo iré poniendo no sera ni lo mejor, ni lo peor de nada. La verdad, muchas (la mayoría) ni me las he leído. Se trata simplemente de cosas que me apetece destacar, o bien porque me han llamado la atención, o porque sé que hay gente que las está esperando.