The New Books Roundup, Feb. 7: The Red Queen Returns
In this week’s new books roundup, we have not one, but three major releases in the realms of YA, adult fiction, and a little Norse mythology.
For the shortest month, February has some top-tier releases in the world of new books, just from this week alone. (Of course, the coming weeks also have some major books hitting shelves, but we’ll hold those back for now.) Not only does the story of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen continue this week, but J.D. Robb’s long-running In Death series has its forty-fourth installment reaching shelves and e-readers everywhere. No, that’s not a typo.
Title links take you straight to Amazon, and Goodreads go straight to Goodreads, where you can stare at your probably massive to-read shelf, sigh, and then add some of these books to that shelf. Fortunately, virtual shelves are infinite.
King’s Cage
The Amazon description pointedly doesn’t call this the final installment of Aveyard’s Red Queen series, a fact confirmed by her own website. (So yes, there will be a fourth book sometime in the near future, possibly in 2018, though that’s completely speculative.) Anyway, Mare Barrow is not in a particularly good place right now, if by “not a particularly good place” one means “captured by the boy you once had a crush on, who is now king and has you suffering.” However, our heroine has a movement of her own working to try and break her out. That includes Cal, the other important boy of this series. Early Goodreads reviews are full of excited GIFs, which should tell you the whole story. HarperTeen; hardcover, 528 pages; list price: $19.99.
Echoes in Death
Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her creator, J.D. Robb, haven’t found their stopping point just yet. We feel it necessary to point out once again that this is book 44 in this series. Anyways, Echoes in Death sees Eve and Roarke tackle a case where for once, it doesn’t look like the wife killed the husband, since Dr. Anthony Strazza, the victim, was not particularly well-liked. Meanwhile, his wife, Daphne, can only talk about the “devil” having committed the crime, which might be more helpful than it seems. Goodreads reviews praise the consistency of the book as well as the ongoing story arc about Eve handling her childhood trauma. St. Martin’s Press; hardcover, 384 pages; list price: $27.99.
Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman knows his mythology. You don’t have to look further than something like American Gods to know that. So, it seems like a perfectly natural fit for him to have now published this book, which covers Norse myth — that’s right, he’s taken on the original Thor and Loki, no offense to Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston. As the description states, he’s also put them together to read more like a novel rather than a compendium of myths, and as this is, once again, a pretty great novelist we’re talking about here, it seems like this might be an excellent read on its own. Goodreads reviews include readers who powered through the entire book in a day, which is some high, high praise. W.W. Norton & Company; hardcover, 304 pages; list price: $25.95.
Next: Review: Falling for the Highlander, Lynsay Sands
Also out today are Kim Harrison’s prequel to The Hollows, entitled The Turn: The Hollows Begins with Death; A Book of American Martyrs, from Joyce Carol Oates; and Wintersong, from S. Jae-Jones, which name-checks Labyrinth and thus has our attention.
Which books are first on your reading list this week?