Stephen Hunt's Jack Cloudie (with new cover design)

Amazon.co.uk have revealed the cover to the next Stephen Hunt novel, titled Jack Cloudie, as well as the cover of the paperback edition of Secrets of the Fire Sea.

First of all I'll get my disappointment out of the way. HarperCollins have ditched the lovely retro designs that graced the covers of the first four hardbacks in favour of a generic photoshopped thing. It's not nearly as nice.



Jack Cloudie comes out in hardcover on 7 July 2011 so it's quite a wait. Here's the blurb:

A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Secrets of the Fire Sea. Thanks to his father's gambling debts, young Jack Keats finds himself on the streets and trying to survive as a pickpocket, desperate to graft enough coins to keep him and his two younger brothers fed. Following a daring bank robbery gone badly awry, Jack narrowly escapes the scaffold, only to be pressed into Royal Aerostatical Navy. Assigned to the most useless airship in the fleet, serving under a captain who is most probably mad, Jack seems to be bound for almost certain death in the far-away deserts of Cassarabia. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Omar ibn Barir, the slave of a rich merchant lord finds his life turned upside down when his master's religious sect is banned. Unexpectedly freed, he survives the destruction of his home to enter into the service of the Caliph's military forces -- just as war is brewing. Two very similar young men prepare to face each other across a senseless field of war. But is Omar the enemy, or is Jack's true nemesis the sickness at the heart of the Caliph's court? A cult that hides the deadly secret to the origins of the gas being used to float Cassarabia's new aerial navy. If Jack and his shipmates can discover what Cassarabia's aggressive new regime is trying to conceal, he might survive the most horrific of wars and clear his family's name. If not!

The previous book in the series, Secrets of the Fire Sea comes out in paperback on 3 Feb 2011.

New books for July

Here are a few books that I bought last Thursday and am looking forward to reading over the next few weeks.

First of all Gerald Seymour's new novel The Dealer and the Dead has just been published in hardback in the UK. I've been reading Seymour since 1987 and he's my favourite author currently writing, so his new novel is always something I look forward to.

This new book deals with a hit-man being sent after an arms dealer who never delivered weapons to a Croatian village that was under siege during the civil war in the 1990s.


Next up is the new Robert Harris paperback, Lustrum. As with a previous novel, Imperium, the book is set in ancient Rome and takes the form of a fictional biography of Cicero. Put like that it sounds quite boring but Harris can make anything exciting and is great at describing his characters.


Finally there's the new 800 page plus door-stopper from Stephen King, Under the Dome. This books deals with a mysterious barrier appearing around a small town that cuts it off from the outside world. (I know at least one other novel that dealt with a similar set-up, All Flesh is Grasss by Clifford D Simak.)

The UK publisher has the gimmick of a "limited edition" set of different covers, four of which are shown below. I think there is at least one other that I have not seen online yet. I went for the "young woman" cover oddly enough, although the "old man" cover is growing on me!

Inverted World by Christopher Priest

Thanks to Gollancz for reprinting another of Christopher Priest's early novels. Priest is an author I knew nothing about until I saw the movie of his 1995 book The Prestige. I've gradually been gathering up his back catalog as they become available.

This edition of Inverted World is published as part of Gollancz's SF Masterworks and has the new "yellow" themed cover.


Inverted World features a strange society of humans who have to keep their city moving on railway tracks. They are trying to keep the city as close to its "optimum" position as they can, however optimum keeps moving. If they fall too far behind then a strange phenomena will destroy the city.

But as with Priest's other works, not everything is as it seems.

I enjoyed the book very much and will be looking forward to reading his others.

Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End

Today I spotted the new Gollancz "SF Masterworks" edition of Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End in Waterstones. What's interesting is that it has a hardback cover rather than the usual paperback that most of the other books in the series have. I assume this is because another publisher has the rights to the paperback.

Gollancz has done something similar with their editions of Frank Herbert's Dune and Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Currently they also have a hardback of H.G. Well's The Island of Doctor Moreau.

As with the other books in the series it has been given what I can only describe as a "yellow" makeover. Compare and contrast the actual cover with the original artwork (the first image).


Childhood's End deals with the arrival of an advanced alien race who seem to have some knowledge about mankind's ultimate destiny. It's been a while since I read the book so I may treat myself to the new edition.

Some classy looking Collins Classics

I caught sight of the new Collins Classics series of novels in HMV (of all places) yesterday. The series includes the usual classic novels but the difference being that they have been given a more contemporary cover makeover. Most of the books feature photographic covers rather than detail of old paintings which has become the norm. They seem to be priced at £2.50 each although for some reason Jane Eyre was priced at £2.00.

Here are the covers to five of the books in the series: Emma, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights.



I do like these editions. I've bought three already and I expect I'll be buying a few more.

James Bond is back in Project X

Exactly a year from now we'll have another James Bond novel to read. The Ian Fleming copyright holders have announced that American crime author Jeffery Deaver will be writing a new James Bond novel (codenamed Project X) for publication on Ian Fleming's next birthday, 28 May 2011.

Deaver is one of those authors I've always meant to read so this should encourage me. I believe that he also has written an introduction to one of the recent Fleming paperback reprints from Penguin.

This will be the first new Bond novel since the centenary Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks that came out in 2008.

As an interesting (or not) footnote the book will be published by Deaver's publishers Hodder & Stoughton in the UK rather than Penguin. Hodder published various Bond books through the 1980s and 1990s before Penguin took over.

Find out more at www.ianfleming.com/project_x.asp and www.jamesbondprojectx.com/

Gerald Seymour's The Dealer and the Dead cover revealed

Thanks to Ross for alerting me that www.amazon.co.uk have put up the cover for Gerald Seymour's new novel, The Dealer and the Dead.


The cover art matches the design of the last year's novel The Collaborator. The publication date is still set for 8 July 2010.