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Worlds Without End Blog

February RYO Review Poll Winners! Posted at 11:06 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

1st Place
alixheintzman
Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente
Alix Heintzman (AlixHeintzman)

2nd Place
RhondaK101
Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
Rhonda Knight (RhondaK101)

3rd Place
valashain
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
Nadine Gemeinböck (Linguana)

RYO_banner_350

The February Roll-Your-Own Review Poll is closed and we have our three winners! Congrats to Alix, Rhonda and Nadine and thanks to everyone for all the great reviews! Our winners will find an Amazon.com gift card waiting for them in their email inbox for $25, $15 and $10 respectively.

This is Alix’s second 1st place win – congrats to her!  We also had a tie for 3rd place between Nadine and Stephen Poltz for his review of Down Below Station but the tie breaking vote went to Nadine.  Better luck next time, Stephen.  I have no doubt you’ll be in the running again!

A look at the stats shows us that the RYO is still going strong with a nice jump in all areas except for the number of challenges.  I’m going to post a new challenge in April that I think will be a lot of fun.  It’s going to be interesting to see how many people can find time for yet another challenge but it will be a short one so I’m hoping to lure out a few adventurous souls.

Challenges: 27
Participants: 454
Books Read: 455
Books Reviewed: 224

The Red Knight and The Fell Sword Giveaway Winners! Posted at 10:20 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

This contest ended yesterday but I was out of town and couldn’t make the announcement until now.  Anyway, we’ve just had our re-tweet contest prize drawing for Miles Cameron‘s The Red Knight and The Fell Sword, books one and two of his Traitor Son Cycle from Orbit!

The Red KnightThe Fell Sword

There were 204 entries for the contest and here are our 5 random winners:

Kimberly Flickinger
(@kaflickinger74)
Dan Wizard-Badger
(@wizard_badger)
Susan T.
(@suekitty13)
Dana Renae Cerrito
(@auntdudu75)
Carmen K Woody
(@1142mom)

 

Congrats to all our winners! If you are one of our prize winners please send your full name and snail-mail address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can send your prize right away. Be sure to mention The Fell Sword in your email so we know which prize you’re claiming.

Our thanks to Orbit and Miles Cameron for the excellent contest and to everyone who participated! We’ll be back with another giveaway soon so keep an eye open!

Jupiter Ascending – Official Trailer 2 Posted at 8:08 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Hey, remember that first trailer for Jupiter Ascending? Yeah, me neither, but THIS one looks pretty cool, no?

2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist Posted at 10:15 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

God's War Ancillary Justice The Disestablishment of Paradise Nexus The Adjacent The Machine

The six shortlisted books for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel for 2014 were announced earlier this week.  They are:

The winner will be announced on Thursday May 1st at an exclusive award ceremony held at the Royal Society, London, and taking place as part of the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival.  The winner will be presented with a check for £2014.00 and the award itself, a commemorative engraved bookend.  See the official press release for more details.

Ancillary Justice keeps rolling along, garnering a 4th award nom with God’s War just behind with 3 noms to it’s credit.  So what do you think of this list?  Any surprises for you?  Which is your pick to win?

Contemporary Fantasy Manga 101: Bleach Posted at 12:10 PM by Glenn Hough

gallyangel

Glenn Hough (gallyangel) is a nonpracticing futurist, an anime and manga otaku, and is almost obsessive about finishing several of the lists tracked on WWEnd. In this series on Fantasy Manga Glenn will provide an overview of the medium and the place of fantasy within it.


bleach07To say that Bleach is a popular Manga here, in Japan, and around the world is to understate the obvious. Bleach is a Pop cultural icon of the worldwide manga movement.

Tite Kubo, as a mangaka, is prolific. Bleach debuted in August of 2001. As of this writing, chapter 573 is due out this week. That’s about 63 takubon worth of material. That’s quite the pace for a weekly series since I’m sure he did have some time off during the last ten plus years. Bleach has probably made Kubo a Billionaire many times over. (A billion Yen. The quick and dirty conversion for Yen to Dollars is to move the decimal two places to the left so ¥1,000,000,000 equals $10,000,000. One Yen is like one Cent.)

This is what VIZ says about Bleach, Vol. 1:

Strawberry and the Soul Reapers

Ichigo Kurosaki has always been able to see ghosts, but this ability doesn’t change his life nearly as much as his close encounter with Rukia Kuchiki, a Soul Reaper and member of the mysterious Soul Society. While fighting a Hollow, an evil spirit that preys on humans who display psychic energy, Rukia attempts to lend Ichigo some of her powers so that he can save his family; but much to her surprise, Ichigo absorbs every last drop of her energy. Now a full-fledged Soul Reaper himself, Ichigo quickly learns that the world he inhabits is one full of dangerous spirits and, along with Rukia–who is slowly regaining her powers–it’s Ichigo’s job to protect the innocent from Hollows and help the spirits themselves find peace.

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Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge: February Review Poll Posted at 10:11 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Vote now!So I guess it’s obvious we’re pretty far behind on getting this review poll started. My apologies for being so tardy but, in my own defense, I was on vacation this month and there have been over 200 reviews. You guys are not making this easy! Anywho, here are 16 great reviews that we featured in the blog from February. Your job is to read through them and pick your top three. In an effort to catch up we’re going to run a short poll so you only have until next Friday, the 28th to vote so don’t delay!

There are 3 prizes awarded each month for the best reviews: $25, $15 and $10 Amazon.com gift cards.  Voting is open to all WWEnders not just those taking part in the RYO.

Thanks and good luck to all our reviewers!

Talus and the Frozen King Winners! Posted at 4:44 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Talus and the Frozen KingWe’ve just had our re-tweet contest prize drawing for the first three books of Graham Edward’s Talus and the Frozen King! There were 98 entrants this time and here are our 5 random winners:

Mr Patrick Reinhart
(@MrPatch)
Troubled Scribe
(@TroubledScribe)
Mrs. MTS
(@TySweeps)
Melissa Tippie
(@MelissaTippie)
Damien Crawley
(@damiencrawley)

 

Congrats to all our winners! If you are one of our prize winners please send your full name and snail-mail address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can send your prize right away. Be sure to mention Talus and the Frozen King in your email so we know which prize you’re claiming.

Our thanks to Solaris and Graham Edwards for the excellent contest and to everyone who participated!  We’ll be back with another giveaway soon so keep one eye open!

Book Giveaway: The Red Knight and The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron Posted at 2:06 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

Orbit BooksTo celebrate the release of Miles Cameron‘s new book, The Fell Sword, the folks at Orbit have asked us to help them give out some autographed books.  And, since this is the second book in the Traitor Son Cycle, they upped the ante by throwing in the first book as well.  That’s right we have five copies of The Fell Sword AND The Red Knight up for grabs!  Pretty schweet, huh?

One caveat:  This contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.  If you are an UhMerican or a Canuck all you have to do is re-tweet this tweet:

 

…or comment here in the blog to enter the contest. Do both and double your chances! It’s about as easy as we can make it. We’ll have a random drawing from our re-tweeter pool and announce the winners next Wednesday so tweet away and don’t forget to tell your friends.


The Red Knight The Fell Sword

The Fell Sword
Miles Cameron

Loyalty costs money.

Betrayal, on the other hand, is free.

When the Emperor is taken hostage, the Red Knight and his men find their services in high demand – and themselves surrounded by enemies. The country is in revolt, the capital city is besieged and any victory will be hard won. But The Red Knight has a plan.

The question is, can he negotiate the political, magical, real and romantic battlefields at the same time – especially when intends to be victorious on them all?


Miles CameronAbout the Author:

Miles Cameron Is a military veteran and historian.

He has a degree in Medieval History and lives with his wife and daughter in the most multi-cultural city in the world. There’s also a cat. So far, no horse.  However, there are a great many pieces of armour, swords, pole-axes, tents, camp kettles, bits of horse harness, and other guarantees that the author spends far too much money on reenacting.

Miles loves the deep wilderness—loves to camp six miles from a road—using only 14th century or 18th century camping techniques and equipment. The author feels—right or wrong—that when you are deep in the Metcalf Lake region of the Adirondack Mountains (or the Serengeti), anything might happen. Everything is possible. Just walk out of the circle of firelight into the waiting darkness, and feel the Wild.

That’s not fantasy.

Our thanks to Orbit and Miles Cameron for sponsoring the contest and best of luck to everyone. Help us spread the word and be sure to come back next Tuesday to see if you’ve won!

Game of Thrones Season 4: Trailer #4 – Devil Inside Posted at 10:36 AM by Dave Post

Dave Post

This just looks better and better! Love the dragon at the end.

RYO Review: Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente Posted at 8:39 AM by Alix Heintzman

alixheintzman

Silently and Very FastRYO Reading ChallengeI read the first few chapters of this novella as an act of faith, because Valente has earned my trust as a reader, and because Silently and Very Fast has an award and nomination list long enough to be its own short story (it won the Locus Award for Best Novella, and was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). So I waded through dense cyber-fairytale imagery on the assumption that it would resolve itself into a story. It did. A very, very good one.

It’s difficult to find the beginning of Silently and Very Fast; it’s one of those Ouroboros stories which loops and curls until it’s eating its own tail. At some point, it becomes clear that your narrator is Elefsis, a self-aware program that lives in the consciousness of the Uoya-Agostino family in a future version of Hokkaido. Elefsis is passed down through the generations in a surgically-implanted jewel, and each human mind she lives in teaches her more about emotion, humanity, creation, and symbolic representation. When the book begins, Elefsis has just been hastily transferred to a woman named Neva — the last surviving member of the family. Neva is tense and unhappy to be saddled with the family heirloom, and she keeps secrets tucked away in their shared dreamscape. Elefsis mines their internal consciousness (the Interior), and discovers more about the world outside them and her place in it.

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