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Game of Thrones: In Memoriam
This video from Comic-Con is but a small slice of all the characters who have lost their lives. Or so I’m told; Dave’s the Game of Thrones watcher around here.
Making Coffee the Steampunk Way
Finally, the steampunk revolution produces something useful!
Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge: June Review Poll Winners
The Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge June review poll is now closed and again we have our three winners!
June WoGF Review Poll Winners:
Congrats to Rob, Steff and Nathan and thanks to everyone who participated in the poll. Our winners will find an Amazon gift card, $25, $15 and $10 respectively, waiting for them in their email inbox.
There are still 6 more months of prizes to be awarded so if you didn’t win this time you still have plenty more chances.
A Once Crowded Sky Book Giveaway Winners!
Our A Once Crowded Sky free books re-tweet contest has closed. We had 76 entries this time around – our thanks to everyone who participated! We used a random number generator to select our five winners. For the record, the numbers we generated were 26, 34, 48, 66 and 71.
Congrats to our winners:
ade1665
If you are one of our prize winners please send your mailing address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can get your autographed books in the mail right away.
Our thanks to Tom King and Touchstone for donating the prizes. We’re looking forward to some great reviews!
WoGF Review: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Steff S. (MMOGC), is an avid reader with an eclectic taste in books. While just about anything can catch her eye, she has a particular soft spot for fantasy and science fiction, and especially loves space operas and stories with interesting magic systems. Besides reading, she enjoys adventuring in the virtual words of MMORPGs, and first started blogging about games before branching out to contribute her book reviews at The BiblioSanctum with her friends.
I’ve always marveled and pondered the many ways authors handle the subject of dragons. In Rachel Hartman‘s Seraphina, they are intelligent, possess advanced technology, and have a magical ability that lets them take human form. The book takes place in a world where humans and dragonkind exist in a constant state of mistrust. After warring with the humans for time eternal, the leaders of the two races had finally come together to agree upon a peace treaty.
Now forty years have passed, and while dragons walk amongst humans at court and in their cities as scholars and ambassadors, bitter feelings still exist between the two sides. The tension reaches a fever pitch in the days before the dragonkind leader arrives to commemorate the treaty’s anniversary, and a human prince of Goredd is found dead, his head missing–presumably eaten by a dragon.
These events hold terrible implications for our protagonist Seraphina Dombegh, a half-dragon hybrid who has struggled to hide her secret for most of her life. Circumstances draw her into the murder investigation, and she finds herself working with handsome Prince Lucian, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, despite her position as the court musician’s assistant. With the day of the anniversary celebrations fast approaching, they have limited time to tease apart a dangerous conspiracy plot.
The world-building in this book is phenomenal; as in, a lot of thought seems to have been put into every aspect of the setting. For example, its rich history adds a lot to the story, and to a certain extent, the reader has to understand the significance of past events to fully appreciate the impact they have on the present. Then there is the complex religion, which encompasses a fair number of saints to which the people of Goredd look to guide them. The religious aspect certainly isn’t central to the book, but at the same time, it adds a layer of context to the story and characters, making them feel more refined.
New Voices: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Published : DAW Books, 2012
Awards Nominated: 2012 Nebula and 2013 Hugo awards
Awards Won: 2013 Locus Award for Best First Novel
Saladin Ahmed is a poet, as well as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, and he maintains a website. While he has a quantity of public short fiction and poetry, Throne of the Crescent Moon is his first novel. Out of his short fiction, he was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer for “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela”, which was also nominated for a Nebula Award (and is available online).
Ahmed’s first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, is a sword and sorcery tale set in an Arabic world, featuring a power struggle around the titular throne. While magic is pretty common in the capital city of Dhamsawaat, the townsfolk are more concerned with the corrupt Khalif and rebellious Falcon Prince than any possible threat from ghuls or djenn. As a result, professional ghul hunting has become a largely thankless task, though the elderly, messy, curmudgeonly hunter Adoulla Makhslood still risks life and limb to protect people from the occasional ghul.
The Mythopoeic Award on WWEnd!
Today we’re happy to announce the addition of the Mythopoeic Award to the Worlds Without End database! The award is administered by the Mythopoeic Society, and organization dedicated to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantastic and mythopoeic literature. Here’s the award description from their website:
The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume novel, or single-author story collection for adults published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings”. Books not selected as finalists in the year after publication are eligible for a second year. Books from a series are eligible if they stand on their own; otherwise, the series becomes eligible the year its final volume appears.
Of all the awards we could have added this one, by far, garnered the most interest and support from our members. Once you take a look at it, especially with the cover image gallery, you’ll see why. There are more classics and fan favorites than you can shake a stick at. You’ll find Richard Adam’s classic Watership Down, John Gardner’s masterwork Grendel as well as a handful of Earthsea books from the incomparable Ursula K. Le Guin – just to name a few of the 191 books on the list.
It’s been a long time coming but it has certainly been worth the wait. Let us know what you think of this new addition and don’t forget to check your reading stats page to see how you fare for this award. We just got the last hundred or so books for the award added to the site so you may have some tagging to do. My record is not worth mentioning so it’s highly likely that yours is far better. Let us know much better in the comments below. Enjoy!
10,000 Near Earth Objects, and a Pleasantly More Assertive NASA
Asteroid 2013 MZ5 as seen by the University of Hawaii’s PanSTARR-1 telescope. Image credit: PS-1/UH
On June 18, 2013, Asteroid 2013 MZ5 was originally detected, and by June 24, it was officially identified as the 10,000th Near Earth Object (NEO – asteroids and comets whose orbits approach or cross Earth’s orbit) to be discovered. Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is approximately 1,000 feet (300 meters) across. Its orbit is well understood, and it will not approach close enough to Earth to be considered potentially hazardous. Although 10,000 NEOs may seem to be a huge number, less than 1% of NEOs believed to be 100 feet or larger (large enough to “cause significant devastation” according to NASA) have been detected. How significant would the devastation be from a 100 foot Near Earth Asteroid (NEA)? Imagine a 100 foot NEA striking a city with a population of millions, and leaving a crater where that entire city used to be. That certainly qualifies as significant devastation.
The February 15 NEA airburst over Chelyabinsk, Russia (which injured approximately 1,000 people), brought worldwide media attention to that NEA, if only for that weekend. Since then, NASA has increased its efforts to request from the U.S. Congress the additional funding needed to identify and categorize NEOs. (Since there are believed to be considerably more NEAs than near Earth comets, the term NEA tends to be more commonplace.) Time will tell if that additional funding is approved.
Mira Grant Book Drawing Winners!
The Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire free books re-tweet contest is now closed. Apparently we have a lot of zombie fans out there, since we got a very respectable 138 entries! After copying all those names into a spreadsheet and assigning each one a number, we used a random number generator to select our 2 winners:
David J. Peterson
(@Dedalvs)
Sarah Williams
(@sarahgmd)
Congrats to David and Sarah who will both receive the complete autographed Newsflesh Trilogy courtesy of Orbit Books and Mira Grant! Our thanks to them for putting up the prizes and also to everyone who participated!
You know, the only thing better than getting free books is giving out free books. We’re having quite a bit of fun doing just that. It’s been so much fun that we’re going to keep doing it so be sure to tune in again Friday for another chance to win.
2012 Shirley Jackson Award Winner!
The 2012 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on Sunday, July 14th at Readercon 24, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts, hosted by Readercon 24 Guest of Honor, Maureen McHugh.
The winner in the novel category is Koji Suzuki‘s Edge: A Novel.
See the official press release for complete results in all categories.
Congratulations to Koji Suzuki and all the nominees! What do you think of the results? Anyone read Edge yet?
