Hoegbotton Book Sale

Most excellent author Jeff VanderMeer is struggling with a problem I know well, a truly delightful torture: having too many books. He's expecting a lot more now he's one of the judges on this year's Wolrd Fantasy awards and so is organising a sale - check out his blog on VanderWorld for details. In more Jeff related news I have been raving on about his new novel of Ambergris, Shriek: an Afterword. Rather than repeat a lot of what I've been saying, here's what I wrote on the FPI blogs last week about Shriek, which has only just come out in the UK (US readers get it later this month).

I have been eagerly waiting for Shriek for months and was totally taken with it; it is like sinking into a dream, full of metaphor and vibrant imagery, sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing. Its my first Bloody Good Book recommendation for 2006 in fact; Jeff's previous book, a collection called City of Saints and Madmen is also highly recommended for anyone who wants a fascinating, well-written fantasy (it went down very well with folk in our Book Group). And for those of you who don't normally delve into fantasy, I still recommend Shriek - it is a very 'literary' (for want of a better term) novel of changing cities and relationships, quite beautiful and with haunting imagery, drawing on Bill Burroughs, Kafka, Borges, Poe and others.

On the new FPI website the individual sections generate their own bestseller lists on a regular basis, but I have been really pleased to see Shriek up there as our top seller with City of Saints usually coming second in the SF&F novels section - obviously the word is spreading, so you may want to read some Jeff VanderMeer now and get ahead of the masses.