'Looking for Jake' Cover

[Jay]

Due out in August according to Amazon, just posted the cover on my site [url="http://www.fantasybookspot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=629"]]Here

Awesome! Thoughts?

[rune]

It does look very classy. I'm looking forward to the book coming out too

[knivesout]

Splendid. This is one I'm really looking forward - to read one of my favouite authors working in my favourite format - the short story (an almost dead art in fantasy circles).

[Rane Longfox]

Very nice

Do you know who the artist is? Doesn't look like his usual...

[Brys]

Great cover. Mieville is very lucky in this - he is one of the few authors who is able to get amazing covers both in the US and the UK. What does this short story collection include, though?

[Jay]

I should have checked, I recently ordered it from the UK (canceled the U.S. Order) due to Amazon not offering it in hardcover. Then I went to World Con, and they already had copies there and I should be getting mine in a few days (I mailed like 6 boxes of books back).

At any rate there is at least one Bas-lag story (the descripuion says 1 set, but I'm not sure what that implies). It's Mieville, so I'm sure it will be outstanding.

[knivesout]

Just got hold of this on Saturday - with a different cover, though. I've read the first 4 stories so far. More once I'm done with the whole book.

These are the contents:

* Looking for Jake
* Foundation
* The Ball Room
* Reports of Certain Events in London
* Familiar
* Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopedia
* Details
* Go Between
* Different Skies
* An End to Hunger
* 'Tis the Season
* Jack
* On the Way to the Front
* The Tain

And here's a decription:

A novella and thirteen short stories of brilliant diversity, from a master of literary fantasy Step into a London ravaged by unearthly creatures at once utterly alien and chillingly familiar. In China Mieville's award-winning novella 'The Tain', we learn the reason for the invaders' terrible revenge. One survivor must trek through the ruins of the city with a desperate plan to stand against their assault. In addition to 'The Tain', this superb collection contains thirteen short stories, of visionary cityscapes and urban paranoia, ghosts, monsters and impossible diseases. Several of the stories are published here for the first time: these include one set in New Crobuzon, the location of the award-winning series of novels that began with Perdido Street Station; and one in comic-strip form, illustrated by top graphic artist Liam Sharp. This collection displays the sheer imaginative scope of China Mieville's work.

[Thadlerian]

I've got it with that cover too. I've read the five first. They're really eerie and disturbing, especially "The Ball Room".

[rune]

I'm gonna have to get this book, it sounds fascinating

[GeoffNelder]

Not so much a review of Looking for Jake as a few observations

Many of the stories centre on a misfit character – interesting formula too. Many of them for instance work on the interception of coded information going on between two unknown groups. Hence we think they might be terrorists v army – as in the cartoon, in-between or ghostly as in reports of certain events where streets go on holiday.

I like the premise of Looking for Jake with the people vanishing, and the horror in ball room (nice line with the guard’s torch ‘sending shadows into corners’.

I like familiar where life is formed maybe from magic but it absorbs objects into its form.

End to hunger also is kind of a formula where narrator is privy to information by a hacker on a click to donate aid website.

The Tain is a novella. Premise is the invasion of London by the Tain in the form of imagos and vampires etc. The enemy are the reflections in everyday objects including water. Hence after the invasion, there was no more reflection. Strangely much of the narrator use of poorly understood physics avoids the use of the word albedo even though he uses the concept – spoilt it for me.

Geoff