Court of the Air promo movie

I do like a book promo when it's well-designed, well-executed and, above all, intriguing. In a comment on my recent post about my reading list backlog, Brian Edwards of SciFind.co.uk points me in the direction of the Flash promo for Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air - hosted by SciFind - which meets all three criteria quite nicely.

It's stylish: smoothly animated and sound-tracked with mood music and sound effect rather than any sort of cheesy author's voice-over. It also introduces the main characters and their situation - chock full of deadly peril and drama-inducing conflict - without giving away any more information than you'd expect from the publishers' blurb, so no major spoilers.

So overall I'd say it had a generally beneficial effect; on balance I for one would be more likely to pick up the book having seen the trailer. Job done.

Okay, some folks might be put off by the stylised, comics-esque animation, but I don't think that would be too much of a problem among the book's likely core, genre reading audience. So it's targeted as well, which is all to the good.

Check it out: www.scifind.co.uk/courtoftheair/.

April 6, 2007 | Filed Under Miscellania | Leave a Comment

New Arrivals - end Dec '06, early Jan '07

Three new items came in recently that have particularly caught my eye. All proof copies of forthcoming UK titles:

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

I'm going to have to fight Jo for first-reading rights to this one. We both loved Joe Hill's debut short fiction collection, Twentieth Century Ghosts and have been looking forward to getting our hands on his debut novel ever since it was announced.

Heart-Shaped Box promises to be "...the best debut horror novel since Clive Barker's Damnation Game twenty years ago... A genuinely scary novel filled with people you care about; the kind of book that still stays in your mind when you turn over the final page." And those are Neil Gaiman's words, not mine.

Published by Gollancz in the UK in March, folks. More information on Amazon.co.uk.

The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt

Mr Hunt is the webmeister of the long-running and highly popular genre 'zine SF Crow's Nest, and The Court of the Air is not his first novel to be published. His debut was For the Crown and the Dragon, which won the WH Smith New Talent Prize way back in 1994 (I'll be dropping Mr Hunt a few interview questions for UKSFBN a bit closer to publication date, so I'll see if we can find out about the hiatus).

The Court of the Air looks to be as a quasi-Victorian adventure / melodrama - so it should appeal to fans of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell et. al. - starring Molly Templar and Oliver Brooks; two orphaned children who must flee from ruthless enemies in the company of outlaws, thieves and spies.

It sounds like a rollicking adventure yarn and a thoroughly good read; the only thing that's making me slightly wary is the rather hefty page-count (582 in the proof), although the page margins and font-size are both generous. One for the list and see if the mood takes me, I reckon...

Ink by Hal Duncan

This is the follow-up to Hal Duncan's much talked-about 2005 debut, Vellum [Amazon]. I have to confess that I was one of the weak-willed, lilly-livered, namby-pamby types who gave up halfway through the first volume, so it's unlikely that Ink will be troubling my 'must read' list anytime soon, not until I've had the chance to gird my loins and re-tackle Vellum with renewed determination.

But I did read enough first time around to recognise that Hal Duncan is an intelligent and intriguing writer with the potential to produce a great deal of very fine work in the future. I'll be keeping an eye on the reaction to this second volume; I'm interested to see what folks make of it, now they think they might have an idea what to expect (although somehow I doubt that it will turn out to be quite what anyone expects...)

There's a good interview with the author over at Fantasybookspot in which he talks about the relationship between the two books, which might give you a couple of clues.