According to Amazon, there's a new Anita Blake novel due out Febuary 28th, titled simply Micah (named for one of the prominent characters in the last three novels). There's an interesting twist. Amazon is listing it as a paperback. I presume that means that Ms. Hamilton has been downgraded from the hardcover list due to lackluster sales of her last Blake novel, Incubus Dreams, or the intervening Meredith Gentry novels. I actually think that's a good thing; the Gentry novels were unashamed soft-core pornography and the recent Blake novels weren't much better. I'm much more interested in magic, vampires, werewolves, and murder mysteries than I am in reading a thousand pages of nonstop sexual orgy. Perhaps the declining sales will deliver the point to the publishers and the author in a way that online commentary may not necessarily accomplish.

In Dies the Fire, author SM Stirling explores the consequences of an event that alters the fundamental principles of the universe such that modern technology -- particularly firearms, engines, and electricity -- no longer function. In the time between the onset of the event and the first harvest, the characters must face the physical challenge of survival in a changed world, while devising new social and moral structures better adapted to that world. Unsurprisingly, survival without modern technology demands a basically feudal structure -- and not every would-be king has the best interests of his people at heart.