Post-Christmas Shopping Guide: Book Edition

Christmas is over and you’ve got a handful of Borders, Amazon, or B&N gift cards to use (if you’re lucky). So what books should you buy with them?

Well, here are my suggestions of a few titles you might want to consider in your post-Christmas shopping madness:

The Golden Cord by Paul Genesse
This debut fantasy novel has everything you need to tickle those fantasy taste buds. Action, adventure, magic, and more. It’s all there to keep you entice from start to finish!

Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale
Not all the books you buy this year have to be fun fantastic romps, do they? Some can be simply stunning quasi-fantasy stories involving the deeper meanings of relationships as they pertain to a society of clashing peoples: Demons and Inquisitors. If you’re into some tough love in the fantasy genre, then this is certainly a book you should consider. After all, nothing wrong with a book that makes you really think, is there?

Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell
Zombies in space. That’s the line I’ve been pitching to people for this book and it’s just as important now as it was then. This book is the first in a series of loosely connected space opera novels by a fantastic Caribbean author. If you don’t like jumping into the middle of a series, however, consider snatching up Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, each equally unique and action-packed stories following some of the same characters.

Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery
Think literary fiction meets pulp fiction (not the movie) meets science fiction. It’s different, it’s beautifully written, and it taps into all the little glimmers of gold in all those genres all at once.

Or maybe you’re not into all that adult stuff. Well, how about some young adult fantasy?

The 13th Reality by James Dashner
A brilliant start to a brilliant new series. Magic, quantum physics (and don’t let that scare you!), strange individuals, and quirky fantasies, this is surely a good book to satisfy those urges for something to fill that Harry Potter void.

Leven Thumps Series by Obert Skye
If quirky is your thing, then the Leven Thumps Series is right up your alley. Nothing can be more strange than the world Mr. Skye has built for this young adult universe. Take Clover, a small, large-eared talking creature that can turn invisible and has what amounts to an endless void in which he stores various unusual things! Quirky? I think so, and fantastic!

Or, if you’re into neither straight fantasy or straight science fiction or young adult fantasy, then perhaps you’re into alternate history.

Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
If you haven’t read Farthing, then I recommend you do so. But if you have, then Ha’penny is a well written and deeper continuation of an alternate world in which England and Nazi Germany made peace instead of duking it out. A terrifically despondent world and a story written like a 1930s detective novel!

These, of course, are just a few suggestions I can make. If you don’t see anything here, however, you should consider checking out SF Signal’s enormous Mind Meld (part one, part two, and part three) on best genre works consumed this year!

You can also find my reviews of the above books either in my Book Reviews label section, at Shelfari, or at Goodreads (feel free to add me as a friend at those last two locations).

Happy shopping!