Can't-Wait Wednesday: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman & Moonbound by Robin Sloan

     

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
Publication: June 25th, 2024
Del Rey
Hardcover. 384 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every “Can I go inside your heart?”

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.
But Other Mommy needs an answer."

The 'Other Mommy' situation definitely makes me think of Coraline (which is a favorite), but even without that this premise sounds wonderfully creepy and I'm really curious to see what Malerman does with this one!

Moonbound by Robin Sloan
Publication: June 11th, 2024
MCD
Hardcover. 432 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.

It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.

Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning."

This sounds incredibly wacky and I'm totally here for it. 

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Book Review

Robin Sloan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2012. 304 Pages. Hardcover.
**I read this book and wrote it's review about a year ago, but for some reason never posted is. So, now here it is.**

This book was truly a lively and delightful read. It wasn’t filled with an overly dramatic or heavy subject matter, but was simply  a wonderfully entertaining book. I would actually say this book was the definition of entertaining.
This story follows the journey of a young man named Clay Jannon who finds a job at a quaint and quirky bookstore. While working the nightshift at this bookstore, Clay encounters a variety of unique and eccentric customers. The strange thing about these customers, however, is that they never buy any books; instead, they merely ‘check out’ the oldest books in the store. Clay soon discovers that there is much more to this bookstore and some of the books inside it than he thought. We, the readers, then follow Clay on his journey to decode the mysterious books and everything that goes along with them.

First, I love books (obviously). Because of this, I loved that this was one of those "books about books" and that the overall focus and aspect of the novel was... well, books. The bookstore itself was so entertaining to read about, with its huge, towering bookshelves and different varieties of books it contained (i.e. "regular books," the "Waybacklist").
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When I first started this book, however, I don’t think I realized how much of a role modern technology would play in it. I feel that most authors who try to incorporate advanced ideas and technologies are either really successful at it, or fail miserably. Luckily, I found Sloan to be extremely successful in this endeavor. I found the topic itself to be very interesting, and I found myself intrigued by the programming and coding that was used throughout, no matter how accurate or inaccurate it may be. I think all of it added a really nice touch to the story.

There was also a very unique array of characters that each had an extremely distinct and entertaining personality; they brought such life and excitement to the novel. One of my favorite aspects of the novel was Clay himself. He had such a witty and refreshing narrative that truly captures you and transports you into the story.

The pacing of the novel was spot-on; I never felt that the story was too rushed. I also did not find myself getting bored from the  novel moving too slowly either. And yes, this book does seem a bit far-fetched at times, but it is fiction, afterall, and that is extremely understandable.

Overall, I found this to be an extremely well-written and exciting novel that I would definitely recommend to anyone. Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore will receive a nice four stars from me.