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While perusing the SF&F section at UBS today I noticed two examples of a new (to me anyway) development: novels based on computer games. These were Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance, based on Assassin’s Creed 2, and Eve: The Empyrean Age, based on Eve Online. I have not read either book, nor have I played either game. I’d be very interested to know, though, a) how well these books capture the feel and backstory of their respective games; and b) how well these books read as SF&F books, independent of their origins. It would seem that neither author has written anything else, which doesn’t augur well, and media tie-ins are traditionally sub-par in terms of writing quality, but you never know…

So I went into Borders last night, and wound up buying Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross. While I was there I noticed that they are about to reduce the size of the Science Fiction section once more. They aren’t bothering to restock the shelves, leaving lots of unsightly gaps, and the Crime section has wrapped itself around the corner and taken over the first bookcase in the Science Fiction section like convolvulus. Furthermore, there was a stack of about a hundred unsold copies of The Gathering Storm gathering dust against one wall. Sigh…

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Since I am as bad as anyone else at buying books mostly from authors I already know, rather than giving the new guys a go, I try on occasion to look for books by people I’ve never heard of. I pulled one such book off the shelf – a mighty red tome, an omnibus edition of a Fantasy trilogy I’d never heard of by some guy I’ve never heard of. I judge new Fantasy books by the quality of the map at the front, so I took a quick squiz: three maps! Oh my! I had already decided to buy the Stross, so I resolved to remember the name of the author and series and check them out some time.

This morning I realised that I had completely forgotten everything about the book, except that it was big and red and had three maps in the front. How hard could it be tracking it down based on that?

Then I happened to read an article on tor.com, in which people were asked to nominate undeservedly little-known writers. And there it was, in comment eight: Chris Wooding, author of The Braided Path trilogy.