Meanwhile, in the world of the Small Press…

Resurrection House acquired Underland Press, not so long ago, and the good news for fans like me is that new owner Mark Teppo won’t be making any huge changes to the imprint. And a good job too I say, Underland Press is something a little bit special and shouldn’t be forced into doing anything other than what it does best.
Another upshot for me though is that I’ve found myself on the Resurrection House mailing list. I love being on mailing lists by the way, not only does it make my email address feel all loved but I get to find out about new stuff that I wouldn’t normally see. Like gorgeous looking covers for example, check these out…

Heraclix was dead and Pomp was immortal. That was before Heraclix’s reanimation (along with the sewn-together pieces and parts of many other dead people) and Pomp’s near murder at the hands of an evil necromancer. As they travel from Vienna to Prague to Istanbul and back again (with a side-trip to Hell), they struggle to understand who and what they are: Heraclix seeks to know the life he had before his death and rebirth, and Pomp wrestles with the language and meaning of mortality. As they journey across a land rife with revolution and unrest, they discover the evil necromancer they thought dead might not be so dead after all. In fact, he might be making a pact to ensure his own immortality…

I love any cover art that has olde worlde style medieval houses on it, that’s just the way I roll. The rest of the book could be about anything and I wouldn’t care, I’d just be looking at those houses on the cover. Luckily in this case, the blurb looks like the book could be interesting, certainly a lot to chew on.

In the 27th century, the transgenic virus has changed the definition of what it means to be human. Jantine is a Beta, a genetically modified soldier from Earth’s Outer Colonies. Her team of Betas, Gammas (conditioned from an early age for support roles in colonial society), Deltas (four-armed biological war machines), and Omegas (telepathic giants also known as "the Builders") are returning to Earth with a cargo of hundreds of sleeping mods. When they reach humanity’s home system, they find themselves in the middle of a civil war.

Is the Reclamation government friendly? Should they stand with the System Defense Force? And how do Jantine and her crew convince either faction that they are human too? With their ship destroyed and its cargo stolen, Jantine and her team flee to the surface in a desperate race to retrieve the sleepers and stop the release of a new version of the virus, which may prove catastrophic for humans and mods alike.

This is one of those covers where I have literally no idea what is going on. Is that a spacecraft crashing, landing or something else entirely? Any guesses? You won’t win a thing but you might just put my mind at rest a little bit. It does look cool though (whatever it is) and isn’t that what counts at the end of the day? The answer is ‘maybe’…

What do you think about these covers? And would you read the books?