One of the nifty things about reader reviews for my books is they sometimes are kind enough to mention authors with a similar style. Firstly it inflates my ego ;-). Secondly, sometimes I go “who?” and look them up and discover a wonderful new author. Such a one is James S.A. Corey, the collective name for a collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Leviathan Wakes is a classic space opera with noir overtones, featuring lots of nesting conspiracies, alien biotech, sociopathic CEOs, planetary wars, and vomit zombies. To tell you how good it is, I usually don’t like tales of interlocking sordid multilayer conspiracies, and yet I loved this book. Now I’m reading the second book, Caliban’s War, and anticipating yet another good story.
Speaking of comparisons, after reading Firehearted (which I enjoyed) with the major characters huffing it across the wilderness, fighting battles on their way to a fortress city, it has left me jonesing for some Tolkein.
Trivia. My step-father is good friends with those guys, and one of the main characters in the second book is based on his (my SF’s) old roleplaying game player character. Haven’t read the second one, though, so I can’t tell you which.