Review: "Tomorrow, the Killing" by Daniel Polansky

No, Daniel Polansky’s “Tomorrow, the Killing” (Hodder & Stoughton) hasn’t been released in the U.S. yet, but after enjoying the first book, “Low Town,” immensely, I got tired of waiting.

“Tomorrow, the Killing” returns us to the world of The Warden, a one-time war hero and government agent turned drug dealer. The Warden is king of the walk in the part of the city known as Low Town, but his past is about to come back to haunt him. He gets a call from a former general whose daughter has gone missing in Low Town. She went there to investigate the death of her brother, Roland, The Warden’s former commanding officer and head of the veteran’s association, a victim of a political murder when his ambitions became a little too big.

Meanwhile, the veteran’s association is cranking its efforts up again. The government has reneged on a promised payment to veterans, and the association is planning a march to protest. The Warden’s friend and co-owner of his tavern, Adolphus, has gotten heavily involved, which gives him some concerns.

Review: "The Black Prism," by Brent Weeks

With “The Black Prism” ($7.99, Orbit), Brent Weeks delivers a tale that will have some familiarity, but a very different tone for fans of his Night Angel trilogy.

Weeks introduces us to Gavin Guile, The Prism, which basically means that he’s the most powerful magic user in the world, an emperor by title, though not necessarily in the traditional sense.

Guile knows exactly how much time he has left to live. Prisms tend to rule in multiples of seven years, and he’s working on his third set of seven, an unusual length of time. He has great purposes planned out for the things that he’ll achieve, but his life is thrown into chaos when he learns that he has a bastard son in a backwater satrapy that has been neglected since he battled his brother Dazen there in the Prism’s War.