I bought the first two books, and, already anxious at waiting for the third, I signed up for the chance to read an electronic Advance Review Copy of Apex, was lucky enough to get chosen for one, and read it last month. And I agree with all of this. A really satisfying ending to a great series, and even though the eARC was free, I’m buying a paperback copy because I know I’ll read the series again.
Invent this kind of interface and I won’t care the slightest how much illegal it is to get one.
Oooh yay! I flew through the first two books a couple months ago, went to get the third one only to find that it wasn’t out yet!
I read the first two books last year, and liked them quite a bit. Heard about the release of the third one and went to the store today to pick it up… and discovered it’s only available as small paperback, not in the same size at the previous two volumes. I hate it with such a fiery burning pasion when publishers do that in the middle (or worse, like in this case, right before the conclusion) of a series. They’re taking away one of the big pleasures of having the physical books - having them look good on your shelves. It’s become such a common thing these last couple of years. Publish one or two books in one style and format, then republish everything in a new design and format, in an attempt to appeal to new readers, making life unpleasant for early readers. >.<
(Usually this goes the other way, moving up from mass market paperback to literary format, which I additionally disliked for taking up that much more vertical space and not fitting in on most of my shelves; bit bizarre to now see this trend reversing again.)
I ended up not actually buying the book today. Probably will still do so at some future point, once my current to-be-read stack has been exhausted, and I’ve been unsuccessful with attempts to find out if the book ever was or will be published in thje old format. Or maybe by that time I’ll decide that I didn’t actually care enough about these books after all and will just move on to the next series. Meh.
Looking forward to getting stuck into this. It’s a shame though, this series seems to tick all the right boxes but i get the impression it hasn’t taken off like it should. Plus i want this tech…maybe without the backdoors.
They are selling it drm free through The Robot Trading Co. for anyone interested. But for some reason nexus and crux are no longer on there; related to the recent Angry Robot troubles maybe?
I’m reading this right now and it is a wonderful book (as were the first two). The first is quite good and, really, I think the weakest of the trilogy. It only gets better.
Disclosure: I’m an acquaintance of the author since our mutual Microsoft days.
It looks like Angry Robot redid the cover graphics for Nexus and Crux, republished those recently as mass-market paperbacks, and Apex has the same graphic theme but is in the larger paperback format. Unfortunately I would guess that the best match you’ll find for the set is holding out for a mass-market of Apex. (Meanwhile, go bug your public library to carry the series if they don’t already.)
Hey OCDReader - You are mistaken, my friend. In the US and Canada, the first two books were published in the larger trade paperback format, and so is the third! Perhaps you saw the new mass-market editions of Nexus and Crux and got mixed-up? Rest assured that if you buy Apex right now it will be the same size as your copies of Nexus and Crux.
Marc @ AR
@ Marc: Huh.I guess a new cover design for one of the previous two volumes would have thrown me off. Thanks for the reply; I’ll go have a second look next week…
Mez’s publisher got itself sold to another overlord between his second and third books and they restructured their line. I assume that this coincides with their development of new cover art.
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