Fantastic sampler to understanding the booking coming out during a time period. We enjoy using these during book club meetings when trying to plan future reads. Please keep these coming.

A great sampler for readers who love sci fi, fantasy, and graphic novels. Enjoy!

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Opinions are mine.

Enter the Fandom Sampler, Vol 4 contains excerpts from The Future is Yours by Dan Frey, The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec, Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King, The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck, Malice by Heather Walter and Afterlift by Chip Zdarsky. This sampler provided a great taste into different books within the genres of sci-fi and fantasy as well as different formats including graphic novels.

The Future is Yours is a story about two college friends who invent a way to communicate with your future from one year in the future. This novel is told in an epistolary format through emails, transcripts and texts. The premise of this novel sounds fascinating and I loved the format which made this really fast paced and easy to read. I would definitely be interested in reading the rest of this.

The Witch's Heart is a Norse mythology retelling and centres around Angrboda and Loki. I'm typically not a fan of mythological retellings and find them quite difficult to follow. However I thought this story seemed really interesting and I loved that it shifted the focus onto Angrboda and her family and struggles.

Sleeping Beauties is the main reason I requested this sampler as I have been keen to get my hands on more work by Stephen King ever since reading Misery last year. This edition is a graphic novel adapted by Rio Youers and illustrated by Alison Sampson. I haven't read many graphic novels so this was something new to me however I did love the illustrations and thought they captured the eerie atmosphere perfectly.

The Memory Theater takes place in a parallel world and explores the story of two best friends travelling between that world and ours to find the person who can grant them freedom from the Garden. I loved the descriptions throughout the extract and found the fairytale world incredibly engrossing.

Malice is a dark retelling of Sleeping Beauty which features Princess Aurora and Alyce. I love princess retellings particularly when the 'prince charming' character is replaced by a villain so the premise of this book was right up my street. From the sample, I did feel that the writing style did feel directed at a younger audience.

Afterlift follows a ride-share driver Janice Chen who picks up a pair of passengers who are being pursued by otherworldly forces in the form of a graphic novel. I loved the illustration style of this novel and found it very easy to follow. Some of the dialogue did feel slightly simplistic, blunt and unnatural so I would be hesitant to continue the series.

I love these samplers. It gives just the right amount of content to get me interested in the books. I find all of these titles to be interesting.

Excerpts for Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King, The Future is Yours by Dan Frey, The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck, The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec, Malice by Heather Walter, and Afterlife by: Chip Zdarsky are provided. The standout here is Sleeping Beauties, but all are intriguing novels. Highly recommended!

A sampler with excerpts of graphic novels, sci-fi and fantasy books that were published by Penguin Random House in the spring of 2021.

The books that are talked about:
1. The future is yours - Dan Frey
2. The witch's heart - Genevieve Gornichec
3. Sleeping Beauties, vol. 1 (graphic novel)* - Stephen & Owen King / Rio Youers / Alison Sampson
4. The memory theater - Karin Tidbeck
5. Malice - Heather Walter
6. Afterlift* - Chip Zdarsky / Jason Loo / Paris Alleyne / Aditya Bidikar

* Includes content published for adult readers

Reading the first few phrases and/or pages of a book is always very enlightening.
As they say: "So many books, so little time."
Thus it's nice to be able to quickly form an idea of books that pique your interest!

I love these samplers! Even though this isn’t my usual genre, it’s great to try out new books to see what I want to read more of and add to my TBR list.

What a treat! For someone who spent years working with young sci-fi fans and graphic novel enthusiasts, this sampler is a wonderful opportunity to see what's coming up for this audience that's always ready for more.

I'm so intrigued by the Stephen King book Sleeping Beauties. What an interesting concept and I can't wait to read the actual book!

Enter the Fandom Sampler 4 is a new preview volume with samples of 6 upcoming fantasy/sf/graphic novels from Penguin Random House Librarian Resources. Released 1st Nov 2020 by Penguin Random House, it's 119 pages and available to download for free on the publisher's website. The .pdf file has interactive links throughout, which is handy.

The book excerpts included are: The Future is Yours (Dan Frey), The Witch's Heart (Genevieve Gornichec), Sleeping Beauties vol 1 (graphic novel adapted from Stephen and Owen King - adapted by Rio Youers and Alison Sampson (illus)), The Memory Theater (Karin Tidbeck), Malice (Heather Walter), and Afterlift (Chip Zdarsky & Jason Loo (illus)).

The publication dates range from Oct 13 2020 to Apr 13 2021. These are all top shelf speculative fiction, both prose and graphic novels.

I enjoy the extra resources and enhancements the larger publishing houses are able to employ to support their publications. I also appreciate that most library systems can provide quite a lot of extra support and guidance to their patrons and groups. These previews would be appropriate for online/remote discussion groups, book clubs, individual readers looking for good "buzz" books to build up the TBR lists. Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I love being able to read some samples of various books to see if I like the writing style of the authors. It’s so convenient to have them all in one spot like this! Thanks so much for putting this together!

I love being able to look at upcoming releases and this sampler was so much fun to read through. I look forward to reading these books in full soon!
Many thanks to Penguin Random House Library Resources and NetGalley for the early look at these titles.