Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
Up for today: Matthew Jarpe's first published work, "Radio Freefall".

It caught my eye at the library, where they just acquired a copy; it's only been out since August, so it's still pretty new on the shelves. A firm grounding in basic science keeps it from bending my suspension of disbelief, and a neat extrapolation of the current state of things makes for an interesting semi-near-future setting. The characters are, nearly without exception, engaging and believable, and the story itself never dragged for me.

While the writing style shows a hint of roughness here or there, it's better by far than most other debut novels I've read; as far as semi-hard SF goes, it definitely puts the author on my "read more by him" list. A neat bonus is that two of the songs mentioned in the book are available through the official Snake Vendors website - though I haven't had a chance to listen to the MP3s, the lyrics in the book have me waiting eagerly 'til I'm in a noise-safe area.

Overall, if you're a fan of cyberpunk, music, SF or any combination of the three, this is something you should give a read. There's even a nice nod of the head to "Neuromancer" near the beginning of the book, for fans of William Gibson. I give "Radio Freefall" a solid 8.5/10, and wouldn't be surprised to see further work by Matthew Jarpe creep higher up the scale.

But don't take my word for it.