Before editors are editors, we are readers. And as readers, we can get caught up in a writer’s words, works, and worlds, to the point where we set aside whatever we should be reading to indulge our imaginations by grabbing a new work by a favorite writer.
I first became aware of Jane Lindskold‘s work when her first Wolf book, Through Wolf’s Eyes, was published by Tor. The copy made the book sound intriguing and the cover had a cool-looking wolf on it, and the good reviews were the icing on the cake (since I write and read copy just about every day, it takes more than good cover copy to sell me). So when the book came out in paperback, I picked it up—I prefer mass market for anything I intend to read on the subway. Then, like everyone else, I had to wait impatiently for each successive volume to appear.
Luckily, we were publishing others of Jane’s books, so there was more for me to discover. And as wonderful and compelling as the Wolf series is, I love the changes of pace of Jane’s stand-alone novels. The kaleidoscope metaphors used in Child of a Rainless Year and that book’s wheels-within-wheels plot made me want to shove it into people’s hands and say, “You will love this.” Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls made me cry.
And then there was The Buried Pyramid. I’ve been haunting The Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s Egyptian Wing since I was in preschool. When the first King Tut exhibit came to New York, my mother and I (then age 17) lined up for hours to be able to ogle the objects. I still have the issues of National Geographic that cover the relocation of Abu Simbel due to the rising waters from the Aswan Dam. I studied the shift from Amun to Aten and knew who Hatshepsut was. In other words, I was a bit of an Egypt nut.
So The Buried Pyramid was right up my alley. Set in the Victorian age, The Buried Pyramid is, at the start, an archaeological suspense novel. Jenny Benet, a recently orphaned American who was raised in the Wild West before being “finished” in Boston, goes to Egypt with her uncle, Neville Hawthorne, a prominent British archaeologist. They’re searching for the legendary Buried Pyramid, the tomb of the pharaoh Neferankhotep—who may also have been Moses the Lawgiver.
Discovering the tomb is not the end of their journey but only the beginning. In The Buried Pyramid, Jane Lindskold sends us on a marvelous ride through Ancient Egyptian myth, legend, and religion and leaves us enlightened and amazed. It remains my favorite of Jane’s non-series novels, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. (You have to be a registered user of Tor.com, and logged in, in order to download this book.)
You can already tell that Jane is far from a one-trick pony. Even when she writes in series, she never does anything the same way twice. I’ve moved from just being a reader, to a fan, to Jane’s editor, and I’m really thrilled to announce that Tor has just published Thirteen Orphans, the first book in Jane’s new series, Breaking the Wall. It’s something else new and different from this talented writer, and I think you’ll love it.
Excellent, thank you!
Thanks! All I’ve read of hers so far is Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls and the posts here. I’m looking forward to this one.
This is a fantastic book. I got this in paperback a few years ago, and I still pull it out from time to time.
Thank you very much for this. I just discovered her standalone “Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls” and am looking forward to reading more of her standalones.
Is there any possibility that you guys could also do the books in microsoft reader (.lit) format? Saves me the trouble of pulling the HTML version and doing a (usually bad) conversion. It’s a completely selfish request, of course, but Microsoft Reader is the only format that works properly on my Windows Mobile phone, the mobi client for it is a complete pile of steaming crap.
@Artanian
Unfortunately, if we catered to every single file format out there, we’d never sleep. And by ‘we’, I mean ‘I’, of course.
The upside of this is that since we’re adamant about backing open—and hopefully soon-to-be-standard—formats (hence our switch from .lrf to .epub for the Sony reader, and our inclusion of a plain HTML version), and doubly adamant about keeping our files drm-free, you can use the files we’ve provided to roll your own formats for personal use.
Also, a quick shout out to Arachne Jericho, in gratitude for lending me her expertise in crafting these files. I’m getting better, and it’s partly her fault.
Hi.
How long will this book be available for free download?
Thanks.
It’s available for a limited time, and that time varies, so get it while it’s hot! Our rule of thumb around here is to keep the book up until we have a new free book to replace it.
Many thanks. I first knew of Jane Lindskold via the Roger Zelazny connection and have been meaning to seek out more of her stuff.
Bummer. It’s a lot of effort for me to do it, because just doing the straight HTML version usually produces a really crappy ebook, so the “best” results usually come from running a conversion on the mobi file. But best is still really not very good, so not worth the effort on an author I’ve not read before. I was hoping it was just one more ‘save as’ on your side.
I do hope that when you guys get around to actually selling ebooks you’ll support it, though. I definitely won’t purchase any ebooks I have to spend a bunch of time converting. Open formats are great, but only if they’re actually supported on the device I use.
Artanian, I don’t work for TOR but since they will be selling ebooks via http://www.webscription.net, I’m sure that they’ll offer them in MS Reader format. That is one of the formats offered by webscriptions.
Pablodefendini, thanks for the ebook. I’ve read this book before (it got lost in a move) so I know I’ll enjoy it again.
Drak the Ebook Loving Dragon
@Artanian
Heh. If only these things were as simple as a “Save As”. Maybe in a few years they will be.
The problem with being an early adopter (and anyone using e-books is still an early adopter, imho) is that these things happen—you run the risk of backing the wrong horse. I really hope you don’t have a Betamax deck, an 8-Track player, a Laserdisk player, or and HD-DVD player lying around your house too ;)
That being said, even though it’s almost too early to tell (but not really), I wouldn’t be surprised if in some near future, Microsoft will also support the ePub format. All sorts of big players in the publishing biz are backing that particular horse, and that’s why we’ve made the decisions we have in regards to supported formats here on Tor.com.
The problem with Microsoft Reader support is that its format is a bit difficult. Reading the format is easy, since the archive structure is outwardly documented. Writing the format is difficult, because the exact internal file details are not documented for outsiders.
The only tools I know of that can write Microsoft Reader format are (a) from Microsoft, (b) publicly known to have obtained a license from Microsoft, (c) don’t dare distribute whatever tools they use to create the Microsoft format, which either means a private license or something else, and (d) illegal.
Surprisingly, there are no legal open source tools I know of to write in Microsoft Reader format (or frankly its predecessor, Microsoft Help Format). This usually indicates a licensing issue somewhere.
So. You know. It makes things hard.
Edit: And by the way, thanks for the shout-out, Pablo! :)
Yes, a license is required, but it’s freely available. The SDK is found here. There’s at least one free tool to use to create the files, it’s a Microsoft Word add-in, provided by Microsoft, which is what I use.
As for open source tools, I suspect it’s just the normal aversion to anything Microsoft that the rabid open source zealots have, combined with their unwillingness to relax their licenses to allow a binary distribution of a DLL from another source.
I’m quite aware of the free MS Word add-in—listed as (a), from Microsoft. I’ve also worked with the official programs that generate .LIT, which I believe is (b) if it’s not actually (a).
For the open source stuff, not everybody in the OS world is rabid about avoiding all things Microsoft, and people find ways more often than not to rip apart formats and write them—hence OpenOffice, AbiWord, and various office programs out there that both read AND write in the Word office formats, not to mention the reworking of .Net via Mono. It’s a cottage industry, so to speak.
Plus there are many programs, in all licensing stripes, out there that can read the files—just not write them. If there was a way to write *without* the DLL and the conflicting license, that would be fine—and would have been done some time since. And given what the major open source video players can do, supporting DLLs is something people are interested in and actually do successfully.
That this isn’t done points me to other reasons, usually licensing.
Right, we weren’t actually disagreeing, hence why I said “combined with their unwillingness to relax their licenses to allow a binary distribution of a DLL from another source.”
The problematic term in the license is probably this:
“Distribution Terms. You may reproduce and distribute an unlimited number of copies of the Sample Code and/or Redistributable Code (collectively “Redistributable Components”) as described above in object code form, provided that (a) you distribute the Redistributable Components only in conjunction with and as a part of your Application; (b) your Application adds significant and primary functionality to the Redistributable Components; (c) you distribute your Application containing the Redistributable Components pursuant to an End-User License Agreement (which may be “break-the-seal”, “click-wrap” or signed), with terms no less protective than those contained herein; (d) you do not permit further redistribution of the Redistributable Components by your end-user customers; (e) you do not use Microsoft’s name, logo, or trademarks to market your Application except and unless as provided under a separate license program agreement between you and Microsoft; (f) you include a valid copyright notice on your Application; and (g) you agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Microsoft from and against any claims or lawsuits, including attorneys’ fees, that arise or result from the use or distribution of your Application. Contact Microsoft for the applicable licensing terms for all other uses and/or distribution of the Redistributable Components.
(c) and (d) are probably the sticking parts, although as a small software developer (g) bugs me a lot more. If I were to throw together a tool to do the conversion, (g) would prevent me from releasing it as a freeware tool. A quick look at the spec for epub files indicates that the complexity would probably prevent me from even writing it, though.
You’re right, we weren’t actually disagreeing. Heh. Thanks for the information!
Wow. I didn’t even realize (g) was something someone would have the gumption of putting into a license. I’m more used to open source software and in-house software.
One of the tags on this post is wrong. It should be “free e-books” not “free e-book”. Well that or the other two free e-book were mistagged. ;)
@DrakBibliophile
The last I heard, there was some legal snafu concerning webscriptions and Tor. The guys over there said it was Tor’s lawyers that pulled the plug last time so I’m not sure that will be resolved anytime soon.
I’d love to see them back there, but I’m not holding my breath.
Garett, the last I heard (in the last few months) from here and Baen’s Bar is that it is a Go Again. The word now is that Arnold (owner & webmaster of WebScriptions) has loads of work to do before he can start adding TOR ebooks to WebScriptions.
Drak
I thoroughly enjoyed Buried Pyramid as well as Brother to Dragons and Child of a Rainless Year.
When will you get the rights to reprint Changer and Legends Walking? They’re fantastic.
My question…Is Jane done with Firekeeper or will there be more? I just love those and all her other works. I am excited about picking up her new one. Just wondering.
First off, thanks. Jane’s been on my ‘sounds cool, grab one of this person’s books’ for a bit now and this gives me the opportunity.
As for the license above… (g) is actually fairly standard for what the license covers. They basically don’t want to be on the hook if you create an app that does something illegal/litigatable. Say, create an app that breaks DRM on ebooks and writes it out in MS Reader format.
Serendipitous timing here…I just two days ago finished reading Child of a Rainless Year, which I’d picked up on a recommendation from Tom Whitmore and greatly enjoyed.
@rickg – This is starting to get off-topic—well, more off-topic—so I’ll just note here that (g) is extremely unusual for a software licensing term, and I’ve worked with and written software with pretty strict terms. (I write software for a living. For a big company. Does not begin with M.)
For anyone who is interested, and I think you’d have to be extremely geeky and without a life to be interested in my further thoughts on this, I yammered on at my blog.
But really, just download and read the book. You’ll be much more satisfied.
Thanks!
Thanks!
I noticed one error though: the HTML has been pretty-printed and thus introduced some whitespaces where there should be none, e.g. at line 2603 (I replaced < with [ and > with ] otherwise it wouldn’t display):
Which output looks like this:
It was easy enough for me to remove those whitespaces with some search and replace combined with regular expressions, but I just thought I’d point out this error.
Angellemarcs, check out Jane’s blog here about sequels/serials. She’s done with Firestarter.
Drak
@garett: Tags are added by the person who writes the post. Therefore they will not be identical from post to post. Someday we may standardize this, but probably not; we’re a fairly idiosyncratic bunch.
@noelx99: I recently read Changer for the first time, and I agree, it’s a great book. We’ve looked at the idea of returning it to print but it will be pretty expensive to do, given its length and today’s market. So the answer, I’m afraid, is “not from Tor right now.”
@angellemarcs: Much as we love those characters and that world, for now, Jane is indeed done with Firekeeper and on to other things.
@Drak: Firestarter is a Stephen King book . . . but we knew what you meant
Strangely enough, my Digital Editions refuse to open ePub version of this book (even though, file is not damaged).
@Artanian: I don’t think it’s zealotry, it’s just that given the choice between dealing with the complications of Microsoft licenses and working on improving something else that doesn’t require you worrying about legal details, a developer who’s working for free on a hobby project will usually prefer the later. As long as Microsoft share/redistribution licenses stay difficult to work with, and with a complex EULA on top of them to make things even more convoluted, while the GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT and similar share/redistribution licenses go on being easy to understand, community-empowering and EULA-less, this won’t change much.
EDIT: Error on my side. Deleted.
Wow, detailed discussion way over my head.
Been reading the .pdf version on my iPhone (which normally has a canary about loading .pdfs) and am finding the book a lot of fun. Many thanks, Tor folks.
One question for Tor/Pablo. Is this the same pagination as the printed MM? I ask because I’m tearing through the book at what seems a fast pace for me, so I’m wondering if the pages are actually shorter than usual.
@pablodefendini in #6:
A bit a of a quibble, but the EPUB version of the book is not entirely DRM-free. It uses Adobe-specific encryption to encrypt the font files. The rest of the book is perfectly accessible on any EPUB viewer, but only Adobe DE can utilize the embedded fonts.
Thanks for that. Havent read this author before.
My tbr pile just got bigger but I am not complaining.
@llasram #34
Ah, guilty as charged. Font foundries are notoriously behind the times on their licensing schemes, and none (as far as I know) allow for full and free embedding onto websites, online documents, and such. It’s an ongoing debate within the print, web, and now, eBook production industries.
Coming from a print production/typographic background, my first instinct when creating a publication is to define all typographic styles as specifically as possible, and to use the most versatile and platform-agnostic fonts I can use to create a beautiful publication (OpenType fonts, IMHO, fit this bill quite nicely, and Adobe is a fine foundry, making versatile, beautiful typefaces and font files).
I’ve recently come to understand that this approach is completely wrong-headed within the context of eBook production, since you want to give the reader as much control over how text is rendered on their individual device/platform.
Thanks for calling me out on this, and look for improvements on this end in subsequent eBooks from Tor.com.
@RichR #33
Actually, it’s not. This PDF was created directly from the original manuscript, as opposed to the original page layout files from the printed book edition. As such, its typographic treatment is slightly different. For example, the leading (the space between lines of text) is a bit looser than on the printed version, which adds to the page count slightly, and ostensibly makes reading a bit easier.
One of the things that I didn’t do, however, was to create a smaller page size for the ePDF as opposed to the pPDF, which is something I do for the short stories. This makes reading on devices like an iPhone a lot more pleasant, since it’s easier to get the whole page (or a substantial part of it) onto a screen without having to do too much zooming in and out. In this case (for reasons which I won’t get into here) I was more interested in recreating the original publication with the PDF than adapting it to different reading conditions. I’m glad that you’re finding reading easier, even despite the lack of this size consideration.
Thanks, Pablo. In terms of reading experience, I’m very pleasantly surprised by the ease of reading on the iPhone. More space between the lines = slightly shorter pages makes sense of my feeling that I’m getting through the page count a tad faster than I normally do with a printed book.
Interestingly, arachnejericho (on Twitter) also theorized that the smaller screen size would speed up reading slightly, which also makes sense, as the eyes don’t have to cover so much space.
As this is the first ebook reading experience I’ve found really easy, comfortable and convenient, I think I’ll be consuming more books this way. And if the initial suspicion of being able to read slightly faster on the iPhone is (even slightly) true I’ll be in heaven, because I’m always wishing for more reading time…
Yeah, I saw you guys were talking about that. Check out the PDF for A Water Matter, which is sized specifically with iPhone-sized screens in mind. I’d love to hear your feedback on that.
Belated formatting comment:
I read the Mobipocket books on my Palm, which has a screen 320 pixels wide. The Mobipocket Reader has an option to turn non-full-justified text into full-justified text, but if the book’s formatted full-justified already, I can’t turn it off–and full-justified on 320 pixels wide is not attractive as far as I’m concerned.
Can the Mobipocket versions revert to non-full-justified, since the reader gives you that option?
Thanks.
Thanks so much for offering this. From the description, it sounds exactly the kind of material I enjoy reading.
@@@@@katenepveu #39
My comments regarding typographic formatting @@@@@#36 apply to this issue as well. Thanks for bringing it up.
Thank you for all your work on these!
Thansk for this and all the other free ebooks. I’ve been downloading them from the beginning, hoping I’d have time to read some.
I finally put Mobipocket on my Blackberry and installed 1984 from the Gutenburg project. It was nice to always have a book with me to read for a few minutes here & there.
Then I installed all the eBooks I’ve gotten from Tor so I’d have them with me. I read John Scalzi’s The Old Man’s War.
Last night I went to a bookstore and bought The Ghost Brigade and The Last Colony (?) – the two sequels. Your plan worked :-)
The other marketing brocures, I mean free eBooks are on my BB just waiting for a chance to sell me on another Tor author.
Excellent book! BTW, if you love sci-fi art, come join us at Space Art Network: http://spaceart.ning.com
Through Wolf’s Eyes started interesting, but I stopped reading it when it turned too much towards political machinations, since that’s not my cup of tea.
This is a good opportunity to check out another Jane Lindskold book and see if I like it better.
Thanks to Tor for allowing these ebooks and to pablodefendini for doing the work of getting them to us.
Thanks for the book. Like many others here, my reading pile/list just keeps growing.
Any chance we’ll ever see “Ender’s Game” offered here? I keep buying the book and then giving it away to friends who have never read any of the series. I’m not likely to get rid of my N810.
thank you! for some odd reasons i’ve not read any jane lindskold before, despite hearing good things. this will give me a chance to do so.
I’m disappointed that she’s done with Firekeeper, I really loved that ‘universe’, but I downloaded this to see if I like it. Hopefully she will return to give us more wolf, but at least she is giving us something else till then!
Thanks for this.
I just wanted to mention the the only reason I now read Jane Lindskold is the Watch the Sky promotion. There is 0 chance that I would have bought “Through Wolf’s Eyes” at the book store because it looks like a book written for young women and I am neither. I read the e-book and was hooked.
Many thanks!
I have tried to download this book twice, with different formats: pdf and html.zip; in both cases the Internet connection was fscked to high heck, and the server would not let me recommence the download after I had halted the download to reconnect the Third World Internet connection.
Could someone change the server setting so it is less likely to throw a tantrum when I am forced by my Third World Telecom NZ-mediated Internet connection, to dance the reconnection jig?
That would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
@pablodefendini #36
Actually, I take it back DRM-wise. According to Adobe’s document on “[URL=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/digitalpublishing/pdfs/content_protection.pdf]Protecting Embedded Fonts in EPUB Documents[/URL],” the encryption method used to “protect” the fonts is…
Wait for it…
XOR.
I have no idea what the point is supposed to be, especially given that not only is the “encryption method” XOR, but they are then [I]publicly documenting how to “decrypt” the fonts[/I]. But it does mean than any EPUB reader is in fact free to access so-embedded fonts.
@@@@@ llasram
Well, yes. But I think your point probably still stands on an ideological level (even if it turns out to be a middling concern in the practical context of these things), as I understand it (and I could be wrong): the font file is still encrypted, and thus ostensibly inaccessible unless some sort of decryption is applied, thus it’s locked down (even if it’s relatively unobtrusive encryption and easily unlocked), QED some obtuse form of DRM, although maybe not the type of DRM that actually makes consumers’ lives a pain in the ass.
@pablodefendini
I’m kind of two minds about it. If you look at PDF font embedding, you have much the same issues, only the encryption/obfuscation is a natural part of how the format works. PDF renders need to extract the font information in order to render text in a particular font, which means the complete information for all rendered glyphs need to be present in the PDF. Adobe distributes from its own website PDFs containing every glyph in the font for every font they produce. Combine those with a little programming elbow grease and you’ve got your very own pirated copy of every one of Adobe’s fonts. Are they actually worried about that? Apparently not. This does the same thing for them – gives them some assurance that normal users won’t casually make out-of-license copies of their fonts from documents which embed the font.
The key “pro” points for me are that it’s (a) documented and (b) standards compliant. The OCF spec which describes how to bundle EPUB content into a ZIP archive specifies how encrypted content should be encrypted in a way which clearly indicates which files are encrypted with which method. Adobe’s scheme follows the spec and anyone is free to implement it, even to implement a font-extractor, just as they are with PDF.
On the other side are (a) the inelegance of an unnecessary obfuscation and (b) the possibility of using the DMCA. I’m not a lawyer, but I can see how Adobe might intend to use this to allow them to go after any potential font-pirates as violating not only their copyright, but also the DMCA. Eeeevil.
So the book starts out with one sentence of action then slams on the brakes, swerves to the left, and launches into several pages of infodump flashback complete with dialog. Ooh — skillful. I guess it’s knowing the ropes enough to practice the craft badly that gets you published nowadays.
Personally, I can’t believe I worked so hard to download this damned thing. The Mobi version throws up a java error and will not open in Stanza and the ePub version, which converted to Kindle format, has the front matter mixed in with the novel text.
Tor has a long way to go with the ebook format, not to mention the way its Web site runs.
Um…
I’m reading on either my Original Rocket, circa 1998 or my Sharp Mobilon running Windows CE 2.0, circa 1999 or my ebookwise 1150, circa 2000?.
Didn’t know I was early adopter.
If I want to read these books, I have to do a sometimes rotten conversion to the ebookwise or just give up and read the Mobi file on the Sharp.
Not a problem, just an FYI.
Michael
Personally I’m betting on PDF rather than ePub or any other ebook specific format, mostly because I know that PDF will be around for a LONG time for other reasons, no no large risk of “loosing” my collection. I prefer PDF over html because it gives a more authentic feel with flipping pages rather than scrolling.
Currently I’m reading them on my Asus Eee PC 901, which I’m holding as if it was a paperback with only left pages. I’m simply using the presentation mode of my PDF viewer (after rotating the screen 90 degrees clockwise ofcourse) and use the mouse buttons at the touchpad to “flip pages”. Works real well, except that the pages in the PDFs doesn’t have width:height ration of exactly 10:16, so I get some minor black bars, usually at the top and bottom of the screen.
Is there a trick to reading epub format book files on a Sony Reader?
I recently downloaded the epub file for this book, and while I can easily import the file into the Sony eBook Library software on my PC, I cannot transfer the file to my PRS-500 reader.
Thank you!
@@@@@ rutherfordr
Ah, unfortunately, you’re out of luck. As I understand it, Sony has added ePub support for their recent readers?starting with the PRS-505. Sadly, the 500 won’t do.
@@@@@ jonno
I personally prefer PDF too, all else being equal (and I do exactly the same thing you do for reading, except I do it with a MacBook Air, which isn’t as compact as an Asus eeePC).
But there is something to be said for the flexibility of re-flowable and re-sizeable text.
EPub, being an open format, and having been adopted as a standard by many outfits (including Adobe, who are pairing it with PDF as their “Digital Editions” initiative—essentially a best-of-both-worlds approach), is really shaping up to become a true standard.
As for the risk of ‘losing’ your book, well, here’s a secret: ePub is nothing more than a series of html docs packaged into a Zip file with a funky extension. Take an un-DRMed ePub (like this one), change its file extension from .epub to .zip, and try to decompress it: you’ll see the guts, which include an HTML file per chapter. It doesn’t get much more accessible than good ol’ HTML.
Heh, literally just now I was thinking I needed to check out some Jane Lindskold stuff, see if I dug her style. Then this, which I hadnt been aware of popped up in recent comments. Clearly, its a sign.
Have since purchased a dead tree copy of “The Buried Pyramid”.