February 2013 – Page 9

New Treasures: Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore

Saturday, February 2, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I talked about genre mash-ups Monday in my post on The Last Policeman. There’s an obvious one I forgot: hard-boiled detective zombie novels.

Not sure how I spaced on that one. Three titles I’ve covered as New Treasures in the last few months alone have been undead crime novels: Stefan Petrucha’s Dead Mann Running, Tim Waggoner’s The Nekropolis Archives, and Chris F. Holm’s Dead Harvest. As trends go, this one is a little more welcome than most, at least for me. Necromancers and tough-talking private eyes… what can I say, they go together.

The latest entrant into this crowded sub-sub-genre, Stephen Blackmoore’s Dead Things, sounds like it will fit in nicely:

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it’s a title Eric Carter is stuck with.

He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He’s turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. When he left LA fifteen years ago, he thought he’d never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.

But now his sister’s been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why. Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it’s the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who’s taken an unusually keen interest in him. Carter’s going to find out who did it, and he’s going to make them pay.

As long as they don’t kill him first.

Dead Things will be published by DAW Books on Feb 5, 2013. It is 295 pages, and priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital editions.

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery Only $6.40 at Amazon.com

Saturday, February 2, 2013 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

One of the best swords & sorcery anthologies of the last ten years is available at a deep discount on Amazon.com.

Swords & Dark Magic, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders, contains 17 original stories — including a new Elric novella by Michael Moorcock, a Majipoor tale by Robert Silverberg, a Cugel the Clever tale by Michael Shea, a Black Company story by Glen Cook, and a brand new Morlock tale by James Enge. Contributors include Steven Erikson, C. J. Cherryh, Scott Lynch, Bill Willingham, Joe Abercrombie, Tanith Lee, Garth Nix, Greg Keyes, Gene Wolfe, Tim Lebbon, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and many others.

Our man Jason Waltz examined it in one of the longest and most detailed reviews we’ve ever published.

At Worldcon, I had the pleasure of hearing James Enge read his fabulous story “The Singing Spear” — which includes the classic line “You killed my bartender!” James is one of our most gifted practitioners of modern S&S, and “The Singing Spear” is one of his finest stories. It’s worth far more than $6.40 all on its own — and if you get the chance, hearing James read it live is worth far more than that.

Our most recent round-up of discount fantasy titles at Amazon is here.

Swords & Dark Magic was published by Avon Eos in June 2010. It is 519 pages, and was originally priced at $15.99. While copies last, it is being sold online for $6.40 at Amazon.com.

Self-published Books: Review of Noggle Stones: The Goblin’s Apprentice by Wil Radcliffe

Friday, February 1, 2013 Donald Crankshaw Comments 1 comment

When I first started this series of reviews on self-published books, I had two criteria for reviewing a book.

First, it had to be a self-published fantasy novel. Second, based on the blurb and the excerpt, it had to be a book that I wanted to read. At the time, I didn’t realize that the first criterion would be the more difficult one to figure out.

I discuss some of the difficulties in deciding whether to review a book on my personal blog, but the bottom line is that I almost didn’t review Noggle Stones: The Goblin’s Apprentice. It was originally published by a small press, and only later self-published by the author. I might have still decided that it didn’t quite qualify, since it wasn’t originally self-published, but it certainly met my second criterion: . I really wanted to read this book.

If there’s one word to describe The Goblin’s Apprentice, it’s charming. From the author’s own illustrations, to the poetry, to the language. At times, it’s a bit too charming, but in the end I forgave it. The book seems to be aimed at the Middle Grade level, and it has the same sense of whimsy found in the best books of that type.

The Goblin’s Apprentice is the first book of the series Noggle Stones. The central character is Martin Manchester, an aspiring stage magician in 1899 America. His career plans are interrupted by the fact that our world has merged with a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, ogres, and yes, goblins. Martin soon finds himself a student of the goblin Bugbear, a scholar of Non-Logical Thought, which forms the basis of the magic system in the novel. Accompanying them is Bugbear’s scoundrel of a cousin, Tudmire. Their wandering takes them to the kingdom of Willow Prairie, which is really a small town that’s been awaiting the arrival of a king for centuries. After rescuing the dragon bride Maga from a show trial, the heroes quickly get caught up in the war against the Shadow Smith and his army of patchworks.

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Genre 2013: The John Pierce Experiment

Friday, February 1, 2013 markrigney Comments 13 comments

You remember John Pierce: his Bell Labs team invented the transistor, and he coined the term. But, like the rest of us, he had his little gaps. When in his eighties, he met up with author Dan Levitin, who was busy writing that complicated puzzler of a book, This Is Your Brain On Music. Much to Levitin’s dismay, Pierce revealed that he had never knowingly heard any rock music. Now, as to how one can live in a developed nation and achieve this, I don’t know, but once Levitin discovered this curious deficit, the two had a little heart-to-heart, and Pierce asked Levitin to provide six –– count ‘em, six –– prime examples of rock and roll from which he might form an opinion and make appropriate generalizations about the whole.

What does this have to do with Black Gate and fantasy literature? Trust me. Read on.

Levitin’s six tunes were as follows:

“Long Tall Sally” by Little Richard
“Roll Over Beethoven” by the Beatles
“All Along the Watchtower,” by Jimi Hendrix
“Wonderful Tonight,” by Eric Clapton
“Little Red Corvette,” by Prince
“Anarchy in the U.K.,” by the Sex Pistols

Scary choices, methinks, especially those last two. But regardless of my opinion (or yours), Pierce’s request poses two dilemmas.

First, if faced with this same conundrum, which songs would you choose?

Second, what if this situation were applied to fiction? Or better yet, to the ongoing divide in genre vs. literary fiction?

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Blogging Austin Briggs’ Flash Gordon – “The Storm Queen of Valkr” / “The Wizard King of the Fur Men”

Friday, February 1, 2013 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

“The Storm Queen of Valkr” was the twenty-sixth installment of the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip serial for King Features Syndicate. Originally published between March 24 and September 29, 1946, “The Storm Queen of Valkr” opens with Flash’s rocketship crashing down in the eye of the hurricane. Flash pulls Dale from the wreckage just as the ship explodes. They are rescued by a party of amazons riding giant wolves and discover their leader is Valkir, Queen of the Forbidden Kingdom of Valkr where they have landed.

Once they reach Valkir’s palace, Flash is placed in the Queen’s harem. He soon meets her royal consort, Marko, and her dwarf jester, Roki. At dinner, Flash offends Valkir by stating he is President of Mongo. She challenges him to a fencing match.

When Flash bests her, her oversized house cat pounces upon him. Flash fights off the great cat. Later, Marko confides in him that Kang’s rocketship has likewise crashed down in Valkr and the deposed Emperor is wooing the Queen and setting himself up as a rival to Marko. This marks an interesting departure from the established formula where the reader would expect the Queen to quickly fall for Flash with her consort becoming a jealous rival to our hero.

Flash and Marko go out riding on wolves and discover Valkir trapped by a flash flood while crossing a stream. Flash rescues the Queen who, unaccustomed to being dominated and then rescued by a man, kisses him passionately before recovering her royal bearing.

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Black Gate

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Month: February 2013