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Month: March 2016

New Treasures: The ‘Mancer Series by Ferrett Steinmetz

New Treasures: The ‘Mancer Series by Ferrett Steinmetz

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Flex Ferrett Steinmetz-small The Flux Ferrett Steinmetz-small Fix Ferrett Steinmetz-small

I bought Ferrett Steinmetz’s The Flux during my last trip to Barnes & Noble, partly because it’s an Angry Robot novel, and Angry Robot is doing great stuff. But also because of its intriguing premise: a world where if you love something enough, your obsession will punch a hole in reality, creating unique magics and potentially giving you powerful abilities.

Turns out The Flux is the second novel in a loose trilogy which has been getting a lot of attention. The first one, Flex, was published last year, and the third, Fix, arrives this September. Joel Cunningham at Barnes & Noble.com has praise for the entire series.

We’d probably love Ferrett Steinmetz’ Flex trilogy for the premise alone — it’s a gritty, hilarious contemporary fantasy series about magic users in a world where your obsessions can can bore a hole through the fabric of spacetime and give you the ability to manipulate reality at will. But it’s all the extra bits (characters you will ache for, twisty plots, the baddest baddies, killer action sequences) that put it over the top, and onto our list of 2015’s best reads.

I suppose I should be annoyed that now I have to track down a copy of Flex, and wait for Fix to complete the story. But when a series sounds this promising, I’m more than happy to gobble up additional volumes.

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Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

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The World of Null-A-smallAlfred Elton van Vogt (1912-2000) is one of the great names of 20th century science fiction, and not just because the moniker sounds so odd, like it belongs to a mad scientist in a lurid Gernsbackian tale, the kind where “cosmic rays” are used to mutate the sleepy denizens of the city zoo into panicky prehistoric behemoths, which then rampage through the streets, spreading riot and chaos, thus allowing a cabal of sinister foreigners to hijack the metropolis’s secret supply of plutonium in order to build a colossal… sorry. Got a bit carried away there; once you’re in full Pulp Mode it’s hard to disengage. Back to A.E. van Vogt.

Van Vogt was a giant of the golden age of the 40’s, first appearing in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction with the short story “Black Destroyer” in 1939. In the years that followed, he dominated the pages of the magazine with countless short stories and novels that even today are regarded as classics, among which the best known are Slan, The Empire of the Atom, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, The War Against the Rull, The Book of Ptath, and The Weapon Shops of Isher. (He frequently incorporated his short stories into his full length books; van Vogt was a pioneer of the “fix-up” — a term he coined — in which a novel is cobbled together from earlier, shorter pieces.)

In an era in which many of the SF writers of the 40’s and 50’s (some of major importance) have vanished from the shelves, most of the van Vogt books I’ve mentioned are still in print, and he remains influential — and controversial. (He did a short stint as a cheerleader for L. Ron Hubbard’s dianetics, for instance.) His writing seems to be equal parts sublime and appalling, and any discussion of van Vogt must sooner or later get around to addressing one simple question: can a “classic” be a godawful, incoherent mess?

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Goblin Fruit Winter 2016 Now Available

Goblin Fruit Winter 2016 Now Available

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Goblin Fruit Winter 2016-smallAfter a one-year hiatus, online magazine Goblin Fruit has returned. Hurrah! They address their missing year in this issue’s Note from the Editors:

We sowed Winter, and we reaped it for a year.

We lay fallow. We withdrew. We shrank into the earth and tucked our roots about us. We shut our eyes, huddled into the brittle dark, and we sank.

While Winter rimed the waves, we sank. While Spring warmed the earth, we sank. While Summer ripened the grain, we sank. While Autumn fell about us in riotous colour, we sank, until the circle of our Winter closed, and we found ourselves in a Deep Place.

We are forbidden to speak of where we went. We are forbidden to speak of what was spoke. We are forbidden from sharing anything but our own words and the fruit of the labour we took with us, the triumph of our trade.

Goblin Fruit is a quarterly online magazine that publishes poetry of the fantastical, poetry “that treats mythic, surreal, fantasy and folkloric themes, or approaches other themes in a fantastical way.” Each quarter has a theme and a feature artist. This issue, art by Grant Jeffery frames poems by Isabel Yap, Jane Yolen, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, Sonya Taaffe, Toby MacNutt, and many others.

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The Series Series: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

The Series Series: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

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The Pagan Night-small

It’s a tempting mistake to see The Pagan Night as an attempt to pare George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series down to a more manageable scale. At first glance, the setting appears to be an old-school medieval European fantasy world with knights, peasants, heraldry, tournaments, and dark forests full of monsters.

Those dark forests are where Akers gets up to some impressive hijinks.

You may know the old saw about how a conquered people’s gods will become their conquerors’ demons. Akers takes that mythological observation and gives it a literal, visceral physicality that owes more to Miyazaki’s brilliant Princess Mononoke than to anything out of European myth or folklore. The novel’s conquered Tenerrans are animists — their customs look like those of European tribes, but their worldview seems to owe its greatest debt to Shinto.

But here’s a divergence: what happens to the gods who arise on their own from the natural world, now that the human rites that managed relations with them are outlawed? The gods go feral, mad, destructive. They must be killed again and again, only to come back again and again, always less like their old selves… until maybe they don’t anymore, and the land begins to die. Unless they can be protected in secret by the faithful.

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Future Treasures: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley, Book 3 of The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

Future Treasures: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley, Book 3 of The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

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The Emperor's Blades-small The Providence of Fire-small The Last Mortal Bond-small

I usually don’t bother to read the first volume of a new fantasy series. I’m not a patient guy… when I find something I love, I generally don’t like to have to wait around for the next volume.

But that policy was severely tested with Brian Staveley’s debut fantasy novel The Emperor’s Blades, the opening volume in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne. The reviews were glowing, and the sequel, Providence of Fire, only upped the ante. Andrew Liptak, writing at io9, called the second volume “the Perfect Blend of Politics, Magic and Action,” saying:

Staveley delivers a solid and suitably epic adventure that ratchets up the action and muddies the waters, all while completely throwing all expectations out the window. Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy is set in the Annurian Empire, a wonderfully immersive fantasy world that was rocked with the death of its Emperor. In the first volume, the Emperor’s three children, Kaden, Valyn and Adare, scattered throughout the empire, were forced to come to terms with his death and confront the massive conspiracy that lead to his assassination.

The second volume continues this already outstanding series, with a thrilling fantasy adventure that blends together politics, action and magic…

The third and final volume arrives in two weeks — just enough time for me to read the first two. Excuse me while I clear my calendar. The Last Mortal Bond will be published by Tor Books on March 15, 2016. It is 656 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital version. Richard Anderson produced the cover art for the entire series, including this volume. Tor.com has released the first seven chapters, and you can download Chapters 1-7 of The Emperor’s Blades for free here.

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

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Black City Saint-smallEpic fantasy has been and I think always will be a mainstay of the fantasy genre as a whole and it is for this which I am of course well-known thanks not only to my Dragonrealm saga, but also such shared worlds as Dragonlance, World of Warcraft, Pathfinder, Iron Kingdoms, and more. I certainly enjoy epic fantasy as well, naturally having read among so many others the Lord of the Rings. Still, as with most readers, I also enjoy a variety of other offerings in fantasy, especially urban fantasy… which leads me to Black City Saint.

I have delved a bit into urban fantasy in the past, most notably Frostwing. Still, although I utilized Chicago as the background in that novel and two others, never before Black City Saint has the city, its history, and the characters been so entwined. It’s far simpler to merely set a story in a modern setting that everyone knows and put in those touches that remind the reader where they are. More complex — and at the same time more exciting for me as the author — is to turn to a time period that, although not all that long ago, remains sharply different from that in which we live. Having grown up around the Chicago area, I had heard many of the names, many of the stories, concerning the prohibition era. Always a fan of the mystery genre, I assumed that I might use those stories in that way, but the notion of Nick Medea entered and changed everything.

I love the mixing of genres. Some of my favorite novels include mysteries with magic. It was therefore not at all surprising to me that I took a few steps farther than I had with my previous excursions into urban fantasy and introduced into Roaring Twenties Chicago possibly the least likely protagonist — St. George of dragon fame.

And, yes, the dragon came with him.

Adding a character such as St. George into the mix meant making certain that the world he lived in had even more depth. With his lengthy life, that meant research had to go back beyond the Roaring 20s, which in turn brought into the story new elements that not only helped cement character development, but added to the depth of the city itself. The actual history of Chicago became a character of its own, molding the story and the protagonists in the process.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: “My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)

Discovering Robert E. Howard: “My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)

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One Who Walked Alone Novalyne Price Ellis-smallFor those of you who searched for the right way to describe your feelings for that certain special someone on February 14, Robert E. Howard might have been be a good source. After all, he was a wizard with words. And he did have a novel approach when it came to romance. As Bob Howard explains to Novalyne Price Ellis in her book One Who Walked Alone:

[M]en made a terrible mistake when they called their best girls their rose or violet or names like that, because a man ought to call his girl something that was near his heart. What, he asked, was nearer a man’s heart than his stomach? Therefore he considered it to be an indication of his deep felt love and esteem to call me his cherished little bunch of onion tops, and judging from past experience, both of us had a highest regard for onions. (106)

REH expanded this “indication of his deep felt love and esteem” in future letters to include:

“My very dear little Bunch of Radishes” or “My very dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” or “My dear Sausage and Big, Brown Fluffy Biscuits as well as sliced red beets with butter over them.” (110)

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Changa: Before the Safari by Milton Davis

Changa: Before the Safari by Milton Davis

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oie_14244n24u2oHPRemember swords & sorcery? You know, the wild, adventurous storytelling that brought most of us here together at Black Gate. I’ve put it on the back burner for the last couple of months, choosing instead to delve into epic high fantasy. But a few weeks ago I got a message from sword & soul impresario/writer/publisher Milton Davis, who wanted to know if I’d be interested in reading the new Changa collection, Before the Safari, pre-publication. Is Conan’s hair square-cut? Does Ningauble have seven eyes? Is Elric bad luck for his friends? Yes. There are a few perks to reviewing at Black Gate and this is one of them. (The hard copy won’t be hitting the shelves until July, but you can get the e-book right now).

Changa Diop, for those not familiar with him (and every self-respecting S&S fan should be by now), was once a prince of the Bakongo people, but his father was overthrown and killed by the sorcerer Usenge. In the original collections, Changa’s Safari 1, 2, and 3 (reviewed by me and Joe Bonandonna), we learned that Changa eventually ended up enslaved and forced to fight in gladiatorial combat. He was rescued from his bloody life by the Swahili Belay. A merchant, Belay taught Changa his trade and eventually made him heir in preference to his own sons.

The three Safari books tell of Changa’s great adventure as he takes his merchant fleet from 14th century Sofala, in present day Mozambique, across the Indian Ocean to China and back again. If you have the slightest interest in old school S&S, these are right up your alley. Changa Diop is an adventurer of heroic proportions and deeds, worthy of standing alongside any of the S&S greats. Constantly pushed to his limits, he faces off against demons, pirates, evil sorcerers, and monsters — lots and lots of monsters.

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New Treasures: Positive by David Wellington

New Treasures: Positive by David Wellington

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Positive-small Positive back-small

Some genres just go together. The weird western. The cyberpunk thriller. The fantasy private eye. David Wellington thinks that two genres that go together are the zombie novel and the Mad Max-style road adventure. You know what? I think he’s right.

I wasn’t exactly looking for a new zombie novel, but Positive has won me over. David Wellington is also the author of the classic zombie novel Monster Island (2006), and its sequels Monster Nation (2006) and Monster Planet (2007). Seanan McGuire calls Positive “One of the best zombie novels I’ve read in years… harrowing, brutal, brilliant,” and Booklist says it’s “recommended to readers of all epic-scale fantasy.”

Positive was published by Harper Voyager on November 24, 2015. It is 576 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition.