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Month: August 2016

Future Treasures: Spellbreaker, the Concluding Volume of The Spellwright Trilogy by Blake Charlton

Future Treasures: Spellbreaker, the Concluding Volume of The Spellwright Trilogy by Blake Charlton

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It’s not often that a fantasy author achieves a breakout work with his first novel — or even his first series — but that’s exactly what Blake Charlton has done with The Spellwright Trilogy, which began with his debut novel Spellwright. Robin Hobb calls the series “A letter-perfect story,” and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it “A winner” in a star review.

After a nearly 5-year gap, the third and final novel in the trilogy, Spellbreaker, arrives in hardcover next week. All three books were published by Tor; here’s the complete publishing details.

Spellwright (352 pages, $25.99, March 2, 2010) — cover by Todd Lockwod
Spellbound (416 pages, $25.99, September 13, 2011) — cover by Todd Lockwood
Spellbreaker (476 pages, $25.969, August 23, 2016) — cover by James Paick

Here’s a look at the back covers of all three volumes.

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Summer Short Story Roundup: Part One

Summer Short Story Roundup: Part One

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oie_167123Q3w3KW4VA veritable torrent of potent heroic fantasy short stories came out of the interwebs this summer. So many, in fact, for the first time ever I have to break the roundup into two parts. This week I’ll tell you about Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Lackington’s, and Cirsova. All together there are twelve stories and three poems (including the nearly six thousand-word first part of an epic poem). Next week I’ll review Grimdark Magazine, Weirdbook, and newcomer, Red Sun.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #54 kicks off with “The Witch House” by Jamie Lackey. A young girl named Elinor, escaping a forced and bound-to-be loveless marriage, forces herself on the Witch of the Wood as her new apprentice. That’s it. It’s well written, and I’d actually be interested in reading about the characters if the plot went somewhere, but as it stands it’s too insubstantial to merit much notice.

“Time Is a Lady’s Unerring Blade,” by Stephen S. Power, is a nasty piece of work. Erynd, an ex-prisoner, has plotted her revenge against one of the captors who tortured and crippled her.

Anyone can buy a soul. Even the meanest villages have dealers now, and prices remain low, thanks to the border wars five years ago. To buy a specific soul, though, Erynd has to deal with a ghost taker.

Having found her target, Erynd intends to see his soul stripped from him bit by painful bit. Not a lot happens, but there are sufficient hints of a larger context for the story that intrigued me and left me wondering about the story’s larger world and history.

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Looking for Some Great Summer Reads? Check out The Best of Prime Books

Looking for Some Great Summer Reads? Check out The Best of Prime Books

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Looking for some great reading to take to the beach in August? Prime Books has you covered. They’ve released one of their highly acclaimed Year’s Best volumes each of the last three months: The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2016, edited by Rich Horton (June), The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2016, edited by Paula Guran (July), and this month it’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas, also by Paula Guran. That ought to keep you busy! (Click each of the images below for more details.)

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Get a Free Copy of Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith

Get a Free Copy of Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith

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Mysterion-smallBlack Gate author Donald Crankshaw (“A Phoenix in Darkness“) and his wife Kristin Janz have produced a groundbreaking anthology of Christian fantasy, Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith. It will be released in two weeks from Enigmatic Mirror Press, and contains original fiction from Beth Cato, Pauline J. Alama, Stephen Case, David Tallerman, and many others. Here’s the description:

The Christian faith is filled with mystery, from the Trinity and the Incarnation to the smaller mysteries found in some of the strange and unexplained passages of the Bible: Behemoth and Leviathan, nephilim and seraphim, heroes and giants and more. There is no reason for fiction engaging with Christianity to be more tidy and theologically precise than the faith itself.

Here you will find challenging fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories that wrestle with tough questions and refuse to provide easy answers or censored depictions of a broken world, characters whose deeds are as obscene as their words and people who meet bad ends — sometimes deserved and sometimes not. But there are also hope, grace, and redemption, though even they can burn like fire.

Join us as we rediscover the mysteries of the Christian faith.

Enigmatic Mirror Press is offering 25 free review copies in digital format to Black Gate readers, in return for honest reviews (e.g., at Amazon, Goodreads, etc.) If you’re willing to read the book and provide a review, just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “Mysterion,” and we’ll forward the first 25 we receive along to the publisher.

Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith will be published by Enigmatic Mirror Press on August 31, 2016. It is 324 pages, priced at $9.99 in digital format. See the complete Table of Contents here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Musical Fairy Tale – Mt. Vernon and Fairway

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Musical Fairy Tale – Mt. Vernon and Fairway

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MtVernon_HollandI’m fortunate in that my boss here at Black Gate lets me wander afield from Sherlock Holmes and mystery-related topics. Now, I think I’ve managed to nominally stay within the milieu of Black Gate,  though my Humphrey Bogart – George Raft post might have stretched things a bit (I’ve got a reasonable argument ready!). So, for example, I haven’t written anything (yet…) about my hero, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson. Today I’m going to stretch the rubber band a ways.

I think that Brian Wilson, the musical force behind the Beach Boys, is a genius. Before you could find almost any unreleased song on Youtube, I was avidly collecting bootleg albums, then CDs. I probably have a bigger SMiLE collection than anybody else you know.

It’s a rare week that I don’t listen to at least one Beach Boys song. And if you’re my Facebook friend, you’ve almost certainly learned something about their music from my posts (like this one about the Lei’d in Hawaii album). Today, I’m going to bring the Beach Boys to Black Gate: assuming it actually gets posted.

It’s well documented that Brian increasingly withdrew from the band (and for the most part, life…) after the SMiLE album was aborted in 1967. His participation level varied on succeeding albums (Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, 20/20, Sunflower, Surf’s Up and Carl and the Passions: So Tough), but it’s indisputable that he wasn’t running the Beach Boys anymore and his brother Carl was largely filling his shoes.

In the summer of 1972, the entire band, with family and friends, relocated to the Netherlands, recording in a studio that had been sent over from California and rebuilt (yes, the Beach Boys did those kinds of odd things back then). Brian co-wrote only two of the nine songs on the album, and they were late additions to boot.

But Brian’s contribution to the Holland album loomed large – in a way. The record included a bonus EP (any of you youngsters who don’t know what an EP is, go look it up).  You can click here to listen to what we’re going to be talking about.

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New Treasures: The Interminables by Paige Orwin

New Treasures: The Interminables by Paige Orwin

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The Interminables-smallI find myself growing steadily more impressed with Angry Robot Books. I write only about the releases that interest me in my New Treasures columns, and in the last few months I’ve given more space to Angry Robot than any other publisher. Most intriguing of all, they’re willing to take a chance on new and emerging authors, which means in the last few years they’ve introduced me to more exciting new talent than any three other publishers combined. Just in the last few months we’ve covered the exciting and award-winning fiction they published by Peter McLean, Rod Duncan, Matt Hill, Ferrett Steinmetz, Ramez Naam, Matthew De Abaitua, Peter Tieryas, Alyc Helms, and Foz Meadows — virtually all of it in affordable mass market paperback format.

Last month they released Paige Orwin’s debut fantasy novel The Interminables, and it sounds like one of their most intriguing releases yet. Featuring two powerful agents of a wizard’s cabal in a drastically altered Earth on a mission that lands them in a very dark place, it sounds a lot like the beginning of an exciting new series. Here’s hoping.

It’s 2020, and a magical cataclysm has shattered reality as we know it. Now a wizard’s cabal is running the East Coast of the US, keeping a semblance of peace.

Their most powerful agents, Edmund and Istvan — the former a nearly immortal 1940s-era mystery man, the latter, well, a ghost — have been assigned to hunt down an arms smuggling ring that could blow up Massachusetts.

Turns out the mission’s more complicated than it seemed. They discover a shadow war that’s been waged since the world ended, and, even worse, they find out that their own friendship has always been more complicated than they thought. To get out of this alive, they’ll need to get over their feelings, their memories, and the threat of a monstrous foe who’s getting ready to commit mass murder…

The Interminables was published by Angry Robot on July 5, 2016. It is 416 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Will Staehle. Read the first chapter at B&N.

A Southern Tale of Spectral Revenge: Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell

A Southern Tale of Spectral Revenge: Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell

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Cold Moon Over Babylon Michael McDowell-1980-small Cold Moon Over Babylon Michael McDowell-1980-back-small Cold Moon Over Babylon Valancourt-small

Leave it to Valancourt Books to produce the first reprint of Michael McDowell’s spooky southern gothic Cold Moon Over Babylon. It was originally published in paperback by Avon in February 1980 (above left and middle, cover artist unknown).

Stephen King called McDowell “The finest writer of paperback originals in America.” McDowell’s other novels include the Blackwater series, The Amulet (1979), and Toplin (1985). I first discovered him with the Valancourt reprint of The Elementals (1981). I was standing in front of the Valancourt booth at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention, gazing in amazement at their incredible back catalog, and that was the book that forced me to open my wallet.

Last year Valancourt brought most of McDowell’s back catalog back into print as part of their 20th Century Classics line, starting with Cold Moon Over Babylon, now available in a handsome new trade paperback with a wonderfully spooky new cover by Mike Mignola.

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The Shannara Chronicles Will Be Back (Though Amber will Not…)

The Shannara Chronicles Will Be Back (Though Amber will Not…)

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Shannara_titleBack in January, I wrote about the then-in progress Shannara Chronicles miniseries on MTV. I was less than overwhelmed. Even though Terry Brooks was involved, and while it did some things nicely, it most certainly was not the Shannara project some of us have been waiting decades for. Granted, it was decent enough that I stuck through all ten episodes.

While the main storyline got closure in the final episode, others (which had nothing to do with The Elfstones of Shannara, the book the series was based on) were left wide open.

I missed this, but back in April, MTV signed on for a second season, though I haven’t come across any kind of timeline.

“This dream team delivered a beautiful, ground breaking show with compelling stories and character journeys which brought in new viewers. I can’t wait to see what season 2 brings,” said Mina Lefevre, Executive Vice President and Head of Scripted Development at MTV.

The show did extremely well in digital format, with over 16 million streams and becoming the most downloaded single-season show ever for MTV. Since it was aimed at the teens and twenties crowd, that’s a good sign.

I liked it enough that I will watch season two, where I’m sure we’ll get more pretty people and lots of the angst, which is the hallmark of the target age group.

Terry Brooks has said that the story is leaning towards The Wishsong of Shannara (which followed Elfstones), with some of Sword of Shannara mixed in.

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August 2016 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

August 2016 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

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Asimovs Science Fiction August 2016-smallTangent Online continues to provide very timely and thoughtful reviews of the latest SF magazines while they’re still on the stands. Here’s a fine example: Michelle Ristuccia’s insightful commentary on James Alan Gardner’s cover story in the August Asimov’s, “The Mutants Men Don’t See.”

Ellie Lee fears that her son will accidentally kill himself in an attempt to activate a mutant gene that he might not even have in “The Mutants Men Don’t See” by James Alan Gardner. Gardner’s engaging urban fantasy inverts a trope or two to focus on an often invisible segment of the population, menopausal women. The title is an homage to the James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) novelette “The Women Men Don’t See” from the December 1973 issue of F&SF. Gardner’s story, because of its subject matter (menopause, and its being the end of the menstrual cycle), also recalls — though in a very different fashion — Connie Willis’s Hugo winning short story “Even the Queen” from the April 1992 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, which dealt with menstruation in a future where one young woman opted not to have the procedure that would eliminate her cycle, as most others of her age and part of a feminist movement have. “Even the Queen” and “The Mutants Men Don’t See” make interesting bookends, for both address issues surrounding a woman’s child-bearing years, the former at the beginning, the latter at the end. All three stories, though wildly different, also deal with the empowerment of women.

Read Michelle’s complete review here.

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Future Treasures: Storm King’s Thunder

Future Treasures: Storm King’s Thunder

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Dungeons and Dragons Storm King's Thunder-smallIn 2013 I wrote an article about introducing my kids to the classic Dungeons and Dragons adventure modules of my childhood — including The Temple of Homlet, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. Last week we wrapped up the climatic Hall of the Fire Giant King with a white-knuckle battle, topping off three years of rousing adventure.

Being the old man that I am, I immediately began to grouse that they don’t make fast-paced, epic adventures like that any more. So I was surprised (and slightly mollified) to see that Wizards of the Coast is releasing a new giant-themed epic adventure for Fifth Edition D&D next month. Just in time for my young adventurers!

Take a stand against the giants in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game

Giants have emerged from their strongholds to threaten civilization as never before. Hill giants are stealing all the grain and livestock they can while stone giants have been scouring settlements that have been around forever. Fire giants are press-ganging the smallfolk into the desert, while frost giant longships have been pillaging along the Sword Coast. Even the elusive cloud giants have been witnessed, their wondrous floating cities appearing above Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate. Where is the storm giant King Hekaton, who is tasked with keeping order among the giants?

The humans, dwarves, elves, and other small folk of the Sword Coast will be crushed underfoot from the onslaught of these giant foes. The only chance at survival is for the small folk to work together to investigate this invasion and harness the power of rune magic, the giants’ weapon against their ancient enemy the dragons. The only way the people of Faerun can restore order is to use the giants’ own power against them.

To defeat giants, you need to be giant!

Storm King’s Thunder will be published by Wizards of the Coast on September 6, 2016. It is a 256-page adventure, suitable for characters level 1-11. It is priced at $49.95.