February 2019 – Page 5

New Treasures: The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons

Monday, February 11, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

It’s tough being a debut fantasy writer. There are so many books being released every month, it’s very, very challenging for new voices to be heard. The thing that can really help is a starred review from one of the big four review sites — Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Booklist. Even a single starred review can mean the difference between a successful launch and vanishing without a trace.

Getting a pair of starred reviews is a very good omen, and three is extremely rare. I can only think of a handful of titles that pulled off the nearly-impossible trick of a clean sweep of all four — but that’s exactly what happened with Jenn Lyons’s new novel The Ruin of Kings. Library Journal called it “Stunning,” Booklist labeled it “Dazzling,” and Publishers Weekly called it ” intricate epic fantasy.” But my favorite review was from Kirkus, who said:

The story begins in a jail cell with a young man named Kihrin being guarded by Talon, a beautiful and monstrous shape-shifting assassin. Kihrin, awaiting what will surely be his death, begins telling her his life story. Talon complements Kihrin’s tale with her own memories of the past few years, and, together, they weave a jaw-dropping, action-packed story of betrayal, greed, and grand-scale conspiracy. It all begins when Kihrin — a thief who has been raised in the slums by a compassionate blind musician—witnesses a horrific murder while robbing a house…. While the comparisons to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle will be unavoidable — in terms of story structure and general narrative content — the potential of this projected five-book saga may be even greater. Although a cast of well-developed characters and an impressively intricate storyline power this novel, it’s Lyons’ audacious worldbuilding that makes for such an unforgettable read. In a sprawling, magic-filled world populated by gods, dragons, krakens, witches, demons, ghosts, shape-shifters, zombies, and so much more, Lyons ties it all together seamlessly to create literary magic.

Epic fantasy fans looking for a virtually un-put-down-able read should look no further.

The Ruin of Kings was published by Tor Books on February 5, 2019. It is 560 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover art is by Lars West. Read the complete first chapter at Tor.com.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Hither Came Conan: Morgan Holmes on “Iron Shadows in the Moon”

Monday, February 11, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 15 comments

Hither_ShadowsRuins — Mark Schultz from Del Rey’s **The Coming of Conan**

“Shadows in the Moonlight” (editor’s note: Howard’s original title was “Iron Shadows in the Moon”) was the eighth Conan story to appear in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Conan had turned out to be a popular character with Weird Tales readers. The character was so popular in fact that fellow Weird Tales writer, E. Hoffmann Price, later wrote that Conan had saved the magazine more than once.

“Shadows in the Moonlight” appeared in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales. This was an especially strong issue of the magazine. The contents included:

“Satan’s Garden” (Part 1 of 2)     E. Hoffmann Price (cover story)
“Black Thirst” C. L. Moore
“Corsairs of the Cosmos”              Edmond Hamilton
“Shadows in the Moonlight”        Robert E. Howard
“The Death of Malygris”                Clark Ashton Smith
“Behind the Screen”                       Dale Clark
“The Cane” Carl Jacobi
“Bells of Oceana” Arthur J. Burks
“In Mayan Splendor” (poem)      Frank Belknap Long

The 1930s Golden Age of Weird Tales was in full force with the three main first stringers present: Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and C. L. Moore. Carl Jacobi, while not a headliner author, always produced good-to-excellent horror stories. The Arthur J. Burks story is a reprint from 1927. Burks was the sort of middling writer along the lines of Otis Adelbert Kline and Seabury Quinn that editor Farnsworth Wright was comfortable publishing. The only real weak story was by Dale Clark. Farnsworth Wright has a penchant for barely competent and unmemorable stories of this sort.

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Gaming on the High Seas

Sunday, February 10, 2019 Jeff Stehman Comments 0 Comment

My wife on Labadee with… uh… not a board game

Gaming on the high seas! Or at least medium seas. My wife and I went on the 2019 Dice Tower Cruise, a sold-out floating board-gaming convention of 600 adults plus 200 children. Five days aboard the Independence of the Seas, with stops in Jamaica and Haiti and access to the Dice Tower library of games.

Some of those 600 adults and most of the children didn’t participate in the gaming action, and some only dabbled. It’s a cruise, with usual huge array of activities available. This makes it an excellent vacation getaway for gamers whose families are less than enthused about the hobby.

Independence of the Seas holds about 4,400 passengers, so the DTC was a sizeable group, warranting its own dining room. We had the conference center for round-the-clock gaming, and additional table space was available in various restaurants at certain times of day. We also had the big theater for recording a live episode of the Dice Tower podcast, and a smaller venue for a few other Dice Tower gatherings/shows.

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Vintage Treasures: Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited by Terry Carr

Sunday, February 10, 2019 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Classic Science Fiction The First Golden Age UK-small

Classic Science Fiction The First Golden Age UK back-small

Terry Carr may be my all-time favorite editor. His Creatures From Beyond (1975) was one of the very first SF anthologies I read in Junior High, and the sixteen volumes of The Best Science Fiction of the Year he produced remain a high water mark for the genre. Carr died in 1987, at the too-young age of 50, but I still read his books with enormous pleasure today.

It may be a sign of age (mine, not Carr’s), but I usually associate him with modern science fiction. So I was a little surprised to discover his anthology Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, which collects a dozen stories published in pulp magazines in 1940-41. This is not an easy book to find; it had a single hardcover printing from Harper & Row in 1978, a UK reprint from Robson a year later, and then promptly vanished. There’s been no paperback, no reprint since 1979, and no digital version. If I hadn’t stumbled on a copy on Amazon through blind luck back in 2011, I probably still wouldn’t know this book existed.

I love pulp SF, so it’s always nice to get a new selection of Golden Age tales, especially from an editor with Carr’s eye. Here he includes a handful of classics, like Asimov’s “Nightfall,” Kuttner’s “The Twonky,” and Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps,” and “–And He Built a Crooked House–,” but also stories I’ve never seen before, like Lester del Rey’s “The Smallest God,” Ross Rocklynne’s “Into the Darkness,” and Leigh Brackett’s “Child of the Green Light.”

But even more interesting than that, at least for me, is Carr’s lengthy editorial material exploring the history of SF’s Golden Age, the major personalities involved, and the stories behind the fiction. Easily 20% of this book (some 90 pages) is written by Carr, and he draws from a great many sources, including a lot of personal correspondence and interviews, to tell some fascinating anecdotes and illuminate the surprising history of some of the greatest science fiction ever written. This is a book that belongs in every serious library of pulp SF, alongside The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Asimov’s Before the Golden Age, and Healy and McComas’ Adventures in Time and Space.

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Ancient Gods, World in Darkness, Ragtag Band of Fighters: The Bound Gods Trilogy by Rachel Dunne

Saturday, February 9, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I made my Saturday bi-weekly trip to Barnes & Noble today, ostensibly to pick up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which has a brand new Alaric the Minstrel novella by my friend Phyllis Eisenstein. While browsing the new releases half a dozen books caught my eye, including The Winter Road by Adrian Selby, The Lost by Kevin A. Munoz, and The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless. But the one that leaped into my hands was The Shattered Sun by Rachel Dunne, with the words A Bounds Gods Novel stamped on the cover, which certainly meant it was the umpteenth novel in series. This was on the back.

The epic sword-and-sorcery Bound Gods fantasy series comes to its dark conclusion in this thrilling story of a vibrant world whose fate lies in the hands of vengeful gods and bold warriors.

The world has been plunged into darkness… and only the scheming priest Joros might be able to bring back the sun.

With his ragtag band of fighters — a laconic warrior, a pair of street urchins, a ruthless priestess, and an unhinged sorcerer — Joros seeks to defeat the ancient gods newly released from their long imprisonment. But the Twins have champions of their own, and powers beyond knowing… and the only sure thing is that they won’t go down without a fight.

The fate of the world hangs in the balance as the Twins aim to enact revenge on the parents that imprisoned them, and the world that spurned them. The Long Night has begun, and the shadows hide many secrets — including that the Twins themselves may not be as powerful as they would have everyone think.

Joros and his allies must strike now — before the Twins can consolidate their power… and before they are allowed to shape the world in their vision.

Now, last thing I need is the final book in a series I’ve never heard of. But then again… there’s a lot that appeals to me here. Epic sword-and-sorcery. Desperate battle against ancient gods. World plunged into darkness, ragtag band of fighters. And Tony Mauro’s cover, with the stooped priest Joros and a mischievous imp familiar on his shoulder, is terrific. Ah, the hell with it. My house is already filled to the brim with fantasy novels. One more won’t hurt.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Jerry Pournelle

Saturday, February 9, 2019 Rich Horton Comments 9 comments

Analog December 1971 A Spaceship for the King-small

Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so the awards for 1973 were the awards for my personal Golden Age. And Steven suggested that much as he is covering awards for 1980, I might cover awards for 1973 here in Black Gate.

It seems appropriate in a year that represents my dawning as an SF reader, I should cover the dawning of an award that since then has celebrated the dawning of what we (as fans) think might be a significant career. This is the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Some people think the full name of the award includes a parenthetical addition: (Not a Hugo). This is because the award is sponsored by Dell Magazines (publisher of Analog, where John Campbell was the long time Editor), but administered by the World Science Fiction Society, and as such voted on using the same process and schedule as the Hugo Awards.

The very first Campbell Award, in 1973, went to Jerry Pournelle. Writers are eligible for the award for the two years after their first professional SF/Fantasy publication. While Pournelle had published a thriller, Red Heroin, in 1969 under the name Wade Curtis, his first SF story was “Peace With Honor,” under his own name, in the May 1971 Analog. This was the first story in his Co-Dominion future history, and the first to feature John Christian Falkenberg, one of his primary heroes. His nomination was based on that story, on another Falkenberg story, “The Mercenary,” and on the novel A Spaceship for the King (set much later in the Co-Dominion universe), as well, perhaps, on three stories that appeared in Analog under the “Wade Curtis” name: “Ecology Now!”, “A Matter of Sovereignty,” and “Power to the People.”

I first encountered Pournelle with some stories in Analog in 1974, such as “Extreme Prejudice.” I soon searched out his earlier stories in back issues of Analog borrowed from my library, and I remember reading, with particular enjoyment, the serialized version of A Spaceship for the King.

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Future Treasures: The Blackest Heart, Book 2 of The Five Warrior Angels by Brian Lee Durfee

Friday, February 8, 2019 John ONeill Comments 14 comments

The Forgetting Moon, the 800-page fat-fantasy debut from Brian Lee Durfee, was published in 2016 to some acclaim, and drew comparisons to Steven Erikson, David Eddings, and George R. R. Martin. SFFWorld was impressed, though it found things a little on the grimdark side.

When a young boy, Nail, is orphaned and taken in by a gruff and mostly silent warrior named Shawcroft, you might have an idea that Brian Lee Durfee’s The Forgetting Moon is going to tread into the waters of Epic Fantasy. You’d be mostly correct, but the routes he takes are down some of the more shadowy, grim, and darkest roads traveled in this popular sub-genre of Fantasy. To say that The Forgetting Moon leans on the shady grimdark side of fantasy would be an understatement, but nothing else about Durfee’s epic novel (and saga) is understated.

Not too surprisingly, one of the most enthusiastic reviews came from Matthew Cropley at Grimdark Magazine.

The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee is a fantastic new addition to the grimdark fantasy landscape… The story begins with Nail, a young man living in a sleepy whaling village in the corner of the kingdom of Gul Kana. Unbeknownst to Nail, he has a grand destiny to fulfil and magical items that only he can wield. In Amadon, the capital of Gul Kana, Princess Jondralyn seeks to become a warrior as her younger sister, Tala, is swept into an assassination plot. Gault, a knight of the invading army from Sør Sevier, has become disillusioned with the conflict, and questions the rule of the conquering Angel Prince, Aeros Raijael. Other individuals scattered across the kingdom give further insight into the escalating war… It sounds like a familiar story but, in this case, Durfee turns it on its head. Nail is far from the moralistic hero of traditional fantasy, and everyone seems to have a different interpretation of the prophecies, if they’re even genuine in the first place…

The Forgetting Moon is an engaging tale about the fine line between truth and lies. It skilfully subverts stories of destiny and ancient magic without losing the grandeur such stories possess. The characters are memorable and realistic, the world is steeped in lore, and the book succeeds in being both fast-paced and sweeping. Brian Lee Durfee has done a fantastic job with his first novel, and the four more to come in the series are books to get excited about.

Wait, there are four more?? Volume two, The Blackest Heart, arrives in hardcover on February 26, and my advance copy tips the scales at 941 pages. We’re only two books into this series, and it’s already over 1,700 pages long. It you like your grimdark epic, I have good news for you.

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Wordsmiths: An Interview with Waubgeshig Rice

Friday, February 8, 2019 Brandon Crilly Comments 1 comment

A while back at Can*Con 2017, I had the pleasure of meeting author and journalist Waubgeshig Rice for a panel discussion on post-apocalyptic fiction and First Nations perspectives in Canada. The panel came together partly because Waub was beginning to promote his then-forthcoming novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, which released in 2018 from ECW Press (and I reviewed a little while ago here). Despite being incredibly busy with different projects, Waub was game for a one-on-one interview to discuss Moon and some of his other work, which I’ve included in full below. Before that, here’s a little more information about Waub, courtesy of his website:

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, was inspired by his experiences growing up in an Anishinaabe community, and won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014. A French translation was published in 2017.

He got his first taste of journalism in 1996 as an exchange student in Germany, writing articles about being an Anishinaabe teen in a foreign country for newspapers back in Canada. He graduated from Ryerson University’s journalism program in 2002. He currently works as a multi-platform journalist for CBC News in Sudbury, where he lives with his wife and son. In 2014, he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling.

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Goth Chick News: Looking Back at a Good Old-Fashioned Exorcism…

Thursday, February 7, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 8 comments

Long before Emily Rose, or Emma Evans there was Regan MacNeil, a once normal little girl who became quite a handful thanks to an imaginary friend who, as it turned out, happened to be an ancient Mesopotamian demon king. It was just over 45 years ago, on December 26, 1973, movie-going audiences were treated to what would come to be known as one of the scariest horror movies of all time – The Exorcist.

Based on William Peter Blatty’s novel of the same name, The Exorcist tells the story of a little girl possessed by the demon Pazuzu and the priests charged with saving her soul. There are tales of people being so frightened of Blatty’s book that they keep it in a separate part of the house, like a garage, a linen closet, or even a freezer; because it’s common knowledge that ancient demon spirits go dormant in the cold and can’t manage closed doors.

The movie terrified audiences even more so, with some believing there was actual evil contained in the film stock. Looking at the adjusted, highest-grossing film list, so named as all totals are twizzled to account for inflation, The Exorcist bests even Avatar. It racked up $232 million in box office takings, over $900 million by today’s standards. What is even more fascinating is the profound difference 45 years has made in what audiences consider terrifying. In spite of the advancements in special effects technology that make some of The Exorcist scenes borderline comical by today’s standards, no movie since its premier has had such an effect on movie-goers.

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Black Gate

Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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Month: February 2019

New Treasures: The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons

Monday, February 11, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Hither Came Conan: Morgan Holmes on “Iron Shadows in the Moon”

Monday, February 11, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 15 comments

Gaming on the High Seas

Sunday, February 10, 2019 Jeff Stehman Comments 0 Comment

Vintage Treasures: Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age, edited by Terry Carr

Sunday, February 10, 2019 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Ancient Gods, World in Darkness, Ragtag Band of Fighters: The Bound Gods Trilogy by Rachel Dunne

Saturday, February 9, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Jerry Pournelle

Saturday, February 9, 2019 Rich Horton Comments 9 comments

Future Treasures: The Blackest Heart, Book 2 of The Five Warrior Angels by Brian Lee Durfee

Friday, February 8, 2019 John ONeill Comments 14 comments

Wordsmiths: An Interview with Waubgeshig Rice

Friday, February 8, 2019 Brandon Crilly Comments 1 comment

Goth Chick News: Looking Back at a Good Old-Fashioned Exorcism…

Thursday, February 7, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 8 comments