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Month: February 2020

New Treasures: The Unwilling by Kelly Braffet

New Treasures: The Unwilling by Kelly Braffet

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The Unwilling-smallIt’s tough publishing a debut fantasy. You’re such a blank slate to genre readers that every little notice and review carries enormous weight, and can tilt the trajectory of your entire career.

Take the case of Kelly Braffet, who began her career with thrillers like Last Seen Leaving and Save Yourself, before turning to fantasy with The Unwilling, which arrives in hardcover from MIRA on Tuesday. It’s had enviable early notices; Ellen Datlow called it “Something wonderful. I love it,” and Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) said it’s “Extraordinary… Fantasy at its most sublime.” Something like that will usually guarantee a fantastic launch.

Unfortunately a handful of readers have expressed their displeasure with the ending, and their one-star reviews are currently the highest-ranked at Amazon. Kitten Kisser wrote “Oh my. The end. For that the book gets 1 star. I’m sorry I spent 10 days reading this #*!@#% book for that total crock,” and QueenKatieMae said “After 572 pages… I threw this book down and simply said, “No”.”

That’s an unlucky and painful turn of events for any writer, though it’s especially hard on someone trying a new genre. I remain quite intrigued by The Unwilling; the complaints haven’t done much to dampen my enthusiasm, and I doubt I’m alone. The major review sites haven’t been silent either; I found this starred review at Bookist this morning.

Judah is foster sister to Gavin, next in line to be Lord of the City. Judah, who was adopted as an infant by Gavin’s late mother, is hated by Gavin’s father, Lord Elban. He and others call her “foundling,” “witchbred,” and worse. It does not help that in a land of pale-skinned, lithe blondes, Judah is short and has dark, almost purple hair. Luckily, Gavin; his brother Theron; and Gavin’s betrothed, Elly, love her. She and Gavin share an even more special bond. Any hurt she experiences, Gavin does as well, and she experiences all of Gavin’s pain. No matter how Elban and his Seneschal try to break this bond, they fail. This mysterious magic that binds them is no accident… Suspenseful, magical, wonderfully written, and never predictable… an essential addition to all epic-fantasy collections.

The Unwilling will be published by HarperCollins/MIRA on February 11. It is 571 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, $12.99 in digital, and $42 in audio formats. The cover was designed by Micaela Alcaino. See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Women and Magic in an Unfair Society: The Women’s War by Jenna Glass

Women and Magic in an Unfair Society: The Women’s War by Jenna Glass

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Covers by Jonathan Bartlett

One thing I love about modern fantasy is how different it is. There’s something for every reader, every mood, and every taste. For example, I’ve never read any of Jenna Black’s fantasy novels, such as her Faeriewalker trilogy, her Nikki Glass series, or her more recent Nightstruck novels for Tor teen. But she’s recently taken to writing more serious fantasy under the name Jenna Glass, starting with The Women’s War, and I find these books very intriguing indeed.

The Women’s War is the tale of a patriarchal society, and a revolutionary spell that abruptly gives women control over their own fertility — and the predictable (and unpredictable) events that follow. Here’s an excerpt from Sabaa Tahir’s review in The New York Times Book Review.

The Women’s War is an epic feminist fantasy for the #MeToo era. . . . The Women’s War does what so many classic adult fantasy books do not: It gives us a nuanced portrayal of grown women dealing with a wretchedly unfair society. It is rare to read a fantasy novel with a middle-aged mother as a main character. And it is refreshing to see women becoming heroes in a world that wishes to keep them muzzled.

The Women’s War was published by Del Rey in March of last year. The sequel, Queen of the Unwanted, is due in May. Here’s all the details.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Ditmar Award for Best Dramatic Presentation: Aussie Fan, directed by John Litchen

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Ditmar Award for Best Dramatic Presentation: Aussie Fan, directed by John Litchen

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John Litchen in Tahiti, 1964

My previous article about the 1973 Ditmars covered the winner for Best Australian Fiction, “Let it Ring!”, by “John Ossian.” That story was written in part in support of the bid for an Australian Worldcon to be held in Melbourne in 1975. That bid was eventually successful.

I was surprised to see that “Let it Ring!” beat out three novels for its award, and I was likewise surprised to see that an obscure movie called Aussie Fan beat out A Clockwork Orange, Slaughterhouse Five, and Tales from the Crypt for the Dramatic Presentation Ditmar. So of course I turned to the experts, people who were in fandom back then, and who know where the bodies are buried.

The great Australian fan (and Ditmar winner on his own) Bruce Gillespie had the answer:

The ‘Aussiefan film’ that won the Best Dramatic Presentation would have been unmissable by anybody attending American SF conventions in 1972 and 1973. John Litchen in Melbourne produced and directed what is essentially a humorous home movie in order to promote the Australia in 75 bid. It ‘stars’ quite a few members of Melbourne fandom, with Paul Stevens as the wascally ‘Anti-fan’ who is determined to wipe out the members of the Aussiecon committee. Malcolm Hunt, who portrays the heroic Aussiefan, disappeared from fandom after his starring role. The film arrived at LACon in 1972, and Jack Chalker (long before he began his writing career) criss-crossed the country, attending a convention almost every weekend from then until Torcon II in 1973, showing the film continually. It was probably the main reason why our bid in 1973 at Torcon was assured before I and about twenty other Australian fans did the presentation (led by Roger Zelazny on the platform) and won the day.

Minnesota-based fan Denny Lien added some details about the reception of Aussie Fan in the US.

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Rogue Blades Presents: What Robert E. Howard Has Meant to Me

Rogue Blades Presents: What Robert E. Howard Has Meant to Me

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Howard changed my lifeI’m rather proud of the upcoming release of the book, Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, from the Rogue Blades Foundation (RBF), a non-profit publisher with a focus on all things heroic. I happen to be a board member of RBF, so my pride comes natural. However, a book title like that gets one to thinking. I can’t help but ask myself, as a writer and editor of fantasy fiction and as a member of the RBF board, how has Robert E. Howard changed my life? What has he meant to me over the years?

In the upcoming book, plenty of people better known and more experienced than myself will answer such questions, and I have to admit, for me these are not easy questions to answer.

I have an admission to make. Robert E. Howard wasn’t my gateway author into fantasy. He wasn’t even my gateway author into sword and sorcery literature.

I’ve read everything Robert E. Howard wrote, or at least everything that’s available to us today, including the formerly unpublished works and tidbits that have been printed in recent years. Back in the day I read nearly all the Howard-related comics from the 1970s. I’ve seen all the movies, even read the book by Novalyne Price, Howard’s one-time girlfriend. I’ve seen the TV shows, played the video games. I attended Howard Days two years ago and I’m planning another trip there this year.

Still, I feel like a phony, a Robert E. Howard phony. I feel like I can never read him enough, study him enough. It’s as if this man dead nearly a century is my teacher and I can never learn enough from him about the art and science of writing.

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Vintage Treasures: The Devil in a Forest by Gene Wolfe

Vintage Treasures: The Devil in a Forest by Gene Wolfe

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A Devil in a Forest Gene Wolfe-small A Devil in a Forest Gene Wolfe-back-small

The Devil in a Forest (Ace Books, 1981). Cover by Kinuko Y. Craft

The Devil in a Forest was Gene Wolfe’s third novel, following Operation Ares and Peace. It was published in 1976, and was very much overshadowed by the release of The Shadow of the Torturer, the opening novel in Wolfe’s masterwork Book of The New Sun, in 1980. Still, in the four and a half decades since its release it’s been much discussed. But my favorite review was this on-the-nose piece by Paul de Bruijn at Rambles:

You know the phrase “You can’t judge a book by its cover?” Well, sometimes you can’t judge a book by the publisher’s blurb on the back, either. Gene Wolfe’s The Devil in a Forest proves the point well…

“He lives deep in the forest in the time of King Wenceslas, in a village older than record. The young man’s hero-worship of the charming highwayman Wat is tempered by growing suspicion of Wat’s cold savagery, and his fear of the sorceous powers of Mother Cloot is tempered by her kindness. He must decide which of these powers to stand by in the coming battle between Good and Evil that not even his isolated village will be able to avoid.”

I would love to know what book that is describing, because it is not The Devil in a Forest. Instead you get a story of a handful of villagers who get caught up in events beyond their control. It starts with the simple plan of getting the local highwayman to leave by helping him commit armed robbery. And Wat plays on the greed of a few of them masterfully. Creating a story of a rich pilgrim, he sends several people away so that he, Gloin, Matt and a char burner can rob Phillip the Cobbler. And then of course things start to go wrong…. it is a story well worth the reading.

Wolfe, who passed away last year, shows no sign of being forgotten by the usually fickle SF fanbase, and he’s discussed (and read) just as much as he’s always been. It’s gratifying to see. The Devil in the Forest was published in hardcover by Follett Publishing in 1976, and reprinted in paperback by Ace Books in November 1977 with a cover by F. Kegil, and again in 1981 with a new cover by Kinuko Y. Craft (above). The 1981 edition is 224 pages, priced at $2.25. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

Goth Chick News: The Crazy Reality of The Show

Goth Chick News: The Crazy Reality of The Show

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A whole 22 years has passed since we marveled at reality TV taken to the extreme via The Truman Show, and my, my, my weren’t we naïve back then? I mean, we were still almost 10 years from the train wreck that would be Keeping Up with the Karadashians, and even 4 years from the first Bachelor episode. Though we had by then voyeuristically tuned into The Real World, it would seem downright pedestrian when compared to what came later in the form of Temptation Island and Survivor. Today, I can’t come up with an accurate count of how many total reality television programs are currently airing, but several sources list at least 15 as ‘must see TV’ so the number must be well into the double-digits. And each year, audiences demand edgier, more titillating, more graphic content until we arrive at…

The Show.

It was a simple idea. Take a man, lock him in a room and film him slowly go mad. That man was Johnny Teevee and he’s been locked away for six years.

But, as Johnny’s antics become more predictable, ratings start to drop, and his producer is forced to go to extreme lengths to keep things entertaining.

It might be cruel, it might be immoral — but it makes good TV.

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But What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s Needle

But What’s at Stake? Hal Clement’s Needle

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Needle (Doubleday, 1950, cover artist unknown)

Needle
by Hal Clement
(Astounding Science Fiction, May-June 1949; expanded to book form: Doubleday, 222 pages, $2.50 in hardcover, 1950)

Hal Clement (legal name Harry Stubbs) was one of the stable of science fiction writers developed by John W. Campbell in the pages of Astounding magazine in the 1940s. His first story was “Proof” in the June 1942 issue and his next 10 stories appeared in the magazine throughout the ‘40s. He’s most famous for the 1954 novel Mission of Gravity and his reputation rests on its sort of hard science fiction: alien environments rigorously extrapolated from known physical principles. (Others in this vein were Iceworld, 1953, and Cycle of Fire, 1957.)

His first novel is a little different. This is Needle, serialized in Astounding and expanded to book form the following year for Doubleday. And published, incidentally, as a juvenile, in the “Doubleday Young Moderns” series, despite, as SFE notes, certain themes. (The edition I’m reading, and using pagination from, is a 1974 trade paperback reprint in Avon/Equinox’s SF Rediscovery series, with an odd cover illustration depicting two Greek-like gods fighting in the clouds. Photo below.)

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Future Treasures: Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

Future Treasures: Twilight of the Gods by Scott Oden

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Cover designs by Jimmy Iacobelli

It’s enormously satisfying to see Scott Oden, who’s been a critical darling for his intelligent historical fantasies like Men of Bronze (which Bob Byrne discussed here) and The Lion of Cairo (which Brian Murphy summed up as “Pulse-pounding sword play, leagues of warring assassins, political intrigue, a hint of evil sorcery, and the clash of armies on a grand stage”) finally have a bonafide hit with his new Grimnir Series, an epic Viking fantasy. In his review of the first volume Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote:

Oden’s novel knocked the heck out of any prejudices I had. New or old, this book kicks ass, and is one of the best swords & sorcery novels I’ve read in a while…. A Gathering of Ravens belongs on the same shelf as the best modern swords & sorcery novels, and on the shelf of any serious swords & sorcery reader.

A Gathering of Ravens also garnered a starred review at Publishers Weekly — not something you see every day. Here’s a snippet.

In this lovingly crafted tale of high adventure, Oden creates an alternate early medieval Europe in which mortal men have defeated entire races of vicious magical creatures. Some nightmares have faded from memory as magic and ancient beliefs are supplanted by a new religion, Christianity. Grimnir, last of the giants called kaunar, is on a mission for vengeance several centuries in the making… This fast-paced thrill ride might have been bleak or unsettling, but it’s rendered so lovingly that it reveals new layers of familiar territory. The fresh viewpoint is steeped in an appreciation for the terrifying and powerful characters of high fantasy, and Oden does them justice.

After a gap of nearly three years, Oden finally delivers the long-awaited second volume in the series, Twilight of the Gods. It arrives in hardcover from St. Martin’s Press in two weeks. Here’s all the details.

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide

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Fantasy and Science Fiction are often viewed as two distinctive, though related, forms of speculative fiction, but in reality, the genre is a continuum in which the dreamscapes of a Lord Dunsany or Robert Holdstock can lead us through twisting turns of possibility until we arrive at Andy Weir and Ian Banks, or a Neal Stephenson story of “digital resurrection” can turn into a story of gods, goddesses and quests.

The central theme, the true “Call of Cthulhu” behind good speculative fiction is not “swords, sorcerers or blasters,” but the author’s ability to take the reader out of the comfort of our mundane world, and by introducing varying degrees of what-ifs, neverwhens or neverwheres to take us on inward journey that stimulates our imagination, our sense of wonder, our ability to consider this spinning rock we live on today. Of course, what I am talking about is “world-building.” The world building may be subtle, introducing only the smallest tweaks to reality, or it may be the all-encompassing sweep of foreign lands, peoples and languages, most famously represented by Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

There are a lot of ways to tackle world-building, but this column is going to focus on one: historicity in fantasy fiction. Full disclosure: I have a background in medieval history and have spent most of my adult life meticulous reconstructing medieval martial arts from primary source material. So, I’m a nerd. For the average fantasy reader, an obvious pushback is “it’s fantasy, Greg, what does it matter?” I am glad I asked for you!

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New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Lord of the Dark Millennium: The Dan Abnett Collection

New Treasures: Warhammer 40,000: Lord of the Dark Millennium: The Dan Abnett Collection

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Cover by Ignacio Bazan-Lazcano

Recently I’ve been listening to a host of audiobooks on Amazon’s Audible service. I’ve enjoyed Craig Davidson’s The Saturday Night Ghost Club, Martha Wells’ All Systems Red, Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim, and the first two volumes of S.K. Dunstall’s terrific Linesman trilogy. But the best one so far, an audio drama that kept me absolutely riveted for four days, was Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40,000 novel The Magos, narrated by the great Toby Longworth. Half story collection, half novel, that damn thing absolutely transported me to into a future of superstition, terror, and dark sorcery.

Naturally, it also spurred my interest in the career of Dan Abnett. He’s written dozens of Warhammer 40,000 books, including 16 novels in the Gaunt’s Ghost military adventure series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor Inquisitor trilogies, several novels in the bestselling Horus Heresy series, and others.

During that time he’s produced numerous short stories set in the war-torn galaxy of the 41st millenium. And now Black Library has issued Lord of the Dark Millennium: The Dan Abnett Collection, a massive 668-page hardcover containing all of his Warhammer 40K short fiction. It’s a gorgeous feast of a book, continuing 37 stories and a brand new introduction. Some of them, including “Regia Occulta,” “The Curiosity,” and “Thorn Wishes Talon,” are some of my favorite science fiction stories of the past two decades.

Lord of the Dark Millennium: The Dan Abnett Collection was published by Black Library on January 21, 2020. It is 668 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $16.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Ignacio Bazan-Lazcano. Get the complete details — and download free digital samples — at the Black Library website.