Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (author, screenwriter, podcaster, and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes (July of 2024).  Now, as of Sept 19th, NESS continues this epic trend of presenting contemporary adventure fiction in fun ways with their second crowdfunded book DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD & SORCERY. It is “double-edged” because, in the tradition of the Ace Double, it’s two novellas bound in one book with unique covers on either side. Both tales are Mongol-inspired Sword & Sorcery.

In this post, we share the campaign’s information and blend in perspectives from both cover artists.

DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD & SORCERY features gorgeous, dynamic covers by Goran Gligović and Artyom Trakhanov, with interior B&W illustrations by Gary McCluskey and the artist known as Crom. If the crowdfunding does well enough, the physical editions will also have vibrant, spray color edges, and a two-page full-color insert featuring art by Sajan Rai. Backers benefit from crowdfunding exclusives like bonus stories, bookmarks, and other surprises.

The campaign ends Oct 19th. Books are scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2025. Support it by visiting Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery on Backerkit – (link) and read this post to learn more about the book(s) and the cover art.

SWORD & SORCERY INSPIRED BY THE TIMES OF GENGHIS KHAN

Walls of Shira Yulun by Dariel Quiogue

Driven to keep an old promise, whatever the cost… trapped in a besieged city, hunted by foes within and without … tormented by a dark shaman using the spirits of those he has slain… Orhan Timur, the Snow Leopard, is brought to bay! Can he escape the imprisoning Walls of Shira Yulun?

Waste Flowers by Bryn Hammond

Goatskin, a despised nomad, is keen to meet Tchingis Khan, champion of nomads. With her bandit love, Sister Chaos, she guides a caravan across the Gobi desert to open trade with the Mongols. But the Gobi casts weird and gruesome strangeness at them like bad weather…

WASTE FLOWERS – Cover Art by Goran Gligović

Goran Gligović Perspective:

For the cover of Waste Flowers we decided to depict the protagonists leading their caravan across the desert at nighttime. The serpentine motion of this large mass of people across the sands has inherent appeal, I think, and it contrasts nicely with the other half of this dual book, which depicts the hard, immovable walls of a fortress. Oliver, the editor of New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine is a fan of the way I depict the starry sky and I’m happy to say that this was the reason we chose to set the scene at night. At first, we wanted to show one of the protagonists looking back at the other, but in the end, we decided that this would interfere with the overall rightward motion of the figures.

Goran Gligović is an illustrator predominantly working within the fantasy genre. You can see his work on the covers of novels or in tabletop roleplaying game books. See more of it at gorangligovic.com

WALLS OF SHIRA YULUN – Cover Art by Artyom Trakhanov

Artyom Trakhanov’s Perspective:

I’ve worked with Oliver on a series of illustrations for New Edge Sword & Sorcery before, so the moment I heard him mentioning David McCall Johnson as a possible project inspiration, I KNEW that I had to be on it. Johnson’s works— ESPECIALLY his covers for Michael Moorcock’s books — are some of my absolute favorite art pieces in all of the world, and I always wanted to try and explore the «Johnson» direction in my own art. But usually, whether I work on comics covers, videogames or posters I feel the need to be a bit more… blunt, maybe? More «straight to the point» with my drawing and what you get with it; but an actual Book Cover is a bit of a different kind of deal, and I think while working on my cover for WALLS OF SHIRA YULUN I managed to push myself enough to actually unlock something new within myself.

Artyom Trakhanov is a comic artist and illustrator who worked on such comics as The 7 Deadly Sins, Slavic Nihilism and First Knife and videogames like Cantata and Dread Delusion. You can find more info about him here: bio.site/ohotnig

 

 

Support Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery on Backerkit – (link)

 

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S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He is also the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group and an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed eight entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone, Swords & Sorcery online magazine, Rogues In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades Vol I and Vol II, DMR’s Terra Incognita, and the 9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull.