John ONeill – Page 210

New Treasures: Skyships Over Innsmouth by Susan Laine

Saturday, August 6, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Airships! Cataclysms! Lovecraft! Horrors beyond imagining! And airships! Really, you had me at airships and Lovecraft.

Susan Lane lives in Finland, and is primarily known as an author of Erotic Alternative Cowboy Romances with great titles, like Lone Wolf and His Cool Cat and Twist in the Saddle. She’s also written the 5-volume Lifting the Veil series of supernatural romances. Skyships Over Innsmouth seems to be her first foray into straight-ahead post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian steampunk… but then again, she seems to have essentially invented it, so she’s free to do it her way. Airships! Lovecraft! This woman has definitely cracked the code for literary cool, and my wallet is helpless before her. That awesome cover doesn’t hurt, either.

Skyships Over Innsmouth was published by DSP Publications on August 2, 2016. It is 200 pages, priced at $14.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The gorgeous cover is by Stef Masciandaro. Get more details (and read a sample chapter by hitting the “Show Excerpt” button) at the DSP website.

Where Epic Fantasy, Uncanny SF, and the New Weird Collide: The Stars Askew by Rjurik Davidson

Thursday, August 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Rjurik Davidson’s Unwrapped Sky was one of the most intriguing works of weird fantasy of 2014. Scott Westerfield called it “An amazing debut… Rjurik Davidson works the sharp edges where epic fantasy, uncanny science fiction, and the New Weird collide.” One of the most fascinating things about it was the marvelously realized fantasy city of Caeli-Amur, home to men, minotaurs, and ancient magic. Hannu Rajaniemi said, “Rjurik has a brilliant, fecund imagination, and I absolutely love the setting… Caeli-Amur is one of the more memorable cities in recent fantasy.” The Stars Askew is the long-awaited sequel, on sale now from Tor Books.

With the seditionists in power, Caeli-Amur has begun a new age. Or has it? The escaped House officials no longer send food, and the city is starving. When the moderate leader Aceline is murdered, the trail leads Kata to a mysterious book that explains how to control the fabled Prism of Alerion. But when the last person to possess the book is found dead, it becomes clear that a conspiracy is afoot. At its center is former House Officiate Armand, who has hidden the Prism. Armand is vying for control of the Directorate, the highest political position in the city, until Armand is betrayed and sent to a prison camp to mine deadly bloodstone.

Meanwhile, Maximilian is sharing his mind with another being: the joker-god Aya. Aya leads Max to the realm of the Elo-Talern to seek a power source to remove Aya from Max’s brain. But when Max and Aya return, they find the vigilants destroying the last remnants of House power.

It seems the seditionists’ hopes for a new age of peace and prosperity in Caeli-Amur have come to naught, and every attempt to improve the situation makes it worse. The question now is not just whether Kata, Max, and Armand can do anything to stop the bloody battle in the city, but if they can escape with their lives.

Read an original story in the same setting, “Nighttime in Caeli-Amur,” published free at Tor.com.

The Stars Askew was published by Tor Books on July 12, 2016. It is 411 pages, priced at $25.9 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Allen Williams.

Future Treasures: The Gate of Sorrows by Miyuki Miyabe

Thursday, August 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

The Gate of Sorrows Miyuki Miyabe-back-small

Miyuki Miyabe is a best-selling novelist in her native Japan. Her first fantasy novel Brave Story won the Batchelder Award for best children’s book in translation from the American Library Association in 2007; her second, The Book of Heroes, appeared in English translation in 2010. It was followed by Ico: Castle in the Mist (2010), inspired by the classic Playstation game Ico.

The Gate of Sorrows is a departure from her previous work — and yet strongly linked to it. It’s an adult novel, set in the same universe as her children’s book The Book of Heroes. It goes on sale in hardcover in two weeks. Here’s the description.

A series of murders shocks Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, but Shigenori, a retired police detective, is instead obsessed with a gargoyle that seems to move. College freshman Kotaro launches a web-based investigation of the killer, and comes to find that answers may lie within an abandoned building in the center of Japan’s busiest neighborhood, and beyond the Gate of Sorrows. In this adult sequel to Miyabe’s The Book of Heroes, you will meet monsters from other worlds and ordinary horrors that surpass even supernatural threats.

The Gate of Sorrows will be published by Haikasoru on August 16, 2016. It is 600 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital version. It is translated by Jim Hubbert. Click the images above for bigger versions.

Forbes on the World’s Highest-Paid Authors in 2016

Wednesday, August 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 13 comments

Forbes magazine is out with its annual round-up of top-paid authors. There aren’t a lot of surprises — but they also estimate the earnings for each writer on the list, and there are some eye-popping numbers. Here’s the top names on the list, as compiled by Natalie Robehmed:

James Patterson – $95 million
Jeff Kinney – $19.5 million
JK Rowling – $19 million
John Grisham – $18 million
Stephen King – $15 million
Danielle Steel – $15 million
Nora Roberts – $15 million
EL James – $14 million
Veronica Roth – $10 million
John Green – $10 million
Paula Hawkins – $10 million
George RR Martin – $9.5 million
Rick Riordan – $9.5 million
Dan Brown – $9.5 million

Robehmed also notes which authors dropped off the list this year… and who may be on their way out:

Newly off the list are Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn, The Hunger Games‘ Suzanne Collins and mystery novelist Janet Evanovich, who all saw sales of their catalogs take a dive.

Even George R. R. Martin may be on his way out: HBO has confirmed its Game of Thrones series will conclude after next season. Martin has already spent a half-decade writing the hotly anticipated sixth installment of A Song of Ice and Fire and without a new book, his earnings may falter next year.

See the complete article here.

Strange Aeons 19 Now Available

Wednesday, August 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Seems to me I should be paying more attention to Strange Aeons, a magazine of horror and dark fantasy that mixes comics and graphic narratives with fiction, all in one attractive package. (The editors describe it as “the illegitimate love-child of a hot tryst between Heavy Metal magazine and Weird Tales” — and you must admit, that’s an evocative image.) They’ve produced 19 issues since the Spring of 2010, and yet we’ve somehow managed to overlook them in our regular magazine coverage here at Black Gate. Shameful.

Time to correct this egregious oversight. Issue 19 is now available, and it contains fiction by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt, and comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York. Here’s the issue description from the website.

Our magnificent Issue Nineteen is now available!

Our amazing cover is by artist Clint Langley, and it was originally commissioned for a film we were pitching called Sunset. The film never got made, but the cover sure is gorgeous!

52 pages of gorgeous B&W and Color Comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York! Three Fiction Stories by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt! Articles, Columns, Reviews and so much more can be found waiting inside, including an interview with the maniac behind the Dreams in the Witch House rock opera, Mike Dalager!

And as an added bonus, a collectible Art Card from the incredible Mohloco!

Check out the full details, including sample pages, below.

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Proceeding in the Pulp Tradition by Writing Five Novels a Year: A Conversation With Guy Haley

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Guy Haley is the author of The Emperor’s Railroad and The Ghoul King, the first two books in The Dreaming Cities from Tor.com Publishing. The tales of the fortified city-states that still stand a thousand years after global war devastated the environment and a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, they take place in a world of constant conflict, superstition, machine relics, mutant creatures, and strange resurrected prehistoric beasts that roam the land. Learn more on our recent contest page.

But as you’ll see in my conversation with Guy below, he’s written more than just these two books — a great deal more. His other works include two Richards and Klein robot detective novels from Angry Robot, the space opera Crash, and a wide assortment of popular books in the Warhammer setting, including Baneblade (2013), The Death of Integrity (2013), Valedor (2015), The Rise of the Horned Rat (2015), Throneworld (May 2016), Death of the Old World (June 2016; an omnibus collection also featuring BG author Josh Reynolds), and no less than five more scheduled for publication before the end of the year:

Pharos (August)
Crusaders of Dorn (September)
Shadowsword (October)
Realmgate Wars: Ghal Maraz (also with Josh, coming in November)
The Beheading (also in November)

Yes, you counted that right: that’s a total of nine books appearing between April and November of this year; seven from Black Library and two from Tor.com Publishing. How does he do it?? Let’s find out.

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B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jeff Somers has announced his picks for the most intriguing SF and fantasy books of the month, and it’s a terrific list.

It includes several books we’ve already showcased here at Black Gate — including The Indranan War by K.B. Wagers, The Forgetting Moon, by Brian Lee Durfee, and Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal — plus new books from Beth Cato, N.K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Faith Hunter, and many more.

He also recommends the latest book from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Spiderlight, on sale today from Tor.com Publishing.

Best-known for his remarkable, innovative, and expansive 10-book Shadows of the Apt series, which crafted an epic fantasy landscape modeled on the real-world characteristics of various types of insects, Tchaikovsky delivers this smart, standalone fantasy, which jumps off from what could be viewed as a clichéd and overdone premise: a standard-issue role-playing party (thief, ranger, wizard, cleric, etc.) following the complicated strictures of a prophecy in order to defeat a dark lord — a prophecy that involves stealing a fang from the Spider Queen and forcing her to lead them to his lair. But Tchaikovsky then pivots to introduce the true protagonist: a spider with an unpronounceable name who is transformed into human form to be the party’s guide. From there, the author brilliantly subverts, inverts, and toys with the common tropes of fantasy literature. The end result is one of the most unique and interesting new fantasies of the year.

See the complete list here.

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

Tuesday, August 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

John Langan has had a stellar career. His first collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008) was nominated for a Stoker Award, and his debut novel House of Windows (2010) was warmly received. But it was his second collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus Press, 2013), that really put him on the map, with plenty of folks praising it as one of the best collections of the year.

His second novel The Fisherman has all the markings of a breakout book. A novel of cosmic horror disguised as a tale of outdoor survival, The Fisherman looks like one of the strongest horror novels of the year. Laird Barron calls it “an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs through It… Straight to hell.”

The Fisherman was published by Word Horde — who’ve been doing some exceptional work recently — on June 30, 2016. It is 282 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Albert Bierstadt. Check out the book video and more here.

Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

Monday, August 1, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Wendy N. Wagner is the Managing Editor for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as an editor for the fabulous Destroy series of anthologies, including Women Destroy Science Fiction, Women Destroy Fantasy, and Queers Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also the author of one previous Pathfinder Tales novel, Skinwalkers.

The sequel to Skinwalkers, Starspawn, will be published next week by Tor Books, and follows the notorious pirate Jendara as she returns to the cold northern isles of her home to settle down and raise her young son. When a mysterious tsunami wracks her island’s shore, she and her fearless crew must sail out to explore the strange island that’s risen from the sea floor. The marketing copy describes the novel as follows:

From Hugo Award winner Wendy N. Wagner comes a sword-swinging adventure in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder meets Lovecraft? That’s definitely worth checking out.

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BookRiot on Seven Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers

Sunday, July 31, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last week I stumbled on a copy of Yangsze Choo’s debut fantasy novel The Ghost Bride in a remainder bin at Barnes & Noble, and snatched it up. I first heard about it in Matthew David Surridge’s review here at Black Gate last year — and more recently, I saw it included in A.J. O’Connell’s entertaining article at BookRiot, 7 Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers, published back in March. It’s good to have a highly functional network that alerts you to the best new stuff.

The first thing I did after getting it home was to check the rest of A.J’s list though, to see what else I’ve missed. What’s so great about standalone novels? Here’s A.J. to explain it.

Stand-alone fantasy novels are beautiful things. You read one book, and get one complete story, with all the resolution you need. You can close the book with a satisfying thunk at the end, knowing that the characters have completed their journeys, and that all the ends are more or less tucked in neatly…

For this list, I stuck to two rules. The books had to be published more or less recently (the oldest book here is from 2008), and they had to be true stand-alones, not part of an author’s pre-existing fictional universe; just one perfect bubble of fiction, floating on its own.

Here’s what she said about The Ghost Bride:

Choo’s first novel is about the Chinese tradition of ghost marriage, a tradition in which one (or both) participants are dead. In this novel, the bride in question is Li Lan, a young woman whose family has fallen on hard times. Because her parents’ financial troubles have made it hard for her to find a husband, she is married off to the spirit of a wealthy young man who has recently died, and finds herself suddenly pulled into the world of the afterlife.

A.J. also discusses The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, and several other intriguing titles. Check out the complete list here .

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