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Author: John ONeill

The Only Devil Book You’ll Ever Need: The Book of Fiends – A Malefic Bestiary for Fifth Edition by Robert J. Schwalb

The Only Devil Book You’ll Ever Need: The Book of Fiends – A Malefic Bestiary for Fifth Edition by Robert J. Schwalb

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The Book of Fiends (Green Ronin Publishing, March 8, 2022). Cover by Svetoslav Petrov

It’s a cliché to say that a good role playing campaign is like a satisfying fantasy series, packed with realistic characters, compelling action, and vivid settings. It’s more accurate, I think, to say that truly great role playing shares an essential ingredient with the best fantasy. I mean, of course, that it’s all about the villains.

Want to keep your players coming back, clutching well-worn character sheets and eager for action? You need challenges worthy of their time, and you won’t get that with the same generic dragons week after week. You need truly malefic opponents with legendary skills, cunning agendas, and awe-inspiring magic at their disposal.

There are some terrific resources out there to help you craft really memorable villains, but for my money the best one on the market is The Book of Fiends by Robert J. Schwalb, with Aaron Loeb, Erik Mona, and Chris Pramas. It’s a massive 254-page tome filled to the brim with inventive and truly original infernal menaces for Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons. There isn’t another book published in the last five years I’ve drawn from as heavily for my own game as this one. I don’t care why kind of RPG you play, The Book of Fiends will up your game.

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Future Treasures: Eyes of the Void, Book 2 of The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Future Treasures: Eyes of the Void, Book 2 of The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void (Orbit, August 3, 2021, and November 22, 2022). Cover design by Steve Stone

Adrian Tchaikovsky is equally at home with ambitious epic fantasy (including his Echoes of the Fall trilogy, and the sprawling, 13-volume Apt series) and big-canvas science fiction (including Warhammer 40K and his Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Children of Time novels).

HIs latest is an ambitious space opera trilogy. It began with Shard of Earth, which BookPage labeled “one of the most stunning space operas I’ve read this year… glorious,” and Publishers Weekly called “dazzlingly suspenseful… a mix of lively fight scenes, friendly banter, and high-stakes intrigue.”

Next month the second installment Eyes of the Void drops, and the advance buzz for this one is just as rapturous. I usually avoid a series until at least three novels are in print, but I may have to make an exception for this one.

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Tales From the Magician’s Skull #8 Now Available

Tales From the Magician’s Skull #8 Now Available

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Tales From the Magician’s Skull #8. Cover by Ken Kelly

What have Howard Andrew Jones and his cabal of mad writers and artists been toiling to create, deep in the abandoned publishing mines below Evanston, Illinois?

Many bothans died to bring us early word, and now at last we can share it with you: it’s issue #8 of the world’s greatest Sword & Sorcery magazine, Tales From the Magician’s Skull!

According to hand-written notes scrawled by dying bothans, the long-awaited new issue is packed with fiction of keen interest to Black Gate readers, including a new Morlock tale by James Enge, a new Tale of Gaunt and Bone by Chris Wilrich, and fiction by C. L. Werner, Robert Rhodes, Jeremy Pak Nelson, and many others — all packaged under a cover by legendary artist Ken Kelly. The issue is available to buy today; check out all the details below.

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New Treasures: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

New Treasures: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

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The Justice of Kings (Orbit, August 23, 2022). Cover by Martina Fackova

These days it’s all about blending genres. Dark fantasy police procedurals (Dan Stout’s The Carter Archives). High fantasy romance (Foz Meadow’s A Strange and Stubborn Endurance). Cthulhu mythos and epic fantasy (Jonathan Mayberry’s Kagen the Damned). If you can imagine it, then trust me, it’s out there.

Some genres go together better than others, though. For my money, the ideal pairing is the tightly plotted murder mystery, blended with the sprawling cast of an ambitious political fantasy. Turns out that perfectly describes Richard Swan’s brand new novel The Justice of Kings, released at the end of August by Orbit. Booklist labels it “Rich and interesting,” and Grimdark Magazine flat out calls it “Brilliant.” Here’s an excerpt from the enthusiastic starred review at Kirkus.

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Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

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Too Many Magicians, Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates
(Ace, 1979 – 1981). Cover art by Robert Adragna

In 1977 Jim Baen accepted an offer from publisher Tom Doherty to return to Ace Books to head their science fiction line. Doherty left Ace to found Tor Books in 1980 and Baen soon followed him, but his years at Ace were extraordinarily productive. He resurrected an enormous amount of classic SF and fantasy from the magazines and brought it to a brand new audience, including Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Poul Anderson’s Flandry, Keith Laumer’s Retief, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker, H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy novels, and collections by Robert Sheckley, James Tiptree, Jr, Robert E. Howard, James H. Schmitz, Barry N. Malzberg, and countless others.

One of the most distinctive works Baen championed was Randall Garrett’s tales of occult detective Lord Darcy, set in an alternate England in which the laws of Magic are rigorously codified, but the laws of physics remain unknown. He gathered them into three volumes: the novel Too Many Magicians and the collections Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates. They captured a brand new readership, and the books have been reprinted half a dozen times in subsequent decades.

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The Most Ambitious SF Novel of 2021: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

The Most Ambitious SF Novel of 2021: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

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The Actual Star (Harper Voyager reprint edition, August 16, 2022). Cover art by Monica Byrne

The trick to really staying on top of the best SF and fantasy, I’ve found, is to take the time to find a handful of excellent reviewers, and trust what they tell you. I’ve discovered over long years that Rich Horton is one of the most reliable and discerning readers out there, and this is what he posted on Facebook three days ago.

I just finished reading (via listening to) The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I will say it is way more ambitious than any other 2021 SF novel I’ve read, and I strongly think it deserved a Hugo nomination.

By strange coincidence, I’d just picked up a copy of the Harper Voyager paperback reprint of The Actual Star, and had a copy to hand. See how fate works for you when you let it?

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

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The Best of British SF 1 and 2 (Orbit, 1977). Covers by Bob Layzell

Every once in a while I sit back, take stock of our accomplishments, and think, “Man. We’ve showcased countless forgotten writers here at Black Gate, discussed tens of thousands of neglected books, writing late into the night on tight deadlines, and nobody has spell checked anything.”

Still, I’m justifiably proud of what we’ve accomplished in the 23 years this website has been live. Though I do have to admit that we have been, like the market at large, over-focused on American publishing. So I was delighted to find the massive two-volume anthology The Best of British SF 1 and 2, published as paperback originals by Orbit in 1977.

Containing nearly 800 pages of short fiction from Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, John Russell Fearn, Eric Frank Russell, Arthur C. Clarke, John Christopher, John Brunner, E. C. Tubb, Brian W. Aldiss, James White, Bob Shaw, Philip E. High, Colin Kapp, Kingsley Amis, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Keith Roberts, and many others — all interspersed with insightful genre history and commentary from editor Mike Ashley — these books are a wonderful retrospective of the finest science fiction from across the pond.

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A Masterclass in Grand-Scale Storytelling: The Legacy of the Mercenary King by Nick Martell

A Masterclass in Grand-Scale Storytelling: The Legacy of the Mercenary King by Nick Martell

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The Legacy of the Mercenary King trilogy: The Kingdom of Liars, The Two-Faced Queen and The Voyage
of the Forgotten (Saga Press, February 8, 2022). Covers by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme and Benjamin Carré

I love it when a fantasy trilogy sneaks up on me.

It seemed like just yesterday we were reporting on the imminent release of The Kingdom of Liars, the debut fantasy from 23-year old wunderkind Nick Martell, getting rave reviews from all quarters. Now I find the third volume in the trilogy will be released in a matter of weeks…. how did that happen?

The acclaim for this series has only grown with each volume. At Tor.com, Paul Weimer described it as “Something like PKD and [Gene] Wolfe teaming up to write City State Fantasy.” Kirkus called the first one “An impressive fantasy debut,” but pulled out all the stops for The Two-Faced Queen, saying “Simply put, this series is a masterclass in grand-scale storytelling. The future of epic fantasy is here — and this saga is it.”

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New Treasures: 36 Streets by T.R. Napper

New Treasures: 36 Streets by T.R. Napper

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36 Streets (Titan Books, February 8, 2022). Cover by Shutterstock

Here’s one that came out a while ago, but I just caught up with recently: 36 Streets, the debut novel by Australian T.R. Napper.

It’s got a Blade Runner/Cyberpunk vibe, and an armload of great notices: Grimdark Magazine calls it “brilliantly realized SF noir,” Publishers Weekly proclaims it “A gripping near-future cyberthriller with plenty of action and intrigue,” and SciNow sums it up as “a deeply textured vision of the future brimming with new and inventive ideas… a gripping sci-fi thriller.”

Sounds like my kind of debut. I snapped up a copy on my last trip to Barnes & Noble. Here’s a snippet from that Grimdark review by Adrian Collins.

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Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

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Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy, Volume 1 (Ballantine Books, 1972). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

Over the decades we’ve spent a lot of pixels at Black Gate talking about Lin Carter’s groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. He was under contract to produce a book a month for editors Ian and Betty Ballantine, and that’s exactly what he did for five years and 65 titles, almost all reprints of out-of-print fantasy novels and original anthologies. For the most part my favorites are those marvelous anthologies, including The Young Magicians, Golden Cities, Far, Discoveries in Fantasy, and others.

In 1972 and 1973 Carter produced the first two volumes in what he’d hoped would be an ongoing series, Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy. They each included four novellas, accompanied by his usual fine introductions, and it’s a tragedy he was unable to produce any more before the Adult Fantasy series was discontinued when Random House bought Ballantine. In his opening essay, Four Worlds of Wonder, Carter explains his focus on longer fantasy.

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