Black Gate

Cover by Duncan Kay

I’ve had my eye on Gaie Sebold ever since I bought her brilliant and funny short story “A Touch of Crystal” (co-written with fellow Brit Martin Owton), the tale of a shopkeeper who discovers some of the goods in her New Age shop are actually magical, for Black Gate 9.

She’s been well worth the watch. Her debut novel Babylon Steel (described as “Sword & Sorcery for the girl who wants to be Conan”) kicked off a successful 2-book series at Solaris; you can get both books in a giant 1,000-page omnibus, The Babylon Steel Adventures. Her 2014 effort Shanghai Sparrow was a Far Eastern steampunk tale of Espionage, Etheric Science, and Murder.

Her latest is A Hazardous Engagement, volume #6 in the NewCon Press Novellas line, a prestigious imprint that has published Alastair Reynolds, Tom Toner, Kari Sperring, Adam Roberts, Hal Duncan, Liz Williams, Simon Clark, Alison Littlewood, and loads more. My friend Arin Komins reviewed it on FB this week, saying:

A Hazardous Engagement novella from Gaie Sebold… Delightful heist story in a sword and sorcery world. From NewCon Press. Excellent and swift read, and quite good. Would make a good series of novellas or stories.

That’s all the endorsement I need…. I put it in my Amazon cart immediately. A Hazardous Engagement was published by NewCon Press on June 19, 2019. It is 120 pages, priced at $8.99 in paperback and $4.75 in digital formats. The cover is by Duncan Kay. See all the latest releases by Black Gate writers and staff here.

The Best of James van Pelt (Fairwood Press, November 2020). Cover by Gabriel Gajdoš

If you’re a regular Black Gate reader, James Van Pelt needs no introduction.

He’s been a prolific contributor to all the major science fiction magazines we’ve covered for the past two decades. He’s also a part-time BG columnist, covering the short fiction beat for us with his occasional Stories That Work column. His latest book is sure to be of interest to all our readers — The Best of James Van Pelt, just released by Fairwood Press, is an enormous 700-page survey of James’ entire career, collecting 62 stories and nearly 300,000 words of fiction. Here’s a snippet from the starred review at Publishers Weekly.

Van Pelt showcases his mastery of short-form fiction in these 62 stories, all published between 1993 and 2018 and ranging from apocalyptic fiction to subtle daylight horror, Lovecraftian riffs, and speculation about future social policy initiatives. . . .Van Pelt’s superior combination of imaginative concepts with recognizable human emotions makes him a talent deserving of a wide readership.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

…

Read More Read More

Need a break from obsessively following US election results tonight? I have just the thing: Blood Royal, the latest entry in the acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels by our very own Lawrence Ellsworth, is on sale today.

I’ve really been enjoying Lawrence’s Cinema of Swords series here at Black Gate. But his day job is even cooler: he’s been bringing Alexandre Dumas’s classic novels of swashbuckling intrigue back into print in exciting and handsome new editions, complete with modern translations.

The latest, Blood Royal, continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. It follows The Red Sphinx and the newly translated The Three Musketeers; here’s what Lawrence told us about it last week.

Blood Royal is the second volume of Dumas’s Twenty Years After; there hadn’t been a significant new English translation of this novel in over a century, which was reason enough to take on the challenge, but the truth is I did it because it was so much fun.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for — while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.

In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.

Blood Royal was published today by Pegasus Books. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $17.99 in digital formats.

See all our recent coverage of the best new releases here.