Black Gate

Anna Smaill is the author of one book of poetry, The Violinist in Spring, but beyond that I don’t know much about her. Except that her debut fantasy novel is being called “What might be the most distinctive debut of the decade” by Tor.com, and “A melodic, immersive dystopian tale set in a London where writing is lost and song has replaced story” by Kirkus Reviews. And Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks calls it “”A highly original dystopian masterpiece, an intricately imagined, exquisitely invoked world in which music instills order and ravages individuality.”

Sounds like I need to check it out. It goes on sale in hardcover this week from Quercus Books.

After the end of a brutal civil war, London is divided, with slums standing next to a walled city of elites. Monk-like masters are selected for special schooling and shut away for decades, learning to write beautiful compositions for the chimes, played citywide morning and night, to mute memory and keep the citizens trapped in ignorance.

A young orphan named Simon arrives in London with nothing but the vague sense of a half-forgotten promise, to locate someone. What he finds is a new family — a gang of scavengers that patrols the underbelly of the city looking for valuable metal to sell. Drawn in by an enigmatic and charismatic leader, a blind young man named Lucien with a gift for song, Simon forgets entirely what originally brought him to the place he has now made his home.

In this alternate London, the past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is considered “blasphony.” But Simon has a unique gift — the gift of retaining memories — that will lead him to discover a great injustice and take him far beyond the meager life as a member of Lucien’s gang. Before long he will be engaged in an epic struggle for justice, love, and freedom.

The Chimes will be published by Quercus on May 3, 2016. It is 287 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover artist is uncredited.

Black Gate is a fantasy site, and there’s more than enough fantasy releases to keep us busy every month. But sometimes adventure SF — especially off-world space opera — reads an awful lot like great fantasy. It’s too early to see if Melissa Landers’s latest novel Starflight will go down in the annals as classic space opera, but it’s sure got the ingredients… including a plucky heroine, lawless outer realms, long-buried secrets, and an eccentric crew on a fast ship.

Solara Brooks needs a fresh start, someplace where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. The outer realm may be lawless, but it’s not like the law has ever been on her side. Still, off-world travel doesn’t come cheap; Solara is left with no choice but to indenture herself in exchange for passage to the outer realm. She just wishes it could have been to anyone besides Doran Spaulding, the rich, pretty-boy quarterback who made her life miserable in school.

The tables suddenly turn when Doran is framed for conspiracy on Earth, and Solara cons him into playing the role of her servant on board the Banshee, a ship manned by an eccentric crew with their own secrets. Given the price on both Doran and Solara’s heads, it may just be the safest place in the universe. It’s been a long time since Solara has believed in anyone, and Doran is the last person she expected to trust. But when the Banshee‘s dangerous enemies catch up with them, Solara and Doran must come together to protect the ship that has become their home – and the eccentric crew that feels like family.

Starflight was published by Disney-Hyperion on February 2, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital version.

I’ve been following Brendan Detzner’s work with keen interest for the past few years. He’s published a number of tight, razor-sharp horror stories in places like Podcastle, ChiZine, Pseudopod, One Buck Horror, and other fine venues.

When I heard he was turning his hand to adventure fantasy, I jumped at the chance to be an early reader, and I’m glad I did. Here’s my enthusiastic blurb, which ended up on the finished novella, The Orphan Fleet.

The Orphan Fleet is terrific adventure fantasy — a non-stop tale of action and strange magic on a wind-swept mountain top where abandoned children have forged a free community, servicing far-traveling airships on sturdy wooden platforms. Here masked heroes with names like Golden Sam and The Sparrow are the ultimate celebrities — and the mysterious Count leaves shivers of terror wherever he treads. When that community is threatened by an admiral who demands the return of his prized daughter, it triggers a terrible war fought in the air, on the ground, and in the old abandoned scaffolding circling the mountain … a war where Golden Sam may prove himself a true hero after all, and the Count has a terrible role to play.

Michael Penkas reviewed two of Brendan’s previous collections for Black Gate: Scarce Resources and Beasts.

The Orphan Fleet was published by Attack Rabbit Books on April 15, 2016. It is 83 pages, priced at $2.99. Order copies directly at Amazon.com.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Ron Rash is the author of Serena, a New York Times bestseller which was made into a Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper film with the same title in 2014. He’s also the author of The Cove and Above the Waterfall, and is a two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize.

I was tipped off to his short story collection Something Rich and Strange by Nathan Ballingrud. Although the stories within are not genre fiction, there’s plenty here to reward readers of weird fiction. Entertainment Weekly said “This anthology of Rash’s earthy, often eerie short stories is like a forest you can get lost in for hours, small but affecting tales of poverty, addiction, pride, love, and despair threaded with life-altering acts of violence.” And NPR said “Rich and strange are two words that aptly apply to this book. I have two other words to continue with: Simply beautiful… some of the stories are so searing, it’s as if someone has taken a stick from a blazing fire and pressed it into your hand.”

Something Rich and Strange was published by Ecco on August 11, 2015. It is 448 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Jamie Heiden. Click the covers above for bigger versions.

Michael Wehunt’s short fiction has appeared in Innsmouth Magazine, Shadows & Tall Trees, Cemetery Dance, The Dark, Shock Totem, and Strange Aeons. His first collection, Greener Pastures, was published last month from Shock Totem Publications, and has already received a lot of positive attention. He’s a fast rising star in horror and weird fiction, and well worth checking out. This may sound strange to everyone else, but I was playing with the digital preview on Amazon, and was delighted to find full-page ads for half a dozen back issues of Shock Totem, a magazine I’ve never read but clearly should, in the back. Things like that make me happy.

From the round-robin, found-footage nightmare of “October Film Haunt: Under the House” to the jazz-soaked “The Devil Under the Maison Blue,” selected for both The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and Year’s Best Weird Fiction, these beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant stories speak of the unknown encroaching upon the familiar, the inscrutable power of grief and desire, and the thinness between all our layers. Where nature rubs against small towns, in mountains and woods and bedrooms, here is strangeness seen through a poet’s eye.

They say there are always greener pastures. These stories consider the cost of that promise.

Greener Pastures was published by Shock Totem Publications on March 29, 2016. It is 238 pages, priced at $13.99 in trade paperback and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Michael Bukowski.