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Handling Wonderful Changes: The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken

Handling Wonderful Changes: The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken

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Black Gate has some of the best writers in the business, and we’re always proud when one of our bloggers has a new publication. But we’re doubly pleased when one of our writers produces a debut novel — and especially one as widely acclaimed as The Quantum Magician, by our Saturday blogger Derek Künsken.

The Quantum Magician was published in trade paperback by Solaris earlier this month, and it’s already won rave accolades from writers such as Yoon Ha Lee, and Cixin Liu, who said “Technology changes us — even our bodies — in fundamental ways, and Kunsken handles this wonderfully.” In his Black Gate review Brandon Crilly called it “intricate, compelling and absolutely fascinating,” and in a feature review at Locus British SF writer Adam Roberts wrote:

This debut novel will do well. It is a fat, fun SF heist-thriller, a sort of Ocean’s 2487… We’re in a 25th century in which humanity has spread to the stars, enabled by wormhole gates left over from a long vanished interstellar civilization. Access to these gates is, as you’d expect, tightly controlled, and when a group wants to smuggle a fleet of advanced spaceships across the galaxy without paying the requisite fee, they approach the galaxy’s finest con-man, Belisarius Arjona, for help. Belisarius gets the gang back together one last time to pull off the most audacious heist of his career… Künsken has a wonderfully ingenious imagination.

Derek first appeared in Black Gate in issue 15 with his short story “The Gifts of Li Tzu-Ch’eng.” He has been our regular Saturday evening blogger since 2013, writing some 128 articles for us. The Quantum Magician was published by Solaris on October 2, 2018. It is 475 pages, priced at $11.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Justin Adams.

Interested in keeping up to date on the latest from BG bloggers and staff? We do our best to share  news with you here, and you always see the latest from our talented crew by reading posts with the BG Staff tag.

Secret Magical Orders and an Occult Underworld: The Nightwise Novels by R.S. Belcher

Secret Magical Orders and an Occult Underworld: The Nightwise Novels by R.S. Belcher

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R.S. Belcher’s Golgotha series is one of the more popular Weird Westerns on the market. Booklist called the opening volume “nothing short of fantastic… a setting so sharp you can feel the dust in your mouth,” and San Francisco Book Review summed it up as “a whirlwind of shootouts, assassins, cults, zombies, magic, attractive ladies, dubious morals, and demonic possession.”

Belcher kicked off a new series set in a seedy occult underworld with Nightwise in 2015. RT Book Reviews called it “brilliant… [a] sensational noir urban fantasy.” Sequel The Night Dahlia arrived earlier this year, making it a real series, and Tor re-issued the first volume with a matching cover.

I picked up both books earlier this month, and they look very attractive on my bookshelves — not to mention intriguing. They’ll make terrific Halloween reading to close out the month.

Here’s the description for both volumes, starting with Nightwise.

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New Treasures: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

New Treasures: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

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An Easy Death-smallCharlaine Harris was the first really big interview we ever scored at Black Gate. This was thirteen years ago, before the breakout success of the True Blood HBO series based on her Sookie Stackhouse novels, but she was already hugely popular. Goth Chick met with her at a restaurant, before a big signing event here in the suburbs of Chicago, and came back totally charmed. We included the interview in Black Gate 8, the Summer 2005 issue, and it was a big hit with readers.

Harris has reached a point in her career where she can do whatever she wants. Fortunately for us, what she wants to do appears to be tell Weird Western tales. Her latest, An Easy Death, is set in a southwestern country known as Texoma, where magic is common and a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose takes a job to be a local guide for a pair of Russian wizards. But all is not what it appears to be, and dark forces are aligning against Lizbeth and her clients. It was published in hardcover earlier this month by Saga Press.

The beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, the inspiration for HBO’s True Blood, and the Midnight Crossroad trilogy adapted for NBC’s Midnight, Texas, has written a taut new thriller — the first in the Gunnie Rose series — centered on a young gunslinging mercenary, Lizbeth Rose.

Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it. They’re searching through the small border towns near Mexico, trying to locate a low-level magic practitioner, Oleg Karkarov. The wizards believe Oleg is a direct descendant of Grigori Rasputin, and that Oleg’s blood can save the young tsar’s life.

As the trio journey through an altered America, shattered into several countries by the assassination of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, they’re set on by enemies. It’s clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.

An Easy Death was published by Saga Press on October 2, 2018. It is 306 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Colin Anderson. Read the complete first chapter here.

Magic and Politics in the Desert: Deborah A. Wolf’s The Dragon’s Legacy

Magic and Politics in the Desert: Deborah A. Wolf’s The Dragon’s Legacy

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I was browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble last week when I came across the two volumes above. They caught my eye immediately. Especially the second one, with its  gorgeous depiction of a moonlit desert city… plus a supergiant bull, whatever the heck that’s about.

I didn’t pick them up right away. Derek Kunsken’s The Quantum Magician, some Angry Robot paperbacks and a bunch of SF magazines were already in my stack, and I’m trying to pace myself. But I did some research when I got home, and I admit I’m intrigued. Deborah A. Wolf is also the author of the Daughter of the Midnight Sun urban fantasy series; the first novel Split Feather came out last year. The Dragon’s Legacy is a planned trilogy, the first volume was a nominee for the 2018 Morningstar Award. Publishers Weekly praised “Wolf’s opulent visual imagination and sly humor” in their review:

Wolf’s epic fantasy debut, the first of a trilogy, is a well-crafted, intricate blend of the politics and magic of multiple cultures. Hafsa Azeina, dreamshifter of the Zeerani desert tribes, can kill her foes as they sleep. She has spent years protecting her daughter, Sulema, from the assassins hunting them, and Sulema has had the chance to come of age as a Zeerani warrior. But Sulema’s father, who may have sent the assassins, has found them. He is the dragon king of the nearby country of Atualon, and his magic prevents the dragon that sleeps under the world from waking and cracking the planet like an egg. Sulema and Hafsa must navigate shifting alliances, ongoing assassination attempts, and manipulation by both friend and foe to try to settle the balance of power and succession…

Titan Books has published two books in the trilogy so far; the third is due next year. Here’s the details:

The Dragon’s Legacy (400 pages, $24.95 hardcover/$14.95 trade/$13.99 digital, April 18, 2017)
The Forbidden City (517 pages, $24.95 hardcover/$16.99 digital, May 15, 2018)
The Seared Lands ($24.99 hardcover/$16.99 digital, April 2, 2019)

The cover artist is uncredited. See all of our recent coverage of the best in series fantasy here.

In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of The Fall by Tracy Townsend

In 500 Words or Less: An Advance Review of The Fall by Tracy Townsend

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The Fall (Thieves of Fate, Book 2)
by Tracy Townsend
Pyr (400 pages, $18 paperback, $9.99 eBook, Jan 15, 2019)

Let’s start with something my friend Matt Moore would call a “hand grenade” on a panel: The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie.

Why? Because it splits up our beloved characters and challenges them with new locales and crises, all while introducing brand new favorites and raising the stakes. I can still remember watching it for the first time as a kid (fine, it was on VHS) and learning back then that one of my main measures for the quality is how many times I gasp out loud at what’s happening. That sort of reaction is tough to achieve with a debut, let alone a sequel, but Lucas and his team pulled it off. And Tracy Townsend has done the same with The Fall, her follow-up to breakout novel The Nine, which I reviewed last year as my Top Book 0f 2017.

And good gods, The Fall is just as amazing. It even reminded me of Empire in a lot of ways, which may or may not have been intentional. Young Rowena Downshire is still very much the star, as she tries to find her footing in the company of Erasmus Pardon and Anselm Meteron, retired campaigners determined to keep her from realizing she’s one of nine subjects being studied by God as part of His Grand Experiment. But each of our valiant heroes gets their moments in the sun, as we learn how far they’re willing to go on the side of right. Much like Empire, The Fall expands various characters like Rowena’s mother Clara, but also adds a bunch of new faces to the mix. There’s even a Palpatine-esque shadow cast by Anselm’s father, Bishop Meteron, though he isn’t quite the Big Bad you’d expect – if he’s a villain at all.

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A Treasure Trove of Classic British Horror: Darkness Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper

A Treasure Trove of Classic British Horror: Darkness Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper

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I first saw the three volumes of Darkness Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basic Copper at Greg Ketter’s booth at Windy City seven years ago. It was a gorgeous set of hardcovers, with magnificent wraparound Stephen Fabian artwork, and it drew my eye immediately.

It was prohibitively expensive, however — nearly $200 for the set, if I remember correctly. Two hundred bucks buys a lot of vintage paperbacks. I put them back on the shelf with a sigh, and headed for the back of the room, where the cheap paperbacks were piled high on countless tables.

Darkness Mist & Shadow was published by Drugstore Indian Press, a division of PS Publishing in the UK, which means it wasn’t widely distributed here in the US. I’ve always been curious about Basil Copper’s fiction… not curious enough to part with $200 on an impulse purchase, but still. Bob Byrne is a fan of his Solar Pons tales (also available from PS Publishing), and Bob has good taste, so that heightened my curiosity.

I’m not always in the mood for classic British horror, but when October rolls around, with its long evenings, hot chocolate, and a cat that insists on climbing into my lap at seven o’clock and staying there, immobile, until midnight, I’m much more receptive. The promise of a virtual library of short stories and novellas — painstakingly gathered from such hard-to-find sources as the Dark Terrors anthology series, the Pan Book of Horror Stories, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and long out-of-print Arkham House volumes — gets a lot more appealing. So when PS reissued the books in beautiful trade paperback editions, priced at just £9.99 each ($17 from most US sellers), it was simply too hard to resist. I paid $45 for the complete set, and I’m very happy I did.

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The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe

The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe

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oie_164159RYRk8xECHaving set out to discuss The Claw of the Concilator (1981), the second entry in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, I’m completely unsure of what to write. Oh, I can tell you what happened, even how some things happened, but I’m not sure I can tell you why a lot of things happened. It’s probably due to a lack of context as two books remain in the series, but I’m not totally sure about that. Much of the story is conveyed via weird encounters, dreams, memories, fables, and even the text of a play. It’s challenging to piece the parts together to form a linear narrative, let alone anticipate the tale’s direction, which remains nearly as mysterious at the conclusion as at the start.

At the end of the previous book, The Shadow of the Torturer, Severian and his companions were caught in a violent outburst among the crowd of people at the great gate exiting the city Nessus. Severian is now accompanied by Jonas, a man with “a jointed contrivance of steel” for a right hand. The others he traveled with, Dr. Talos, Baldanders, Jolenta, and Dorcas, were lost to him in the chaos. While intent on reaching Thrax to take up his assignment as the town’s executioner, Severian and Jonas still hope to find the others. Severian makes his way serving as itinerant headsman and torturer in several towns along the road. It is in the mining town of Saltus (its mine is the buried ruins of an ancient city) that we find Severian and Jonas as Claw opens.

After he carries out a pair of executions, Severian is lured into danger by Agia. Previously she had colluded in setting him up to be killed and robbed, resulting in her own brother’s execution. She had also stolen the powerful artifact, the Claw of the Conciliator, and hidden it on Severian. Having discovered it, he has begun to realize it can emit a powerful light, heal wounds, and even raise the dead. With it, he is able to survive and overcome the trap set for him.

Unfortunately it can’t keep him from falling into the hands of the rebel leader, Vodalus. This encounter leads to Severian and Jonas signing on with the rebels and being sent to the House Absolute, the secret palace of the Autarch. There he must deliver a message to another agent of the uprising. They will also find their friends there who have been hired to put on a play. Along the way things get extra weird.

By book’s end, Severian has still not reached Thrax. He has, though, explored the House Absolute, one of the coolest works of fantastical architecture. It is covered with lawns and gardens to keep it from be spied from the sky. Miles and miles of tunnels lie below it, some, perhaps, even reaching all the way back to Nessus. Even more mysterious than the secret passages and rooms that seem de rigueur for any self-respecting palace, is the Second House. Instead of just adding more hidden chambers, the Autarch’s mysterious aide, Father Inrie, added an entire new house within the very structure of the House Absolute.

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Future Treasures: Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

Future Treasures: Restless Lightning by Richard Baker

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Richard Baker’s new military SF series Breaker of Empires, set in an era of great interstellar colonial powers, began with Valiant Dust last year, and the second installment is scheduled to arrive in trade paperback from Tor next week.

I’m glad to see it. Baker began his career as a game designer at TSR where he co-designed the Birthright campaign setting. His first novel was Forgotten Realms: The Adventures: The Shadow Stone (1997). He wrote nearly a dozen more for TSR over the next decade, but Breaker of Empires is his first non-licensed project. It’s generated plenty of interest — Booklist called the first volume “a great start,” and Michael Stackpole proclaimed it “an excellent example of military SF at its best.”

Richard Baker continues the adventures of Sikander North in Restless Lightning, the second book in his new military science fiction series Breaker of Empires and sequel to Valiant Dust.

Lieutenant Sikander North has avoided an outright court martial and finds himself assigned to a remote outpost in the crumbling, alien Tzoru Empire―where the navy sends trouble-makers to be forgotten. When Sikander finds himself in the middle of an alien uprising, he, once again, must do the impossible: smuggle an alien ambassador off-world, break a siege, and fight the irrational prejudice of his superior officers. The odds are against his success, and his choices could mean disgrace ― or redemption.

We covered Valiant Dust here.

Restless Lightning will be published by Tor Books on October 23, 2018. It is 429 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Larry Rostant.

New Treasures: The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams

New Treasures: The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams

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I love a good space opera. Especially when it features evil empires, civil war, a valiant Terran navy, and ‘splosions. One of the weighty classics of the genre is Walter Jon Williams’ Praxis Universe, which includes the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy (The Praxis, The Sundering, and Conventions of War), the Tor.com novella Impersonations (2016), a novella in Robert Silverberg’s Between Worlds, and more.

The Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy is scheduled to be re-released next year in handsome new Author’s Preferred Editions from Harper Voyager, with brand new covers by artist Damon Za. (Which you can see here. For you vintage paperback collectors in the audience, the original editions looks like this.) Just in time to build excitement for those versions, Williams has released a new novel, The Accidental War, the opening volume in a new trilogy in the series. To help whet your appetite, here’s our previous coverage of Walter Jon Williams.

Walter Jon Williams Explains Why UFOs Are Actually Made of Bread, and Other Little Known Facts by Emily Mah
Future Treasures: Quillifer
John DeNardo on SF and Fantasy for October 2016: Impersonations by Walter Jon Williams
Birthday Reviews: Walter Jon Williams’s “The Fate Line” by Steven H Silver

The Accidental War was published by Harper Voyager on September 4. It is 496 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Damon Za.

A Love Letter to the Paranormal Western: The Shadow by Lila Bowen

A Love Letter to the Paranormal Western: The Shadow by Lila Bowen

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If you’re a Weird Western fan like me, you know some years are a lot leaner than others. Like pioneers on the prairie, you learn to survive by keeping your eyes sharp for unexpected bounty.

So I have no idea how Lila Bowen’s The Shadow series managed to evade me this long. I stumbled on a remaindered copy of the second book over at Bookoutlet, and quickly tracked down the other two volumes. And I just learned today that the fourth and final book, Treason of Hawks, arrives on Tuesday — perfect timing.

“Lila Bowen” is a pseudonym for Delilah S. Dawson, the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma and Servants of the Storm. Wake of Vultures, the opening novel in The Shadow, won the RT Fantasy of the Year Award, and in a starred review Publishers Weekly said, “The unforgiving western landscape is home to supernatural beasties as diverse as the human inhabitants… the narrative is a love letter to the paranormal western genre.”

In a featured review last year at Tor.com, Alex Brown offered a tantalizing summary of the story so far. Here’s his take.

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