Check out the cool bookmark that came with my review copy of The Tiger’s Daughter, the debut novel by K Arsenault Rivera!
It’s instructing me to “Plant flower seed paper under 1/8″ of soil. Water thoroughly.” Okay, but…. what does it GROW? A geranium? Violets? An alien seed pod like that horrifying episode of Johnny Sokko?
I guess there’s only one way to find out. And it involves sticking this super-cool book collectible in a bunch of dirt. Marketing departments, man. They thrive on cruelty.
Two months ago I bought the second novel in Jonathan Stroud’s five-volume Lockwood & Co series. I don’t usually buy middle volumes in a series, at least not when I don’t have any of the other books. But this one had a whispering skull on the cover, so I’m sure you understand.
It did serve to introduce me to the entire series, though (the book, not the whispering skull). Jonathan Stroud is probably best known for his best-selling Bartimaeus Trilogy; here he turns his narrative powers to the tale of a teenage ghost-hunting agency in an alternate-history England infested with Visitors, malevolent spirits that can only be detected by young people with psychic gifts. Three such talented youngsters band together in London to form Lockwood & Co, facing a series of increasingly-horrifying challenges in these middle grade adventures.
The final volume in the series, The Empty Grave, was published this month in hardcover.
It’s been a good week for review copies here at Black Gate (see some of the recent arrivals here). But the moment Quillifer arrived, I knew it was the most significant release of the current crop, by a pretty good margin.
Walter Jon Williams has had an extraordinary career, displaying an easy mastery of cyberpunk (Hardwired, Angel Station), military SF (Dread Empire’s Fall), SF police procedural (Days of Atonement), light-hearted fantasy (the Majistral series), space opera (Aristoi), contemporary disaster (The Rift), and even the Star Warsuniverse (The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way).
Quillifer, the tale of a young man forced to flee his beloved home and find his fortune among goddesses, pirates, war, and dragons, is his long-awaited foray into epic fantasy. It’s the first in an ambitious new series from one of the most respected authors in the genre.
Quillifer is young, serially in love, studying law, and living each day keenly aware that his beloved homeport of Ethlebight risks closure due to silting of the harbor. His concerns for the future become much more immediate when he returns from a summery assignation to find his city attacked by Aekoi pirates, leading to brigands in the streets and his family and friends in chains.
First, he has to survive the night. Then, he has to leave his home behind and venture forth into the wider world of Duisland, where he can find friends and allies to help avenge his losses and restore Ethlebight to glory. His determination will rock kingdoms, shatter the political structure of Duisland, and change the country forever.
Quillifer will be published by Saga Press on October 3, 2017. It is 530 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Gregory Manchess. Learn more at Williams’ website, and read Emily Mah’s interview with the author (“Why UFOs Are Actually Made of Bread, and Other Little Known Facts”) here.
With the hammer-wielding (sort of) priest Egil and the (not really) rogue Nix, Paul S. Kemp created his entry for the classic swords & sorcery duo contest. They made their debut in The Hammer and the Blade (2012).
We meet them media res as, in search of treasure, they prepare to penetrate the last defenses of an ancient tomb. Like characters in a classic buddy movie, they bicker and banter.
“You may have heard but you didn’t reply, so let me restate. Are you acquainted with a door I couldn’t open? I press the question only to illustrate your softheadedness, as demonstrated by a faulty memory. It’s important you understand your limits.”
Egil tossed the sliver to the ground, tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, and pressed it to his leg wound. “There was that time in the Well of Farrago–”
Nix shook his head emphatically. “That was not a door.”
Egil looked up, thick eyebrows raised. “It had hinges, a handle. It opened and closed. How can you say–”
“It was a hatch.”
“A hatch?”
“Of course it was a hatch, and only a fool priest of the Momentary God would confuse a door with a hatch. A hatch is a different thing from a door. A hatch is troublesome. You see? Does having an eye inked on your head make your other two blind, or otherwise detrimentally affect your cognition?”
“Well enough,” Egil said at last. “It was a hatch.”
I consider Canadian author Matthew Hughes to be one of the most gifted short stories writers at work today. Much of his output — including his two book Gullible’s Travels series, his 2004 novel Black Brillion, and his Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira) — is set in his Archonate Universe, which is profoundly influenced by Jack Vance. John DeNardo says “His Archonate universe is a wonderfully compelling far future that mixes fantasy and science fiction.”
But Hughes is also responsible for a quirky superhero trilogy published as paperback originals by Angry Robot between 2011 and 2013, back before the publisher had the reach and acclaim it enjoys today. As a result, the series didn’t get the exposure I think it deserved… a shame, since I think the topic is quite timely, and Hughes’ comic gifts make him almost uniquely suited for the material. If you’re a fan of superheroes, To Hell and Back is a series that deserves your attention.
I love omnibus editions. It’s not just their convenience, the joy of having an entire trilogy packed into one hefty volume. I think it’s just as much the celebratory aspect. It’s like, Holy crap, we made it. The series is finished. Forget we charged you for the first two; look, here’s the whole damn thing in one volume. You’re welcome.
In the case of The Icarus Corps, the trade paperback containing a complete military science fiction trilogy by Zachary Brown, that’s actually more or less accurate, as the third book, Jupiter Rising, was never even published in paperback. If you enjoyed the first two, and don’t have an e-reader, this is your only option.
Still, it ain’t a bad option, all things considered. I bought the first book, The Darkside War, and I was still delighted to stumble on the omnibus edition of all three novels at Barnes & Noble last week, and I snapped it up immediately.
“The Fourth Book in the Hitch-Hiker Trilogy” proclaimed the cover blurb on the Pan version of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, by Douglas Adams. And many smiled and thought this was very clever and funny. The fourth book in a trilogy wasn’t actually a new idea, even back in the 1984. Now a fifth book in a trilogy is a little more unusual, and indeed when one appeared (Mostly Harmless, in 1992) the updated blurb proclaimed: “The Fifth Book in the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhikers Trilogy”.
What has Douglas Adams got to do with Jane Gaskell?
Well, she did the same thing. She wrote a pretty good trilogy – albeit one which some publishers stretched into four books – and then, by all appearances, decided to tack on another volume some years later. This is of course my opinion, but if you’ll indulge me a bit you will see why I reached that conclusion.
Now there are plenty of authors who have tacked books on to a successful trilogy — and some who have even added a whole follow up series. To be fair to Mr Adams, his additional books were pretty good, though not up to the standard of the original series. To me, they still felt like they were more of an afterthought than a specifically planned and executed conclusion.
Some Summer Lands also does not quite fit. Sadly, that is not the only issue. I cannot in honesty give this book the same recommendation I gave to the other books in the Atlan Saga, which were pretty good, with occasional flashes of brilliance. Some Summer Lands was published in 1977, roughly ten years after The City. My Orbit Futura edition weighed in at 360 pages split into three parts of varying length.
Some Summer Lands is not pretty good. Dismally disjointed, maybe. Rambling, definitely. Misguided, certainly. One of the few positives I had from the experience was that it helped me realize why I had taken on re-reading the series with such trepidation. The first three (or four) books surprised me, as I did not have fond memories of the series when I read it in my youth.
Anyone who has read my earlier reviews may remember me marveling at certain aspects and wondering why I had disliked them as a teenager. Now I know why! It’s this last book which casts a dark shadow.
One of the reasons I love Angry Robot is their enthusiasm for new authors. Paired with their commitment to mass market, they’ve allowed me to take a chance on dozens of new writers over the last few years, and all for the price of a few $7.99 paperbacks. That’s a rare and precious thing these days, and it’s worth supporting.
John DeNardo tipped me off to a trio of great-looking Angry Robot paperbacks arriving September 5. Here’s all the deets.
By the western wall of Klavenport on the Sea of Autumn Mists — but you do not want a bard’s beginning to my tale, Goodmen? Well enough, I have no speak-harp to twang at all the proper times. And this is not altogether a tale for lords-in-their-halls. Though the beginning did lie in Klavenport right enough.
— from “Legacy from Sorn Fen”
I’ve written before that Andre Norton’s Witch World books is a series I avoided for way too long. There were two things that kept me away from them over the years. The first, when I was younger, was their name: Witch World. It seemed a little too twee. When I was older there were so many other things I wanted to read that it never crossed my mind to investigate Andre Norton’s catalogue. If she ever occurred to me at all, it was as the author of Starman’s Sonand several other books shelved in the children’s section at my local library. Later, I found a few scattered Norton volumes in the boxes of paperbacks my dad kept in the attic but, again, nothing prompted me to read them. At the time, the cover of “Witch World” turned me off. (Today I love the goofy looking thing.)
Not until I started contemplating blogging about swords & sorcery did I actually read anything by Andre Norton. When I started expanding my library of S&S books, there were several anthologies I finally picked up, one being Flashing Swords #2, edited by Lin Carter. I had read some of its stories before, but not Norton’s Witch World story, “The Toads of Grimmerdale.”
I was surprised by the darkness of the story. Like I said, I had assumed the Witch World stuff was light and airy and my first encounter with it was a story of revenge for rape, set in a country savaged by years of war. Well I was hooked, and I scanned my shelves for any other Witch World stories. I found “Spider Silk” in Flashing Swords #3, and “Falcon Blood” in Amazons!, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. I rooted through boxes in the Vredenburgh attic and dug out my dad’s ancient copy of the first novel, Witch World, and devoured it. Its inventiveness, fast pacing, and the sheer fun of it made me an instant fan.
Our Friday blogger Violette Malan, author of the Dhulyn and Parno fantasy novels, has just launched an ambitious new series, the Faraman Prophecy, under the name V. M. Escalada. Violette talked about writing under a pseudonym in her most recent article for us, “What’s in a Name?”
I have to admit that when my agent first suggested I use a penname, my immediate reaction was unfavourable. There are all kinds of reasons for such a suggestion, however, some of which I touched on in a previous post. Today, I’d like to talk about the actual, practical experience…
My first concern? What explanation do I give people who know me, personally? After all, people who have never met/heard of Violette Malan, aren’t likely to ask for any. The short answer, by the way, is “it’s a marketing thing.” The long answer we don’t have time for. Buy me a beer sometime at a con and I’ll tell you.
Which brings me to my second concern: Who am I in public? At a con, for example? The easy answer is: I’m whoever was invited. That’s the name that will go first on the con badge. It’s not unusual, at cons, to see people with two names on their badges, the one who was invited, and (in brackets? smaller print?) the other one. If you weren’t invited as a special guest? If you’re just registered as a regular panelist? That’s when it gets tricky. Do you use the established, familiar name first? or the new one?
Halls of Law, the first book in the Faraman Prophecy, introduces a world of military might and magical Talents on the brink of destruction. Julie E. Czerneda cals it a “fresh, engaging new fantasy series set in a world of marvelous texture and magic.” It’s available now in hardcover from DAW.
