Black Gate

The second book in Peter Brett’s Demon Cycle series, The Desert Spear, became an international bestseller, and the next two volumes catapulted him to the top tier in the industry. That’s a meteoric rise for someone with a single series to their name.

Anticipation for the final book, The Core, has been running high for two years, and it finally arrived  in hardcover from Del Rey this week. Here’s the description.

For time out of mind, bloodthirsty demons have stalked the night, culling the human race to scattered remnants dependent on half-forgotten magics to protect them. Then two heroes arose — men as close as brothers, yet divided by bitter betrayal. Arlen Bales became known as the Warded Man, tattooed head to toe with powerful magic symbols that enable him to fight demons in hand-to-hand combat — and emerge victorious. Jardir, armed with magically warded weapons, called himself the Deliverer, a figure prophesied to unite humanity and lead them to triumph in Sharak Ka — the final war against demonkind.

But in their efforts to bring the war to the demons, Arlen and Jardir have set something in motion that may prove the end of everything they hold dear — a swarm. Now the war is at hand, and humanity cannot hope to win it unless Arlen and Jardir, with the help of Arlen’s wife, Renna, can bend a captured demon prince to their will and force the devious creature to lead them to the Core, where the Mother of Demons breeds an inexhaustible army.

Trusting their closest confidantes, Leesha, Inevera, Ragen, and Elissa, to rally the fractious people of the Free Cities and lead them against the swarm, Arlen, Renna, and Jardir set out on a desperate quest into the darkest depths of evil — from which none of them expects to return alive.

At 800 pages, The Core brings the page count for the entire 5-volume series to an impressive 3,250 pages. This is an epic you can sink your teeth into, and no mistake. It began with The Warded Man, still available in paperback. Those of you looking for a new fantasy series, and who hate to start reading before it’s complete — your ship has finally come in.

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Fletcher Vredenburgh has been steadily reviewing P. C. Hodgell’s Chronicles of the Kencyrath series here at Black Gate. In his article on the opening volume, God Stalk, Fletcher wrote:

Out of the haunted north comes Jame the Kencyr to Rathilien’s greatest city, Tai-Tastigon. From the hills above, the city appears strangely dark and silent. She arrives at its gates with large gaps in her memory and cat claws instead of fingernails. She’s carrying a pack full of strange artifacts, including a ring still on its owner’s finger… and she’s been bitten by a zombie. Wary, but in desperate need of a place to heal, Jame enters the city. So begins God Stalk, the first book in P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series and one of my absolute, bar none, don’t-bother-me-if-you-see-me-reading-it, favorite fantasy novels…

I’m so grateful Carl gave me this book thirty years ago. P.C. Hodgell seems so far below the general fantasy radar, I don’t know if I would have ever heard of her at all, which is pretty darn shameful.

You can read his compete review here.

Fletcher wrapped up with volume 7, The Sea of Time, back in December, writing,

Now I, and every other fan of Hodgell’s, will have to wait nearly a year for the next volume, The Gates of Tagmeth… It’s taken over thirty years to get to this point, so I guess I can wait another eight months.

The Gates of Tagmeth arrived in trade paperback from Baen right on time on August 1st. I’m looking forward to Fletcher’s review, but you can get the jump on him by ordering a copy today. Here’s the description.

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When I first heard of Luke Scull’s debut fantasy novel The Grim Company, which features a band of mercenaries in the service of the White Lady, I assumed it was an homage to Glen Cook’s classic debut novel The Black Company, about a band of mercenaries in the service of the Lady. But folks have compared it more frequently to Joe Abercrombie than Cook. Here’s Niall Alexander at Tor.com.

The Grim Company is as grimdark as fantasy gets… [it] is a genuinely great debut: fun yet fearsome, gritty and gripping in equal measure… In truth, no-one does grimdark fantasy better than Joe Abercrombie, but by the dead, Luke Scull comes incredibly close. The Grim Company can’t quite eclipse the likes of The Heroes, or Red Country; all told, though, this is a more satisfying debut than The Blade Itself.

In large part that’s thanks to an action-packed narrative, paced like a race. There’s never [a] dull moment in The Grim Company — even in the middle, where most stories sag. Here, there and everywhere there are extraordinary set-pieces: battles, by and large, but what battles they are! In the interim, there’s murder, mystery and intrigue; a meaningful, if somewhat simplistic magic system; no shortage of snappy banter; and such smooth worldbuilding that I hardly noticed it happening… Shiver me timbers, The Grim Company is pretty brilliant… a sterling exemplar of what the genre has to offer today.

Read the complete review here.

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I continue to be impressed with the scope and ambition of the Tor.com novella series. With a release nearly every week for the past two years, the line has rapidly grown to some 100 novellas and full-length novels, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

It’s also doing some innovative and exciting things that no one else is attempting (and I don’t just mean hogging nearly all the novella-length award nominations). Case in point: JY Yang’s ambitious story cycle The Tensorate Series, composed of the twin novellas The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven, and two more upcoming novellas. The New York Times calls the first two volumes “Joyously wild stuff. Highly recommended.”

They were published simultaneously today. Here’s the descriptions.

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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.

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