Black Gate

According to the publicity material I have on hand, Gail Z. Martin is a bestselling writer… but that doesn’t mean I know which of her various novels have actually cracked the bestseller lists. There’s a lot of possibilities. She’s produced no less than four series in the last ten years, including seven volumes in the Chronicles of the Necromancer, four in the Ascendant Kingdoms series, three Deadly Curiosities books, and Iron and Blood, the opening book in a new steampunk series co-authored with her husband Larry N. Martin.

Her latest is Scourge, in which three brothers must find out who is controlling the abominations in a city beset by monsters. It’s the opening novel in the brand new Darkhurst series, on sale now from Solaris.

The city-state of Ravenwood is wealthy, powerful, and corrupt. Merchant Princes and Guild Masters wager fortunes to outmaneuver League rivals for the king’s favor and advantageous trading terms. Lord Mayor Ellor Machison wields assassins, blood witches, and forbidden magic to assure that his powerful patrons get what they want, no matter the cost.

Corran, Rigan, and Kell Valmonde are Guild Undertakers, left to run their family’s business when guards murdered their father and monsters killed their mother. Their grave magic enables them to help souls pass to the After and banish vengeful spirits. Rigan’s magic is unusually strong and enables him to hear the confessions of the dead, the secrets that would otherwise be taken to the grave.

When the toll exacted by monsters and brutal guards hits close to home and ghosts expose the hidden sins of powerful men, Corran, Rigan and Kell become targets in a deadly game and face a choice: obey the Guild, or fight back and risk everything.

Scourge was published by Solaris on July 11, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 in digital format.

I settled in with the latest issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction last week, and noticed something unusual… it had two stories by James Gunn, both set in his Transcendental universe, the setting for his novels Transcendental, Transgalactic and the newly-released Transformation. In the comments on my Asimov’s piece Amy Bisson pointed out that it was Gunn’s birthday, and when I went to confirm that, Wikipedia casually informed me he was 94 years old… 94 and still writing cutting edge hard SF! The field hasn’t seen anything like that since Jack Williamson (who won a Hugo at the age of 92, and died in 2006 at the age of 98).

Interestingly, Gunn was one of Jack Williamson’s collaborators. They wrote Star Bridge together in 1955. Like Williamson, Gunn began his career in the pulps, selling his first stories to Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1949. His first novels, including Star Bridge and This Fortress World, were published by Gnome Press in 1955. Carl Sagan called his 1972 novel The Listeners, runner-up for the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award, “one of the very best fictional portrayals of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence ever written.” In 1996, he novelized Theodore Sturgeon’s famed unproduced Star Trek script The Joy Machine. As an editor he’s best known for his monumental six-volume Road to Science Fiction anthology series, and he won the Hugo Award in 1983 for his non-fiction book Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction. He became SFWA’s 24th Grand Master in 2007, and he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015.

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Laura Lam is the author of the Micah Grey series (Pantomime, Shadowplay) from Pan, and the self-published Vestigial Tales (The Snake Charm, The Fisherman’s Net, The Tarot Reader, The Card Sharp). Last year Tor published her first Pacifica novel False Hearts, which A. M. Dellamonica called “A taut futuristic thriller, set in a San Francisco where everybody is beautiful… Two unusual sisters are caught in a war for control of a society that quietly suffocates its outsiders, rebels, and the damaged.” Last week Tor released the sequel in hardcover.

Carina used to be one of the best biohackers in Pacifica. But when she worked for Sudice and saw what the company’s experiments on brain recording were doing to their subjects, it disturbed her ― especially because she found herself enjoying giving pain and contemplating murder. She quit and soon grew addicted to the drug Zeal, spending most of her waking moments in a horror-filled dream world where she could act out her depraved fantasies without actually hurting anyone.

One of her trips is interrupted by strange flashing images and the brutal murder of a young girl. Even in her drug-addicted state, Carina knows it isn’t anything she created in the Zealscape. On her next trip, she discovers that an old coworker from Sudice, Max, sent her these images before he was killed by the company. Encrypted within the images are the clues to his murder, plus information strong enough to take down the international corporation.

Carina’s next choice will transform herself, San Francisco, and possibly the world itself.

My interest in the book was piqued by Liz Bourke’s Tor.com review, in which she called it “A tight, tense and nail-biting science fiction thriller, informed by cyberpunk influences like Nicola Griffith’s Slow River and Melissa Scott’s Trouble and Her Friends as much as by the near-future extrapolatory science fiction tradition. It’s damn good.” (David B. Coe reviewed Slow River for us earlier this year.)

Shattered Minds was published by Tor Books on June 20, 2017. It is 386 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

There are times when I want a quick read. And there are times when I want something edgy and new. And then there are times when I just want to sink back into my chair with a comforting 2,000-page fantasy trilogy, featuring squabbling royal houses, dark forces, river cities, tournaments, honor guards, wind-swept bastions, strange magic, wild lands, isolated outposts, black treachery — and a towering mountain wall that’s the last defense against the ravening hordes.

Helen Lowe’s The Wall of Night trilogy fits the bill nicely. The opening novel, The Heir of Night, won the Gemmell Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer, and The Gathering Of The Lost was nominated for the Gemmell Legend Award for the Best Novel. The series wrapped up last year with Daughter of Blood. Here’s the complete publishing deets.

The Heir of Night (466 pages, $7.99 paperback/$2.99 digital, September 28, 2010) — cover by Gregory Bridges
The Gathering of the Lost (672 pages pages, $7.99 paperback/$3.99 digital, March 27, 2012)
Daughter of Blood (768 pages, $7.99 paperback/$4.99 digital, January 26, 2016) — cover by Don Sipley

All three are paperback originals from Harper Voyager; all three are still in print. Here’s the back covers.

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