Search Results for: janet e. morris

Series Fantasy: The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells

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I’m cheating a bit with these books, since technically they’re not all part of the same series. Also, the newest volume, The Edge of Worlds, won’t officially be released until April 5th — but Amazon and B&N.com both have copies in stock today, so let’s go with it. Martha Wells’ tales of Gilead and Ilias were some of the most popular stories we ever published in Black Gate, and her Books of the Raksura trilogy captivated readers around the world….

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Series Fantasy: The Duelists Trilogy by Julia Knight

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Every time a fantasy series successfully wraps up, we bake a cake. This week we celebrated the completion of Julia Knight’s Duelists trilogy, published by Orbit in quick succession late last year, all with covers by Gene Mollica: Swords and Scoundrels (400 pages, $14.99/$9.99 digital, October 6, 2015) Legends and Liars (400 pages, $15.99/$9.99 digital, November 10 2015) Warlords and Wastrels (400 pages, $15.99/$9.99 digital, December 15, 2015) What’s so special about The Duelists trilogy? It’s an adventure fantasy series “full of…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

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The top article at Black Gate last month wasn’t even a BG piece, strictly speaking. It was a brief link to Matthew David Surridge’s essay The Great Hugo Wars of 2015, at Splice Today. Based on the overwhelming traffic to that article, and the high number of comments, it seems our readers are still more than casually interested in the Hugo Awards. Number 2 on the list was M Harold Page’s look at Fool’s Assassin, and How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in January

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The most widely read article at Black Gate last month was Andy Duncan’s obituary for Tor senior editor David G. Hartwell, the founder of the World Fantasy Convention and one of the most accomplished editors this field has ever seen. In the last few weeks we’ve compiled several articles on David’s most popular books, including: The Masterpieces of Fantasy The Dark Descent and The World Treasury of Science Fiction The Early Horror Paperbacks Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

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BG blogger M Harold Page had a fabulous month in December, with three of the top four posts for the month, all dealing with Medieval Worldbuilding: How to Get From Worldbuilding (or Research) to Story An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: What if There’s No Room at the Inn (or No Inn Whatsoever?) Three Classic Books for Medieval Worldbuilders and Armchair Time Travellers Mr. Page has clearly fired the imaginations of all the aspiring medieval novelists in our audience (and…

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Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound

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Hell Bound By Andrew P. Weston Perseid Press (464 pages, $23.85 paperback/$8.90 digital, November 5, 2015) Cover art and design by Roy Mauritsen Hell Bound is the latest novel by Andrew Paul Weston, best-selling author of The Guardian series, The Cambion Journals, and The IX, (which I reviewed for Black Gate here.) Hell Bound is also the latest novel in the Heroes in Hell shared-world universe, created by author/publisher Janet Morris. The main character in Hell Bound is Daemon Grim, Satan’s…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November

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The most popular article at Black Gate last month was M. Harold Page’s “An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: Town Watch? Where?”, a look at the much-loved concept of a citizen’s militia in fantasy. It’s not hard to see why it was popular: The first thing that Conan — or Locke Lamora, or Grey Mouser, or Vimes, or a D&D party  — would notice about a real medieval city would be the almost total absence of an Ankh Morpork-style town watch….

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New Treasures: Dark Parchments: Midnight Curses and Verses by Michael H. Hanson

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I don’t see a lot of dark poetry, so I was very pleased to receive a copy of Michael Hanson’s Dark Parchments: Midnight Curses and Verses, a gorgeous volume of new poems from the author of Autumn Blush, Jubilant Whispers, and the creator of the Sha’Daa shared-world horror/fantasy anthology series. Janet Morris, in her Foreword, calls Dark Parchments “a brooding anthology exploring humanity’s awful heart, its crippling guilt and madness, its untoward dominion and unbridled power.” Hanson’s best work, including…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

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With his very first article for Black Gate, Richard C. White shot right to the top of the charts with the most popular article for the month, “World Building 101: The Village.” Here’s a sample: Just because you have water doesn’t mean you can put any number of people in an area. The Cahokia Mounds in Illinois were believed to have held up to 40,000 people which would have made it the biggest city in North America until the 18th century. However,…

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Did the Butler Do It? Dean R. Koontz’s A Werewolf Among Us

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A Werewolf Among Us by Dean R. Koontz Ballantine Books original paperback edition (211 pages, $1.25, January 1973) Cover art by Bob Blanchard Wow — check out that price! $1.25! Hard to believe, isn’t it? I can’t recall exactly how I discovered this enjoyable mash-up of two very different genres. I was probably hanging out in one of the many bookstores that were, in those days, like Starbuck’s: one on almost every other street corner. We had the big chain…

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