Search Results for: New Edge Sword

Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Final Discussion

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Welcome to the final round of the Black Gate Book Club, where we hash out or feelings and impressions on C.J. Cherryh’s 1981 classic Downbelow Station (DbS).  We also give DbS our final score– and things get contentious! Need to catch up on the discussion?  Easily done with these convenient links to the first, second, third, and fourth rounds. Adrian S. I finished DbS last week. Third time was on the money!  Since I appeared to be the slow elephant I assume…

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Harlan Ellison 1934-2018: Essential and Impossible

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Did you feel that? That sudden drop in pressure, that slump, as if the world itself had let out a long-held breath? I’m sure it was registered on every spot on earth, from Cleveland to Calcutta, from Reykjavik to Tierra del Fuego. That was Harlan Ellison leaving the building. No man was ever less likely to die peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of eighty four, but that’s exactly what happened on the morning of June 28th,…

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Can a Trilogy Have Six Books? The Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

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Every time an author wraps up a trilogy, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters. Of course, this sometimes leads to anxiety. Is the series really wrapped up? Are there going to be more books? It’s not like the publisher slaps a sticker on the book saying Finito!, exactly. What if we bake a cake, and it turns out there’s four more books? Won’t we look stupid. Ah, the hell with it. It’s cake! We’ll be forgiven. Probably….

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Traveller Resources Without Dice #1: The Travel Survival Guide by Lloyd Figgins

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“That moment when you realise some of the people you follow on Twitter are Traveller characters…” We’d been chatting about buying a second hand (deactivated) Bren Gun. (I once nearly impulse bought one, but ended up saving the money to spend on swords and armour like most if the other responsible adults I knew.) This led to a consensus that fair fights are bad. Then @wandering_andy tweeted: 30 years, mostly in the crappier parts of the world has developed what I…

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Bloody Court Intrigue: Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

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Theodosia just wants to survive. Ten years ago, the Kaiser’s forces invaded and slit her mother the Queen’s throat. Theo’s been the Kaiser’s prisoner ever since. She tries to forget she was once heir to the throne, rather than a princess of nothing but ashes. She tries to forget the magical powers the old gods used to give humans, now that their temples lie in ruins. She tries to forget that her best friend’s father was the one who murdered…

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An End to the End: The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

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And so we come to end of the line for several of the main characters of the Black Company trilogy. The end of the third book, The White Rose, saw the storied mercenary company whittled down to a handful of survivors. The group — five veterans, the empire’s erstwhile ruler the Lady, and Croaker in the lead — decided to travel south and find Khatovar, the fabled home city of the Black Company. Darling, otherwise known as the rebel leader…

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The Late May Fantasy Magazine Rack

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The back half of May is filled with great print magazines, including the latest Analog, with the concluding installment of our very own Derek Künsken’s debut novel The Quantum Magician. Asimov’s SF has new novellas from two sets of collaborators, Rick Wilber & Alan Smale, and David Gerrold & Ctein, plus lots of shorter fiction. And last but not least, just before we went to press I received a copy of the June issue of The Digest Enthusiast, a handsome…

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Gardner Dozois, July 23, 1947 – May 27, 2018

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Yesterday I learned that Gardner Dozois had been hospitalized for a massive infection. Before I left the house today I checked Facebook and other sources to see if there was any news. When I checked again an hour ago, I was devastated to learn that he had passed away. While he was a fiction writer of considerable note, Gardner made his true reputation as an editor. I first took notice of his name when he took over the editorial reins at…

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in April

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Joe Bonadonna had the top post at Black Gate in April, with his review of Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Hounds, the follow-up to his 2015 novel Hell Bound, and the second novel featuring the Daemon Grimm and his adventures in the Heroes in Hell universe created by Janet Morris. Not to be intimidated, both Bob Byrne and Fletcher Vredenburgh placed two articles in the Top Ten last month. Bob’s feature on Arthurian Elements in the Conan Canon came in at…

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The May Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Lots of great new fiction in May, including new stories by Mark Lawrence, Nicholas Kaufmann, Kelly Robson, John Shirley, Naomi Novik, Erica L. Satifka, Steven J. Dines, Lynne Jamneck, Katharine Duckett, Michael Washburn, Robert M. Waugh, and many others. The new kid on the block this month is Vastarien from Grimscribe Press, a 284-page journal “of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas.” The first issue includes contributions from…

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