Black Gate – Page 370 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland

Friday, November 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore this weekend. This is my first trip to the city (Holy cats! Did you know Baltimore was on the Atlantic Ocean?? They should tell people this stuff), and so far I’ve dined at a terrific seafood restaurant, taken in the salt air, and visited what has to be the largest Barnes & Noble on the planet.

I’ve also reconnected with plenty of friends whom I only see at conventions these days, including more than a few Black Gate contributors (quick shout out to Derek Kunsken, Marie Bilodeau, Howard Andrew Jones, Patty Templeton, Doug Ellis, L.E. Modesitt, and Sarah Avery!) and wandered through the beautiful Dealer’s Room, packed to the brim with fantasy books. It may seem strange that even surrounded by a hive of activity like WFC I can still be distracted by new books, but there you are. One of the first to catch my eye was the debut fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland. I think I’ll be taking this one home with me.

A wrongfully imprisoned storyteller spins stories from his jail cell that just might have the power to save him — and take down his jailers too.

Arrested on accusations of witchcraft and treason, Chant finds himself trapped in a cold, filthy jail cell in a foreign land. With only his advocate, the unhelpful and uninterested Consanza, he quickly finds himself cast as a bargaining chip in a brewing battle between the five rulers of this small, backwards, and petty nation.

Or, at least, that’s how he would tell the story.

In truth, Chant has little idea of what is happening outside the walls of his cell, but he must quickly start to unravel the puzzle of his imprisonment before they execute him for his alleged crimes. But Chant is no witch—he is a member of a rare and obscure order of wandering storytellers. With no country to call his home, and no people to claim as his own, all Chant has is his wits and his apprentice, a lad more interested in wooing handsome shepherds than learning the ways of the world.

And yet, he has one great power: his stories in the ears of the rulers determined to prosecute him for betraying a nation he knows next to nothing about. The tales he tells will topple the Queens of Nuryevet and just maybe, save his life.

A Conspiracy of Truths was published by Saga Press on October 23, 2018. It is 464 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

From Beneath the Review Pile: The Same Old Story

Friday, November 2, 2018 Brandon Crilly Comments 2 comments

As they used to say in Monty Python, “and now for something completely different.”

The more I read, the more difficult it is for me to be entranced by a novel or short story. My writer brain is always whirring away in the background, pointing out when an author has done something clever or highlighting specific techniques like Chekhov’s gun. To be honest, it’s sort of a pain in the ass. If a novel isn’t gripping to the point that my writer brain clicks off for a bit – or at least gets quieter – I usually put it down somewhere around the fifty-page mark, if not sooner.

Doing this column makes it tough sometimes, too, because a) I don’t like to review something I didn’t at least enjoy enough to finish, but b) I need to find a book worth reviewing every two weeks. And honestly, two years into this column it’s getting harder, since I keep seeing the same story over and over again.

Let me give you an example, without giving too many specifics (since I don’t want to insult anyone). Recently I started a space opera ARC that I received from a publisher, because the back cover blurb sounded really cool, involving a protagonist who’s vilified by the galaxy he worked to save. Except the novel doesn’t start with that; it goes back to the protagonist’s youth, struggling to find his own way in a typical noble household, feeling stifled and controlled until he escapes and begins to come into his own, etc, etc. Sigh. Where’s my story about the intergalactic savior grappling with whether he should consider himself a hero or a villain? If we started there, I’d be able to forgive yet another far-future imperial setting structured like a hundred other novels I’ve read in the last few years.

Sorry if that sounded a little more heated than I usually get here. It’s just that I keep seeing the same story, and it’s wearying. Sometimes the story pretends to be different through its main characters. Like a post-alien invasion apocalypse where the adults are gone and young people have to survive on their own. Jazz it up with lead characters that are different than your usual fare, whether it’s based on gender identity, race, mental health, physical disability, etc, and maybe you’ve got a hit. Or maybe it’s the same story with the exact same beats and even some of the same tropes, and all the author is trying to do is be clever.

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Birthday Reviews: Lois McMaster Bujold’s “The Hole Truth”

Friday, November 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Lois McMaster Bujold was born on November 2, 1949.

Bujold has won seven Hugo Awards. Her first Hugo was for the novella “The Mountains of Mourning.” She has won the Best Novel Hugo for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, and Paladin of Souls. She won back-to-back Best Series Hugos for The Vorkosigan Saga and the World of the Five Gods series. “The Mountains of Mourning” and Paladin of Souls also earned Bujold Nebula Awards, as did the novel Falling Free, which also won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. She earned the Italia Award for the novel Komarr and the Mythopoeic Award for The Curse of Chalion. Her novel A Civil Campaign won a Sapphire Award. Bujold has also been recognized with the Skylark Award from NESFA and the Forry Award from LASFS. She was the guest of Honor at Denvention 3, the 66^th Worldcon in Denver in 2008.

“The Hole Truth” was first published in the December 1986 issue of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, edited by Tappan King. The story’s only other publication occurred in the NESFA Press anthology Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, which was originally published in 1996.

Authors often become so identified with specific series that readers find it difficult to remember that they have written outside those series. Lois McMaster Bujold’s name is synonymous with her Vorkosigan series and her World of the Five Gods, but she has also written stories and novels that stand on their own. In fact, “The Hole Truth” is part of a mini series of three short stories.

The story is set on Milton Street in the small Ohio town of Putnam. As with many cities in the Midwest, following the winter, Putnam is plagued by a plethora of potholes. One of the potholes in Putnam is on Milton and the residents don’t think much of it, although it caused severe damage to Waldo Simpson’s shocks. Eventually, Bill Pointer looked closely at the pothole and realized that it seemed to have a thick substance in it. When he poked at it with a stick, the stick became lodged and eventually sucked into the pothole, or possibly sinkhole.

While the city postpones dealing with the pothole, the residents of Milton Street, and eventually others, come up with their own use for the hole, dropping a wide, and ever-increasing mass, of garbage into the hole which seems to have an insatiable appetite for detritus. As more is dumped into it, the hole grows larger, allowing for bigger pieces of trash to be thrown in. Suddenly, the hole shuts with little warning, at least temporarily.

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Goth Chick News: Netflix Bring It for Halloween

Thursday, November 1, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

As “the season” officially ended yesterday as it always does, with me getting in the coffin that’s been sitting in my front yard all month, and jumping out of it to scare the snot out of the neighbor kids, I’m a bit behind schedule on this. But it’s okay, because these two new Netflix shows are well worth a binge, regardless if we’re now all supposed to put away all the fun, scary stuff because its ‘not appropriate’ and go back to being ‘normal’ and get right onto the rest of the holidays with little elves on the f…

Sorry, lost my head there for a minute.

First up is The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. This story line harkens back to the original Archie comic, circa 1962 when Sabrina Spellman first appeared as a friend of the Archie gang. Sabrina didn’t go to Riverdale High, but Greendale, a nearby town where Sabrina lived with her two aunts and her cat familiar, Salem. In the original comic Sabrina mainly dealt with problems associated with not being able to tell her friends or her boyfriend that she’s a “half-witch” (her father was a famous warlock and her mother was a human) and just being a normal teenager, using her powers to do generally good things for others.

The Netflix version is much, much darker and it’s awesome.

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DMR Books is Open to Submissions

Thursday, November 1, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I had lunch with the hard-working Dave Ritzlin yesterday, the mastermind behind DMR Books, and he casually mentioned that they are now open to submissions. This is great news for any aspiring writers out there who produce fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction in the tradition of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic writers of the pulp era. Instead of trying to summarize exactly what Dave’s looking for, here he is in his own words.

Heroic fantasy adventure fiction of the sword-and-sorcery subgenre. Rather than give a detailed explanation of what that means, I’ll just say that if you’re familiar with the books we’ve published, as well as the titles on the following list, you’ll have a good idea of what we want.

Clark Ashton Smith – Zothique, Xiccarph, Averoigne, Hyperborea, etc.

Jack Vance – Dying Earth series

Fritz Leiber – Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series

Michael Moorcock – Eternal Champion series (Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, etc.)

Robert E. Howard – Conan, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, etc.

Poul Anderson – The Broken Sword

A. Merritt – The Ship of Ishtar, Dwellers in the Mirage

What are you waiting for? Start your writing adventure here.

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Birthday Reviews: Zenna Henderson’s “Trouble of the Water”

Thursday, November 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Zenna Henderson was born on November 1, 1917 and died on May 11, 1983.

Henderson was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1959 for her novelette “Captivity,” one of the stories in her The People series. Her story “Porrage” was made into a television film starring William Shatner in 1972, and “Hush” was adapted for an episode of Tales from the Darkside.

“Troubling of the Water” was originally published in the September 1966 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. Henderson included it in her collection The People: No Different Flesh the following year. In 1973, it was translated into Japanese and in 1993, it was translated into Italian by Giuliano Acunzoli. The story was most recently included in the NESFA Press volume Ingathering: The Complete People Stories, edited by Mark and Priscilla Olson.

Henderson’s People stories are quite different. “Troubling the Water” is set on a nineteenth century ranch in an area suffering a long drought. Access to water has become a major issue, but while most modern science fiction dealing with lack of water would use it as the basis for conflict over water rights, the characters in Henderson’s story use it to support each other and build a community.

In “Troubling of the Water,” Barney and his Father see a meteorite fall to Earth on their property. Set in the nineteenth century in a rural backwater, they are surprised to find a burnt and blinded boy at the site of the meteorite strike. The bring him back home and begin to nurse him back to health, eventually naming him Timothy. It becomes clear to Barney’s father and eventually to Barney that Timothy was not a boy struck by a meteorite, but rather an alien who had come to Earth. Through touching Barney and forging a link with the boy, Timothy is eventually able to learn to speak and learn of the family’s need for water.

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Birthday Reviews: October Index

Thursday, November 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index
July index
August index
September index

October 1, Donald A. Wollheim: “Blueprint”
October 2, Edward Wellen: “Barbarossa”
October 3, Ray Nelson: “Time Travel for Pedestrians”
October 4, Gary Couzens: “Half-Life”
October 5, Zoran Živković: “The Whisper”
October 6, David Brin: “Just a Hint”

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Unbound Worlds on the Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of October 2018

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Astounding John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction-small

Happy Halloween everyone!

Later tonight, as you’re curled up in your favorite chair munching Halloween candy, you’ll remember that today is also the last day of the month, and you’ll wonder what exciting new releases you overlooked. (Trust me. It’ll happen.) I mean, I get it. There are so many great new books being published these days that it’s impossible to keep track.

Impossible without very special resources, that is. Resources like Matt Staggs at Unbound Worlds, who’s curated an impressive list of 45 (yes, 45) new novels, collections, photobooks, anthologies, and nonfiction books representing the very best in science fiction, fantasy, horror and the unclassifiable. Here’s some of his best selections.

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee (Dey Street Books, 544 pages, $28.99 hardcover/$15.99 digital, October 23, 2018)

Astounding is the landmark account of the extraordinary partnership between four controversial writers — John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard — who set off a revolution in science fiction and forever changed our world.

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Traces of Byzantium in Florence

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

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The dome of the Baptistry of St. John, Florence

When we think of Italian art, we tend to think of Ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance, and forget the periods in between. Considering the achievements of those two high points of human civilization, that’s hardly surprising, but the Middle Ages contained the inspiration of Renaissance art, and much of that inspiration came from further east–from the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantium owned parts of Italy until 1071, and left a legacy of beautifully decorated churches and public buildings. These influences endured, and can be found in some of the most famous buildings and art collections of the Renaissance. This interesting article from Oxford University goes into greater depth about specific important influences.

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Future Treasures: The Thing in the Close by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Wednesday, October 31, 2018 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

While Manhattan publishers spend six-figures promoting the latest fantasy doorstopper, on the other side of the continent Jeffrey E. Barlough is quietly producing one of the best and most original fantasy series on the market. The Western Lights novels have steadily been winning readers since the first volume Dark Sleeper appeared in 2000. In his review of Anchorwick, fifth in the series, Jackson Kuhl summarized the setting this way:

In a world where the Ice Age never ended, a cataclysm has reduced humanity to a slip of English civilization along North America’s western coastline. It’s neither steampunk nor weird western; the technology is early 19th century. It’s kinda-sorta gaslamp fantasy, except there doesn’t seem to be any natural gas. Barlough’s creation is best described as a Victorian Dying Earth — gothic and claustrophobic yet confronted by its inhabitants with upper lips held stiff. As the books are fantasy mysteries, the less said about their plots, the better… mastodons and mylodons mixed with ghosts and gorgons? Yes, please.

In 2016 Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed Dark Sleeper for us, saying:

For nearly twenty years now Barlough has been creating a truly unique series that has seems to have escaped too many readers’ attention… If you have the slightest affinity for the works of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, or the steampunk works of Tim Powers and James Blaylock, then I highly recommend Dark Sleeper.

The Thing in the Close, the tenth volume in the series, arrives in trade paperback in December from Gresham & Doyle. Its has been long awaited in the Black Gate offices.

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