Search Results for: tale covers

New Treasures: Call of the Bone Ships, Book 2 of The Tide Child Trilogy by RJ Barker

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The Bone Ships (Orbit, 2019) and Call of the Bone Ships (Orbit, 2020). Covers by Edward Bettison RJ Barker’s The Bone Ships was published by Orbit in 2019, to strong reviews. Spectrum Culture called it “A thrilling bit of high seas fantasy… from a tremendously talented and imaginative mind,” BookPage said it’s “the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea,” and it was nominated for the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel. But my favorite…

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Future Treasures: Stormbreak, Book 3 of the Seafire Trilogy by Natalie C. Parker (Author)

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The Seafire trilogy (Razorbill, 2018-21). Covers by Billelis and Cliff Nielsen You know the rule about trilogies at Black Gate. Every time one wraps up, we bake a cake. Stormbreak, the third novel in Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire series, arrives early next month from Razorbill, and the interns are already warming up the oven. What’s Seafire all about? Pirates!! Girl pirates of the far future, actually, which is intensely cool. My favorite notice comes from Feliza Casano over at Tor.com,…

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Goth Chick News: In 2021, The “Stakes” Get Higher…

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No surprise, I absolutely love a good vampire story. And though I’ve had a bit of an up and down relationship with Stephen King over the years, one of the “up” periods involved his book Salem’s Lot. During the year-end holidays I reread it, followed by a revisiting of the 1979 TV miniseries starring David Soul and directed by Tobe Hooper. Though it had its moments, not the least of which being the vampires themselves, I’ve always felt a little…

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Monsters, Magic, and Kung fu: The Daoshi Chronicles by M. H. Boroson

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The Daoshi Chronicles, published in paperback by Talos Press. Covers by Jeff Chapman I discovered M. H. Boroson’s delightful Daoshi Chronicles when Sarah Avery reviewed the opening novel The Girl With Ghost Eyes here at Black Gate five years ago, saying in part: We’re connoisseurs of kickass combat scenes, eldritch lore, and victories won at terrible, unpredictable price. We want our heroes unabashedly heroic and morally complicated at the same time. Add a decade or more of research on the author’s…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 26: Introducing Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Launching the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1979!

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Well, if you’ve been waiting for my epic reread of the Uncanny X-Men to reach one of the most consequential and memorable stories in comic history, your waiting has paid off. It only took 26 blog posts, but we’ve arrived at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. This arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, from issue #129 to #131 does some major things. First, it introduces a mutant who will over the course of the coming decades become a…

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A Fine Addition to any SF Library: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Tin Stars (Signet, 1986), volume 5 of Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction. Cover by JAV Isaac Asimov published more than 500 books in his lifetime. Now Asimov was amazingly productive — averaging around 1,700 words published per day over the last two decades of his life — but no one is that prolific. In later years he became a proficient book packager, working with editors like Charles G. Waugh and especially Martin H. Greenberg to churn out dozens…

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Future Treasures: Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

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Nnedi Okorafor has won every major award our small field has to offer. She won a Hugo and Nebula Award for her Tor.com novella Binti, a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death, a Locus Award for Akata Warrior, an Eisner Award and another Hugo Award for the comic LaGuardia — and a great many more, including a Black Excellence Award, Kindred Award, Lodestar Award, and awards I’ve never even heard of. I hear that when she steps outside to…

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The Heroes Gather at Last: The Maradaine Elite Trilogy by Marshall Ryan Maresca

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The Maradaine Elite trilogy by Marshall Ryan Maresca (DAW Books). Covers by Paul Young Marshall Ryan Maresca is one of the most ambitious fantasy authors to burst on he scene in the last decade. His masterwork is the Maradaine Saga: four parallel trilogies, each with a separate cast and very different tone, all set amid the bustling streets and crime-ridden districts of the exotic port city of Maradaine. It kicked off in 2015 with his debut novel The Thorn of…

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Vintage Treasures: The Trackers Series by David Gerrold

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Covers by Michael Herring David Gerrold began his career as a screenwriter for Star Trek (the famous episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”), Land of the Lost, Babylon 5, Sliders, and others, but today he’s chiefly known as an author and novelist, with such works as the Hugo Award winning “The Martian Child” (made into a 2007 John Cusack film), The War Against the Chtorr series, Star Wolf, and most recently Hella, a 2020 adventure thriller set on a world where…

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Fantastical Kung fu Swordsmen Woven Into Historical Events: Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong

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St. Martin’s Press paperback editions. Cover design by Ervin Serrano Louis Cha Leung-yung, known more widely by his pen name Jin Yong, was a Hong Kong wuxia author whose tales of martial arts heroes in ancient China made him one of the most popular writers of all time. He wrote 15 books between 1955 – 1972, and by the time of his death in 2018 he was the best-selling Chinese author. The New Yorker proclaimed that “in the Chinese-speaking world,…

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