Black Gate – Page 531 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Dead Gods, Buried Histories, and a Protean City: Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Divine Cities Trilogy

Thursday, March 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I love it when the final book in a terrific trilogy finally arrives. (Wait a minute… are you sure it’s a trilogy? How can you tell? Sure, they all look like trilogies, until that pesky fourth book shows up. Better start over.) I love it when the third book in a terrific series finally arrives, and wraps things up satisfactorily… at least until the fourth book appears, maybe.

Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs (2014), the opening novel in The Divine Cities, was nominated for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and GoodReads Choice Award, and came in second for the Locus Award. But what got my attention was BG writer Peadar Ó Guilín calling it “The best fantasy I’ve read so far this year. Great stuff,” and a reviewer at Tor.com who described it as “an atmospheric and intrigue-filled novel of dead gods, buried histories, and a mysterious, protean city.” Volume II, City of Blades, was published in 2016 to wide acclaim, and that built up anticipation for the third volume nicely.

City of Miracles is now scheduled to arrive in trade paperback from Broadway Books in early May. On his blog Bennett calls it “the final installment of The Divine Cities series, starring everyone’s favorite Dreyling murder machine, Sigrud. It’s readable as a standalone, just like the other books, but it’s highly recommended that you read the previous ones first.” Final installment. Uh huh. Let’s see how long that promise that holds up when this thing is optioned as the next big Netflix series.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1953: A Retro-Review

Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Matthew Wuertz Comments 10 comments

Galaxy Science Fiction September 1953-small

Galaxy Science Fiction September 1953-back-small

The September, 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction opens with Editor H. L. Gold weighing in on vocabulary guessing for future science fiction. He writes that

Objects and methods must be named so the reader will recognize them. All the author can do is apply logic, which sometimes works, as in the case of several commonly used terms invented by science fiction, but more often does not, as in terms that are born naturally, not synthesized.

He describes how some words, like nylon and Kleenex, are trade names. The word jeep came from how soldiers abbreviated “General Purpose Car” (listed as “G.P.” in stock lists). He concludes his remarks by writing:

If we were trying to predict instead of entertain, you’d be right in objecting to our inevitable bloopers (origin unknown). But would you rather wait for the correct lingo (lingua, tongue) or enjoy our guessing right now?

My answer: bring on the bloopers!

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Future Treasures: Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods by Tania del Rio and Will Staehle

Wednesday, March 8, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in September I wrote a brief piece on Warren the 13th and The All-Seeing Eye, the opening book in a new middle grade series written by Tania Del Rio and illustrated by Will Staehle. I’d been seeing glowing coverage of the book and had decided to order it, and as I said in the piece, “I can make up my mind on Staehle’s artwork right now — and I think it’s fantastic.”

So I was very pleased to see a new entry in the series, Warren the 13th and the Whispering Woods, on the schedule for March 21, 2017. The books follow the adventures of twelve-year-old Warren, a kid who looks like he escaped from an Edward Gorey cartoon. Warren is the sole surviving heir to a grand (but rapidly decaying) old hotel, and his exploits see him mixed up with a terrific cast of supporting characters who live on or near the grounds of the rambling hotel, including monsters, witches, a ghostly girl who creeps around the hedge maze, and his twisted Aunt Annaconda and her evil sisters.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder by Roy A. Mauritsen

Wednesday, March 8, 2017 John ONeill Comments 15 comments

Shards of the Glass Slipper Queen Cinder-small

Shards of the Glass Slipper Queen Cinder-back-small

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder by Roy A. Mauritsen, published by Padwolf Publishing and now available in a brand new audibook narrated by Christopher Crosby Morris!

The new audiobook is available at Amazon, iTunes and Audible.com. Over 15 hours long and richly enhanced with music and sound, it’s a whole new way to experience Shards Of The Glass Slipper — the fairy tale fantasy epic that Patrick Thomas (The Murphy’s Lore series) calls “The Brothers Grimm meets Lord of the Rings.”

Here’s the audiobook trailer.

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Modular: Dungeons That Fight Back: 13th Age: Bestiary and Eyes of the Stone Thief from Pelgrane Press

Tuesday, March 7, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

This past Saturday was the bi-annual Games Plus auction in Mount Prospect, Illinois, an event I celebrate every year (usually by massively blowing my budget in a prolonged bout of auction fever). A lot of folks attend looking for collectible vintage SF & fantasy games, and there’s certainly plenty of those to be had. But the chief reason I go is to find bargains, and especially bargains on new games. Heck, the big reason I sit in an uncomfortable metal chair for seven hours is just to see all the new games that flash by (and to see which ones the crowd goes nuts for). It’s sort of like attending a Paris fashion show for games, a comparison I’ve made previously.

When you’re sitting in the front row and the auctioneer starts fast-talking about a fascinating new game you’ve never seen before, you need to be ready to make a quick assessment. Is it a rare out-of-print title, like that copy of Victory Point Games’ Darkest Night I foolishly let get away for $40? Or are copies still available on Amazon for 20 bucks, like that Star Trek: Five Year Mission from Mayfair Games I agonized over? I kept my smartphone handy, and got pretty adept at fast-thumbing online prices as the auction progressed.

I made out pretty well this year, carting home seven big boxes of games — including plenty that fell into both categories. Some of my most intriguing purchases included Krosmaster Arena (for $20), Z-man Games Tragedy Looper ($10), City of Horror ($12), a shrinkwrapped copy of SoulJar Games’ Torn Amor ($15), and even an unread copy of KenzerCo’s Cattlepunk Chronicles ($5). But when I got home, there was one item I wanted to get my hands on immediately, and I dug through all seven boxes until I found it (nestled at the bottom of the seventh box, naturally): Eyes of the Stone Thief, a massive adventure supplement for the popular 13th Age RPG from Pelgrane Press. Along with it I won a copy of the 13th Age Bestiary, a full color monster compendium for the same system.

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The End of the Matter: Viriconium Nights by M. John Harrison

Tuesday, March 7, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 2 comments

The three novels of the Viriconium sequence, The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, and In Viriconium, are not the entirety of M. John Harrison’s intricate, multi-faceted portrayal of the titular city. A fourth book, Viriconium Nights (1984), collects seven stories written between 1971 and 1983. Each is strange, some bordering on the inpenetrable, but all attempt to shine lights onto new aspects of the larger story.

As he did with each succeeding novel, Harrison twists, recasts, and reweaves characters, thematic melodies, and locations first found in The Pastel City. Sometimes, as with that book’s ostensible hero, tegeus-Cromis, things seem to be exactly as they were before. Other times, particularly with the city of Viriconium itself, they are changed considerably. Its very name becomes mutable, one time being Uriconium, another just Vriko. This reminds us of one of Harrison’s central ideas: that there is no real “there” to Viriconium; it is just a bundle of words painted on a page at its creator’s discretion.

Viriconium Nights commences with “The Lamia & Lord Cromis.” tegeus-Cromis is in search of the lamia, a beast which has slain numerous members of his family. Though he appears to have accepted the same will happen to him, still he sets out accompanied by the wonderfully named Dissolution Khan and the dwarf gladiator, Morgante. The hunt ends in a morass of complications, death, and unclarity.

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New Treasures: If This Goes Wrong… edited by Hank Davis

Monday, March 6, 2017 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

If This Goes Wrong... Hank Davis-back-small

I’m really enjoying these recent Hank Davis anthologies, especially The Baen Big Book of Monsters and Things from Outer Space. As I’ve mentioned before, no one else today is collecting writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak, Fritz Leiber, and Fredric Brown and packaging them in mass market anthologies for under 8 bucks. Davis is making the greatest SF writers of the 20th Century accessible to casual modern readers, and that’s no small thing.

Plus, his anthologies are a blast.

His most recent, If This Goes Wrong…, showed up just after Christmas. It collects 17 tales of off-kilter futures originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy, World of IF, Analog, and other fine publications. Just think — some kid in Oklahoma picked this book up and discovered the science fiction of the pulps for the first time. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

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The March Fantasy Magazine Rack

Monday, March 6, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Michael Penkas took on the lion’s share of our magazine coverage this month, with in-depth reviews of the latest issues of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nightmare. Mike joins our current magazine reviewer, Fletcher Vredenburgh (whose beat is primarily sword & sorcery), as well as our Retro-reviewers, Rich Horton and Matthew Wuertz.

In other magazine news this month, Rich Horton presented his 2017 Hugo Nomination thoughts, recommending dozens of stories from all of the major magazines. See all the details here.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our February Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: A Nero Wolfe Mystery

Monday, March 6, 2017 Bob Byrne Comments 8 comments

We’re in to March and The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has made it to three years here at Black Gate. Every Monday morning, I’ve written about a thousand words about some topic I hoped would be interesting, without missing a deadline. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this column and very thankful that Black Gate was willing to let me ramble on about a wide range of topics. For I certainly did that!

But I’m having trouble keeping up with the demands of weekly blogging (I know it appears I just slap these things together, but I actually do a lot of reading and research) and there are a couple of writing projects I want to tackle in 2017, and for me as it is for most folks, time is a scarce commodity. So, I’ll be wrapping up The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes with the March 20th post. I convinced the powers that be here not to put a restraining order on me at Black Gate World Headquarters (in large part by signing over all future post royalties…) and I’ll be allowed to post something once in a while. And I’m going to continue contributing to the Modular column. This is a great blog to write for and I’m pleased to still be part of the family. If still the odd cousin that doesn’t get talked about at the reunions.

One of my two major writing projects for the year involves my favorite mystery series, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe.

In early 2000, A&E aired a one-off movie, The Golden Spiders. It starred Canadian Maury Chaykin as Rex Stout’s famous detective, Nero Wolfe, and Timothy Hutton as his man Friday, Archie Goodwin. Reviews were positive and a year later, the first of an eleven-episode series aired, The Doorbell Rang.

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Self-published Book Review: Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw

Sunday, March 5, 2017 Donald Crankshaw Comments 2 comments

It’s been a few months since I’ve done one of these. Partly that’s for personal reasons that I won’t go into here, and partly it’s because I haven’t received a lot of submissions lately, so I went looking for a book to review, and I ended up with one that proved a little longer than I anticipated. (If you’d like to submit a book for me to review, please see the instructions.)

This month’s self-published book review is of Dawn of Wonder, by Jonathan Renshaw, a 700-page novel of epic fantasy. Mr. Renshaw doesn’t need my help selling his book, as he’s sold over 200,000 copies, has over 2,500 Amazon reviews, and has won a bevy of awards. But it is a self-published book, and I was curious whether it could live up to the expectations.

It is certainly a well-written book, with rich and poetic language and strong characterization. Aedan, the main character, is instantly likeable, adventurous and bold but with a grave weakness that will haunt him throughout the novel. We’re first introduced to Aedan as a boy, together with his friends, most notably Kalry, the daughter of the local noble. When tragedy strikes and Kalry is lost to slavers, Aedan is blamed, and his family has to leave the area. It is here that we are introduced to the source of Aedan’s fears and weakness, his father’s abusive temper. When they arrive in the city of Castath, Aedan’s father separates from his family to return to the criminal lifestyle he had practiced before marrying.

Aedan quickly decides that what he wants is to become a soldier, independent of his father and the domineering woman his mother finds shelter with, and more importantly, able to pursue revenge on the nation of slavers who took Kalry. When he seeks out the training to become one, he quickly catches the eye of General Osric, and is offered a place at the Academy, studying to become a gray marshal, the spies and scouts who are Castath’s first line of defense. Believing that becoming one would give him an even better chance to avenge Kalry, he leaps at the opportunity.

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