Black Gate

Joshua Palmatier is a high-energy guy. I wrote about his science fictional Ley Trilogy last year, and I backed his 2017 Kickstarter for the Guilds & Glaives anthology because it contains stories by no less than four Black Gate authors: David B. Coe, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, and Violette Malan.

That ought to be enough from one guy to satisfy even the most demanding readers. So I was surprised to find a fat 840-page volume from Palmatier during my last trip to Barnes & Noble: The Throne of Amenkor. It turns out to be an omnibus reprint collecting three of his early fantasy novels:

The Shewed Throne (384 pages, $8.99 in paperback, January 3, 2006)
The Cracked Throne (400 pages, $7.99 in paperback, November 7, 2006)
The Vacant Throne (480 pages, $8.99 in paperback, January 2, 2008)

All three were published in hardcover by DAW, and are still in print in mass market paperback a decade later — an impressive feat. K. Tang and Charlene Brusso reviewed them enthusiastically for Black Gate, but I never had the chance to enjoy them myself. I already have a handful of Joshua Palmatier novels sitting on my nightstand, and an anthology on the way, but I’m a sucker for these big omnibus editions from DAW and I ended up bringing The Throne of Amenkor home with me anyway.

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Neal Shusterman is the author of dozens of books for young readers, including The Dark Side of Nowhere, The Shadow Club, The Star Shards Chronicles, The Skinjacker Trilogy, and the Unwind Dystology. His latest series, set in a far-future world of eternal life, where teenagers train to become sanctioned killers to control the population, began with Scythe in 2016 . Here’s Kirkus Reviews on the opening novel.

On post-mortal Earth, humans live long (if not particularly passionate) lives without fear of disease, aging, or accidents. Operating independently of the governing AI (called the Thunderhead since it evolved from the cloud), scythes rely on 10 commandments, quotas, and their own moral codes to glean the population. After challenging Hon. Scythe Faraday, 16-year-olds Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova reluctantly become his apprentices. Subjected to killcraft training, exposed to numerous executions, and discouraged from becoming allies or lovers, the two find themselves engaged in a fatal competition but equally determined to fight corruption and cruelty… Elegant and elegiac, brooding but imbued with gallows humor, Shusterman’s dark tale thrusts realistic, likable teens into a surreal situation and raises deep philosophic questions. A thoughtful and thrilling story of life, death, and meaning.

The second volume in the series, Thunderhead, arrived last month. It was published by Simon & Schuster on January 9, 2018. It is 504 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Kevin Tong. Read an excerpt at Entertainment Weekly.

OK, this isn’t strictly a New Treasure, since it came out in 2016. But I discovered it for the first time while browsing the science fiction shelves at Barnes & Noble last week, so what the heck. It’s new to me.

Michelle West (who also writes as Michelle Sagara) is a Canadian writer with some three dozen novels to her credit, including the 6-volume Sun Sword series (which Derek Kunsken reviewed for us here) and the 7-volume House War, both from DAW Books. Both of those popular series are set in the Empire of Essalieyan, and build on events in two earlier novels from the 90s, Hunter’s Oath (1995) and Hunter’s Death (1996), collectively known as The Sacred Hunt. The former novel is still in print — pretty darned impressive after 23 long years! — but the later is not, which is a little frustrating for West’s many fans.

DAW has a fine habit of reprinting classic series in their back catalog in handsome omnibus editions, and I was delighted to find Hunter’s Oath and Hunter’s Death collected in a single 864-page paperback. Here’s the description.

For the first time in one volume, the two novels that began the epic tale of the Essalieyanese empire.

Hunter’s Oath
When the covenant was made with the Hunter God, all who dwelt in Breodanir swore to abide by it. The Hunter Lords — and the hunting dogs to which their minds were attuned — would seek out game in the God’s woods to provide food for their people, and the Hunter God would ensure that the Hunters, the land, and the people prospered.

But in payment, once a year the Sacred Hunt must be called, the God’s own Hunt in which the prey became one of the Lords, or his huntbrother–the companion chosen from the common folk to remind each Lord of his own ties to humanity. It was the Oath pledged in blood by Gilliam of Elseth and the orphan boy Stephen — and the fulfillment of that Oath would lead them to the kind of destiny from which legends were made….

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