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New Treasures: Gilded Cage by Vic James

New Treasures: Gilded Cage by Vic James

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Gilded Cage Vic James-smallIf you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for an exciting new fantasy series with fresh ideas, and Vic James’ debut Gilded Cage looks like it will fit the bill nicely. It’s the opening volume in a new series set in a modern England where magically gifted aristocrats rule and commoners are forced to serve them. Kirkus Reviews says it “Conjures up the specters of Les Misérables and Downton Abbey… an intriguing new fantasy series,” and Aliette de Bodard calls it ““A dark and intriguing vision of an alternate, magic-drenched Britain… kept me up long into the night.”

NOT ALL ARE FREE. NOT ALL ARE EQUAL. NOT ALL WILL BE SAVED.

Our world belongs to the Equals — aristocrats with magical gifts — and all commoners must serve them for ten years. But behind the gates of England’s grandest estate lies a power that could break the world.

A girl thirsts for love and knowledge.

Abi is a servant to England’s most powerful family, but her spirit is free. So when she falls for one of their noble-born sons, Abi faces a terrible choice. Uncovering the family’s secrets might win her liberty — but will her heart pay the price?

A boy dreams of revolution.

Abi’s brother, Luke, is enslaved in a brutal factory town. Far from his family and cruelly oppressed, he makes friends whose ideals could cost him everything. Now Luke has discovered there may be a power even greater than magic: revolution.

And an aristocrat will remake the world with his dark gifts.

He is a shadow in the glittering world of the Equals, with mysterious powers no one else understands. But will he liberate — or destroy?

Gilded Cage was published by Del Rey on February 14, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $20.00 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition.

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

The Top 50 Black Gate Blog Posts in March

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The Collapsing Empire-smallerThere were lots of new faces in the Top Ten last month, including the #1 slot, which featured a cover comparison between John Scalzi’s new Tor bestseller The Collapsing Empire, and a hurriedly-packaged cover rip-off, The Corroding Empire, by “Johan Kalsi.”

Coming in at #2 was our coverage of the third Literary Wonder and Adventure Podcast, a conversation with Scott Oden, followed by Sean McLachlan’s fascinating photo-essay on the items you don’t usually see from King Tut’s legendary treasure trove.

Rounding out the Top Five were Thomas Parker’s gargantuan undertaking, the Master List of Fantastic Literature, compiled from recommended reading lists from several notable sources, and our look at the first Fifth Edition D&D dungeon anthology, Tales From the Yawning Portal.

Coming in sixth was Ryan Harvey’s review of the Sword & Sandal classic Colossus of the Stone Age, followed by our celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Black Gate‘s very first blog post (Howard Andrew Jones’ musings on Sword & Sorcery — go figure). At number 8 was our a look back at the fiction and covers featured in Asimov’s Science Fiction in the 90s.

Wrapping up the Top Ten were our review of the marvelous new periodical for vintage magazine fans, The Digest Enthusiast, and Bob Byrne’s look at Nero Wolfe.

The complete list of Top Articles for March follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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Future Treasures: A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

Future Treasures: A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

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A Face Like Glass-smallJust last week I was complaining about the dearth of good subterranean fiction… and along comes Frances Hardinge’s A Face Like Glass, set in an underground world that Kirkus calls an “utterly original setting… [with] a cracking good story.”

Frances Hardinge is the author of Cuckoo Song, the 2015 winner of the British Fantasy Award, as well as Fly By Night, Verdigris Deep, and Twilight Robbery. She has twice been nominated for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, for Cuckoo Song and The Lie Tree. A Face Like Glass was published in the UK in 2012; the US version arrives from Amulet Books in early May.

In the underground city of Caverna, the world’s most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare — wines that remove memories, cheeses that make you hallucinate, and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer, even as they slit your throat. On the surface, the people of Caverna seem ordinary, except for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned, and only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to express (or fake) joy, despair, or fear — at a steep price.

Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. Neverfell’s expressions are as varied and dynamic as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, except hers are entirely genuine. And that makes her very dangerous indeed…

A Face Like Glass will be published by Amulet Books on May 9, 2017. It is 496 pages, priced at $19.95 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

April 2017 Apex Magazine Now Available

April 2017 Apex Magazine Now Available

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Apex Magazine April 2017-smallWalter Mosley is the author of the bestselling Easy Rawlins series, hard-boiled detective novels featuring a black private investigator in post WWII L.A. But he’s also dabbed successfuly in science fiction, with the novels Blue Light and The Wave, and the collection Futureland. So it wasn’t too much of a surprise to see a brand new Walter Mosley story in the latest issue of Apex. Here’s Stephanie Wexler’s take at Tangent Online.

Marilee Frith-DeGeorgio in “Cut, Cut, Cut” by Walter Mosley gets by creating social media advertising to pay rent, producing bad pottery and spending her days pursuing men on a date site called People for People. Pretty sure her ideal man is not her husband or her first date (body odor challenged) and then she meets Martin, man of mystery and plastic surgeon. It isn’t long before Marilee discovers Martin is too good to be true, when she is interviewed by a Detective Wade. The Detective claims he is still a subject of interest in their missing persons case. What is even stranger is Martin’s version sketches a love affair. Despite Martin’s omission, she continues to act as double agent for Detective Wade. The mystery deepens and her tryst with Martin becomes more than just a nightly romp between the sheets. She even confesses to her sister this double agent role is arousing her even more. Martin is pretty accepting of her questions and isn’t even upset that she is probing. At this point, I am committed to seeing where Marilee’s actions lead her and why Martin is so adamant that Marilee visit his lab…

Read Stephanie’s complete review here.

The April issue of Apex contains new fiction from Walter Mosley, Sheree Renée Thomas, Chesya Burke, and Kendra Fortmeyer, as well as poetry, a podcast, an editorial by guest editor Maurice Broaddus, an article on diversity by Tanya C. DePass, and interviews with Sheree Renée Thomas and cover artist Angelique Shelley.

Here’s the complete TOC, with links to all the free content.

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Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

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Famous Fantastic Mysteries Weinberg-smallI spent yesterday and Friday at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in Lombard, Illinois, about 30 minutes from my house. And as soon as I finish this article, I’m going to scoot over there again.

I found a great many treasures at this show this year. More than usual, even. And I’m looking forward to reporting on them here. One of the more interesting was a copy of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a 1991 pulp reprint anthology from Gramercy edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg, in terrific shape, which I bought for just $5.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries was a much-beloved fantasy pulp which ran from 1939 to 1953. The publisher was Frank A. Munsey, a name well known to pulp fans. The first bi-monthly issue was cover-dated September-October 1939, and contained A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool,” Ray Cummings’ “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” and stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Donald Wandrei, and many others. The magazine was a success, and it quickly switched from bi-monthly to monthly.

While the magazine relied chiefly on reprints, especially in the early days, it commissioned original art from many of the top artists of the day, especially Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Sterne Sevens, and today is treasured as much for the fabulous covers and interior art as the fiction.

In its 81 issues, Famous Fantastic Mysteries offered reprints of SF and fantasy pulp stories by Max Brand, E. F. Benson, Robert W. Chambers, William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and countless others, as well as brand new fiction from Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Murray Leinster, Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, Margaret St. Clair, Arthur C. Clarke, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and many more. See the complete issue checklist at Galactic Central.

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Robin Hobb Wraps Up the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy with Assassin’s Fate

Robin Hobb Wraps Up the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy with Assassin’s Fate

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Two decades ago Robin Hobb (who also writes fantasy as Megan Lindholm) burst on the scene with her debut the Farseer Trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin’s Quest). They were almost immediately successful, and by 2003 Robin Hobb had sold over a million copies of her first nine novels.

The Farseer Trilogy is the first-person narrative of FitzChivalry Farseer, the illegitimate son of a prince, and his adventures with an enigmatic character called the Fool. The story continued in the Tawny Man Trilogy (Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, and Fool’s Fate), and in 2013 Hobb announced she would pick up the tale decades later with the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy. The first two books are now in print in both hardcover and paperback, and the third and final volume arrives in hardcover next month. So for those of you who hang on until a series is complete to start the first book, the long wait is finally over.

Fool’s Assassin (667 pages, $28 hardcover, $8.99 paperback, $7.99 digital, August 12, 2014)
Fool’s Quest (784 pages, $28 hardcover, $8.99 paperback, $7.99 digital, August 11, 2015)
Assassin’s Fate (864 pages, $32 hardcover, $14.99 digital, May 9, 2017)

All three are published by Del Rey, with covers by Alejandro Colucci.

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Guile by Constance Cooper Now Available in Paperback

Guile by Constance Cooper Now Available in Paperback

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Guile Constance Cooper paperback-smallWe’re always proud when a Black Gate author breaks out to wider success in the publishing world. That happened with Constance Cooper’s Guile, her debut novel set in the same world — and drawing on the same characters — as her acclaimed story “The Wily Thing” from Black Gate 12.

Guile was published in hardcover by Clarion Books last year. Here’s Sarah Avery from her BG review.

In the town of Wicked Ford, an orphan girl with a secret claim on high town respectability but a history in a bayou stilt village lives under an assumed name and a false claim. Yonie makes her living as a pearly, an assessor of magical objects… she’s a self-taught antiquarian with a brilliant eye for detail, but to detect and diagnose magic, she needs the help of her business partner the talking cat…

Guile is a remarkable layerwork of mysteries. From the seemingly trivial and isolated mysteries about enchanted lockets and street signs that Yonie and LaRue solve for their daily subsistence, a larger pattern emerges that demands investigation. Mysteries of personal origin run beneath them, and every relationship Yonie has with kin, allies, friends, and suitors will be changed one way or another by the end of the book. Deepest of all runs the mystery of the river’s magic and the fallen civilizations that once understood it.

Constance Cooper’s debut novel delighted me from start to finish. The worldbuilding feels thoroughly lived in, as if we could step ahead of Yonie around any corner or shrub and something amazing would already be there for us to find. The characters are richly imagined individuals, and together they add up to a social world that is both kinder and more dangerous than Yonie ever guessed. The plot runs like the river delta it’s set in, its streams parting and rejoining and braiding around obstacles until it runs clear to its conclusion.

Read Sarah’s complete review here..

The paperback edition of Guile is now avaiable from HMH Books. It was published on March 14, 2017. It is 384 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the trade paperback and digital editions.

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper, Part II

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper, Part II

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Horror on the Asteroid at Windy City Pulp 2016-small

Horror on the Asteroid, and other fabulous treasures

Happy Saturday morning everyone!

I leaped out of bed this morning, and hastily started packing up to head out to the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in nearby Lombard, IL. I spent most of the day there yesterday, catching up with Jason Waltz, Arin Komins, Rich Warren, David Willoughby, Bob Garcia, Doug Ellis, and many other old friends… and more than a few fellow happy buyers and sellers.

I also found more than a few treasures, including a seller in the back with an absolutely gorgeous collection of 1970s and 80s science fiction paperbacks that looked glossy and flawless. He was asking $2 each, in many cases less than the original cover price, so it was like stepping back in time and plucking brand new books by Roger Zelanzy, Sherri Tepper, H. Beam Piper, P.C. Hodgell, Gene Wolfe, and Robert E. Howard off the shelves. I even found a complete set of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence, which Fletcher Vredenburgh enthusiastically wrote up here at Black Gate. I spent a small fortune at that booth alone, and it took a few trips back to the car to carry all my bags.

Windy City has the kind of treasures I cannot find anywhere else, like rare Arkham House collections and early issues of Weird Tales, and even a copy of the first collection by my favorite pulp writer, Edmond Hamilton’s The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror, published in hardcover by Philip Allan in 1936. I’ve only seen one copy in my entire life, and that was at last year’s show, resting on a table among dozens of other near-priceless volumes, like early first editions of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert A Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and lots more (click the image above for a closer look).

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The April Fantasy Magazine Rack

The April Fantasy Magazine Rack

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We had lots of great coverage for magazine fans this month, including Doug Ellis’s look at 1930s-era letters from famed editor and fan Julius Schwartz on A. Merritt, Amazing Stories, and the First Worldcon, and Derek Kunsken’s report on Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine‘s 40th Anniversary Celebration in Manhattan. For vintage magazine fans, we had Rich Horton’s retro-review of the October 1968 Galaxy, and Allen Steele’s new take on the classic pulp hero Captain Future.

We also added no less than three new magazines to our coverage for the first time: 3×3 Illustration, Wired, and the brand new magazine of fantasy, science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and sword & sorcery, Gathering Storm.

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

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Future Treasures: A Tyranny of Queens, Book 2 of The Manifold Worlds, by Foz Meadows

Future Treasures: A Tyranny of Queens, Book 2 of The Manifold Worlds, by Foz Meadows

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An-Accident-of-Stars-medium A Tyranny of Queens-small

Foz Meadows, who’s been nominated for a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, wraps up her 2-volume Portal Fantasy The Manifold Worlds with A Tyranny of Queens, arriving in mass market paperback from Angry Robot next month. When she signed a 2-book deal with Angry Robot in 2015, Foz wrote,

After years of quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) obsessing over magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies, I’m delighted to announce that Angry Robot has decided to enable me in these endeavours. An Accident of Stars is the book I desperately wanted to read, but couldn’t possibly have written, at sixteen – and, as you may have guessed, it features (among a great many other things) magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies. I’m immensely excited to share it with you, and I look forward to collaborating in its production with our glorious Robot Overlords, who only asked in exchange a very small blood sacrifice and part ownership of my soul.

A Tyranny of Queens arrives on May 2.

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