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Author: John ONeill

The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

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Angry Robot is one of the most innovative (and successful) new genre publishing houses in the last decade. Not every aspect of its journey has been equally successful, however. Its Strange Chemistry imprint, launched in 2011 to publish young adult SF and fantasy, shut down in 2014… but not before publishing highly acclaimed new work by Martha Wells, Jonathan L. Howard, and three early novels by Cassandra Rose Clarke: The Assassin’s Curse (2012) and its sequel The Pirate’s Wish (2013), and The Wizard’s Promise (2014). A fourth novel, The Nobleman’s Revenge, the sequel to The Wizard’s Promise, was never published.

Clarke was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for her first novel for adults, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, in 2013, and late last year Saga Press reprinted the book in a new trade paperback edition. Now they’re doing the same with Clarke’s Strange Chemistry novels. The Assassin’s Curse series will be reprinted in a handsome omnibus edition, Magic of Blood and Sea, arriving in hardcover in early February. And The Wizard’s Promise and the previously unpublished The Nobleman’s Revenge will appear in Magic of Wind and Mist in 2018.

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New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

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Lords of Dyscrasia-smallI met Seth Lindberg at the World Fantasy Convention back in October. He co-moderates the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, one of the rare groups that pays a lot of attention to genre magazines, like Cirsova and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He also maintains a fairly active (and excellent) blog — check out his recent reviews of Joe Bonadonna’s Mad Shadows II, and Skelos issue #1.

He’s also an acclaimed S&S author in his own right. Joe Bonadonna wrote a rave review of his first novel Lords of Dyscrasia here at Black Gate last year. Here’s Joe.

Lords of Dyscrasia (an abnormal or disordered state of the body or of a bodily part) is touted as “Graphic Sword and Sorcery,” but to me it has more in common with the dark fantasy of Clark Ashton Smith and the gothic tones of Mervyn Peake’s first two Gormenghast books. There is some nice Lovecraftian shading to this novel, as well, with a touch of Edgar Allen Poe to lend it a feverishness of tone, and even a psychedelic flavor in style.

While Lindberg channels his influences with a deft hand, he has mapped out a beautifully grotesque world that is truly his own unique creation. This book was described to me as being part of the Grimdark subgenre of dark fantasy, and it is indeed a grim, dark tale….

This is a complex and well-written novel, very difficult to describe. The settings and the atmosphere are rich in color and texture, and story’s pace is almost relentless: it rushes along like a bullet train, with very few stops along the way. Although Lysis Endeken is the main character, it is the weird and wonderful Doctor Grave who really rises above all others.

I bought a copy of this novel from Seth at the convention, and I’m glad I did. It’s become the foundation of a popular new S&S series, and the second volume, Spawn of Dyscrasia, was published in 2014.

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Download Some of the Best from Tor.com 2016 For Free Before January 17th!

Download Some of the Best from Tor.com 2016 For Free Before January 17th!

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Every year since 2011 Tor.com, one of the top short fiction markets in the industry, has compiled a collection of some of their finest short fiction into a digital anthology. And this year they’re making the latest edition completely free on their website — but only until January 17th. Act now to grab your free copy today!

We are very excited to offer a free download of the 2016 edition of Some of the Best from Tor.com, an anthology of 25 of our favorite short stories and novelettes from the last year. The ebook edition will be available as a free download here until January 17th, it will also be made available wherever ebooks are sold for the duration of 2017.

Of course, you can always enjoy all of our free weekly short stories by visiting Tor.com’s fiction index.

These stories were acquired and edited for Tor.com by Ellen Datlow, Ann VanderMeer, Carl Engle-Laird, Liz Gorinsky, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Justin Landon, Diana Pho, and Miriam Weinberg. Each story is accompanied by an original illustration.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

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The Casefiles of Mr JG Reeder-smallWordsworth Editions published dozens of titles in their Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural imprint (or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS), featuring classic tales of detection, horror and ghostly doings from Robert E. Howard, Rudyard Kipling, Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, W.F. Harvey, Edith Nesbit, Oliver Onions, E.F. Benson, and many others.

Wordsworth has revamped the entire series (see their website for the dramatic redesign), and they’re letting all the older titles gradually go out of print… which means it’s definitely time to snatch up those I still don’t have. Like The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, an omnibus collection of three pulp-era books by popular British thriller writer Edgar Wallace.

How on earth did you piece together all this? he asked in wonder. Mr Reeder shook his head sadly. I have that perversion, he said. It is a terrible misfortune. I see evil in everything. I have the mind of a criminal.

Let us introduce you to the enigmatic J. G. Reeder, a timid, gentle middle-aged man who carries a furled up umbrella and wears an old-fashioned flat-topped bowler hat. He is one of the great unsung sleuths of mystery fiction, created by the prolific Edgar Wallace, the King of Thrillers. Despite his insignificant appearance, Reeder is a cold and ruthless detective who credits his success to his criminal mind which allows him to solve a series of complex and audacious crimes and outwit the most cunning of villainous masterminds.

This volume is a rich feast for crime fiction fans, containing the first three volumes in the Reeder canon: two novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep; and the classic collection of short stories, The Mind of J. G. Reeder.

Edgar Wallace was an enormously popular mystery and thriller writer of the 20s and 30s. More than 160 films have been based on his work, and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine was a popular digest magazine in the mid-60s. But perhaps his most famous creation was the script for King Kong (1933); he died of complications of diabetes while working on revisions with director Merian C. Cooper.

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Shimmer 35 Now on Sale

Shimmer 35 Now on Sale

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Shimmer Story Tags

Shmmer magazine has one of those Browse Stories by Tag! options at the bottom of their website. Clicking individual tags will take you to all the tales in their inventory with those tags. Some are a little headscratching (What’s the point of the awesome tag? Are some stories not awesome? Or maybe it’s awesome birds?), but overall, I’m enormously pleased to see that the most active tags this month are death ghosts haunted monsters. Shimmer, you’re all right.

Shimmer #35, the latest issue, is cover-dated January 2017, and it comes packed with new fiction by L.M. Davenport, Malon Edwards, Emily Lundgren and Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s been far too long since we’ve covered Shimmer, so let’s get down to it.

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Future Treasures: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

Future Treasures: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

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Six Wakes Mur Lafferty-smallMur Lafferty’s latest novel is a space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer — before they kill again. (On her blog Mur writes, “Clone Murder Mystery in SPACE was a rejected title. Another rejected title was from my friend Alasdair: Murder Space Clone Bastard.”)

James Patrick Kelly writes “This is one of the cleverest and most exciting murder mysteries I have ever read. The confined space of the colony ship Dormire is filled with feisty and memorably strange characters… Lafferty does for clones what Asimov did for robots.” The novel arrives in trade paperback by Orbit at the end of the month.

It was not common to awaken in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood.

At least, Maria Arena had never experienced it. She had no memory of how she died. That was also new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.

Maria’s vat was in the front of six vats, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it could awaken. And Maria wasn’t the only one to die recently…

Mur Lafferty’s most recent series was The Shambling Guide to New York City; she’s also a contributor to the Book Burners serial from Serial Box. She won the 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award for her novel Ghost Train to New Orleans. Our recent coverage of her includes Mur Lafferty on Reading the Classics.

Six Wakes will be published by Orbit on January 31, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

John DeNardo on the Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

John DeNardo on the Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

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We wrap up our look at the best books of 2016 with one final stop: John DeNardo’s annual end-of-the-year project, in which he assembles the most prestigious Best of the Year lists and distills them down into one mega-list of the very best of 2016. He drew from seven Best of the Year lists, produced by:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Publishers Weekly
Washington Post
The Guardian
NPR
Kirkus Reviews

The result is a list of the six most acclaimed SF & Fantasy books of the year (plus thirteen honorable mentions). John’s ultra-list contains no less than three debut novels — including Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit — and a linked collection of stories from Lavie Tidhar, Central Station.

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New Treasures: All-American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade (2000-2010), edited by Mort Castle

New Treasures: All-American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade (2000-2010), edited by Mort Castle

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Mort Castle is the author of seven novels, including the horror novel Cursed Be the Child (1990), and four collections. But his reputation today rests just as much on his considerable accomplishments as an editor, including stints as editor of two magazines (Horror: The Illustrated Book of Fears, and Doorways Magazine), and the 2012 anthology Shadow Show: All New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

More recently, Mort was the editor of the ambitious volume All-American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade (2000-2010), released as a limited edition hardcover from Wicker Park Press in 2013. Independent Legions Publishing has finally released a trade paperback edition of the 412-page volume, which collects the best short horror fiction published by magazines, anthologies, and websites between 2000 and 2010, including tales from Andy Duncan, Tom Monteleone, David Morrell, F. Paul Wilson, Nick Mamatas, Jay Bonansinga, Jack Ketchum, Steve Rasnic Tem, Paul Tremblay, Sarah Langan, and many others. It also includes an introduction and a new Afterword by Mort Castle. It’s an impressive volume that belongs on every serious horror collector’s bookshelf.

All-American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade (2000-2010) was published by Independent Legions Publishing on November 27, 2016. It is 412 pages, priced at $19.90 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition. The cover art and interior illustrations are by Giampaolo Frizzi. Click the covers above for bigger versions.

Ares Magazine 4 Now Available

Ares Magazine 4 Now Available

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ares-4-smallAres magazines, the Kickstarter-funded gaming publication that ships with a complete game in every issue, is now out with its fourth issue. The game this time is Extractors!, a 2-player game of mining and mech combat on a far-distant alien planet, designed by Karoly Szigetvari and Claudio De Pra.

Doriana, a Sol-like star system in the Sagittarius arm. Doriana-5, a medium sized planet barely suitable to life, is inhabited by bipedal intelligent creatures, organized in “hives.” Not as curious as us, their evolution has been slow, but they have now reached a technology level high enough to put a halt on the centuries-aged wars between hives. Dorians became aware that continuing these wars with weapons more and more deadly would lead to mutual extinction….

5 light-years away, the Avronians develop the ability to send non-living materials through space at effective speed faster than light. Carbophosphate composites, the main organic energy source on Avronia, has now become very scarce but, according to recent probe reports, it is common on Doriana-5.

Whilst most of the Avronian masters are still debating the best way to negotiate their energy crisis, groups of desperate peoples decide to send armed forces (huge semi-autonomous machines) to secure large extraction perimeters on Doriana-5….

Extractors! is a two-player game of medium complexity and medium solitaire suitability. One player controls a company of the Dorian Cellular Forces, consisting of Augmented Infantry Sections organized in cells and support vehicles. They face Avronian Machines whose AI is represented by the second player.

As always, there’s more to Ares magazine than just a game. Issue #4 comes packed with loads of original fiction and features.

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Future Treasures: The Weight of the World, Book 2 of the Amaranthine Spectrum, by Tom Toner

Future Treasures: The Weight of the World, Book 2 of the Amaranthine Spectrum, by Tom Toner

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In this business you get used to seeing breathless blurbs on everything, from the latest fat fantasy to the newest stack of midlist paperbacks. But if you’re not completely jaded, you can still detect genuine buzz.

That’s what I’m sensing with the debut novel from Tom Toner, The Promise of the Child, a space opera set in the far-distant 147th Century. Tor.com said it’s “Among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years,” and Adam Roberts called it “Absolutely brilliant… space opera like you’ve never seen it before.” Karl Schroeder proclaimed it “Utterly absorbing; a tremendous adventure… One of the most ambitious and epic-scale pieces of worldbuilding I’ve read,” and Booklist said “This is the kind of novel that could develop a cult following.”

The Promise of the Child was published in hardcover by Night Shade Books in September of 2015, and reprinted in trade paperback last October. On January 24th the second novel in the Amaranthine Spectrum, The Weight of the World, finally arrives in hardcover and digital formats from Night Shade.

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