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B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

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Spiderlight Adrian Tchaikovsky-smallOver at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jeff Somers has announced his picks for the most intriguing SF and fantasy books of the month, and it’s a terrific list.

It includes several books we’ve already showcased here at Black Gate — including The Indranan War by K.B. Wagers, The Forgetting Moon, by Brian Lee Durfee, and Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal — plus new books from Beth Cato, N.K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Faith Hunter, and many more.

He also recommends the latest book from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Spiderlight, on sale today from Tor.com Publishing.

Best-known for his remarkable, innovative, and expansive 10-book Shadows of the Apt series, which crafted an epic fantasy landscape modeled on the real-world characteristics of various types of insects, Tchaikovsky delivers this smart, standalone fantasy, which jumps off from what could be viewed as a clichéd and overdone premise: a standard-issue role-playing party (thief, ranger, wizard, cleric, etc.) following the complicated strictures of a prophecy in order to defeat a dark lord — a prophecy that involves stealing a fang from the Spider Queen and forcing her to lead them to his lair. But Tchaikovsky then pivots to introduce the true protagonist: a spider with an unpronounceable name who is transformed into human form to be the party’s guide. From there, the author brilliantly subverts, inverts, and toys with the common tropes of fantasy literature. The end result is one of the most unique and interesting new fantasies of the year.

See the complete list here.

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

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John Langan has had a stellar career. His first collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008) was nominated for a Stoker Award, and his debut novel House of Windows (2010) was warmly received. But it was his second collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus Press, 2013), that really put him on the map, with plenty of folks praising it as one of the best collections of the year.

His second novel The Fisherman has all the markings of a breakout book. A novel of cosmic horror disguised as a tale of outdoor survival, The Fisherman looks like one of the strongest horror novels of the year. Laird Barron calls it “an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs through It… Straight to hell.”

The Fisherman was published by Word Horde — who’ve been doing some exceptional work recently — on June 30, 2016. It is 282 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Albert Bierstadt. Check out the book video and more here.

Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

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Wendy N. Wagner is the Managing Editor for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as an editor for the fabulous Destroy series of anthologies, including Women Destroy Science Fiction, Women Destroy Fantasy, and Queers Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also the author of one previous Pathfinder Tales novel, Skinwalkers.

The sequel to Skinwalkers, Starspawn, will be published next week by Tor Books, and follows the notorious pirate Jendara as she returns to the cold northern isles of her home to settle down and raise her young son. When a mysterious tsunami wracks her island’s shore, she and her fearless crew must sail out to explore the strange island that’s risen from the sea floor. The marketing copy describes the novel as follows:

From Hugo Award winner Wendy N. Wagner comes a sword-swinging adventure in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder meets Lovecraft? That’s definitely worth checking out.

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BookRiot on Seven Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers

BookRiot on Seven Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers

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The-Ghost-Bride-smallLast week I stumbled on a copy of Yangsze Choo’s debut fantasy novel The Ghost Bride in a remainder bin at Barnes & Noble, and snatched it up. I first heard about it in Matthew David Surridge’s review here at Black Gate last year — and more recently, I saw it included in A.J. O’Connell’s entertaining article at BookRiot, 7 Standalone Novels for Fantasy Lovers, published back in March. It’s good to have a highly functional network that alerts you to the best new stuff.

The first thing I did after getting it home was to check the rest of A.J’s list though, to see what else I’ve missed. What’s so great about standalone novels? Here’s A.J. to explain it.

Stand-alone fantasy novels are beautiful things. You read one book, and get one complete story, with all the resolution you need. You can close the book with a satisfying thunk at the end, knowing that the characters have completed their journeys, and that all the ends are more or less tucked in neatly…

For this list, I stuck to two rules. The books had to be published more or less recently (the oldest book here is from 2008), and they had to be true stand-alones, not part of an author’s pre-existing fictional universe; just one perfect bubble of fiction, floating on its own.

Here’s what she said about The Ghost Bride:

Choo’s first novel is about the Chinese tradition of ghost marriage, a tradition in which one (or both) participants are dead. In this novel, the bride in question is Li Lan, a young woman whose family has fallen on hard times. Because her parents’ financial troubles have made it hard for her to find a husband, she is married off to the spirit of a wealthy young man who has recently died, and finds herself suddenly pulled into the world of the afterlife.

A.J. also discusses The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, and several other intriguing titles. Check out the complete list here.

July 2016 Locus Now on Sale

July 2016 Locus Now on Sale

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Locus July 2016-smallThe July 2016 issue of Locus is numbered #666… so naturally it’s the horror issue, with lengthy interviews with Peter Straub and Joe Hill, and a photo story on “Stephen King and George R.R. Martin in Conversation.” The magazine is also packed with the usual reviews, news and features — including a photo spread on the Nebula Awards weekend, held here in Chicago.

But the big news for me was the detailed results of the annual Locus Awards. Amongst all the vote counts for Best Novel, Best Collection, and Best Editor, were the surprising results for Best Magazine. Surprising to me, anyway. 27 magazines were ranked by the readers of Locus; here’s the Top Ten.

  1. Asimov’s SF
  2. Tor.com
  3. Fantasy & Science Fiction
  4. Clarkesworld
  5. File 770
  6. Lightspeed
  7. Analog
  8. Black Gate
  9. Uncanny
  10. Strange Horizons

I was surprised and pleased to see Black Gate ranked above such excellent magazines as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Nightmare, Shimmer, and Weird Tales. I want to thank everyone for their support — believe me, it means a lot.

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Series Fantasy: Swords Versus Tanks by M. Harold Page

Series Fantasy: Swords Versus Tanks by M. Harold Page

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M. Harold Page is Black Gate‘s Thursday afternoon blogger, and one of our most consistently popular contributors. He’s also a noted fantasy novelist in his own right, author of The Sword is Mightier, Blood in the Streets, Marshal Versus the Assassins, and his popular book on writing, Storyteller Tools. But his magnum opus is his five-volume series Swords vs Tanks. I’ve made a couple of efforts at writing a synopsis, and ultimately I think it’s best to let the author explain it himself. Here’s Mr Page:

What did I care about? What did I like? Swords, apparently, and tanks.

It was more than that. I’m fascinated by the medieval mentality, and by — at the other end of history — the emergence of modernity in the 1900s-1930s. Why not, I thought, bang the rocks together? Great idea!

Well it was a great idea. I set out to pen a Baen-style military yarn with time travelling communists clashing with magic-enabled knights… The end result was too short and the story had grown in the telling — shifting from Military to Heroic Fantasy (or was it, Heroic Steampunk?) while exploring themes about Medievalism versus Modernism… I realized that the editors were right: it was too fast paced by modern standards. What I’d written was not really a modern 100 thousand word Fantasy novel. Instead, it was three or four 1970s-style short novels making up a series like the old Michael Morcock yarns I grew up on.

Now, I could have taken each novella and expanded it into a Big Fat Fantasy. However, it worked rather well as an old school series. Doorstop tomes were an artefact of the practicalities of publishing back in the 1980s anyway. There was no literary reason to expand. Why the hell not just chop it up and release it in its natural form? And that, dear reader, is what I did.

Read the complete article, ‘Swords Versus Tanks — What “10 Years in the Making” Means,’ here. Swords Versus Tanks was published by Warrior Metal Tales; all five volumes are now available in digital format for $2.99 each. Click the images above for bigger versions.

New Treasures: Almost Insentient, Almost Divine by D P Watt

New Treasures: Almost Insentient, Almost Divine by D P Watt

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Michael Kelly and his team at Undertow Publications have been getting some long overdue attention recently. Two of their books, V.H. Leslie’s collection Skein and Bone, and Simon Strantzas’s anthology Aickman’s Heir’s, were nominated for the World Fantasy Award this year, and their exemplary anthologies Year’s Best Weird Fantasy, Volumes One and Two, have been heaped with praise.

They continue to produce beautiful and intriguing books. One of their latest is D P Watt’s collection Almost Insentient, Almost Divine. Watt’s previous collections include An Emporium of Automata (2013) and The Phantasmagorical Imperative: and Other Fabrications (2015). I’m not familiar with Watt, but that’s what Undertow is great at — introducing me to overlooked horror and dark fantasy writers who deserve my attention.

The stunning new collection of weird fiction from visionary writer D.P. Watt. The foolish wisdom of forlorn puppets. A diabolical chorus in many voices. Shadowy shapes emerging from the strange blueness. Dreamers of other truths. The delicate craft of filial love. You – and some other you. Creatures in the hedgerows. Cold rime creeping across darkened windows. The numinous night pool. A hive of pain. These and other nightmares await. “DP Watt has real talent. It touches on and reflects the world we know, but as in a glass darkly.” – Reggie Oliver

Almost Insentient, Almost Divine was published by Undertow Publications on May 17, 2016. It is 244 pages, priced at $17.99 in trade paperback and $5.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tran Nguyen.

Future Treasures: The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee

Future Treasures: The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee

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We did a cover reveal for Brian Lee Durfee’s upcoming epic fantasy back in December. But now that the book is on the verge of being published, I wanted to take another peek.

The Forgetting Moon is a debut novel, part of the stellar line from Saga Press, and the opening book in The Five Warrior Angels series. Brian shared his thoughts on the cover with us back in December; click the image above left to check it out. And read the book description by clicking on the image at right.

The Forgetting Moon will be published by Saga Press on August 30, 2016. It is 576 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See Saga Press’ complete catalog here, and our coverage of all the best in upcoming fantasy here.

July 2016 Lightspeed Magazine Now Available

July 2016 Lightspeed Magazine Now Available

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Lightspeed July 2016-smallThe complete July issue of Lightspeed is now yours to enjoy free online. This month brings new fantasy by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and Kenneth Schneyer, and fantasy reprints by A. Merc Rustad and Spencer Ellsworth, plus original science fiction by Ted Kosmatka and Jilly Dreadful, along with SF reprints by Genevieve Valentine and Seth Fried.

In his editorial, editor John Joseph Adams shares some award good news, plus intriguing news about his new book line with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

We’re thrilled to report that Alyssa Wong’s story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” from the Queers Destroy Horror! special issue of Nightmare (Oct. 2015), won the Nebula Award for best short story! Congrats to Alyssa and to all of the other winners. You can find a full list of the winners at SFWA.org/nebula-awards…

John Joseph Adams Books News

In my role as editor of John Joseph Adams Books for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I just acquired two books in a new series by Molly Tanzer (author of Vermilion).

The first book is Creatures of Will and Temper, a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which epee-fencing enthusiast Evadne Gray and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only Evadne’s skill with a blade standing between them and certain death.

Publication of book one will likely happen in late 2017. Can’t wait for you all to read it!

I’m especially intrigued by the Book News. We covered Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion here, and I’m very interested in seeing her latest. John has proved to be an editor with a very keen eye… What other wonders will he offer us through John Joseph Adams Books? I’m looking forward to finding out.

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New Treasures: Time Siege by Wesley Chu

New Treasures: Time Siege by Wesley Chu

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Time Siege Wesley Chu-smallFew writers have the kind of year that Wesley Chu had in 2015. He received a contract to continue his popular Tao series with Angry Robot, announcing that the first book in a related series, The Rise of Io, would be released in 2017. And in August he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. But the big news came in June, when Publishers Weekly revealed that Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights for a feature film franchise based on Chu’s new novel Time Salvager, with Michael Bay attached to direct and Chu set to executive produce.

Details on the film have been sparse ever since — but the praise for Time Salvager, a fast-paced time-travel adventure and the opening volume in a new series, has been plentiful. Publishers Weekly called it “Fascinating… this page-turner is a riveting, gratifying read.” And RT Book Reviews called it “Utterly captivating… to put it simply, Chu’s world-building is extraordinary.” The second volume in the series, Time Siege, was released in hardcover earlier this month by Tor.

Having been haunted by the past and enslaved by the present, James Griffin-Mars is taking control of the future.

Earth is a toxic, sparsely inhabited wasteland — the perfect hiding place for a fugitive ex-chronman to hide from the authorities.

James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James’s mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.

James also has enemies. They include the full military might of benighted solar system ruled by corporate greed and a desperate fear of what James will do next. At the forefront of their efforts to stop him is Kuo, the ruthless security head, who wants James’s head on a pike and will stop at nothing to obtain it.

Time Siege was published by Tor Books on July 12, 2016. It is 431 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Richard Anderson.