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Read Jennifer Fallon’s “First Kill” at Tor.com

Read Jennifer Fallon’s “First Kill” at Tor.com

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First Kill Jennifer Fallon-smallLast month I posted a Future Treasures piece about Jennifer Fallon’s new novel The Lyre Thief, the opening volume in a new trilogy, and the first novel set in the world of her popular Hythrun Chronicles in over a decade.

It’s not the only work of fiction set in that world released this year, however. Last month Tor.com published her short story “First Kill,” a brand new tale that uses the same setting. It’s available free online.

How do you kill with honor? When is murder not a murder?

In “First Kill”, assassin Kiam Miar will find out when his first assignment goes awry and he is faced with an ethical choice…as if assassins could have ethics.

And if he makes the wrong choice, he could not only lose his life but throw a good chunk of his world into chaos…

“First Kill” was posted at Tor.com on Jan 26. It was edited by Claire Eddy, and illustrated by Tommy Arnold. It’s available here.

If you enjoy “First Kill,” check out Jennifer’s novel The Lyre Thief, published last week by Tor Books. And see all the latest free fiction at Tor.com, including stories by Brian Staveley, Joe Abercrombie, Matt Wallace, David Nickle, Delia Sherman, and Alyssa Wong, here.

We last covered Tor.com with Michael Swanwick’s “The Night of the Salamander.” For more free fiction, see all of our online magazine coverage here.

Future Treasures: Man With No Name by Laird Barron

Future Treasures: Man With No Name by Laird Barron

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Man With No Name Laird Barron-small Man With No Name Laird Barron-back-small

Laird Barron is one of the modern masters of horror. James McGlothlin reviewed his latest collection for us, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, saying, “Barron is still one of the leading horror voices of today… I highly recommend it!”

Barron’s also been highly prolific, releasing a steady steam of books in the last few years — including first novel The Croning, the novella X’s For Eyes, and the first volume of the new Year’s Best Weird Fiction anthology series from Undertow Publications.

His latest is a promising-looking novella that looks closer to a modern thriller than anything else. Click the back cover above for the book description. The first of the Nanashi Novellas, Man With No Name was called “Bold, complex, and absolutely riveting” by Jonathan Maberry. It arrives this week from JournalStone.

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Gardner Dozois on the New Sword & Sorcery

Gardner Dozois on the New Sword & Sorcery

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Spaghetti western town-smallOn Facebook yesterday editor Gardner Dozois theorized that the essential influence on modern Sword & Sorcery, which differentiates it from the classic pulp S&S of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, may be the Spaghetti Western.

While we’re talking about fantasy, I’ve been reading a lot of what’s being called “the New Sword & Sorcery” lately, stuff by people like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, K.J. Parker, Daniel Abraham, and it struck me what the one essential influence was that aesthetically separates the New Sword & Sorcery from the Old Sword & Sorcery, since both have sword-wielding adventurers, monsters, and evil magicians: it’s the Spaghetti Western. Clearly Spaghetti Westerns have had a big influence on the TONE of this new work. Gone are the gorgeous, jewel-encrusted temples stuffed with huge snakes and giant idols with jeweled eyes and slinky sinister priestesses in jeweled bikinis where Conan used to hang out. Instead, the most common setting seems to be a remote jerkwater village, either parched and sun-blasted or drizzling and half-buried in mud, extremely poor and mean, swarming with flies, packed with venal, dull-eyed, illiterate peasants who are barely smarter than morons, if they are, and who have no power or influence in the wider world, and certainly no money, and who stare blankly and slack-jawed at our heroes as they enter town, either kicking up clouds of dust at every step or splashing muddy water.

You know this place. Think of every degraded village in every Spaghetti Western you’ve ever seen.

Read his comment (and the fascinating discussion thread with folks like Eleanor Arnason, Joe Bonadonna, Scott Oden, Elizabeth Lynn, Christopher Fowler, Darrell Schweitzer, Lisa Tuttle, and others) here.

New Treasures: Warhammer: Lords of the Dead

New Treasures: Warhammer: Lords of the Dead

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Warhammer Lords of the Dead-smallI really enjoy these Warhammer omnibus editions. They’re a tremendous bargain, for one thing. They typically contain 2-3 full length novels, plus the assorted short story or two. I’ve collected more than a few, and while I especially enjoy the science fiction offshoot, Warhammer 40K, the straight-up Warhammer volumes have proven to be a reliable source of modern sword & sorcery, most notably the tales of Gotrek & Felix, C. L. Werner’s Brunner the Bounty Hunter, and Kim Newman’s The Vampire Genevieve.

I’m extremely interested in the new omnibus Lords of the Dead, which includes the first two novels in the End Times series: Chris Wraigh’s The Fall of Altdorf, and The Return of Nagash, by Black Gate blogger Josh Reynolds, author of our popular series on The Nightmare Men. Here’s the description.

The fate of The Old World hangs in the balance. Heroes rise and fall as they battle the Ruinous Powers in a last desperate attempt to save the mortal realm. The Gods of Chaos only want total destruction and their victory seems inevitable……

The Return of Nagash

As the forces of Chaos threaten to drown the world in madness, Mannfred von Carstein and Arkhan the Black put aside their difference and plot to resurrect the one being with the power to stand against the servants of the Ruinous Powers and restore order to the world – the Great Necromancer himself. As they set about gathering artefacts to use in their dark ritual, armies converge on Sylvania, intent on stopping them. But Arkhan and Mannfred are determined to complete their task. No matter the cost, Nagash must rise again.

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March/April Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

March/April Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction March April 2016-smallThe longest story in the March/April issue of F&SF is John P. Murphy’s novella “The Liar,” which editor C.C. Finley introduces with, “If you’ve ever wondered what the result would be like if Garrison Keillor wrote a Stephen King story, then look no further.” In his review at Tangent Online, Jason McGregor writes:

Greg is a “liar,” which is to say someone who can tell broken things they aren’t really broken and, if he’s convincing enough, repair them with an imposition of will alone. When the old sexton can no longer perform his duties, Greg takes over and learns about the town’s secret: every November 5th, a teenager dies. Unraveling this supernatural mystery takes him back to a crashed WWII bomber nearby and another secret. Adding urgency to this fatal problem is that Greg and Pastor Julie have a budding relationship going and Julie has a wayward teenaged daughter…

[Murphy] creates interesting characters steeped in a sense of place (small-town New Hampshire) in which quite a bit does happen and, even when matters aren’t at a peak, I was content to hang out with the folks of the story. The realistic aspects are very well done, the fantasy is deftly woven in (and creative in recasting the essence of the supernatural element), and the horror adds spice.

Jason van Hollander’s cover illustrates Marc Laidlaw’s novelette “The Ghost Penny Post.” Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

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2011 Hugo Award-smallThe top article at Black Gate last month wasn’t even a BG piece, strictly speaking. It was a brief link to Matthew David Surridge’s essay The Great Hugo Wars of 2015, at Splice Today. Based on the overwhelming traffic to that article, and the high number of comments, it seems our readers are still more than casually interested in the Hugo Awards.

Number 2 on the list was M Harold Page’s look at Fool’s Assassin, and How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy Without Being Boring. As always, never underestimate the power of a great title. It was followed by our obituary for BG contributor and author Bud Webster.

Rounding out the Top Five were Matthew Wuertz’s piece on a 60-year old scandal, the Galaxy Science Fiction $6,500 Novel-Writing Sham, and Donald Crankshaw’s review of D. P. Prior’s second self-published fantasy novel Carnifex, the sequel to his popular debut The Nameless Dwarf.

Also in the Top Ten for February were Doug Ellis’ historical essay on the Great Pulp Gathering at Mort Weisinger’s House in 1937, Marie Bilodeau’s review of season one of The Flash, Fletcher Vredenburgh’s detailed look at Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Illearth War, our sneak peek at Salomé Jones’s new anthology Cthulhu Lies Dreaming, and Violette Malan’s look at Agent Carter.

The complete list of Top Articles for February 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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A Tale of Two Covers: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

A Tale of Two Covers: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

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The Last Page Anthony Huso-small The Last Page Anthony Huso paperback-small

I bought the hardcover edition of Anthony Huso’s debut novel The Last Page after reading Matthew David Surridge’s review in Black Gate 12.

The Last Page is a high fantasy steampunk novel, and a love story. We follow the sexually charged relationship between the improbably named Caliph Howl, heir to the throne of the northern country of Stonehold, and a witch named Sena. The two of them meet at university, go their own ways, and then come together again after Caliph has become king and Sena has acquired a vastly powerful magical tome…  what really makes the first book work is its language. The prose is strong, quick and dense in the best ways. The diction, the word choice, is inventive; the imagery is both original and concise. At its best, Huso’s language recalls Wolfe or Vance…

The last time I was in a bookstore I did a double take when I saw the trade paperback edition, which has been given a dramatically different cover. The hardcover edition (above left) was packaged as an urban fantasy, with a beautiful woman with glowing eyes on the cover. The paperback (at right) has been completely redesigned as a fantasy adventure novel, showing a huge fleet of airships massing over a sprawling fantasy landscape. If you’re not paying attention, it’d be pretty easy to mistake it for a completely different book.

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Future Treasures: Harmony House by Nic Sheff

Future Treasures: Harmony House by Nic Sheff

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Harmony House Nic Sheff-smallThe YA dystopian trend doesn’t seem like it will run out of energy too soon. My eyes glaze over these days when I see them at the bookstore.

There’s plenty of original and interesting YA work being produced that don’t involve nightmare dsytopian scenarios, however. Nic Sheff, author of the bestselling memoir Tweak, an account of his teen years as a crystal meth addict, and its follow up We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction, brings us Harmony House, a YA horror novel. It arrives in hardcover from HarperTeen later this month.

Something’s not right in Beach Haven.

Jen Noonan’s father thinks a move to Harmony House is the key to salvation, but to everyone who has lived there before, it is a portal to pure horror.

After her alcoholic mother’s death, Jen’s father cracked. He dragged Jen to a dilapidated old manor on the shore of New Jersey to start their new lives—but Jen can tell that the place has an unhappy history. She can feel it the same way she can feel her anger flowing out of her, affecting the world in strange ways she can’t explain.

But Harmony House is more than just a creepy old estate. It’s got a chilling past — and the more Jen discovers its secrets, the more the house awakens. Visions of a strange boy who lived in the house long ago follow Jen wherever she goes, and her father’s already-fragile sanity disintegrates before her eyes. As the forces in the house join together to terrorize Jen, she must find a way to escape the past she didn’t know was haunting her — and the mysterious and terrible power she didn’t realize she had.

Harmony House will be published by HarperTeen on March 22, 2016. It is 304 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: The Last Girl by Joe Hart

New Treasures: The Last Girl by Joe Hart

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The Last Girl-small The Last Girl back-small

Joe Hart is the author of several horror and thriller novels, including The River Is Dark, Lineage, and Widow Town. His latest is the opening novel in a new post-apocalyptic series in which a mysterious worldwide epidemic dramatically reduces the number of females born, from 50% of births to less than 1 percent. Twenty-five years after the first infection, there’s still no cure, and there are fewer than a thousand woman on the face of the Earth.

The Last Girl tells the tale of Zoey, and a few other surviving women, kept in a research compound desperately searching for the cause of the epidemic. It’s not a life Zoey wants… and when she makes a bid for freedom, she takes the future of mankind into her hands.

The second volume in The Dominion Trilogy, The Final Trade, is scheduled to be released on September 13, 2016. The Last Girl was published by Thomas & Mercer on March 1, 2016. It is 371 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $5.99 for the digital price. The cover was designed by M.S. Corley. Click the images above for bigger versions.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 194 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 194 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 194-smallBeneath Ceaseless Skies has changed up its cover art again. I quite like the new art, “Research Lab” by Sung Choi (see the full piece here), which covers their third Science Fantasy Special Issue.

The March 3rd BCS is a special double-issue featuring a bonus story, a bonus podcast, and a science-fantasy episode of the BCS Audio Vault podcast. It contains original short fiction by Yoon Ha Lee, Cat Rambo, Anaea Lay, and an Audio Vault reprint by Yoon Ha Lee.

“Foxfire, Foxfire” by Yoon Ha Lee
Even in human-shape, I had an excellent sense of smell. I had no difficulty tracking the pilot. She lay on her side in the lee of a chunk of rubble, apparently asleep. The remains of a Brick Ration’s wrapper had been tossed to the side. She had downed all of it, which impressed me. But then, I’d heard that piloting was hungry work.

“Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest” by Cat Rambo
Today her sleeves are sewn with opals and moonstones and within their glimmer here and there on the left sleeve, glitters another precious stone, set in no particular order, random as the stars. Her skirt and bodice are aluminum fish-scales, armored though she expects no fight. Her only weapon is her own considerable wit.

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