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New Treasures: The Recoletta Novels by Carrie Patel

New Treasures: The Recoletta Novels by Carrie Patel

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The Buried Life-small Cities and Thrones-small

I’m a sucker for a great fantasy setting. Plot, character, sparkling prose… these all appeal to me as much as the next guy. But give me a fresh, innovative setting, and you’ve got my attention from page one.

One of the most intriguing and innovative settings I’ve come across recently is the fantastical, gaslit underground city of Recoletta, where mankind huddles after a mysterious apocalypse, and whose true origins are shrouded in mystery. It is the setting for two novels (so far) from debut author Carrie Patel: The Buried Life and Cities and Thrones, both published this year by Angry Robot. Here’s a brief bit of enticing description from the starred review at Publishers Weekly:

With Regency-era sensibilities and Agatha Christie’s flair for the subtle conundrum, Patel’s debut novel introduces readers to a subterranean city of the future, centuries after what is dubbed ‘The Catastrophe’, and beautifully manages the delicate balance between entertainment and social commentary. The subtly fantastical story is resplendent with surprisingly deep villains, political corruption, and a gripping whodunit feel.

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Shimmer 26 Now on Sale

Shimmer 26 Now on Sale

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Shimmer 26 July 2015-smallShimmer #26, cover-dated July 2015, offers four new stories. Two are currently available on the website; the last two will be available in August.

“The Star Maiden,” Roshani Chokshi
A star maiden is not an actual star. If you split her open, you will find neither crumbled moons nor milky pearls. A star maiden is a sliver of heaven made flesh. She is an orphaned moonbeam clinging to one possession only: A dress.

“The Last Dinosaur,” Lavie Tidhar
As Mina drove, a hush fell over the city, gradually, in tiers, and the white fluffy clouds in the sky above London parted gently to open up a riverful of blue. It was a beautiful day for a ride. She hummed to herself, an old song, and her fingers tapped rhythm on the steering wheel.

“Serein,” Cat Hellisen (available 8/4)
I’ve imagined it endlessly: what Claire must have thought as she packed her bag. How leaving is easy, even if you lie and say oh god it’s hard it’s hard it’s hard. Make a clean break, leave everything, let loose your claim to possession: this is my house, this is my bed, these are my albums not shelved alphabetically because I tried and never could keep the world orderly, this is my little library built out of gifts and second-hand forgotten paperbacks.

“States of Emergency,” Erica L. Satifka (available 8/18)
In a no-tell motel just outside Billings, the psychotic cattle rancher known as Paranoid Jack freezes when he sees the baby-blue eyeball glowering at him from the mouthpiece of the Bakelite phone.

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See the Table of Contents for Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, edited by Dominik Parisien

See the Table of Contents for Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction, edited by Dominik Parisien

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Dead North Canadian Zombie Fiction-smallEditor Dominik Parisien has just announced the Table of Contents for his upcoming anthology Clockwork Canada, to be published by Exile Editions, a Canadian small press, next year.

Exile began publishing Canadian genre anthologies in 2013; so far they’ve published Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction (edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia), Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse (edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia), and New Canadian Noir (edited by Claude Lalumière and David Nickle). They are currently reading submissions for a fifth anthology: Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories, edited by Kelsi Morris and Kaitlin Tremblay.

Here’s the description:

Clockwork Canada runs the gamut of steampunk, showcasing a wide variety of genre elements, from purely technological contraptions to combinations of the mechanical and magical. The stories in the anthology reimagine important Canadian historical events, provide us with alternate Canadas, and gather inspiration from the Canadian landscape to make us wonder: what if history had gone a different way?

Clockwork Canada will contain fifteen stories; all are steampunk, and all are set in Canada. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Wickedness of Old: Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, edited by Brian M. Sammons

Wickedness of Old: Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, edited by Brian M. Sammons

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Tales of Cthulhu Invictus-smallCthulhu Invictus, the popular 2009 Call of Cthulhu sourcebook from Chaosium, allows players to partake in mythos adventures in the hills and streets of ancient Rome. It was at least partially inspired by one of Lovecraft’s most famous dreams, described in a letter to Donald Wandrei dated Thursday, November 3, 1927. The letter survives (and the relevant fragment, now titled “The Very Old Folk,” is posted online here), and it relates an exceptionally vivid nightmare in which Lovecraft dreamt  he was an ancient Roman named Lucius Caelius Rufus, investigating a terrible Iberian hill tribe.

He had killed himself when the horses screamed… He, who had been born and lived all his life in that region, and knew what men whispered about the hills. All the torches now began to dim, and the cries of frightened legionaries mingled with the unceasing screams of the tethered horses. The air grew perceptibly colder, more suddenly so than is usual at November’s brink, and seemed stirred by terrible undulations which I could not help connecting with the beating of huge wings…

Above the nighted screaming of men and horses that dæmonic drumming rose to louder pitch, whilst an ice-cold wind of shocking sentience and deliberateness swept down from those forbidden heights and coiled about each man separately, till all the cohort was struggling and screaming in the dark… Only old Scribonius Libo seemed resigned. He uttered words amidst the screaming, and they echo still in my ears… “Wickedness of old… it is wickedness of old…”

Tales of Cthulhu Invictus is an original anthology of Cthulhu Mythos fiction set in Ancient Rome, the setting of Cthulhu Invictus. It was funded as a stretch goal as part of a successful Kickstarter for De Horrore Cosmico. It is due to be published any day now by Golden Goblin Press.

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Vintage Treasures: The Torin Trilogy by Cherry Wilder

Vintage Treasures: The Torin Trilogy by Cherry Wilder

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Cherry Wilder The Luck of Brin's Five-small Cherry Wilder The Nearest Fire-small Cherry Wilder The Tapestry Warriors-small

Cherry Wilder had a relatively short career as fantasy writers go. Her first novel was The Luck of Brin’s Five (1977), which won the 1978 Ditmar Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel, and was the first novel in The Torin Trilogy. She produced two other series, The Rulers of Hylor (four novels, published between 1984 and 2004) and two novels in the Rhomary Land series (in 1986 and 1996), several short stores, and that was it. She died in 2002.

Still, she is very fondly remembered as one of the shining lights of 80s fantasy. Although The Torin Trilogy has all the trappings of fantasy — including sorcerers, far-flung kingdoms, and mystical powers — at heart it’s actually science fiction. It’s the tale of Scott Gale, a space traveler from Earth who finds himself shipwrecked on the world of Torin, where he’s accepted as a family member by Brin’s Five. Before long he finds himself embroiled in a desperate battle against the feared man who rules much of the land, Strangler Tiath Pentroy.

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New Treasures: No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill

New Treasures: No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill

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No One Gets Out Alive-smallBritish horror writer Adam Nevill has been winning over fans here in the US, with books like Last Days and The House of Small Shadows (which Goth Chick reviewed for us here). His latest novel, No One Gets Out Alive, looks like it will continue that trend nicely. It was recently released in hardcover by St. Martin’s Press, and has just been nominated for a 2015 British Fantasy Award.

When Stephanie moves to the notoriously cheap Perry Bar neighborhood of Birmingham, she’s just happy to find an affordable room for rent that’s large enough not to deserve her previous room’s nickname, “the cell.” The eccentric — albeit slightly overly-friendly — landlord seems nice and welcoming enough, the ceilings are high, and all of the other tenants are also girls. Things aren’t great, but they’re stable. Or at least that’s what she tells herself when she impulsively hands over enough money to cover the first month’s rent and decides to give it a go.

But soon after she becomes uneasy about her rash decision. She hears things in the night. Feels them. Things… or people… who aren’t there in the light. Who couldn’t be there, because after-all, her door is locked every night, and the key is still in place in the morning. Concern soon turns to terror when the voices she hears and presence she feels each night become hostile. It’s clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever’s going on in the house finds her first.

No One Gets Out Alive was published by St. Martin’s Press on April 28. It is 640 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

NK Jemisin Profiled at The Guardian

NK Jemisin Profiled at The Guardian

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NK JemisinNK Jemisin is one of the finest new writers to arrive on the fantasy scene in the last decade. Her new novel The Fifth Season will be published by Orbit next month, and yesterday the UK newspaper The Guardian posted an intriguing profile and interview with the author, in which she addresses, among other things, the ongoing Sad Puppy debate.

Jemisin is on the phone from her not-very-epic day job as a university administrator in New York. When she gets off the phone, she says, she’s going to bike to a coffee shop to write her thousand words for the day, a pace that allows her to finish about a novel a year…

“As a black woman,” Jemisin tells me, “I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful, the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change. With epic fantasy there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative, in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack…”

Earlier this year, a number of writers and sci-fi industry insiders began to organise and protest against the fact that nominees for the Hugo awards have become substantially less white and less male… Jemisin is obviously no fan of the Puppies, but she sees a positive side effect from their crusade. “What I find heartening,” she said, “is the sheer amount of laughter the Puppies are engendering as they demand that what they call ‘affirmative action’ works no longer be considered, but really at the same time, they’re putting only their own friends on the ballot. So they’re actually asking for their form of affirmative action to replace what they think of as affirmative action. And everyone is realising it. People are looking at these authors [like Vox Day and Puppies leader Brad Torgerson], who they once took seriously, and now just pointing and laughing.”

Read the complete article here.

Black Static #47 Now on Sale

Black Static #47 Now on Sale

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Black Static 47-smallI’m going to have to find a more reliable source for my newsstand copies of Black Static. It takes a little effort to find a copy on the shelves here in Chicago — but that effort is definitely worth it.

Issue #47 is cover-dated July/August, and contains six stories:

“On the Road with the American Dead” by James Van Pelt
“All the Day You’ll Have Good Luck” by Kate Jonez
“Razorshins” by John Connolly
“The Devil’s Hands” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“When the Devil’s Driving” by Ray Cluley
“A Case Study in Natural Selection and How it Applies to Love” by Eric J. Guignard

The magazine’s regular columns include Coffinmaker’s Blues by Stephen Volk and Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker.

The magazine also offers two terrific review columns: Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); and Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews). I’m not sure why so many other magazines have a hard time doing highly visual review columns, with book covers, movie stills, and behind-the-scenes pics. Just open up a single issue of Black Static (or its sister magazine, Interzone), and you’ll see how it’s done.

Issue 47 is nearly 100 pages and comes packed with new dark fantasy and horror, and top-notch art. The front and back cover art is by Richard Wagner.

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The Future of Fantasy: The Best New Releases in July

The Future of Fantasy: The Best New Releases in July

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Bone-Swans-CSE-Cooney-small Last First Snow-small The-Great-Bazaar-and-Brayans-Gold-small

We’re more than three quarters of the way through July, and I’ve barely scratched the surface on the 30 new books we covered in The Best New Releases in June. If I want to get caught up, I’ll have to cut back on late-night superhero movie marathons with my kids (and probably sleeping, and eating.)

July’s crop of new fantasy releases includes some terrific work from C.S.E. Cooney. Peter V. Brett, Max Gladstone, Wesley Chu, Lou Anders, Melinda Snodgrass, Victor Milan, Chris Willrich, Elizabeth Bear, Nnedi Okorafor, D.B. Jackson, and many others. There are 33 in the list this month, so let’s get started.

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Future Treasures: Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick

Future Treasures: Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick

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Chasing the Phoenix Michael Swanwick-smallMichael Swanwick’s Darger and Surplus stories, featuring a con-man and a genetically engineering talking dog, began with the Hugo-award winning short story “The Dog Said Bow-Wow” in 2002. Since then there have been many additional tales of adventure featuring the two, including the 2002 Hugo nominee “The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport,” and the 2011 novel Dancing with Bears (which finished sixth in the 2012 Locus Poll for Best SF Novel).

Swanwick’s latest novel, Chasing the Phoenix, finds our two con-men/heroes in post-collapse China, in the middle of a brand new con… one that quickly spirals beyond their control, and soon attracts the kind of attention they’d much rather avoid.

In the distant future, Surplus arrives in China dressed as a Mongolian shaman, leading a yak which carries the corpse of his friend, Darger. The old high-tech world has long since collapsed, and the artificial intelligences that ran it are outlawed and destroyed. Or so it seems.

Darger and Surplus, a human and a genetically engineered dog with human intelligence who walks upright, are a pair of con men and the heroes of a series of prior Swanwick stories. They travel to what was was once China and invent a scam to become rich and powerful. Pretending to have limited super-powers, they aid an ambitious local warlord who dreams of conquest and once again reuniting China under one ruler. And, against all odds, it begins to work, but it seems as if there are other forces at work behind the scenes…

Chasing the Phoenix will be published by Tor Books on August 11, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital version.