John ONeill – Page 343

Future Treasures: When the Heavens Fall by Marc Turner

Wednesday, December 17, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I just received Tor’s Spring 2015 catalog and it’s crammed full of great-looking titles. I’ve only perused about a third, and I’ve already flagged some promising titles. Right at the top of the list is the opening volume in a new epic fantasy series featuring dark gods, necromancy, and a very dangerous book….

If you pick a fight with Shroud, Lord of the Dead, you had better ensure your victory, else death will mark only the beginning of your suffering.

A book giving its wielder power over the dead has been stolen from a fellowship of mages that has kept the powerful relic dormant for centuries. The thief, a crafty, power-hungry necromancer, intends to use the Book of Lost Souls to resurrect an ancient race and challenge Shroud for dominion of the underworld. Shroud counters by sending his most formidable servants to seize the artifact at all cost.

However, the god is not the only one interested in the Book, and a host of other forces converge, drawn by the powerful magic that has been unleashed. Among them is a reluctant Guardian who is commissioned by the Emperor to find the stolen Book, a troubled prince who battles enemies both personal and political, and a young girl of great power, whose past uniquely prepares her for an encounter with Shroud. The greatest threat to each of their quests lies not in the horror of an undead army but in the risk of betrayal from those closest to them. Each of their decisions comes at a personal cost and will not only affect them, but also determine the fate of their entire empire.

The first of an epic swords & sorcery fantasy trilogy for fans of Patrick Rothfuss, Marc Turner’s When the Heavens Fall features gritty characters, deadly magic, and meddlesome gods.

When the Heavens Fall will be published by Tor Books on May 19, 2015. It is 544 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition.

Lawrence Schick on “Dash and Daring Never Go Out of Style”

Tuesday, December 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Lawrence Schick has posted an intriguing article on modern swashbucklers over at The Huffington Post.

I am a connoisseur of old swashbuckling stories, the kind of historical adventure tales that were arguably the western world’s most popular form of fiction in the hundred years from the publication of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe in 1820 to Johnston McCulley’s first Zorro novel in 1919… and I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to go back to the 19th century to find a thrilling swashbuckler. A strong story boldly told never truly goes out of fashion, and there are some excellent novelists working today whose stories hearken back to the old swashbucklers, but whose writing is thoroughly modern.

He points to several recent titles, including William Dietrich’s Ethan Gage books, and a sparkling new translation of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. He also enthusiastically recommends the Outlaw Chronicles by British author Angus Donald:

The titular outlaw in the series is none other than Robin Hood, the original swashbuckler himself… The books in this series are fast-paced, the characters are memorable and well-drawn, and the dialogue is crisp and modern. But Donald’s Robin Hood isn’t Scott’s merry and chivalrous rogue, he’s a much more dangerous man: he’s a charismatic but ruthless renegade knight with a grudge against the aristocracy, and the author’s portrayal of the hard life of a band of medieval outlaws rings true…

The author has done his homework, and his depiction of the bloody work of combat in the 12th century is in equal parts thrilling and horrific. This is solid historical adventure that doesn’t shy away from the nasty realities of life in the Late Middle Ages: Donald tells it as it was.

Lawrence Schick’s most recent post for us was Compiling The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure. Read the complete article at The Huffington Post.

New Treasures: Gifts for the One Who Comes After by Helen Marshall

Tuesday, December 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Recently I’ve talked at length (or “droned on and on,” as a few friendly readers have commented) about wandering through the Dealer’s Room at the World Fantasy Convention and discovering the splendid books produced by many of the most dynamic and exciting small press publishers in the industry, including Valancourt, Hippocampus Press, Chizine, Prime Books, Taychon Press, and many more.

Of course, the Dealer’s Room isn’t the only way to discover fabulous new titles. Another is to talk to your fellow attendees and see what they recommend. Or you can attend the marvelous reading series put on by the convention. Or if you’re very lucky — as I was with Helen Marshall — you can do both. After hearing multiple rave review of her second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After, from panelists, authors, and fellow attendees, I was able to change my schedule at the last minute and slip into Helen’s reading — where I was thoroughly delighted. I dashed down to the Dealer’s Room and bought her book immediately. She is a major new talent, and you should investigate her work as soon as possible. I know I am.

Ghost thumbs. Microscopic dogs. One very sad can of tomato soup.

Helen Marshall’s second fiction collection offers a series of twisted surrealities that explore the legacies we pass on to our children. A son seeks to reconnect with his father through a telescope that sees into the past. A young girl discovers what lies on the other side of her mother’s bellybutton. Death’s wife prepares herself for a very special funeral.

In Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Marshall delivers seventeen tales of love and loss shot through with a profound sense of wonder. Dazzling, disturbing, and deeply moving.

Gifts for the One Who Comes After was published by ChiZine Publications on September 16, 2014. It is 268 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Erik Mohr.

Keep Your Blaster Close: The Many Horrors of Outbreak: Deep Space

Tuesday, December 16, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Being at the Games Plus Fall Auction can be an exhilarating experience. Take my discovery of Outbreak: Deep Space, just as an example.

There I am, sitting in the second row of the auction on October 4th, ninety minutes into the auction, wondering if I’ve blown my budget already. I’ve just made the decision to add up my purchases when the auctioneer holds up a brand new copy of Outbreak: Deep Space and starts the bidding at $5.

What the heck is that?, I think. And then, I have no idea, but it looks fantastic.

I immediately hold up my bidding card. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one to be intrigued by this strange gaming artifact. About a dozen bidders have their cards in the air, and the auctioneer quickly runs the price up to ten bucks. This is how you get in trouble, I remind myself. Bidding like mad on a book when you have absolutely no idea what it is.

But my card stays in the air. The bidding hits 15 bucks, then blows past it. The cards around me are starting to waver and drop.

This thing could be on sale at Amazon for $10. Just because you’ve never seen a copy doesn’t mean it’s hard to find.

But I keep my card in the air. It’s a sharp-looking and professional bound hardcover — my instincts tell me it’s going to cost a lot more than 10 bucks to track down a copy if I miss out on this one. And besides… there’s more going on now than just bargain hunting. It looks like a science fiction horror RPG, and a very professional one. I’m deeply curious and willing to pay more than $15 for the opportunity to find out what it is.

…

Creeping Menace and Midnight Apparitions: The Crimson Blind and Other Stories by H.D. Everett

Monday, December 15, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I haven’t had the opportunity to read much to my kids around the fireplace this holiday season, as suggested by Thomas Parker in his BG article Ghost Stories for Christmas.

But I have been sneaking a peek at my collection of Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural (or TOMAToS, for short) myself. As I’ve observed before, it’s the perfect line of books if you’re looking for great Victorian horror tales — and Thomas is right that cold wintry nights are the perfect time to be settling down under a blanket with a book of ghost stories.

One thing I appreciate about the Wordsworth TOMAToS books is that they’ve introduced me to several authors I likely would never have discovered on my own. M.R James, William Hope Hodgson, Wilkie Collins, Edith Nesbit… I was certainly familiar with their work. But Henry S. Whitehead? William Fryer Harvey? May Sinclair? I would not have discovered them if Wordsworth hadn’t made collections of their work available in an inexpensive and attractive format as part of the Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural. H.D. Everett is another fine example. Here’s the back cover blurb from her collection The Crimson Blind and Other Stories.

Mrs H.D. Everett was the last in a long line of gifted Victorian novelists who knew how to grip the reader through the invasion of everyday life by the abnormal and dramatic, leaving the facts to produce their special thrills without piling on the agony. “I always know,” says one of her characters, “how to distinguish a true ghost story from a faked one. The true ghost story never has any point and the faked one dare not leave it out.” From the chilling horror of “The Death Mask” to the shocking violence of “The Crimson Blind,” from the creeping menace of “Parson Clench” to the mounting suspense of “The Pipers of Mallory,” these thrilling stories were enthusiastically received by readers and critics when they first appeared, and are sure to delight and terrify the modern reader in equal measure. With their haunting influences, their permeating scents, their midnight apparitions and unexplained sounds, they plunge us, along with the hero or heroine, into a state of increasing nervous excitement.

…

Vintage Treasures: The White Bird of Kinship Trilogy by Richard Cowper

Sunday, December 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

A lot of people were talking about Richard Cowper’s The Road to Corlay just as I was discovering fantasy in the late 70s. It appeared in the UK in 1978, and was published in paperback in the US by Pocket Books in 1979, with a striking cover by Don Maitz (above left). It was nominated for the British Fantasy Award in 1979, and both the Nebula and Balrog awards in the US a year later. It also placed 7th on Locus’s annual lists for Best SF novel.

I wasn’t even aware it was a series until many years later, as I gradually stumbled on the sequels. Volume two, A Dream of Kinship, was published in 1981, and A Tapestry of Time followed in 1982. The cover artist of the second volume is unknown, but Don Maitz returned for the third book (above right). Click on any of the images for bigger versions.

Richard Cowper was a pen name for John Middleton Murry, Jr, a UK author who died in 2002 — of a broken heart, according to his friend Christopher Priest, following the death of his wife Ruth four weeks earlier. He wrote several other SF and fantasy novels, the most famous of which was probably The Twilight of Briareus (1974); his other titles included Clone (1972), Time Out of Mind (1973), Worlds Apart (1974), and Profundis (1979) (see our coverage of his other US releases here). I found the complete trilogy in the estate of my sister-in-law Mary, who passed away in May, and brought it home with me to read for the first time. We shared an interest in SF and fantasy, and these books remind me of her.

Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Best New Horror

Saturday, December 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

25th-anniversay-edition-best-new-horror-1-small

25th-anniversay-edition-best-new-horror-2-small

Stephen Jones has been editing an annual Best New Horror collection since 1990. The first five volumes were co-edited with Ramsey Campbell; since 1995 Jones has edited them solo. The 25th volume, now retitled The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 25, was published by Robinson back in October.

Now PS Publishing is celebrating 25 years of Best New Horror by re-releasing the first two volumes in this groundbreaking series, with brand new comic-inspired covers by Lee Elias and Ken Bald. The first volume won both the 1991 British Fantasy Award and the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. They contain short fiction by Robert R. McCammon, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner, Peter Straub, K.W. Jetter, Jonathan Carroll, Ian R. MacLeod, Kim Newman, Gene Wolfe, and dozens of others.

The 25th Anniversary Edition of Best New Horror volumes 1 and 2 were edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell and published in trade paperback in September and October of this year. They are priced at £11.99 and £12.99 respectively. Get more information, including the complete table of contents and snaps of the gorgeous wraparound covers, at the PS Publishing website here and here.

New Treasures: The Shotgun Arcana by R. S. Belcher

Saturday, December 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

We covered R.S. Belcher’s first Golgotha novel, The Six-Gun Tarot, in April, as part of my review of the current crop of Weird Westerns. Now Belcher returns to the bustling frontier town of Golgotha, Nevada, a place that hides more than its fair share of unnatural secrets, in The Shotgun Arcana.

Don’t know much about this R. S. Belcher fellow. He doesn’t have a website, and his only other publications are two short stories that appeared in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 9 and Deep Cuts. A background check on the Black Gate supercomputer reveals that he runs Cosmic Castle, a comic book shop in Roanoke, Virginia, and that Tor.com interviewed him in October. That’s enough to make him alright in our book.

1870. A haven for the blessed and the damned, including a fallen angel, a mad scientist, a pirate queen, and a deputy who is kin to coyotes, Golgotha has come through many nightmarish trials, but now an army of thirty-two outlaws, lunatics, serial killers, and cannibals are converging on the town, drawn by a grisly relic that dates back to the Donner Party… and the dawn of humanity.

Sheriff Jon Highfather and his deputies already have their hands full dealing with train robbers, a mysterious series of brutal murders, and the usual outbreaks of weirdness. But with thirty-two of the most vicious killers on Earth riding into Golgotha in just a few day’s time, the town and its people will be tested as never before — and some of them will never be the same.

The Shotgun Arcana was published by Tor Books on October 7, 2014. It is 400 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The deliciously creepy cover is by Raymond Swanland.

C. S. E. Cooney Joins Uncanny Magazine as a Podcast Reader

Friday, December 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

The brand new fantasy magazine Uncanny — which we discussed excitedly last month when its first issue went on sale — has shown uncanny good sense by hiring our very own C.S.E. Cooney as a podcast reader. Here’s a bit cribbed from the press release:

Uncanny Magazine is thrilled to announce that the marvelous C.S.E. Cooney has agreed to join us as the second reader on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast! Ms. Cooney is a Rhode Island writer and actor… She loves to read aloud to anyone who will sit still long enough to listen. Some of her narration work can be found on Podcastle and Tales to Terrify. With her fellow artists in the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, C. S. E. Cooney appears at conventions and other venues, singing from their growing collection of Distant Star Ballads, dramatizing fiction, and performing such story-poems as “The Sea King’s Second Bride,” for which she won the Rhysling Award in 2011.

Ms. Cooney will make her debut as an Uncanny Magazine Podcast reader in Episode 3 this January.

So much exciting C.S.E. Cooney news! Just last month, we reported on Amal El-Mohtar’s review of her short story “Witch, Beast, Saint,” and our roving reporter Mark Rigney interviewed her in late October. The two C.S.E. Cooney short stories we published here at Black Gate, “Godmother Lizard” and “Life on the Sun,” consistently rank among the most popular pieces we’ve ever published. Her most recent blog post for us was Book Pairings: Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells and Royal Airs, published last Sunday. She is a past website editor of Black Gate, and the author of How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes and Jack o’ the Hills.

In other C.S.E. Cooney news, today is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Claire!!

Amazon Announces its Top-Selling Books of 2014

Friday, December 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Amazon.com has announced its top-selling books of 2014, and the list includes half a dozen fantasy novels.

This isn’t a truly definitive breakdown of top sellers for the year, since it’s just from one bookseller (as powerful as Amazon may be). Also, 2014 isn’t even over yet, fer cryin’ out loud.

Still, it’s an interesting list, with plenty on it for fantasy fans — including several popular series (The Heroes of Olympus, The Mortal Instruments, and two Outlander books, just to name a few), and a standalone novel from Stephen King. The most surprising thing about the list, however, is that Amazon claims that Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the only title on the list to sell more copies in print than for the Kindle.

Here’s the complete list.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
Gray Mountain by John Grisham
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Twenty Seconds Ago by Lee Child (Jack Reacher No. 19)
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
The Target by David Baldacci (Will Robie series)
The Fixed Trilogy by Laurelin Paige
The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan (The Heroes of Olympus, Book Five)
…

Read More Read More

Black Gate

Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Browsed by
Author: John ONeill