John ONeill – Page 384

New Treasures: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Friday, March 14, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Rosamund Hodge’s story “Apotheosis” from Black Gate 15, was a brilliant and wholly original tale of three brothers who undertake a dangerous voyage to find a new god for their small village. She’s also been published in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed Magazine.

Cruel Beauty, her first novel, arrived in January, and has already received wide acclaim. I finally acquired a copy last month and it looks gorgeous. I plan to settle in with it this weekend and find out what just what wonders Rosamund has accomplished with her fairy tale source material.

The romance of Beauty and the Beast meets the adventure of Graceling in a dazzling fantasy novel about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom, Nyx has always known her fate was to marry him, kill him, and free her people from his tyranny.

But on her seventeenth birthday, when she moves into his castle high on the kingdom’s mountaintop, nothing is as she expected — particularly her charming and beguiling new husband.

Nyx knows she must save her homeland at all costs, yet she can’t resist the pull of her sworn enemy — who’s gotten in her way by stealing her heart.

Cruel Beauty was published by Balzer + Bray on January 28, 2014. It is 352 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Rally Your Armies, Dominate Your Foes, and Give a Boatload of Commands in Warmachine: High Command

Thursday, March 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

All right, so five minutes ago I won a copy of Hordes: High Command at the Games Plus Spring Auction and I’m feeling pretty good. Sure, who wouldn’t? Looks like a sweet game and it’s mine, all mine, thanks to my killer auction skills. That’s right.

And then, before I can even enjoy my victory, the auctioneer calls out the next item up for bid: a brand new, still-in-the-shrinkwrap copy of Warmachine: High Command, starting at the low, low opening bid of one dollar.

Wait, what? Is this the same game? Do I need to own this to play the other one? Come on! I still haven’t figured out the game I just bought. This is why I avoid miniature games, damnit! I’ve only owned it for five minutes and it’s already shaking me down for more money.

Take command and muster the military might of an entire nation to conquer the Iron Kingdoms! Warmachine: High Command is a deck-building card game for 2-4 players set in the steam-powered fantasy world of the Iron Kingdoms. This stand-alone game can be played with just the contents of this box or combined with other Warmachine: High Command products for a customizable experience. Leverage your resources, rally your armies, and dominate your foes to set your banner above all of western Immoren! This box contains game rules and 386 cards, including: 89 Cygnar cards 89 Khador cards 89 Protectorate of Menoth cards 89 Cryx cards 15 Winds of War cards 15 Location cards.

Warmachine: High Command was published by Privateer Press on August 28, 2013. Learn more at the website. It retails for $44.99; I won my copy at auction for $17. Reluctantly. I note that I now own two core sets of a collectible miniatures game and somehow I still don’t own any miniatures. God help me, I’m never gonna figure this game out.

Take Command of Mighty Warriors and Beasts in Hordes: High Command, Using Cards or Whatever

Thursday, March 13, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

So I’m sitting in the front row at the Games Plus Spring Auction on Sunday, minding my own business, when the auctioneer holds up a brand new, still-in-the-shrinkwrap, copy of Hordes: High Command and starts the bidding at a dollar.

Now, I have no idea what Hordes: High Command is all about, but the box looks pretty neat, with giant monsters and what-not. Plus, a buck. I’m sitting close enough to read the tag line at the bottom: The Game of Strategic Deck-Building Conquest in the Iron Kingdoms, and I know that promises a lot of, uh, deck-building fun… okay, to be brutally honest, I’m not 100% sure what a “deck building” game is. But you learn the art of the quick decision at auction and my card was in the air pretty much the moment I saw the beautiful babe and the monster on the cover.

Well, I won it. Whatever it is, exactly. It’s apparently a stand-alone game that can be played with just the contents of the box or combined with other Hordes High Command products for a customizable experience. Okay, I copied that sentence from the back of the box. But I think it sounds pretty good. I looked up Hordes on Wikipedia, and it’s a “30mm tabletop miniature wargame produced by Privateer Press… [and] designed as a companion to Warmachine.” Cards and collectible miniatures… we’re moving into a terrifying area for me. Thank God the woman on the cover doesn’t look threatening too or I might wrap this in brown paper and hide it in the basement.

Still, I’ve been mightily impressed by Privateer Press over the last decade, especially their Iron Kingdoms stuff, and Wikipedia assures me the game shares the same setting as the Iron Kingdoms — and also that Hordes won the 2006 Origins Award for Miniatures Game of the Year, which is reassuring. There are plenty of intriguing things about the game (like, how come a miniatures game doesn’t come with any miniatures? What’s up with that?)

I think I might delve deeper into the mystery this week. Hordes: High Command was published by Privateer Press on October 09, 2013. The game includes a set of rules and 386 cards and is priced at $44.99. I won my copy at auction for $12, due to mad auction skillz. Learn more at the website.

The Novels of Michael Shea: Assault on Sunrise

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

We’re back on the record with the fourth installment of our survey of the books of Michael Shea, who passed away last month. This time, we’re looking at his final novel, Assault on Sunrise, the sequel to The Extra and the second book of The Extra Trilogy — which, sadly, will presumably never be completed. As I mentioned last time, I honestly wasn’t sure it was the same Michael Shea when I first saw the cover of The Extra, as it looked more like an urban thriller than the kind of adventure fantasy Michael was famous for. With this volume, all my doubts were swept away. Only Michael Shea could pull off a giant-insect attack with this kind of panache in 2013.

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy has brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which L.A. may be the worst.

Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who — with the help of a couple of very gutsy women — survived being anonymous players in a “live-action” film in which getting killed on-screen meant getting killed for real. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic Hell that L.A. has become. But their survival was not what Panoply Studios’ CEO Val Margolian had in mind, especially since it cost his company millions.

Now he’s taking his revenge. After several plainclothes police are found dead in the former extras’ new home, the bucolic, peaceful town of Sunrise, California, the entire town is subjected to Margolian’s invidious plan to punish the entire town… and make a fortune doing it. Margolian has created toxic, murderous wasp-like mechanical creatures to set upon the people of Sunrise, while his film crew captures the carnage in what promises to be the bloodiest “live-action” film yet. With their haven from L.A. besieged by the deadly assault, the former extras — and their fellow townspeople — are faced with a grim task: to defeat the creatures and take back their town and their freedom. Michael Shea’s Assault on Sunrise is a saga of courage and sacrifice in a world gone mad.

Assault on Sunrise was published August 13, 2013 by Tor Book. It is 287 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. There is no paperback edition. I bought my copy new on Amazon for $3.98 in early March; discounted copies are still relatively plentiful from several sellers.

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Tough Urban Fantasy Women and Cloak-guys, You’ve Overstayed Your Welcome

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 John ONeill Comments 37 comments

Ursula Vernon, the Hugo Award-winning creator of Digger, nicely articulates the tedious sameness of much of modern fantasy, and makes an eloquent call for fresh, rich settings to draw her back into the genre, at her blog Bark Like a Fish, Damnit!

I love fantasy. I love it dearly… and god help me, I am so very sick of nearly all of it… I scan the new book section of Barnes & Noble and go “Cloak-guy, Cloak-guy, Steampunk Guy, Cloak-guy, Tiger, Cloak-guy, John Jude Palencar That I Would Buy A Print Of But Not The Book, Tough Urban Fantasy Woman, Cloak-guy.”

None of it excites me. It’s the setting, I think. Has to be. I picked up The Ghost Bride and read it in two fascinated days. When I discovered Sarah Addison Allen’s magical realism books, I devoured every single one, one after another.

I think I am tired of Fantasyland.

You know where it is. It’s the vague European city and countryside that has no sense of place to it… Perhaps it’s just a call for books to take me someplace that I haven’t been already. Many, many times… I am desperately tired of farmboys in search of their lonely destiny, and if you are going to introduce yourself as a ranger, you goddamn well be putting out fires and fretting over declining woodpecker populations in the next paragraph…

But mostly I just scan over the new releases and feel no desire to read any of them.

I hear this complaint frequently, but I rarely hear it laid at the feet of setting as Ursula does here. And rightly so. (And I’ve never heard of Sarah Addison Allen before, but her novels — including Garden Spells and The Girl Who Chased the Moon — look very intriguing indeed.)

Read the complete post here.

Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, edited by Laird Barron

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

There’s lots of great news in this post. So grab some coffee, find a seat, and pay attention.

A few months back, the folks at Undertow Publications, an imprint of the fabulous ChiZine, launched an Indiegogo funding campaign for a brand new anthology of weird fiction: Year’s Best Weird Fiction. The campaign wrapped up in September and was a rousing success. (Good news!)

In fact, it was successful enough that the anthology is planned to be an annual affair. (Good news!) And as the editor of the first volume, the publishers have selected none other than the talented Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, The Croning, and The Light is the Darkness. (Great news!) Here’s the book description:

Each volume of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction will feature a different guest editor. Along with 125,000 words of the finest strange fiction from the previous year, each volume will include an introduction from the editor, a year in review column, and a short list of other notable stories.

Once the purview of esoteric readers, Weird fiction is enjoying wider popularity. Throughout its storied history there has not been a dedicated volume of the year’s best weird writing. There are a host of authors penning weird and strange tales that defy easy categorization. Tales that slip through genre cracks. A yearly anthology of the best of these writings is long overdue. So . . . welcome to the Year’s Best Weird Fiction.

Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One will be published August 19, 2014 by Undertow Publications. I don’t have a projected page count, but it will cost $17.95 in trade paperback. The cover art is by Santiago Caruso, with design by Vince Haig. Learn more at ChiZine.

Jon Sprunk’s Blood and Iron, Volume One of The Book of the Black Earth, on Sale Today

Tuesday, March 11, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Jon Sprunk’s highly anticipated Blood and Iron, the first book in his new series, The Book of the Black Earth, finally goes on sale today. We gave you the scoop on the book last month; last week Jon peeled back the curtain on the book’s origins in a guest post at Fantastical Imaginations.

The Book of the Black Earth series is set in the same secondary world as my Shadow Saga, but in a different region far to the east of Caim’s adventures. It follows three people as they struggle for freedom in an ancient land called Akeshia, where magic is worshipped and powerful God-Kings (and –Queens) hold the power of life and death over a vast race of people.

Horace is a shipbuilder and sailor who embarks on a Great Crusade for his country, but winds up shipwrecked on the shores of his enemy. Taken captive and made a slave, he discovers a hidden talent for sorcery, and thereby comes of the attention of the local ruling queen. Alyra is a slave. As one of the queen’s handmaidens, she is lovely, intelligent, and obedient. She is also a spy in the service of a foreign government, sent to turn the greedy eyes of the Akeshians away from her homeland. Jirom is a former mercenary turned gladiator. Dragooned into the queen’s army, he joins a group of subversive slaves who crave freedom…

One of the things I really wanted to tackle in this series was an original magic system. I played around with a few concepts until I hit on one that fit my world and my story. It plays on the basic “elemental” magic (earth, air, fire, and water) with a few twists of my own.

Jon Sprunk is the author of the Shadow Saga (Shadow’s Son, Shadow’s Lure, and Shadow’s Master) and a mentor at the Seton Hill University fiction writing program. He is a regular blogger for Black Gate. Blood and Iron was published by Pyr Books on March 11, 2014. It is 445 pages and is available in trade paperback for $18.00 ($11.00 for the digital version). Learn more at Pyr Books or read our exclusive excerpt here.

To Hear the Lamentations of Their Women (at the Auction)

Monday, March 10, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Well, I survived the Spring Auction at Games Plus.

Not just survived, but triumphed. I brought home a fabulous assortment of treasures old and new, including classic titles from Task Force Games, Metagaming, Avalon Hill, FASA, and dozens of others. Overall, I carted home four boxes of games.

Not a bad haul, I happily told Alice. She wasn’t quite as happy as I was. Not only did I go a bit over budget (say, by about three boxes), but I have nowhere to put them. So much negativity and just when I finished crushing my enemies and driving them before me.

Well, I’ll worry about all that later. Right now, I’m enjoying my sweet gaming loot. In the boxes somewhere are copies of Talisman (3rd Edition), TSR’s Top Secret, several Earthdawn supplements, assorted expansions for Fantasy Flight’s Descent, Smallworld, Cutthroat Caverns, and lots more. I even found a reasonably priced copy of Earth Reborn — how lucky was that?

Always a delight to find some items on my want list. But at the moment I’m most intrigued with the surprises — the games I didn’t even know existed until they showed up on the auction block. They include a gorgeous pair of deck building games from Privateer Press, both called High Command for some reason (Hordes: High Command and Warmachine: High Command. Why? Who knows), and the oddity at left: Starship Merchants. One copy came up for auction, and that cover art spoke to me. It said, Take me home. And I said, Yes sir. Ten bucks later, it was mine. Looks like a neato game, too.

Did you know about this game? I didn’t. According to Board Game Geek, Starship Merchants was designed by Joe Huber and Thomas Lehmann, and published by Toy Vault in 2012. New copies retail for $34.99; I bought a slightly used copy in beautiful shape for 10 bucks.

When I have a few minutes, I’ll arrange some of the more interesting titles I brought home in a big pile and take some pics for posterity (like I did last year, the year before, and Spring 2012). But first, I’ll report here on the best surprises. Stay tuned.

The Novels of Michael Shea: The Extra

Monday, March 10, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

We’re continuing our look at the career of Michael Shea, who died last week, leaving behind a legacy of underappreciated novels. We started with his Sword & Sorcery classic Nifft the Lean (1983) and his dark fantasy In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).

Now we turn to something more recent, the first of a pair of novels that Locus Online called “dark, satirical novels about the movie industry.” The Extra arrived unexpectedly in hardcover in 2010, and when I first saw it I remember wondering if this was the same Michael Shea – it looked more like a biotech thriller than the kind of moody, cutting edge fantasy we’d come to expect from him. But, as Locus noted, there was a sharp satirical edge to this novel of a murderous, out-of-control Hollywood:

Producer Val Margolian has found the motherlode of box-office gold with his new “live-death” films whose villains are extremely sophisticated, electronically controlled mechanical monsters. To give these live-action disaster films greater realism, he employs huge casts of extras, in addition to the stars. The large number of extras is important, because very few of them will survive the shoot.

It’s all perfectly legal, with training for the extras and long, detailed contracts indemnifying the film company against liability for the extras’ injury or death. But why would anyone be crazy enough to risk his or her life to be an extra in such a potentially deadly situation?

The extras do it because if they survive they’ll be paid handsomely, and they can make even more if they destroy any of the animatronic monsters trying to stomp, chew, fry, or otherwise kill them. If they earn enough, they can move out of the Zoo — the vast slum that most of L.A. has become. They’re fighting for a chance at a reasonable life. But first, they have to survive…

The Extra was followed three years later by Attack on Sunrise, the second book in the Extra Trilogy. It was also set in a future Southern California, this time featuring a reality TV series based on the invasion of a small bankrupt town by murderous robot wasps. We’ll cover that one in our next installment.

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Future Treasures: Mary Robinette Kowal and Blake Hausladen Read from Upcoming Books at Capricon

Monday, March 10, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Mary Robinette Kowal reads from Valour and Vanity at Capricon 2014 — Mary Robinette Kowal reads from **Valour and Vanity** at Capricon 2014

There are lots of reasons to attend conventions. To meet your favorite authors, to network with fellow writers and editors, to browse in the Dealer’s Room (yeah!), to check out the Art Show, to attend entertaining panels.

But the thing I find most delightful these days is author readings. There’s something about hearing beloved characters brought to life right in front of you by the author herself that’s truly magical. In just the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to attend readings by Peter S. Beagle, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Patty Templeton, C.S.E. Cooney, Martha Wells, Fredric Durbin, and Steven Erikson, among many others.

It’s also a great way to discover new writers. I make it a priority to attend as many readings as I can by writers I’m not familiar with. And let me tell you, that’s really paid off — I’ve discovered some of my favorite new writers because I had an empty 30 minute slot between the Firefly panel and the midnight showing of Destroy All Monsters. Over the decades, that’s included people like Charles Saunders, N. K. Jemisin, Mark Sumner, Bradley Beaulieu, Alex Bledsoe, and — believe it or not — George R.R. Martin.

Take my advice: if you find yourself in a place where professional storytellers are willing to stand before you and entertain you, take advantage of it. You won’t be sorry. You can attend that anime panel next year.

A few weeks ago, I was at Capricon 34 in Wheeling, Illinois, with a few other Black Gate staffers, including Patty Templeton and Steven Silver. We didn’t have a booth — we haven’t bothered with one since the print version of the magazine died in 2011 — and I’m still getting used to being able to wander without being tied to the Dealer’s Room. I didn’t get to attend everything I wanted to — I missed Wesley Chu’s Saturday morning reading because I was mailing back issue orders at the post office — but I did catch some terrific panels. And, not too surprisingly, the most delightful and entertaining events at the convention were three readings, from Hugo-Award Winning author Mary Robinette Kowal, Strange Horizons editor Mary Anne Mohanraj, and self-published writer Blake Hausladen.

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