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Author: John ONeill

Visit a Post-Magical-Apocalypse Paris in the Dominion of the Fallen Trilogy by Aliette de Bodard

Visit a Post-Magical-Apocalypse Paris in the Dominion of the Fallen Trilogy by Aliette de Bodard

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Cover art by Nekro

I missed the final volume of Aliette de Bodard’s epic of a ruined future Paris, The House of Sundering Flames, when it was released last September. But I suppose that’s one of the advantages of a nationwide lockdown… I can catch up on big reading projects.

I think part of the reason I missed it was because de Bodard switched publishers. The House of Shattered Wings and The House of Binding Thorns were both published in hardcover in the US by Ace… but Ace elected not to release the second volume in paperback, and for the third book de Bodard switched to the JABberwocky Literary Agency. JABberwocky kept the same cover artist, which I appreciate, but they don’t have the marketing reach in the US that Ace does.

Nonetheless, the final volume of the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy got a lot of great press. Here’s a snippet from Liz Bourke’s enthusiastic review at Locus.

On the list of books I can’t recommend highly enough: Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Sundering Flames, the latest – and for now final – novel-length instalment in the series… The powerful, magical Houses of de Bodard’s decayed, post-apocalyptic Paris are at peace, at least for now. House Silverspires, once in the first rank of the powerful, is much diminished; House Hawthorn is still strong, but its internal dynamics have changed since the dragon prince Thuan staked his claim on a true partnership… But the peace of Paris is blown apart when an explosion levels House Harrier, one of the more powerful – and more bigoted – Houses. Emmanu­elle, partner and lover of House Silverspires’ head, Selene, is caught in Harrier’s territory, forced to navigate the disaster and a civil war playing out in the ruins…

De Bodard’s prose is precise and elegant, and her characters are compelling and fascinating, even – especially – when they’re making terrible compromises and impossible choices. They’re very human – even the immortal and the dragon prince. Events mount with increasing tension, histories hinted at with terrible implication, until the revela­tions and resolutions of the climax. This is a clever book, and a nuanced one, and to me it feels like a tour-de-force of storytelling. I deeply enjoyed it, and I recommend it highly.

Aliette’s Dominion of the Fallen is the setting for some of her most acclaimed short fiction, including stories collected in In Morningstar’s Shadow and Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship (both published 2015).

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Experience an Epic 4X Game with Heroes of Land, Air & Sea

Experience an Epic 4X Game with Heroes of Land, Air & Sea

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Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea (Gamelyn Games, 2018)

I love elegantly designed games, and games with deep replay value. When I fall in love with a board game, it’s usually because it has simple mechanics, backed up with a rich and creative setting.

But mostly, I fall for games with a cool map.

While I was walking the floor at Gen Con 2019, I wandered into a packed booth where they’d set up several sample boards for the new Heroes of Land, Air & Sea game. Competing booths nearby had open areas with loud demo games underway, but the Gamelyn Games crew instead had simply set up a few mid-game boards, then walked away to allow attendees to gawk as long as they wished.

It worked. Readers, I gawked. This is a huge and beautiful 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate), with a 3D mapboard, gorgeous terrain, dynamic miniatures, and detailed accessories. It’s precisely the kind of colorful and deliciously intriguing play surface that brings gamers from far and wide just to ask, “What the heck is THIS??” Have a look at the set up below and see what you think.

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New Treasures: The Best of Jeffrey Ford

New Treasures: The Best of Jeffrey Ford

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Jeffrey Ford is the author of, wow, a whole bunch of stuff. Including The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Twilight Pariah, and the upcoming Tor.com novella Out of Body. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s won the World Fantasy Award — for the novels The Physiognomy (1998) and The Shadow Year (2009), the collections The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant (2003) and The Drowned Life (2009), and a few others I’m sure I’ve lost track of. His short fiction has won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy, and — for his brilliant tale “Exo-Skeleton Town,” originally published the very first issue of Black Gate magazine — the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.

Jeff’s has written over 130 short stories, gathered in half a dozen fine collections over the past two decades, but he’s never has a Best of. At least he didn’t, until PS Publishing produced the gorgeous artifact you see above: a massive 554-page career retrospective containing 25 reprints selected by Jeff himself, and a brand new tale, “Mr. Sacrobatus.” It also includes author notes on each story, and original sketches and a cover by Jeff’s son Derek Ford.

Copies of this beautiful book are still available, in a limited-run hardcover, but if you want a copy, I suggest you order quickly. Here’s the book description.

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Vintage Treasures: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy by Keith Laumer

Vintage Treasures: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy by Keith Laumer

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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy (Berkley Medallion, 1968). Cover by Richard Powers

Science Fiction comedy isn’t much of a subgenre these days. Well, it never really was, to be truthful. But a few brave souls — Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Harry Harrison, Robert Asprin — made a career of it over the years.

Keith Laumer is one of those who occasionally dabbled in SF comedy, or at least light-hearted fare, with fine results. His satirical tales of Retief the galactic diplomat ran to more than 15 volumes during his lifetime, and many of his short stories showed a humorous bent. His 1968 collection It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy — a riff on the zany and wildly popular United Artists film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), a stable in Saturday afternoon reruns even in the early 70s when I was growing up — collects four long novelettes from Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow, all written between 1963-67, and one tale original to this collection.

Unlike Laumer’s Retief collections, which remained in print for decades, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy came and went without leaving much of a ripple. It has been out of print for over five decades. It still finds favor among modern readers, however. In a fairly typical 4-star review at Goodreads from 2016. Mike S wrote:

A collection of Laumer short stories, typically fast paced, imaginative, witty, gritty, funny… classic Laumer. I liked them all, a couple were really good, one was outstanding.

Although copies are cheap (I acquired mine very inexpensively on eBay), they can be a little tricky to find. A better option may be Eric Flint’s generous 2002 collection from Baen, Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side, which contains three of the stories, and much more, packed into a generous 500-page volume.

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 44 Now Available

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 44 Now Available

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly–Q44

Issue banner by Rengin Tumer

The ancient druids used to use gigantic standing stones to precisely chart the passing of the seasons. Me, I have a more accurate and satisfying method. I rely on the mystical and inexorable cosmic cycle that gives birth to a new issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, every quarter, without fail.

HFQ 44 is a special treat as it contains a complete story by our very own Greg Mele, whose most recent article for Black Gate, an Interview with Christian Cameron, appeared just last week. Tangent Online gives “Heart of Vengeance” a solid thumb’s up, calling it “A dark tale of betrayal and lethal fury, this thoroughly enjoyable story is as much about the power of love and sacrifice as it is the justice of the grave.” For audiobook fans, there’s also a complete reading of the tale by Karen Bovenmeyer.

The issue also contains “The Whispering Healer,” by Larisa Walk (which Tangent calls “full of the unexpected,”) and “Do Not Fear, for the Work Will be Pure,” by Michael Johnston (which “follows the mission of the royal sculptor Deonoro Zayal… [into] the wilds facing down mutated brigands”).

Here’s the complete TOC, with fiction links.

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Future Treasures: Ballistic, Book 2 of The Palladium Wars by Marko Kloos

Future Treasures: Ballistic, Book 2 of The Palladium Wars by Marko Kloos

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Aftershocks and Ballistic, the first books in The Palladium Wars (47North). Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant.

Marko Kloos is the author of six books in the Frontlines military SF series, starting with Terms of Enlistment (2013) and Lines of Departure (2014). His newest series is The Palladium Wars, a space opera trilogy which kicked off with Aftershocks last summer. In a far-ranging interview at The Verge, Kloos laid out the intriguing backdrop.

Aftershocks is set in the aftermath of that massive, system-wide conflict over resources — namely palladium — that saw its instigator, the planet Gretia, endure a major defeat and occupation by its enemies. One of the story’s central characters, Aden Robertson, was on the losing side, and he’s just been released from a POW camp where he’s had to contend with the atrocities that he witnessed during the war. Kloos explains that he wanted to deal with a character who had to come to terms with the collapse of a system he supported for two decades, and “how you find your identity after that.”

Kloos’s own German roots figure into the larger geopolitics of the series. “I totally cribbed from history,” he says. “The aggressors here are basically space Germany. It’s kind of like this cross between the end of World War I and the end of World War II. I kind of mashed it up a bit so that there’s a set of circumstances where it was a war of aggression, and they definitely are the bad guys, but also make the war logically understandable and consistent — a war for resources.”

Booklist called Aftershocks a “fast-moving combination of corporate machinations, police procedural, and interstellar naval combat.” The second volume Ballistic arrives from 47North on May 26, 2020, priced at $24.95 in hardcover, $14.95 in trade paperback, and $4.99 in digital formats. It is 318 pages. The cover was designed by Shasti O’Leary Soudant.

See all our recent Future Treasures here.

New Treasures: Providence by Max Barry

New Treasures: Providence by Max Barry

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Providence Max Barry-smallMax Barry is the author of Lexicon, the tale of a secret war between rival poet factions, which Time called “Unquestionably the year’s smartest thriller;” the New York Times Notable Book Jennifer Government; and Syrup, adapted as a 2013 film starring Amber Heard.

His latest is an interstellar thriller which Publishers Weekly calls “a terrific sci-fi thriller,” and which Paul Di Filippo describes as “a blend of Starship Troopers, UK cult TV show Red Dwarf and the cinematic Alien franchise, with Barry’s own unique slant and voice.” That sounds pretty compelling to me. Here’s an excerpt from Paul’s Locus Online review.

We are in a future era — say, fifty to one hundred years ahead of 2020…  this world has FTL travel, and pretty soon there’s a First Contact. The aliens, eventually dubbed “salamanders,” are inherently and implacably hostile… After witnessing the initial slaughter of kindly human ambassadors, we jump ahead to a time when humanity seems to be winning the war against the salamanders. A fleet of enormous battle-ready starships, the Providence class, has taken the fight to the native territory of the aliens, who seem to occupy not planets, but artificial “hives,” located at various random points in interstellar space. The Providence ships, run by very clever but non-self-aware artificial intelligences, each have a crew of four humans, who are present mainly as operational backups — and also as media-friendly faces for humanity’s self-esteem.

Our focus is on the crew of the newest war vessel: Isiah “Gilly” Gilligan, the techie; Paul Anders, the warrior; Jolene Jackson, the captain; and Talia Beanfield, the life-support expert… However, two years into their intermittently deadly cruise (a section that occupies about the first third of the book, during which we learn all the important parameters of the war and the emotional mechanics of the crew interactions), after effortlessly wiping out all the salamanders they encounter, things start to go wrong. Anders begins to go screwy, as does the ship’s AI. And the salamanders exhibit new refinements of strategy that eventually pose a mortal threat to the crew and their ship. How the humans react in the face of these challenges forms the last two-thirds of the tale…

When the battle klaxon sounds, Barry shifts into suspenseful military-SF mode, delivering tense and suspenseful depictions of warfare. His speculative elements are top-notch, as is his technological gadgetry. And when we eventually get a peek into the salamander home world, his crafting of their ecology and culture surprises and astounds.

Providence was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on March 31, 2020. It is 320 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover artist is uncredited. Read a lengthy excerpt here.

See all our recent coverage of the best new SF and fantasy here.

Claim the Night in Terrors of London from Kolossal Games

Claim the Night in Terrors of London from Kolossal Games

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Terrors of London (Kolossal Games, 2019)

As of today, May 9, Gen Con 2020 is still on. I find it very hard to believe the nation’s situation will change enough in the next 82 days that 60,000 gamers from around the world will feel perfectly relaxed gathering in halls in Indianapolis, packed together like attendees at a rock concert. I’m fairly certain that the powers that be will face reality in the next few weeks, and postpone or cancel the event this year. And if not, I can’t imagine it will be well attended — not nearly enough for it to break even, anyway.

That’s okay, though. I’m still unpacking from last year’s con, sifting through all the great games I picked up, and sorting through the many hundreds of pics I snapped as I wandered the Exhibit Hall. If Gen Con became a once-a-decade event it would still pay off handsomely for me, as I suspect it’ll take at least ten years to track down all the fascinating games I glimpsed during my arduous three-day walk through the giant Hall.

Today I want to take a look at Terrors of London, a competitive fantasy card game from Kolossal Games with a very cool Victorian horror theme. I only got a glance at it during my marathon trek through the Hall, but it stuck out. The component art was fantastic, and the premise — players are arcane Overlords assembling hordes of monsters and undead to secretly tussle for control of the smoke-shrouded city — appealed to me immediately. The whole thing has an Underworld vibe, and I can definitely see a leather-clad Kate Beckinsale fitting right in.

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Vintage Treasures: The Fantastic Imagination Anthologies, edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski

Vintage Treasures: The Fantastic Imagination Anthologies, edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski

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The Fantastic Imagination, volumes I and II (Avon, February 1977 and December 1978).
Cover artist: unknown (left), Elizabeth Malczynski (right)

Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski were quite the dynamic pair in the late 70s and early 80s. They edited five anthologies between 1977-81, all but one paperback originals from Avon, and a sixth a decade later, from Academy Chicago specialty press. All are fine volumes well worth your attention today.

The Fantastic Imagination (1977)
Dark Imaginings (1978)
The Fantastic Imagination II (1978)
The Phoenix Tree (1980)
Visions of Wonder: An Anthology of Christian Fantasy (1981)
Visions & Imaginings: Classic Fantasy Fiction (1992)

It may be giving them too much credit, but for me at least Boyer and Zahorski defined fantasy and its related genres for a generation. With their popular and highly readable paperback anthologies they helped new readers explore Gothic Fantasy (Dark Imaginings), Mythic Fantasy (The Phoenix Tree), and Christian Fantasy (Visions of Wonder).

And with The Fantastic Imagination volumes in particular, they drew clear boundaries around the particular sub-genre that more or less defined English fantasy until Tolkien upended things in the early 20th Century: the fairy-tale, and the High Fantasy genre that grew out of it, rich with fairies, elves, dwarves, kings, queens, and knights.

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Future Treasures: Unreconciled, Book 4 of Donovan by W. Michael Gear

Future Treasures: Unreconciled, Book 4 of Donovan by W. Michael Gear

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The Donovan series: Outpost, Abandoned, Pariah, and the forthcoming Unreconciled. Covers by Steve Stone.

W. Michael Gear knows his way around a science fiction series. He wrote the Way of Spider trilogy in the late 80s, the Forbidden Borders trilogy in the early 90s, and some, what, 20 novels in the First North Americans series, co-written with his wife Kathleen O’Neal Gear? This is a man who knows how to plot for the long haul.

His latest is the Donovan trilogy, which next week turns into the Donovan quartet with the arrival of the fourth novel, Unreconciled. The Dononvan trilogy (er, quartet) is a favorite here in the Black Gate offices. It opened with Outpost in 2018, which Brandon Crilly raved about right here.

I had a blast reading Outpost, the start of W. Michael Gear’s Donovan trilogy… The setting is very Deadwood meets Avatar, set on a frontier colony that hasn’t been resupplied in almost a decade, on a planet filled with bizarre creatures and plants ready to kill the careless or unfortunate. Add in a bunch of new arrivals when the next resupply ship finally shows up, and what you get is an immediate clash of cultures between the freedom-loving colonists and the representatives of the Corporation, which basically runs Earth back home (maybe there’s some Firefly in here, too). Overall, the running idea with a lot of the main characters is the possibility of either losing yourself or remaking yourself in the frontier, with arcs that are diverse and often surprising…

The world-building is amazing, there are echoes of contemporary political and economic conflicts, and an air of mystery that doesn’t take away from a story that feels complete. I really want to find out what’s going to happen on Donovan in Gear’s next book, which is slated for November 2018.

Mystery! Monsters! Freedom-lovin’ colonists! Killer plants! Evil corporations! An alien frontier! This series checks so many boxes it’s ridiculous. I may have to buy it twice.

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