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Future Treasures: The Name of All Things by Jenn Lyons

Future Treasures: The Name of All Things by Jenn Lyons

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You can learn a lot about the publishing industry by watching what they spend money on. And this year Tor is spending a lot of money and energy promoting the debut fantasy novel by Jenn Lyons, The Ruin of Kings, released this February, and its sequel, The Name of All Things, due in bookstores in three weeks.

It seems to have paid off. The Ruin of Kings scored a rare quadruple crown, with starred reviews from Library Journal (“Stunning”), Booklist (“Dazzling”), Publishers Weekly (“intricate epic fantasy”) and Kirkus Reviews (“Un-put-down-able”). Kirkus calls the new installment “top-notch adventure fantasy written for a 21st-century audience.” Here’s the description.

You can have everything you want if you sacrifice everything you believe.

Kihrin D’Mon is a wanted man. Since he destroyed the Stone of Shackles and set demons free across Quur, he has been on the run from the wrath of an entire empire. His attempt to escape brings him into the path of Janel Theranon, a mysterious Joratese woman who claims to know Kihrin.

Janel’s plea for help pits Kihrin against all manner of dangers: a secret rebellion, a dragon capable of destroying an entire city, and Kihrin’s old enemy, the wizard Relos Var. Janel believes that Relos Var possesses one of the most powerful artifacts in the world― the Cornerstone called the Name of All Things. And if Janel is right, then there may be nothing in the world that can stop Relos Var from getting what he wants.

And what he wants is Kihrin D’Mon.

The Name of All Things is Book 2 of A Chorus of Dragons. On her website Lyons says that, if everything goes according to plan, “Tor will be releasing a book in the series every nine months or so. Two this year, one next year, two the year after that.” That’s a grueling publication schedule, but it should keep fans happy. The Name of All Things will be published by Tor on October 29, 2019. It is 587 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Lars Grant-West. Read a lengthy excerpt at Tor.com.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, by Wayne Barlowe

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, by Wayne Barlowe

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Cover by Wayne Barlowe
Cover by Wayne Barlowe

The Locus Awards were established in 1972 and presented by Locus Magazine based on a poll of its readers. In more recent years, the poll has been opened up to on-line readers, although subscribers’ votes have been given extra weight. At various times the award has been presented at Westercon and, more recently, at a weekend sponsored by Locus at the Science Fiction Museum (now MoPop) in Seattle. The Best Art or Illustrated Book Award was only given in two years, 1979 and 1980 and was won by Ian Summers for Tomorrow and Beyond. In 1994, Locus introduced the Best Art Book Award, which was won by Michael Whelan for The Art of Michael Whelan: Scenes/Vision. The category has been dominated by the Spectrum series, which has won in all except six subsequent years. In 1980. The Locus Poll received 854 responses.

Wayne Douglas Barlowe and Ian Summers have created a catalog of aliens as described in numerous works of science fiction, by authors as diverse as Larry Niven, Ursula Le Guin, and Jack Vance. Each alien is according a two page spread in which the author and artist provide the name of the alien’s race, the author who created them and the work in which they appear and a full page image of the creature. The aliens are also described and frequently Barlowe has illustrated details of their hands, textures, or other things that make each race unique.

The book includes a fold-out centerfold that shows 48 of the aliens more or less at their relative sizes, from the wormlike Mesklinites from Hal Clement’s novel Mission to Gravity to Jack Williamson’s jellyfish-like Medusians from The Legion of Space. Summers admits that in many cases the size comparisons are approximate since the authors often just gave hints about an alien’s size relative to humans, who are also included in the comparison chart.

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Vintage Treasures: Through the Heart by Richard Grant

Vintage Treasures: Through the Heart by Richard Grant

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Through the Heart (Bantam Spectra, 1992). Cover by Wil Cormier

When I think of Richard Grant I usually think of his high-profile 80s novels, his Philip K. Dick Award-nominated debut Saraband of Lost Time (1985), the minor classic Rumors of Spring (1986), and the post-holocaust Views from the Oldest House (1989). The last two were published by Bantam Spectra and went a long way towards cementing Grant’s reputation as a modern fantasy master.

So I was surprised to discover a Grant novel I’d never heard of on eBay a while back. I was even more surprised to discover it’s perhaps his most acclaimed book — his only novel to win a major award, the Philip K. Dick (beating out Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty, and Æstival Tide by Elizabeth Hand, whom he was living with at the time). I bought it immediately — for a measly $2.50 — and it arrived last month, and it’s been pulsing powerfully on my TBR pile ever since. Despite being perhaps his most celebrated work, it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact with readers, vanishing pretty much without a trace. It had a single paperback edition in 1992, and that was it. No reprints; not even a digital edition. I couldn’t find a single real review online. Though I did come across this brief Goodreads review (by Nicholas Barone) that summarizes it nicely, comparing it to A Canticle for Leibowitz and Christopher Priest’s The Inverted World.

This well written book tells the story of Kem, a young nomadic boy in a dystopian future. He is traded to a place called the Oasis by his father in exchange for tools and supplies needed for the further survival of his family. The Oasis is a vast machine – a town on treads – that travels across the wastes on a yearly cycle, trading with the remnants of humanity as it goes.

As Kem investigates his new home, he begins to wonder and worry at the puzzle that is the Oasis’ reason for existing, as well as the meaning of his own existence.

The book reminded me at times of Christopher Priest’s classic The Inverted World and at other times of Walter Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. As I neared the end of the novel I found myself pulled more and more into the story – eager to finally piece together the puzzles uncovered by Kem in his tale. Some puzzles were solved, some were left unanswered, leaving the reader to ponder them on his own.

Through the Heart is something of a literary mystery… and I love a good literary mystery. I’ll give it a try this weekend.

Through the Heart was published by Bantam Spectra in January 1992. It is 376 pages, priced at $5.99 in paperback. There is no digital edition. The cover is by Wil Cormier. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

Mind-blowing in the Best Science-fictional Tradition: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Mind-blowing in the Best Science-fictional Tradition: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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This Is How You Lose the Time War-smallAt Wiscon in 2017 I was lucky enough to be in the audience when Guest of Honor (and Black Gate blogger emeritus) Amal El-Mohtar and author Max Gladstone conducted a joint reading of a project they’d been working on together. Here’s how I described it in my convention report for Black Gate.

For the second half of her reading, Amal invited Max Gladstone to the stage to perform a joint reading of their collaborative tale. It’s an epistolary Spy vs. Spy novella, set in a universe where time is a braid, and two timelines exist simultaneously. One where consciousness is embedded, one where it is more abstract. (Think of them as a technologically advanced timeline, and a more natural world.) Both timelines are unstable. There’s a time war between the two realities, and two opposing agents, Red and Blue. At the end of a successful and bloody opp, Red finds a letter left for her by her enemy that reads “Burn before reading. ” She knows it’s a trap, but it’s also a thrown gauntlet, and she cannot resist. Soon she’s leaving her own notes in response.

What starts as inquisitive taunts at mysterious opponents gradually become much sharper, funnier and more poignant as the two take their game — and their taunts — to higher and higher levels. All the while hiding their correspondence from their superiors, and gradually learning at least grudging respect for each other. Once again, the audience got only a tantalizing snippet of a wider story, but it was a fascinating one.

The story is tentatively titled “These Violent Delights.” It does not yet have a publisher.

“These Violent Delights” eventually became the collaborative novel This Is How You Lose the Time War, published by Saga Press in July of this year. It has been widely praised; Martha Wells calls it “rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse,” and Publishers Weekly says it’s “Exquisitely crafted… Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure… dazzling.”

But I think my favorite review comes from our own Matthew David Surridge, writing at Splice Today. Matthew is insightful and illuminating as always, calling the novel “mind-blowing in the best science-fictional tradition.” Here’s the highlights.

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BookRiot on 30 Haunted House Books that will Give You the Creeps

BookRiot on 30 Haunted House Books that will Give You the Creeps

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The Grip of It Jac Jemc-small THE WOMEN IN THE WALLS AMY LUKAVICS-small THE GOOD HOUSE TANANARIVE DUE-small

Ah, October. The month when I finally catch up on all the all the spooky reads I’ve been hoarding all year.

Back in July, Jessica Avery at Book Riot posted a fine survey of 30 Haunted House Books that will Give You the Creeps. Who wants to read haunted house novels in July? But now that the evenings are getting cold and leaves are starting to fall off the trees, a young man’s thoughts naturally turn to… creepy houses and buried family secrets. So I returned to Jessica’s piece, and it features some very intriguing titles indeed. Here’s the highlights.

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc (FSG Originals, 288 pages, $15 paperback/$2.99 digital, August 1, 2017)

This addition to the list was recommended to me as being just absolutely read-through-your-fingers frightening. In one of those plots familiar to many haunted house books, Julie and James need to get out of the city and end up settling in a house in the country. But what was supposed to be a fresh start for the troubled couple soon turns into a nightmare. As the house seems to misshape and decay before their eyes, Julie and James rush to discover its history before they follow suit.

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New Treasures: Straight Outta Deadwood, edited by David Boop

New Treasures: Straight Outta Deadwood, edited by David Boop

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Cover art by Dominic Harman

I was impressed with David Boop’s 2017 anthology Straight Outta Tombstone, one of the better Weird Western volumes of the last few years. So I was excited to see the sequel, Straight Outta Deadwood, arrive this week from Bean. Boop gives us a taste of what to expect in his Foreword, “Histories Mysteries.”

My directive to all the authors in these anthologies [was] to give me the Old West the way it really was, where applicable. I wanted the history within to be accurate, the voices authentic… But I also asked them to give me, and you the readers, the world we wished to see: dragons flying overhead, or the ability to drink with dwarves, or hear how grandpappy fought off zombies in Deadwood…

For those of you who read read Straight Outta Tombstone, this second anthology is my Empire Strikes Back. It’s darker, and include a couple pieces that left me shaken afterward… Don’t worry if you get scared easily, though. I have broken the narrative up with humor, victories over evil, and gunfights.

Lots of gunfights.

There’s been a distinct lack of decent Weird Western recently, and Straight Outta Deadwood addresses that nicely. It contains brand new short fiction by Steve Rasnic Tem, Charlaine Harris, Stephen Graham Jones, Lacy Hensley, Jane Lindskold, Cliff Winnig, D.J. Butler, and many others. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Novels of 1979

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Novels of 1979

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Cover by Don Maitz
Cover by Don Maitz

Cover by Enrich
Cover by Enrich

Cover by Larry Schwinger
Cover by Larry Schwinger

Taking another break from award winners, here’s a look at novels published in 1979 that did not win any awards.

C.J. Cherryh published Hestia, a stand-alone about an engineer, Sam Merrit, who travels to the title planet to build a damn to help the human colonists.  Upon arrival, Merrit realizes that the dam will not only prove to be the panacea that is sought, but would also destroy the local indigenous species. Cherryh uses the novel to explore personal and ecological responsibility and the sense of entitlement the colonists have.

Jerry Pournelle’s novel Janissearies is the first of the similarly titled trilogy, although it is also set in the wider world of his Co-Dominium universe that began with his novel King David’s Starship. The novel follows a group of American soldiers who have been rescued from an ambush in Africa and given the chance to put their talents to use in a medieval level society among the stars. Although Pournelle’s main character faced mutiny, he wins through in the end, establishing himself as the undisputed leader of the force.

Kindred, Octavia E. Butler’s time travel novel that shuffles Dana, a twentieth century African-American author, between her own time and the antebellum South was published in 1979. The novel offers a look at the sort of compromises Dana must make to survive as a slave as be able to continue to exist in her own time. Butler offers a complex view of slavery and race relations in the novel, partly because of the way she has caused Dana’s own existence and fate to be entwined with that of Rufus, the plantation owner.
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The Case Against Environmental Exploitation: The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison

The Case Against Environmental Exploitation: The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison

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The Deathworld Trilogy, Science Fiction
Book Club edition (1974). Cover by Richard Corben

James Nicoll recently reviewed Harry Harrison’s The Deathworld Trilogy on his blog, saying “The Deathworld books haven’t aged badly. They were dire in the 1960s and they are still dire.”

I still have fond memories of the first book in this series (which may or may not be dispelled by a reread). For one thing, it really made a case against hyper-militarism and environmental exploitation. Because it’s Harrison we’re talking about, the case was not subtle, but I think it was effective.

The second novel is a self-righteous, tedious morality play about a self-righteous, tedious character who has the misfortune to partake in a different morality than his self-righteous, tedious creator. The third book is a step up from that, because anything would be. The laziness of the worldbuilding pained me even as a teenager: a cartoony version of Harold Lamb’s version of Mongols, inexplicably transplanted to another planet. On the other hand, I always enjoyed Harold Lamb’s books about Mongols, so…

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Space Opera for Today: The Axiom by Tim Pratt

Space Opera for Today: The Axiom by Tim Pratt

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Tim Pratt’s Axiom series began with The Wrong Stars (2017). That was quickly followed by The Dreaming Stars (2018), and Angry Robot will release the highly anticipated third book, The Forbidden Stars, next week. The Axiom is one of the more successful modern space opera series; and I think Sam Reader at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog nicely captured its appeal with his fine review of the opening volume.

The Wrong Stars... is a work every bit as vast as you expect from space operas, but with a character-focused touch that keeps the action feeling intimate.

On a routine mission, Captain Kalea “Callie” Machedo and the borderline-shady crew of the salvage vessel White Raven find a “Goldilocks ship” — an undisturbed generation ship from 500 years in Earth’s past. Looking for parts from this priceless relic of a bygone era to strip and sell for a profit, Callie stumbles upon two things: a perfectly preserved scientist still in suspended animation within a cryo-pod, and a strange wormhole-generating black box patched into the ship’s propulsion system. When the cryo-pod’s inhabitant, Doctor Elena Oh, wakes up, she warns the crew of immanent first contact with sapient life… only to be told that humanity actually made contact with a race of body-modifying octopus traders known as “Liars” three centuries earlier. But Elena’s descriptions don’t match that of the Liars, and when an indescrible something begins following the White Raven, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake — along with a single clue: the name “Axiom” — the crew realizes what Elena’s brought them might be something far older and and far more alien, something that has been waiting for the right time to wake up…

Through his wit, dialogue, and vast, varied cast, Tim Pratt has created a space opera for today — one filled with diverse characters and cultures that feel nuanced enough to be real — while still delivering the sense of wonder that made you love the genre in the first place.

Tim Pratt has been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, and Mythopoeic Awards, and won the Hugo Award for his short story “Impossible Dreams.” His novels include The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, and the Pathfinder Tales novels Liar’s Island and Liar’s Bargain. The Forbidden Stars will be published by Angry Robot on October 8, 2019. It is 400 pages, priced at $8.99 in paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. See all our coverage of the best new SF and fantasy series here.

A Mysterious, Whirling Fantasy: Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol by Robert Levy

A Mysterious, Whirling Fantasy: Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol by Robert Levy

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Anais Nin At The Grand Guignol
By Robert Levy
Lethe Press (170 pages, $13 in paperback, no digital edition?)

Read Robert Levy’s Anais Nin At The Grand Guignol from Lethe Press. Being a fan of Henry Miller and Anais Nin and the whole dynamic milieu of 1930’s Paris, when I saw this book I had to check it out and was not disappointed.

In the voice of Nin, it tells of her journey into the dark world of the Grand Guignol, a playhouse of horror themes and outre sketch drama where she finds a new passion beyond Miller and June and her husband. Someone thrilling and dangerous, Maxa, the most murdered woman in the world. To have Maxa she finds she must match wits against a monstrous creature of the night, Monsieur Guillard, in a surreal contest. The writing is really beautiful, from the descriptions of place, to the sex, to the macabre world of the bizarre theatre. A mysterious, whirling fantasy.

Levy really captures Nin’s writing voice and sensibility as well as her times. This is an instance of a writer doing more with less. A short novel that creates a complete reading experience. Check it out.