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Birthday Reviews: Jon DeCles’s “The Power of Kings”

Birthday Reviews: Jon DeCles’s “The Power of Kings”

Cover by Gary Ruddell
Cover by Gary Ruddell

Jon DeCles was born as Donald Studebaker on December 5, 1941.

In addition to writing, DeCles is also a Mark Twain interpreter, performing as Twain and giving lectures about the man’s life and career. He collaborated with Paul Edwin Zimmer on the novel Blood of the Colyn Muir. Studebaker married author Diana L. Paxson.

“The Power of Kings” was written for the eleventh Thieves’ World anthology, Uneasy Alliances, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey and published in 1988. He would write a follow-up story for the next, and final, volume of the original series as well.

A troupe of actors led by Feltheryn has arrived in Sanctuary, where High Priest Molin Torchholder is building them a new theatre and has commissioned them to perform a play. Once a major actor in the capital of Ranke, Feltheryn and his crew are hoping to reestablish themselves in Sanctuary, unaware that Torchholder has specifically chosen a play that couldn’t help be political in nature and set to offend Prince Kadakithis and his lover, the Beysa. The story is clearly part of the woven tapestry of Thieves World and would not work well standing on its own.

The story deals with Feltheryn’s need to get the theatre in order, rehearse himself and his troupe, and keep tabs on his troupe, from his partner/lover Gisselrand, who is as focused as he is, to Rounsnouf, the comedian given a key dramatic role who is spending all his time at the infamous Vulgar Unicorn tavern. Into this schedule are thrown random groups of street toughs who want to avenge themselves on Feltheryn for not being able to rob him, as well as meetings, chance or otherwise, with various denizens of Sanctuary.

For someone who thrived in the capital, Feltheryn seems to have a poor sense for when he is being used a as pawn. Not only is Torchholder using him and the troupe for his own purposes, but many others who he or Rounsnouf come into contact with see the theatrical troupe as a means of advancing their own agenda. Even without the troupe being aware that anything is happening, they are moved in a political agenda which could (and should) be disastrous until Feltheryn’s quick thinking allows him to cast the situation in a more positive light.

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Pirates, Dungeons, and Undead Soldiers: The Copper Cat novels by Jen Williams

Pirates, Dungeons, and Undead Soldiers: The Copper Cat novels by Jen Williams

The Copper Promise-small The Iron Ghost-small

Art by Gene Mollica

I’m a fan of all kinds of fantasy. Urban, romance, Arthurian, YA, weird, magic realism, anthropomorphic, horror, sword & planet… plus all the ones I can’t think of right now. But my first love was adventure fantasy and sword & sorcery, and that’s still the sub-genre that gets the bulk of my attention. Tell me a tale of heroes and magic, and you’ve got my interest. Throw in a dungeon, and I’ll show up for opening night.

So when I found Jen Williams’ 2016 fantasy The Copper Promise — a tale of swords, monsters, and dungeons — at Barnes & Noble last weekend, I wasn’t so much intrigued as I was thinking, “How the heck did I miss this for two years??” Turns out I didn’t miss it entirely; Adrian Tchaikovsky recommended it in his Tor.com list of Five Books Featuring Adventuring Parties, which I read back in 2016, saying:

Jen is one of the best new voices in UK fantasy, and it’s a testament to her writing skill that Wydrin, the “Copper Cat” and a proper fantasy rogue through and through, does not actually eclipse her companions Frith and Sebastian as they fight, trick and run their way through a world that has gone from run-of-the-mill dangerous to actively-being-set-on-fire-by-a-dragon dangerous thanks, chiefly, to their own poor life choices. “Let sleeping gods lie,” goes the tagline. No need to tell you how that one works out.

The book was released by Angry Robot; a little digging online found one sequel from the same publisher, The Iron Ghost (2017), and a third volume published only in the UK, The Silver Tide (2016). All three were nominated for the British Fantasy Award. The first for Best Newcomer, and the second and third for Best Fantasy Novel. The reviews have been strong as well, especially for the first one. Starburst Magazine said “The Copper Promise is near-perfect fantasy-adventure fun and a breath of fresh air,” and Den Patrick said, “There are pirates and magic, demons and disciples, undead soldiers and noble knights… a lot of fun.” Here’s the Angry Robot book blurbs for the first two.

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A Spectacularly Gruesome Nasty: The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight

A Spectacularly Gruesome Nasty: The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight

The Fungus Harry Adam Knight-small The Fungus Harry Adam Knight-back-small

I first discovered Valancourt Books at their wondrous booth in the Dealer’s Room of the 2014 World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC (I wrote about that revelatory find here.) So as soon as I entered the Dealer’s Room at this year’s WFC in Baltimore I searched them out, and was delighted to find them with a well-stocked booth again this year. I stocked up on several of their recent releases, including a new collection from Steve Rasnic Tem, Michael McDowell’s creepy novel Cold Moon Over Babylon, a pair of novels by Mervyn Wall, and the latest volumes of The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories. But I think my most interesting acquisition was The Fungus, a reprint of a gonzo 1985 horror novel by “Harry Adam Knight” (the pseudonym of British writers John Brosnan and Leroy Kettle). Ramsey Campbell called it “A spectacularly gruesome nasty, written with inventiveness, grisly wit, and considerably more intelligence than almost any of its competitors,” and Publishers Weekly raved about it, saying:

What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi–mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts — were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable (sic) to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry’s wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead (sic) to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers…. A first-rate and vivid thriller.

That’s some great press, but I think what really sold me was the marvelous cover by M.S. Corley. The Fungus was published by Valancourt Books on October 2, 2018. It is 191 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. See all of our coverage of the excellent Valancourt Books here, and check out their website here.

Future Treasures: A Cathedral of Myth and Bone by Kat Howard

Future Treasures: A Cathedral of Myth and Bone by Kat Howard

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Kat Howard has been widely acclaimed for her novels, starting with Roses and Rot (2016), a Locus Award nominee for Best First Novel and a Publishers Weekly Best Fantasy Novel of Summer 2016, and An Unkindness of Magicians (2017), the tale of a secret cabal of wizards in New York City. Both were published by Saga Press.

She began publishing short fiction eight years ago, with “Beauty and Disappearance” in the Summer 2010 issue of Weird Tales. Since then she has become a regular in places like Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Nightmare, and other fine magazines, producing over 40 tales. Two decades ago that would have meant she’d have at least a successful collection or two by now, but the industry has changed at lot since the days when publishers would take a chance on a collection from an emerging author.

But apparently nobody told Saga editor Joe Monti. Howard’s new collection A Cathedral of Myth and Bone arrives next month from Saga. It contains fourteen previously published stories, plus two original to this collection, the short story “Saint’s Tide” and the 116-page Arthurian novella “Once, Future.” I’m glad to see it, and I hope it does well. And if, like me, you enjoy short story collections, then I hope you’ll support this one.

A Cathedral of Myth and Bone will be published by Saga Press on January 8, 2019. It is 358 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Amy Haslehurst. See all of our recent coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.

The Omnibus Volumes of Daniel Abraham: The Long Price Quartet

The Omnibus Volumes of Daniel Abraham: The Long Price Quartet

The Long Price Quartet-small The Long Price Quartet-back-small

Daniel Abraham is the author of The Dagger and the Coin five-volume fantasy series, five books in the Black Sun’s Daughter horror series (as M. L. N. Hanover), and a pair of Star Wars novels. With Ty Franck he is the author of the breakout hit The Expanse, under the name James S. A. Corey. But before all that he created a four-volume fantasy series called The Long Price Quartet that helped cement his rep as a rising young star. The first book, A Shadow in Summer, appeared in 2006 from Tor, and the three sequels arrived almost exactly a year apart.

When I was in Barnes & Noble last week I saw a handsome omnibus volume, and I was very happy to pick it up. It contains all four novels:

A Shadow in Summer (331 pages, $24.95 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, March 7, 2006)
A Betrayal in Winter (317 pages, $24.95 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, August 2007)
An Autumn War (366 pages, $25.95 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, July 2008)
The Price of Spring (348 pages, $27.99 hardcover, $7.99 paperback, July 2009)

The Long Price Quartet was published by Tor Books on November 13, 2018. It is 975 pages, priced at $19.99. There is no digital edition. The cover is by Getty Images.

Believe it or not, we’ve covered dozens of omnibus paperbacks just like this one, from authors like C.J. Cherryh, Jack Vance, H. Beam Piper, P.N. Elrod, Steven Brust, James H. Schmitz, Murray Leinster, Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg, and many others. Check them out here.

In 500 Words or Less: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

In 500 Words or Less: Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

Moon of the Crusted Snow-smallMoon of the Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice
ECW Press (224 pages, $14.95 paperback, $7.99 eBook, October 2, 2018)

At Can*Con this year, we held a panel titled “True or False: All Post-Apocalyptic Fiction is Derivative Crap.” Obviously, we chose the title to enflame diehard fans of the genre – but while I can’t speak for the rest of our programming team, I’ll freely admit that it takes a lot for a post-apocalyptic story to excite me these days. There are only so many stories you can tell in a world that’s collapsed without it feeling stale; even established properties like The Walking Dead are accused of being well past their prime. However, even as reviewers like me grumble about certain subgenres, authors manage to create something that’s fresh and exciting to show us up. Which means I have to say thanks(?) to Waubgeshig Rice, after binging his novel Moon of the Crusted Snow over the course of about three days.

Part of the appeal right away was the slow, gradual way that Rice builds tension in this story. We’re introduced to a focused cast of characters in an Ontario indigenous reserve, where people are already used to living minimally – so when the Internet and satellite TV go down, no one balks, since it happens all the time. When the phone and power lines follow, the reader is probably getting more nervous than the characters … until they figure out something has gone really wrong and have to decide how the community will cope.

But things are kept ambiguous right to the end, so much so that we never find out the cause of Moon’s apocalypse. Since the novel never leaves the reserve, we only hear about society’s collapse tangentially, from a handful of characters who escape the chaos. In fact, there’s a lot that gets unanswered by the end of the novel, including the fate of several key characters. But Rice doesn’t make it feel like we’re left hanging; instead, it’s part of the overall uncertainty of the novel, and a reflection of how life is rarely packed up neatly, even when things aren’t collapsing.

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Future Treasures: King of the Road, Book 2 of Brotherhood of the Wheel by R. S. Belcher

Future Treasures: King of the Road, Book 2 of Brotherhood of the Wheel by R. S. Belcher

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I’ve been waiting for the sequel to R.S. Belcher’s Brotherhood of the Wheel since the book first appeared in 2016, and next week my wait is finally over.

Expectations for King of the Road, the second book in the series, are high. In a starred review Publishers Weekly said,

Belcher’s masterful storytelling and worldbuilding make for a gripping and consistently surprising follow-up to Brotherhood of the Wheel. Long-haul trucker Jimmie Aussapile; his squire, Hector “Heck” Sinclair; and Louisiana State Police Officer Lovina Marcou, a road witch gradually coming into her powers, are members of a secret society descended from the Knights Templar, protecting the roads and travelers. While Lovina works a missing-person case involving a ghost clown and an alchemist who assembles a cult of disaffected souls, Jimmie and Heck battle a number of supernatural horrors, including animated corpses and living shadows… [a] fascinating series.

King of the Road will be published in hardcover by Tor on December 4. The first book was released in paperback last year. Here’s the book blurb.

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Birthday Reviews: John Helfers’s “The Final Battle”

Birthday Reviews: John Helfers’s “The Final Battle”

Cover by John Howe
Cover by John Howe

John Helfers was born on November 29, 1972.

Helfers has been nominated for the Hugo Award, both times in the Best Related Work category. In 2009 he and Lillian Stewart Carl were nominated for The Vorkosigan Companion: The Universe of Lois McMaster Bujold and in 2013, he shared a nomination with Martin H. Greenberg for I Have an Idea for a Book…: The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg. While Helfers has written numerous short stories and novels, he is perhaps best known as an editor for Tekno Books and Five Star Press and he has worked on many anthologies which did not include his name on the cover. He has collaborated on fiction with Jean Rabe, Russell Davis, and his wife Kerrie L. Hughes. His editing collaborations are too numerous to mention. He has also published works under the house name James Axler.

“The Final Battle” was published in Martin H. Greenberg’s anthology Merlin in 1999. The story has never been reprinted.

In Helfers’s story, Merlin, recently escaped from his confinement by Nimue, is shown to be a tremendously powerful magic user. Rather than showing Merlin participating in rituals to call down lightning, the magic Merlin does is almost an afterthought. A wave of his hand conjures a massive castle and, once inside, he uses magic as readily as anyone else would use breathing. Difficulties occur when he grafts himself onto a familiar, a sparrow, who flies out and discovers that Arthur’s nemesis, Mordred, is approaching Merlin’s castle. Mordred’s casual destruction of the sparrow and Merlin’s bond to it warns the magician of Mordred’s intent and that Arthur’s bastard is more powerful than Merlin expects.

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Reworking A Classic: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Reworking A Classic: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

9781786073976The Arabic world has seen an upsurge in speculative fiction in recent years. Some attribute it to the disappointments of the Arab Spring and the disaster of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Others point to ready access to the Internet, allowing Arab writers to communicate more easily with genre fans in other parts of the world.

Of course this ignores the fact that Arabic literature has a long tradition of the fantastic. Arab writers are working from very deep roots. So it’s interesting that one of the most successful Arab speculative novels of the past decade takes its inspiration from a Western source.

Frankenstein in Baghdad retells Mary Shelley’s classic tale in American-occupied Baghdad in the early years of this decade. The book originally came out in Arabic in 2013. Baghdad is a nightmare of opposing factions shooting it out while a corrupt Iraqi government propped up by the clueless Americans tries to keep it all together.

***Spoilers follow. If you don’t like spoilers, just go out and buy the novel. You’ll be glad you did.***

Hadi is a junk dealer who drinks too much and works too little, living in an abandoned house and telling wild tales at the local cafe to anyone who listens. On his rounds he comes across the wreckage of countless car bombings. While the emergency crews try to clean up as much as possible, they often miss small body parts. Hadi decides to take these home and sew them together, making a complete body that would be suitable for burial.

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New Treasures: Terra Incognita: Three Novellas by Connie Willis

New Treasures: Terra Incognita: Three Novellas by Connie Willis

Uncharted Territory-small Remake Connie Willis-small D.A. Connie Willis-small

I need to read more Connie Willis. She’s one of the most acclaimed modern SF writers, and what I’ve read of her so far has been fabulous.

I don’t even have the excuse that her books are all too long — she’s made it a habit to regularly publish short, digestible novels over the years, like the alien western Uncharted Territory (1994), Remake (1994), a tale of future Hollywood, and D.A. (2006), an SF conspiracy thriller. In fact, I’d read all three of those if they weren’t all long out of print and impossible to find.

Maybe that’s what was going through the mind of the editors at Del Rey when they decided to publish Terra Incognita, an affordable trade paperback collecting all three short novels. The reviews have been terrific, especially for a reprint collection: Kirkus Reviews said “A master of fantasy playfully combines science fiction with other genres in three antic novellas… Clever, funny, thought-provoking, and sweet, these stories are classic Willis,” and Shelf Awareness said:

Willis’s lively, funny forays into futuristic territory shine as brightly today as when originally released… In all three stories, the protagonists find their narrow concepts of life challenged and expanded by possibilities created through technology. As a collection, these smart, accessible shorts make for an entertaining initiation or reintroduction into the world of one of sci-fi’s greatest treasures.

Here’s all the details.

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