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A Tale of Two Covers: Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss

A Tale of Two Covers: Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss

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Outside the Gates Molly Gloss-small Outside the Gates Molly Gloss Saga-small

Molly Gloss has published only a handful of novels, but she’s accumulated an enviable number of awards and nominations, including the Ken Kesey Award and Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for the non-genre The Jump-Off Creek (also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and a James Tiptree, Jr. Award for SF novel Wild Life (2000). Her first novel Outside the Gates was published as a slender hardcover by Atheneum in 1986 (above left, cover by Michael Mariano), and Ursula K. Le Guin called it “The best first novel I’ve seen in years.” It has been out of print for over three decades, but Saga Press is finally rectifying that situation by reprinting it in January with a spare new cover by Jeffrey Alan Love (above right). Hard to say which one I like more; they’re both clear products of their time. Here’s the description.

Villagers were always warned that monsters live outside the gates, but when a young boy named Vren is cast out, he finds a home in the world beyond, in Whiting Award winner Molly Gloss’s classic fantasy novel.

Vren has always been told that the world beyond the gates of his village is one filled with monsters, giants, and other terrifying creatures. But when he confides with his family about his ability to talk to animals, he’s outcast to the very world he’s been taught to fear his whole life. He expects to die alone, lost and confused, but he finds something different altogether — refuge in a community of shadowed people with extraordinary powers.

Thirty years later, Molly Gloss’s dystopian fantasy novel is just as timely, poignant, and stirring as ever, in a brand-new edition!

This slender book is more a novella than a true novel; to sweeten the deal Saga is packaging it with Gloss’ 18-page story “Lambing Season,” which was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Outside the Gates was published by Atheneum in September 1986. It was 120 pages, priced at $11.95 in hardcover. It will be reprinted by Saga Press on January 1, 2019. It is 115 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. See all our recent Tales of Two Covers here.

Vintage Treasures: The Dreamhaven Box

Vintage Treasures: The Dreamhaven Box

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49 beautiful vintage paperbacks for $36, courtesy of Dreamhaven Books

On years I attend the World Fantasy Convention I don’t usually do Windycon, the local convention here in Chicago, the very next week. I don’t typically have the stamina for two back-to-back cons. But this year Richard Chwedyk, who runs the Saturday Writer’s Workshop at Windycon, asked me to fill in as a judge, and I learned that my friend Rich Horton and his wife Mary Anne were making the long drive from Missouri. So I decided to register for the con.

I made it to the Dealer’s Room only a few minutes before they closed Friday night. And who did I find in the back but the tireless Greg Ketter and his wife Lisa Freitag, manning the well-stocked Dreamhaven Books table. I’d seen both of them at World Fantasy, where they’d also had a table. They’d packed that up, driven from Baltimore to Minneapolis, and then here to Chicago — with brand new stock! Talk about stamina.

While we were chatting in front of their booth I discovered eight boxes at my feet, tightly crammed with paperbacks. “They’re all a dollar,” Lisa said, noticing my distracted gaze. “Less than that if you buy a bunch.”

Gentle reader, I bought a bunch.

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A High-Octane Thriller in a Post-Pretty World: Imposters by Scott Westerfeld

A High-Octane Thriller in a Post-Pretty World: Imposters by Scott Westerfeld

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Bullets fly as an assassin shoots up the ballroom with an assault rifle. On stage, teenager Frey huddles behind a fallen table with her twin sister Rafia, taking cover. Rafia just finished delivering her first public speech when the attack began. In the audience, people die.

Frey has been training for this moment her entire life. She’s probably going to fall under the bullets, but that doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is saving Rafia. Grabbing her military-grade pulse knife, she rises from the table and rushes the gunman.

He never even has a chance.

Frey isn’t just her sister’s body double. She’s also Rafia’s secret last line of defense. She knows how to use every weapon with lethal force, as well as every quotidian object – scarves, tablets, vases. Rafia was born twenty-six minutes before her, so she’s the heir. Their father, a ruthless dictator, rules over the city-state of Shreve.

Successfully taking down the assassin, Frey feels giddy with triumph. Finally, she has done what she was born to do. Better yet, the way the attack went down, no one saw there are two Rafias. The secret of Frey’s existence has been preserved.

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New Treasures: The Nissera Chronicles by Hannah West

New Treasures: The Nissera Chronicles by Hannah West

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Kingdom of Ash and Briars-small Realm of Ruins-small

I’m still not done unpacking my free book bag from the World Fantasy Convention, but the wheels of publishing stop for no man. Review copies continue to pile up at the Black Gate headquarters, and they demand attention. At least, that’s what Realm of Ruins did when I pulled it out of an envelope on Tuesday, anyway.

First, Daniel Burgess’ cover is great. He also did the cover for the first volume, Hannah’s debut novel Kingdom of Ash and Briars, released by Holiday House in 2016. I was completely unaware of that book until Tuesday but, second, there’s ample praise for it on the back of Realm of Ruins, including a snippet from this starred review from Kirkus:

Bristal, a teenage kitchen maid, never expected to survive being forced into the Water, a pool designed to prove that a mortal may be an elicromancer, an ancient breed of ageless and immortal beings that once populated the realm of Nissera. But she does.

With elicrin stone in hand, Bristal is thrust from the Water, proving her birthright as an elicromancer. With Bristal’s true identity revealed, the last two remaining elicromancers, Brack and Tamarice, materialize to rescue Bristal from kidnappers. They begin to train her to use her gift as a Clandestine: the ability to transform into any human or animal form… Greatly influenced by the likes of “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Hua Mulan,” and arguably Harry Potter, debut author West mixes fairy-tale charm with contemporary mysticism to create a world both terrifying and wonderful… Sweet romance and strong supporting characters complete this impressive debut.

Third, all the Black Friday madness put me in a buying mood. so I ordered a copy of the first book yesterday. Will it turn out to be as lightly sweet and charming as promised, or was I just another victim of unchecked consumerism? Stay tuned to find out.

Realms of Ruins goes on sale December 4th. Here’s the description for the first book.

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Fantasy on an Postapocalyptic Frontier: The Raven’s Mark Trilogy by Ed McDonald

Fantasy on an Postapocalyptic Frontier: The Raven’s Mark Trilogy by Ed McDonald

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Ed McDonald’s debut novel Blackwing is a curious mix of genres. Set on a postapocalyptic frontier, it’s a gritty fantasy of a bounty hunter caught in an attack that may signify an end to a century-long peace. Anthony Ryan (Tower Lord, Queen of Fire) calls it “A remarkably assured fantasy debut that mixes of the inventiveness of China Miéville with the fast paced heroics of David Gemmell,” and that’s a pretty rousing endorsement in my book.

Blackwing was published by Ace in October 2017, and slid under my radar. Ace sent me a copy of the sequel Ravencry this summer, and it intrigued me enough to go searching out the first book. The concluding volume, Crowfall, arrives in June. Here’s the book blurbs for all three.

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Birthday Reviews: Spider Robinson’s “The Centipede’s Dilemma”

Birthday Reviews: Spider Robinson’s “The Centipede’s Dilemma”

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Cover by Vincent di Fate

Cover by Vincent di Fate

Spider Robinson was born on November 24, 1948.

In 1974, Robinson won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Robinson has won the Hugo Award three times. He won for Best Novella in 1977 for “By Any Other Name” and in 1983 for the Short Story “Melancholy Elephants.” In 1978 his novella “Stardance,” co-written with his wife Jeanne, won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. He received the Skylark Award from NESFA in 1978, the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2008, and in 2015, LASFS presented him with the Forry Award. He was the guest of Honor at Worldcon 76 in San Jose in 2018. Robinson has also used the pseudonym B.D. Wyatt. He has collaborated with his wife, Jeanne Robinson (d.2010), and co-edited an anthology with James Alan Gardner. Robinson also finished Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Variable Star and published a revised version of Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D.

“The Centipede’s Dilemma” was one of three original short stories Spider Robinson wrote for his collection Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. It subsequently appeared in the George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer’s anthology Tales from the Spaceport Bar. The story was translated into French as part of Robinson’s collection and was later translated into Croatian for inclusion in the magazine Sirius #145 and into Italian for an issue of Urania which reprinted all of Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. It was also included in various omnibus reprints of the original collection.

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Mystical Beings, Power Struggles, and a Delicious Villain: The Empirium Trilogy by Claire Legrand

Mystical Beings, Power Struggles, and a Delicious Villain: The Empirium Trilogy by Claire Legrand

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One of the best things about the free book bag at the World Fantasy Convention is that it introduces you to books you’d never have paid attention to otherwise. That’s exactly what happened when I reached inside the bag this morning and pulled out Furyborn by Claire Legrand.

I’ve never heard of Claire Legrand. Turns out that’s something of an oversight, as she’s the bestselling author of Winterspell, Foxheart, the YA horror novel Sawkill Girls, and the Edgar Award finalist Some Kind of Happiness. Furyborn, the opening novel of The Empirium Trilogy, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and my hardcover comes laden down with plenty of praise (“A veritable feast of magic: mystical beings, ruthless power struggles, and gorgeously cinematic writing” – Traci Chee, author of The Reader trilogy; and “A delicious villain, non-stop action, and heart-pounding romance… A fantastic read!” – Morgan Rhodes, author of the Fallen Kingdoms series).

Still, not exactly my cup of tea. One more tale of ill-fated royals who must discover secret magic to reclaim their rightful seat on the throne? Not usually the kind of thing that interests me. But the book worked its magic and drew me in almost immediately, and the dual narrative — short alternating chapters set a thousand years apart — features two unapologetically powerful women, and is heavy with both cliffhangers and twists. Heaven help me, I’m enjoying it so far, and will probably pick up the sequel Kingsbane when it arrives next May.

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Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

Birthday Reviews: Marly Youmans’s “The Smaragdine Knot”

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Logorrhea
Logorrhea

Marly Youmans was born on November 22, 1953.

Youmans won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction for her novel The Wolf Pit. She has won the Theodore Hoepfner Award for short story twice, as well as the New Writers Award from Capital Magazine. Youmans won the Ferrol Sams Award and her novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphange received the ForeWord BOTYA Award. Youmans has published four volumes of poetry in addition to her novels for both adults and young adults.

“The Smaragdine Knot” was written for an anthology in which all the stories are inspired by words that were the winning entries in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Youmans’s story is based on the word “Smaragdine,” which won the contest for John Capehart in 1961. The story has never been reprinted.

Youmans tells the history of an heirloom book which has gone missing. Although best known for his poetry, a Puritan minister in the early years of the colonization of North America used Puritan meditation techniques to visit other worlds and kept a record of his journeys in a diary he called The Smaragdine Knot, which has been passed along from generation to generation. Each generation has a caretaker for the book until Samuel, who somehow managed to misplace it. Despite not knowing where it is or who took it, Samuel is still the book’s keeper.

The story alternates between the modern day, when one of Samuel’s great-nieces asks him about the book and learns it is missing and uncle Samuel telling her the story of how their ancestor met with an angel who turned out to be a demon trying to tempt him and how he overcame temptation and learned about the world at large. The story Samuel tells her reinforces the importance of the lost book and once the story ends, the two discuss the possible whereabouts of the book, blaming its disappearance on the girl’s hapless cousin, Chauncy. In the end, Samuel passes along the responsibility, and the need to find, the book.

 

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Future Treasures: Hollow Empire, Volume II of The Poison Wars by Sam Hawke

Future Treasures: Hollow Empire, Volume II of The Poison Wars by Sam Hawke

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City of Lies-small Hollow Empire-small

When I arrived at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore I was handed a heavy bag of complementary books, one of the perks of that fine convention. After a few horse trades I ended up going home with about two dozen brand new books, a very nice haul indeed.

I’ve been pulling them out one at a time, and when I reached deep into the bag last night the book that came out was City of Lies, the debut novel by Australian Sam Hawke, which looks like one of the most promising reads in the whole batch. In his Tor.com review Paul Weimer called it “an exemplar of the form” of city-state fantasy.

City of Lies tells its story from the perspective of Jov and Kalina, a pair of young siblings of noble rank who are coming of age in the city-state of Silastra. Jov is a poison expert in training, and the male equivalent of a maid-companion to Tain, nephew and heir to the Chancellor of Silatra. Kalina, on the other hand, whose path was to follow Jov’s, is physically disabled and has been trying to find her own path and her own role. The city-state is attacked from within and without: the Chancellor is assassinated, and it is up to Tain, Jov, and Kalina to face the beseiging army that has very coincidentally shown up as all this occurs, while the city-state’s own army is far away on a venture. City of Lies is the story of a city-state under siege, and of two siblings who must grow into their roles, inherited and self-selected, in order to try and save it…

This is a novel of discovery and unearthing of secrets, not only of the physical nature of the city, but also of its population. As Jov, Kalina and the rest of their peers learn the physical and topographical secrets of their city, they learn about their fellow inhabitants as well. As a reader, we learn about these factions and social strata, and get to see them change and evolve while under stress, changes that often surprise the protagonists themselves in the process…  City of Lies succeeds very well as a city-state fantasy, an exemplar of the form.

City of Lies is the opening novel in The Poison War, a new series from Tor. It will be followed by Hollow Empire, due in trade paperback next December. Here’s the back cover blurbs for both.

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Romance and Ancient Magic: The Earthsinger Chronicles by L. Penelope

Romance and Ancient Magic: The Earthsinger Chronicles by L. Penelope

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One of the nasty little secrets of American fantasy is that for years virtually no major publisher would put non-white characters on a cover. The situation was so dire that even Ursula K. Le Guin, whose classic A Wizard of Earthsea featured a non-white cast, had to put up with having her hero Ged depicted as white on countless covers for decades. And as recently as this year, Nnedi Okorafor saw the skin tone of her heroine dramatically lightened for the US release of Akata Warrior (compare it to the UK version here.)

Fortunately the situation has been steadily — if slowly — improving, and it’s no longer quite so remarkable to see black characters on mainstream covers. Recent examples we’ve featured include Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, and The High Ground by Melinda Snodgrass. But I can’t recall seeing a mainstream fantasy cover as black and as beautiful as Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope, which I think is one of the most gorgeous covers of the year. Publishers! More like this, please.

Song of Blood & Stone, Penelope’s debut novel, was self-published in 2015 through her Heartspell Media company (which designed the cover); it won the 2016 Self-Publishing eBook Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was soon picked up by St. Martin’s Press, which republished it in hardcover in May of this year (with the same cover). The B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog listed it as part of the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of May.

According to Penelope’s website St. Martin’s will be republishing the entire Earthsinger Chronicles, including Whispers of Shadow and Flame (released by Heartspell in 2015 and now out of print), and the forthcoming Breath of Dust & Dawn (due Winter 2019). Song of Blood and Stone will also be reprinted in an expanded trade paperback next July with a brand new cover (above right).

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