Rather foolishly, I thought Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoatstrilogy was, er, a trilogy. But that was before the fourth novel, Tyrant’s Throne, showed up in hardcover last year. Jo Fletcher Books reprinted it in trade paperback on May 1 of this year, and this time it seems that de Castell has indeed bought his popular debut series to a close.
In her review of Knight’s Shadow Sarah Avery said,
De Castell is carving himself an enduring place in the fantasy canon…. Knight’s Shadow is so strong, the only way I can see the Greatcoatsseries failing to achieve eventual wide recognition as a classic is if the author meets an untimely demise.
Fortunately that hasn’t happened, and in fact de Castell just launched a brand new four-volume series, Spellslinger(which we discussed here). The second volume arrives this month, and the next two before the end of the year. With productivity like that, Sebastien de Castell may well be the hardest working man in fantasy.
1979 Ace edition, paired with Master of Life and Death. Cover by Frazetta.
Robert Silverberg’s novella “Spawn of the Deadly Sea” appeared in the April 1957 issue of Science Fiction Adventures. He expanded it to novel length in 1965, retitling it Conquerors from the Darkness in the process. It wasn’t one of Silverberg’s more successful novels, at least from a commercial standpoint. Today it’s considered a juvenile, and it was reprinted only a handful of times, including a 1979 Ace paperback in which it was paired with Master of Life and Death and given a typically colorful Frank Frazetta cover (above).
In his introduction to the Ace edition Silverberg talks about Robert E. Howard, and it’s one of Silverberg’s few early SF novels with a clear Howard influence. Perhaps as a result, the book certainly has its fans. Here’s an extract from James Reasoner’s enthusiastic review on his blog.
Conquerors from the Darkness is exactly the sort of vivid, galloping action yarn that made me a science fiction fan in the first place. At first it seems like a heroic fantasy novel, set in some totally different universe than ours. The oceans cover the entire planet except for a few floating cities. The only commerce is between those cities, and keeping the seas safe for the merchant vessels is a Viking-like group known as the Sea-Lords. The hero of the novel, a young man named Dovirr, lives in one of the cities but wants to be a Sea-Lord and take to the oceans. He gets his wish and rapidly rises in the ranks, and along the way the reader learns that this is indeed Earth, a thousand years after alien invaders flooded the planet for reasons known only to them, preserving a little of humanity in those floating cities… the alien Star Beasts return to take over the planet again, and Dovirr and his comrades have to find some way to stop them with swords and sailing ships.
I love a good science fiction series, though I don’t get to indulge that love very often. But I’ve got some vacation time coming up this month, and I plan to put it to good use. I’ve had to ruthlessly pare down my to-be-read pile to an achievable size (man, that was painful), and only one SF series survived the culling: Becky Chambers Wayfarers trilogy.
There’s been a lot of praise heaped on these books — including making numerous Best of the Year lists, and a Hugo nomination for the second volume, A Closed and Common Orbit — but what’s really drawn me to them has been the intriguing reviews. Niall Alexander at Tor.comcalled the opening novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, “A genuine joy,” and Publishers Weekly labeled the second “Superb work from one of the genre’s rising stars.” But I think my favorite review came from James Nicoll, who admitted up front that he read the first one expecting a Travellernovel.
I picked it up because, over on Livejournal, Heron61 said:
It’s basically what you’d get if you took Firefly (minus the unfortunate Civil War metaphors) or an average campaign of the Traveller RPG and focused more on interpersonal dynamics and character’s emotional lives, while substantially reducing the level of violence.
Yes, this book reminds me of Traveller… I was more strongly reminded of James Tiptree, Jr.’s short story “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side”… that is, if James Tiptree, Jr. instead of being relentlessly, inexorably depressing, had been a cheerful optimist. The book isn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a refreshing change of pace.
The third volume, Record of a Spaceborn Few, arrived last week. I’ve been looking for something fun and different — and new — and this series very definitely fits the bill.
Beth Bernobich is the author of the River of Souls trilogy (Passion Play, Queen’s Hunt, and Allegiance) and Fox and Phoenix (which Rich Horton reviewed for us here.) In his July wrap-up at Kirkus Reviews John DeNardo tipped me off to her latest, A Study in Honor, her first science fiction/mystery, and her first title released under the pen name Claire O’Dell:
Claire O’Dell’s futuristic mystery A Study in Honor is not set in space but is no less thrilling. It’s a gender-flipped re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes. In near future Washington, D.C., Dr. Janet Watson, recently and honorably discharged from the Civil War, teams up with covert agent Sara Holmes to find a murderer targeting veterans.
Early notices for the book have been excellent. Liz Bourke at Tor.comcalled it “a tense, gripping story, excellently paced, and Janet is an amazingly compelling narrator. This novel is really hard to put down, and I’m looking forward to the sequel with great anticipation.” And Publisher’s Weeklysaid,
This riveting mystery (fantasist Beth Bernobich’s first work under the O’Dell pseudonym), set in near-future Washington D.C., spotlights delightfully fresh adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters. After Dr. Janet Watson loses her arm in an attack by the New Confederacy, she is discharged from the Army and returns home. She meets the fascinating, if infuriating, Sara Holmes, and they become roommates in Georgetown, Va., where, as two black women, they are not entirely welcome. Watson observes troubling patterns in her new job at the VA, and these, along with prompts from Holmes’s top secret connections, send the women on a high-stakes search for answers… This is a real treat for fans of Conan Doyle and SF mysteries.
A Study in Honor was published by Harper Voyager on July 31, 2018. It is 304 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Chris McGrath. Read an excerpt at Unbound Worlds.
Robert Holdstock was born on August 2, 1948 and died on November 29, 2009.
He won a British Science Fiction Award (BSFA) for the original novelette “Mythago Wood” in 1981, and the novel version earned him the 1984 BSFA and the 1985 World Fantasy Award. The second book in the series, Lavondyss, won the BSFA in 1988. Holdstock’s novella “The Ragthorn” won the World Fantasy Award in 1992 and the BSFA Award the following year. He won a third BSFA in 1989 for Best Artist for the anthology Other Edens III, shared with Christopher Evans. He won a special Prix Imaginaire in 2003 for La forêt des mythagos, tome 1 and tome 2, two volumes that contained five Mythago Wood novels. The following year, he won the Prix Imaginaire for his novel Celtika. He was awarded the Karl Edward Wagner Award posthumously in 2010.
“Magic Man” was originally published in Mary Danby’s anthology Frighteners 2 in 1976 and reprinted in Danby’s 65 Great Tales of the Supernatural three years later. Holdstock included it in his collection The Bone Forest and it showed up in the reprint anthology Great Vampires and Other Horrors. The story was translated into German for an appearance in Heyne Science Fiction Magazin #5 in November 1982 and into French in 2004 for a collection of Holdstock’s works, Dans la vallée des statues et autres récits.
On the face of it, “Magic Man” seems to be a face-off between One Eye, the old man in a group of prehistoric hunters who paints images of the hunt on the walls of the shrine-cave, and He Who Carries a Red Spear, the leader of the bands hunting bands. There is clearly no love lost between the men and the situation is made worse because Red Spear’s son enjoys hanging around with One Eye and wants to learn to draw.
One Eye teaches Red Spear’s son to paint in the cave, but, while he teaches technique and discusses proper topics, he fails at the most basic level to explain to the boy the importance of painting in the shrine-cave. While some poo-poo the cave’s effectiveness, it is clear that what is painted there influences the day’s hunt, down to the number of bison the hunters capture. When the clash between Red Spear and One Eye escalates, One Eye instructs the boy to paint a scene which clearly shows that One Eye plans to murder Red Spear, which would put the entire tribe at risk.
Over at Kirkus Reviews, John Denardo has a regular monthly book column. For July he mixes things up a bit by recommending a book for every single day of the month.
I am constantly in awe at the vast number of books that are published every month. July alone sees the publication of several hundred speculative fiction titles vying for your reading time. It can thus be a daunting task for readers to find their way to the best of them. That’s where I come in. Every month, I sift through the vast number of speculative titles and pick out the ones that deserve your attention…
In Emily Skrutskie’s intriguing Hullmetal Girls, the path to a better life (or at least the money to buy one) may be volunteering to become a mechanically-enhanced soldier called a Scela. That’s what Aisha Un-Haad decides to do to raise the money she needs for her brother’s medical treatment. In the Fleet is where Aisha meets Key Tanaka, a Scela with only fuzzy memories of her former, well-to-do, pre-Scela life. Both women from disparate backgrounds must work together if they are to challenge the pending rebellion… There’s also Micah Yongo’s Lost Gods, a dark fantasy in which a young assassin named Neythan finds himself hunted by his assassin brothers and sisters when he is framed for the murder of his closest friend. Neythan’s journey will lead to him learning the true nature of his revered assassin brotherhood… I said it before and I’ll say it again: Shortfictionrocks. July is stuffed so full of short fiction, you won’t know where to start. I do… check out From the Depths: and Other Strange Tales of the Sea edited by Mike Ashley.
Hullmetal Girls is available in hardcover from Delacorte Press (320 pages, $17.99, July 17). Lost Souls is from our friends at Angry Robot (448 pages, $12.99 in trade paperback, July 3, 2018). From the Depths is part of the Tales of the Weird library from British Library Publishing (320 pages, £8.99/$12.50 US, July 19, 2018). Check out John DeNardo’s complete list of July recs here.
Vintage Treasures: Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle
William Kotzwinkle isn’t much talked about today. Now that I think about it, he didn’t get as much attention as he deserved 30 years ago, either.
That’s likely because of the fact that, while he wrote a fair degree of fantasy, he was chiefly published by mainstream publishers. His World Fantasy Award-winning novel Doctor Rat (1976) was published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, and The Bear Went Over the Mountain (1996), about a bear who finds a manuscript buried in the woods and uses it to become a New York literary sensation, was published by Doubleday. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. His most famous book, the novelization of E.T., was published in paperback by Berkley in 1982.
Bantam Books released a pair of Kotzwinkle’s popular early fantasies in matching paperback editions: Doctor Rat and Fata Morgana (1977), his fifth novel. Fata Morgana, a genre-blending hard-boiled detective/fantasy, follows Inspector Picard as he investigates a conjurer whose fortune-telling machine is causing a sensation in 1861 Paris. David DeValera at Goodreads has a fine synopsis:
Fata Morgana is a solid mystery with fantasy elements that elevate it from sleuth versus villain into an enigmatic and elusive tale tinged with Gypsy mystery, parlor games and extortionist magic. Inspector Picard, (career descending and body weight ascending), is on the trail of Ric Lazare who is bilking high-society members out of considerable cash. Ric Lazare possesses a machine that foretells the future, but this alone does not explain his hold on those in his circle of influence. Picard investigates with the intention of exposing the salon scam of a medium and his costly advice; instead, he encounters the unknown — Black Magic, Grand Bewitching, the creations of a German toy maker, and a nagging foreshadowing of events, particularly his own demise…
Fata Morgana has been out of print since 1996, but is well worth tracking down. A digital version was published by E-reads in 2012. The Bantam edition above was published in September 1980; it is 195 pages, priced at $2.95. The cover is by Sandy Kossin.
Into the Night: She Is the Darkness by Glen Cook Part 2
I think this reread of She Is the Darkness (1997) took me so long because I subconsciously remembered how disappointing it is. The first half (reviewed last week), despite a bunch of problems, is all right because of Cook’s usual talent at creating cool characters and sticking them into tough situations. It also had some epic battle scenes. As the Black Company inched its way toward the Shadowmaster’s fortress, the good managed to outweigh the bad. This was not the case for the book’s second half, despite some crowning moments of awesome. Not at all.
We left off last week’s post with the siege of Overlook about to begin. The Taglian legions raised and trained by Croaker and Lady invest the fortress. The great castle eventually falls not to starvation or the walls being thrown down, but to a coup de main. Overlook is so vast and so undermanned that Lady and her most loyal troops were able to secretly bore their way into its foundations and operate from within. After much planning (and magical scouting by Murgen), Lady is able to capture Longshadow.
Back in Taglios the Prince’s sister, the Radisha Drah, starts hunting down the Black Company’s allies. She has always feared the Company; now that Longshadow is defeated the time is ripe for its destruction. Having assumed a betrayal would come (as it always does for them), Croaker has readied the Company for the for the final trek to Khatovar.
The road to Khatovar lies to the south of Overlook, through something called the Shadowgate. From the gate come the shadows — deadly spectral things Longshadow and the Shadowmasters could control to a certain extent. Beyond the gate lies a great barren circular plain. From the gates (turns out there are more than one) are roads leading to the plain’s center, like the spokes of a wheel. And there stands a ruined fortress even greater than Overlook. Its inner courtyard measures nearly a mile across.
Certain the answer to where or what Khatovar is lies within, Croaker leads the core of the Black Company, along with its most important prisoners, — Longshadow, Howler, and Soulcatcher — into the ruins. But instead of answers, what lies behind the broken walls is a devastating trap. The book ends with the most important military commanders and veterans of the Black Company in stasis, and Soulcatcher racing back to Taglios in order to unveil some yet-undescribed scheme.
Newman won the Bram Stoker Award for his books Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books, both written with Stephen Jones. He won the British Fantasy Award for his collection Where the Bodies Are Buried and the British SF Association Award for his short story “The Original Mr. Shade.” His novel Anno Dracula won the Prix Ozone, the Lord Ruthven Award, and the International Horror Guild Award, with its sequel, The Blood Red Baron also winning the Prix Ozone and the short story “Coppola’s Dracula” winning the IHG Award. He has been nominated for the Sidewise Award five times, twice for works in his Anno Dracula series, twice for works co-written with Eugene Byrne in their Back in the U.S.S.R. series of stories, and once, with Paul McAuley, for their script for the Prix Victor Hugo, given at Intersection, the 53rd World Science Fiction Convention held in Glasgow.
“Richard Riddle, Boy Detective in ‘The Case of the French Spy’” was originally published in volume one of the anthology Adventure, edited by Chris Roberson in 2005 (there was no volume 2). Stephen Jones reprinted it in Summer Chills: Tales of Vacation Horror. Newman included it in his collection The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, a series to which the story is loosely connected. Jones reprinted the story a second time in the anthology Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth.
Dick, Violet, and Ernest are three kids growing up in Victorian England. To keep themselves occupied, Dick has formed the Richard Riddle Detective Agency, in which he solves minor crimes using Violet’s inquisitiveness and education and Ernest’s muscle. How real the crimes are is a matter of conjecture, and the kids admit that the majority of the “crimes” they solve were committed by their nemesis, Tarquin “Tiger” Bristow. The story is a tribute to the sort of boys adventure stories which flourished from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century.
The Case of the French Spy focuses on a fundamentalist minister, Daniel Sellwood, who comes to the kids’ attention when he destroys a large ammonite that Violet has found. Violet’s current interest is paleontology, but the anti-Darwinian Sellwood views fossils as being planted by the Devil to lead people astray, and therefore only fit for destruction. The members of the Detective Agency soon decide that Sellwood is either a smuggler or a spy and break into a tower that belongs to him, only to discover that his villainy goes much deeper than they had suspected.
If it seems like it’s been a while since Alan Dean Foster released a standalone SF book from a mainstream publisher, that’s because it has. Over a decade now, since Pyr published his novel Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India way back in 2006. And the one before that was Interlopers (Ace, 2001).
It’s not like he hasn’t been busy. Foster is in great demand as a media tie-in writer, and his recent books include top-selling titles like Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Alien: Covenant (2017). But his many fans who remember his fine early novels like Icerigger (1974), For Love of Mother-Not (1983) and the other Pip & Flinx books, and the tales of the Humanx Commonwealth Universe, are impatient to see something new from him.
It looks like we will finally be rewarded. Foster’s latest book Relic has been called “Stunning… A true first contact novel on many different levels” by Library Journal. It arrives in hardcover from Del Rey in two weeks.
The last known human searches the galaxy for companionship in a brilliant standalone novel from the legendary author of the Pip & Flinx series.
Once Homo sapiens reigned supreme, spreading from star system to star system in an empire that encountered no alien life and thus knew no enemy… save itself. As had happened many times before, the basest, most primal human instincts rose up, only this time armed with the advanced scientific knowledge to create a genetically engineered smart virus that quickly wiped out humanity to the last man.
That man is Ruslan, the sole known surviving human being in the universe. Rescued from the charnel house of his home planet by the Myssari — an intelligent alien race — Ruslan spends his days as something of a cross between a research subject and a zoo attraction. Though the Myssari are determined to resurrect the human race, using Ruslan’s genetic material, all he wants for himself and his species is oblivion. But then the Myssari make Ruslan an extraordinary offer: In exchange for his cooperation, they will do everything in their considerable power to find the lost home world of his species — an all-but-mythical place called Earth — and, perhaps, another living human.
Thus begins an epic journey of adventure, danger, heartbreak, and hope, as Ruslan sets out in search of a place that may no longer exist — drawn by the slimmest yet most enduring hope.
Relic will be published by Del Rey on August 14, 2018. It is 320 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 for the digital edition.
