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Future Treasures: The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence

Future Treasures: The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence

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The Liar's Key-smallPrince of Fools, the first volume in Mark Lawrence’s new fantasy series The Red Queen’s War, was released in June 2013. It is set in the same world as his previous trilogy The Broken Empire (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Award winner Emperor of Thorns).

The Liar’s Key, the second book in the series, will be published this June, and it continues the story of the unusual fellowship between a rogue prince and a weary warrior.

After harrowing adventure and near-death, Prince Jalan Kendeth and the Viking Snorri ver Snagason find themselves in possession of Loki’s Key, an artefact capable of opening any door, and sought by the most dangerous beings in the Broken Empire — including The Dead King.

Jal wants only to return home to his wine, women, and song, but Snorri has his own purpose for the key: to find the very door into death, throw it wide, and bring his family back into the land of the living.

And as Snorri prepares for his quest to find death’s door, Jal’s grandmother, the Red Queen continues to manipulate kings and pawns towards an endgame of her own design…

We published the first chapter of Prince of Thorns, with a brand new introduction by Mark, here, and Howard Andrew Jones’s interview with him is here. Mark’s long article on writing and selling The Prince of Thorns is here.

The Liar’s Key will be published by Ace Books on June 2, 2015. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

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Enchanted Pilgrimage-smallClifford Simak is often described as a pastoralist, his sci-fi stories set in rural Wisconsin or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Kindly robots as well as smart and faithful dogs feature in many of his books. Scholars are more likely than soldiers to figure as his heroes. There’s more kindness and sense of wonder than violence in most of his stories.

If you haven’t read him (which wouldn’t be surprising since most of his twenty-six novels and multitude of story collections are out of print in the US), snag a battered old copy of City or Way Station to start. City holds a place in my heart as one of my favorite books. Simak brought a gentle humanity to his writing. Love of an unhurried life and respect for common decency run through many of his stories.

Inspired by John O’Neill’s post about The Goblin Reservation, I dug out the first of Simak’s three fantasy novels, Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975). In it, a disparate party of travelers leave the safety of humanity’s lands to explore the dangerous, magical Wasteland. He would revisit this theme twice more before his death in 1986, in the structurally similar The Fellowship of the Talisman (1978) and Where the Evil Dwells (1982).

I remember liking the book thirty years ago and thirty years later, I still like it. It’s fully fantasy and science fiction, both. While there are goblins, gnomes, witches, and trolls, there are also UFOs, a robot, and a traveler from an alternate Earth.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine-smallThe first — and one of the finest — of the Best of the Year collections has arrived: Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine. Strahan has crammed 28 stories into his latest anthology. He published the complete table of contents earlier this year, and it looks fantastic. Here’s the description:

DISTANT WORLDS, TIME TRAVEL, EPIC ADVENTURE, UNSEEN WONDERS AND MUCH MORE!

The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past twelve months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan. This highly popular series now reaches volume nine and will include stories from both the biggest names in the field and the most exciting new talents. Previous volumes have included stories from Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Joe Abercrombie, Paolo Bacigalupi, Holly Black, Garth Nix, Jeffrey Ford, Margo Lanagan, Bruce Sterling, Adam Robets, Ellen Klages, and many many more.

This kicks off the Best-of-the-Year season; there will be over a dozen more released from various publishers between now and October.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Wrapping up Jeremy Brett’s Adventures

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Wrapping up Jeremy Brett’s Adventures

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Brett3_RucastleClick here for parts one and two of this look at Jeremy Brett’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The second installment of Granada’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes kicked off on August 25, 1985 with The Copper Beeches. Tapped for the role of one of the Canon’s most dastardly villains, Jephro Rucastle, was veteran actor Joss Ackland. Back in 1965 he had starred opposite Douglas Wilmer’s Holmes in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, playing her former suitor, Philip Green.

Other tangential Holmes-related efforts had included John Cleese’s disastrous parody, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It and an episode of the BBC series, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, based on the anthologies edited by Hugh Greene.

And in 1989 he would play the King of Sweden in Christopher Lee’s Sherlock Holmes & The Incident at Victoria Falls. Ackland’s Rucastle is one of the most memorable evildoers in the entire Granada series; menacing in a creepy but understated way.

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Vintage Treasures: The Arabesk Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Vintage Treasures: The Arabesk Trilogy by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

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Pashazade-small Effendi-small Felaheen-small

Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Vampire Assassin Trilogy (The Fallen Blade, The Outcast Blade, and The Exiled Blade) has earned him an enviable rep as a fantasy author. But I first became acquainted with him over a decade ago with The Arabesk Trilogy, a trio of acclaimed novels that had the unusual distinction of being nominated for both the British Science Fiction and British Fantasy Awards.

The Arabesk Trilogy isn’t easy to describe. It’s sort of an alternate history fantasy cyberpunk hard-boiled detective series, if that makes sense. The point of divergence with our reality is 1915, with Woodrow Wilson brokering a peace accord that prevents World War I from expanding outside the Balkans. All three books are set in Alexandria, in Islamic Ottoman North Africa (called El Iskandriyah in the novels), in the 21st century. The main characters are Raf, a genetically enhanced ex-street criminal now posing as a rich Ottoman aristocrat, and the hallucinatory fox Tiriganiaq, who frequently accompanies him.

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Future Treasures: Mech edited by Tim Marquitz and Nick Sharps

Future Treasures: Mech edited by Tim Marquitz and Nick Sharps

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Mech Age of Steel-smallLast year we told you about Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, the book that founded Ragnarok Publications. Since then I’ve been very impressed with the astonishing energy from Ragnarok’s founders, Joe Martin and Tim Marquitz. In their first year they released 22 titles, and their recent releases have included Martin’s Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries. and Rogues, which we covered here, Stacey Turner’s Grimm Mistresses, Kenny Soward’s Gnomesaga trilogy, and many others.

Ragnarok recently announced plans for a companion anthology to Kaiju Rising, Mech: Age of Steel, edited by Tim Marquitz and Nick Sharps. Here’s the scoop:

Growing up there was only one thing I loved more than giant monsters and that would be giant robots! The anthology will feature a diverse array of tales from some of the genre’s finest talent (including some returning favorites from Kaiju Rising) and each story will be accompanied by a piece of interior art by either Frankie B. Washington or Oksana Dmitrienko (the latter’s work is seen throughout Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues)…

The Mech: Age of Steel Kickstarter campaign will launch in Q3/4 2015 and feature stories from some of the genre’s finest talent.

They’ve already announced a preliminary line-up of authors for the book, and it includes several names that will be familiar to Black Gate authors, including Martha Wells and Jennifer Brozek, as well as Jeremy Robinson, Graham McNeill, C.L. Werner, and many others.

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New Treasures: Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

New Treasures: Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

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Vermilion by Molly Tanzer-smallWasn’t I just saying that I love weird westerns? (Yes, I was.) And now comes the debut novel of British Fantasy Award nominee Molly Tanzer from Word Horde, featuring a gun-slinging 19-year-old, an undead villain, geung si (wait… what the heck are geung si?), ghosts, and an alternate San Francisco. Life is good.

Publisher Word Horde has been doing some terrific work recently, including The Children of Old Leech, Ross E. Lockhart’s Giallo Fantastique, and the upcoming anthology Cthulhu Fhtagn! Vermilion looks like a terrific edition to their catalog.

Gunslinging, chain smoking, Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp, Elouise “Lou” Merriwether might not be a normal 19-year-old, but she’s too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to care much about that. It’s an important job, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have even accused Lou of being more comfortable with the dead than the living, and, well… they’re not wrong. When Lou hears that a bunch of Chinatown boys have gone missing somewhere deep in the Colorado Rockies she decides to saddle up and head into the wilderness to investigate. Lou fears her particular talents make her better suited to help placate their spirits than ensure they get home alive, but it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only one willing to do it. On the road to a mysterious sanatorium known as Fountain of Youth, Lou will encounter bears, desperate men, a very undead villain, and even stranger challenges. Lou will need every one of her talents and a whole lot of luck to make it home alive… From British Fantasy Award nominee Molly Tanzer comes debut novel Vermilion, a spirited weird Western adventure that puts the punk back into steampunk.

Vermilion was published by Word Horde on April 15, 2015. It is 386 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The splendid cover is by Dalton Rose.

Vintage Treasures: Heroic Visions, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Vintage Treasures: Heroic Visions, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

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Heroic Visions-small Heroic Visions II-small

We’ve covered so many classic paperbacks here at Black Gate, in so many sub-genres, that I sometimes forget that our original focus was Heroic Fantasy. We’ve kept true to that promise (more or less) here on the website, although as a matter of course we’ve broadened our focus as the years have gone by.

But it’s good to be reminded from time to time that it was heroic fantasy that lured many of us into this field. This week’s reminder came in the form of a slender 1983 Ace paperback I found titled Heroic Visions. It collects sword & sorcery tales by Jane Yolen, Alan Dean Foster, F.M. Busby, Robert Silverberg, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, Phyllis Ann Karr — and a brand new Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella by Fritz Leiber. It was followed by a sequel, Heroic Visions II, with new stories from Thomas Ligotti, Manly Wade Wellman, Keith Roberts, Ellen Kushner, Michael Bishop, Avram Davidson, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and many others. Both are fine collections featuring some of the top fantasy writers of the 80s.

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Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, edited by Sean Wallace

Future Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, edited by Sean Wallace

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The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk-smallWhat the heck is Dieselpunk?

Sean Wallace gave an enticing description of this funky new sub-genre in his call for submissions for The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk last year:

If you need to know what dieselpunk is, it’s a subcategory of steampunk, essentially, covering the 1920s through the 1950s, including the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, and even a little beyond that, but here’s the thing: I want material from all over the world, I don’t want a white-washed representation of this theme.

The book is scheduled to be published in July, and I have to say, it looks pretty good. Packed with stories by Genevieve Valentine, Carrie Vaughn, E. Catherine Tobler, Nick Mamatas, Jeremiah Tolbert, and many others, it could be a lot of fun.

Dieselpunk: an emerging retro-futuristic sub-genre, similar to steampunk, based on the era between the First World War and the start of the Atomic Age, merging elements of noir, pulp, and the past with today’s technology… and sometimes a dash of the occult.

Award-winning editor Wallace presents a cutting-edge collection of twenty-five vibrant stories that explore the possibilities of history while sweeping readers into high-powered hydrocarbon-fuelled adventures. Join us in an era when engines were huge, fuel was cheap and plentiful, and steel and chrome blended with the grit and grease of modern machines.

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New Treasures: Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown by Michael Alan Nelson

New Treasures: Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown by Michael Alan Nelson

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Hexed Michael Alan Nelson-smallI’m not familiar with the the BOOM! comic Hexed, but perhaps I should be. It’s apparently a spin-off from the horror comic Fall of Cthulhu, but you don’t need to be familiar with her appearances there to enjoy her adventures in her own comic. I’m not sure how many issues were published, but enough to be collected into at least two graphic novels, the first published in March 2010, illustrated by Pretty Deadly Artist Emma Rios, and the second by newcomer Dan Mora, to be released this July.

Lucifer the thief, the star of Hexed, seems like a pretty interesting character, and The Sisters of Witchdown marks her first appearance in a prose novel. It’s being marketed as a YA title, but I’m intrigued enough to check it out.

Luci Jenifer Inacio das Neves, Lucifer for short, isn’t your typical teenaged girl. She’s a thief who survives by stealing bad things from bad people in the magical and mystical underworld hidden beneath our own. So when a policeman’s daughter, Gina, is kidnapped by a force he can’t explain, Lucifer is the only one who has a chance at getting his daughter back.

With the unsolicited help of Gina’s friends, including Gina’s boyfriend David, Lucifer’s investigation leads to the unfortunate truth of the kidnapping. Gina was taken to an otherworldly dimension by a creature of unspeakable evil: one of the Seven Sisters of Witchdown. Against all odds, Lucifer must use every magical tool hidden in her trick bag to steal her way into the Shade and bring Gina back before the Sister sacrifices her for her own dark ends. But the closer Lucifer gets to Gina, the closer she gets to David. And David to her. Lucifer must risk her life by confronting demons, witches, and the cruel demigoddess controlling her destiny — all to save the one girl who stands in the way of Lucifer finally finding love.

Michael Alan Nelson’s comic writing includes 28 Days Later, Supergirl, Valen the Outcast, Dominion, Cthulhu Tales, Dead Run, and many others.

Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown was published by Pyr on May 5, 2015. It is 279 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Larry Rostant.