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Future Treasures: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Future Treasures: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

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A Court of Thorns and Roses-smallSarah J. Maas is the author of the New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series (Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, and the upcoming Queen of Shadows.)

Her new series is an adult fantasy with a strong fairy tale theme, drawing from Beauty and the Beast and the tales of Tam Lin.

When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin — one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled their world.

As she dwells on his estate, her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie and warning she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow over the faerie lands is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it. . . or doom Tamlin — and his world-forever.

A Court of Thorns and Roses will be published by Bloomsbury on May 5, 2015. It is 432 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital version.

See our summary of April new fantasy releases here, and all our reports on upcoming fantasy of note here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Peter O’Toole as Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Peter O’Toole as Holmes

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O'Toole_ValleyCoverAs famous a (costumed) character as Sherlock Holmes is, it is no surprise that he has lent himself to animation. Of course, you’ve seen images of Daffy Duck, Snoopy and Mickey Mouse, among many others, imitating Holmes: usually with an oversized magnifying glass.

Actual Holmes characters can be found in such animated efforts as Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century (Watson is a robot) and Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes. Of course, Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective features Basil of Baker Street, an excellent, if tiny, Holmes.

In 1983, Burbank Films produced forty-five minute animated versions of Doyle’s four Holmes novellas: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear. To voice the great detective for the television movies, they tapped eight-time Academy Award nominee Peter O’Toole (he did receive an Honorary Award in 2003).

O’Toole, who passed away in 2013, had a long, successful career in films, was best known for his sweeping performance in Lawrence of Arabia.

He was a solid, if not inspired, choice for these four productions. O’Toole’s manner and delivery, while rather flat, fits the animated Holmes well. An antic, Jeremy Brett portrayal wouldn’t have worked as well. I can see how some folks don’t like O’Toole’s almost constant monotone. But for me, it works here.

It’s Elementary – Billy Wilder envisioned a Holmes/Watson pairing of O’Toole and Peter Sellers for his The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but could not pull it off.

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New Treasures: Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories by Martha Wells

New Treasures: Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories by Martha Wells

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Between Worlds Martha Wells-smallMartha Wells was one of the most popular writers ever published in Black Gate. In fact, her three Cineth stories featuring Giliead and Ilias helped bring us a host of new readers.

Those three stories have never been collected — until now. Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories, one of six anthologies to be funded by the successful Six by Six Kickstarter in December, is now available. It contains “Holy Places,” “Houses of the Dead,” and “Reflections,” which first appeared in Black Gate 10, 11, and 12, as well as “Night at the Opera,” a brand new Nicholas and Reynard story set before The Death of the Necromancer, and two other stories.

We serialized Martha’s complete novel The Death of the Necromancer here.

The Six by Six project brought together six popular fantasy and SF authors — Martha Wells, Will McIntosh, Tina Connolly, Stephen Gaskell, Brenda Cooper, and Bradley P. Beaulieu — to create six new collections featuring each author. Two have shipped so far, Martha’s Between Worlds, and Futures Near and Far, featuring six stories by Will McIntosh.

In addition to the Black Gates stories and the new Nicholas and Reynard tale, Between Worlds also features “The Potter’s Daughter,” a prequel to Martha’s novel The Element of Fire, and the Giliead and Ilias story “Rites of Passage.”

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Vintage Treasures: The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park

Vintage Treasures: The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park

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Soldiers of Paradise-small Sugar Rain-small The Cult of Loving Kindness

Paul Park is one of the most acclaimed writers working in American fantasy. His four-volume A Princess of Roumania series (A Princess of Roumania, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger, and The Hidden World), set in a parallel world where magic works, has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Tiptree, Locus, and Sidewise awards, and his short fiction has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. Under his own name and the name Paulina Claiborne he has published fiction set in the Forgotten Realms, including the 2012 novel The Rose of Sarifal.

But Park’s first three novels, Soldiers of Paradise (1987), Sugar Rain (1989), and The Cult of Loving Kindness (1991), jointly known as The Starbridge Chronicles, are nearly forgotten today — and in fact have been out of print for over 20 years. But they were widely praised when they first appeared. Soldiers of Paradise was nominated for the Clarke Award, and Kim Stanley Robinson called it “A superb novel — vivid, harsh, mysterious.” Asimov’s SF magazine said “I was hooked… a real trip to someplace else that is really Someplace Else.”

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The Future of Fantasy: April New Releases

The Future of Fantasy: April New Releases

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The Vagrant-small Perfect Slate Brandon Sanderson-small The Grace of Kings-small

It’s tough to keep up on all the exciting new fantasy releases every month. But that’s why Black Gate is in your life. That and — admit it — you love Goth Chick’s Halloween Show reports.

April looks pretty exciting from where I sit, with a new fantasy debut from wunderkind Ken Liu, an exciting line up of graphic novels — including new Alan Moore — some fresh installments in popular series, and a lot more. We’re here to point you towards the most exciting releases of the month, so let’s get started.

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2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners Announced

2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners Announced

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The Girl in the Road-small My Real Children-small

With all the drama and controversy over this year’s Hugo Awards, we have neglected to inform you of the other major award new this week. Shame on us.

The 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Awards were given out this week. The Tiptrees, named after one of the finest SF writers of the 20th Century, are awarded annually to works of science fiction or fantasy that explore and expand gender roles. This year the winners are Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road (Crown) and Jo Walton’s My Real Children (Tor).

As usual, the jury released a statement about each of the winners; here’s what they said this year.

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Why I Was So, So Wrong about the Standard Fantasy Setting

Why I Was So, So Wrong about the Standard Fantasy Setting

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The Sailor on the Seas of Fate-smallSo I wrote a stonking great think piece thing about the Standard Fantasy Setting a while back and a lot of people read it. Some of those people liked it and some of those people didn’t; that’s fine, it’s got to the point where I only cry for fifteen minutes when someone criticizes me now.

The problem is, though, the more I think about it, the more I think about the points I made, the more I find myself in the latter camp, the more I catch myself bad-mouthing me behind my back and trying to suffocate me in my sleep. That’s a very bad thing when you’re a bona-fide messiah, chosen by the gods to lead the masses to enlightenment.

So yeah, I thought I’d write this follow-up post, explaining what was wrong with the article and to set the record straight. It’s more for me than anyone else… mostly because, goddammit, no one criticizes Connor Gormley better than Connor Gormley does.

I had good intentions at the start, yeah. It was going to be a much more balanced look at the standard fantasy setting, its pros and cons and a pretty mild critique; and you can still see elements of that initial idea kicking around in there, in what I actually said about the setting. The fact that it lets authors focus on narrative pacing, on character development, or outright, balls-to-the-mothertrucking walls action if they want, without having to worry about world building or introducing entirely new creations because most readers already know the characteristics of Elves, Dwarves and Orcs and what not, or at least the nature of a medieval-ish society. Michael Moorcock might be able to meet the compromise, yeah, but Michael Moorcock is essentially Jesus, so I don’t think it’s fair to count him (which, renders half of the article moot, anyway).

Where the problems arose was when I started spouting out things like “A genre that, by its very nature, should have no restrictions, that should be free of limitations and impossible to define has become one of the most rigid and easily distinguishable genres in our modern spectrum.”

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There Will be Blood Books

There Will be Blood Books

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Huff PriceThe great thing about the people in Tanya Huff’s Blood Books is that they act like… well, like people. This is remarkable for two reasons. First, not all of them are people; second, not all authors allow their characters to act like themselves all the time. Huff insists on it. Even when it makes writing the story difficult.

Let me qualify. All the characters in the Blood Books are people. Not all of them are human. They do act like themselves all the time, which isn’t to say that they act the way you expect them to. Not at all. More often than not, they’ll surprise you. But they’ll surprise you in a way that makes you go “Oh! Wow!” And not in a way that makes you go “Huh? What?”

The human protagonist, Vicky Nelson, was an extremely successful police detective, the kind who doesn’t suffer fools, and therefore doesn’t make a lot of friends among her peers. When she develops night blindness, she has two options, take a desk job, or leave the force. Being who she is, she chooses to leave the force and start her own detective agency. She’s stubborn, arrogant, and strong – exactly the kind of person you’d need if you were in trouble. Immanent blindness doesn’t change that.

The vampire protagonist, Henry Fitzroy, is the Duke of Richmond, the bastard son of Henry VIII. He doesn’t act like a young man living at the end of the 20th century. He acts like the son of a king, who’s been around for 450 years, has actually lived through all the changes that took place in those years, and who subsequently knows how to pretend that he’s a man living in the 1990’s. He’s a vampire, but he’s also the son of a powerful king, so for him, “territory” always has two meanings.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Dragons, Elves, and Heroes edited by Lin Carter

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Dragons, Elves, and Heroes edited by Lin Carter

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Dragons Elves and HeroesDragons, Elves, and Heroes
Edited by Lin Carter
Ballantine Books (277 pages, October 1969, $0.95)
Cover art by Sheryl Slavitt

It’s been a while since my last post, and no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth, run away to join the circus, or been abducted by aliens. Although there have been times I’ve considered that circus thing. Or maybe gypsies.

No, I’m just overloaded this semester (my day job is in academia), which hasn’t left a lot of opportunity to read at a time when I’m not likely to fall asleep after a few pages.

And I wanted to take my time and do this one right. Dragons, Elves, and Heroes is the first of a two volume set in which Carter collects heroic fantasy imaginary world stories, beginning with a selection from Beowulf. This volume ends in the 1800s, although the most recent selection isn’t the last. The companion volume, The Young Magicians, will pick up where this one left off.

Anyway, this book looked like it would take some concentration, so I tried to read it when I would have time to devote to it. But enough about what happens to the well laid plans of mice and men.

I found the selections on the whole to be thoroughly enjoyable, with a few exceptions. I used the word “selections” intentionally, because other than a handful of poems, most of the stories Carter selected were excerpts. The one notable exception was the entire text of The Princess of Babylon by Voltaire was included. I wish Carter had stuck to his practice of using excerpts, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Get Ready For 11 Best-of-the-Year Volumes

Get Ready For 11 Best-of-the-Year Volumes

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Best British Horror 2014-smallWe’re entering the Best-of-the-Year season.

Starting in May we’ll see no less than eleven volumes collecting the best short fiction of last year, beginning with Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (released May 12), and ending in October with the release of the latest volume in Stephen Jones’ long-running Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. We’ve showcased eight as Future Treasures in just the last few months (click on the links below for details on each.)

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine, edited by Jonathan Strahan (May 12)
Best British Horror 2015, edited by Johnny Mains (May 25)
The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera, edited by David Afsharirad (June 2)
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015 edited by Paula Guran (June 16)
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton (June 16)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, edited by Paula Guran (June 24)
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (July 7)
The Best Horror of the Year Volume Seven, edited by Ellen Datlow (August 4)
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by John Joseph Adams and Joe Hill (October 6)
Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume 2, edited by Kathe Koja (October)
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 26, edited by Stephen Jones (October)

After 18 volumes, we lost David’s Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF in 2014 — a major loss– but we’ve added three to the list this year: the Afsharirad, Adams, and Paula Guran’s Best Novellas book. (And Year’s Best Weird Fiction just started up in 2014). I don’t remember any time in the history of the genre when we had this many Year’s Best volumes; certainly there’s been no time when I’ve looked forward with anticipation to nearly so many. I take it as a sign that there’s still a very healthy interest in short fiction in this market. Stay tuned over the next six months, and we’ll bring you additional details as they hit the market.