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New Treasures: The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding

New Treasures: The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding

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The Iron Jackal-smallChris Wooding’s Ketty Jay novels come packed with witty dialog, high-flying adventure, and a hearty dose of steampunk fantasy — not to mention some great covers (see the British editions of the first three here). The previous volumes, Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain, were published in the US by Bantam Spectra; with the third Wooding switches publishers to Titan, bringing a new look to a series that has been compared to Firefly. If you’re on the hunt for a new series that includes sky pirates, quirky characters, and swashbuckling fantasy, this might be exactly what you’re looking for.

Things are looking good for Captain Frey, roguish captain of the Ketty Jay and her dysfunctional crew of layabouts. Accustomed to living on the wrong side of the law, running contraband, robbing airships and generally making a nuisance of themselves, Frey’s rag-tag bunch of no-hopers is finally on the rise from bottom-feeding freebooters to bar-room celebrities. And, just for once, nobody is trying to kill them.

Even Trinci Dracken, Frey’s one-time fiancée and long-time nemesis, has given up her quest for revenge. In fact, she’s offered him a job — one that will take his crew deep into the desert heart of Samarla, land of their ancient enemies, where the secrets of the past lie in wait for the unwary. Secrets that might very well cost Frey everything.

Join the crew of the Ketty Jay on their greatest adventure yet: a story of mayhem and mischief, roof-top chases and death-defying races, murderous daemons, psychopathic golems and a particularly cranky cat.

Chris Wooding is also the author of Malice, Storm Thief, and over a dozen other books. He has announced that the fourth volume in the series, the upcoming The Ace of Skulls, scheduled for release in August, is also the last.

The Iron Jackal was published by Titan Books on March 11, 2014. It is 480 pages, priced at $14.95 for the trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

The Eucatastrophic Gesta Romanorum

The Eucatastrophic Gesta Romanorum

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Gesta RomanorumSomewhere in Europe, probably around the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century, someone put together a book of tales. Likely this someone was a cleric who wanted to compile a manual to use in sermons and preaching. The texts were written in Latin and featured stories of all sorts: romances, travellers’ tales, fragments of Pliny and Herodotus and Aesop. A number were brief and didactic, if not prosaic, describing some uninteresting event or propounding a riddle a nearby wise man quickly answered with too pat an explanation — but others of the tales were filled with miracles and adventure and magic, with angels and saints and knights and dragons. Each was given a detailed moral, with every incident and character shown to have allegorical significance. Whether because it boasted wonder-stories, because it made those wonder-stories Christian parables, or both, the book quickly became immensely popular. This being well before the age of print, manuscripts proliferated, gaining and losing stories along the way.

Most of the tales claimed to take place in “Rome,” which superficially meant little: there was no attempt to create any sense of place or setting. A story might be said to take place in the reign of a given Emperor, but even if said Emperor happened to share a name with a recorded ruler of Rome, the Emperor of the tale typically had nothing to do with the Emperor of history. At any rate, this conceit gave the collection of stories a name: Gesta Romanorum, The Deeds of the Romans.

The book was first put in print in the late fifteenth century and an English translation appeared in the first decade of the sixteenth, by which time the book had already had tremendous influence on European literature. It had presented writers like Chaucer and Boccaccio and John Gower with narratives and narrative seeds that they’d develop in their own writings. It continued to be popular through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the longest single story in the book is a version of the romance of Apollonius, Prince of Tyre, one of the most popular tales of the Middle Ages, and it seems that the Gesta’s version directly or indirectly inspired Shakespeare’s take on the story, Pericles.

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The Fantasy Novels of Lucius Shepard: The Golden

The Fantasy Novels of Lucius Shepard: The Golden

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The Golden Lucius Shepard-smallLucius Shepard was known chiefly as a science fiction writer, and for good reason. His most popular books, including Green Eyes and Life During Wartime, were science fiction and so was much of his most acclaimed short fiction.

But to disregard his fantasy contributions would be a major oversight. Shepard died earlier this month and to commemorate his profound contributions to the genre, we will survey his fantasy books, beginning with his third novel, 1993’s The Golden, a tantalizing mix of mystery and horror subtitled A Sensual Novel of Vampires and Blood Lust.

In the mid nineteenth century, vampires gather at Castle Banat, one of their most sprawling and ancient warrens. Their five-hundred-year breeding project has produced the Golden, a mortal of perfect blood, and they’ve come to drink from her in a ceremony that will incidentally make her one of the Family. When the girl is found murdered, the clan’s shadowy patriarch calls on the detective Michel Beheim to solve the crime. But Michel has been a vampire for only a short while, and though he was a talented investigator among mortals, he is ill-prepared for the task. Soon he is fighting to survive the bizarre terrors of the labyrinthine castle and the schemes of vampires who guard a secret that may forever alter the world of the undead.

The Golden won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel in 1994.

The Golden was published in a limited edition hardcover by Mark V. Ziesing books in April 1993 and in a mass market paperback by Bantam Books in August 1993. It was 291 pages in paperback, priced at $4.99. It is currently out of print, but a digital version is available for $6.99.

Enter the World of Pathfinder Legends… At a Discount!

Enter the World of Pathfinder Legends… At a Discount!

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Rise of the Runelords-smallPaizo Publishing’s Pathfinder RPG has made a habit of breaking new ground. Or, in a sense, re-breaking old ground in completely new ways. They’ve revolutionized Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition by re-imagining it into the Pathfinder RPG. Their Pathfinder Adventure Path series seems to have transformed the scope of what can be done with pre-generated gaming modules. Their Pathfinder Tales line of novels set in the Pathfinder world of Golarion are frequently praised around the Black Gate world headquarters, only a fraction of which spills over onto the website. And, last year, they transformed the deck-building game with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (which, I promise, I will review one of these days! – but for now you can get it on Amazon).

Now they’re moving in a similar direction with their Pathfinder Legends line of audiobooks. Instead of adapting the Pathfinder Tales novels, they’re instead focusing this series of audiobooks on adaptations of their Adventure Paths. And, instead of merely being audiobooks relating a narrative of the adventure, these are instead full audio productions with a cast of talented actors, heralding back to the glory days of the radio age… but with modern production values. You can get a hint of what to expect from this audio trailer. It introduces the first episode, “Burnt Offerings,” which is the first installment of their Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path (Amazon)

If what you hear interests you, the first installment of Pathfinder Legends is available now for order through Paizo’s website. For a limited time, they are offering the first audio production at the discounted subscription price even if you don’t subscribe. This means you can order the audio CD for $12.79 (normally $15.99) and the audio download for $10.39 (normally $12.99). It’s not exactly clear when this offer will end, but they’ve said that it will last until the Pathfinder Legends subscription plan is available online.

I Invoke the Voidal! Oblivion Hand by Adrian Cole

I Invoke the Voidal! Oblivion Hand by Adrian Cole

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oie_24224952K95LzfUEStripped of all his memories for some great transgression against the Dark Gods, the mysterious one called the Voidal, or Fatecaster, endlessly traverses the dimensions of the omniverse. Always he brings vengeance via his Oblivion Hand, an additional punishment of the Dark Gods. And furthermore, any who aid or befriend him are made to suffer.

Oblivion Hand (Wildside Press 2001) is a fix-up of eight early stories by Adrian Cole about his dark wanderer, the Voidal. Cole’s amnesiac protagonist was introduced in a chapbook titled “The Coming of the Voidal” (in this book reworked and retitled “Well Met in Hell.”) Five more tales appeared in a variety of small magazines and anthologies between 1977 and 1980, including Fantasy Crossroads and the Gerald Page-edited Heroic Fantasy. Two more, “The Lair of the Spydron” and “Urge and Demiurge,” were scheduled to be in Phantasy Digest and Weird Adventures respectively, but both magazines shut down before the stories could be published. They appear for the first time in Oblivion Hand.

In a review I did of the first two stories, “Well Met in Hell” and “The Lair of the Spydron,” I was harsh and almost disdainful. Still, there was something about them that I remember liking. Reading Lin Carter’s Kellory the Warlock last week (and whoever thought a writer most people agree was generally mediocre could attract so many comments a quarter of a century after his death?), elements of it reminded me of Cole’s book. Both authors were intent on creating a setting that wasn’t just another watered down mimeograph of Middle-earth; they wanted something stranger. Carter succeeded, but Cole did immeasurably better.

Cole’s omniverse is an endless collection of interesting settings: universe-sized dimensions; monster-infested pocket worlds; a realm filled not with planets but islands that float in space. Countless arrays of gods rule over these various worlds. Terrible beings like the Spydron create and work their will on hidden places they carve out for themselves. Powerful sorcerers raise themselves up above the gods in other worlds.

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New Treasures: The Last Wild by Piers Torday

New Treasures: The Last Wild by Piers Torday

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The Last Wild Piers TordayI don’t know much about this Piers Torday fellow. Not that there’s all that much to know — The Last Wild is his first novel, he lives in London, and is hard at work on additional adventures featuring Kester and Polly. Admit it — that’s all you need to know, too.

The Times has compared The Last Wild to Roald Dahl’s classic James and the Giant Peach – a pretty rousing endorsement. It looks like a quick, exciting, Middle-Grade read, and I think I’ll settle down with it later in the week. That is if my kids don’t steal it first.

In a world where animals no longer exist, twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes sometimes feels like he hardly exists either. Locked away in a home for troubled children, he’s told there’s something wrong with him. So when he meets a flock of talking pigeons and a bossy cockroach, Kester thinks he’s finally gone crazy. But the animals have something to say. And they need him. The pigeons fly Kester to a wild place where the last creatures in the land have survived. A wise stag needs Kester’s help, and together they must embark on a great journey, joined along the way by an overenthusiastic wolf cub, a military-trained cockroach, a mouse with a ritual for everything, and a stubborn girl named Polly. The animals saved Kester Jaynes. But can Kester save the animals?

The Last Wild was published on March 18, 2014 by Viking. It is 322 pages, priced at $16.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Short-Lived Holmes

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HouseofCardsNetflix’s House of Cards redefined what can be achieved by a web series. Everything about it, from casting to story to visuals, screams “quality.” The fact that it was intended to run for only a single season yet has already been renewed for a third testifies to the success that the show has had. It’s tough to maintain viewership when there’s almost nobody to root for, but they’ve done it.

But I wonder how many people realize that it is a remake of a 1990 British miniseries (apparently lust for power transcends decades. And centuries…)? Ian Richardson plays the Kevin Spacey role. Francis Urquhart has a disarming smile that makes him seem more warm than Spacey’s Frank Underwood. Don’t be fooled!

HouseofCardsRichardsonThe original House of Cards has a few Holmes ties. Female lead Susannah Harker appeared opposite Charlton Heston in the TV version of Crucifer of Blood, a modified version of The Sign of the Four.

She was also the client in Jeremy Brett’s version of The Adventure of the Dying Detective. Also, Colin Jeavons was Brett’s Inspector Lestrade. But it is Richardson’s brief tenure as Sherlock Holmes that we will look at now.

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Vintage Treasures: Rogers’ Rangers by John Silbersack

Vintage Treasures: Rogers’ Rangers by John Silbersack

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Rogers' Rangers-smallIf you know the name John Silbersack, it’s likely for his many significant accomplishments as a publisher and literary agent.

Silbersack has founded no less than six different imprints, including ROC Books at Penguin, Warner Aspect, and Harper Prism. Over a decade ago, he walked away from publishing and decided to become an agent, partnering with Trident Media Group, where he now reps some of the biggest names in the industry, including Barb & J.C. Hendee, Guy Gavriel Kay, E. E. Knight, William F. Nolan, David Schow, Paul Park, and the Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert estates.

But back in the early 80s, this publishing Renaissance man also tried his hand at writing and editing. With Victoria Schochet, he edited the first four volumes of The Berkley Showcase (1980 – 1982), an anthology of science fiction and fantasy that presented original work from Berkley authors. It lasted five volumes and published a fabulous range of fiction from Orson Scott Card, R A Lafferty, Pat Cadigan, John Kessel, Howard Waldrop, Connie Willis, Thomas M Disch, Marge Piercy, Eric Van Lustbader, and many others.

All very interesting. But what we want to talk about today is Silbersack’s sole novel: Rogers’ Rangers, a sequel to the original Buck Rogers novel, published by Ace Books in 1983, which I found in a collection of SF books from the 1980s I acquired two months ago.

Back in 1979, Glen A. Larson, the producer behind the original incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, launched a new SF TV show for Universal: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, starring Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (and the voice of Mel Blanc as Twiki, Buck’s robot companion.) The series was a hit, and I vividly remember seeing the pilot episode in theaters, shortly before the TV version launched.

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Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

Politics and Fantasy Make Strange Bedfellows

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strange bedfellowsIn January, both M. Harold Page and I wrote posts about politics in fantasy literature. While we came at the topic from different points, I think we narrowed in on the same conclusion. I quote from Page’s post:

Of all the genres, Fantasy must be the worst possible channel for the politically minded author. They simply can’t be heard over that clash of steel and the roar of dragons…

Really enjoyed and appreciated his post. And I do take his point – escapism is great fun and entertaining. But ultimately escape and make believe can only go so far, and at other times and places we will have other needs, other reasons to want to read. Something that touches us inside.

The reason I’m coming back to this topic, perhaps more convinced than I was before of this serious liability in fantasy, is that I’ve just read Strange Bedfellows: An Anthology of Political Science Fiction. I’d mentioned the anthology in my post as something I was looking forward to reading.

Now that I have, maybe I’m having one of those stumbling-upon-a-watch-in-the-heath moments, because, for the life of me, I can’t see how fantasy could have done even a fraction of what this anthology seems to have accomplished effortlessly. A few examples will make this clear.

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Is the Original SF and Fantasy Paperback Anthology Series Dead?

Is the Original SF and Fantasy Paperback Anthology Series Dead?

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Orbit 9 Damon Knight-smallI miss the era of the original paperback anthologies. It seems to have faded away without anyone really noticing and I’m not sure why.

Well, I guess I do know why, but I’m grumpy about it. Short fiction isn’t really viable in mass market anymore. Ten years of trying — and failing — to publish a fantasy fiction magazine taught me that.

That wasn’t always the case. For decades, SF and fantasy readers supported several prestigious, high-paying paperback markets for short fiction and they attracted the best writers in the field. Damon Knight published 21 Orbit anthologies between 1966 and 1980; Robert Silverberg edited New Dimensions (12 volumes, 1971-81) and star editor Terry Carr helmed 17 volumes of the Universe series (1971-1987), for example.

I’d be hard pressed to tell you which of those three was the best source for original SF and fantasy, and I don’t really feel qualified to anyway, since I didn’t read them all. (Or even most of them — we are talking a combined 50 volumes, just for those three. I read pretty fast, but I’m not Rich Horton.)

In any event, those days are gone. And now that they are, I wonder — was it the sheer editorial talent of Messieurs Knight, Silverberg, and Carr that allowed their respective anthologies to continue for decades?

Or was there simply more of an appetite for short fiction forty years ago? Could an editor with the same talent and drive accomplish what they did today? Or is it futile, like trying to argue football with the Borg?

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