Black Gate

I remember when I first saw Dhampir, the opening volume of Barb and & J.C. Hendee’s Noble Dead saga, back in 2003.

A supernatural medieval fantasy packed with vampire hunters, assassins, ancient castles, and mysterious guilds? That went right on my to-be-read pile. It was still there when Thief of Lives arrived twelve months later. And the third volume, Sister of the Dead. There are now a dozen, and I’ve surrendered all hope. Those two write faster than I can read.

So that’s why I was pleased when Barb Hendee’s solo effort, The Mist-Torn Witches, arrived in May. It’s the first in a brand new series, but it has many of the same elements that attracted me to The Noble Dead. In one volume, I can be on top of everything and not have to hang my head in shame when we talk about Hendee at the Black Gate reading club. Big green recliner, here I come.

In a small village in the nation of Droevinka, orphaned sisters Céline and Amelie Fawe scrape out a living selling herbal medicines in their apothecary shop. Céline earns additional money by posing as a seer and pretending to read people’s futures.

But they exist in a land of great noble houses, all vying for power, and when the sisters refuse the orders of a warlord prince, they must flee and are forced to depend on the warlord prince’s brother, Anton, for a temporary haven.

A series of bizarre deaths of pretty young girls is plaguing the village surrounding Prince Anton’s castle. He offers Céline and Amelie permanent protection if they can use their “skills” to find the killer.

With little choice, the sisters enter a world unknown to them — of fine gowns and banquets and advances from powerful men. Their survival depends on catching a murderer who appears to walk through walls and vanish without a trace — and the danger grows with each passing night.

The Mist-Torn Witches was published by Roc Books on May 7. It is 326 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the hardest working writers in the business — and one of the most successful.

It’s not unusual for a prolific novelist to release a book a year. What is unusual is to consistently beat that pace while producing highly acclaimed, massive fantasy epics.

Just consider the last few years — starting with the 688-page Warbreaker (2009), which our reviewer Charlene Brusso called “the cure for trilogy fatigue” (not to be outdone, our Reviews Editor Bill Ward also noted that portions “approach the compulsive readability of the best page-turners.”)

A year later, Sanderson released the 861-page Wheel of Time novel Towers of Midnight, written from Robert Jordan’s notes. The same year (!), his massive 1,008-page novel The Way of Kings won the 2011 David Gemmell Legend Award (our review is here.)

In 2011, it was the new Mistborn novel The Alloy of Law; in her review Charlene said it was “full of neat ideas, crackling dialogue, and a very big helping of dry wit.”

In 2012, Sanderson published the unusual science fantasy The Emperor’s Soul, from Tachyon Publications.

That’s not even including the various short fiction and novellas he published during the same period — or the two complete novels in his juvenile fantasy series, Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia (2009) and Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens (2010).

Seriously, I’m getting tired just typing all the titles. How does he do it?

Moving into 2013, Sanderson’s first release was the 912-page A Memory of Light in January (our coverage here); he also has the upcoming science fiction novel Steelheart in September.

That’s not all, of course. His third 2013 book is the just-released The Rithmatist, a comparatively short (for Sanderson) 372 pages. For those not doing the math at home, that brings his published page count for the year to 1,696 — down from 2,173 in 2010, but we try not to judge.

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