Black Gate

You’d think the rooftop headquarters of Black Gate would be a great place to stay up-to-date on the best new talent in fantasy. It probably would be, too, if I didn’t waste half my time watching H.R. Pufnstuf DVDs and trying to fix the coffee machine.

Still, I occasionally manage to overhear good tips around the water cooler. When I hear a new name enough times, I go back to my office, move around piles of pulp magazines until I can find a piece of paper, and make a note of it.

Australian writer Trent Jamieson generated a lot of chatter with his Death Works Trilogy. But it was last year’s Roil, the first novel in The Nightbound Land duology, that caused me to jot his name down on the back of a Jimmy John’s receipt.

Now Night’s Engines, the concluding volume of The Nightbound Land, has arrived, and suddenly it seems I can’t change the toner in the office copier without hearing the name Trent Jamieson.

Shale is dying. The vast, boiling maelstrom known only as the Roil has pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. The last cities teeter on the verge of collapse.

There is one hope, but it is enshrined in a decadent wastrel who does not want his destiny, and a young woman who seeks only an end to everything. And yet they go on, in search of the ancient weapons that worked against the Roil once, and must work again.

Even in fantasy, duologies aren’t that common (my spellchecker keeps wanting to change the word to Audiology, in fact). But for someone with precious little leisure time who still wants to join in on water cooler conversations, especially the ones involving that cute new intern, duologies seem like the way to go. Wish me luck.

Night’s Engines was published in May 2012 by Angry Robot. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Yeah, I know I’m late to the party with this one. Stories, the high-profile original anthology edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, was released over two years ago — back in June of 2010.

But I have a good excuse. Despite the incredibly awesome cover by Tom Gauld, after my first glace at the table of contents, I dismissed Stories as a mainstream anthology.

I mean, come on. Walter Mosley, Jodi Picolut, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanne Harris, Lawrence Block, Roddy Doyle, and Chuck Palahniuk? You’d have made the same mistake.

Eventually, I picked up enough on the buzz around this book to realize that its claim to being a “groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction” wasn’t just hyperbole. Many of the stories, including Neil Gaiman’s “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” and Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon,” began showing up on genre best-of-the-year lists.

I finally decided it was time to take another look. It didn’t hurt that by then the hardcover was being offered at a bargain price at Amazon.com for 60% off (still in stock if you act fast).

Stories is by no means a straight-up fantasy anthology. But it includes some terrific fantasy fiction by some of the genre’s biggest names, including Richard Adams, Michael Swanwick, Michael Moorcock, Peter Straub, Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, Joe Hill, Michael Marshall Smith, and Joe R. Lansdale.

And I think you’ll be surprised by the contributions of the writers I mentioned above — who aren’t known for writing fantasy — as well.

…

Read More Read More