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Try Out the Best in Modern Epic Fantasy in John Joseph Adams’ Latest Anthology

Try Out the Best in Modern Epic Fantasy in John Joseph Adams’ Latest Anthology

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John Joseph Adams EpicThe true value of anthologies, of course, is you get to sample a variety of authors under a single cover. And the true value of great anthologies is that you get to sample a variety of great authors under a single cover.

Epic: Legends of Fantasy looks like a great anthology. It’s a fantasy buffet featuring some of the most acclaimed writers working in the field today, including Patrick Rothfuss, George R. R. Martin, Tad Williams, Michael Moorcock, Mary Robinette Kowal, and N. K. Jemisin, to name just a few. Here’s the complete TOC:

“Homecoming” by Robin Hobb
“The Word of Unbinding” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Burning Man” by Tad Williams
“As the Wheel Turns” by Aliette de Bodard
“The Alchemist” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Sandmagic” by Orson Scott Card
“The Road to Levinshir” by Patrick Rothfuss
“Rysn” by Brandon Sanderson
“While the Gods Laugh” by Michael Moorcock
“Mother of All Russiya” by Melanie Rawn
“Riding the Shore of the River of Death” by Kate Elliott
“The Bound Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Narcomancer” by N. K. Jemisin
“Strife Lingers in Memory” by Carrie Vaughn
“The Mad Apprentice” by Trudi Canavan
“Otherling” by Juliet Marillier
“The Mystery Knight” by George R. R. Martin

This is a reprint anthology, but don’t let that dissuade you. Adams has done a marvelous job assembling epic fantasy from the last five decades, and tracking down even a fraction of these stories would cost you far more than this anthology. Paolo Bacigalupi’s novella, “The Alchemist,” for example, was previously available only as a limited-edition hardcover from Subterranean Press. “The Road to Levinshir” by Patrick Rothfuss is from Volume 18 of the Writers of the Future anthology, long out of print. Michael Moorcock’s Elric tale, “While the Gods Laugh,” originally published in Science Fantasy #49 (October 1961), is probably the most-reprinted tale of the lot, but trust me — you’ll be glad it’s here.

Epic: Legends of Fantasy was published on October 5th by Tachyon Publications. It is 624 pages in trade paperback for $17.95 ($9.99 for the digital version). Complete details at the Tachyon website.

Goth Chick News: While You’re Waiting for Ridley Scott…

Goth Chick News: While You’re Waiting for Ridley Scott…

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image0023It’s been nearly a year since we told you Ridley Scott had leapt from his lounge chair to dive head-first into a fit of creativity; at the end of which we’d be gifted with extensions of two of his most lucrative and beloved films.

Prometheus, a pseudo-prequel to the Alien franchise hit theaters on June 8th and just became available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D. Among the many special extras included is Scott’s own feature-length audio commentary, wherein he provides a brief update about the status of his upcoming Blade Runner sequel.

“I’m going through Blade Runner now,” Scott says, likening the process to his work on Prometheus. “You start off with a blank sheet and you start to evolve. Sometimes you walk into this wilderness of mirrors that don’t make any sense at all. Then, suddenly, two and two do make four and you think, ‘Oh, that’s good,’ and you put that up there. It’s a series of paving stones.”

What that “wilderness of mirrors” says to us is that as of October, Scott was still working on what is likely the early stages of a script. And though we can confirm a Blade Runner sequel has been green-lighted, it appears very unlikely that we’ll be sitting down with popcorn to find out if Harrison Ford makes an appearance or not any sooner than early 2014.

That’s quite all right Mr. Scott. Take your time. You are fiddling with a cinematic icon there.

But, my replicant covetors, fear not – we have a little something to hold you over…

From Madrid, Spain, award-winning author Rosa Montero spins a futuristic tale also set in Rick Deckard’s replicant-populated world, but told from the replicant’s point of view.

…

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New Treasures: Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

New Treasures: Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

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harborI’m a big fan of Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film based on the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel. Creepy, creepy stuff, and any film that can have you cheering for the vampire while simultaneously being 100% faithful to traditional vampire lore gets my vote.

Let the Right One In was re-made for English audiences as Let Me In in 2010, staring Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass). Lindqvist’s original novel was given the same title for its English trade paperback release the same year. His latest is Harbor, and it sounds very intriguing indeed.

With Harbor, a stunning and chilling masterpiece, Lindqvist firmly cements his place as the heir apparent to Stephen King.

One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While they are exploring the lighthouse, Maja disappears – either into thin air or under thin ice — leaving not even a footprint in the snow.

Two years later, Anders, a broken man, moves back to his family’s abandoned home on the island. He soon realizes that Maja’s disappearance is only one of many strange occurrences, and that his fellow islanders, including his own grandmother, know a lot more than they’re telling. As he digs deeper, Anders begins to unearth a dark and deadly secret at the heart of this small, seemingly placid town.

As he did with Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist serves up a blockbuster cocktail of high-tension suspense in a narrative that barely pauses for breath.

I don’t cover a lot of horror with my New Treasures column, mostly because I don’t get the chance to read as much as I used to. But I plan to make an exception for this one.

Harbor was released by St. Martin’s Griffin in September; it is 528 pages. It is $15.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

You can see all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Win a Free Copy of A Magic Broken

Win a Free Copy of A Magic Broken

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A Magic BrokenLast Monday, Black Gate blogger Theo Beale announced the publication of A Magic Broken, a new novella that marked his first foray into epic fantasy:

A Magic Broken is a tale of ruthlessness, courage and deceit. The novella tells the story of Captain Nicolas du Mere, an exile fleeing the death of his rebel lord, and Lodi, son of Dunmorin, a brave dwarf dedicated to rescuing his fellow dwarves from slavery. Their dangerous paths meet, but in a manner that is anything but predictable.

Theodore Beale is the author of Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, which Howard Andrew Jones called “Entertaining… Beale should be applauded for trying to create a medieval fantasy that more accurately replicates historical reality than many of his peers” (Black Gate 14).

A Magic Broken is an appetizer to Theo’s forthcoming epic fantasy novel, A Throne of Bones. It is currently available for Kindle and Nook for just 99 cents.

Theo has graciously offered 25 copies of the digital version of A Magic Broken free to Black Gate readers willing to share their thoughts in a review on Amazon.com. If you’re interested, send an e-mail to the editor with the title “A Magic Broken” expressing your willingness to read it and write a review, and we’ll e-mail you your free copy.

No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. A maximum of 25 free copies will be awarded. Not valid where prohibited by law. I have no idea where giving away free books might be prohibited, but our lawyers make us say that. Winners responsible for all taxes. Eat your vegetables.

Update Wednesday, Oct 24: We have now passed the 25 response mark, and there are no additional copies to give away. Thanks for all your interest!

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part IV: My Heart Laid Bare

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part IV: My Heart Laid Bare

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My Heart Laid BareFor the past three weeks, I’ve been looking at Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet, in preparation for the publication of the fifth book in the sequence, The Accursed, set for next March. I started off with 1980’s Bellefleur, which I thought was brilliant. Then I looked at 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, which I found interesting, but not up to the first book’s level, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the romance genre. Last week, I considered Mysteries of Winterthurn, from 1984, which impressed me quite a bit. Now, this week, I look at 1998’s My Heart Laid Bare.

It may be worth noting that while My Heart Laid Bare was published in 1998, it was written in 1984. Similarly, The Accursed, under its original title The Crosswicks Horror, was first completed in 1981. Both books were revised in the years since, and I wonder if that might help account for the fact that My Heart Laid Bare has a rather different feel than the other ‘Gothic’ books. Nothing evidently supernatural happens in it. It’s only nominally Gothic in atmosphere, and the narration’s relatively straightforward — it’s told in omniscient third-person, unlike Bloodsmoor or Winterthurn, and is stylistically more restrained than Bellefleur (which admittedly is not saying much). Still, it’s a wild, wide-ranging look at American life in the early part of the twentieth century, incorporating several self-consciously melodramatic touches. It fits in with its predecessors nicely, and overall serves to round off Oates’s Gothic sequence as we’ve had it so far.

The book follows grizzled con-man Abraham Licht and his sons and daughters, from 1909 through to the Great Depression. A prologue suggests that they’re the descendants of a scheming eighteenth-century servingwoman who impersonated her mistress, was caught and sent to America; at any event, the novel shows us the Lichts consistently changing identities, some of which are false and some of which become true. Besides Abraham, we have his three biological sons, his older boys Thurston and Harwood and his younger Darian; his two daughters, Millie and Esther; and his black adopted son, Elisha. Over the course of the book, the children leave and betray and (occasionally) return to Abraham, as Abraham himself plots for money, for power, and, perhaps most importantly to him, for another marriage.

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November Brings the Final Volume of Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch Series

November Brings the Final Volume of Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch Series

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shadowheartThose of you who wait until a series is completed before picking up the first volume (especially if, like me, you wait until it arrives in paperback) will be glad to hear that DAW Books will be releasing Tad Williams’s Shadowheart, the fourth and final volume in his well-reviewed epic fantasy series Shadowmarch, in mass market paperback on November 6th:

Southmarch Castle is about to be caught between two implacable enemies, the ancient, immortal Qar and the insane god-king, the Autarch of Xis. Meanwhile, its two young defenders, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick, are both trapped far away from home and fighting for their lives.

And now, something is awakening underneath Southmarch Castle, something powerful and terrible that the world has not seen for thousands of years. Can Barrick and Briony, along with a tiny handful of allies, ordinary and extraordinary, find a way to save their world and prevent the rise of a terrible new age — an age of unending darkness?

I bought Williams’s first novel, the cat fantasy Tailchaser’s Song, in 1985, and have followed his career with interest ever since. His massive Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (starting with The Dragonbone Chair in 1988) catapulted him to the front ranks of epic fantasy writers, and the 4-volume Otherland series, beginning with City of Golden Shadow (1996) and ending with Sea of Silver Light (2001), proved he was as proficient with science fantasy.

The first novel in his latest series, Shadowmarch, was published in hardcover in 2004. Just as with Otherland, Shadowmarch was initially announced as a trilogy, but the third book became so large and unwieldy it was broken into two volumes. It’s been a long wait for the fourth and final installment, but epic fantasy fans are nothing if not patient.

Shadowheart will be released by DAW Books on November 6. It is 840 pages for $8.99 in paperback; the digital version is $9.99,

Dark Regions Press releases Crooked House by Joe McKinney

Dark Regions Press releases Crooked House by Joe McKinney

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crooked-house-smallI don’t know about you, but as Halloween approaches I’m seeing a lot more horror movies, books, and graphic novels cross my path.

As Goth Chick loves to point out, it is the Season. And if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to overlook some of its more intriguing titles, especially from the small press. Fortunately, Black Gate has you covered.

Dark Regions Press specializes in horror and dark fiction, and have published hundreds of authors such as Bentley Little, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Tim Waggoner, and many more. This Tuesday, October 23rd, they are publishing Crooked House by Bram Stoker Award winning author Joe McKinney:

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.

Those words were true when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote them in 1851, and they were true in 1933, when a fire burned half of Crook House to the ground, taking James Crook’s wife and two sons with it. A disgraced bootlegger and former pro baseball player, James Crook returned from prison to find his house, and his life, a pile of cinders. Broken and insane, he rebuilt Crook House, putting his pain and loneliness into every timber.

But Hawthorne’s words are still true today, and nobody knows that better than Dr. Robert Bell, who has just moved into Crook House as part of his hiring package from a small Texas college. He soon discovers that Crook House is more than just a new beginning for himself and Sarah and their daughter Angela. For the Bell family, Crook House is a place where the past still lives, and its horrors waiting for the next drowning man.

With Crooked House, Joe McKinney brings you a chilling novel in the vein of The Shining by Stephen King, a haunted house tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned.

Joe McKinney is the author of Flesh Eaters, Dead City, Mutated, and more. Crooked House will be available as a leather-bound deluxe lettered hardcover and as a signed and numbered limited hardcover. Find complete details and order information at Dark Regions.

New Treasures: Melanie Rawn’s The Diviner

New Treasures: Melanie Rawn’s The Diviner

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the-diviner-smallMelanie Rawn’s first novel, 1988’s Dragon Prince, was an immediate success. Twenty-four years later, it’s still in print — on something like its 50th printing — and so are both of its sequels. If that’s not an auspicious debut, I don’t know what is.

Rawn certainly didn’t rest with the Dragon Prince trilogy. From 1991-94, she published the Dragon Star trilogy; in 1996 the collaborative novel The Golden Key (with Kate Elliott and Jennifer Roberson); and 1994 and 1997 saw the release of the first two novels of the Exiles trilogy. Rawn practically had her own shelf on every bookstore in North America — nine fat fantasy novels, all still in print.

And then… nothing. Her last publication of the 90s was a short story in A Magic-Lover’s Treasury of the Fantastic in 1998. The Captal’s Tower, the final novel in the Exiles trilogy, has been listed as “forthcoming” since 1997.

She emerged from nearly a decade of silence in 2006, breaking away from epic fantasy with Spellbinder, a modern urban fantasy of the territorial disputes and sex lives of Manhattan witches. In a note in that book, Rawn spoke of battling clinical depression and the need to move on to other projects to help her recovery. The sequel Fire Raiser arrived in 2009.

Last year she returned to epic fantasy for the first time in nearly 15 years with The Diviner, a prequel to The Golden Key:

The only survivor of royal treachery that eliminates his entire family, Azzad al-Ma’aliq flees to the desert and dedicates himself to vengeance. With the help of the Shagara, a nomadic tribe of powerful magicians, he will finally be able to take his revenge — but at what cost?

The Diviner was released in paperback by DAW books on August 7th. It is 438 pages, and priced at $7.99 for both the digital and print versions.

Cover Your Naked Books, Please

Cover Your Naked Books, Please

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shiversOn Tuesday, I mentioned a few of the vintage anthologies I bought from the collection of Martin Harry Greenberg at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show. I’ve been enjoying them quite a bit, and I certainly couldn’t argue with the price.

However, most of them were coverless. Maybe Greenberg used those beautiful old dust jackets to wrap Christmas presents, I dunno. Anyway, they look a little odd that way on my shelves.

But we live in the era of the Internet, when you can find anything you want from the comfort of your couch, so I figured I could find a cover for the 1949 Merlin Press edition of From Off This World, maybe. As enjoyable as that book is, it would look a lot better with that Virgil Finlay wraparound cover. I’m not asking much — just a brand new dust jacket for an obscure 60-year old hardcover from a forgotten publisher. Give it up, Internet.

And you know what? I found one.

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC sells over 7,700 high-quality reproductions of dust jackets for rare and collectable books. Mark Terry, the mad genius behind the company, tells us it is the sole funding for his “Dust Jacket Archive Project.” He’s traveled all over North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas and Jamaica, scanning collections and accumulating over 50,000 jackets. Nice work if you can get it.

Just browsing through his online catalog is fascinating. His SciFi/Fantasy/Supernatural category includes over 800 vintage covers from Gnome Press, Arkham House, Doubleday, and many other publishers. I immediately fell in love with the cover to Shivers, a 1932 British anthology in the Creeps series, from Philip Allan & Co. Just look at the skinny stick dude menacing that plucky young English lass. You know something untoward is in the wind, and no mistake.

The facsimiles are a little pricey (averaging around $22), but I’ve seen much worse in the collector’s market. I’m tempted to buy a handful, to dress up my coverless books and even replace some of the more tattered dust jackets in my collection. And I think I’ll buy a facsimile dust jacket for Shivers, too. I don’t have a copy of Shivers, but I’m willing to grab a random hardcover, throw away the jacket, and put this one on it. Because, damn.

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC operates out of San Francisco. Their website is here.

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Murphy’s Law (Pedagogical Corollaries)

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Murphy’s Law (Pedagogical Corollaries)

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the-once-and-future-kingWhen teachers write publicly about teaching, we usually write about the things that went well. It’s not just that we’re full of ourselves or want to save face — though we fall prey to human nature like anybody else. It’s that we like being helpful, and talking about the things that worked seems more likely to help our readers than talking about the things that didn’t. Maybe some offhand comment that accidentally turned out to be illuminating for a student will help some other student, somewhere, so off I send it into the ether.  If teachers are more visibly full of ourselves than other people are, it’s because the work we do can be utterly humbling.

Of course, some lesson plans just fall down and spit. Some things that could be done well go horribly wrong in the execution. We all have bad brain days. Only a small minority of disasters are fun or useful to read about, though. If teaching mistakes were as frequently entertaining as parenting mistakes are, you’d see a lot more sitcoms set in the faculty lounge.

Why did I make my Intro to Myth students read such very long stretches of Tolkien’s “Valaquenta,” when I myself nod off reading it? What was I thinking when I sent my minimally English-proficient Mandarin speakers off to read The Once and Future King? Why did I hector that poor creative writing student to make his dragon-riding antihero more sympathetic, when an antihero was so clearly what he wanted to write?

For every awesome thing I can’t wait to tell you guys about, there’s an equal and opposite gaffe.

Sarah Avery’s short story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” appeared in the last print issue of Black Gate. A related novella, “The Imlen Bastard,” is slated to appear in BG‘s new online incarnation. Her contemporary fantasy novella collection, Tales from Rugosa Coven, follows the adventures of some very modern Pagans in a supernatural version of New Jersey even weirder than the one you think you know. You can keep up with her at her website, sarahavery.com, and follow her on Twitter.