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A Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly for The Bones of the Old Ones

A Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly for The Bones of the Old Ones

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bones-of-the-old-onesI’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Howard Andrew Jones’s The Bones of the Old Ones, the sequel to my favorite novel from last year, The Desert of Souls.

Publisher’s Weekly isn’t making that wait any easier. In a starred review just last week, the magazine raved:

This rousing sequel to The Desert of Souls offers a mélange of ancient adventure myths populated by convincing, endearing characters… Asim el Abbas and scholar Dabir ibn Khalil rescue alluring and aristocratic Najya binta Alimah from her kidnappers, the Sebitti, seven sinister wizards from the remote past. In Asim and Dabir’s subsequent quest to find and destroy the ancient and powerful bone-weapons also sought by the Sebitti and free Najya from the weapons’ soul-threatening spell, the friends experience one fearful ordeal after another, while brave Asim falls more and more for Najya’s wit, courage, and charms. As intricately woven as the magic carpet of Greek sorceress Lydia, Jones’s tale incorporates real historical personages and settings like Mosul of “haggard beauty” from the early days of Islam, and fills the pages with gallantry and glamour to provide a thrilling spectacle.

You can read the complete review at Publisher’s Weekly‘s website here.

Like I didn’t want this book enough already. Now I know why publishers want us to wait until the month a title is published before we blab about it on the blog. I want this book right now.

We first reported on The Bones of the Old Ones in August. It will be released in hardcover and eBook by Thomas Dunne Books on December 11. If you’ve got an advance proof you’re willing to part with, we should talk.

Vintage Treasures: World of Wonder, edited by Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: World of Wonder, edited by Fletcher Pratt

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world-of-wonder2I’m gradually making my way, with considerable delight, through the vintage science fiction and fantasy anthologies I bought for a few bucks from the collection of Martin H. Greenberg.

I’ve already covered From Off This World (1949) and The Giant Anthology of Science Fiction (1954), both edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend. This week, I’ve been fondling Fletcher Pratt’s 1951 World of Wonder, subtitled An Introduction to Imaginative Literature.

Pratt, author of The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star, was already a noted fantasy author in his own right by 1951. The science fiction anthology was still a relatively new beast, but the handful that had been published at that point had been generally well received.

Nonetheless, Pratt felt it necessary to grouse about lack of respect in his lengthy introduction:

Now let us not kid ourselves. The stories in this book are fiction, they are literature, whatever definition one chooses to give to those often-disputed terms. A good many people tend to look down on science fiction and fantasy (there is no word that really covers both exactly) because the bulk of it has appeared in magazines with garish covers. They forget that the color of the skin is no guarantee of the flavor of the apple.

Like many books in Greenberg’s collection — especially the vintage anthologies — this one had notes scrawled in the margins, the most prominent being “Fantastic — use. Conflict resolution?” beside H. Beam Piper’s “Operation RSVP.” Greenberg reprinted “Operation RSVP” in Amazing Science Fiction Anthology: The Wild Years 1946-1955 (which I discussed back in June.)

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Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part III: Mysteries of Winterthurn

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part III: Mysteries of Winterthurn

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Mysteries of WinterthurnFor the past couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet, in advance of the publication of the fifth book in the sequence next March. I started off with 1980’s Bellefleur, which I thought was brilliant. Last week 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. This week, I’ll be looking at Mysteries of Winterthurn, from 1984, which impressed me quite a bit.

Winterthurn plays with the mystery novel as Bellefleur did the Gothic and Bloodsmoor did the romance. Like those books, it both celebrates and subverts its form, and presents a parable whose themes include America, gender, and God. Unlike those books, it also creates a fully-realised community, the city of Winterthurn, against which background its hero investigates three separate cases. I think it succeeds both as a story and as a work of well-wrought prose. It deftly manipulates symbol and theme, while in its pacing and manipulation of suspense, it might well be called genre-savvy; though not necessarily savvy in the genre one would expect.

The book follows detective Xavier Kilgarvan in three separate cases over about two dozen years. In the first case, “The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; Or, The Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor,” a teenaged Xavier investigates a murder at Glen Mawr Manor, the dwelling of his uncle, Judge Erasmus Kilgarvan, and Erasmus’s three daughters — for one of whom, Perdita, Xavier has conceived a strong attraction. As killings and macabre events continue, Xavier finds himself facing apparently supernatural forces. In the second case, “Devil’s Half-Acre; Or, The Mystery of the ‘Cruel Suitor’,” Xavier returns to Winterthurn in his late twenties, at the height of his fame, to unravel the events around the deaths of five women in a ruined landscape near the city. He draws closer to Perdita, even as his suspicions are drawn to the aristocratic Valentine Westergaard. Finally, “The Bloodstained Bridal Gown; Or, Xavier Kilgarvan’s Last Case” sees Xavier, nearing forty, dealing with a triple murder in Winterthurn — and, again, his love for Perdita.

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New Treasures: Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds

New Treasures: Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds

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bitter-seeds-smallI somehow managed to overlook Ian Tregillis’s debut novel, Bitter Seeds, and that situation might not have changed if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled into his reading at the World Science Fiction convention.

In front of a packed audience, Ian spun a tale of Nazi supermen, the warlocks of Britain, and a desperate battle to prevent the twisted psychics of Germany from winning World War II in a supernatural alternate history. I heard less than a minute of his summary of the second novel, but it was more than enough to grab my attention. I got my hands on the first volume, just released in paperback, as soon as I could.

It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between.

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities — a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present — Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.

Alan Furst meets Alan Moore in the opening of an epic of supernatural alternate history, Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis is a tale of a twentieth century like ours and also profoundly different.

Bitter Seeds was published by Tor Books on April 24, 2012. It is 467 pages for $7.99 in both paperback and digital format. The Coldest War, the sequel and second volume in what’s now being called The Milkweed Triptych, was published in hardcover on July 17, 2012.

See all of our recent New Treasures selections here.

New Treasures: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

New Treasures: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

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three-parts-dead-smallThe fall is a big time for fantasy releases. We see a lot of press releases and advance proofs in the build-up to the holiday season, and everyone here has their favorites. I’m usually a fan of serial fiction — Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales, Jame Enge’s Morlock the Maker, Howard Andrew Jones’s Dabir and Asim novels — and I’m always on the lookout for the next breakout fantasy series.

But this year the book that most grabbed my attention was a first novel by Max Gladstone. I first saw the cover hanging on the wall at a Tor party at Wiscon in May, and I’ve been anxiously awaiting it ever since. Set in a decaying city on the verge of destruction, Three Parts Dead offers a high-stakes tale of dead gods, necromancers, and dark dealings in a richly-imagined urban landscape.

A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts — and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.

Set in a phenomenally built world in which justice is a collective force bestowed on a few, craftsmen fly on lightning bolts, and gargoyles can rule cities, Three Parts Dead introduces readers to an ethical landscape in which the line between right and wrong blurs.

Three Parts Dead was published by Tor Books on October 2. It is 333 pages, and sells for $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital version.

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Hazards of Teaching Cool Stuff You Love in a Classroom

Teaching and Fantasy Literature: Hazards of Teaching Cool Stuff You Love in a Classroom

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“Why do we have to read so much?” said the students who thought Intro to Myth would be an easy A. “And all this writing! You turned it into work!”

“Why are you asking us to think critically about mythology, of all things?” said the students who regarded stories only as entertainment. “I want to read this stuff the same way I read watered-down versions of it when I was ten.”

“Why are you making us read The Silmarillion?” said the less reflective of the Tolkien fans. “I’ve read The Lord of the Rings twenty times, and I thought I could get college credit for stuff I already did in high school.”

Alas, one side effect of attending college is that one may be asked to do college level work. Most of my students were good sports about it. I assured the students who weren’t that they were welcome to keep their copies of the syllabi and read the same books for kicks on their own, and they could get out of the bother of keeping pace, writing papers, or thinking about what they read. All they had to do was go to the registrar’s office and withdraw from my class. Nobody was making them stay.

Nearly all of them stayed.

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Adventures in Stealth Publishing: The Return of the Sorcerer

Adventures in Stealth Publishing: The Return of the Sorcerer

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return-of-the-sorcerer-smallSome time, I dunno, about four years ago, I saw the cover for The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith online, and I knew I had to have it.

Maybe it was the cool cover. Maybe it was the Gene Wolfe cover blurb. I can’t say. But I wanted it. Real bad.

Of course, it wasn’t published yet. So I had to wait. I added it to my Amazon cart, where it sat. For months. The publication date changed a few times, and then Amazon slapped it with one of those “Currently Unavailable” warnings that are code for “We have no clue when it’s going to ship, dude.”

So I reluctantly took it out of my cart. But I still kept an eye out in bookstores. For years. It was a long, lonely vigil, like Penelope waiting for Odysseus. Exactly like that, now that I think about it.

There were false reports from time to time. Private sellers listed it on Amazon, but when I queried them they admitted it was “available for pre-order.” Bastards. Our own Brian Murphy, usually rock-solid reliable, even wrote a detailed review in July of 2010, the poor deluded fool. It’s sad what deadline pressure can do, I know. When I have to, I make up books to review too, I’m not throwing stones.

Then today I saw it listed for sale by the Book of the Month club. Yes, the Book of the Month club. That’s just weird. They don’t sell books that don’t exist, usually.

So I dug a little further. I discovered, to my astonishment, that Amazon.com had it listed. So did Barnes & Noble. Apparently it came out in 2010.

Excuse me? 2010?? How the hell did it get past me? I had, like, a dragnet the size of Rhode Island out for this book. I’m usually pretty plugged in to the publishing industry. Really. I’m connected, man. It hurts that this book managed to get past me. For two years.

I blame the publisher, because they’re small and I can pick on them. Prime Books, you owe me an apology. And maybe a cinnamon danish.

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Mystery 101: Books To Die For is a Complete Course in Mystery Fiction

Mystery 101: Books To Die For is a Complete Course in Mystery Fiction

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books-to-die-for-smallI don’t read much mystery fiction, and if I’m honest with myself it’s because I feel a little lost in the mystery section of the bookstore. I don’t know the authors or the major titles, and there are just so many choices it’s overwhelming. Safer to take my money and retreat back to the science fiction aisle, and buy that Asimov reprint.

But if I were a little more adventurous, or had a knowledgeable friend to hold my hand, I bet I’d find a lot of great reading in those shelves. There’s always a ton of old ladies buying mystery paperbacks, anyway. And if there’s a more discerning paperback reader than the American old lady, I haven’t met her.

It’s very possible that knowledgeable friend arrived in the mail this week, in the form of Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, a fabulous book that looks like it could open the door to a lifetime of mystery reading.

With so many mystery novels to choose among, and so many new titles appearing each year, where should a reader start? What are the classics of the genre? Which are the hidden gems?

In the most ambitious anthology of its kind yet attempted, the world’s leading mystery writers have come together to champion the greatest mystery novels ever written. In a series of personal essays that often reveal as much about the authors and their own work as they do about the books that they love, 119 authors from 20 countries have created a guide that will be indispensable for generations of readers and writers. From Agatha Christie to Lee Child, from Edgar Allan Poe to P. D. James, from Sherlock Holmes to Hannibal Lecter and Philip Marlowe to Lord Peter Wimsey, Books to Die For brings together the cream of the mystery world for a feast of reading pleasure, a treasure trove for those new to the genre and for those who believe that there is nothing new left to discover.

Even if you’re not in the mood for a mystery novel marathon, Books To Die For is perfectly suited for browsing, with brief personal essays from the world’s most illustrious mystery writers, chatting about the finest mystery novels ever written. The book is arranged chronologically, starting in 1841 with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Dupin Tales; the second entry is Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (covered by Sara Paretsky). The last one is The Perk, by Mark Gimenez, published in 2008.

In between are 118 enthusiastic mini book reviews, most averaging two to four pages, by writers including Rita May Brown, Linda Barnes, Carol O’Connell, Chuck Hogan, Joseph Finder, Charlaine Harris, Joe R. Lansdale, Laura Lippman, Max Allan Collins, Phil Rickman, Bill Pronzini, Jeffery Deaver, F. Paul Wilson, John Connolly, Joseph Wambaugh, Elmore Leonard, Eoin Colfer, Anne Perry, and many, many others.

Books To Die For is edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke; it was published by Atria on October 2. It is 560 pages in hardcover, and priced at $29.99. The digital edition is $14.99.

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part II: A Bloodsmoor Romance

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part II: A Bloodsmoor Romance

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A Bloodsmoor RomanceLast week I began looking at Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, in advance of the publication of the fifth book in the sequence next March. I thought 1980’s Bellefleur was a tremendous work, eloquent testimony to the imaginative power of the Gothic and to the sophistication the form can sustain. This week I’m looking at 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, to which I had a more qualified response.

To some extent this may well be a function of my being not the right reader for this book. While Bellefleur consciously played with the genre conventions of the Gothic proper, Bloodsmoor uses and parodies the conventions of 19th-century romance — romance as we know it, the story of young women looking for love and marriage. And romance as such is not a form that has any intrinsic appeal to me, or whose appeal I understand. I don’t say it’s bad. I’m saying I have no idea what makes romances good or bad as romances.

Unsurprisingly, then, the book plays off of texts with which I’m not familiar. I’ve seen similarities noted to Little Women, for example, which I’ve never read. Bloodsmoor is also intensely ironic, satiric in a way that Bellefleur wasn’t (as I read these books, anyway). So this is a genre that never appealed to me, and with whose key stories I have no experience, and it’s being sent up in a fairly unsubtle manner. Maybe it’s surprising that I didn’t have a worse reaction than I actually did.

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New Treasures: Castle Waiting, Volume Two

New Treasures: Castle Waiting, Volume Two

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castle-waiting-volume-two-smallI first discovered the brilliant and touching Castle Waiting through Linda Medley’s self-published comic in the late 90s. Eventually collected into the graphic novel Castle Waiting: The Curse of Brambly Hedge, it retold the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty (sort of), as seen by an odd cast of mostly minor characters. It was well written and beautiful, feminine in perspective and mood, incredibly slow-paced, and wholly original. I loved it.

And then it pretty much vanished. Stray issues popped up now and again in my local comic shop over the years, but it looked to me like Castle Waiting would always be one of those undiscovered indie treasures that never broke into the mainstream.

Fanatagraphics turned all that around in 2006 with the massive Castle Waiting, a 472-page omnibus collecting virtually all the early issues in an attractive and affordable format. Picking up the story many years later, Medley follows the new inhabitants of Sleeping Beauty’s ancient castle, most of them fairy tale characters with mysterious origins. Managed by the unflappable (literally) stork Rackham, the Castle is home to an eclectic mix of humans, outcasts, and friendly but mischievous sprites and other spirits.

This volume was successful enough that it allowed Medley to return to publishing Castle Waiting on a regular schedule in 2006. She published fifteen issues with Fantagraphics, and those issues were finally collected in 2010. Focusing chiefly on the pregnant Lady Jain, who has fled to the castle to escape an abusive husband, this second volume drew wide praise from NPR, Time Magazine, and many other sources, and Publishers Weekly ranked it one of the best comic books of 2006 in a critics’ poll.

With its long-awaited second volume, Linda Medley’s witty and sublimely drawn fantasy eases into a relaxed comedy of manners as Lady Jain settles into her new life in Castle Waiting.

Unexpected visitors result in the discovery and exploration of a secret passageway, not to mention an epic bowling tournament. A quest for ladies’ underpants, the identity of Pindar’s father, the education of Simon, Rackham and Chess arguing about the “manly arts,” and an escape-prone goat are just a few of the elements in this delightful new volume.

The book also includes many flashbacks that deepen the stories behind the characters, including Jain’s earliest romantic entanglements and conflicts with her bratty older sisters, the horrific past of the enigmatic Dr. Fell, and more.

Interestingly, except for a tiny copyright notice on page 377, the book is published totally anonymously, with no mention of Linda Medley anywhere on the cover, spine, or title pages.

Castle Waiting, Volume Two was published in December 2010 by Fantagraphics. It is 384 pages in hardcover for $29.99. There are no paperback or digital editions. With its slow pacing and glacial (almost non-existent) plot, it’s not for everyone. But I recommend it highly.