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New Treasures: Rachel Aaron’s The Spirit War

New Treasures: Rachel Aaron’s The Spirit War

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the-spirit-warAlways nice to see a new fantasy series succeed. In particular, it’s nice to see a non-traditional series succeed — i.e. one that doesn’t feature vampires, werewolves, or a stake-wielding heroine with an all-leather wardrobe. And it’s especially nice to see a genuine sword & sorcery series succeed, one whose protagonist is not a swordsman, prince, or naive young hero… in fact, he may not be a hero at all.

Rachel Aaron’s first novel The Spirit Thief (October, 2010) kicked off The Legend of Eli Monpress, a series that has now run to four volumes. The most recent, The Spirit War, was just released last month.

Eli Monpress is vain. He’s cocky. And he’s a thief.

But he’s a thief who has just seen his bounty topped and he’s not happy about it. The bounty topper, as it turns out, is his best friend, bodyguard, and master swordsman, Josef. Who has been keeping secrets from Eli…

Family drama aside, Eli and Josef have their hands full. The Spirit Court has been usurped by the Council of Thrones and someone calling herself the Immortal Empress is staging a massive invasion. But it’s not just politics — the Immortal Empress has a specific target in mind: Eli Monpress, the greatest thief in the world.

Here’s what our buddy John Ottinger III at Grasping for the Wind said about the first novel:

The Spirit Thief is a work of sword and sorcery that will appeal to readers of Jim C. Hines, Karen Miller, Jon Sprunk, and Piers Anthony. It is a thrill ride of a novel, delightfully amusing, based on an original magic system… I loved it.

Missed out on the first volumes? No problem. Orbit has just released all three — The Spirit Thief, The Sprit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater — in a single handsome omnibus edition for $15 ($9.99 for the digital version).

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New Treasures: Jason E. Thummel’s In Savage Lands

New Treasures: Jason E. Thummel’s In Savage Lands

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in-savage-landsOne of the many great things about being involved with Black Gate is being exposed to so many terrific new writers. One of the best of the recent lot is Jason E. Thummel, whose short fiction is fast paced, consistently exciting, and packed with invention.

I’ve purchased three short stories from Jason for Black Gate magazine, but we by no means have a monopoly on his work. His story “Runner of the Hidden Ways” was one of the finest stories in the excellent anthology, Rage of the Behemoth (2009), and his fiction has also appeared in the acclaimed (and much-missed) Flashing Swords magazine and the anthology Magic and Mechanica (2009). His first novel, The Spear of Destiny, was published in 2011.

Now comes word that his first collection, In Savage Lands, is available. Here’s the official description:

A small band of rebellious slaves, fleeing an undead terror; an untested leader, willing to sacrifice everything to save his people; a man driven to become the thing he hates most in order to exact a terrible vengeance…

These are just a few of those you will meet within.

Against unfathomable odds, the might of monsters, the cunning of men, and the raw, overwhelming power of the elements themselves, each struggles to survive…

In Savage Lands is a collection of 13 short stories for lovers of Heroic Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, and action-driven Fantasy.

In Savage Lands is 160 pages (approximately 44,000 words). It is available for $8.95 in paperback, and in digital format for $2.99 from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Jason Waltz for the head’s up on this one!

Donald J Sobol, October 4, 1924 – July 11, 2012

Donald J Sobol, October 4, 1924 – July 11, 2012

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encyclopedia-brown-finds-the-clues2Donald J Sobol, the man who created greatly under-rated detective Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, died last week of natural causes at the age of 87.

Sobol, a clerk at the New York Public Library, published Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective in 1963. It was the first of what eventually became 28 volumes featuring the genius boy detective.

While the book was an instant hit, and the adventures of Encyclopedia Brown entertained generations of young readers, it took dogged persistence for Sobol to get his creation in print. According to later interviews, it was rejected no less than twenty-four times before Penguin Books bought it.

Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books, really collections of short stories, follow the boy detective and his friends as he solved mysteries in his hometown of Idaville for “25¢ per day plus expenses.” Occasionally Encyclopedia would assist his father, the chief of police, solve more serious crimes, but usually he was matching wits with a local gang of bullies led by Bugs Meany.

Sobol continued writing Encyclopedia Brown books his entire career, publishing five new volumes between 2000 and 2010. The most recent, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Carnival Crime, was released in 2011. A twenty-ninth book, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme, is scheduled for release this October, in advance of the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective next year. HBO aired 10 half-hour episodes of Encyclopedia Brown, a live action version of the books with Scott Bremner in the title role, in 1989.

Sobol wrote 50 additional books in his lifetime, including the popular Two-Minute Mysteries and Secret Agents Four. He was born in New York City in 1924 and served in World War II before becoming a clerk at the New York Public Library. The success of the Encyclopedia Brown books allowed him to move to Florida to become a full time writer.

He will be missed.

Vintage Treasures: The Pan Book of Horror Stories

Vintage Treasures: The Pan Book of Horror Stories

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the-third-pan-book-of-horror-storiesI talk a lot about book collecting here on the blog. People sometimes tell me, “It’s interesting to hear about all the books you’ve been able to find… sort of. But you know what would really be interesting? To hear about the books you haven’t been able to find.”

Okay, but this is a painful subject. Just ask any serious book collector to tell you about the titles that have eluded them for decades. It’s like asking a guy to enumerate all the women who’ve turned him down. We carry those memories for a long time, but that don’t mean we wanna talk about ’em.

“Oh come on,” people say. “Like you’ve ever turned down a chance to talk about books. Give it up.” Well, since you put it that way.

Let’s talk about The Pan Book of Horror Stories.

The Pan Book of Horror Stories was a British paperback series of horror anthologies. Published by Pan Books, it lasted for an amazing thirty volumes, from 1959 to 1989. The series creator — and editor for the first 25 volumes — was the renowned editor Herbert van Thal (Told in the Dark, Tales to Make the Flesh Creep, Lie Ten Nights Awake, and many others classic horror anthologies). Clarence Paget took over in 1985 after Van Thal’s death and edited the last five volumes, until the series came to an end with number thirty in 1989.

The Pan Book of Horror Stories has a legendary reputation. Van Thal is a highly regarded editor, and with these books his vision was nothing less than to create a complete library of the finest short horror stories ever written. With the early volumes he relied heavily on classic tales from Bram Stoker, C. S. Forester, Ray Bradbury, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, William Faulkner, Frank Belknap Long, and many others, but with later installments he branched out to include newer authors (such as Stephen King), which helped launch a lot of new talent.

After several decades of collecting I have managed to lay my hands on exactly one volume: The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories, published in 1962 (shown above).

That probably overemphasizes the rarity of these books — they’re not that hard to find. But they are expensive, especially in the original British editions (the US editions were dramatically pared down, including fewer stories), and the older volumes in particular are difficult to find in good condition. I’ve been trying to locate a reasonably-priced collection of Pan Book of Horror Stories for years, with absolutely no success.

But that’s okay. As most collectors know, the real joy is in the search. I’m looking forward to a lot of joy in the next few years, as I gradually accumulate the other 29 volumes. Wish me luck.

New Treasures: Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson

New Treasures: Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson

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alif-the-unseenI’ve been sitting impatiently on this one for months. I got an advance review copy in March, and it looked great.

But publicists get a little grumpy if you spill the beans on a new release too soon before the official on-sale date, and since it’s publicists — the finest people in the world — who send Black Gate fantasy books by the crateload every year, we like to keep them happy. So I kept my mouth shut.

The book in question is Alif the Unseen, the first novel by acclaimed comics writer  G. Willow Wilson (Cairo, Air). It officially went on sale July 3rd, and I am here to tell you about it. Let’s start with the flap copy:

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients — dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups — from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif — the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the State’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the “Hand of God,” the head of State security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.

Intrepid Black Gate investigative journalist Emily Mah has been writing a multi-part series on The Best of Modern Arabian Fantasy (in our Interview section), and this would fit right in. Alif the Unseen has received rave blurbs from some of America’s most respected fantasy writers, including Neil Gaiman, Matt Ruff, Jack Womack, and Gregoor Maguire. Here’s what Janet Maslin at The New York Times called it:

A Harry Potter-ish action adventure romance [that] unfolds against the backdrop of the Arab Spring… A bookload of wizardry and glee.

Alif the Unseen is 433 pages in hardcover from Grove Press. The cover price is $25 ($11.99 for the Kindle version), and you can read the first chapter online here.

Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens”

Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens”

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universe-10I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction recently. It started as I was putting away a collection of Worlds of IF magazines and dawdled over the April 1970 issue, with Ron Goulart’s tale of casual wife-swapping, “Swap,” which I talked about here. The same thing happened with Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild” (in the June 1984 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine), and then George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers” (Analog, April 1980). And my wife wonders why it takes me two hours to put away a dozen magazines.

It happened again today, this time with Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens,” which also originally appeared in 1980, in the tenth volume of Terry Carr’s long-running Universe anthology series. I read it in Donald A. Wollheim’s The 1981 Annual World’s Best SF, where it had this introduction:

Science Fiction is subject to many definitions and there are some that are so specific that they might exclude this unusual story. But if science fiction deals with the probable that is just beyond the newspapers or with things that might have happened — even though they did not shake the world — then this is truly science fiction.

“The Ugly Chickens” won the Nebula Award for best novelette, and the World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. There are times when I look around at my collection of science fiction and fantasy, and wonder if I’ve wasted my time gathering such a concentration of work in relatively few genres. Then I read something like Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens.” If even a fraction of the unread books in my collection have the charm and wonder of this story, then I’m certain I’ll never grow tired of it.

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New Treasures: Best New Werewolf Tales, edited by Carolina Smart

New Treasures: Best New Werewolf Tales, edited by Carolina Smart

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best-new-werewolf-tales1It’s Thursday, so I must be Goth Chick. Sadly, I am not. Last night Goth Chick received reports of a possible sighting of the Jersey Devil in Skokie, Illinois, and she immediately leaped in the Gothmobile to investigate. At the moment, she’s diligently exploring the back alleys of the Chicago suburbs with an EMF detector and a Piña colada.

Frankly it all sounds dubious to me, but maybe that’s because I’m left holding the bag for the Thursday blog entry. “Uphold my fine journalistic standards — I will countenance nothing less,” said her last text. Had to look up “countenance,” which didn’t bode well.

Luckily, Toronto-based Books of the Dead Press came to my rescue with a well-timed announcement this week, promoting six new releases.

Founded in 2009, Books of the Dead Press is one of the most active small presses around. They’ve already released eight books this year; some of their recent titles include Berserk by Tim Lebbon; Husk by Matt Hults; Gary Brandner’s The Howling Trilogy, Pain Cages by Paul Kane, Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown, and the Zombie Kong anthology, edited by James Roy Daley.

But the title that really grabbed my attention was Best New Werewolf Tales, Volume 1, edited by Carolina Smart, which was released in paperback and Kindle format in May. Following on the heels of their popular anthologies Best New Zombie Tales and Best New Vampire Tales, this one contains “more than 100,000 words of ferocious, slavering, hairy horror” from Jonathan Maberry, Michael Laimo, John Everson, James Newman, David Niall Wilson, and many others — 20 short stories altogether.

The fiction appears to be all new (not reprints). The cover art is by Carl Graves. You can find the complete Table of Contents at the Books of the Dead website here.

“Ferocious, slavering, hairy horror.” That’s gotta be better than whatever Goth Chick finds in Skokie, no matter how good that EMF detector is. I tell you, good things come to he who waits. And who patiently checks his e-mail.

Best New Werewolf Tales is available for $9.99 in paperback and $3.49 in Kindle format. You can purchase both at their online store.

Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

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bug-eyed-monsters2Last week I posted a brief article on Damon Knight’s landmark SF anthology, A Science Fiction Argosy (and I mean that in the literal sense — it’s so large that for years I used it as a visual landmark when scanning my bookshelves.) The first response in the Comments Section was from the esteemed John C. Hocking, who wrote:

Some years back I read the anthology Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg, which leads off with Knight’s story “Stranger Station.”

This story knocked me out of my chair.

It is not a clever punch-line kind of tale, it’s a bravura piece of serious space operatic sf with strong characters, a vivid setting, genuinely alien horror, and a plot that manages to make the outcome of a single character’s dire situation a crux of cosmic importance without pushing the whole tale into wide-eyed melodrama.

The other stories in the collection were worth reading, but Knight’s tale put them deep in the shade.

So naturally I had to dig up my copy of Bug-Eyed Monsters, a 1980 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich trade paperback, to see what all the fuss was about. First thing I noticed was the Ruby Mazur cover. Mazur, who created over 3,000 album covers, was one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll cover artists of the 70s and 80s. His work here is serviceable but not particularly attractive, with a rather drooly BEM lording it all over a pulpy alien landscape.

But we’re here to talk about “Stranger Station,” not 70s cover art, and Mr. Hocking is right that Damon Knight’s story, which first appeared in 1956 in F&SF, is a fine piece. The editors give it pride of place as first in the anthology, calling it “a virtuoso performance — arguably, one of the two finest BEM stories ever written (the other being, of course, H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.)”

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Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau

Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau

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Dossouye The Dancers of Mulukau-smallDossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau
Charles R. Saunders
Sword & Soul Media (326 pp, $20.00, Paperback, 2011)
Reviewed by Bill Ward

Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau will feel a bit like new territory for fans of Charles R. Saunders. Unchanged, of course, is the terrific action and imagination of Saunders, and the fidelity to character and setting — indeed everything there is to love about Saunders’ Imaro and Dossouye stories is evident in this latest offering. But The Dancers of Mulukau is Saunders’ first full-length sword & sorcery offering of recent years that is not based wholly or in part on existing material, and represents the Saunders of today, not of decades ago. After the various ups and downs of Saunders’ publishing career, it feels good to at last come to a place in which this author’s classic works are now safely preserved and easily available. Now he is able to move forward into as yet uncharted territory to tell new stories and develop new themes, reminding us once again why he must be counted among the giants of the field of heroic fantasy adventure fiction.

Dossouye herself is in new territory at the start of The Dancers of Mulukau. The story of how Dossouye, formidable warrior woman of the Abomey, came to leave her people and wander the land is told in the first book, a picaresque fix-up novel based on classic novellas penned by Saunders in the 70s and 80s, with additional unpublished material and a new story added for the book’s release in 2008. I won’t trouble to repeat much of what I said about Dossouye in my original review of that book, but readers can be assured that all of the hallmarks of those foundational stories have returned and are enlarged upon in The Dancers of Mulukau.

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How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

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the-tritonian-ring2It was the summer of 1969. Very much like the one described in the song by Bryan Adams.

I quit the rock and roll band I’d been playing with since high school, went to work with my Dad, and had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings; a year earlier, while still in high school, I’d read The Hobbit. Now, after completing my magical journey through Middle-earth, I was totally hooked. I had found a liking — no, a craving for Heroic and Epic Fantasy.

Not long after that I discovered the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy Series, wonderfully edited and championed by Lin Carter. Novels by Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, David Lindsay, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, Poul Anderson, and others fanned the flames of my passion.

To say I was addicted would be a gross understatement. No, I had found novels that had changed my life and would continue to do so for the next 40-plus years!

Then one day, while browsing through a used book store on State Street and Congress in downtown Chicago, I came across three more novels that would further alter my life. The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber, and an anthology of short-stories by Lin Carter, Beyond the Gates of Dream.

What was this new and exciting genre of fantasy fiction I had discovered? Sword and sorcery, of course! I was not only caught like an unwary Hyrkanian soldier, I was taken captive — axe, mace, and broadsword.

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