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New Treasures: The Sword & Sorcery Anthology

New Treasures: The Sword & Sorcery Anthology

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the-sword-sorcery-anthology2We announced The Sword & Sorcery Anthology was shipping last week, but I’m glad to report that I now have it in my hot little hands.

And it looks gorgeous. It’s 480 pages in thick, oversize paperback, and sits nicely in my lap as I recline in my big green chair. Where it will remain for much of the rest of the weekend, I think.

In fact, I have two copies, courtesy of co-editor and publisher Jacob Weisman. I was going to add it to the list of titles that go out regularly to our dedicated team of freelance reviewers, but maybe I’ll just give it to the first one that asks for it. Or maybe I’ll encase it in plastic and carefully bury it in a time capsule in my back yard. Future generations with thank me (assuming they can figure out what a book is).

David Drake’s introduction notes that while two stories in this book originated in Weird Tales — the magazine that gave birth to Sword & Sorcery — three come from the legendary small press magazine Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff from 1973 to 1987. Drake was the assistant editor for Whispers starting with the second issue; his musings on the authors and fiction included in this volume are fascinating.

Other sources include Swords Against Darkness, Science Fantasy, Fantastic and Asimov’s SF magazines, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress anthologies, Orbit 2, and such recent books as Eclipse Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Strahan and Lou Anders 2010 anthology Swords & Dark Magic.

Two pieces — Michael Shea’s new Nift the Lean story “Epistle from Lebanoi,” and Michael Swanwick’s “The Year of the the Three Monarchs” — are original to this volume.

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology was edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman. The cover is is by Jean Sebastien Rossbach. It is published by Tachyon Publications, and priced at $15.95 for the print version and $10.95 in digital format. More complete details are here, and the complete Tables of Contents is here.

Sean Stiennon Reviews Dark Jenny

Sean Stiennon Reviews Dark Jenny

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darkjennyDark Jenny
Alex Bledsoe
Tor ($14.99, trade paperback, 352 pages, April 2011)
Reviewed by Sean T. M. Stiennon

Readers new to Alex Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse series should brace themselves for culture shock, because while the book is set in a medieval world, all the characters have distinctly un-medieval names and mannerisms.  Be prepared for Gary, Eddie, Liz, and Angie to appear in the first few pages.  In keeping with their anachronistic names, all the characters speak in a modern conversational style.  Swords are referred to by make and model, like cars.

It’s a dramatic choice on Bledsoe’s part that will leave many readers feeling alienated, but I think it works.  The novels are hard-boiled crime fiction just as much as they are fantasy, and the casual style means that Bledsoe can give his hero Eddie a dry wit that requires no translation to be funny.  It also gives the story a freshness that the setting, which is your stand low-fantasy budget medieval, tends to lack.

For my part, I found that once I got past the anachronisms (first in The Sword-Edged Blonde, now in Dark Jenny), I was thoroughly captivated by the raw strength of Bledsoe’s writing and story-telling, and found myself with a book that seemed to stick to my fingers.

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This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Books at Amazon.com

This Week’s Bargain SF & Fantasy Books at Amazon.com

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MagicMirror-JKT.inddIt’s good to be the editor. For example, I pretend I do a weekly bargain books update, and no one corrects me — even though the last one was in April. Thank you for indulging me in my shared fantasy.

Let’s get down to business: Bargain Books. I’m the expert, and I’m here to share my knowledge with you. It’s what I do.

This week (ha!) the list contains books by Delia Sherman, Stephen Baxter, Sara Douglass, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen R. Donaldson, L.E. Modesitt, Jr, William Gibson, R.A. Salvatore, E.E. Knight, and many more.

The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, Delia Sherman [$7.20, was $17.99]
Land of the Dead, by Thomas Harlan [$10.40, was $25.99]
The Last Page, Anthony Huso [$4.73, was $25.99]
Hidden Empire, Orson Scott Card [$1.63, was $24.99]
Flood, Stephen Baxter [$9.98, was $24.95]
The Devil’s Diadem, Sara Douglass [$10.80, was $26.99]
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien ($1.92, was $26)
Against All Things Ending: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson [$6.40, was $16]
Scholar, L. E. Modesitt Jr. [$11.20, was $27.99]
Stephen King’s The Stand Vol. 1: Captain Trips, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Mike Perkins [$10, was $24.99]
Zero History, William Gibson [$6.40, was $16]
The Pirate King, R.A. Salvatore [$11.18, was $27.95]
Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire, E. E. Knight [$6.40, was $16]
Songs of Love and Death, edited by Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin [$10.40, was $26]

All discounted between 60% and 80%. As always, quantities on these bargain books are very limited. All are eligible for free domestic shipping on orders over $25. Most of last week’s (ha!) discount titles are still available; you can see them here.

New Treasures: Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem

New Treasures: Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem

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deadfall-hotelI don’t get to cover horror fiction as often as I like to — mostly because I don’t get to read much these days. So it’s always a delight when a surprise like Deadfall Hotel arrives at my door. The seed of the novel was the acclaimed short story “Bloodwolf,” published by Charles L. Grant in his anthology Shadows 9 back in 1986. For over 25 years author Steve Rasnic Tem has nurtured that seed, and it has finally grown into a complex and original horror novel.

This is the hotel where our nightmares go… It’s where horrors come to be themselves, and the dead pause to rest between worlds. Recently widowed and unemployed, Richard Carter finds a new job, and a new life for him and his daughter Serena, as manager of the mysterious Deadfall Hotel. Jacob Ascher, the caretaker, is there to show Richard the ropes, and to tell him the many rules and traditions, but from the beginning, their new world haunts and transforms them.

It’s a terrible place. As the seasons pass, the supernatural and the sublime become a part of life, as routine as a morning cup of coffee, but it’s not safe, by any means. Deadfall Hotel is where Richard and Serena will rebuild the life that was taken from them… if it doesn’t kill them first.

Weird Fiction Review had this to say about Deadfall Hotel:

The novel provides a smorgasbord of sweet spots for the weird fiction connoisseur. Nightmares, supernatural creatures, cults, eccentric characters, and the atmosphere of the titular hotel all combine for a fascinating read. With the popularity of TV shows like American Horror Story, the timing seems right, as well (although we think Deadfall is much more interesting.)

And Fear.com raves:

Horror legend Steve Rasnic Tem returns with Deadfall Hotel, a modern fairytale, haunted house story, vampire novel, cult novel, werewolf novel, zombie story, and just plain old “weird tale”… It’s a masterful hodgepodge of genre tropes and devices that — much like Peter Straub’s magnificent Floating Dragon — in the hands of a lesser writer would have collapsed… Deadfall Hotel is everything a horror novel should be. Steve Rasnic Tem is at the height of his powers with this effort.

Deadfall Hotel is 301 pages in paperback for $9.99. It was published by Solaris on April 17. It is illustrated by Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen, whose creepy, Edward Gory-like style is both classic and richly modern — click on the cover above to get a closer look at his work. WFR.com offers a long self-contained excerpt, “The King of the Cats,” presented in four parts that you can sample here.

A Wiscon Reading Report: The Best in Upcoming Fantasy

A Wiscon Reading Report: The Best in Upcoming Fantasy

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the-unnaturalists-2Last weekend I drove to Madison, Wisconsin, for Wiscon, one of the best SF conventions in the Midwest. My travel companions were four young women, and the two-hour drive from Chicago was filled with enthusiastic discussions of My Little Pony, how to cook kale, the most satisfactory sexual positions, and who that hot-looking agent was. When I wasn’t driving I sat in the back and kept my mouth shut.

You can learn a lot about life by keeping your mouth shut. For example, I learned I definitely need to check out My Little Pony.

I learned some important stuff at Wiscon, too. Wiscon has some pretty heavy panels, with titles like Intersectionality and Feminist Community, Dogmatic Rationalism, and Performing Katniss in Print and On Screen: Gender Performativity and Deconstructing Reality TV in The Hunger Games.

No, I didn’t learn what any of those things meant. The first thing I learned at Wiscon was: Don’t volunteer to be on panels. It’s like picking my teeth with a golf club — it’s painful, and it makes me look stupid.

But the second thing I learned was: Wiscon has the best reading program on the continent. And if you’re not listening to talented authors reading their work, you’re wasting your precious hours here on Planet Earth.

So I packed my hours with as many readings as I could. At the last two Wiscons I simply followed the brilliant C.S.E. Cooney — the Queen of Wiscon, and her most gifted reader-poet — as readings seemed to spontaneously spring  forth wherever she wandered. But this year she was in Ottawa giving a command performance at the most prestigious venue in the country, Canada’s National Art Centre, so we were forced to rely on our own devices. When there weren’t any readings, my driving companions and I simply created our own. In the process we were introduced to some of the hottest new writers on the fantasy scene, and several really terrific new, upcoming, or wholly undiscovered SF and fantasy novels.

Below is a list of the best of the best.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews The Cloud Roads

Charlene Brusso Reviews The Cloud Roads

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the-cloud-roadsThe Cloud Roads
Martha Wells
Night Shade Books (300 pp, $14.99, February 2011)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

I always look forward to reading anything by Martha Wells, because she always gives me something marvelous and new–and The Cloud Roads doesn’t disappoint.

Moon is an outsider. He’s drifted all over, living with one tribe or clan or family after another, and never met another soul like himself. Because Moon has a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. With a little concentration he can alter his body from something that appears human and “normal” to a scaly humanoid with big dragon-like wings and sharp, retractable claws. Orphaned as a child, he’s been on his own ever since, never quite fitting in, and never staying long. It’s not safe to stay, because if anyone found out what he was, what he could become, they’d be certain to think he was one of the vile, noisome Fell, creatures from nightmares who live to hunt and consume humankind.

Moon isn’t Fell. Hes’ not sure what he is. And Moon doesn’t want to be alone. That’s just how things are.

Then he meets another shapeshifter: Stone, someone like himself. From Stone, Moon learns about the Raksura, who shift between groundling and dragonish shapes and live in courts run by Queens. There’s a long list of hierarchical rules to learn, but Moon is welcome to come back with Stone to Indigo Cloud Court and become one of its warriors. More than welcome, in fact.

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One Week Left to Win a copy of Thunder in the Void from Haffner Press!

One Week Left to Win a copy of Thunder in the Void from Haffner Press!

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thunder-in-the-voidWe’ve received some great entries in our Thunder in the Void giveaway, which we announced last week. Here are some that came in today:

  • Midnight in the Robot Graveyard
  • The Cult of the Broken Sun
  • Message from the Haunted Asteroid

Doesn’t that sound like fun? You could be part of it — all you have to do is submit the title of an imaginary Space Opera story.

What’s at stake is the latest archival quality hardcover from Haffner Press, Thunder in the Void, a massive collection of 16 Space Opera tales by Henry Kuttner. The most compelling title — as selected by a crack team of Black Gate judges, renowned experts in quality pulp fiction all — will receive a free copy, complements of Haffner Press and Black Gate magazine.

Thunder in the Void gathers classic pulp fiction from Planet Stories, Weird Tales, Super Science Stories, and even rarer sources, including “War-Gods of the Void,” “Raider of the Spaceways,” “We Guard the Black Planet,” “Crypt-City of the Deathless Ones,” and the previously unpublished “The Interplanetary Limited.”  Most appear here in book form for the first time.

One submission per person, please. Submissions must be received by May 31st, 2012. Winner will be contacted by e-mail, so use a real e-mail address maybe. All submissions must be sent to john@blackgate.com, with the subject line Thunder in the Void, or something obvious like that so I don’t randomly delete it.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Employees of New Epoch Press are ineligible to enter. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Seriously, this book is heavy and we’re on a budget.

Thunder in the Void is 612 pages in high-quality hardcover format, with an introduction by Mike Resnick and a cover price of $40. Cover art is by Norman Saunders. It is available directly from Haffner Press.

Of Red Moon and Black Mountain and the Anxiety of Tolkien’s Influence

Of Red Moon and Black Mountain and the Anxiety of Tolkien’s Influence

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red-moonRed Moon and Black Mountain
Joy Chant
Ballantine Books (268 pages, $0.95, 1971)

The shadow of The Lord of the Rings is long, indeed. In the 1960s Frodo lived and the reading public was hungry for more, and derivative works like The Sword of Shannara met that demand. This pattern continued into the 1980s with the publication of works like Dennis McKiernan’s Iron Tower trilogy, the series showing the clearest Tolkien “influence” of them all and one that literally provided more of the same. Now, this stuff wasn’t all bad; it filled a need and offered a safe, enjoyable formula. I willingly read many of these works back in the day and occasionally still do. But decades later many of the Tolkien clones haven’t aged all that well. I seem to have a lot less patience for them these days, even though I understand the environment in which they were written, and can appreciate that avoiding the influence of The Lord of the Rings 30-40 years ago must have been very difficult, if not impossible.

Take Joy Chant’s Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970). It’s well-written, not hackwork by any stretch. In 1972 the Mythopoeic Society bestowed its Fantasy Award upon the novel, denoting it as a work that best exemplified “the spirit of the Inklings.” Red Moon and Black Mountain has an unquestionable Tolkien-Lewis quality about it, if by spirit one means rewriting The Lord of the Rings with the framing device of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe tacked on. After a solid start it descends into full-on Tolkien-clone, which probably explains why it’s largely forgotten today.

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The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Now on Sale

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology Now on Sale

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sword-and-sorcery-anthologyOne of the year’s most anticipated books has arrived — a few days ahead of its official June 1 publication date.

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology, edited by David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman, is now on sale. This massive 480-page tome contains classic S&S tales from the writers who created the genre — including C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Poul Anderson, Karl Edward Wagner and Michael Moorcock — as well as modern masters such as Charles R. Saunders, Glen Cook, George R. R. Martin, Jeffrey Ford, and Caitlín R. Kiernan.

It also includes “Epistle from Lebanoi,” an original tale by Michael Shea, author of the classic Nifft the Lean, and “The Year of the Three Monarchs,” a new story by Michael Swanwick.

The early reviews have already been filled with praise, including this one from Publishers Weekly:

Hartwell and Weisman have selected some of the best short-form work in the genre… This is an unbeatable selection from classic to modern, and each story brings its A game.

With an introduction by David Drake, “Storytellers: A Guided Ramble into Sword and Sorcery Fiction” and a tantalizing assortment of stories I’m unfamiliar with — including “Gimmile’s Song” by Charles R. Saunders, “Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat” by Glen Cook, “Six from Atlantis” by Gene Wolfe, and “Path of the Dragon” by George R. R. Martin — this ones leaps right to the top of my want list.

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology is published by Tachyon Publications, and priced at $15.95 for the print version and $10.95 in digital format. More complete details are here, and the complete Tables of Contents is here.

Catherynne M. Valente parts ways with Night Shade Books

Catherynne M. Valente parts ways with Night Shade Books

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the-habitation-of-the-blessed2Catherynne M. Valente has announced her third Prester John novel, following The Habitation of the Blessed and The Folded World, will not be published by Night Shade Books. In a statement on her blog last week she said:

I continue to think that Night Shade puts out wonderful books and I hope for their success. I did not take this step lightly. But their recent troubles have made our business relationship difficult, and I could not in good conscience proceed with a third book given the circumstances. Obviously I’m being a bit vague – there’s no point in airing laundry in public… What this means is that at the moment, The Habitation of the Blessed and The Folded World are for the most part unavailable. Some copies will float around for awhile yet, but most of the e-versions are gone. I hope to fix this in the next week – I have relicensed the covers from the excellent Rebecca Guay and Night Shade has been very kind and accommodating with regards to physical copies and digital files…

As for the third and final book in the series, The Spindle of Necessity, I am committed to finding a way to make sure you get to see it. I owe you a finish. Oddly enough, Prester John is my longest series to date, and I want to bring it all to a close the way I planned to from the beginning… Given the market realities, the most likely avenue for this is a Kickstarter campaign to fund a self-published version.

At press time, both The Habitation of the Blessed and The Folded World are available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, in both print and Kindle versions. But if you’re interested in getting copies, you want want to move quickly.