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Art of the Genre: The Age of Perfect Creation

Art of the Genre: The Age of Perfect Creation

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martin-300Perhaps some of you know of my utter disdain for George R.R. Martin. There are various reasons for this feeling, but this week I had a friend call me to complain about A Dance of Dragons, a book which I’ve refused to read. I must say, however, that I felt a great deal of satisfaction at his ire toward the novel because somehow that made my own dislike of Martin’s post-2000 work all the more valid. My friend’s thoughts were echoed by the bulk of Amazon reviews, and as I did a bit of research on what people were thinking about A Dance of Dragons I remembered my own experience with its predecessor in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

You see, the last Martin book I read was A Feast for Crows. I took it with me on vacation to St. Croix and read it under the tranquil skies of the Caribbean just a few months before my son was born. When I got to the end of the book, there was a note of apology placed there from Martin concerning the text I’d just read. Now I’m no rocket scientist, but if an author has to apologize to a reader AFTER they read his book, then you know you’ve been taken for a ride.

At that point I swore I’d never read anything by Martin again, no matter how much I loved A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords. In that promise to myself, I was vindicated by my friend’s words concerning A Dance of Dragons. Yes, at last a true victory for being a stubborn ass was mine to enjoy!!!!!!

However, after hearing this news concerning the latest volume, a couple of remembered quotes I’d read concerning writing started doing the rockem sockem robot dance in my head.

The first of these random quotes concerns Martin’s publication dates, and his extreme time lag between.

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book — something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.

– Stephen King, On Writing.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 3: The Warlord of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 3: The Warlord of Mars

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the-warlord-of-mars-1st-editionAlthough there are still eight more books to go in the Mars series, with The Warlord of Mars I can bring to a conclusion Phase #1 of the saga: this completes the “John Carter Trilogy,” and the books that follow it take different paths with new heroes. John Carter will not return to the protagonist role until the eighth book, Swords of Mars, published twenty-one years later.

At the end of the thrill-ride of The Gods of Mars, John Carter lost his love Dejah Thoris in the Chamber of the Sun within the Temple of Issus. A whole year must pass before the slow rotation of the chamber will allow Dejah Thoris to escape. She may not even be alive, since the last moments that John Carter witnessed, the jealous thern woman Phaidor was ready to stab Carter’s love. Did she kill Dejah Thoris? Or did the noble Thuvia take the blow instead?

Readers hung on through the middle of 1913 until Burroughs brought a conclusion to the John Carter epic at the end of the year and made his hero into The Warlord of Mars.

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. A dry and slowly dying world, Barsoom contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with nine novels, one volume of linked novellas, and two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: The Warlord of Mars (1913–14)

Previous Installments: A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1913)

The Backstory

With a cliffhanger ending to The Gods of Mars, Burroughs was ready to roll with the conclusion. It was a ferociously busy time in his life: All-Story rejected his second Tarzan novel — one of the most comically blockheaded decisions in the history of magazine fiction; he quit his day job and became a full-time author; his third son John Coleman Burroughs was born; days later, his father George Tyler Burroughs died. In the middle of all this, ERB plunged back to working on Mars. He never developed an outline for the trilogy, and so he took the wrap-up of John Carter’s story as it came, daydreaming down on paper.

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Book Review: Orson Scott Card’s Keeper of Dreams

Book Review: Orson Scott Card’s Keeper of Dreams

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keeperdreamsKeeper of Dreams (Amazon, B&N)
Orson Scott Card
Tor (656 pp, $16.99, 2008)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

Orson Scott Card’s novels (in hardcover, several autographed) own the lion’s share of the top shelf in my main bookcase. Though he is one of my favorite authors, I’ve read enough of his work to know that it can be, at best, inconsistent. Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead are science fiction classics and also modern classics of children literature. As a teenager, in tears when Ender and Valentine bid each other farewell in Speaker, I thought, “I want to write like this someday.”

But Card does not always hit the mark, either. Xenocide and Children of the Mind are nowhere near classics, even though they are part of the same series. While I have enjoyed all of the Ender’s Shadow books (featuring the secondary character, Bean, from Ender’s Game), they don’t possess the same magic, either. In some ways, they are better than the originals – better character motivation, better structure, better dialogue – but they are not classics. They are not better stories, just better plots.

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Journey to The Serpent Sea

Journey to The Serpent Sea

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theserpentseaMartha Wells’ tales of Gilead and Ilias have been some of the most popular stories we’ve published in Black Gate. Her opening novel in the Books of the Raksura series, The Cloud Roads (Night Shade Books, March 2011) won her a new legion of fans, and this month the second installment finally arrives.

The Serpent Sea is already getting a lot of great press as a major new fantasy novel. Here’s Keith West over on Adventures Fantastic:

There was a time, more in science fiction than in fantasy, where authors created detailed worlds or universes, such as Known Space (and especially Ringworld), Dune, or more recently Karl Schroeder’s Virga, places unique and filled with that sense of wonder that seems to be missing from so much of contemporary fantastic literature. The Cloud Road and The Serpent Sea are brim full of sense of wonder…  With these books Wells is writing at the top of her game, and given their breath, originality, and complexity, this series is showing indications it could become one of the landmark series of the genre.

When I asked her to describe the series, here’s what Martha shared with us:

The Cloud Roads is a fantasy adventure novel about dragon-like shapeshifters who can fly, but it’s also about searching for a place to belong. When the main character does find his own people, his difficulties don’t end.

The sequel, The Serpent Sea, is about finally finding the place you were meant to be, but realizing that it’s going to take a lot of work to finally belong there. If you can survive long enough.

You can try a sample chapter of The Cloud Roads here, and The Serpent Sea here. Don’t wait to check out one of the most exciting new fantasy series of the last few years.

The Last Dragonslayer (if only it were true)

The Last Dragonslayer (if only it were true)

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laOf potential interest to readers of this space is my review of The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde over at the SF Site.

This is one of those books where you know exactly what to expect. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I know what to expect from Häagen-Dazs rum raisin ice cream and just because the high-fat content is not necessarily the best thing to consume doesn’t make the experience of eating it any less enjoyable.

If you’ve somehow managed to miss the Jasper Fforde juggernaut, he is the author of several serial parodies that variously poke fun at super agents and literary theory (Thursday Next), detective noir and kid stories (Nursery Crime Division) as well as dystopias and Wizard of Oz allusions (Shades of Grey). Think whimsical. Think smart-ass. Think about that unkempt guy in college who never attended classes but was obviously pretty smart and never at a loss for a wisecrack.

You’re thinking Jasper Fforde.

Real vs. the Unreal, Worlds Other Than Our Own, and the Starting Line of Fantasy

Real vs. the Unreal, Worlds Other Than Our Own, and the Starting Line of Fantasy

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masterpieces-of-fantasy-and-enchantmentWhenever discussions of fantasy fiction arise, the question of “which came first?” inevitably follows. Newbies mistakenly think that J.R.R. Tolkien started the genre, overlooking authors like William Morris and E.R. Eddison who had already begun a rich tradition of secondary world fantasy. The same arguments swirl over the many sub-genres of fantasy, too. For example, most believe that Robert E. Howard is the proper father of swords and sorcery, beginning with his 1929 short story “The Shadow Kingdom.” But others have pled the case for Lord Dunsany’s “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth” (1908), and so on.

Once begun, these arguments inevitably reach further and further back in time. George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) was published before Morris’s The Well at the World’s End (1896), didn’t you know? Oh yeah, what about Malory’s LeMorte D’Arthur (1485)? I’ve got that beat: The Odyssey (8th Century BC). I see your Odyssey and raise you The Epic of Gilgamesh (1300 BC, or thereabouts). And so on. Until it seems that fantasy has always been with us.

But perhaps that isn’t the case. In an introduction to the 1988 anthology Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, editor David Hartwell draws one of the most neatly defined starting lines for fantasy I’ve encountered. Hartwell describes fantasy as a story written deliberately as unreal, and one which does not take place in the real world.

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Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon

Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon

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bgthroneThrone of the Crescent Moon
Saladin Ahmed
DAW Hardcover (288 pp, $24.95, February 7th 2012)

So, I got Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon in the mail yesterday.

By dinnertime, after the longest bath in history (getting out would’ve meant stopping reading) and an afternoon of dissolute lounging (moving from my mattress would’ve meant stopping reading), I finished the thing. O the exclamations of delight! O the Facebook status updates!

It is quite possible, although I make no sworn confession, that I took up Throne in my own two hands, with its slick dust jacket – art by Jason Chan featuring dervish (complete with a two-pronged blade “in order to cleave right from wrong”), ghul hunter (with his blazing white kaftan that will not stain), Badawi warrior girl (awesome, green-eyed, growling, rude, and frickin’ Angel-touched too – which you have to like in a girl) and buncha vile bone ghuls with terrifyingly unsanitary teeth – and with this glossily just-read book spun ‘round and ‘round my kitchen, making noises that perhaps ought not to be approximated in print.

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this novel.

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A Look at The Tears of Ishtar

A Look at The Tears of Ishtar

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the-tears-of-ishtarThe Tears of Ishtar
Michael Ehart
Ancient Tomes Press (284 pp, $16.95, March 2010)
Reviewed by Bill Ward

Fans of Michael Ehart’s 2007 release The Servant of the Manthycore (Double-Edged Publishing) will find a lot of familiar ground in The Tears of Ishtar – in fact the later book contains all of the stories collected in the former, some of which have been enlarged or altered, alongside new material. While I will admit to feeling a slight twinge of disappointment upon discovering that I had already read most of the stories in this book (and, when one factors in those stories appearing in other anthologies such as Rogue Blades Entertainment’s Rage of the Behemoth, I think I may have read nearly all of these tales at one time or another), that feeling quickly dissipated. These are, after all, good stories in the tradition of classic sword & sorcery, and this new collection-cum-fix-up-novel showcases Ehart’s Ninshi stories in a more complete and ultimately satisfying way than the previous book.

The Tears of Ishtar spans something like 3,000 years in the life of the cursed, nearly immortal warrior woman Ninshi, the Servant of the Manthycore. Beholden to this legendary, man-eating beast, Ninshi spends long centuries luring men into murderous ambush to satisfy the Manthycore’s appetite – and in exchange is rewarded with brief glimpses of her imprisoned lover, a man ensnared by the Manthycore’s magic and used as leverage against her. But these grim transactions do not comprise the main action of The Tears of Ishtar, as Ninshi finds herself confronting all manner of gods and spirits as she wanders the lands of the ancient Near East. Set against the backdrop of the rise and fall of empires, Ehart’s stories, which move relentlessly forward and often skip centuries of intervening time, capture the sweep and almost unimaginable chronological depth of a time and culture too-often merely abstracted as ‘Ancient Mesopotamia.’ It is that familiarity with the nuances of history, the inclusion of solid details of material culture and belief, and frequent biblical and historical allusions, which elevate the setting of The Tears of Ishtar in a memorable and compelling way.

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The Desert of Souls Now Available in Trade Paperback

The Desert of Souls Now Available in Trade Paperback

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the-desert-of-souls-tpHoward Andrew Jones’ debut novel The Desert of Souls is finally available in trade paperback, with a brand new cover by Scott Grimmando.

It’s been a busy week for our Managing Editor. Yesterday we told you Thomas Dunne Books had released the cover art for the sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones, and announced a release date of August 21, 2012.

And less than two months ago Howard published The Waters of Eternity, an exciting collection of stories featuring the heroes of his first two novels, the intrepid Dabir and Asim — including two stories that first appeared in Black Gate.

Here’s just a sample of the praise the novel received when it first appeared:

“The Desert of Souls is filled with adventure, magic, compelling characters and twists that are twisty. This is seriously cool stuff.”  — Steven Brust

“A grand and wonderful adventure filled with exotic magic and colorful places — like a cross between Sinbad and Indiana Jones.”  —Kevin J. Anderson

“Howard Andrew Jones spins an exciting and suspenseful tale in his historical fantasy debut. A rich, detailed tapestry — part Arthur Conan Doyle, part Robert E. Howard, and part Omar Khayyam, woven in the magical thread of One Thousand And One Nights.”  —  E.E. Knight

The Desert of Souls, 320 pages of action-packed Arabian adventure, is available from St. Martin’s Griffin for just $14.99.

The Bones of the Old Ones Arrives in August

The Bones of the Old Ones Arrives in August

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bones-of-the-old-onesThomas Dunne Books has released the cover art, and announced the release date, for Howard Andrew Jones’ The Bones of the Old Ones, the sequel to The Desert of Souls, which The Mad Hatter’s calls “one of the most enjoyable Swords & Sorcery novels in quite a few years.”

The Bones of the Old Ones will be released in hardcover on August 21, 2012, with a cover by Stephen Stone. This will be the third book chronicling the exploits of Dabir and Asim, Arabian adventurers par excellence, following The Desert of Souls and the short story collection The Waters of Eternity, released in Kindle, Nook and iBook format on November 22.

Here’s the groovy cover blurb for Bones:

A thrilling, inventive follow-up to The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones, a “rare master of the storyteller’s art” (Greenmanreview.com)

As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years…

Tomorrow is the release of The Desert of Souls in trade paperback — a perfect chance to job on board if you haven’t already. Don’t miss out on one of the most exciting fantasy debuts in years.