Browsed by
Category: Books

The Winter Triptych, Papaveria Press, and Doctors Without Borders

The Winter Triptych, Papaveria Press, and Doctors Without Borders

Comments 1 comment

Have you read Nicole Kornher-Stace’s wickedly twisted fairy tale retelling The Winter Triptych?

I have, and this is what I had to say about it.

“Nicole Kornher-Stace ‘The Winter Triptych’ is an icily glittering marvel of storytelling construction. This wicked tale of evil queens, mad huntsmen, martyred witches and a terrible curse that unfolds over a century executes its sleight-of-hand in diabolical layers. The immediate tableau before your eyes never flags as it pulls you in with its sweeping cast of characters, coldly terrifying villains and earnestly compelling heroines. And underneath it all, piece after piece locks and turns into place, until the entire triptych unfolds in a stunning revelation of inexorable fate, time-bending wonder and blood-curdling horror. I hold Nicole in both awe and envy: at the start of her career, she has already produced a masterwork.”

Although it’s hard to beat this line from Black Gate editrix C.S.E. Cooney:

Nicole Kornher-Stace plays with Time like it was her very own Tetris game.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. You can check out check out this review from Tori Truslow at Sabotage And this one from the indomitable Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker.

You can order it directly from the website of the publisher, Papaveria Press, or, if you don’t want to wait on overseas snail mail, you can snag it for your Kindle.

If you buy the book now, or buy anything from the Papaveria Press website, you’re helping out a good cause. Nicole is currently donating all her royalties from book sales to Doctors Without Borders. That includes both The Winter Triptych and her challenging debut novel, Desideria, which Booklist called “exceptionally well-crafted” and “spellbinding.”

Erzebet YellowBoy Carr, the totally awesome artist behind Papaveria Press, is doing likewise. Aside from many beautiful handbound volumes from the likes of Hal Duncan and Catherynne M. Valente, Papaveria published Amal El-Mohtar’s The Honey Month and C.S.E. Cooney’s own Jack o’ the Hills.

…

Read More Read More

The Desert of Souls Chosen as a Feature Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

The Desert of Souls Chosen as a Feature Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

Comments 1 comment

desertofsoulsHoward Andrew Jones’s first novel  has been chosen as a Feature Selection of The Science Fiction Book Club. Rave reviews continue to accumlate for The Desert of Souls, including this recent article from The Green Man Review:

Barely into the third month of 2011, I’m wondering if I’ll read anything else this year as good as The Desert of Souls. In it, Howard Jones proves himself a rare master of the storyteller’s art, a talent uncommon even amongst successful novelists. He’s written a pure, unapologetic, classically-structured adventure tale. In the vein of the Arabian classic, One Thousand and One Nights, Jones invites us into a fictional ninth-century Baghdad: one of mysterious figures, magical artifacts, frightening djinn, and lost cities damned by God…

Brilliant and immediate characterization, not only for Asim, the narrator, but Dabir, as well, perfect pacing, and a truly intriguing mystery draw the reader deeply into the world of the story. At one point, a story within the story allows Jones to comment on the act of storytelling itself. The novel is polished to a mirror sheen, but it has that something extra that takes a story beyond technical excellence and into the human heart.

Jones is an editor at Black Gate, a Harold Lamb scholar, and has written short stories in the world of his novel for many years. The Desert of Souls doesn’t read like a first novel, and perhaps that’s why. If you have any interest in historical fiction, fantasy adventure, Robert Howard, Harold Lamb, or the One Thousand and One Nights, you will love this book… Stories that stay with me as this one has don’t come around very often.

I’ve been a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for many years, and enjoy their low-cost editions of popular SF bestsellers.  The Desert of Souls will be featured in their June catalog, mailing out May 20, 2011. You can read the complete Green Man Review of Desert of Souls here.

Congratulations Howard!

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction in the Golden Age

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction in the Golden Age

Comments 4 comments

sf-golden-ageJames Van Hise, renowned comic and pulp expert and editor of The Rocket’s Blast ComicCollector magazine, has compiled a terrific collection of non-fiction articles from the dawn of the science fiction pulp era.

Science Fiction in the Golden Age arrived in the mail a week ago, and I’ve been mesmerized by it ever since. It gathers articles, letters, interviews, advertisements and artwork that appeared in pulps, fanzines and other sources between 1908 and 1955, including a H. G. Wells piece in a 1908 issue of Cosmopolitan speculating about life on Mars – with four illustrations, all reproduced here in color – a 1938 report on John W. Campbell’s plans as the new editor of Astounding Science Fiction, a review of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Galactic Patrol from 1950,  a report from “Inside the Graf Zeppelin” from Science & Invention (1929), and a lot more.

Authors include Hugo Gernsback, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Thomas Sheridan, and Ray Bradbury, and the vintage art from pulps and fan magazines includes classic work by Frank R. Paul and others, as well as unused art intended for the first edition of The Skylark of Space. I particularly enjoyed the house ads for magazines and novels, including Amazing Stories and Otis Adelbert Kline’s The Planet of Peril.

This is clearly a labor of love from someone who spent years reading and gathering literary gems and curiosities from some extremely rare sources, including Air Wonder Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Scientifiction, Fantasy Review, Boys Magazine, Writers Digest, Fantasy Advertiser, and many other pulps and fanzines. The only criticism I have is that the page numbers in the TOC are rather useless, given that most of the magazine isn’t paginated.

Science Fiction in the Golden Age is the first in a planned series, although since this one came out in May 2005 and no new volumes have followed, I’m not sure about the state of those plans. Volume One is 160 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 (side-stapled) with full color front and back covers by Frank R. Paul. I bought mine from the author on eBay for $20; additional copies are still available.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Eight – “The Fiery Hand”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Eight – “The Fiery Hand”

Comments 0 Comment

fiery-hand“The Fiery Hand” was the eighth installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company.   The story was first published in Collier’s on September 25, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 24-26 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

8073861This serves as Rohmer’s variation on the haunted house story and mines the same territory as countless Sherlock Holmes pastiches where the reader is assured that the detective will arrive at a rational explanation because the other characters are convinced that the mysterious goings-on must be of supernatural origin from the start. That said, the story is an excellent one and finds Rohmer in fine form.

Inspector Weymouth calls on Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie to enlist Smith’s aid in investigating the Gables, a property in Hampstead that appears to have been haunted for the past two years. The previous owners, a Quaker family who lived at the house for over forty years sold it after manifestations of a fiery hand holding a flaming dagger appeared. They said nothing of the incident at the time for fear of not being able to sell the property.

…

Read More Read More

The Desert of Souls, a Review

The Desert of Souls, a Review

Comments 7 comments

the-desert-of-souls

“We should talk more, you and I,” he said, “about storytelling.”

–Howard Andrew Jones, The Desert of Souls

The Desert of Souls is the debut novel of Black Gate magazine managing editor Howard Andrew Jones. About ¼ of the way into it, I thought aloud: You’ve got to be kidding me. A debut novel? Jones’ Arabian Nights-style adventure has the polish of a cut diamond, and the finish of a veteran author.

The Desert of Souls is a proper fantasy, albeit placed in a historical setting, so there’s magic, undead monsters, god-like snakes, and more. I haven’t encountered a djinn on the printed page since my old AD&D days, and was pleasantly flooded with memories of Oasis of the White Palm as I read. The Desert of Souls features two heroes, Dabir and Asim, who spend large part of the book in near-death situations in pursuit of the wizard Fifouz, who plots to visit an ancient curse on a modern city.

Jones has an excellent sense of pace and an affinity for a tale properly told. Not rushed, but told as a story should be told, as though novelist and the reader were drawn up around a campfire with the whole night ahead for stories. A lot happens in The Desert of Souls but it’s not told breathlessly; the pace is languid at times, quick at others in Asim’s first person narrative. It’s also unabashedly optimistic, a welcome relief in these often dark times of current fantasy offerings.

…

Read More Read More

Howard Andrew Jones on How Captain Kirk Led Me to Historical Fiction

Howard Andrew Jones on How Captain Kirk Led Me to Historical Fiction

Comments 0 Comment

captain-kirkMan, that Howard Andrew Jones is, like, everywhere.

Today he’s at Tor.com, writing about how James T. Kirk led him on a many-year mission to explore strange new worlds of historical fiction:

I’d read that Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry had modeled Captain Kirk after some guy named Horatio Hornblower. I didn’t think I’d like history stories, but I sure liked Star Trek, so I decided to take a chance. Once I rode my bicycle to the library and saw how many books about Hornblower there were, I figured I’d be enjoying a whole lot of sailing age Star Trek fiction for a long time to come.

Of course, it didn’t turn out quite like that. Hornblower wasn’t exactly like Kirk, and his exploits weren’t that much like those of the Enterprise, but they were cracking good adventures. Thanks to my own curiosity but mostly to the prose of the talented C.S. Forester, my tastes had suddenly, and accidentally, broadened beyond science fiction… I no longer thought of historical fiction as a strange, untouchable world, and as I grew older I tried more and more of it, sometimes because a period interested me and sometimes just because I liked a cover or a title. That’s how I found the work of Cecilia Holland, and it’s why I wasn’t afraid to try out a book by Harold Lamb titled The Curved Saber after I was spellbound by Lamb’s biography of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general…

The complete article is here, and you can learn the mind-boggling details about Howard Andrew Jones month at Black Gate here.

Bradley Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo Released This Week

Bradley Beaulieu’s The Winds of Khalakovo Released This Week

Comments 1 comment

windsofkhalakovocover_smBlack Gate blogger Bradley Beaulieu’s first novel The Winds of Khalakovo was published by Night Shade Books on Monday. I asked him to tell us a little bit about it, and his influences:

Thanks for having me on Black Gate. It’s great to be able to talk to some of the fans of the magazine, because unlike other places where I often feel like a relative newcomer — a welcome guest, so to speak — here I feel at home. I feel like I’m among friends, like we’re all part of an extended family: those who love adventure – and epic-based fantasy. So I was excited about the chance to share the news about my debut novel, The Winds of Khalakovo, just released by Night Shade Books.

The Winds of Khalakovo is a story about Nikandr, the Prince of a Grand Duchy modeled loosely after Muscovite Russia. The Nine Duchies of Anuskaya have been beset by a decade-long blight, by a wasting disease that strikes commoner and royal alike, and by the Maharraht, a rebellious splinter group that wants nothing more than the destruction of the Grand Duchy and her people. While searching for a way to heal the islands, Prince Nikandr stumbles across a boy, a boy who has the power to break worlds, and he finds that the Maharraht are bent on using this boy to achieve their goals. But the boy also has the power to heal, and it falls to Prince Nikandr to unlock his secrets before the Maharraht can use him to lay waste to his home of Khalakovo.

…

Read More Read More

Howard Andrew Jones’ Plague of Shadows Now on Sale

Howard Andrew Jones’ Plague of Shadows Now on Sale

Comments 12 comments

Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, by Howard Andrew Jones. Coming February 2011Howard Andrew Jones’ second novel in two months officially goes on sale today:

The race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only his old elven mercenary companion Elyana has the wisdom — and swordcraft — to solve the mystery of his tormentor and free her old friend before three days have passed and the illness takes its course. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, the elf sets out with a team of adventurers across the Revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains to discover the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley warped by weird magical energies and inhabited by terrible nightmare beasts. From Black Gate magazine’s managing editor Howard Andrew Jones comes a fantastic new adventure of swords and sorcery, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows is the third novel in the new line of Pathfinder Tales from Paizo. They are standalone tales set in the world of Golarion, home of the succesful Pathfinder role playing game; Plague of Shadows follows Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross and Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham.

You can order copies directly from Piazo, either individually or as part of their Pathfinder Tales subscription.

Steven Erikson finally gets a Bestseller with The Crippled God

Steven Erikson finally gets a Bestseller with The Crippled God

Comments 2 comments

the-crippled-godJustin Golenbock, publicist at Tor, tells us that Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God, the last book of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, will debut at #12 on the print bestseller list in the March 20 edition of The New York Times. It’s only the second time for Erikson — last year his previous novel barely made the list.

As Justin puts it:

Steven’s first novel, Gardens of the Moon, came out in 1999 to much fanfare…and flopped. We spent the next ten years and eight novels telling everybody and anybody who would listen that this was THE fantasy series to be reading, the best that no one knew about. The depth and breadth of its world, characters and cultures, its heartbreaking yet addictive story, and the level of pathos and philosophy embedded into every narrative layer is staggering. Erikson’s core fans knew; so many of our top-selling authors kept telling us, he’s the guy who deserves it more; yet it was on us to convince everyone else.

Then last fall, Steven’s ninth novel, Dust of Dreams, finally squeaked its way onto the NYT extended bestseller list, claiming the last spot at #35… and it was just this afternoon that we learned that the tenth and final novel in his Magnus opus will get the due he so richly deserves.

During his 2008 book tour Steven confirmed that he had signed to write six more Malazan novels; two trilogies, one of which would be a prequel to the main series, detailing the history of Anomander Rake and Mother Dark. He also plans six additional Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas, set in the same world.

Congratulations to Steven Erikson, Justin Golenboc, and Tor books on a job well done!

We Live In Small Worlds

We Live In Small Worlds

Comments 1 comment

neverknewTraveling around the world in eighty days is not only quite possible, but a leisurely journey. One could, on this trip, stop to smell the roses, perhaps do a little sight-seeing on an island or two, and pursue adventure in remote locations. Really, if one were pressed for time, anyone with a passport and a few plane tickets could circumnavigate the globe in about a week or two, depending on the flight paths of the planes.

Before planes, trains, and automobiles, I wonder at the size of the world. I think of all things not as objects divorced from the shifting perspectives of humanity, singular and solid and weighty, but as objects that are shaped primarily and inextricably from the experience of the object. To me, the moon is a slip of paper always out of reach until the day an astronaut landed upon it, becoming soil and sizable stone. To me, the woods and the wild places of the world are forever out of reach, an imaginary landscape where alien life forms like bears and monkeys inhabit the world according to my television screen, where men with cyclopean-eyed tentacles of cameras and wires carry our hyperreal lens into the forested hills beyond the suburbs.

My apartment, down to its tiniest detail, is in many ways a larger space, to me, than all of the Himalayas. What I experience and what I feel, are my life, and the objects and places that are physically present in that life are the ones that are larger to me than ones in the distant horizon, imagined and mythical in its telling, but not really impactful to me in a tangible way. I live in a world that’s defined by how far I can travel in about half a day. My parents’ house is about half a day away by car and plane. My sister’s house, as well. My fiancée lives about forty minutes by car, and together we explore the landmarks and points of interest between us. This is my whole world.

The point of all this is to say that in writing a world, the experience of that world is tied not to the size and shape of stones, hills, but to the experience of them.

…

Read More Read More