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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: “When the Levee Breaks (and the Goddess Wakes), I’ll Have a Place to Stay…”

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: “When the Levee Breaks (and the Goddess Wakes), I’ll Have a Place to Stay…”

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When the Goddess Wakes (St. Martin’s Press, August 2021). Cover by Lauren Saint-Onge

Know, O prince, that between the years when Stag-flation and the Iran Hostage Crisis drank the Carter Administration, and the years of the rise of the stepson of Roger Clinton Sr, there was an Age Undreamed of, when sword & sorcery, high fantasy epics, slender trilogies and stand-alone novels lay spread across bookshelves like paper jewels beneath fluorescent stars.

This tongue-in-cheek riff on Robert E. Howard’s famous quote from the Nemedian Chronicles is a perfect way to begin a review of Howard Andrew Jones’s concluding volume of the Ring Sworn Trilogy, because it is both a very modern fantasy, and yet, in so many ways the product of growing up as a fantasy-reading GenXer – which both Jones and I are.

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Fun, Fresh Fantasy: Mad Shadows: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

Fun, Fresh Fantasy: Mad Shadows: The Heroes of Echo Gate by Joe Bonadonna

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Mad Shadows III: The Heroes of Echo Gate (Pulp Hero Press, February 2021). Cover artist uncredited

Joe Bonadonna’s third installment of his Mad Shadows, Dorgo the Dowser series, The Heroes of Echo Gate, was announced this Feb 2021 at Black Gate. We covered Dorgo’s world and Bonadonnoa’s cinematic narrative, which we’ll touch upon again during this review. Also on Black Gate, the author of the internationally acclaimed IX Series, Andrew Paul Weston, reviewed all three books of the Mad Shadow series. This post reinforces those articles and highlights this fresh fantasy adventure’s (a) Epic Scope, (b) Cinematic Style, and (c) Faith theme.

The Heroes of Echo Gate is fun, fresh fantasy. Dorgo and his fellowship of Harryhausen-like creatures defend a magical portal from a horde of demons. Epic!

As the cover implies, we have our beloved weird-fiction investigator & mercenary Dorgo (the guy front and center on the cover with the dowsing rod and sword) defending the titular portal with a band of friends (most of whom could have stared in a Ray Harryhausen movie. For the young readers take note that Harryhausen was the “Frank Frazetta” of cinema who gave life to the fantastical creatures before computer graphics were invented). There are three acts that follow the classic purposes: setup, rising tension, and an epic battle. The climax consumes a full third of the book and resonates with all the grandeur of defending Tolkien’s Helm’s Deep. The city of Soolaflan, on the island of Thavarar, is the fortress and it is situated around Echo Gate. Demons from across time want access to it. The portals across the world of Tanyime (and even across time and space) echo those from C. J. Cherryh’s Morgaine Cycle and even Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Saga.

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Future Treasures: You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo

Future Treasures: You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo

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You Sexy Thing (Tor, November 16, 2021). Cover artist unknown

Cat Rambo made a name for herself with her short fiction — and a successful stint as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America. You Sexy Thing is their first novel release from a major publisher, and it looks poised to be a breakout book. Here’s an excerpt from Liz Bourke’s review at Locus Online.

You Sexy Thing, Cat Rambo’s first space opera novel, is in fact a romp. If you’re the kind of person who likes Mass Effect… then this book is definitely for you. This is a fast, zippy novel that hides some surprisingly substantial emotional heavy lifting under its hood…

Captain Niko Larsen is perhaps the greatest military mind ever to avoid being absorbed by the Holy Hive Mind. She and some of her surviving troops got out of the Holy Hive Mind’s military through the only loophole available to them: they became artists. Kitchen artists: their art is cookery, and their restaurant – the Last Chance, on TwiceFar station – is the first step in a plan that Niko’s had years, if not decades, in the making, a plan that has nothing at all to do with cooking…. You Sexy Thing… [is] fast, pulpy, and explosive – and full of feeling… it’s an utter delight. I recommend it wholeheart­edly.

Check out an excerpt here. You Sexy Thing will be published by Tor Books on November 16, 2021. It is 292 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. No word on who did the cover, but I like it. See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

A Triumphant Finale: The Last Uncharted Sky by Curtis Craddock, Book 3 in The Risen Kingdoms

A Triumphant Finale: The Last Uncharted Sky by Curtis Craddock, Book 3 in The Risen Kingdoms

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The Last Uncharted Sky (Tor trade paperback edition, August 2021). Cover by Thom Tenery

When an author completes a trilogy, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters in Chicago. In the case of Curtis Craddock’s acclaimed Risen Kingdom trilogy, the confectionery celebration was unfairly delayed until I found a copy of the final volume, The Last Uncharted Sky, released in trade paperback in August.

It was Charles Stross who drew my attention to the opener, An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, back in 2017 when he proclaimed it a “gaslight fantasy in the tradition of Alexander Dumas.” That’s not something I hear every day. The second, A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, offered more tales of “adventure full of palace intrigue, mysterious ancient mechanisms, and aerial sailing ships!” (According to David D. Levine).

The closing volume was first published in hardcover in August 2020. Publishers Weekly called it a “triumphant finale to Craddock’s swashbuckling Risen Kingdoms trilogy… a spectacular series ender.” A truly satisfying and original modern fantasy trilogy is not an easy thing to find. This one reminded me of Howard Andrew Jones’ Ring-Sworn Trilogy; that alone was enough to pique my interest.

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2 edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2 edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Volume 2 (Saga Press, September 2021). Cover design by Richard Yoo

Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies have been popular for seven decades — since Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty published The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949 — but one thing hasn’t changed. You can still tell the hottest writers in the genre by whose names get plastered on the covers. So I was very curious to see who make the grade in Jonathan Strahan’s latest, a huge, nearly Dozois-sized volume crammed with top-notch writers like Alastair Reynolds, Rich Larson, Pat Cadigan, Maureen McHugh, Suzanne Palmer, and many others. For the record, here’s the official list:

Charlie Jane Anders
Max Barry
Sarah Gailey
Yoon Ha Lee
Ken Liu
Usman T. Malik
Tochi Onyebuchi

Jonathan’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Volume 2 was released in trade paperback just a few weeks ago. Tor.com calls this installment “a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.” Here’s a snippet from Reading Llama‘s enthusiastic coverage.

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Guran strikes again! The Year’s Best of Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 2

Guran strikes again! The Year’s Best of Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 2

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The Year’s Best of Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 2 (Pyr, October 2021)

Widely known, well respected, prolific editor of dark fiction Paula Guran returns with a new volume of her Year’s Best of Dark Fantasy & Horror. This new, huge anthology collects thirty short stories that previously appeared in 2020 in various books and magazines.

Clearly it would be impossible (and tedious) to comment upon each one, hence I will only mention those which especially impressed me. In other words my personal “best” among Guran’s best.

“Recognition” by Victor Lavalle is a disquieting story set in a New York apartment building where flats are vacated little by little during the first COVID outbreak, while “ Odette” by Zen Cho is the neat description of the difficult relationship between a young orphan, her stern uncle, and the house where they live.

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Crisis and Mystery at the End of the Universe: The Divide Series by J. S. Dewes

Crisis and Mystery at the End of the Universe: The Divide Series by J. S. Dewes

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The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet (Tor, April and August 2021). Cover art by Shutterstock

As days get shorter and nights get longer, my reading ambitions begin to grow. Recently I’ve been on the hunt for a more substantial reading project, and I think I’ve found it in J.S. Dewes debut series The Divide. The opening book The Last Watch received plenty of breathless notices; in her mid-year wrap-up of The Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Year, Sadie Gennis at Vulture called it “one of the most stunning sci-fi series debuts of recent years… [a] nail-biting space epic,” and Booklist proclaimed it “a bravura debut that blends great action with compelling characters.”

The first volume was released in April, and sequel The Exiled Fleet followed hot on its heels four months later. Dewes has announced a third volume on her website, to be released next year. An epic space opera with more volumes in the pipeline is just what I had in mind for a fall reading project. Here’s a sample from Matt Matkowski’s enthusiastic review of the audiobook version of The Last Watch at Booklist.

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New Treasures: The Conductors by Nicole Glover

New Treasures: The Conductors by Nicole Glover

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The Conductors (John Joseph Adams Books, March 2021). Cover art by Elizabeth Leggett. Click for bigger versions.

As we near the end of 2021 (thank God!), I’m already starting to look back at the big fantasy releases and debuts of the year. One that surprised me was Nicole Glover’s The Conductors, the opening novel in her Murder & Magic series, which follows the adventures of black detectives Hetty and Benjy Rhodes, who pry into cases white police officers deign to investigate in Reconstruction era Philadelphia.

The Conductors was published and edited by John Joseph Adams, the man who pulled my own debut novel out of the slush pile and published it in 2018, so perhaps you can forgive me if I think the man has superb taste. I’m not the only one, however. NPR praises The Conductors as “A history buff’s dream fantasy novel,” and P. Djèlí Clark calls it “a tangled mystery of murder, spellwork, and freedom amid the remnants of slavery’s lingering memories.” Here’s an excerpt from the starred review at Publishers Weekly.

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Killer Dolls and Murderous Dimensions: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories I (1972), edited by Richard Davis

Killer Dolls and Murderous Dimensions: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories I (1972), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories (DAW, 1972). Cover by Karel Thole

The first Year’s Best Horror Stories, DAW No. 13, published in 1972, was edited by British author and editor Richard Davis, who would go on to produce many more horror and sci-fi anthologies throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He also edited the next two Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW, but he primarily published through British outlets.

The Year’s Best Horror Stories, No. 1, was first published by Sphere in the UK in May 1971, and reprinted by DAW in the US fourteen months later, dropping the No. 1 from the title in the process. The cover of the DAW edition was by Dutch painter Karel Thole (1914–2000), a regular on sci-fi covers during the time. I think the cover is more psychedelic than horrific. In 1975 DAW reprinted the book with a new cover by Hans Arnold, one much more fitting to the horror genre.

This first volume has a strong lineup, and I can see why Donald A. Wollheim sought to get Davis’ Sphere release as the debut for his new Year’s Best Horror Stories series. It was also, somewhat surprisingly for the time, quite diverse.

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Future Treasures: Swashbucklers by Dan Hanks

Future Treasures: Swashbucklers by Dan Hanks

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Swashbucklers (Angry Robot, November 2021)

Dan Hanks’ first novel was Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire (Angry Robot, 2020), which the author admits was “all about my love for Indiana Jones.”

His follow-up features an ancient pirate ghost, supernatural battles, and 80s video games, which makes we wonder why no one has tried that combo before. I’m definitely ready to sign up, anyway. Nils Shukla at Fantasy Hive says it “brings all the magic of the 80’s back to life, and delivers a fun, action-packed tale with heart.”

Swashbucklers arrives in paperback next month from Angry Robot. Here’s the publisher description.

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