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Future Treasures: The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Future Treasures: The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

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The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. Orbit Books, September 8, 2020. Cover by Sasha Vinogradova.

I love a good fantasy debut, and Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter, coming from Orbit next month, looks like a doozy. It’s the tale of Lin, the former heir to an empire controlled by bone shard magic, fighting to reclaim her magic and her place on the throne, and it’s the opening volume of an epic fantasy trilogy by an unknown author purchased for a six-figure advance. Library Journal called it a “richly told, emotional, action-laced debut” in a starred review. Here’s an excerpt from S.W. Sondheimer’s rave review at The Roarbots.

You know what I love? I love that we are getting a tsunami of fantasy based in cultures that aren’t medieval Western Europe. I love it a lot….

Roving island chains? Hybrid constructs powered by bone magic? A collapsing Empire akin to that of Imperial China? Newly and inexplicably minted elemental wizards with mysterious, talking familiars (who compromise me emotionally, excuse me, your honor, I love Jovis and Mephi and will die for them)?

Inexplicable ships and missing memories? Queer rep that is without it being a thing? Yes, thank you, I’ll take it all, and I’ll take as many entries in Andrea Stewart’s The Drowning Empire series as she’ll write… It all starts when Deerhead Island sinks without sign, without warning, and without mercy. Jovis, searching for his lost wife, finds himself rescuing a child from the same ceremony that killed his brother years before – the ceremony in which the empire harvests a small shard of bone from every child’s skull to be used to power the emperor’s constructs. These creatures, created from leftovers and remains to do the ruler’s bidding, are powered by the life tethered to the shard.

Lin, the emperor’s daughter, tries to salvage lost memories, desperate to please her father while Phalue and Ranami try to love each other through a rebellion. As the three stories converge, the truth of the emperor’s plans – and the depth of his grief-driven madness – are revealed.

I love a good creepy magic system, and there’s a lot to like about this one. The Bone-Shard Daughter will be released by Orbit Books on September 8, 2020. It is $28 in hardcover and $14.99 in digital formats. The cover art is by Sasha Vinogradova. Read a lengthy excerpt at Gizmodo., and see all our recent Future Treasures here.

Gorgeous Celtic Imagery in a Haunting Fairy Tale: The Warrior Bards Novels by Juliet Marillier

Gorgeous Celtic Imagery in a Haunting Fairy Tale: The Warrior Bards Novels by Juliet Marillier

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The Harp of Kings and A Dance With Fate. Ace Books,
September 2019 and September 2020. Covers by Mélanie Delon and unknown.

I discovered Juliet Marillier’s Blackthorn & Grim Celtic fantasy trilogy last year. How I missed the whole series for years I dunno, but was very glad to find them when I did. So I was excited to see a sequel series featuring a new generation arrive in 2020, opening with The Harp of Kings, which Andrew Liptak at Polygon selected as one of the Best Fantasy Releases of September 2019, saying it was “Soaked in gorgeous Celtic imagery and mythology.” Carolyn Cushman reviewed it warmly at Locus Online, saying:

Sibling bards determined to become warriors end up on a special mission to recover a magic harp in this Celtic fantasy novel, the first in the War­rior Bards series, a next-generation sequel to the Blackthorn & Grim series. Liobhan sings and plays the whistle, while her brother Brocc is a harpist with the voice of an angel, skills that turn out to be useful when the warrior group they’re training with needs to infiltrate a court where the legendary harp used at coronations has gone missing. Dealing with princes turns out to be the least of their problems, though, when druids and otherworldly influences are revealed to be involved. The trainees – includ­ing Liobhan’s biggest rival – have a tricky time staying in their assigned roles, and staying out of problems at court, but ultimately it’s Liobhan and Brocc’s knowledge of old stories and their mother’s wisewoman skills that save the day in a tale that draws on some haunting fairy tale elements while telling an exciting adventure all its own.

The next book in the series arrives in two weeks. A Dance With Fate will be published by Ace Books on September 1, 2020. It is 512 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. I don’t know who did the cover. Read an excerpt from The Harp of Kings here, and see all our recent coverage of the best new fantasy series here.

New Treasures: Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

New Treasures: Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

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Unconquerable Sun-smallKate Elliott is the pseudonym of writer Alis A. Rasmussen. As Rasmussen she published The Labyrinth Gate (1988) and The Highroad Trilogy science fiction novels (1990).

Those books didn’t meet with a lot of commercial success however, and in 1992 Rasmussen rebooted her career, switching genres, changing publishers, and launching an epic fantasy series under the name Kate Elliot.

It worked. Kate Elliot’s first novel Jaren (DAW, 1992) was a success, spawning three sequels, and the follow-up series Crown of Stars (DAW, 7 volumes, 1997-2006) proved even more popular. Kate Elliott has had a long and fruitful career as a fantasy writer over the past 28 years, with a number of top-selling series, including Crossroads, the Spiritwalker Trilogy, and the Court of Fives novels.

Her latest book, Unconquerable Sun, is a departure from epic fantasy and a return to her science fiction roots. It’s been widely acclaimed, with a trifecta of starred reviews from Booklist (“A candidate for instant re-reading”), Publishers Weekly (“highly entertaining… will have readers clamoring for more”), and Kirkus Reviews (“A maelstrom of palace intrigue, interstellar back-stabbing, devious plots, treachery, blistering action, ferocious confrontations ― and a heroine for the ages.”) Here’s an excerpt from that rave review at Kirkus.

Clash of empires: an action-packed yarn loosely based on historical precedent, the sort of flawlessly plotted, high-tension science fiction Elliott’s been threatening to write for some time.

The story precipitates us into a kind of modernized Chinese-flavored Alexandrian Macedonia, with a partially collapsed “beacon” network allowing instantaneous interstellar travel, commerce, and war…. Under queen-marshal Eirene, the matriarchal Republic of Chaonia has expelled the Yele and Phene occupiers. Eirene, unaccountably, grudges her daughter and heir, Princess Sun, a word of praise, no matter how stellar Sun’s achievements. Sun’s Companions are aides drawn from her relatives and the scions of powerful nobles… Sun must survive constant threats to her life and freedom while conducting battles, making plans, exposing traitors, controlling her wayward impulses, and asking the questions everybody else shrinks from… The upshot is a maelstrom of palace intrigue, interstellar back-stabbing, devious plots, treachery, blistering action, ferocious confrontations — and a heroine for the ages, tough, resourceful, loyal, intelligent, honorable, courageous, and utterly indomitable.

Enthralling, edge-of-your-seat stuff hurtling along at warp speed. Grab!

Read the complete review here.

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Catching up with Tor.com Publishing — August 2020 edition

Catching up with Tor.com Publishing — August 2020 edition

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Just some of the Tor.com releases that have accumulated in the Black Gate reference library since 2015

Arrgh. I can’t keep up with all the cool stuff coming from Tor.com.

You think it’d be easy. These are short little novellas, quick reads. I love novellas, and got all excited when they launched back in 2015, covered the first 33 releases in detail as they arrived, and watched in satisfaction as they started getting Hugos and Nebula nominations — and then virtually sweeping the nominations in the Novella category, year after year. And the books kept coming, and piling up on my desk, and then on the office tables at Black Gate‘s rooftop headquarters, and then spilling onto the floor….

Okay. I’m just one guy, I can’t keep up with the tireless dynamo that is Tor.com Publishing. But I’m not giving up. In the last few months alone, they’ve released brand new books by Jeffrey Ford, Alex Irvine, Carrie Vaughn (two!), Zen Cho, Emily Tesh, Eddie Robson — plus a new Murderbot novel by Martha Wells, and a New York Times bestseller by Tamsyn Muir. My readers deserve to know about it all, damnit.

So I’m in triage mode. Tor.com has been releasing a book a week for the past few months, and I can’t cover them all. But I can hit the highlights. So let’s take a look at three of their most interesting releases from the past few months.

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Thank You — Yes You — For Helping Fill Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s Cosmic Corsairs

Thank You — Yes You — For Helping Fill Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s Cosmic Corsairs

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Cosmic Corsairs (Baen, August 4, 2020). Cover by Tom Kidd

I was minding my own business at Barnes and Noble last week, picking up random books and opening them to the Acknowledgements page, as one does. And what should I find in Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s new Cosmic Corsairs anthology?

For help and advice, many thanks to John O’Neil and his Black Gate webzine, R.K. Robinson, Jason McGregor, Chris Willrich, Rich Horton, Marie Bilodeau, and others I’m unforgivably forgetting.

I was very touched. Yeah, they misspelled my name slightly, but I wasn’t the source of good advice anyway. As Hank and Chris note, it was really you, the readers of Black Gate, who chipped in with great suggestions when we sent out a call for suggestions here last year:

Help Hank Davis fill a Space Pirate Anthology

Hank has been a friend of BG for many years, and we’re huge fans of his. His most excellent anthologies for Baen include The Baen Big Book of Monsters (2014), Worst Contact (2016), Things from Outer Space (2016), The Best of Gordon R. Dickson, Volume 1 (2017), and Space Pioneers, with Christopher Ruocchio (2018).

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Unbearable Utopias and Harrowing Adventures on Alien Planets: The Best of Jack Williamson

Unbearable Utopias and Harrowing Adventures on Alien Planets: The Best of Jack Williamson

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The Best of Jack Williamson (Del Rey, 1978). Cover by Ralph McQuarrie

The Best of Jack Williamson (1978) was, according to my research, the fifteenth installment in Lester Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) provided the introduction (his second in the series, he also did the intro for The Best of C. M. Kornbluth). Jack Williamson (1908–2006), who was still living at the time, does the Afterword. The famous sci-fi artist Ralph McQuarrie (1929–2012) provides his first (and only) cover in the series.

Jack Williamson’s writing career spans close to a century! He began professionally writing all the way back in the Hugo Gernsback “scientifiction” pulps, and continued all the way up to and beyond the Star Trek/Star Wars science fiction popularization of the late Twentieth Century. In addition to winning several awards such as the Hugos and Nebulas, the Science Fiction Writers of America named Williamson its second Grand Master in 1976, the first being Robert Heinlein (1907–1988). Also, in 1994 Williamson received a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 1996 he was part of the inaugural class of inductees into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He received various other awards before his death in 2006 at the ripe old age of 98.

Given this long and illustrious career, it beggars no disbelief that the fourteen stories in The Best of Jack Williamson represent over fifty years of his writing. Presented in chronological order, the earliest stories are pure juvenile pulps and progress up through the “New Wave”-ish/Harlan Ellison era to darker themes and more mature stories. Though The Best of Jack Williamson is clearly the work of one science fiction writer, it can also be seen as a sort of panoramic history of science fiction in the Twentieth Century in general. Williamson was diverse but various themes seem to recur.

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The Art of Author Branding: The Berkley Poul Anderson

The Art of Author Branding: The Berkley Poul Anderson

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The first six of what would eventually be fourteen Berkley Poul Anderson paperbacks with this design,
including the first three books of the Polesotechnic League. Covers by Rick Sternbach
(Satan’s World) and Richard Powers (all others). July 1976 – December 1977

Back in May, inspired by Mark R. Kelly’s review of one of the very first science fiction novels I ever read, the 1977 Ace paperback edition of Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course, I took an extended look at Silverberg’s mid-70s career at Ace, and how the marketing department gave his books a distinct visual identity — one very different from the way his novels were later packaged at Berkley, Bantam, Tor and others.

In many ways this kind of author branding reached its zenith in the late 70s, and in the Comments section of that article there were plenty of suggestions for examples I should look at next. Joseph Hoopman suggested Avon’s black-bordered Roger Zelazny (great choice!) and their vintage A. Merritt, Charles Martel mentioned the distinctive Laser Books cover series by Kelly Freas, Thomas Parker expressed fondness for Frank Frazetta’s Ace paperback covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Bob Byrne suggested Tim Hildebrandt’s gorgeous covers for the first half-dozen Garrett, PI books by Glen Cook, among other ideas.

All good choices, and if fortune holds I’ll look at many of them. But today I want to highlight a set of paperbacks more contemporary to the Ace Robert Silverberg — the 14 Poul Anderson volumes published by Berkley and Berkley Medallion between 1976 – ’79.

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Vintage Treasures: To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg

Vintage Treasures: To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg

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To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg (Sphere, 1977). Cover by Peter Elson

I’m on something of a Robert Silverberg kick. It started when Mark Kelly reviewed Silverberg’s early novel Collision Course for us back in April, one of the first SF novels I ever read, and in a haze of nostalgia I ended up taking an extended look at all six Silverberg novels packaged up by Ace in that magical year of 1977. More recently I’ve been collecting some of his earlier books, and finding all kinds of interesting artifacts, like the 1969 anthology Dark Stars, and the 1967 fix-up novel To Open the Sky, assembled from five novelettes originally published in Galaxy magazine.

To Open the Sky is the saga of two religions that emerge in the 21st Century, both of which worship technology and atomic power. Over nearly a century the mysterious origins of both religions, and the secret ambitions of their founders, are gradually revealed. It’s the kind of epoch-spanning, tech-focused SF that isn’t written any more. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite review, a short but insightful piece by Thomas M. Wagner at sff180.

A fine example of pre-1970s Bob Silverberg, To Open the Sky is the absorbing story of an overpopulated and economically depressed world clinging to the outcome of a religious schism for its salvation. But is the schism itself a pure public relations ploy, a staged affair whose intricacies are known only to its elusive and enigmatic founder?…

Silverberg effectively constructs a narrative on an epic scale — nearly a century of time between 2077 and 2164 — within a taut 200 or so pages, demonstrating once again that the present-day tendency towards bloat in SF and fantasy publishing is not necessarily the only way to convey big ideas set against a big canvas. Noel Vorst is the founder of a new religious movement rooted squarely in science. Though there is plenty of spiritualist window dressing to appeal to the emotional needs of the disaffected, the promises of the Vorsters are materialist to a fault. There is the promise of potential immortality, as well as the ultimate colonization of the stars, both unfulfilled so far due to limitations of technology.

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The Fate of Intelligence: Chad Oliver’s The Winds of Time

The Fate of Intelligence: Chad Oliver’s The Winds of Time

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The Winds of Time by Chad Oliver; First Edition: Doubleday, 1957.
Cover art Dick Shelton. (Click to enlarge)

The Winds of Time
by Chad Oliver
Doubleday (192 pages, $3.95, hardcover, April 1957)
Cover art Dick Shelton

This science fiction novel from 1957 is by an author known for anthropologically informed works (Wikipedia; SFE). He was an anthropologist himself, and thus one of the few science fiction writers who was also a scientist.

Oliver published nine novels from the early 1950s into the 1990s, not all of them SF. His work is currently in print only through several titles in the UK Gateway line and in three omnibus volumes from NESFA Press.

The present volume is currently available as a Gateway e-book (not listed on the SF Gateway page linked above), and in a 1997 omnibus of three “time travel” novels for White Wolf/Borealis, Three in Time, edited by Jack Dann, Pamela Sargent, and George Zebrowski, which is currently available on Amazon. I note this because generally I try to cover in these reviews only books that are readily available in some current, unused edition, and the last title serves to qualify this Oliver novel. (Though I broke this rule with my look back at Silverberg’s Collision Course a few months back.) In any event, I think it’s fair to say that Chad Oliver, while still remembered, isn’t remembered as among the Great SF Authors of all time, or even of the 1950s. Yet this novel is interesting nevertheless for its display of the standard SF furniture of the 1950s (as I discussed with Silverberg’s novel), and also for its anticipation of the quandary behind Fermi’s celebrated Paradox.

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James Davis Nicoll on Five Doomed Armies in Science Fiction

James Davis Nicoll on Five Doomed Armies in Science Fiction

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The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw (Ace Books, 1969), The Faded Sun: Kesrith by C. J. Cherryh (DAW, 1978), and A Small Colonial War
by Robert Frezza (Del Rey/Ballantine, 1990). Covers by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon, Gino D’Achille, and Stephen Hickman

I’ve been enjoying James Davis Nicoll’s recent gaming articles at Black Gate, shotgun surveys of the best and worst of vintage role role playing. They’re quick reads, and if you have any nostalgia (or curiosity) at all about RPGs of the 80s and 90s, I think you’ll enjoy them.

Ten RPG Moments of Awesome
Ten WTF Moments from Classic RPGs
Stormbringer, Stargates, and Fighting Sail: Ten Classic Unplayed RPGs

I’ve also been enjoying his regular book column at Tor.com, for much the same reason. James is an entertaining writer, but he also has an uncanny knack for highlighting some fascinating vintage SF, a lot of which is new to me.

Take his July 2 article “Five Doomed Armies in Science Fiction,” which showcases novels from 1969-1989 by Bob Shaw, C.J. Cherryh, Joe Haldeman, David Drake, and Robert Frezza. You gotta admit that’s an interesting angle on classic SF. Here’s a tasty excerpt.

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