New Treasures – Page 113

New Treasures: Almost Infamous by Matt Carter

Monday, July 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Talos Press is in imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, the same outfit that purchased Night Shade Books and has done a stellar job re-invigorating the imprint. They’ve published some fine titles over the past few years, including Patricia Ward’s Skinner Luce, Martin Rose’s My Loaded Gun, My Lonely Heart, Karina Sumner-Smith’s Radiant, M. H. Boroson’s The Girl with Ghost Eyes, and many others.

Talos does a lot of books that other publishers wouldn’t risk, and that alone makes them interesting. A fine recent example is Matt Carter’s first solo novel Almost Infamous, about teenage superhuman Aidan Salt, who chooses to become the first supervillian the world has seen in decades. San Francisco Book Review calls it “a funny, dark, and thoroughly enjoyable story about friendship, heroism, and the lengths to which we’ll go to disrupt the status quo,” and Booklist labels it “irresistible reading.”

My only complaint is the cover. I understand why they went the comic book route, but it looks like it was designed by someone who hasn’t looked at a comic book in 20 years. With all the dynamic and innovative work being doing in comics these days, there’s little excuse for a comic book-style cover to be as bland and minimalist as this one. I suspect a lot of readers will overlook it because of the cover, and that’s a shame.

Almost Infamous was published by Talos Press on April 19, 2016. It is 312 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Adam Wallenta.

Sample the Finest Short Stories of a Science Fiction Great: The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades

Monday, July 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

The Best of Robert Silverberg Stories of Six Decades-small

The Best of Robert Silverberg Stories of Six Decades-back-small

William Schafer’s Subterranean Press is one of the most prolific and accomplished small presses in the industry. It has produced countless books by Dan Simmons, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, James Blaylock, Robert McCammon, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neal Barrett, Jr., Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance, and many others.

I don’t typically report on them here, however. While we’re always happy to promote small press publishers at Black Gate, we like to make sure you can obtain the great books we’re telling you about. And Subterranean specializes in limited edition hardcovers that frequently sell out quickly.

That’s not always the case, however — and I’m very pleased to report on those rare instances when Subterranean makes its excellent books available in paperback. One such case is the splendid The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades, a generous collection of Robert Silverberg’s best stories spanning over 50 years. It includes much of his most important and acclaimed short work, including “Nightwings” (the 1969 Hugo Award winner for Best Novella), “Passengers” (Nebula Award, 1970), “Good News from the Vatican” (Nebula, 1971), “Born with the Dead” (Best Novella Nebula, 1975) “Schwartz Between the Galaxies,” “Sailing to Byzantium” (Nebula Award, Best Novella, 1986), and “Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another” (Hugo winner, 1990).

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Series Fantasy: The Greatcoats by Sebastien de Castell

Saturday, July 2, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

In her review of the second volume in Sebastien de Castell’s Greatcoats trilogy, Sarah Avery said:

De Castell is carving himself an enduring place in the fantasy canon…. I forgot I was wondering or worrying or writing a review, because the stalwart, somewhat cracked hero Falcio Val Mond was tugging me back into his story. I’d follow Falcio anywhere… he makes us laugh, raucously, especially in the bleak moments when he and we need it most…

One of the great pleasures of Knight’s Shadow is that the worldbuilding deepens, opens outward, flowers. In Traitor’s Blade, the Dashini made only a brief onstage appearance, and otherwise were basically ciphers, bogeymen the Greatcoats feared because so little was known about them. In the new volume, we learn about their tragedies and traumas, and why they were founded in the first place. The Greatcoats themselves had a centuries-long history with a violent end before King Paelis refounded them… Like Traitor’s Blade, Knight’s Shadow ends on a note that could still be satisfying if the series ended right now. One hazard of series fantasy is an endless episodic structure in which boundaries between volumes can feel arbitrary… It’s one problem you won’t find in de Castell’s work. Each of the two books now before us has a clear beginning, middle, and end…

Knight’s Shadow is so strong, the only way I can see the Greatcoats series failing to achieve eventual wide recognition as a classic is if the author meets an untimely demise before he finishes writing it. Live a long life, Sebastien de Castell.

Saint’s Blood, the third installment in the series, was released in hardcover by Jo Fletcher Books last month. Here’s the description.

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New Treasures: The Destructives by Matthew De Abaitua

Friday, July 1, 2016 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

The Destructives Matthew De Abaitua-small

Matthew De Abaitua’s first novel for Angry Robot, If Then, was called “Stunningly original and superbly well written… everything science fiction should be aiming for,” by Nina Allen. In his review in Locus magazine, Paul Di Filippo said “This is the kind of post-apocalypse, after-it-all-changed novel that the Brits do with so much more classy, idiosyncratic style than anyone else. It is full of magisterial weirdness, logical surrealism, melancholy joy and hopeful terror.”

His follow-up novel, set in the same world as If Then (and sharing a single character, Alex Drown) is The Destructives, released in paperback in March. From what I’ve read so far, it seems packed with the same gonzo weirdness that made If Then such a success. Well worth checking out.

Theodore Drown is a destructive. A recovering addict to weirdcore, he’s keeping his head down lecturing at the university of the Moon. Twenty years after the appearance of the first artificial intelligence, and humanity is stuck. The AIs or, as they preferred to be called, emergences have left Earth and reside beyond the orbit of Mercury in a Stapledon Sphere known as the university of the sun. The emergences were our future but they chose exile. All except one. Dr Easy remains, researching a single human life from beginning to end. Theodore’s life.

One day, Theodore is approached by freelance executive Patricia to investigate an archive of data retrieved from just before the appearance of the first emergence. The secret living in that archive will take him on an adventure through a stunted future of asylum malls, corporate bloodrooms and a secret off-world colony where Theodore must choose between creating a new future for humanity or staying true to his nature, and destroying it.

The Destructives was published by Angry Robot on March 1, 2016. It is 415 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Raid71. See more details at the Angry Robot website.

New Treasures: New Pompeii by Daniel Godfrey

Wednesday, June 29, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

You know what I didn’t know I wanted? A Roman-era adventure tale/modern thriller mash-up. At least, I didn’t know I wanted it until a copy of Daniel Godfrey’s debut novel New Pompeii showed up on my doorstep, courtesy of Titan Books. Now I can’t wait to read it.

Calling New Pompeii a delightful mix of genres is something of an understatement. Alan Smale (Clash of Eagles) says it’s “That rare science fiction novel that reads like a thriller… an astonishing debut.” Gareth L. Powell (The Recollection, Hive Monkey) concurs, calling the novel “A smart, intriguing thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton and Philip K. Dick.” And Barnes & Noble calls it, “Deliciously Readable.” And yeah, it’s their job to sell books, but you gotta admit they don’t say that about everybody.

Whatever the case, New Pompeii has one of the most original and intriguing premises I’ve heard this year. Not bad at all for a debut novel. Here’s the description.

In the near future, energy giant Novus Particles develops the technology to transport objects and people from the deep past to the present. Their biggest secret: New Pompeii. A replica of the city hidden deep in central Asia, filled with Romans pulled through time a split second before the volcano erupted.

Historian Nick Houghton doesn’t know why he’s been chosen to be the company’s historical advisor. He’s just excited to be there. Until he starts to wonder what happened to his predecessor. Until he realizes that NovusPart have more secrets than even the conspiracy theorists suspect.

Until he realizes that NovusPart have underestimated their captives…

New Pompeii was published by Titan Books on June 21, 2016. It is 422 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $7.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman

Monday, June 27, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Christopher Buehlman is a fast-rising horror star. His debut novel, Those Across the River, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and he followed it quickly with The Necromancer’s House and Between Two Fires. Last year’s The Lesser Dead, a novel of vampire clans in New York, won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of the Year, and Tor.com called it “surprising, scary, and, ultimately, heartbreaking.” Based just on the gonzo description his latest, The Suicide Motor Club, may be his best yet. Check it out.

Remember that car that passed you near midnight on Route 66, doing 105 with its lights off? You wondered where it was going so quickly on that dark, dusty stretch of road, motor roaring, the driver glancing out the window as he blew by.

Did his greedy eyes shine silver like a coyote’s? Did he make you feel like prey?

You can’t remember now.

You just saw the founder of the Suicide Motor Club. Be grateful his brake lights never flashed. Be grateful his car was already full.

They roam America, littering the highways with smashed cars and bled-out bodies, a gruesome reflection of the unsettled sixties. But to anyone unlucky enough to meet them in the lonely hours of the night, they’re just a blurry memory. That is — to all but one…

Two years ago, they left a witness in the mangled wreck of her family car, her husband dead, her son taken. She remembers their awful faces, despite their tricks and glamours. And she’s coming for them — her thirst for vengeance even more powerful than their hunger for blood.

On the deserted highways of America, the hunters are about to become the hunted…

The Suicide Motor Club was published by Berkley on June 7, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $26 in hardcover, or $12.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent

Sunday, June 26, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Tiffany Trent is the author of the six-volume Hallowmere historical fantasy series, published in paperback by Mirrorstone. But my first exposure to her was in 2012, when I attended a superb reading series hosted by Wiscon in Madison. Here’s what I said in my convention report.

The first reading of the con for me was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Corset, featuring Tiffany Trent, Franny Billingsley, Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer… my favorite tale from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Corset was Tiffany Trent’s The Unnaturalists.

Set in an alternate London where magical creatures are preserved in museums, The Unnaturalists follows plucky young Vespa Nyx, who is happily cataloging unnatural creatures in her father’s museum until she becomes involved in Syrus Reed’s attempts to free his Tinker family, who have been captured to be refinery slaves. Funny, fast-paced, and packed with lively characters, Tiffany Trent’s novel captured my attention immediately.

The Unnaturalists was a success, and it spawned a sequel, The Tinker King, published in hardcover in February 2014. The Unnaturalists was published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster on August 14, 2012, and in trade paperback on August 13, 2013. It will be reprinted in mass market paperback by Saga Press on June 28, 2016, to be followed by the mass market edition of The Tinker King, on July 26. The Unnaturalists is 311 pages, priced at $7.99. The cover is by Aaron Goodman.

Barnes & Noble on 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

Saturday, June 25, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog continues to be a great source of recs for the discerning reader. They had a fine summary of the Best SF and Fantasy of 2015, and their monthly list of the best new books on the shelves is an excellent resource (our most recent look was back in March, when their list included Myke Cole’s Javelin Rain and Adrian Selby’s Snakewood.)

This week Sam Reader takes a look at seven recent SF and fantasy short story collections, including Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble, Joan Aiken’s The People in the Castle, and Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. His list also includes the latest collection from Jeffrey Ford, whose spectacular story “Exo-Skeleton Town” was one of the most memorable tales in Black Gate 1. Here’s Sam’s description of A Natural History of Hell: Stories.

Jeffrey Ford is probably writing your dreams. It’s the best way to describe his surreal style, which frequently relies on an internal structure and logic to convey images that teeter between odd fantasy and unsettling horror, while remaining impossibly grounded in a tangible reality. A Natural History of Hell (out in July) goes to some odd places, with genre-bending stories about artists trapped on a rocket ship, imaginary serial murderers, and God being torn apart by an angry mob, but it leaves plenty of room for beauty, however dark. It also contains one of my personal favorite stories from last year, “Word Doll,” in which children are lured into a world of make-believe. If you’re looking for something you haven’t seen before, look no further than these 13 stories.

Standout stories: “A Rocket Ship to Hell,” “The Blameless.”

A Natural History of Hell: Stories will be published by Small Beer Press on July 26, 2016. It is 256 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback.

See the complete article at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

New Treasures: Confluence by Paul McAuley

Thursday, June 23, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve found a number of online sellers offering brand new copies of recent British SF and fantasy books very inexpensively (essentially, at remainder prices), and I’ve been taking advantage of them. My most recent purchases include Paul McAuley’s In the Mouth of the Whale (the third volume in his far-future series The Quiet War), and the massive omnibus volume Confluence, which contains his complete trilogy. And I do mean massive — just take a look at the thing (click the image at right for a more lifesize version). At 935 pages, it proudly stands all on its own on my end table (and darn near tips it over).

Paul McAuley was an early columnist for Black Gate (his fantasy review column On the Edge appeared in our early print issues). The omnibus volume contains three complete novels, all originally published in hardcover in the US by Avon EOS:

Child of the River (1997)
Ancients of Days (1998)
Shrine of Stars (1999)

Here’s the description:

Confluence — a long, narrow, artificial world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. A world beyond the end of human history, served by countless machines, inhabited by 10,000 bloodlines who worship their absent creators, riven by a vast war against heretics.

This is the home of Yama, found as an infant in a white boat on the world’s Great River, raised by an obscure bureaucrat in an obscure town in the middle of a ruined necropolis, destined to become a clerk — until the discovery of his singular ancestry. For Yama appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the revered architects of Confluence, able to awaken and control the secret machineries of the world.

Pursued by enemies who want to make use of his powers, Yama voyages down the length of the world to search for answers to the mysteries of his origin, and to discover if he is to be the saviour of his world, or its nemesis.

Confluence was published by Gollancz in August 2015. It is 935 pages, priced at £16.99 in trade paperback and $15.99 for the digital edition. I bought my copy from Media Universe for $12.14 plus $3.99 shipping (and In the Mouth of the Whale from the same vendor for $2.95). Copies of both are still available.

New Treasures: A Most Improper Boxed Set by Stephanie Burgis

Monday, June 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Not long after I got my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, I joined a small start-up in Champaign, IL. I kept trying to explain to my friends and family what we did, without much luck. But after Microsoft licensed our first product and renamed it Internet Explorer 1.0, everyone understood what we did.

It was thrilling to be a manager in a fast-growing internet start-up in the early days of the dot-com boom, let me tell you. But one of the things I came to realize early on was that being an early tech pioneer was no help at all when it came to predicting where the next big thing was coming from. When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, for example, I confidently predicted it would never approach the success of Borders, since there was no way to browse for books, like you could in a real bookstore. Today, Borders is bankrupt, Amazon.com is one of the most successful companies in human history, and I spend hours every week browsing and shopping for books online, discovering more new titles than I ever could in a brick-and-mortar store.

That’s how I stumbled across A Most Improper Boxed Set, a delightful trilogy of Regency fantasy novels by Stephanie Burgis (Masks and Shadows), and decided to take a chance on it. Would I have made the same impulse purchase in a bookstore? Who can say? I’m just glad I did it.

For lovers of Harry Potter and Jane Austen, this boxed set of the Kat, Incorrigible Regency-era fantasy trilogy is a delightful blend of adventure, humor, mischief, romance, and quite a bit of improper magic.

Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she’s inherited her mother’s magical talents, and despite Stepmama’s stern objections, she’s determined to learn how to use them.

But nineteenth-century England is not the easiest place to practice scandalous magic. Kat’s reckless heroism will be tested to the utmost as she learns to control her new powers — all while battling dangerous highwaymen, dodging devious scoundrels, attempting to win her sisters their true loves, avoiding malicious gossip and disgraceful accusations, managing her sister Angeline’s heedless witchcraft and her brother Charles’s carelessness… and saving her family’s lives, the magical Order of the Guardians, and ultimately, England itself. And all this while trying to maintain the dignity of a proper lady!

This paperback boxed set — which includes Kat, Incorrigible; Renegade Magic; and Stolen Magic — contains enough mischief and magic to make Stepmama faint… and to satisfy the most voracious of readers.

A Most Improper Boxed Set was published by Atheneum Books on October 7, 2014. It contains three novels in trade paperback, with a combined page count of 1072 pages, and is priced at $21.99. The marvelously whimsical cover art is by Annette Marnat. See Emily Mah’s interview with Stephanie Burgis here.

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