Black Gate

Barnes & Noble announced their Bookseller’s Picks for March earlier this month, including their top SF and Fantasy releases. It’s an impressive list — including BG author Myke Cole’s upcoming novel Javelin Rain.

While this is technically the fifth book in Cole’s Shadow Ops series, it’s really a sequel to the prequel novel Gemini Cell. Set in a future in which magic’s reappearance in the world is just beginning to erode the old order, Jim Schweitzer is a U.S. Navy SEAL serving with the Gemini Cell — until he’s killed in action. And then brought back from the dead via occult means. His escape is coded “javelin rain,” indicating the worst possible security threat — one that must be stopped as quickly as possible, by any means necessary. As Schweitzer discovers his resurrection has made him immortal, his family certainly isn’t, and he has to use all of his skills — old and new — to protect all that is important to him. Combining military heroics, espionage intrigue, and magic-infused action, Cole adds new layers to one of the most unique SF/F universes on shelves today.

We covered B&N’s picks for the Best SF and Fantasy of 2015 here.

Javelin Rain, by Myke Cole, will be published by Ace Books on March 29. It’s priced at $7.99 in paperback and digital formats. Myke’s last posts for Black Gate were Drizzt Do’Urden Simply Won’t Stop Adventuring: Learning to Love Serial Fantasy and Selling Shadow Ops. Our roving reporter Patty Templeton interviewed him here.

Well here’s something interesting — a Victorian era superhero novel. Debut novelists Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas bring us the tale of Evelyn Wyndham and her sister Rose, a Victorian adventure featuring evening parties, abductions, a love triangle, witty dialog, mysterious and secret societies, fog-shrouded London, villains with phenomenal abilities, intrigue, mystery, and more. It’s being called Jane Austen meets X-Men, which isn’t a description I hear very often.

These Vicious Masks was published by Swoon Reads on February 9, 2016. It is 320 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the trade paperback and digital editions. The cover is by Rich Deas. Click on the back cover above to read the complete description. See the complete details, including a brief excerpt, at the Swoon Reads website.

See all of our coverage of the best in New Fantasy here.

Robert Repino’s Mort(e) is an unusual book.

In his article “Five Books in Which Giant Insects Ruin Everyone’s Day” at Tor.com last year, Eric Smith described it thusly:

An epic science-fiction thriller out on January 20th, Mort(e) introduces you to a world that’s been conquered by hyper-intelligent giant ants… Tired of mankind’s treatment of the world, the ants have risen to take the planet, and have made other animals self-aware. It’s an epic battle between humans, ants, dogs, ants, cats, ants, raccoons, ants, and it is incredible. And the protagonist, a housecat named Mort(e), will stick with you long after you close the pages.

I found the newly released trade paperback at the bookstore this week, and was impressed enough with the accolades on the back cover to bring it home. Mort(e) was included in Andrew Liptak’s Very Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Of 2015 at i09, and listed as an Amazon Best Book of January 2015. BookRiot called it “Absolutely incredible.. The apocalypse has never, ever been this entertaining.” (Click the cover above to see the complete text.)

I’ve been intrigued by anthropomorphic fantasy ever since I first read Watership Down, and this one sounds right up my alley. Mort(e) was published in hardcover on January 20 of last year, and was reprinted by Soho Press on February 9, 2016. It is 358 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Napo Ng.

Under the name M.D. Lachlan, Mark Alder has written four novels in the Wolfsangel fantasy series; under the name Mark Barrowcliffe, he’s the author of the D&D memoir The Elfish Gene, Lucky Dog and Girlfriend 44. His newest is the opening volume of a fantasy retelling of the Hundred Years War, in a world where angels and demons choose sides on the battlefield, and England and France are locked in a true holy war. Publishers Weekly calls it “alternate history leavened with wry humor… [a] fast-moving epic.”

England, 1337: Edward III is beset on all sides, plagued by debt and surrounded by doubters. He refuses to pay homage to the newly crowned Philip Valois of France and seeks to secure his French holdings, but he’s outmanned. Philip can put 50,000 men in the field, but he is having his own problems: he has summoned the angels themselves to fight for France, but the angels refuse to fight. Both kings send priests far and wide, seeking holy relics and heavenly beings to take up the cause of their country, but God remains stubbornly silent, refusing to grant favor to either side.

Meanwhile, among the poor and downtrodden, heretical whispers are taking hold: what if God — who has never been seen to do anything for them — is not the rightful leader of the heavens after all? And as Edward’s situation becomes increasingly desperate, even his counselors begin to believe that if God won’t listen, perhaps they can find a savior not from Heaven, but from Hell.

In a sweeping tale packed with courtiers and kings, knights and priests, and devils and angels, Mark Alder breathes fresh and imaginative life into the Hundred Years War in this unique historical epic.

Son of the Morning was published by Pegasus on February 15, 2016. It is 727 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover painting is a detail from Luca Giordano’s painting of St. Michael.