Browsed by
Category: New Treasures

New Treasures: The Thorn of Dentonhill by Marshall Ryan Maresca

New Treasures: The Thorn of Dentonhill by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Comments 0 Comment

The Thorn of Dentonhill-smallI don’t know much about this Marshall Ryan Maresca fellow. His short fiction has appeared in Rick Klaw’s anthology Rayguns Over Texas, and Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer.

But his debut novel sounds like a lot of fun. The Thorn of Dentonhill follows the adventures of Veranix Calbert, diligent college student by day, and crime-fighting vigilante by night. When Calbert intercepts two powerful magical artifacts owned by a local drug lord, he suddenly becomes a major player in the nighttime struggle for control of Maradaine. But he also becomes a major target…

Veranix Calbert leads a double life. By day, he’s a struggling magic student at the University of Maradaine. At night, he spoils the drug trade of Willem Fenmere, crime boss of Dentonhill and murderer of Veranix’s father. He’s determined to shut Fenmere down.

With that goal in mind, Veranix disrupts the delivery of two magical artifacts meant for Fenmere’s clients, the mages of the Blue Hand Circle. Using these power-filled objects in his fight, he quickly becomes a real thorn in Fenmere’s side.

So much so that soon not only Fenmere, but powerful mages, assassins, and street gangs all want a piece of “The Thorn.” And with professors and prefects on the verge of discovering his secrets, Veranix’s double life might just fall apart. Unless, of course, Fenmere puts an end to it first.

This is the first novel set in the fantasy city of Maradaine, but it won’t be the last. DAW has Maresca’s A Murder of Mages: A Novel of the Maradaine Constabulary, the first novel in a new series, on the schedule for July 7, 2015.

The Thorn of Dentonhill was published on February 3, 2015 by DAW Books. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback ad $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Paul Young.

Black Static #44 Now on Sale

Black Static #44 Now on Sale

Comments 4 comments

Black Static 44-smallI stumbled on my first copy of Black Static, issue #40, at a Barnes and Noble here in Chicago last year, and I was very impressed. The magazine is beautifully designed and illustrated, with top-notch writing and some great columns. It’s exactly the kind of thing I like to take with me on long plane rides.

I’ve been tracking down subsequent issues and writing about them here, because I think you deserve to know about them. Also, because really excellent fantasy magazines are a vanishing breed, and they deserve your support. Issue #44 is cover-dated January/February, which means it’s still on sale here in the US. The fiction contents are:

“Going Back to the World” by Simon Avery
“The Absent Shade” by Priya Sharma
“The Fishers of Men” by Jackson Kuhl
“Sweet Water” by E. Catherine Tobler
“Samhain” by Tyler Keevil

Yes, that’s our own Jackson Kuhl in the TOC. Jackson’s last article for us was his review of Jeffrey E. Barlough’s The Cobbler of Ridingham, which appeared here last week. On his blog, Jackson talks a little about selling his story, “The Fishers of Men,” to a British market like Black Static:

I was a little shocked when [Black Static editor] Andy Cox accepted “Fishers;” it is a very American story and when I sent it I wasn’t sure the historical background would translate. But I suppose I don’t have to know the intricacies of lines of royal succession or the industrialization of Greater Manchester to enjoy M.R. James, Robert Aickman, or Susanna Clarke (to name the three most recent authors I’ve read), so perhaps the width of the Atlantic isn’t as great as I sometimes imagine.

…

Read More Read More

Michael Moorcock’s Fantasy Autobiography: The Whispering Swarm

Michael Moorcock’s Fantasy Autobiography: The Whispering Swarm

Comments 1 comment

The Whispering Storm-smallMichael Moorcock is a giant. He is probably most famous for his Elric of Melniboné stories, but he also has written many other fine works. In addition, he is also well known for having been the editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds from 1964 to 1971. From this position Moorcock is usually credited with fostering the development of the New Wave in science fiction and fantasy.

Personally, I have been a big Moorcock fan for years and was something of a rabid devotee in junior high. I read the Elric stories over and over, almost memorized the “Melnibonéan Mythos” section of the Dungeons and Dragons Deities and Demigods book, and even bought the old Chaosium RPG Stormbringer, which was based on Moorcock’s Elric tales.

So I was incredibly excited when I heard that Moorcock was releasing a new novel, The Whispering Swarm, the first in a new trilogy. Having just finished it, I have to say that it is one of the most unique books I have ever read. Described in a sentence: It’s part fantasy and it purports be part autobiographical.

What?!

I think a little light can be shed on the book’s conception with the following.

StarShipSofa, the excellent British science fiction podcast and website, interviewed Moorcock back in 2008 (if you’re interested, you can watch it here). At one point in the interview, Moorcock relates that his publisher thought he should write a memoir. But Moorcock admits that he is very reticent to do so because many of the people he would be writing about are still alive, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings — nor did he want to get into any “he said vs. she said” controversies.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson

New Treasures: Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson

Comments 4 comments

Island 731-smallTwo weeks ago, we announced the winners of our contest to suggest who should be writing the Cthulhu Mythos today. Each of the winners received a copy of the new anthology Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth. One of the more intriguing entries came from Donald Nutting, who wrote:

Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson had me curled up in the fetal position whimpering and scared for my life; if he can do that about a kaiju, then he could do it with Cthulhu.

I had to admit I wasn’t familiar with Jeremy Robinson, but it didn’t take long to rectify that. I tracked down a copy of Island 731, released in paperback last February. I’m not sure how I missed it, because it looks right up my alley.

Mark Hawkins, former park ranger and expert tracker, is on board a research vessel on the Pacific. But his work is interrupted when the ship is plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm… The next morning, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island — and no one knows how they got there. The ship has been sabotaged, two crewmen are dead, and a third is missing. Hawkins spots signs of the missing man onshore and leads a small team to bring him back. But they soon discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by the island’s former occupants: Unit 731, Japan’s ruthless World War II human experimentation program. As more of his colleagues start to disappear, Hawkins begins to realize the horrible truth: That Island 731 was never decommissioned and the person preying on his crewmates may not be a person at all — not anymore…

Jeremy Robinson is also the author of seven Jack Sigler thrillers, including the latest, Cannibal, on sale in hardcover this month. Island 731 was published in hardcover on March 26, 2013, and in paperback by St. Martin’s Press on February 25, 2014. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

Comments 3 comments
THE TREASURY OF THE FANTASTIC-small The Uncertain Places-small The Best of Michael Moorcock-small

While I was at the World Fantasy Convention last November, I kept being irresistibly sucked into the Dealers Room. Seriously, the place was like a giant supermarket for fantasy fans. There were thousands of new and used books on display from dozens of vendors — books piled high on tables, books crammed into bookshelves, books being pressed into your hands by enthusiastic sellers.

When I came home I moped around for a few days, and then mocked up some HTML pages with dozens of thumbnail jpegs of books so I could pretend I was still at the convention. I waved a crisp twenty dollar bill in front of my computer screen and said things like, “I’ll take the new Moorcock collection, my good man.” I even haggled over the price of The Treasury of the Fantastic. Truly, it felt like I was there.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

New Treasures: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

Comments 0 Comment

Shadow Study Jacket-small

Maria V. Snyder’s first short story, “The Wizard’s Daily Horoscope,” appeared in Black Gate 11 in 2007. We published ”Cursing the Weather” in Black Gate 15, and it quickly became one of the most acclaimed stories in what was to be the final issue of the magazine. Here’s what Keith West said about it on his blog Adventures Fantastic:

Nysa… is probably as far from the sterotypical warrior woman as you can get. She’s a young girl working in a tavern, trying to earn enough money to buy the medicine needed to keep her dying mother alive. Then a weather wizard moves in across the street…  I wouldn’t have considered this one to really fit the theme of warrior woman. In spite of that, I think I enjoyed it the most. I’m going to be checking out more of Ms. Snyder’s work.

Keith wasn’t the only one to seek out Maria’s work. Her first novel, Poison Study, won the Compton Crook Award in 2006, and the third in the series, Fire Study, hit The New York Times bestseller list in 2008.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: California Bones and Pacific Fire by Greg van Eekhout

New Treasures: California Bones and Pacific Fire by Greg van Eekhout

Comments 11 comments
California Bones-small Pacific Fire-small

What we have here is a pair of novels in an intriguing new dark fantasy series which were both released last month — California Bones in paperback, and Pacific Fire in hardcover.

California Bones is the first; it was published in hardcover by Tor last year. It’s an epic adventure set in a world similar to our own, in the Kingdom of Southern California, in a city of canals and secrets and casual brutality.

…

Read More Read More

Unbound: Flipping the Pages of Reality

Unbound: Flipping the Pages of Reality

Comments 0 Comment

UnboundFor those of us who love books, they are often like windows into their own vibrant, living worlds. The idea that these stories contain a magical power to transport the reader to a new world, not merely figuratively but also literally, has shown up before, perhaps most prominently in The Neverending Story. In recent years, the idea of storybook worlds being tied to our own have become the driving force behind the popular television series Once Upon a Time. And, of course, many magical systems throughout fantasy literature have involved words of power.

Jim C. Hines has contributed one of the most intriguing interpretations on this theme in his Magic Ex Libris series. The first two books, Libriomancer and Codex Born, have been previously reviewed by our very own Alana Joli Abbott, but here’s the quick recap:

Isaac Vainio is a libriomancer, a magician with the ability to tap into the magic of books, drawing objects from them into the real world. His particular interest is science fiction and fantasy, allowing him to manifest anything from a lightsaber to a laser assault rifle to healing potions.

Magic has its limits, though. Isaac, with more skill and tenacity than common sense, has pushed beyond those limits more than most other libriomancers. So much so that he has come directly into contact with a dark presence that exists within books, a consciousness called the devourers, which has existed on the periphery of magic for centuries.

The third book, Unbound (Amazon), brings this conflict between the libriomancers and the devourers to a head. Isaac begins the book at about the lowest point imaginable. Not to give away too many spoilers from the end of Codex Born, but Isaac has no access to his magic and has been ostracized from the Porters, the magical society founded and led by the near-immortal sorcerer Johannes Gutenberg. (Yes, that Johannes Gutenberg. Like John O’Neill, reading keeps him young.) But this doesn’t prevent him from trying to hunt down more information about the devourers.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Cobbler of Ridingham by Jeffrey E. Barlough

New Treasures: The Cobbler of Ridingham by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Comments 1 comment

The Cobbler of RidinghamWinter is the best time to appreciate Jeffrey E. Barlough, perhaps none more so than the current brutality we’ve been experiencing in New England. Day after day of snow blowing past the windows makes it easy to imagine oneself in Barlough’s alternate history of an ice age that never fully receded; and a fire in the grate and a cup of hot coffee at hand while the wind howls beyond the lattices blurs the distinction between this reality and living in a separate megafauna-filled America settled by Victorian doomsday survivors swaddled in coats and mufflers.

In Barlough’s latest novel, The Cobbler of Ridingham, Richard Hathaway comes to Haigh Hall to examine some letters penned by Pharnaby Crust, an overlooked composer whom Hathaway intends to rescue from obscurity with a thorough biography. While studying in the Hall’s library, Hathaway observes a lurking shadow without source and is soon immersed in the curse of Crispin Nightshade, the infamous cobbler of nearby Ridingham. Nightshade used something known as haunted leather to fashion shoes which, when placed on the feet of corpses, could make the dead walk again. There are bumps in the night, unexplained footprints, a boot found in a snow bank, and more, all involving Barlough’s typical cast of well-sketched characters from upstairs and down.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Dead Spots by Rhiannon Frater

New Treasures: Dead Spots by Rhiannon Frater

Comments 0 Comment

Dead Spots-smallRhiannon Frater’s zombie trilogy As the World Dies won her many readers, and in her Black Gate review Beth Dawkins called the opening volume, The First Days, “Very compelling… could be a zombie front runner.”  Now Frater returns with an original horror novel featuring dead spots in the world where dreams become reality, terror knows your name, and nightmares can kill you.

After a tragic stillbirth and a devastating divorce, Mackenzie has no choice but to start her life over. What should be a routine drive across Texas to her mother’s home becomes much more when a near-accident causes Mackenzie to stumble into a dead spot. Dead spots link the world of the living to the one of nightmares and dreams, where people are besieged by monsters and by situations born of highly personal fears.

Grant, her newfound companion, keeps her from spiraling into madness — he has survived decades in the dead spots’ dreadful landscape and vows that together they will find a way to escape. With Grant’s guidance, Mac uses her will and life spark to restore abandoned buildings to their former glory, creating sanctuary for a night, or a day, or a few hours. But there is little respite in the dead spots. Horrible, unnatural birds snatch at Mackenzie’s few, precious reminders of her dead son. Graves open beneath her feet, attempting to swallow her whole. A killer clown lurks in the forest, eager for new prey.

Worse, death is not final in the dead spots. Even if a monster tears her apart, Mackenzie is doomed to return.

Friction between Mackenzie and Grant blooms when he cautions her against befriending others trapped in this nightmarish realm, yet she cannot ignore those who desperately need her help. As she learns more about the world, Mac starts to question who she can trust — and worse, to wonder who is real. To escape the dead spots, Mackenzie will have to take a stand against her worst fears and fight to liberate herself and the survivors she’s come to care about.

Dead Spots was published by Tor Books on February 10, 2015. It is 412 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover design is by FORT.