New Treasures – Page 171

New Treasures: Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest

Saturday, December 14, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m extremely intrigued by Cherie Priest’s The Clockwork Century series, and have been ever since the first volume, Boneshaker, appeared in 2009 and was nominate for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

The only thing holding me back, of course, was the fact that it was incomplete. But now the fifth and final volume, Fiddlehead, has arrived, and by all accounts it brings the Priest’s ambitious steampunk series to a rousing conclusion.

The American Civil War has dragged on for two bloody decades as the South, aided by fantastic steam-powered machines and Texas technology, has avoided defeat again and again. Leviticus Blue’s incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine accidentally destroyed much of downtown Seattle, unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas in the process, and a desperately-constructed wall around the city is the only that that keeps hordes of the living dead enclosed.

Now a deadly yellow drug from Washington has begun to circulate through the ravaged country… and genius Gideon Bardsley — who has constructed Fiddlehead, the first thinking machine — dares to ask his creation who is going to win the war…

Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they’re trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing.

…

Sword Sisters: A Partnership, a Prequel, a Picture Show, and a Print Run

Friday, December 13, 2013 Jason M Waltz @ Rogue Blades Comments 6 comments

> The first Red Reaper novel from Tara Cardinal and Alex Bledsoe is prequel to the 2014 movie The Legend of the Red Reaper — The first **Red Reaper** novel from Tara Cardinal and Alex Bledsoe is the prequel to the 2014 movie *The Legend of the Red Reaper*. Click for bigger version

Tara Cardinal has quite a story to share. And now she has a novel too. They’re not quite the same thing — but they have a lot in common.

Her, for instance. The actress/writer/director pours everything she is into her stories, and once a person knows them both, the interplay between them is obvious. Passion is a way of life for Tara, and she instills in her projects and the people around her a thirst for it.

This is not the sum of her though. Tara does all her own stunts AND swordplay, she added directing to her resume on the fly, learned how to write the score, edited the film, and interested Uwe Boll into co-producing the movie The Legend of the Red Reaper with her. Then she hit upon an idea to write a story prequel to the movie she’d written and created. She sketched it out, discovered Alex Bledsoe wandering the same Sword & Sorcery super-aisle, and the rest is history. (Alex offers a bit of a better description of how it all worked out over on his site.)

Alex just so happened to have recently worked with RBE on Writing Fantasy Heroes, and so introductions were made, and the work began. It wasn’t long before the manuscript was going through edit exchanges, the art was being penciled & inked, and both interior and cover layout was being described, revised, and delivered.

But wait! There’s even more to the story. Tara’s passion isn’t for writing, directing, even acting. It’s for empowering children and young women in pursuit of her dream of making the world a better, happier place. The martial artist and swordswoman is also a humanitarian, psychologist, and child advocate. From the age of 12, Tara has always been about defending, assisting, and benefiting children survivors of abuse, illness, and disaster.

Best of all, Tara’s rolled all that passion, all that experience, and all those goals into a Sword & Sorcery novel that delivers the sword-swinging, monster-slaying, ancient god-defying, and good ol’ fun we Black Gaters (hmm, sounds like a football team name to me!) expect — and she’s done that while also delivering Aella, a young woman protagonist who struggles with identity, destiny, belonging, and confidence simultaneous with racial, familial, and sexual tensions.

Aella is not your everyday chain-mail bikini warrior — she’s the heroine every young woman experiencing her own struggles with identity, belonging, confidence, and belief can look up to and emulate.

New Treasures: Darkwalker by E.L. Tettensor

Wednesday, December 11, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Darkwalker is the debut fantasy novel from E.L. Tettensor and it offers an intriguing mix of both the familiar and the new — just what I’m looking for, I think.

The setting is Kennian, part of the backwater Five Villages, which seems a lot like 19th-century England if you squint. Stepping into the scene is Police Inspector Nicolas Lenoir, tasked with investigating a dark mystery. Folks here for the most part scoff at the supernatural — but don’t tell the thing hunting Inspector Lenoir. This one looks like a fine mix of fantasy and mystery in a fog-shrouded Victorian-era (ish) landscape, with plenty of original touches to keep things interesting.

He used to be the best detective on the job. Until he became the hunted…

Once a legendary police inspector, Nicolas Lenoir is now a disillusioned and broken man who spends his days going through the motions and his evenings drinking away the nightmares of his past. Ten years ago, Lenoir barely escaped the grasp of the Darkwalker, a vengeful spirit who demands a terrible toll on those who have offended the dead. But the Darkwalker does not give up on his prey so easily, and Lenoir has always known his debt would come due one day.

When Lenoir is assigned to a disturbing new case, he treats the job with his usual apathy — until his best informant, a street savvy orphan, is kidnapped. Desperate to find his young friend before the worst befalls him, Lenoir will do anything catch the monster responsible for the crimes, even if it means walking willingly into the arms of his own doom…

Darkwalker: A Nicholas Lenoir Novel was published by Roc Books on Dec 3, 2013. It is 368 pages, priced at $7.99 for the paperback and for the digital edition. Read an excerpt on the Penguin website here.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

John R. Fultz’s Seven Sorcerers On Sale Today

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

We’re celebrating a major publishing event at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters today: the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third novel in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper series.

When Seven Princes, the first book in the series, arrived in January 2012, it marked the debut of a major new fantasy talent. Seven Kings cemented that reputation, and over the next two years, John graduated from promising new novelist to full-fledged literary star. The critical acclaim for the first two books has been stellar — Barnes & Noble called them “flawless epic fantasy,” Library Journal praised Seven Princes as “A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building,” and io9 labeled the same novel “Epic with a capital EPIC.”

John’s talent is too big to be contained just in novels — on June 3, 2013, 01Publishing published his first collection The Revelations of Zang, gathering his baroque and fascinating sword & sorcery Zang Cycle, featuring the tale of a revolt against the nine Sorcerer Kings whose power displaced the gods themselves.

We published three stories from John R. Fultz’s Zang Cycle in the print version of Black Gate: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine,” that tale of Taizo the thief and his daring heist in spider-haunted Ghoth (BG 12); “Return of the Quill,” in which Artifice’s long-simmering plan to bring revolution to the city of Narr finally unfolds (BG 13); and the prequel story “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). Next, John took us back in time to Artifice’s first year as a member of the travelling Glimmer Faire in “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which appeared as part of the Black Gate Online Fiction line here in January.

Somehow missed out on all the excitement? Read the excerpts and stories linked above or try the complete first chapter of Seven Kings for free. Get more details on Seven Sorcerers here.

Seven Sorcerers was published today by Orbit Books. It is 448 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Look for it in bookstores everywhere — and stay tuned to Black Gate for a special opportunity to win a signed copy!

New Treasures: Black Blood by John Meaney

Saturday, December 7, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

British writer John Meaney, author of The Nulapeiron Sequence (Paradox, Resolution, and Transmission), has been called “the most important new SF writer of the 21st century” by The Times of London. Impressive, but it was his turn towards gothic fantasy with Bone Song that really caught my attention. The sequel, Black Blood, has been described as a blend of futuristic noir, gothic fantasy, and thriller, all set in a lushly detailed necropolis where a cop must stop a conspiracy of killers whose power is fueled by spilling black blood.

He’s lucky to be alive. That’s what everyone tells him. Except Tristopolitan police lieutenant Donal Riordan doesn’t feel lucky and he isn’t really alive. In one horrific moment not even death can erase from memory, Donal lost the woman he loved even as her ultimate sacrifice saved his life. Now it’s literally her heart that beats in his chest and her murder that Donal “lives” to avenge.

While being a zombie cop has its upsides — including inhuman reaction time and razor-sharp senses — Donal’s new undead status makes him the target of Tristopolis’s powerful Unity Party, whose startling rise to power is built on a platform of antizombie paranoia and persecution. The Party is no friend, to be sure — but it’s the secret cabal known as the Black Circle and their stranglehold on the city’s elite that consume Donal’s black heart. For at the center of this ring of evil is the man responsible for his lover’s murder — a man Donal has already had to kill once before.

Now, with ominous reports of white wolf sightings throughout the city and a dangerous sabotage attempt at police headquarters, all signs indicate that the Black Circle is planning a magical coup d’état. And the terror will begin with a political assassination triggered by a necroninja already hidden… in a place no one expects. For Donal, it’s no longer a matter of life and death but something far more serious. How can he stop a killer who won’t stay dead and an evil that death only makes stronger?

Sounds like the beginning of a promising new series, especially if you like your fantasy blended with dark science fiction (and necroninjas!) Black Blood was published February 24, 2009 by Bantam Spectra. It is 384 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback or $9.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: Dark Melody of Madness by Cornell Woolrich

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I wish a knew more about Cornell Woolrich.

From what I understand, this is a common state of affairs, even for some of his most devoted fans. Woolrich was something of a recluse, especially in the last few years of his life, and there are only a handful of people alive today who had any real dealings with him. Barry N. Malzberg, Woolrich’s agent for much of the 1960s, is one of the few, and he’s provided a fascinating reminisce in his introduction to Phantom Lady, one of the handsome new Woolrich editions from Centipede Press.

Woolrich is revered by mystery and noir fans — and rightly so. Some three dozen films have been made of his taut thrillers, including Rear Window, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The Bride Wore Black, and many others. But on occasion, he also wrote supernatural fiction and Dark Melody of Madness, one of the new Centipede Press volumes, collects four of his novellas for the first time: “Graves For The Living,” “Jane Brown’s Body,” “Dark Melody of Madness,” and “I’m Dangerous Tonight,” all originally published between 1935 and 1938.

Holding on to a loved one can be difficult, but certainly not as weird and treacherous as in this quartet of Cornell Woolrich novellas set in the mid-1930s. It’s a time of great incongruities — physical anguish of the Great Depression, lighthearted dancing to the rhythms of swing; near-legendary bank robbers, daredevil long-distance airplane pilots; head bashing of union members, air-conditioned comfort for movie goers.

Woolrich takes this milieu, adds an overlay of the supernatural, and places his protagonists in grotesque, untenable situations involving their lives and souls. Here is the eerie world of voodoo, Frankenstein-style reincarnation, live burial, and macabre garments — a mixture of cold sweat-producing dilemmas, where the characters find it near-impossible to separate the real from the unreal.

Dark Melody of Madness was published by Centipede Press on August 6, 2013. The introduction is by Bill Pronzini, and the cover and color interiors are by Matt Mahurin. The trade paperback is 296 pages, priced at $18; there’s also a limited edition, out-of-print hardcover. The hardcover edition lists an additional novella, “Mannequin,” on the TOC. For mystery and noir fans, Centipede Press offers three additional volumes in the series: Deadline at Dawn, I Married a Dead Man, and Speak to Me of Death (see the complete set here.)

Deck-Building Battles with Warmachine: High Command

Tuesday, December 3, 2013 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 1 comment

For me, a good game is really a window into another world. It’s like a miniature story that is told with a set of pre-defined rules. The war games I play are rarely just games, like tic-tac-toe or chess, but instead a single battle in a larger war, which in turn is part of the story of the rise and fall of nations and the struggles of the people within them.

It was this perspective on gaming that first drew me to Privateer Press’s Warmachine line of miniature games. Though I loved the physical look of the figures, the fact is that I’m not an artist or a visually-compelled person as a rule, so it was really the setting that drew me in, the possibility to, in some small part, take part in the stories set in this world. And the giant warjacks didn’t hurt.

In fact, the first article I wrote for Black Gate was a review of Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdom roleplaying supplements, exploring their magically infused steampunk-style world of giant mechanical behemoths. Soon after, though, my involvement in Warmachine died off. I got married, became a father, and the disposable income to buy metal miniatures and disposable time to sit painting them went by the wayside (and there was a vast increase in anxiety, as little two-year-old fingers would inevitably seek to play with “Daddy’s dolls,” as they became known in my house).

Fast forward to the present, and it’s as if Privateer Press has found a solution to getting me back involved in one of my favorite gaming worlds. In addition to a whole new Iron Kingdoms line of RPG supplements (Amazon, Privateer Press) and digital fiction set in the Iron Kingdoms (Amazon), they have released a new deck-building game, Warmachine High Command (Amazon).

…

A Step Into Dark Realms

Tuesday, December 3, 2013 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’ve always been a fan of small press magazines, especially genre magazines. That’s where you frequently find much of the cutting edge fiction and design — they take the kinds of creative risks that larger magazines simply can’t afford to. While I was running my own small press magazine, I didn’t have time to keep up on what was going on at the fringes, of course. And I missed out on a lot. But now that the print version of Black Gate is no longer an ongoing concern, I can afford more time to look around.

I bought my first issue of Dark Realms last week. A back issue, #25, cover dated Winter 2007. To be honest, I’m not sure what Dark Realms is all about, but it seems like my thing. The cover has a vampire dude, and promises to explore “The Inquisition” and the “The Dark Secrets of Loch Ness” inside. The subtitle reads “Exploring the Shadows of Art, Music, and Culture.” I’m up for that.

First thing I want to know, of course: is this thing still being published? Call it the ghoulish curiosity of a publisher with his own dead magazine. Sadly, I discovered I’m too late to actually support Dark Realms — the magazine give up the ghost five years ago, in 2008, after an impressive 32 issues.

From what I can tell after spending a few hours with it, Dark Realms is an odd mix of non-fiction, artwork, horror fiction, music reviews, and ads for goth necessities. However, while the magazine is visually very striking, it seems to rely heavily on a small number of contributors.

Issue #25 is a fine example. The moody and effective cover is by Joseph Vargo. On the inside front cover is a house ad for an art book and a tarot deck — both by Joseph Vargo. In the middle of the magazine is another ad, this one for Tales of the Dark Tower, a very professional-looking original anthology based upon characters created by Joseph Vargo. Turn the page and we come to the first fiction piece of the issue: “Spiders in the Attic,” written by… Joseph Vargo (with art by Joseph Vargo).

…

New Treasures: Allegiance by Beth Bernobich

Monday, December 2, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

You can always tell the books that get a serious buzz here at Black Gate — because the review copies always vanish. I try to track them down and discover they’ve been passed from hand to hand until almost everyone on staff has read them. Except for me, of course. I can never find the damn things.

That’s what it’s been like with the novels of Beth Bernobich and her River of Souls trilogy. I still have no idea what happened to the first volume, Passion Play… I gave up looking for it after I learned my son Tim took it off to college. I’m trying to run a blog here, people. Work with me.

And so it is with the third volume, Allegiance. I have no idea where it is. I’m writing this based on the release notes. I think I just have to accept the inevitable: that I’ll have to draft New Treasures posts for Beth Bernobich’s novels without ever having the book in hand. I’m forced to rely on what I can glean from brief sightings during staff meetings and scattered Internet rumors. Enjoy.

King Leos of Károví, the tyrannical despot whose magic made him near immortal and who controlled a tattered empire for centuries through fear and intimidation, is finally dead. Ilse Zhalina watched as the magical jewels that gave him such power reunited into a single essence, a manifestly God-like creature who then disappeared into the cosmic void. Ilse is now free to fulfill her promise to Valara Baussay, the rogue Queen of Morennioù, who wants to return to her kingdom and claim her throne.

Ilse will do all in her power to help Valara if only as a means to get to her home. Home to her lover, Raul Kosenmark, who is gathering forces in their homeland of Veraene now that Leos is dead in order to save them from an ill-advised war. Pulled by duty and honor, Ilse makes this long journey back to where her story began, to complete the journey she attempted lives and centuries before and bring peace between the kingdoms. Along the way she learns some hard truths and finally comes to a crossroads of power and magic. She must decide if duty is stronger than a love that she has sought through countless lifetimes.

Will Ilse give up her heart’s desire so that her nation can finally know lasting peace?

Allegiance was published by Tor Books on October 29. Best guess, it is 320 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition. I dunno who painted the cover, but I like it.

New Treasures: The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

Friday, November 29, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Mur Lafferty is something of a renaissance woman. She was the host and co-editor of the horror podcast Pseudopod until July 2007; in 2010 she became the editor and host of the weekly SF podcast magazine Escape Pod. She’s also the host of I Should be Writing (when does she find time to actually write?), and a winner of the Podcast Peer Award and the Parsec Award.

Apparently, she must make time somehow. She’s the author of two previous novels (Playing for Keeps, and Nanovor: Hacked), and her third novel is out from Orbit Books. Zoe Norris is a travel writer forced to take a job with a shady publishing company in New York, only to discover she’s been tasked with writing a tour guide for the undead. Scott Sigler said of The Shambling Guide to New York City, “If Buffy grew up… moved to New York and got a real job, it would look a lot like this.” Sounds plenty intriguing to me.

Because of the disaster that was her last job, Zoe is searching for a fresh start as a travel book editor in the tourist-centric New York City. After stumbling across a seemingly perfect position though, Zoe is blocked at every turn because of the one thing she can’t take off her resume — human.

Not to be put off by anything — especially not her blood drinking boss or death goddess coworker — Zoe delves deep into the monster world. But her job turns deadly when the careful balance between human and monsters starts to crumble — with Zoe right in the middle.

The Shambling Guide to New York City is the first novel in The Shambling Guides series; the second volume, Ghost Train to New Orleans, is due March 4, 2014.

The Shambling Guide to New York City was published by Orbit Books on May 28, 2013. It is 358 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The marvelous cover is by Jamie McKelvie (click for a full-size version).

Black Gate

Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Browsed by
Category: New Treasures