Black Gate

You’d think that, after nearly 40 years of collecting science fiction and fantasy, I’d be accustomed to looking past the cover while on the hunt of promising new books.

Naaah. Good covers are underrated, and great covers can tell you a more than a simple plot summary. And Watcher of the Dark has a very intriguing cover indeed, featuring a fabulously detailed Lovecraftian horror dominating a bone-strewn alien landscape, while a sinister blind man looms over the whole affair, plotting his evil… wait a minute.

Is that blind guy the hero, exorcist Jeremiah Hunt? My. He’s definitely got a certain style (click the image at right for a bigger version.) This is even more intriguing than I thought.

New Orleans was nearly the death of Jeremiah Hunt, between a too-close brush with the FBI and a chilling, soul-searing journey through the realm of the dead that culminated with a do-or-die confrontation with Death himself.

Hunt survived, but found no peace. When he performs an arcane ritual to reclaim the soul of the magically gifted, beautiful women who once saved him, he must flee the law once again, to the temporary sanctuary of Los Angeles, city of angels.

In L.A., Hunt must contend with Carlos Fuentes, who sees in the blind exorcist a means to obtain the mystical key that opens the gates of Hell. Fuentes knows Hunt’s weakness is his loyalty – to the woman he loves and to another supernaturally gifted friend – and threatens to torture them in order to get Hunt help complete his dreadful quest.

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Walter Moers got my attention with his first novel in English, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, which relates adventures of human-sized bear with blue fur on the fictional continent of Zamonia.

Okay, I know how that sounds. But Moers, who’s also a cartoonist and painter, brings cartoon sensibilities to the page with consummate skill, and his whimsical tales of Zamonia have captured hearts and minds around the world. The 13½ Lives was followed by Rumo, A Wild Ride Through the Night, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The City of Dreaming Books sounds like his most intriguing title yet, featuring a city-sized library filled with secrets, haunted by the mysterious Shadow King…

Optimus Yarnspinner has inherited from his godfather an unpublished manuscript by an unknown writer. He sets off to track down the mysterious author, who disappeared into Bookholm — the so-called “City of Dreaming Books.” Yarnspinner falls under the spell of this book-obsessed metropolis, where an avid reader and budding author can find any number of charming attractions — priceless signed first editions, salivating literary agents, and for-hire critics. But as Yarnspinner pursues the trail of the missing author, the darker side of Bookholm begins to unveil itself — cold-blooded book hunters, fearsome cyclopean booklings, sharp-toothed animotomes, and of course, the Shadow King, whose howls rise from deep beneath the city at night. Will Yarnspinner survive his quest into this world where reading is a genuine adventure?

Like most of his books, this one features a cover by Moers, and numerous black & white illusrations throughout. Moers’ art is as charming as it is unique, equal parts Virgil Finlay and Dr. Seuss.

I found the brand new sequel, The Labyrinth of Dreaming Book, in the Dealer’s room at Windycon last week for the first time. That means it’s time for me to stop dithering and finally read this one.

The City of Dreaming Books was published by Overlook Press in 2008. It is 462 pages, priced at $17.95 in trade paperback at $11.99 for the digital edition. It was translated from the German by John Brownjohn.

Nancy A. Collins has had a long and distinguished career in dark fantasy. Her first novel, Sunglasses After Dark (1989), became an immediate classic of vampire fiction, and her character Sonja Blue went on to appear in two additional novels: In The Blood (1992), and Paint It Black (1995). Her three-volume Vamps series from HarperTeen began in 2008, and her brand new adult series Golgotham began in 2010 with Right Hand Magic, followed a year later by Left Hand Magic.

The third volume, Magic and Loss, arrived last week, and it continues the tale of Tate Eresby, an artist who moves to Golgotham, Manhattan’s centuries-old supernatural district. The neighborhood is populated by creatures from myth and legend, but its most prominent citizens are the Kymera, a race of witches who maintain an uneasy truce with New York’s human population.

It has been several months since Tate Eresby developed her new magical ability to bring whatever she creates to life, but she is still learning to control her power. Struggling to make a living as an artist, she and Hexe can barely make ends meet, but they are happy.

That is until Golgotham’s criminal overlord Boss Marz is released from prison, bent on revenge against the couple responsible for putting him there. Hexe’s right hand is destroyed, leaving him unable to conjure his benign magic. Attempts to repair the hand only succeed in plunging Hexe into a darkness that can’t be lifted — even by news that Tate is carrying his child.

Now, with her pregnancy seeming to progress at an astonishing rate, Tate realizes that carrying a possible heir to the Kymeran throne will attract danger from all corners, even beyond the grave…

Nancy Collins has been writing dark urban fantasy since before it existed as a sub-genre, and she still does it far better than most. Magic and Loss was published November 5th by Roc; it is 290 pages, priced at $7.99 for both paperback and digital versions.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

There are lots of retellings of Dracula out there (just in the last two weeks William Patrick Maynard covered of Marvel’s Dracula, Lord of the Undead, James Maliszewski examined Bela Lugosi’s turn as Count Dracula in the 1931 Universal film, and John R. Fultz looked at NBC’s new series Dracula.) Same with Sherlock Holmes (see the trailer for Season Three of BBC One’s adaptation here), and the Tales of King Arthur and his noble knights (examples from the past two weeks here and here).

Hell, they recently retold Carrie and John Carpenter’s Halloween, and those stories are barely 30 years old.

For my money, the legend that doesn’t get re-told enough is the tale of Robin Hood. I can think of only a handful of really fine versions in the last 30 years, including Parke Godwin’s novel Sherwood, Richard Carpenter TV series Robin of Sherwood, and Robin McKinley’s novel The Outlaws of Sherwood. So I was pleased to see a new omnibus collecting all three novels of Paul Kane’s post apocalyptic retelling, Hooded Man.

When nine-tenths of the world died horrifically, Robert Stokes lost everything, including his wife and his son. The world about him gradually descended into a second Dark Age, and the former policeman retreated into the woods near Nottingham, becoming a hunter, living off the land and avoiding any form of human contact… until now.

A new foreign despot, De Falaise, has looked on England and found it ripe for conquest. He leads an army of mercenaries through the Channel Tunnel and works his way up the country, pillaging as he goes. When De Falaise arrives at Nottingham and sets up his new dominion, Robert finds himself drawn reluctantly into the resistance, and assumes the mantle of the famous legend of Robin Hood, in a guerrilla war that will take him and his followers to the limits of endurance and beyond.

This volumes collects the novels Arrowhead, Broken Arrow, and Arrowland. Paul Kane’s other novels include Of Darkness and Light and The Gemini Factor. His short story collection, The Butterfly Man, was released in 2011 by PS Publishing. Although it’s standalone, Hooded Man is part of The Afterblight Chronicles series, which also includes School’s Out Forever by Scott K. Andrews and The Afterblight Chronciles: America by Simon Spurrier, Rebecca Levene and Al Ewing.

Hooded Man was published June 11, 2013 by Abaddon. It is 704 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version.