Black Gate

I first stumbled on the novels of Guy Adams with The World House and its sequel, Restoration, both modern fantasy from Angry Robot, and his novel of hidden laboratories, genetic engineering, and Sherlock Holmes, The Army of Dr. Moreau (August, 2012). But it was his gonzo fantasy-western, The Good The Bad and the Infernal, released in March, that really got my attention.

Guy is not exactly sitting on his hands. The sequel to his March novel, Once Upon a Time in Hell, is scheduled to arrive in December, and his companion to the hit TV series Sherlock, The Sherlock Files, shipped in July. For those of you not keeping score, that’s four books in about 18 months. Damn.

So you can imagine my surprise when my weekly trip to the bookstore turned up Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger, a paperback by Guy Adams that was released in June, 2013. This is a pretty impressive run — all the more impressive because this one sounds like the most intriguing book yet.

Max and Tom are old, old friends, once actors. Tom now owns a jazz nightclub called Deadbeat which, as well as being their source of income, is also something of an in-joke. In a dark suburban churchyard one night they see a group of men are loading a coffin into the back of a van. But, why would you be taking a full coffin away from a graveyard and, more importantly, why is the occupant still breathing?

Tom and Max are on the case. God help us…

Deadbeat was published by Titan books in June 2013. It is 289 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions. The sequel, Deadbeat: Dogs of Waugh, is scheduled to arrive June 2014.

Look at that, it’s October already. And you know that that means, don’t you? It’s spooky reads season, when all the major publishers inundate us with the year’s best creepy fiction.

I like to try new authors every October. Ramsey Campbell is hardly new, but I know him almost exclusively through his short fiction. I’ve been wanting to try one of his novels for years, and this appealing new hardcover from Tor will fit the bill nicely.

Graham Wilde is a contentious, bombastic host of the talk radio program Wilde Card. His job, as he sees it, is to stir the pot, and he is quite good at it, provoking many a heated call with his eccentric and often irrational audience. He invites Frank Jasper, a purported psychic, to come on the program. He firmly believes that the man is a charlatan, albeit a talented one. When Jasper appears on his show, Wilde draws upon personal knowledge about the man to embarrass him on air, using patter similar to that which Jasper utilizes in his act.

Wilde’s attack on Jasper earns him the enmity of his guest and some of the members of his audience. He next encounters Jasper when the psychic is hired by the family of a missing adolescent girl to help them find her. Wilde is stunned and then horrified when Jasper seems to suggest that he might be behind the girl’s disappearance.

Thus begins a nightmarish journey as circumstantial evidence against Wilde begins to mount, alienating his listeners, the radio station, and eventually, his lover. As Wilde descends into a pit of despair, reality and fantasy begin to blur in a kaleidoscope of terror….

Ghosts Know was published by Tor Books on October 1st. It is 285 pages, priced at $25.99 for the hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

John Ajvide Lindqvist may be the breakout horror writer of the last decade.

That’s not what I might have predicted, given his bio. Lindqvist was a street magician and stand-up comic in Sweden when his first novel appeared. Set in his home town of Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, Let the Right One In (2004) has been filmed twice, once in Swedish and once in English, and both versions have brought him hosts of new fans. His second novel, Handling the Undead (2005), featured a horde of zombies shambling towards Stockholm; Harbour arrived in 2008, followed by Little Star in 2010.

Of course, being prolific is no proof of popularity. No, the real evidence that he’s become a mainstream horror phenomenon is more obvious: he is relentless compared to Stephen King. Of the eight blurbs reprinted on the back of his latest, the short story collection, Let the Old Dreams Die, more than half invoke King: “Reminiscent of Stephen King at his best” (The Independent). “Deserves to be as much of a household name as Stephen King” (SFX). “Sweden’s answer to Stephen King” (Daily Mirror). Makes me wonder if Stephen King will pick the book up in Barnes and Noble and think to himself, “Hey, this guy sounds pretty good.”

Let the Old Dreams Die contains a dozen short stories and novellas, including sequels to both Let the Right One Did and Handling the Undead.

Because of the two superb films made of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In, millions of people around the world know the story of Oskar and Eli and of their final escape from Blackeberg at the end of the novel. Now at last, in “Let the Old Dreams Die,” the title story in this absolutely stunning collection, we get a glimpse of what happened next to the pair…

“Let the Old Dreams Die” is not the only stunner in this collection. In “Final Processing,” Lindqvist also reveals the next chapter in the lives of the characters he created in Handling the Undead. “Equinox” is a story of a woman who takes care of her neighbor’s house while they are away and readers will never forget what she finds in the house. Every story meets the very high standard of excellence and fright factor that Lindqvist fans have come to expect.

Let the Old Dreams Die was released today by Thomas Dunne Books. It is 400 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 in digital format.

In case anybody has surfed over accidentally from io9 or something, I want to make clear that we’re a fantasy website. Fantasy is J.R.R. Tolkien, Conan, Harry Potter, movies with wizards, pretty much any game with oddly-shaped dice, most anime, and those secret daydreams you have about Scarlett Johansson. That’s fantasy.

We don’t cover much mystery, current events, or science fiction. Except maybe for Star Trek, ’cause it’s Howard’s favorite show, and we’re big William Shatner fans (but who isn’t?)

I mention this because I bought a copy of Three today and thought I would turn it into my Saturday New Treasures column. But no sooner do I settle into my big green chair and crack it open, then I discover it’s actually science fiction. Should have paid more attention in Barnes & Noble. That’s what dreaming about Scarlett Johansson will do to you.

Well, what the heck. Still looks more like fantasy than SF to me. Three is the first book in a new trilogy (see? What’s more fantasy than that!) called Legends of the Duskwalker. Here’s the book description.

The world has collapsed, and there are no heroes any more. His name is Three, a travelling gun for hire in a dying world. He has no allegiances, no family, no ties.

Against his better judgment, he accepts the mantle of protector to a sick woman on the run, and her young son. Together they set out across the plains in search of a mythic oasis, attempting to survive the forces that pursue them, and the creatures of the dark. In these dark times, a hero may yet arise.

Angry Robot, in their efforts to be helpful, have the words “Not a sequel” buried in the copyright page. That was helpful, actually. They’ve also printed handy category labels on the back — apparently Three should be filed under Science Fiction, Apocalyptic Wasteland, A Journey Home, Three For All, and Fear the Weir. Fear the Weir? Let’s just say that book categorization sure has changed since I learned the Dewey Decimal system, and leave it at that.

Three was published by Angry Robot on July 30.It is 480 pages, priced at $7.99 for the paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The moody bloke-in-a-cloak cover is by Steven Meyer-Rassow.

There’s no shortage of intriguing new SF and fantasy series out there and more arriving every month. So how is a busy reader supposed to choose?

Easy! Based on cover art, of course. Duh. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to apply what I like to call The O’Neill Rule — always wait until at least the fourth installment in a series arrives before you commit to the first one, so you’re less likely to get caught in a George R.R. Martin-like wait between volumes.

The Havoc Machine, the fourth novel in Steven Harper’s Victorian steampunk-zombie Clockwork Empire series, was published earlier this year. And that means I can finally crack open the first, The Doomsday Vault. Good thing too, because it has a killer cover and the wait was killing me.

The Honorable Alice B. Michaels is in a life or death struggle for survival — socially speaking, that is. At twenty-one, her age, her unladylike interest in automatons, and the unfortunate deaths of most of her family from the clockwork plague have sealed her fate as a less than desirable marriage prospect.

But a series of strange occurrences are about to lead Alice in a direction quite beyond the pale. High above the earth on the American airship USS Juniper, Gavin Ennock lives for the wind and the sky and his fiddle. After privateers attack the Juniper, he is stranded on the dank, dirty, and merciless streets of London. When Alice’s estranged aunt leaves her a peculiar inheritance, she encounters Gavin under most unusual — even shocking — circumstances.

Then Alice’s inheritance attracts the attention of the Third Ward, a clandestine organization that seizes the inventions of mad geniuses the plague leaves behind — all for the good of the Empire. But even the Third Ward has secrets. And when Alice and Gavin discover them, a choice must be made between the world and the Empire, no matter the risk to all they hold dear.

Steven Harper also writes SF and movie novelizations under the name Steven Piziks, and romantic suspense under the name Penny Drake. The Doomsday Vault was published by Roc Books in November 2011. It is 382 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the digital and paperback version. It was followed by The Impossible Cube (May 2012), The Dragon Men (November 2012), and The Havoc Machine (May 2013).