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New Treasures: Blood’s Pride by Evie Manieri

New Treasures: Blood’s Pride by Evie Manieri

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Blood's PrideI’m still reading the books I picked up over the weekend — including Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean, and Karen Heuler’s fascinating collection The Inner City. Heck, I haven’t even finished the digital version of The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination I bought weeks ago. I suck.

Fortunately, sucking as a reader isn’t a crime (yet). And besides, it’s hard to stay focused when so many delicious new titles cross my desk every day. Titles like Evie Manieri’s intriguing first novel Blood’s Pride, which promises a tale of vengeance, conquest & rebellion, and long-buried secrets.

Rising from their sea-torn ships like vengeful, pale phantoms, the Norlanders laid waste to the Shadar under cover of darkness. They forced the once-peaceful fisher folk into slavery and forged an alliance with their former trading partners, the desert-dwelling Nomas tribe, cutting off any hope of salvation.

Now, two decades after the invasion, a rebellion gathers strength in the dark corridors of the city. A small faction of Shadari have hired the Mongrel, an infamous mercenary, to aid their fledgling uprising — but with her own shadowy ties to the region, she is a frighteningly volatile ally. Has she really come to lead a revolution, or for a more sinister purpose all her own?

The eye-catching cover art is by Kekai Kotaki — click on the image for a bigger version. Evie Manieri is a graduate of Wesleyan University with a double major in medieval history and theater — a promising mix for a career as a fantasy novelist. She lives in New York. According to her website bio this is the first novel in the Shattered Kingdoms trilogy; the next installment, Fortune’s Blight, is due out in the Fall.

Blood’s Pride was published on February 19, 2013 by Tor Books. It is 516 pages in hardcover, priced at $24.99.

Releasing This Week: Warhammer 40K: Relic From Fantasy Flight Games

Releasing This Week: Warhammer 40K: Relic From Fantasy Flight Games

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Game Designers Workshop and Fantasy Flight — the folks behind the superb Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy role playing games — have teamed up once again to release Relic, an intriguing new board game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Based on the streamlined (and well-honed) mechanics of the Talisman fantasy games, Relic allows two to four players to assume the role of powerful Imperial heroes, and bravely venture forth to protect the Antian Sector. By completing card-based missions and defeating dangerous enemies of the Imperium — including Nurgling Swarms, Fallen Inquisitors, Ork Vulcha squads, and even a Tyranid Hive-ship — characters compete to gain rewards and experience, increasing their chances to advance and ultimately be the first to defeat the evil that lies beyond the Warp rift. See all the details in the compact video run-through below.

Relic was published today, Mar 18, 2013, by Fantasy Flight, under license from Games Workshop. The game contains a game board, 10 plastic character pieces and character sheets, mysterious attribute and life dials, more than 300 cards, tokens, 4 six-sided dice, and a handsome rulebook. It retails for $59.95.

New Treasures: The Inner City by Karen Heuler

New Treasures: The Inner City by Karen Heuler

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The Inner CityI’ve started ordering more from Barnes & Noble’s online store. Not that I’ve been unhappy with Amazon, but I wanted to try out the competition, and so far I’ve been pleased with the service.

The first book I ordered was the seventh volume of the collected Atomic Robo, Flying She-Devils of the Pacific. At some point while browsing their online store, they recommended an odd little volume to me: Karen Heuler’s The Inner City, a collection of fantasy short stories. I’ve never heard of Karen Heuler. But I’m very familiar with ChiZine, the eclectic Canadian publisher, and raved at length about their marvelous back catalog a while back. So I took a chance and ordered The Inner City — what the heck, it was the perfect price to get my order up to $25, and get free shipping.

What are you hiding down deep in your inner city?

Anything is possible: people breed dogs with humans to create a servant class; beneath one great city lies another city, running it surreptitiously; an employee finds that her hair has been stolen by someone intent on getting her job; strange fish fall from trees and birds talk too much; a boy tries to figure out what he can get when the Rapture leaves good stuff behind. Everything is familiar; everything is different. Behind it all, is there some strange kind of design or merely just the chance to adapt? In Heuler’s stories, characters cope with the strange without thinking it’s strange, sometimes invested in what’s going on, sometimes trapped by it, but always finding their own way in.

Surprisingly, so far I’ve been more taken with The Inner City than Atomic Robo — and believe me, that doesn’t happen very often. Typical of ChiZine, the book design and packing are gorgeous. There’s even a 10-page catalog in the back that reminds me of the checklists in the endpapers of Ace paperbacks that fascinated me as a young teen. The stories in this collection were originally published in places like Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Albedo One, Moon Milk Review, and other excellent publications — a good sign.

The Inner City was published February 13, 2013. It is 212 pages, priced at $16.95 ($9.99 for the digital edition). ChiZine has a generous sneak-peek here — including the complete 10-page catalog. Check it out!

Alex Bledsoe on “How I Discovered Silver John”

Alex Bledsoe on “How I Discovered Silver John”

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Who Fears the Devil Planet StoriesJust last week, we announced the winners of our Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman contest, and published twenty of the best entries. Not too surprisingly, many focused on Wellman’s popular Silver John stories, tales of monsters and Appalachian magic.

Alex Bledsoe, author of The Hum and the Shiver and the forthcoming Wisp of a Thing, knows a thing or two about Appalachian magic himself. I was fortunate enough to hear Alex read from Wisp of a Thing at Capricon here in Chicago last month, and I’m looking forward to receiving my copy. So I was pleased (and a little surprised) to see Alex’s article at Tor.com last week, explaining how he only recently discovered Wellman’s Silver John tales — and came across his novels for the first time at Capricon, of all places:

When Tor released my first Tufa novel, The Hum and the Shiver, back in 2011, many people asked me if I’d been inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s tales of Silver John. Although I knew of them by reputation, I’d never actually read them until last year, when Planet Stories published Who Fears the Devil? The Complete Tales of Silver John.

The resemblance, as is so often the case in comparisons like this, strikes me as mostly cosmetic. Yes, Wellman’s stories are set in a vague Appalachia, and yes, they involve magic and inhuman creatures. But they’re far more Lovecraftian than Tufan, with their invocation of things from other realities bleeding into ours and poking out around the fringes to snag the unwary… I’m delighted that the stories are so different from my own stuff, because that means I can devour them with a clear conscience. These stories are cool.

Further, before Capricon in Chicago this year, I didn’t even know there were full length Silver John novels. Rich Warren of Starfarer’s Despatch, a used-book dealer, clued me in, and I picked up After Dark based on his recommendation. And lo and behold, it was a real, literal page-turner that kept me reading when I should’ve been doing other, more important things (like writing, or parenting).

Ah, Starfarer’s Despatch — that explains it. Rich Warren and Arin Komins have had a hand in more than a few discoveries of my own. They sold me that paperback edition of Vampires I talked about last month, not to mention the only copy of Tales of Time and Space I’ve ever seen. There’s a great photo of the two of them in action in Howard’s Worldcon wrap-up from last year, too (and their website is here). True booksellers have magic of their own.

New Treasures: Comics: The Complete Collection by Brian Walker

New Treasures: Comics: The Complete Collection by Brian Walker

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Comics The Complete CollectionThere are coffee table books, and there are coffee table books. Brian Walker’s Comics: The Complete Collection is the latter — meaning it’s a “coffee table” book in the sense that it’s large enough to be propped up and used as a coffee table. For a family of five.

If the very existence of a 672-page, 7-pound book crammed full of vintage American comics strips from the past 110+ years isn’t enough to interest you, then you probably have no soul. But maybe this will help: this book collects 1,300 of the best newspaper strips from some of the finest comics ever created, including Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Berke Breathed’s Bloom County, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Scott Adams’s Dilbert, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Gary Larson’s The Far Side, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs, Dik Browne’s Hagar the Horrible, Jim Davis’s Garfield, Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead, Johnny Hart’s B.C., Geroge Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan, Lynn Johnston’s For Better Or For Worse, Bil Keane’s Family Circus, Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, Dale Messick’s Brenda Starr, Richard Outcault’s Yellow Kid, Brant Parker’s Wizard of Id, Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, E.C. Segar’s Popeye, Mort Walker’s Beetle Bailey, Tom Wilson’s Ziggy, and Chic Young’s Blondie.

And others. Lots and lots (and lots) of others.

It’s called The Complete Collection because it was originally published in two volumes: The Comics Before 1945 and The Comics Since 1945. These survey volumes were useful in their own right, with comics organized by decade, and well-written biographical profiles, as well as thoughtful analysis of the different genres. But the omnibus collection is both an incredible value and a beautiful piece of work, the kind of gorgeous and massive tome you could place prominently in the living room, flip through for years, and never exhaust. Or use to prop up the foundation of your house, whatever.

Comics: The Complete Collection was published in April 2011 by Abrams ComicArts. It is 672 pages in hardcover, and there is unlikely to be a softcover or digital edition. It’s a bargain at $40, and you can find copies online for around $29. Highly recommended.

New Treasures: Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1

New Treasures: Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1

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Enter the WolfE.E. Knight’s Vampire Earth is one of the best adventure series on the market — action-packed, highly entertaining, and filled with great twists and surprises. Set on a near-future Earth conquered by a vampiric alien race, it’s the kind of fast paced and chilling narrative that would have resulted (as Paul Witcover puts it), “If The Red Badge of Courage had been written by H.P. Lovecraft.”

The Science Fiction Book Club has just released a high-quality hardcover omnibus of the first three books, Enter The Wolf. My copy arrived last month, complete with a sewn-in bookmark and great new wrap-around cover art by Gregory Manchess (click on the image at right for a bigger version).

Earth, 2065. Everything you know has changed. 43 years ago, the bloodthirsty Reapers came to Earth to feed their insatiable hunger. Now a ragtag rebel alliance is all that remains in the fight against our vampiric alien overlords. This is the world of the Vampire Earth saga, author E. E. Knight’s riveting blend of horror, dystopia and all-out military SF action. Devour this addictive series’ first three thrilling novels in Enter the Wolf, an SFBC 60th Anniversary omnibus!

Way of the Wolf: For four decades the Reapers have ruled our world. But Lieutenant David Valentine believes the human spirit remains unconquerable. And he’s on a mission to take back the Earth. Choice of the Cat: They call them the Cats — an elite stealth force of the finest warriors humanity has to offer. David Valentine is out to join their ranks. But first he must uncover the secret of the Twisted Cross, a deadly and mysterious new force under Reaper command. Tale of the Thunderbolt: As the human Resistance continues their struggle to overthrow the Reapers’ reign, Valentine embarks on a harrowing quest to find a long-lost weapon. Is it enough to turn the tide of darkness and end the Kurian Order’s dominion of Earth forever?

If you haven’t already, read E.E. Knight’s short story of ancient fellowships and dread sorcery, “The Terror in the Vale,” published in January right here at Black Gate.

Enter The Wolf: Vampire Earth Volume 1 was written by E.E. Knight, and published exclusively by the Science Fiction Book Club in February 2013. It is 803 pages in hardcover priced at $16.99 for members; it’s available as part of the introductory offer to the club for just $1. Check it out here — I’ve been a member of the club for years, and recommend it highly.

SF Signal on Liar’s Blade: “Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style Sword and Sorcery”

SF Signal on Liar’s Blade: “Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style Sword and Sorcery”

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Pathfinder Liar’s BladeSF Signal‘s Karen Burnham gives a big thumbs-up to Tim Pratt’s latest Pathfinder novel, Liar’s Blade, with the kind of review that sends me scrambling to find a copy:

The Pathfinder line of RPG novels is doing a lot of things right. They’ve been publishing intelligent adventure novels that showcase their gaming system and their campaign setting in lush detail. They’ve hired a variety of solid, professional authors, and they’ve spread their tales among a wide variety of heroes instead of following one party for multiple books. The one thing that they had been missing – until now – was the particular brand of [charm] that I have recently come to love in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. Tim Pratt has done an excellent job of capturing that spirit in this Pathfinder outing.

Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style Sword and Sorcery in a Pathfinder setting? Sign me up!

Tim’s first Pathfinder Tales novel was City of the Fallen Sky (June, 2012), which seems to be unrelated to this one. But maybe not; I’ll have to read them both to be sure. The “variety of solid, professional authors” Karen mentions include Howard Andrew Jones, Richard Lee Byers, Dave Gross, Robin D. Laws, Elaine Cunningham, Ed Greenwood, James L. Sutter, and many others.

We’ve been telling you about Paizo’s premiere fiction line for a while; don’t pretend we haven’t. We presented an exclusive excerpt from Dave Gross’s new Pathfinder Tales novel, Queen of Thorns, in October; we also covered the release of Howard Andrew Jones’s Plague of Shadows in October 2011. Bill Ward’s four-part Pathfinder Tales story “The Box” was published online back in October 2011, and Howard had his own Pathfinder Tales piece, “The Walkers from the Crypt,” a 4-part mini-epic, published free online in March 2011.

Liar’s Blade was published March 12, 2013 by Paizo Publishing. It is 400 pages in paperback, priced at $9.99. You can download a free sample chapter or purchase the digital edition for $6.99 directly from Paizo.com, or read Karen’s complete review at SF Signal.

New Treasures: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts

New Treasures: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts

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AppleMarkYesterday, I spent the day at the Spring Auction at Games Plus, which I’ve taken to calling the Paris Fashion Week of Games. It was a very successful outing — so successful that I knew I had some explaining to do to Alice, who balances the family finances.

While I was waiting to settle up with the cashier, my eyes fell on a curious artifact in the tiny books section at Games Plus: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts. Roberts was a Canadian pulp author whose tales of Sir Dinadan, whom Mallory called “the merriest knight,” appeared in the pulp magazine Blue Book in the 50s. Sir Dinadan was known as the most practical of the Knights of the Round Table, and Roberts’s stories differed from many of the Arthurian tales of the era in their warmth and wit.

Late in his career, Roberts wrote a final entry in the Dinadan saga, “Quest’s End,” which remained unpublished in his lifetime. Rumor had it he’d also begun collecting all the tales with an eye towards publishing a book, but the project remained unfinished when he died.

Now the peerless Mike Ashley, who’s edited countless anthologies — including 32 books in The Mammoth Book Of... series, and five other Arthurian Anthologies, such as The Pendragon Chronicles and Chronicles of the Holy Grail — has finished what Roberts began with The Merriest Knight, a beautiful collection of the complete tales of Sir Dinadan:

Under the guidance of editor Mike Ashley, The Merriest Knight gathers for the first time all of Roberts’ tales of Sir Dinadan — including the previously unpublished “Quest’s End” — and several other long lost Arthurian works by this master of the stylish adventure yarn and the historical romance. Within these pages, readers will find a collection of Arthurian tales that are sometimes poignant, often humorous, and always ingenious, as well as a Camelot made fresh by the wry and often scathing eye of Sir Dinadan, who never rushes into battle without first being certain of the need to fight at all.

Why is The Merriest Knight for sale in a games store? Ah, that’s an entirely different tale.

…

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The Paris Fashion Week of Games, Spring Edition

The Paris Fashion Week of Games, Spring Edition

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Cyclades by AsmodeeYou know what happens tomorrow? Think hard.

That’s right! The Spring Auction at Games Plus here in Chicago — only the best auction in the entire country for dedicated game collectors of all stripes. I reported on the Fall Auction here, and confessed to a painful bout of auction fever at last year’s Spring Auction here.

I used to attend these as part of a constant quest for rare science fiction and fantasy collectibles — things like Judge’s Guilds epic Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Task Force Games’ colorful Swordquest, SSI’s wonderous Swords & Sorcery, and of course the most eagerly sought artifiact in Western Civilization, an intact copy of Barbarian Prince.

These days, my interests have changed. It’s not that I’m not constantly on the lookout for Barbarian Prince — who isn’t? — but I gradually realized that an obsession with older games was blinding me to the golden age of adventure gaming we’re living Right Now.

So my trip to Mount Prospect, Illinois tomorrow to take part in the auction will be with an open mind. And a lengthy list of recently-published games I’m seeking — including Cyclades by Asmodee, Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight, the second edition of Descent: Journeys in The Dark, Alien Frontiers from Clever Mojo Games, Mice and Mystics by Plaid Hat, Cosmic Patrol by Catalyst, and many others.

Wish me luck. I’ll report back here with all my treasures next week.

Rogue Blades Entertainment Reveals the Secrets of Writing Fantasy Heroes

Rogue Blades Entertainment Reveals the Secrets of Writing Fantasy Heroes

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Writing Fantasy HeroesThe distinguished Mr. Jason M. Waltz, occasional Black Gate contributor and stalwart road-trip companion, is rumored to be fairly highly placed in the global publishing mega-consortium that is Rogue Blades Entertainment. So when he leaked word to us of an impending major release this week, we dropped everything to check it out.

RBE is no stranger to heroic fantasy. For the past few years they’ve been at the very forefront of the genre, with such groundbreaking anthologies as Return of the Sword, Rage of the Behemoth, Demons, and others. Writing Fantasy Heroes looks like their most ambitious release yet — a must-have book for readers and aspiring writers alike.

Fantasy heroes endure. They are embedded in our cultural fabric, dwarfing other literary figures and the mere men and women of history. Achilles and Odysseus, Gilgamesh and Beowulf. King Arthur and Robin Hood, Macbeth and Sherlock Holmes, Conan and Luke Skywalker. They dominate our legends, and tower over popular culture. The stories we tell each other begin and end with fantasy heroes, and the 21st Century is as thoroughly captivated with them as ever. From Batman to Gandalf, Harry Potter to Tyrion Lannister, the heroes of fantasy speak to — and for — whole generations. But what makes a fantasy hero? How do the best writers create them, and bring them to life on the page? In Writing Fantasy Heroes some of the most successful fantasy writers of our time-including Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson, Janet Morris, Cecelia Holland, Orson Scott Card, and Glen Cook-pull back the curtain to reveal the secrets of creating heroes that live and breathe, and steal readers’ hearts. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or simply a reader who loves great fantasy and strong characters, this book is for you.

Writing Fantasy Heroes is edited by Jason M. Waltz, with a forward by Steven Erikson. It was published by Rogue Blades Entertainment and is available from Amazon.com and other fine distributors for $14.99 in trade paperback. The terrific wrap-around cover is by Dleoblack (click on the image for a bigger version). As soon as we receive a copy in house, we’ll report back with full details.