Black Gate

Well, this has been a long time coming.

The first volume of The Wheel of Time, possibly the defining epic fantasy series of our generation, was published over two decades ago in 1990. The Eye of the World was an immediate success, and the dozen volumes that followed have sold over forty million copies — 25 million more than its only true competitor at the top of the charts, the five existing novels in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

When Robert Jordan died in 2007, fans around the world mourned his loss and were justifiably concerned that the series would be left incomplete. But rising star Brandon Sanderson, working from notes and partial texts by Jordan, finished Jordan’s masterwork. Sanderson delivered The Gathering Storm (Book 12) in 2009, and Towers of Midnight (Book 13) in 2010, both of which became # 1 New York Times hardcover bestsellers, and today Tor Books released the 14th and final volume of The Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

In the Field of Merrilor the rulers of the nations gather to join behind Rand al’Thor, or to stop him from his plan to break the seals on the Dark One’s prison – which may be a sign of his madness, or the last hope of humankind. Egwene, the Amyrlin Seat, leans toward the former.

In Andor, the Trollocs seize Caemlyn.

In the wolf dream, Perrin Aybara battles Slayer.

Approaching Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon plans to visit his wife Tuon, now Fortuona, Empress of the Seanchan.

All humanity is in peril – and the outcome will be decided in Shayol Ghul itself. The Wheel is turning, and the Age is coming to its end. The Last Battle will determine the fate of the world…

A Memory of Light, like every volume in the series, was edited by Jordan’s widow, Tor editor Harriet McDougal, who owns The Wheel of Time copyright and controls the rights to the series. Brandon Sanderson recently revealed that she is working on a comprehensive Wheel of Time encyclopedia, to be published next year.

A Memory of Light was published by Tor Books on January 8, 2013. It is 911 pages in hardcover (which, incidentally, brings the total for all 14 hardcover volumes to a staggering 10,037 pages). It is $34.99; an audio version is also available. There is no digital version. The striking cover art is by Michael Whelan.

I admit that I was surprised to find a new Xanth novel among this week’s new arrivals — but I suppose I shouldn’t have been. This is the 36th in the series, following 2011’s Well-Tempered Clavicle, and Anthony shows no sign of slowing down; the next two, Esrever Doom and Board Stiff, have already been announced.

The Xanth series, for those of you completely unfamiliar with American fantasy, began with A Spell for Chameleon, published in paperback by Del Rey in 1977. I was in high school in 1977, and I remember the immediate impact it had. It was fast-paced and genuinely funny, and that made it virtually unique on book store shelves groaning under the weight of numerous Tolkien rip-offs

The first nine Xanth books were published in paperback by Del Rey; starting with Vale of the Vole in 1987, the series switched to Avon Books. Anthony switched publishers again in 1993 for Demons Don’t Dream, the sixteenth installment. It’s pretty unusual for a successful author to hop publishers like that; I found this cryptic explanation on Anthony’s Wikipedia page (with no citation):

On multiple occasions Anthony has moved from one publisher to another (taking a profitable hit series with him), when he says he felt the editors were unduly tampering with his work. He has sued publishers for accounting malfeasance and won judgments in his favor.

Yikes. That doesn’t sound good. Not sure what the true story is, but have no fear. Team Black Gate will investigate.

But not until we finish reading Luck of the Draw, of course. And maybe get a snack.

Luck of the Draw was published by Tor Books on December 24, 2012. It is 350 pages in hardcover, priced at $25.99 ($12.99 for the digital edition).

Holy cats, it’s 2013 already. Happy New Year, all you Black Gate peeps.

And where did 2012 go? There’s 1,021 unanswered e-mail messages in my in-box, I’m late editing this week’s BG Online Fiction entry, and I’m not even sure how many unread review copies are stacked up by my big green chair. 2013 ain’t even 20 hours old, and I’m weeks behind already.

Ah, the heck with it. I have to keep up on the latest top-notch fiction, don’t I? Yes, I do. So tonight I’m curling up in my big green chair and starting 2013 off right: by reading Chris F. Holm’s first novel, an intriguing mix of dark fantasy and noir-dark crime: Dead Harvest.

Meet Sam Thornton, Collector of Souls.

Sam’s job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure their souls are dispatched to the appropriate destination.

But when he’s dispatched to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that’s doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before.

“No.”

The second book, The Wrong Goodbye, hit shelves in September. If we’re lucky, they could both eventually be re-released in a handsome and affordable 3-novel omnibus like Aliette de Bodard’s Obsidian & Blood. But damn, I can’t wait that long.

Dead Harvest was published February 2012 by Angry Robot. It is 381 pages in paperback, priced at $7.99 ($5.99 for the digital edition).

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

I’ve been continually impressed with the growing fantasy and dark fantasy/horror catalog from Dave Mattingly’s BlackWyrm Publishing. They first appeared on my radar in 2008 with unapologetically straightforward adventure fantasy novels such as Jason Walters’s The Vast White and Trevis Powell’s Albrim’s Curse. Their cover art was excellent, their production values were solid, and they clearly knew what they were doing. Independent sword-and-sorcery publishers are thin on the ground these days, especially those willing to take a chance of new authors, and their arrival was much celebrated in our offices.

I met Dave for the first time at Worldcon in Chicago, and I was glad to finally be able to shake his hand. He had an impressive booth just around the corner from ours in the Dealer’s room, and I was stunned when I set eyes on the complete BlackWyrm catalog for the first time: dozens of new fantasy titles from a host of exciting new authors, spread out in an eye-catching panorama. Dave handed me a copy of their newest release, Jason S. Walters’s fiction collection An Unforgiving Land, and I took it home determined to steal enough time to read it.

I should have known that the mighty BlackWyrm Publishing empire would move faster than I could. Long before I could put the finishing touches on a review, Dave had added no less than seven new publications to his resume, including the epic fantasy Witches by Georgia L. Jones, Andrew Toy’s dark fantasy The Man in the Box — and Andrew Cooper’s novel of modern horror Burning the Middle Ground, which arrived in my mail box this week.

Burning the Middle Ground is a tale of religious conspiracy and supernatural mind control in small-town America. Journalist Ronald Glassner is determined to write a book on the McCullough Tragedy, which began the day Brian McCullough came home from school to discover that his ten-year-old sister Fran had murdered their parents. But the more time Ronald spends in the small town of Kenning, Georgia, the more the mystery deepens… until he finds himself caught up in a struggle between two very different churches. When the town’s pets begin to go berserk and mutilated corpses begin to appear, Ronald realizes he’s stumbled on the story of his life.

Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper was published in trade paperback by BlackWyrm Publishing on Nov 30, 2012. It is 330 pages, priced at $15.95. It’s only the latest in a terrific line of titles from an exciting new publisher — do yourself a favor and check them out.