Black Gate

Long before I heard about Saladin Ahmed’s first novel Throne of the Crescent Moon, I heard great things about its author.

In 2009-2010, Saladin was busy making a name for himself with a series of very well-received short stories, published in such places as Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Strange Horizons. His “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela,” which originally appeared in Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 2, was a finalist for the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. By the time I met him at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio in 2010, the buzz was unmistakable. This was a writer who was going places.

Our Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones spoke enthusiastically about Saladin’s upcoming novel on a panel on Arabian Fantasy at WFC, saying he was a writer who brought a genuine love of Arabian history and a natural storyteller’s talent to adventure fantasy.

When you’ve been in the industry as long as I have, you get used to young writers getting talked up at conventions. But when Throne of the Crescent Moon arrived last February, it exceeded all expectations. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called it “A delight in every imaginable way,” and io9 said it was “The best fantasy swashbuckler of the year so far.” Howard was right: with a single novel, Saladin Ahmed has vaulted to the front rank of modern adventure fantasy writers.

Throne of the Crescent Moon follows the exploits of Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, “The last real ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat,” who’s more interested in a quiet cup of tea than adventure. But the Crescent Moon Kingdoms are on a knife’s edge as a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the master thief known as the Falcon Prince reaches a boiling point. As the city begins to slide into open rebellion, a series of mysterious and brutal supernatural murders strike even greater fear into the populace. When Adoulla and his companions learn the murders are somehow connected to the rebellion, they’re swept up in a plot that threatens to destroy their city.

Throne of the Crescent Moon is the first volume in The Crescent Moon Kingdoms trilogy. It was released in hardcover in February 2012, and finally arrived in paperback on December 31. It is 367 pages in paperback, priced at $7.99 for the print and digital versions. The mass market edition is sure to reach an even wider audience and grow Saladin’s already vast legion of fans. Don’t be one of the last to catch on.

Seems like I’ve done an awful lot of New Treasures posts this week. So I guess one more won’t matter.

Good thing too, because I’m dying to tell you about Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top, a new anthology from Ekaterina Sedia and Prime Books.

Have you ever seen a book and wanted it immediately? I mean, you just got the concept instantly, and knew it was what you were looking for?  What am I talking about — of course you have.

Well, that’s what happened with me and Circus. I was innocently browsing on Amazon, shopping for… well, I forget exactly. Anyway, there it was, displayed in 76-pixel glory in the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought widget (and man, the anonymous software engineer who invented that damn thing has cost me a fortune, lemme tell you.)

And I got it: a reprint anthology featuring classic fantasy tales of circuses light and dark. I was sold the moment I laid eyes on the terrific cover by Malgorzata Jasinska (click on the image at right for the full-sized version). Here’s Ekaterina Sedia from her introduction:

We have collected tales of children running away to join the circus and circuses doing the same, stories of circuses not of this world (in all senses of the word), circuses futuristic, nostalgic, filled with existential dread and/or joy. Acts mundane, and spectacular, and incomprehensible. Clowns and extinct animals. Magicians and werewolves. Acrobats and living musical instruments… Because we cannot help but love them — for the sake of the children we once were, or for the sake of the better adults we long to become.

Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top includes tales by Peter Straub, Jeff VanderMeer, Genevieve Valentine, Barry B. Longyear, Howard Waldrop, Neal Barrett Jr, Kij Johnson and many more. Complete Table of Contents after the jump.

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James P. Blaylock is something of a hero to Steampunk fans. We don’t go so far as to say he invented the genre single-handed, but he was definitely in the laboratory when Igor threw the switch and it took its first lumbering steps.

I first encountered Blaylock in the late 80s, when he was making a name for himself with brilliant short fiction like “Paper Dragons” (1986), which won the World Fantasy Award, and novels like The Elfin Ship (1982) and The Digging Leviathan (1984).

But his steampunk pedigree dates back to his Langdon St. Ives novels, starting with Homunculus (1986) and Lord Kelvin’s Machine (1992) — collected in The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives, a handsome omnibus edition that also included four related short stories, published by Subterranean Press in 2008.

So you can understand the excitement when Titan Books recently announced the first full-length Langdon St. Ives novel in two decades: The Aylesford Skull, a rollicking new steampunk adventure, from one of the genre’s pioneers, that takes us into the dangerous underworld of 19th Century England, through the foggy depths of the Cliffe Marches and the lairs of smugglers and pirates, and into the sewers, lost rivers, and sorcerous underworld of London:

It is the summer of 1883 and Professor Langdon St. Ives — brilliant but eccentric scientist and explorer — is at home in Aylesford with his family. However, a few miles to the north a steam launch has been taken by pirates above Egypt Bay; the crew murdered and pitched overboard. In Aylesford itself a grave is opened and possibly robbed of the skull. The suspected grave robber, the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, is an old nemesis of Langdon St. Ives.

When Dr. Narbondo returns to kidnap his four-year-old son Eddie and then vanishes into the night, St. Ives and his factotum Hasbro race to London in pursuit…

The Aylesford Skull will be published January 15th by Titan Books. It is 425 pages in trade paperback, priced at $14.95 for both the print and digital versions.

You can see all of our recent New Treasures here.

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).