Black Gate

Cover by Matthew Jaffe

Canadian Michael Kelly is a Renaissance Man of modern Weird Fiction. He’s an accomplished author, with a novel and three story collections under his belt, including last year’s All the Things We Never See. He’s also the publisher behind Undertow Publications, one of the leading — maybe the leading — houses behind the modern Weird Fiction resurgence.

And in his spare time he’s one of the most important editors in modern horror, with over a dozen anthologies to his name, including five volumes of Year’s Best Weird Fiction and seven of his widely acclaimed Shadows & Tall Trees. In her annual summation in Best Horror of the Year, Ellen Datlow puts it succinctly: “Shadows and Tall Trees epitomizes the idea of, and is the most consistent venue for weird, usually dark fiction.”

The long-awaited eighth volume arrived last month and, like the previous installments, it’s packed with fiction by the top writers in the field, including Steve Rasnic Tem, Simon Strantzas, V.H. Leslie, Alison Littlewood, Brian Evenson, M. Rickert, and many others. It’s already gathering positive press; here’s the highlights from Matt’s review at Runalong the Shelves.

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The cover blurb on Alechia Dow’s debut novel The Sound of Stars is “Can Their Love of Books and Pop Music Save the World?”, and I’ve never seen a more obvious question in my life. Every science fiction fan knows books and pop music are the only damn things keeping the world together. Duh.

Still, The Sound of Stars has a few surprises. It’s the story of a human teenager and a lab-created alien invader who team up for an epic journey with a bag of books and their favorite albums, while the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, and that’s not exactly the kind of plot summary I write every day.

It was released in hardcover last month, and Zoraida Córdova at Tor.com called it “a charming sci-fi novel… [set in] a delightful futuristic New York full of pop culture and impossible moral dilemmas,” and Kirkus Reviews says it’s “A promising debut that begs for a sequel.” Here’s a slice of the feature review from Kirkus.

When the spaceships came to Earth, there was confusion and then conflict — large numbers of humans died and the Ilori took over. Seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker managed to hold onto a trove of forbidden books, but her mother is falling into alcoholism and her father receives injections that make him an obedient Ilori servant. Lending books from her secret library makes Ellie feel less helpless even though she risks death for her transgression. Morris (or M0Rr1S) is a labmade, created to appear human and part of a unit sent to Earth to prepare for the true Ilori, who are susceptible to the Earth’s pollution. Although his father is a high-ranking true Ilori, disdainful of feelings, Morris harbors a secret love of human music. He uses his knowledge of Ellie’s secret library to convince her to collect music for him, and their bond deepens when he saves Ellie from execution… A promising debut that begs for a sequel.

The Sound of Stars was published by Inkyard Press on February 25, 2020. It is 432 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Mary Luna. Read the complete Prologue and first chapter at VickyWhoReads.

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Jacket design by Laywan Kwan

You gotta wonder about the pitch for this novel. “I got this idea, you know, for a book about a highly contagious virus. The country is unprepared, people die by the thousands, the president says it will be cured soon, but then there’s mass layoffs, the borders are closed and California is quarantined.” I can see the editorial team exchanging glances, shrugging and saying, “It’s far-fetched and crazy, but I like that bit about California under quarantine. Does it affect surfers?”

Katie M. Flynn’s debut The Companions was published March 3, perfect timing for a viral-apocalypse novel. It got all the press you’d expect. The New York Times included it in “Your Quarantine Reader” (alongside Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain and Stephen King’s The Stand), and it was listed in Bustle’s “16 Novels About Viral Outbreaks To Make You Feel Less Alone,” and The Hollywood Reporter’s “8 Pandemic-Themed Books to Read Amid Coronavirus,” among similar lists. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing that opens wallets these days, but you know what they say. No such thing as bad publicity.

Lumping The Companions in with other viral-outbreak entertainment probably does this book a disservice, however. Yes, it opens with a plague, but the novel also addresses questions about identity in a world of machines, and wraps it all up in a compelling story of a 16-year old trying to solve her own murder.

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Katharine Kerr’s science fiction novels include Polar City Blues, Palace (with Mark Kreighbaum), and Snare. But she’s much more well known for sixteen epic fantasy novels set in the world of Deverry, starting with Daggerspell (1986), Darkspell (1987), and The Bristling Wood (1989).

Kerr’s roots are firmly in fantasy gaming, which immediately increases her cred in my book. She was introduced to fantasy gaming in in 1979, and she quickly began writing articles for gaming magazines. She was a contributing editor to Dragon magazine, and authored adventure modules for TSR and Chaosium’s Pendragon role-playing game. Her first novel was published in 1986, and she’s never looked back. It’s fiction that brings the fame and the fast cars, so I guess I can’t blame her.

The last few years she’s been occupied with her Nola O’Grady urban fantasy series for DAW (which the author describes as a “female James Bond with magic rather than violence”). It’s been over a decade since we’ve seen a new novel in Deverry, though, and it’s good to see her return. Ralph Harris gave Sword of Fire a warm review at BookPage; here’s a sample.

Sword of Fire centers around a sociopolitical struggle against the unjust courts of the Kingdom of Deverry. While that certainly could be a backdrop for a bleak, dark struggle, Kerr’s novel is instead a lovely quest with an ever-optimistic, wholeheartedly enthusiastic crew of brilliant women and chivalrous men. Alyssa, our primary heroine, embarks on a trip to recover a book that can help usurp the old traditions of the courts with even older, supposedly more fair traditions….

With a lightly magical, extremely familiar setting and lovable cast of characters, Kerr sets out to take the reader through the Kingdom of Deverry’s evolution to a (hopefully) more just world. She doles out plot points via chatty gossip between noble families and secret messages sent by way of servants… Meandering through the pages of Kerr’s Sword of Fire was escapism of the finest quality. For readers looking for a dark drama of epic proportions, these 380 pages will hold nothing for you. Here, you will only find charming banter, happy endings and optimism in prose form.

Sword of Fire is the opening volume in The Justice War. It was published by DAW on February 18, 2020. It is 384 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Katie Anderson. Read an excerpt from Chapter One here.

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