Black Gate

The Maradaine Constabulary trilogy by Marshall Ryan Maresca (DAW). Covers by Paul Young.

Marshall Ryan Maresca is one of the hardest working writers in fantasy.

It started in 2015 with his debut novel The Thorn of Dentonhill, which introduced Veranix Calbert, diligent college student by day and crime-fighting vigilante by night in the crime-ridden districts of the port city of Maradaine. The book was an unexpected hit, and was nominated for the Compton Crook award. I’ve quoted Library Journal‘s pithy review (“Veranix is Batman, if Batman were a teenager and magically talented”) a few times here, mostly because it’s the quote that first got my attention.

You’d expect a sequel or two to follow after that, but Maresca has delivered far more — he’s produced no less than eleven full novels set in what the Barnes & Noble Sci-fi and Fantasy Blog calls “One of the most richly detailed settings in fantasy… In one fast-paced, funny, highly readable novel after another, Maresca continues to build out every nook and alleyway of Maradaine.” All told the fast-growing Maradaine Universe has grown to three full trilogies, with a fourth underway.

While they share a setting, each series has a different focus and cast. The Maradaine trilogy follows the adventures of Veranix Calbert, struggling magic university student by day and armed vigilante by night; the Maradaine Constabulary books are gritty fantasy mysteries focused on Inspectors Satrine Rainey and Minox Welling in the city constabulary; The Streets of Maradaine are caper novels featuring Asti and Verci Rynax, former thieves attempting to go straight but dragged back into their old lives; and Maradaine Elite blends fantasy and political intrigue as it follows Dayne Heldrin and Jerinne Fendall, hopeful members of the Tarian Order.

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Covers by Dominick Saponaro

Three long years ago, in November 2016, Jim Killen at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog shared his thoughts on The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the month. Based on his rec I purchased the debut novel by James Islington, The Shadow of What Was Lost, volume one of what was to become the Licanius Trilogy at some nebulous point in the future.

Low and behold, the future is here. The second book, An Echo of Things to Come, arrived in August 2017, and now the final volume, The Light of All That Falls, appeared on December 10. Just in time to keep me company over my long Christmas break! What did Killen say all those years ago that got me so interested? I had to go look it up this morning:

The Shadow of What Was Lost feels old-fashioned in the best of ways, molding familiar genre traditions into something wholly unique. In a world where the magical class has been overthrown, hunted, and subjugated, the struggle cannot simply be divided between magic and mundane or human and divine. The evil that encroaches Andarra, the center of the action, is neither simple, singly focused, or, for that matter, definitively evil. It’s been 20 years since the Unseen War, which overthrew the Augurs, powerful and portentous demigods. Those who once feared and obeyed the them rose up, wiping out the leaders and binding those with lesser magical abilities, the Gifted, to Four Tenets that restrict the use of their powers. Davian, a student of the Gifted, struggles to wield Essence, the magic that should sustain and flow through him with ease, but can “read” people to determine whether they’re telling the truth, a power that once belonged only to the Augurs. That’s a dangerous association for one raised in a world endlessly suspicious of those with abilities outside the norm. But as forces long thought defeated descend from the North, Devian’s quest to understand who he is and what he can do takes on greater urgency than he can comprehend.

Here’s the complete publishing details for all three.

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Last year I wrote a brief New Treasures piece on Nick Setchfield’s debut novel The War in the Dark, and made a note to keep an eye out for the sequel. The Spider Dance finally arrived in September, and in October Nick gave this enticing summary in an interview with Starburst Magazine.

It’s the next adventure for supernaturally-inclined British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter. This time he’s mixed up with the stolen hearts of the undead, unholy criminal empires and a contract for a kill that demands a very strange bullet indeed. It’s a quest that spans the stranger corners of London, Budapest, Venice, Normandy, and Naples and the map certainly gets spattered with blood along the way.

[It’s] The Day of the Jackal – with vampires…. I wanted to refresh the vampire myth. Keep the essential glamour and horror of the creature but create a breed of vampire that would slot into a ‘60s-set spy thriller.

That certainly sound like something I need. But is it any good? Last week Ginger Nuts of Horror gave it a rave review, saying in part:

The Spider Dance is the direct sequel to his excellent 2017 novel The War in the Dark , a perfect genre blend of spies, monsters, magic and derring-do… In Nick Setchfield’s previous novel, he laid out the groundwork for a well constructed and believable alternative history where magic and the occult coexist in an otherwise reasonably realistic representation of our world…

It’s going to become cliched and, but you can’t review this book without mentioning James Bond, after all the simplest way to describe this book is James Bond meets the occult…

The mashing up of genres is pitch perfect… However it [is] his portrayal of a classic horror monster that shines in this book… Setchfield has created an exciting and extraordinary version of the creature that has sadly over the years been unfairly represented in fiction.

The Spider Dance was published by Titan Books on September 3, 2019. It is 352 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. See all our recent New Treasures here.