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Category: New Treasures

Ancient Gods, World in Darkness, Ragtag Band of Fighters: The Bound Gods Trilogy by Rachel Dunne

Ancient Gods, World in Darkness, Ragtag Band of Fighters: The Bound Gods Trilogy by Rachel Dunne

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In the Shadow of the Gods-small The Bones of the Earth-small The Shattered Sun-small

I made my Saturday bi-weekly trip to Barnes & Noble today, ostensibly to pick up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which has a brand new Alaric the Minstrel novella by my friend Phyllis Eisenstein. While browsing the new releases half a dozen books caught my eye, including The Winter Road by Adrian Selby, The Lost by Kevin A. Munoz, and The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless. But the one that leaped into my hands was The Shattered Sun by Rachel Dunne, with the words A Bounds Gods Novel stamped on the cover, which certainly meant it was the umpteenth novel in series. This was on the back.

The epic sword-and-sorcery Bound Gods fantasy series comes to its dark conclusion in this thrilling story of a vibrant world whose fate lies in the hands of vengeful gods and bold warriors.

The world has been plunged into darkness… and only the scheming priest Joros might be able to bring back the sun.

With his ragtag band of fighters — a laconic warrior, a pair of street urchins, a ruthless priestess, and an unhinged sorcerer — Joros seeks to defeat the ancient gods newly released from their long imprisonment. But the Twins have champions of their own, and powers beyond knowing… and the only sure thing is that they won’t go down without a fight.

The fate of the world hangs in the balance as the Twins aim to enact revenge on the parents that imprisoned them, and the world that spurned them. The Long Night has begun, and the shadows hide many secrets — including that the Twins themselves may not be as powerful as they would have everyone think.

Joros and his allies must strike now — before the Twins can consolidate their power… and before they are allowed to shape the world in their vision.

Now, last thing I need is the final book in a series I’ve never heard of. But then again… there’s a lot that appeals to me here. Epic sword-and-sorcery. Desperate battle against ancient gods. World plunged into darkness, ragtag band of fighters. And Tony Mauro’s cover, with the stooped priest Joros and a mischievous imp familiar on his shoulder, is terrific. Ah, the hell with it. My house is already filled to the brim with fantasy novels. One more won’t hurt.

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New Treasures: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

New Treasures: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

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Black Leopard Red Wolf-smallLast year I bought a copy of Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, a widely praised novel that won the Man Booker Prize. His latest, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, a 640-page fantasy epic published this week, arrives with the kind of advance praise most writers can only dream of. The New York Times calls it “The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe,” Rolling Stone labels it ”a stunning, word-drunk take on sword-and-sorcery sagas,” Neil Gaiman says it’s set in “A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made,” and the LA Times proclaims it “Absolutely brilliant.” But my favorite quote is from Entertainment Weekly, which said:

Drenched in African myth and folklore, and set in an astonishingly realized pre-colonized sub-Saharan region, Black Leopard crawls with creatures and erects kingdoms unlike any I’ve read… This is a revolutionary book.

Over at Tor.com, Alex Brown gives us a better sense of what folks are so excited about.

Y’all, Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a miracle. It’s a gift from Anansi himself. This book. This book. THIS BOOK.

Dead. I’m dead. I have died. It is so good it killed me. Murdered by my own ARC. Please bury me in my To Read pile.

The basic story is this: a man known only as Tracker, and several of his acquaintances and enemies, are hired to find a boy. The boy is missing (or not) and may be dead (or not). Of the hired group, there are those wish to find the boy, those who plan to kill him, and those who want him to remain missing. Some are human, some witches, some mercenaries, and some are magical beings. Who is the boy? What happened to him? What was really going on? Is Tracker lying? What if he’s really telling the truth?

But the plot isn’t really the plot. Finding the boy provides the skeleton, but the muscles, blood, and heat come from everything that happens along the way. This is no stroll through a dreamland of fairies and pixie dust. James drags us through a nightmare world of shapeshifters, witches, mermaids, mad scientists, cannibals, vampires, giants, sadistic slavers, selfish monarchs, and a sentient buffalo…

If Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro series opened the door to new ways of telling epic fantasy, and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy leapt over the threshold, then Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf just ripped the whole damn door off its hinges.

Good things continue to happen for this book. The film rights were snapped up just yesterday by Warner Bros and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf was published by Riverhead Books on February 5, 2019; it is the first installment of The Dark Star Trilogy. It is 640 pages, priced at $30 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover artist is uncredited. Read the complete first chapter here, and see our recent New Treasures here.

The Astounding Life of John W. Campbell

The Astounding Life of John W. Campbell

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(1) Astounding-small (1) Astounding-back-small

Every now and then, amid your fevered cries for net neutrality, free soil and free silver, the restoration of the house of Stuart, more episodes of Firefly, or whatever other hopeless cause gets your blood racing and your family members fleeing (they recognize a wind-up to a full fledged rant when they hear one), against all odds the universe actually hears, takes note, and gives you precisely what you’ve asked for — not often, dammit, but sometimes.

Thus it was that after decades of buttonholing strangers and lecturing them on the nation’s desperate need for a biography of John W. Campbell, the pioneering science fiction writer and influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog) from 1937 until his death in 1971, a couple of months ago I discovered that just such a book had finally been written. (Where did I find this out? I saw it mentioned on some fantasy web site or other… hold on… I’ll think of the name in a minute…)

I Immediately put Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee at the top of my Christmas list, and I have just finished devouring it, blurbs, book jacket, binding glue, and all. Give me a second to belch, and I’ll tell you what I thought.

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Nora Roberts meets Neal Stephenson: The Felicia Sevigny Trilogy by Catherine Cerveny

Nora Roberts meets Neal Stephenson: The Felicia Sevigny Trilogy by Catherine Cerveny

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The-Rule-of-Luck-medium The-Chaos-of-Luck-medium The Game of Luck-small

I first discovered Catherine Cerveny’s Felicia Sevigny trilogy when Unbound Worlds selected the second novel, The Chaos of Luck, as one of the Best SF Titles of December 2017. The tale of a Brazilian tarot card reader and a Russian crime lord and their desperate race to unmask a conspiracy sounded different enough to be very appealing, and I took a chance and bought the first two books.

The series opened with The Rule of Luck (2017), Catherine Cerveny’s debut novel, an unusual blend of romance and SF thriller in which tarot card reader Felicia Sevigny discovers she’s at the heart of a far-reaching plot to manipulate human genetics. Alison Spanner at Booklist gave the book a starred review, saying

In the year 2950, dark days of floods, war, famine, and devastation are over, but the world has been reshaped forever. Terraforming on Venus and Mars, tech implants allowing for seamless access to the Internet-like CN-net, genetic modification to enhance beauty, government-sponsored anti-aging treatments, and strictly regulated population control are the new normal under the world’s new government, One Gov. Felicia Sevigny grows up blindly believing her life is her own until she discovers, for reasons unknown to her, she has been blacklisted from having a baby. Felicia has made a name for herself as a skilled fortune-teller, and her life changes the day Alexei Petriv, a high-ranking member of the Tsarist Consortium, a shadow organization set to take One Gov down, walks into her shop and demands a reading. In return for a promise to remove her blacklisted status, Felicia agrees to help Alexei in his quest to take power from One Gov… Cerveny’s first novel in a planned trilogy mingles romance and science fiction — think Nora Roberts meets Neal Stephenson — and is certain to satisfy audiences of both genres.

The final novel, The Game of Luck, arrived in September 2018. All three volumes were published in trade paperback and digital formats by Orbit Books; the striking covers were designed by Lisa Marie Pompilio. The digital version of The Rule of Luck is priced at just $4.99 at most major online bookstores — well worth checking out.

See all of our recent coverage of the best SF and fantasy series here.

The Most Ambitious First Contact Saga in Science Fiction: The Foreigner Series by CJ Cherryh

The Most Ambitious First Contact Saga in Science Fiction: The Foreigner Series by CJ Cherryh

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CJ Cherryh Foreigner 10th Anniversary Edition-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 2 Invader-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 3 Inheritor-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 4 Precursor-small
CJ Cherryh Foreigner 5 Defender-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 6 Explorer-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 7 Destroyer-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 8 Pretender-small
CJ Cherryh Foreigner 9 Deliverer-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 10 Conspirator-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 11 Deceiver-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 12 Betrayer-small
CJ Cherryh Foreigner 13 Intruder-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 14 Protector-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 15 Peacemaker-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 16 Tracker-small
CJ Cherryh Foreigner 17 Visitor-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 18 Convergence-small CJ Cherryh Foreigner 19 Emergence-small CJ Cherryh

Art by Michael Whelan (1,2,6,7), Dorian Vallejo (3), Stephen Youll (4,5), Donato Giancola (8,9), and Todd Lockwood (10-19)

I like to talk about SF and fantasy series here, and last week I dashed off a quick article about a 9-volume space opera that caught my eye, Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance. The first two commenters, R.K. Robinson and Joe H, both compared her novels to the queen of modern space opera, C.J. Cherryh. That certainly got me thinking. Like Norman, Cherryh is published by DAW, and as I said last week,

For many years DAW’s bread and butter has been extended midlist SF and fantasy series that thrive chiefly by word of mouth… You won’t connect with them all of course, but when you find one you like they offer a literary feast like no other — a long, satisfying adventure series you can get lost in for months.

More than any other writer, Cherryh may be responsible for DAW’s success with space opera. She’s been associated with the publisher for over four decades, since her first two novels, Gate of Ivrel and Brothers of Earth, were purchased by founder Donald A. Wollheim in 1975. Cherryh has produced many of DAW’s top-selling series, including the popular Chanur novels, the Company War (including the Hugo Award-winning Downbelow Station), The Faded Sun trilogy, and especially the 19-volume Foreigner space opera, perhaps the most ambitious and epic first contact saga ever written.

C.J. Cherryh became a SFWA Grand Master in 2016, and the Foreigner books are perhaps her most celebrated achievement. The first, Foreigner, was published in 1994, and has remained in print for the last 25 years; the most recent, Emergence, arrived in hardcover last year, and was reprinted in paperback less than four weeks ago. Four of the books were shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and all 19 titles remain in print today.

If you’re truly on the hunt for “a long, satisfying adventure series you can get lost in for months,” Foreigner — all 7,200 pages of it — may be the most important literary discovery you ever make.

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Reading for a Good Cause: 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill edited by Duane Pesice

Reading for a Good Cause: 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill edited by Duane Pesice

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32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill-small 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill Volume 2-small

I’ve heard from several readers about a new charity anthology benefiting horror writer Christopher Ropes, 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill. Most recently Robert Adam Gilmour wrote, saying:

There are no shortage of writers going through difficult times and I imagine you might get quite a number of emails for funding them but this involves two anthologies and some writers you are familiar with. His situation is horrifying enough that it has stuck in my head and I just wanted to see if you’d feature it on Black Gate.

I’m informed about a lot of worthy fundraising efforts every year, but Robert is right — this one is of particular interest, as it involves dozens of writers of keen interest to Black Gate readers. Editor Duane Pesice has assembled two volumes of 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill, both of which contain 32 stories & poems generously donated from members of the weird fiction & horror communities, including Jonathan Maberry, Michael Wehunt, Ashley Dioses, K.A. Opperman, Marguerite Reed, Jon Padgett, Douglas Draa, John Linwood Grant, Jeffrey Thomas, Jason A. Wyckoff, Frank Coffman, and many others. All the profits from the books go towards helping Christopher cover the costs of some long-needed dental work (see the Go-Fund-Me page here).

Christopher’s work has been published in Vastarien (Grimscribe Press), Nightscript (Chthonic Matter), Ravenwood Quarterly (Electric Pentacle Press), and other fine publications, and it’s clear he has a lot of friends in the industry. If you’re active in fandom or on social media, you doubtless encounter calls for help on a regular basis. But I’ve never seen one quite like this. Pesice has assembled two anthologies that would look impressive under any circumstances. Copies are available at Amazon and directly from Planet X Publications. If you’re going to read some horror this month, why not read for a good cause?

New Treasures: A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, Book Two of The Risen Kingdoms by Curtis Craddock

New Treasures: A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, Book Two of The Risen Kingdoms by Curtis Craddock

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An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors-small A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery-small

Curtis Craddock’s 2017 fantasy An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, the opening novel in the Risen Kingdoms series, received starred reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus Reviews, no mean feat. Here’s a snippet from Kirkus:

This debut fantasy is set in the Risen Kingdoms, where countries float in the air and people take airships from place to place, princes battle for a throne, and dashing musketeers defend feisty princesses.

In other hands, this would be a swashbuckling gaslamp romp, but author Craddock chooses to go darker. His princess, Isabelle des Zephyrs, cousin of His Imperial Majesty Leon XIV of L’Empire Céleste, is feared for her deformed hand and abused by her father and brother for failing to possess their family’s saint-given magic, the ability to drain the life from others with the bloodshadow. Her only refuges are her trusty protector, the musketeer Jean-Claude, and her secret work as a scientist and mathematician, pursuits forbidden to women on pain of death. Saintly lines are supposed to remain pure, so Princess Isabelle can’t understand why the younger prince of Aragoth, who bears his own royal family’s gift of traveling through mirrors, would wish to marry her; nevertheless, she welcomes the opportunity for a new life… The skulduggery is pleasurably complex, the emotional stakes feel convincing, and the reasonably happy ending feels earned. And while Jean-Claude’s doggedness in protecting Isabelle is admirable, Isabelle is decidedly and enjoyably not a damsel in need of rescue.

Charles Stross calls it a “gaslight fantasy in the tradition of Alexander Dumas,” and admittedly that’s the quote that got my attention. The second book in the series, A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, arrived last week, offering more tales of “adventure full of palace intrigue, mysterious ancient mechanisms, and aerial sailing ships!” (David D. Levine). Here’s the description.

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Gender Boundaries Crumble in YA: The XY by Virginia Bergin

Gender Boundaries Crumble in YA: The XY by Virginia Bergin

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Cover of Virginia Bergin's THE XY
Cover of Virginia Bergin’s THE XY

River drives her horse and cart through the woods as night falls. But when she sees a body lying in the middle of the road, her first emotion isn’t fear. It’s surprise.

The body doesn’t look like any she’s ever seen. It’s clearly human, but it has no breasts. There’s hair on its face, and a strange lumpiness rises between its legs.

It’s an XY. A male.

River has never encountered an XY before. Boys and men all live in hermetically sealed Sanctuaries where they won’t contract a lethal virus. The rest of the planet has been given over to women, who are immune. Any boy or man who leaves one of the Sanctuaries dies within 24 hours.

When River rouses the XY to consciousness, he attacks her, steals her knife, threatens to kill her, and eats her food without permission. River has never encountered anyone who would behave so badly before.

The XY – his name is Mason – says he’s been on the run in women’s country for five days. But only now does he fall ill. Losing his faculties, he releases her once again.

Watching him writhe on the road, River knows this male creature – this boy named Mason – is going to die. He knows it, too. He said as much to her.

She knows the humane thing to do. Her community’s code requires her to put him out of his misery. She’s given mercy to injured animals before.

But she just can’t bring herself to draw her blade across his neck. He’s a human being.

It takes three hours, but she carts Mason back to her village. The appearance of the first XY to survive the virus for more than a day reveals rifts in this community of women. Some race to heal him. Others want him to die. Caught in the middle, River finds herself lying for the first time in her life. Everything in her safe existence starts to unravel.

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Adventure in One of the Most Famous Locales in Fantasy: The City of Brass by S. A Chakraborty

Adventure in One of the Most Famous Locales in Fantasy: The City of Brass by S. A Chakraborty

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The City of Brass-small The Kingdom of Copper-small

The fabled City of Brass, magical home to djinni and efreet, is the setting for but a single tale from The Arabian Nights, but it has nonetheless loomed large in readers hearts and minds through the centuries. For D&D players of course it has a special significance, as it features prominently in the history of the game (including on the famous cover of Gary Gygax’s Dungeon Masters Guide). But no modern writer has laid claim to it as passionately and as effectively as S. A Chakraborty, with her bestselling debut novel The City of Brass, named one of the Best Books of 2017 by Library Journal, Vulture, The Verge, and SYFYWire.

Some of you may recall Brandon Crilly’s enthusiastic review of The City of Brass at Black Gate. Here’s the highlights.

Chakraborty creates a world that’s nuanced and detailed. It has exactly the vivid freshness we continue to need in the fantasy genre, as a balance for the variations on the same Eurocentric worldviews that are still widely common…. But the novel is much more than its world – at the end of the day, my interest is always characters. Our two main protagonists, Cairo street urchin Nahri and immortal warrior Dara, are great counterparts; they’re equally passionate and protective, but in different ways, and both are seeking to find their place in the world… The City of Brass is excellent. It’s rare that I find a fantasy novel that’s so vividly detailed.

Last week the sequel The Kingdom of Copper, the second novel in what’s now being called The Daevabad Trilogy, arrived in hardcover from Harper Voyager. Here’s the description.

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New Treasures: Breach by W.L. Goodwater

New Treasures: Breach by W.L. Goodwater

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Breach W L Goodwater-smallFantasy comes in all shapes and sizes. I enjoy epic fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings), sword & sorcery, horror, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy, weird westerns, and virtually everything in between. But more and more these days I find myself drawn to work that truly strikes out into new territory.

W.L. Goodwater’s debut novel Breach is a great example. It was published late last year by Ace, and is described as the opening novel in a new Cold War fantasy series, in which the Berlin Wall is made entirely of magic. When a breach unexpectedly appears, spies from both sides descend on the city as  World War III looms ever closer.

I discovered Breach almost wholly by accident, as I browsed the shelves at B&N a few weeks ago. I knew nothing about it, and the cover didn’t particularly grab me. But the brief blurb on the back cover did, pretty much immediately. As modern fantasy goes, this is about as original as it gets. This is the kind of book that kicks off a whole new sub-genre. Alternate history political thriller fantasy? Cold War apocalypse fantasy? Whatever; I’m on board. Here’s the blurb that grabbed my attention.

AFTER THE WAR, THE WALL BROUGHT AN UNEASY PEACE.

When Soviet magicians conjured an arcane wall to blockade occupied Berlin, the world was outraged but let it stand for the sake of peace. Now, after ten years of fighting with spies instead of spells, the CIA has discovered the unthinkable…

THE WALL IS FAILING.

While refugees and soldiers mass along the border, operatives from East and West converge on the most dangerous city in the world to either stop the crisis, or take advantage of it.

Karen, a young magician with the American Office of Magical Research and Deployment, is sent to investigate the breach in the Wall and determine if it can be fixed. Instead, she discovers that the truth is elusive in this divided city — and that even magic itself has its own agenda.

THE TRUTH OF THE WALL IS ABOUT TO BE REVEALED.

Breach was published by Ace on November 6, 2018. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Pete Garceau. See all our recent New Treasures here.