Black Gate

I’m at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore this weekend. This is my first trip to the city (Holy cats! Did you know Baltimore was on the Atlantic Ocean?? They should tell people this stuff), and so far I’ve dined at a terrific seafood restaurant, taken in the salt air, and visited what has to be the largest Barnes & Noble on the planet.

I’ve also reconnected with plenty of friends whom I only see at conventions these days, including more than a few Black Gate contributors (quick shout out to Derek Kunsken, Marie Bilodeau, Howard Andrew Jones, Patty Templeton, Doug Ellis, L.E. Modesitt, and Sarah Avery!) and wandered through the beautiful Dealer’s Room, packed to the brim with fantasy books. It may seem strange that even surrounded by a hive of activity like WFC I can still be distracted by new books, but there you are. One of the first to catch my eye was the debut fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland. I think I’ll be taking this one home with me.

A wrongfully imprisoned storyteller spins stories from his jail cell that just might have the power to save him — and take down his jailers too.

Arrested on accusations of witchcraft and treason, Chant finds himself trapped in a cold, filthy jail cell in a foreign land. With only his advocate, the unhelpful and uninterested Consanza, he quickly finds himself cast as a bargaining chip in a brewing battle between the five rulers of this small, backwards, and petty nation.

Or, at least, that’s how he would tell the story.

In truth, Chant has little idea of what is happening outside the walls of his cell, but he must quickly start to unravel the puzzle of his imprisonment before they execute him for his alleged crimes. But Chant is no witch—he is a member of a rare and obscure order of wandering storytellers. With no country to call his home, and no people to claim as his own, all Chant has is his wits and his apprentice, a lad more interested in wooing handsome shepherds than learning the ways of the world.

And yet, he has one great power: his stories in the ears of the rulers determined to prosecute him for betraying a nation he knows next to nothing about. The tales he tells will topple the Queens of Nuryevet and just maybe, save his life.

A Conspiracy of Truths was published by Saga Press on October 23, 2018. It is 464 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

We’re almost at the end of our 2018 coverage of the annual crop of Year’s Best anthologies, and today’s title has traditionally been one of the highlights — Undertow Publication’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction.

The series is edited by Undertow publisher Michael Kelly, side-by-side with a different guest editor every year. Past editors have included Laird Barron, Kathe Koja, Simon Strantzas, and Helen Marshall. This year it’s Robert Shearman, author of the celebrated collections Remember Why You Fear Me (2012) and They Do the Same Things Different There (2014), and a man who’s shown up in more than his fair share of Year’s Best anthologies himself.

This is a book I highly anticipate every year, but the arrival of this one is bittersweet because it’s also the last. There’s a lot of reasons why a publisher might discontinue a series, but my guess in this case is that Undertow has been growing rapidly — its releases this year include Priya Sharma’s All the Fabulous Beasts, Simon Strantzas’s Nothing Is Everything, and the beautiful hardcover magazine The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism — and the sales for Year’s Best Weird Fiction just don’t justify all the work it takes. It’s sad to see, but these are the kinds of decisions a thriving small press has to make.

In the meantime, we still have this year’s brand new volume to enjoy (and if you haven’t checked out the previous ones, you have a lot more than that). Here’s the complete table of contents for Volume Five, including stories by Brian Evenson, Alison Littlewood, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Marshall, Paul Tremblay, and others — including Chavisa Woods’s Shirley Jackson Award-winning novelette “Take the Way Home That Leads Back To Sullivan Street.”

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Arguably the major living expert on the body of work of Rev. Montague Rhodes James, the cult British author of classical “ghost” stories, Rosemary Pardoe has been the editor of the journals Ghosts & Scholars, The Ghosts & Scholars MR James Newsletter, and the three volumes of the anthology series The Ghost & Scholars Book of Shadow (Sarob Press).

Here’s yet another short story anthology by Pardoe, entitled A Ghosts & Scholars Book of Folk Horror.

Traditional folklore is the basis not only for a good portion of Jamesian stories, but of classic British horror in general, so the new anthology is consistent with Pardoe’s previous work in this area. It assembles seventeen tales, ten of which are reprinted from the journals mentioned above, and seven which are original to this anthology.

Let me tell you right away that, not surprisingly, the best contributions are to be found among the reprints, first of all the outstanding “Meeting Mr. Ketchum” by Michael Chislett. This superb, creepy tale, perfectly in keeping with the anthology’s theme, depicts how ancient horrors come back to terrify a couple of accidental tourists exploring a desolate landscape.

Other excellent offerings include “Where are the Bones..?” by Jacqueline Simpson, a delightful story featuring MR James himself, in which old legends cast a dark shadow on an innocent boy, and” The Walls” by Terry Lamsley, a very unusual tale of supernatural horror, describing the eerie trip taken by two men to find a friend lost in a deserted area near abandoned lead mines that hide unfathomable secrets. Lamsley’s recent disappearance from the British horror scene is still sorely lamented.

The book features also some very conventional yet effective ghost stories such as CE Ward’s “The Spinney” and Kay Fletcher’s “The Peewold Amphisbaena,” both quite enjoyable and well worth reading. The same applies to “Loreley” by Carol Tyrrell, an offbeat tale portraying a case of unconventional vampirism.

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