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In 500 Words or Less: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

In 500 Words or Less: All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner

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All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault
By James Alan Gardner
Tor (384 pages, $17.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, November 2017)

Imagine a world where vampires, werewolves and demons all exist in public, courtesy of rich people making pacts with dark entities for immortality and power. Got that? Okay, now imagine a world where people can become superheroes by being exposed to the right (or wrong) kind of powerful energies, with as wide an assortment of powers as any comic book. Good? Take another pocket of your mind and add in things like wizard magic and weird science like opening rifts to other dimensions. And then combine all of this together into a single world.

Still with me?

If you’re not, I’d understand – but nonetheless, all of the above is present in James Alan Gardner’s All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault. I’m sure some of you are sitting back and thinking that sounds insane. But the X-Files/Cops crossover episode or establishing Bones and Sleepy Hollow in the same universe came with an expectation of a certain amount of ridiculousness, and the world Jim has created definitely has that flair. It’s interesting in that there’s a fast-paced and arguably straightforward narrative, even when the narrative pauses again and again with moments of “okay, I’d better explain this before we move on,” where this might be were-bats, rifts to other worlds that spew telepathic fireflies, university buildings named after rich vampires, or why a cascade of superpowers like force fields and telescopic vision and encyclopedic knowledge and whatever you would call Ant-Man (which is all in the first five chapters) makes logical sense.

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New Treasures: The Hyperspace Trap by Christopher G. Nuttall

New Treasures: The Hyperspace Trap by Christopher G. Nuttall

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47North, the science fiction publishing imprint of Amazon.com, has taken a lot of chances on new authors, with considerable success. Jeff Wheeler (the Legends of Muirwood trilogy, The Kingfountain Series) has become a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and Meg Elison’s The Book of Etta was a 2018 Philip K. Dick Award nominee, just as a few examples.

Christopher G. Nuttall is another example of a 47North author who’s a little outside the mainstream. Nuttall has published over fifty novels through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, as well as 16 volumes in the Schooled in Magic series through Timeless Books. His latest, The Hyperspace Trap, is a deep-space thriller set in the set in the world of his Angel in the Whirlwind series. It’s a creepy tale of a shipwreck in a floating graveyard, in a war-ravaged galaxy beset by pirates. Sounds like a winning combo to me.

The Hyperspace Trap was published by 47North on February 27, 2018. It is 397 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt here.

Future Treasures: The Body Party by Jeff Noon

Future Treasures: The Body Party by Jeff Noon

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Jeff Noon, author of the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke award-winning Vurt (1993), returned after too long an absence with A Man of Shadow last year, which Warren Ellis called “superb… one of our few true visionaries,” and Adrian Tchaikovsky said was “A disturbing and bizarre journey by one of the great masters of weird fiction.” The sequel, The Body Party, arrives next month from Angry Robot, continuing the tale of a P.I. in an weird and inverted city.

Jeff Noon returns with a staggering hallucinogenic sequel to A Man of Shadows, taking hapless investigator John Nyquist into a city where reality is contaminated by the imagination of its citizens

In a city dissolving into an infected sprawl of ideas, where words come to life and reality is contaminated by stories, John Nyquist wakes up in a room with a dead body… The dead man’s impossible whispers plunge him into a murder investigation like no other. Clues point him deeper into an unfolding story infesting its participants as reality blurs between place and genre.

Only one man can hope to put it all back together into some kind of order, enough that lives can be saved… That man is Nyquist, and he is lost.

The Body Party will be published by Angry Robot on April 3, 2018. It is 384 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover design is by Amazing15. Read Part One here.

New Treasures: The Song of All by Tina LeCount Myers

New Treasures: The Song of All by Tina LeCount Myers

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The Song of All-smallI can’t keep up with all the new SF and fantasy released every month, no matter how I try. Fortunately I’m not alone — I’m part of the Black Gate community, and there’s no more knowledgable or connected brotherhood (and sisterhood!) in the field.

Last month David B. Coe, author of “Night of Two Moons” in Black Gate 4, tipped me off to an exceptional debut fantasy novel, The Song of All by Tina LeCount Myers. Dave called it “A compulsively readable tale, steeped in mythology, suffused with magic, and beautifully realized. Highly recommended.” That’s good enough for me.

A former warrior caught between gods and priests must fight for the survival of his family in this dark epic fantasy debut, set in a harsh arctic world inspired by Scandinavian indigenous cultures.

On the forbidding fringes of the tundra, where years are marked by seasons of snow, humans war with immortals in the name of their shared gods. Irjan, a human warrior, is ruthless and lethal, a legend among the Brethren of Hunters. But even legends grow tired and disillusioned.

Scarred and weary of bloodshed, Irjan turns his back on his oath and his calling to hide away and live a peaceful life as a farmer, husband, and father. But his past is not so easily left behind. When an ambitious village priest conspires with the vengeful comrades Irjan has forsaken, the fragile peace in the Northlands of Davvieana is at stake.

His bloody past revealed, Irjan’s present unravels as he faces an ultimatum: return to hunt the immortals or lose his child. But with his son’s life hanging in the balance, as Irjan follows the tracks through the dark and desolate snow-covered forests, it is not death he searches for, but life.

The Song of All was published by Night Shade Books on February 20, 2018. It is 452 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 for the trade paperback and digital editions. The cover artist is uncredited. It is the first volume of the series Legacy of the Heavens. Read an excerpt here.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

New Treasures: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

New Treasures: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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Her Body and Other Parties-smallCarmen Maria Machado’s short stories have appeared in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, The Long List Anthology, The New Voices of Fantasy, Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, and magazines like The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, and others.

But it was Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe’s excellent Coode Street Podcast that alerted to me the existence of her debut collection. Jonathan writes:

When… Her Body and Other Parties was shortlisted for the National Book Award it went to the top of everybody’s “to read” piles. A smart, sensitive and thoughtful look at issues to do with sex, gender, violence and horror, it proved to be one of the very best books of 2017.

That’s a pretty strong endorsement. I don’t know about other folks, but the book sure shot to the top of my to read pile. Here’s the description.

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Her Body and Other Parties was published by Graywolf Press October 3, 2017. It is 248 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Kimberly Glyder Design.

Experience a Darkly Gripping Vision of the Future with the San Angeles Trilogy by Gerald Brandt

Experience a Darkly Gripping Vision of the Future with the San Angeles Trilogy by Gerald Brandt

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The Courier Gerald Brandt-small The-Operative-Gerald-Brandt-smaller The Rebel Gerald Brandt-small

Every time a trilogy completes, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters.

Today’s cake is in honor of Gerald Brandt’s San Angeles series. It opened with The Courier, which the B&N Sci-fi Fantasy Blog called “a darkly gripping vision of the future.” It was published in hardcover by DAW in March 2016. Here’s the description.

The first installment in the San Angeles trilogy, a thrilling near-future cyberpunk sci-fi series

Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level 2 trash in a multi-level city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border — a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of fourteen, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone’s help.

But a late day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she’s stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants. It looks like the corporations want Kris gone, and are willing to go to almost any length to make it happen.

Hunted, scared, and alone, she retreats to the only place she knows she can hide: the Level 1 streets. Fleeing from people that seem to know her every move, she is rescued by Miller — a member of an underground resistance group — only to be pulled deeper into a world she doesn’t understand.

Together Kris and Miller barely manage to stay one step ahead of the corporate killers, but it’s only a matter of time until Miller’s resources and their luck run out….

The Rebel, the third and final volume, arrived in hardcover November 14.

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Future Treasures: Quietus by Tristan Palmgren

Future Treasures: Quietus by Tristan Palmgren

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Quietus-smallTristan Palmgren is a Missouri writer; his ambitious debut novel Quietus arrives from Angry Robot next week. Una McCormack calls it “A truly outstanding debut… Palmgren takes the staples of science fiction – post-apocalypse, first contact, interventionism – and integrates them seamlessly, breathing new life into familiar forms.” Here’s the description.

A transdimensional anthropologist can’t keep herself from interfering with Earth’s darkest period of history in this brilliant science fiction debut

Niccolucio, a young Florentine Carthusian monk, leads a devout life until the Black Death kills all of his brothers, leaving him alone and filled with doubt. Habidah, an anthropologist from another universe racked by plague, is overwhelmed by the suffering. Unable to maintain her observer neutrality, she saves Niccolucio from the brink of death.

Habidah discovers that neither her home’s plague nor her assignment on Niccolucio’s world are as she’s been led to believe. Suddenly the pair are drawn into a worlds-spanning conspiracy to topple an empire larger than the human imagination can contain.

As interesting as all that is, I’m more fascinated by this snippet from an interview with Palmgren at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

Every time we read history, we change it. We bring our biases and myopias. If we’re honest, we can be aware of them. (And if we’re naive, we can convince ourselves that we’ve found all of them, or that being aware means we escaped them.)

Quietus embraces the observer. It’s about the paradox of being an observer – the biases we bring to history, the urge to touch…. Every time we read history, we bring ourselves to it like we bring ourselves to everything else we read. Our perspective lurks between the lines. Quietus, as does other science fiction and fantasy about history, takes the observer out of the hidden space and into the text. We confront ourselves as observers, and see what we bring without intending to. And by using the freedom of fantasy to play with the facts of the past, I want to make that past feel like the present.

Quietus will be published by Angry Robot on March 6, 2018. It is 464 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Dominic Harman. A sequel, Terminus, is already scheduled for November 6, 2018.

Andrew Liptak on 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in February

Andrew Liptak on 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in February

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Andrew Liptak’s February book selections give you a nice opportunity to be an armchair tourist in some pretty exotic locales (“Visit distant planets, conspiracies, and galactic conflicts!”)

Just as important for diligent book fans, Andrew catches us up with some of the more intriguing ongoing fantasy series. So without further ado, let’s see what he has for us this month.

Tarnished City by Vic James ( Del Rey, 416 pages, $25 in hardcover/$10.99 digital, February 6, 2018)

Vic James began her career last year with The Gilded Cage, in which the world belongs to a class of gifted magical aristocrats. In the next installment of her Dark Gifts trilogy, an uprising has been crushed, and protagonist Abi Hadley’s brother Luke has been framed for the murder of Parliament’s Chancellor Zelston. She goes into hiding, and after her brother is condemned to a remote estate, she hatches a plan to save him. Publisher’s Weekly says that readers will “appreciate the multifaceted complexity of James’s world and its lively, determined characters.”

We covered the opening volume, Gilded Cage, back in April.

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New Treasures: The Throne of Amenkor by Joshua Palmatier

New Treasures: The Throne of Amenkor by Joshua Palmatier

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Joshua Palmatier is a high-energy guy. I wrote about his science fictional Ley Trilogy last year, and I backed his 2017 Kickstarter for the Guilds & Glaives anthology because it contains stories by no less than four Black Gate authors: David B. Coe, James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, and Violette Malan.

That ought to be enough from one guy to satisfy even the most demanding readers. So I was surprised to find a fat 840-page volume from Palmatier during my last trip to Barnes & Noble: The Throne of Amenkor. It turns out to be an omnibus reprint collecting three of his early fantasy novels:

The Shewed Throne (384 pages, $8.99 in paperback, January 3, 2006)
The Cracked Throne (400 pages, $7.99 in paperback, November 7, 2006)
The Vacant Throne (480 pages, $8.99 in paperback, January 2, 2008)

All three were published in hardcover by DAW, and are still in print in mass market paperback a decade later — an impressive feat. K. Tang and Charlene Brusso reviewed them enthusiastically for Black Gate, but I never had the chance to enjoy them myself. I already have a handful of Joshua Palmatier novels sitting on my nightstand, and an anthology on the way, but I’m a sucker for these big omnibus editions from DAW and I ended up bringing The Throne of Amenkor home with me anyway.

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