Black Gate

Fletcher Vredenburgh has been steadily reviewing P. C. Hodgell’s Chronicles of the Kencyrath series here at Black Gate. In his article on the opening volume, God Stalk, Fletcher wrote:

Out of the haunted north comes Jame the Kencyr to Rathilien’s greatest city, Tai-Tastigon. From the hills above, the city appears strangely dark and silent. She arrives at its gates with large gaps in her memory and cat claws instead of fingernails. She’s carrying a pack full of strange artifacts, including a ring still on its owner’s finger… and she’s been bitten by a zombie. Wary, but in desperate need of a place to heal, Jame enters the city. So begins God Stalk, the first book in P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series and one of my absolute, bar none, don’t-bother-me-if-you-see-me-reading-it, favorite fantasy novels…

I’m so grateful Carl gave me this book thirty years ago. P.C. Hodgell seems so far below the general fantasy radar, I don’t know if I would have ever heard of her at all, which is pretty darn shameful.

You can read his compete review here.

Fletcher wrapped up with volume 7, The Sea of Time, back in December, writing,

Now I, and every other fan of Hodgell’s, will have to wait nearly a year for the next volume, The Gates of Tagmeth… It’s taken over thirty years to get to this point, so I guess I can wait another eight months.

The Gates of Tagmeth arrived in trade paperback from Baen right on time on August 1st. I’m looking forward to Fletcher’s review, but you can get the jump on him by ordering a copy today. Here’s the description.

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When I first heard of Luke Scull’s debut fantasy novel The Grim Company, which features a band of mercenaries in the service of the White Lady, I assumed it was an homage to Glen Cook’s classic debut novel The Black Company, about a band of mercenaries in the service of the Lady. But folks have compared it more frequently to Joe Abercrombie than Cook. Here’s Niall Alexander at Tor.com.

The Grim Company is as grimdark as fantasy gets… [it] is a genuinely great debut: fun yet fearsome, gritty and gripping in equal measure… In truth, no-one does grimdark fantasy better than Joe Abercrombie, but by the dead, Luke Scull comes incredibly close. The Grim Company can’t quite eclipse the likes of The Heroes, or Red Country; all told, though, this is a more satisfying debut than The Blade Itself.

In large part that’s thanks to an action-packed narrative, paced like a race. There’s never [a] dull moment in The Grim Company — even in the middle, where most stories sag. Here, there and everywhere there are extraordinary set-pieces: battles, by and large, but what battles they are! In the interim, there’s murder, mystery and intrigue; a meaningful, if somewhat simplistic magic system; no shortage of snappy banter; and such smooth worldbuilding that I hardly noticed it happening… Shiver me timbers, The Grim Company is pretty brilliant… a sterling exemplar of what the genre has to offer today.

Read the complete review here.

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I continue to be impressed with the scope and ambition of the Tor.com novella series. With a release nearly every week for the past two years, the line has rapidly grown to some 100 novellas and full-length novels, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

It’s also doing some innovative and exciting things that no one else is attempting (and I don’t just mean hogging nearly all the novella-length award nominations). Case in point: JY Yang’s ambitious story cycle The Tensorate Series, composed of the twin novellas The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven, and two more upcoming novellas. The New York Times calls the first two volumes “Joyously wild stuff. Highly recommended.”

They were published simultaneously today. Here’s the descriptions.

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Two months ago I bought the second novel in Jonathan Stroud’s five-volume Lockwood & Co series. I don’t usually buy middle volumes in a series, at least not when I don’t have any of the other books. But this one had a whispering skull on the cover, so I’m sure you understand.

It did serve to introduce me to the entire series, though (the book, not the whispering skull). Jonathan Stroud is probably best known for his best-selling Bartimaeus Trilogy; here he turns his narrative powers to the tale of a teenage ghost-hunting agency in an alternate-history England infested with Visitors, malevolent spirits that can only be detected by young people with psychic gifts. Three such talented youngsters band together in London to form Lockwood & Co, facing a series of increasingly-horrifying challenges in these middle grade adventures.

The final volume in the series, The Empty Grave, was published this month in hardcover.

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I love omnibus editions. It’s not just their convenience, the joy of having an entire trilogy packed into one hefty volume. I think it’s just as much the celebratory aspect. It’s like, Holy crap, we made it. The series is finished. Forget we charged you for the first two; look, here’s the whole damn thing in one volume. You’re welcome.

In the case of The Icarus Corps, the trade paperback containing a complete military science fiction trilogy by Zachary Brown, that’s actually more or less accurate, as the third book, Jupiter Rising, was never even published in paperback. If you enjoyed the first two, and don’t have an e-reader, this is your only option.

Still, it ain’t a bad option, all things considered. I bought the first book, The Darkside War, and I was still delighted to stumble on the omnibus edition of all three novels at Barnes & Noble last week, and I snapped it up immediately.

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