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Category: New Treasures

New Treasures: Hekla’s Children by James Brogden

New Treasures: Hekla’s Children by James Brogden

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James Brogden is an Australian horror writer with three novels to his credit, The Narrows, Tourmaline, The Realt, plus the collection Evocations. His latest is a modern-day dark fantasy about a teacher who has four students go missing on the same day… and the horror that begins when one of them returns alone.

Tim Lebbon calls it “Brilliant… full of great twists and beautifully drawn characters,” and Kirkus Reviews says it’s “genuinely scary… a wonderfully odd mix of dark Bronze Age fantasy and modern-day thriller, and it works.” Booklist gave it high praise indeed, saying

The engrossing plot features steadily intensifying dread… a fast-paced and terrifying ride as everyone tries to solve two mysteries, one modern and one ancient… a horror novel and a standout thriller that can hold its own against the best in either genre.

Hekla’s Children was published by Titan Books on March 7, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd (click the images to embiggen). Read a brief excerpt at Dread Central.

A Tale of Two Covers: The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi, and The Corroding Empire by Johan Kalsi

A Tale of Two Covers: The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi, and The Corroding Empire by Johan Kalsi

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io9 is reporting that Amazon temporarily blocked sales of The Corroding Empire, the short story collection from pseudonymous “Johan Kalsi” that Castalia House created to troll John Scalzi’s new Tor release The Collapsing Empire.

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi was released from Tor Books Tuesday, almost a year after it was first announced. Earlier this month, Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) revealed on his blog that The Corroding Empire from Johan Kalsi was available for pre-order… and would be released one day before Scalzi’s book. Amazon temporarily made the book unavailable to buy, but it looks to have been restored for the time being… There’s a reason Beale made a cover that looks exactly like Scalzi’s, and it’s not to ride his coattails. This is all part of Beale’s longstanding feud (or obsession) with Scalzi, who hasn’t shied away from criticizing him in the past.

I assumed the Castalia House release was a parody of Scalzi’s new book, but that doesn’t appear to be the case — it’s a straight up collection of SF stories, packaged to look virtually identical to The Collapsing Empire. I’m not sure of the exact point, but Theo is obsessively tracking the comparative sales of the two books on his blog.

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Colonists, Smugglers, and Fast Attack Craft: The Virtues of War Trilogy by Bennett R. Coles

Colonists, Smugglers, and Fast Attack Craft: The Virtues of War Trilogy by Bennett R. Coles

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I grew up as an army brat in Canada. My dad was an engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces, and I was born on a Canadian Air Force base in Marville, France in the mid-60s. We moved all over Nova Scotia, Quebec, and eventually Ontario, as Dad led teams of engineers working on huge projects, including radar installations in Eureka, Nunavut, and the Air Combat Maneuvering range in Cold Lake, Alberta.

So I’ve been naturally curious about the work of author Bennett R. Coles, who spent 14 years as an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, and served two tours with the United Nations in Syria and Lebanon. His debut SF novel, Virtues of War (Promontory Press, 2010), drew wide praise for both its realistic portrayal of life in uniform, and for his mastery of fast-paced military SF.

Now, I know you’ve been wanting to try some military SF, but you’ve been a little gun shy, right? Who better to ease you into the genre than a Canadian writing about far-flung Terran colonies, smugglers, rebellion, sinister terrorists, and the crew of a fast attack craft caught in the middle of it all? You know I’m right.

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Future Treasures: Among the Fallen, Book 2 of Godserfs, by NS Dolkart

Future Treasures: Among the Fallen, Book 2 of Godserfs, by NS Dolkart

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Among the Fallen, the second volume in NS Dolkart’s epic fantasy series Godserfs, arrives early next month from Angry Robot. The first volume, Silent Hall, was released in the US last June, and James A Moore called it “Very nearly a perfect novel. I wish my first book had been anywhere near as inventive and challenging.” So let’s start with that one. Here’s the description.

Five bedraggled refugees and a sinister wizard awaken a dragon and defy the gods.

After their homeland is struck with a deadly plague, five refugees cross the continent searching for answers. Instead they find Psander, a wizard whose fortress is invisible to the gods, and who is willing to sacrifice anything – and anyone – to keep the knowledge of the wizards safe.

With Psander as their patron, the refugees cross the mountains, brave the territory of their sworn enemies, confront a hostile ocean and even traverse the world of the fairies in search of magic powerful enough to save themselves – and Psander’s library – from the wrath of the gods.

All they need to do is to rescue an imprisoned dragon and unleash a primordial monster upon the world.

How hard could it be?

Looks like things turned out okay for everybody, since they’re back for a second volume. Let’s see what’s going on in this one. Hope that sinister wizard guy shows up again.

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New Treasures: They Don’t Come Home Anymore by T.E. Grau

New Treasures: They Don’t Come Home Anymore by T.E. Grau

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T.E. Grau’s short horror fiction has appeared in The Children of Old Leech, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Dark Fusions – Where Monsters Lurk!, World War Cthulhu, and other fine anthologies and magazines. His other books include Triptych: Three Cosmic Tales, The Lost Aklo Stories, and The Nameless Dark, which was nominated for a 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection. His novella I Am The River will be published later this year by Lethe Press.

I’ve been wanting to sample his fiction for a while, and his brand new novella They Don’t Come Home Anymore seems like the way to do it. On his blog, Grau describes it this way.

They Don’t Come Home Anymore [is] a story that might, at first blush, seem like a slight departure from my previous work, as it centers on a teenage girl, and is very much a tale of obsession, loneliness, and a search for meaning, acceptance, and love in a world (and sub world) that waits, cruel and threatening, just behind the facade. It’s also about vampires, but not the garden variety sort you’d expect in a mass market/network television teenage vamp story, but something that cleaves closer to the natural world, and how our planet once was, and might still be in certain darkened corners. I can’t really say more, other than to invite you to pick up the book when it’s available, and tell me what you think it’s about, underneath, beyond that first impression.

They Don’t Come Home Anymore was published by This Is Horror on November 28, 2016. It is 104 pages, priced at $10.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Candice Tripp.

Interstellar Empires, Alien Warrior-Priests, and a Rebel Runner: R.M. Meluch’s Jerusalem Fire

Interstellar Empires, Alien Warrior-Priests, and a Rebel Runner: R.M. Meluch’s Jerusalem Fire

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I’ve been trying to pay attention to mass market paperbacks lately (since it’s easy for new releases to slip past you if you’re not paying attention.) In my last trip to the bookstore I found R.M. Meluch’s Jerusalem Fire tucked between Jack McDevitt and China Miéville on the shelves, and it had me at “A planet out of myth.” Religion, space empires, and rebel captains — always a good mix in my book.

Meluch is the author of the ongoing Tour of the Merrimack military space opera series, and this seemed like a promising new direction for her. Except it’s not a new direction at all… turns out Jerusalem Fire is her second novel, originally published in paperback by Signet in 1985. It’s been reprinted several times since.

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Ave Atque Vale: Celebrating the Life and Work of Michael Shea

Ave Atque Vale: Celebrating the Life and Work of Michael Shea

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Michael Shea was one of the most distinguished and loved figures in the field of speculative fiction. He twice won The World Fantasy Award, and his work also received nominations for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, August Derleth and International Horror Guild awards. Ranging from wildly baroque dark fantasy to cosmic horror and grimly humorous parodies of contemporary “reality” culture, his writing conveys the sense of wonder and awe that imaginative readers crave and appreciate, and one can develop an insatiable appetite for his work.

But since Shea’s unexpected passing in 2014, many of us have been unable to slake that. That is, until the recent release of And Death Shall Have No Dominion: A Tribute to Michael Shea, which among many other things, contains three previously unpublished works of his fiction.

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Invasions, Space Combat, and a Human Bomb: Margaret Fortune’s Spectre War

Invasions, Space Combat, and a Human Bomb: Margaret Fortune’s Spectre War

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Margaret Fortune’s Spectre War looks like my kind of YA series — the kind with space combat. The first volume, Nova, was published in hardcover in 2015 by DAW, and Booklist called it “A super start to what looks like a fine series.” Here’s the description.

Lia Johansen was created for only one purpose: to slip onto the strategically placed New Sol Space Station and explode.

But her mission goes to hell when her clock malfunctions, freezing her countdown with just two minutes to go. With no Plan B, no memories of her past, and no identity besides a name stolen from a dead POW, Lia has no idea what to do next. Her life gets even more complicated when she meets Michael Sorenson, the real Lia’s childhood best friend.

Drawn to Michael and his family against her better judgment, Lia starts learning what it means to live and love, and to be human. It is only when her countdown clock begins sporadically losing time that she realizes even duds can still blow up.

If she wants any chance at a future, she must find a way to unlock the secrets of her past and stop her clock. But as Lia digs into her origins, she begins to suspect there’s far more to her mission and to this war, than meets the eye. With the fate of not just a space station but an entire empire hanging in the balance, Lia races to find the truth before her time — literally — runs out.

The second installment, Archangel, arrived in hardcover last week. Nova is now available in paperback — and the digital version is just $1.99!

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New Treasures: Dr Potter’s Medicine Show by Eric Scott Fischl

New Treasures: Dr Potter’s Medicine Show by Eric Scott Fischl

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The mass market original seems almost like a dying art form these days. But not for Angry Robot, for whom it’s their bread and butter. They find talented writers and package their works in attractive, sharply-designed, inexpensive paperbacks. I heartily approve.

Dr Potter’s Medicine Show, by Eric Scott Fischl, is the latest Angry Robot paperback to grab my attention. It’s an historical dark fantasy that John Shirley calls “A powerful alchemical elixir concocted of post Civil War historical fiction, dark fantasy, and Felliniesque flavoring.” On his website, Fischl recently announced that the next book in the series, The Trials of Solomon Parker, will be released in November 2017, also from Angry Robot.

Dr Potter’s Medicine Show was published by Angry Robot on February 2, 2017. It is 346 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Steven Meyer-Rassow. Read the first three chapters at the Angry Robot website.

Where The Road meets Mad Max: Peter Newman’s The Vagrant Trilogy

Where The Road meets Mad Max: Peter Newman’s The Vagrant Trilogy

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In his SF Signal review Nick Sharps called Peter Newman’s The Vagrant “Dark Dystopian Fantasy at Its Very Best,” saying:

The premise of The Vagrant is simple enough. Accompanied by a baby and a goat, a nameless mute must cross demon-infested wastelands to deliver a magical sword to the Shining City, last bastion of hope. The mute is hunted by multiple factions and it is difficult to distinguish friend from foe in the ruins of a world tainted by evil… Beneath the grit and grime of The Vagrant there is no shortage of beauty. It’s part fantasy and part science fiction. There are demons and knights but the demons enhance their followers with necrotech and the knights ride floating castles and caterpillar tanks. All of the shiny technology of the past has fallen to rust and disuse in the wake of the demonic incursion. The taint of the demons brings mutation and famine. The Vagrant has a sort of The Road meets Mad Max meets The Children of Men vibe…

It wouldn’t feel appropriate to classify The Vagrant as grimdark fantasy. The elements of the subgenre are all present: the setting is dystopian, life is harsh and brief, the bad guys are bad and the good guys are few and far between. Newman’s demons and the change they affect on the world and its inhabitants remind me of the forces of Chaos from Warhammer 40,000 — the very property that inspired the term grimdark. The Vagrant is bleak, depressive, and violent and yet… The Vagrant surpassed all my expectations.

The sequel, The Malice, finally arrived in trade paperback from Harper Voyager this week, and the third and final book, The Seven, is scheduled to appear in October.

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