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New Treasures: Fish Tails by Sheri S. Tepper

New Treasures: Fish Tails by Sheri S. Tepper

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Fish Tails Tepper-small Fish Tails Tepper-back-small

Sheri S. Tepper is one of the most beloved genre authors of the last few decades. Her fantasy series include the nine-volume The True Game, the Marianne trilogy, and The Awakeners trilogy.

Even among that impressive body of work, her 35th novel, Fish Tails, is uniquely ambitious, as it weaves together characters and storylines from eleven previous fantasy novels spanning nearly three decades of her writing career, starting from King’s Blood Four (1983) to her recent The Waters Rising (2010). 

Fish Tails see two of her most popular characters, Abasio and his royal wife Xulai (from A Plague of Angels and The Waters Rising) and their children traveling across the land of Tingawa, searching for those interested in adopting their sea-dwelling lifestyle. As they travel they meet visitors from the far-off world of Lom, characters Tepper’s fans will recognize from The True Game: Mavin Manyshaped, Jinian Star-eye, and Silkhands the Healer… all of whom have been gathered by a mysterious, time-traveling, rule-breaker. For the waters are rising and will soon engulf the entire planet, transforming it utterly.

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Future Treasures: Souldrifter by Garrett Calcaterra

Future Treasures: Souldrifter by Garrett Calcaterra

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Souldrifter-small Souldrifter-back-small

Garrett Calcaterra’s most recent posts for us were “Fantasy Clichés Done Right and “Can SF Save the World From Climate Change?” But in addition to all the investigative reporting he’s been doing for Black Gate, he’s also been managing a career as a fast-rising fantasy author. His novel Dreamwielder (2013), the opening book in The Dreamwielder Chronicles, is a terrific sword & sorcery adventure, widely praised by fans and critics alike. James P. Blaylock called it “fast-paced, colorful, and richly detailed… My kind of book,” and Tim Powers proclaimed it a “good solid fantasy adventure.”

Souldrifter, the long-anticipated second volume in the series, finally arrives next week. Emperor Guderian’s empire has fallen, and young Queen Makarria finds herself in grave danger. The Old World Republic is demanding that she form a new empire, one she would rule as their puppet. When she refuses, the Old World threatens war… and sends a dangerous spy into the heart of her court. Wendy Wagner, author of Skinwalkers, describes it as “packed with sorcerers, spies, and high-stakes intrigue… a real page-turner.”

Souldrifter will be published by Diversion Publishing on September 29, 2015. It is 298 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition. Get more details at Garrett’s website here.

Vintage Treasures: The Damiano Trilogy, by R.A. MacAvoy

Vintage Treasures: The Damiano Trilogy, by R.A. MacAvoy

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Damiano-small Damiano's Lute-small Raphael-small

R. A. MacAvoy published her first novel, Tea with the Black Dragon, in May 1983. It was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and received the 1984 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Not too surprisingly, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1984.

Her next novel, Damiano, the tale of a wizard’s son befriended by the Archangel Raphael, appeared in 1984, and became the first novel of an ambitious fantasy trilogy. The next two were published as paperback originals by Bantam Books the same year, all with gorgeous wraparound covers by Jim Burns (click the images above for bigger versions.)

Here’s the back covers for all three.

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New Treasures: The Sea of Trolls Trilogy by Nancy Farmer

New Treasures: The Sea of Trolls Trilogy by Nancy Farmer

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I’ve been very excited by what I’ve seen from Saga Press in the last few months. They’ve published novels from some of the most exciting new names in fantasy, including Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings, and Genevieve Valentine’s Persona, among many others. And just this month they brought us John Joseph Adam’s timely new anthology Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction.

But mixed in with that sharp nose for exciting new work is a keen talent for finding and repackaging overlooked older fantasy. So I was just as excited to see Saga bring Nancy Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls trilogy, originally published in hardcover by Atheneum Books in 2004-2009, out in mass market paperback for the first time, with a gorgeous series of new covers by Richard Anderson. The release dates were:

The Sea of Trolls (496 pages) – June 30, 2015
The Land of the Silver Apples (496 pages) – July 28, 2015
The Islands of the Blessed (496 pages) – August 25, 2015

All three books are now on sale from Saga, priced at $8.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. Check ’em out.

Tanith Airborne: Warhammer 40k: Gaunt’s Ghosts: The Guns of Tanith

Tanith Airborne: Warhammer 40k: Gaunt’s Ghosts: The Guns of Tanith

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The Guns of Tanith-smallThe Guns of Tanith
A Warhammer 40K novel
Volume 5 of Gaunt’s Ghosts
By Dan Abnett
Black Library (315 pages, $6.95, May 2002)
Cover by Adrian Smith

The Guns of Tanith opens with another first for the Ghosts: A training sequence. After redeeming himself for the disaster on Hagia, Gaunt and the men of the Tanith First-and-Only are being deployed to Phantine. Phantine’s industrial history spans so many millennia that most of the planet is covered by smog toxic enough to make human life impossible. The remaining Phantine cities are perched on mountains whose elevations rise above the poisonous clouds. So naturally, when the time comes to liberate Phantine settlements from the occupying forces of Chaos, ground assaults aren’t an option. Thus, en route to Phantine, we find the Ghosts in training for an aerial drop assault, supported by Phantine’s elite aerial corps.

The training sequence reintroduces us to some familiar faces: Twitchy sniper Larkin, soft-hearted giant “Try-Again” Bragg, scout leader Mkoll, and the rest of the crew, along with some relatively new arrivals, particularly Commissar Viktor Hark, who joined the Ghosts in the previous volume to supplement Gaunt’s split role as both Commissar (a kind of propaganda officer) and Colonel of the Ghosts. Hark, as neither Tanith nor Vervunhive, is in a position to be a little harsher, a little more detached, and perhaps a little more objective in his disciple than Gaunt can ever be. He’s a fair man, and fits well with the Tanith, but is more at ease with the brutal reality of a commissar’s duty to enforce iron disciple.

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Defending Children of Dune

Defending Children of Dune

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Children of Dune final-smallWhen it comes to Dune and the media universe it spawned, it seems there’s not much middle ground. This is more of a perception than a carefully reasoned position with evidence to back it up. But I gather that people like Dune a lot, or they just don’t get what the fuss is about.

I’d put myself in the former camp. I read a great deal of SF in my early years, before drifting away. Somewhere in there I discovered Dune and I read the original trilogy (yes Virginia, Dune was once a paltry trilogy) several times. Near the end of my SF reading days God Emperor of Dune came out and I read it a few times.

A few decades later I decided to revisit the Dune universe. By now Frank Herbert was long gone, with two more installments published in his later years. There was an ill-fated and much-maligned movie directed by David Lynch (I maintain it’s not that bad of an effort at shoehorning the massive Dune story into two hours). There were some better-regarded miniseries adaptations that aired on the SciFi Channel. And a flood of Dune novels by Herbert’s son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. There are currently fourteen of these spinoffs.

It’s here that I began revisiting Dune. Which seemed like a good idea at the time. The novelty of reading about Dune again got me through six or seven volumes. Then it dawned on me that perhaps they didn’t measure up to the originals. I’ll leave it at that.

Another perception I’ve formed is that even for those who like Dune, the first book was the end of the line. Which I’d agree with, but only to a point. I probably won’t read any more Herbert/Anderson books, and I see no reason to revisit books five and six of Frank Herbert’s original run.

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New Treasures: Dragon Coast by Greg van Eekhout

New Treasures: Dragon Coast by Greg van Eekhout

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Dragon Coast-smallIn California Bones, Greg van Eekhout introduced us to Daniel Blackland, a con artist attempting the biggest con of his career… who ends up crossing the terrifyingly powerful Hierarch, the tyrant ruling the Kingdom of Southern California. With the mysterious and powerful Sam, the Hierarch’s golem, Daniel ended up on the run. In the second novel, Pacific Fire, set a decade later, the pair return to L.A. to confront a brand new horror: the terrifying weapon of mass destruction called a Pacific Firedrake. In the concluding volume in the trilogy, the stakes are even higher, as Daniel Blackland must pull off his most improbable theft yet, by returning to the Kingdom of Northern California and stealing the bones of the great dragon at the center of the Earth.

Daniel’s adopted son Sam, made from the magical essence of the tyrannical Hierarch of Southern California whom Daniel overthrew and killed, is lost — consumed by the great Pacific firedrake secretly assembled by Daniel’s half-brother, Paul.

But Sam is still alive and aware, in magical form, trapped inside the dragon as it rampages around Los Angeles, periodically torching a neighborhood or two.

Daniel has a plan to rescue Sam. It will involve the rarest of substances, axis mundi, pieces of the bones of the great dragon at the center of the Earth. Daniel will have to go to the kingdom of Northern California, boldly posing as his half-brother, come to claim his place in the competition to be appointed Lord High Osteomancer of the Northern Kingdom. Only when the Northern Hierarch, in her throne room at Golden Gate Park, raises her scepter to confirm Daniel in his position will he have an opportunity to steal the axis mundi — under the gaze of the Hierarch herself.

And that’s just the first obstacle.

We covered the first two novels in the trilogy here. Dragon Coast will be published by Tor Books September 15, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Cliff Nielsen.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

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The-Book-of-Lost-Tales-2-smallI was a voracious reader of fantasy in my teens and early twenties. Moorcock, Tolkien, Lieber, Kurtz, Feist, Eddings, Brooks, Donaldson, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell; I devoured series fantasy. And later I would delve into McKiernan, Cook, Howard, Jordan and others.

Now, in the past decade, I’ve made a couple of attempts to re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but given up each time (I can say the same thing about Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series). I like the stories and the events, but parts of them just read so sloooow. I’ve not run into that problem with Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, or Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni books. But I’m still a huge Tolkien fan, even though I don’t sit down and read through him any more.

I’m in a rather small minority that prefers The Silmarillion to his two better-known works. And that’s because I’m completely sold on Tolkien as a world builder and storyteller. That’s why he’s still a favorite.

From the story of the Silmarils up to the start of the Third Age, Tolkien set the standard for world building and epic history. I enjoy the vast creations of Robert Jordan, Steven Erickson, Stephen R. Donaldson, David Eddings and many more, but Tolkien was unsurpassed.

One of my first Dungeons and Dragons characters was an elf named Gil Galad, wielding his spear, Aeglos. Fingolfin, the Sons of Feanor, Hurin, Turin, Melkor, Ancalagon, and Glaurung: The Silmarillion is just chock full of heroes, villains, lands, kingdoms and events.

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Foz Meadows Signs Two-Book Deal with Angry Robot

Foz Meadows Signs Two-Book Deal with Angry Robot

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Foz MeadowsBlack Gate blogger Foz Meadows has just signed a two-book deal with UK publisher Angry Robot, one of the most exciting and innovative genre publishers out there. Both books will be part of the same fantasy series. Here’s the release from Angry Robot:

An Accident of Stars, the first in the series, which is described by Foz as ‘a portal fantasy with the safeties off’, will be published in summer 2016, with a second novel to follow. You might know of Australian born, Aberdeen-based Foz through her Hugo-nominated blog, Shattersnipe, or from her many articles on The Huffington Post, Strange Horizons, Tor.com or the sadly now closed A Dribble of Ink. Foz has also written two previous books, Solace and Grief and The Key to Starveldt.

Foz Meadows: “After years of quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) obsessing over magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies, I’m delighted to announce that Angry Robot has decided to enable me in these endeavours. An Accident of Stars is the book I desperately wanted to read, but couldn’t possibly have written, at sixteen – and, as you may have guessed, it features (among a great many other things) magic portals, feminism and adventuring ladies. I’m immensely excited to share it with you, and I look forward to collaborating in its production with our glorious Robot Overlords, who only asked in exchange a very small blood sacrifice and part ownership of my soul.”

Congratulations Foz!

You can read the complete release at the Angry Robot website, or check out Foz’s most recent blog post at Black Gate, “The Fascination of Dragons.”

Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance

Vintage Treasures: The Durdane Trilogy by Jack Vance

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The Anome-small The Brave Free Men-small The Asutra-small

Jack Vance was an amazingly prolific writer, and he wrote for over six decades. That’s two decades shy of Jack Williamson’s astonishing eight-decade run as an SF writer, but still pretty darned impressive. Vance made his fiction debut in the Summer 1945 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories with “The World-Thinker,” and his last short story, “Phalild’s Fate,” appeared in the ebook collection Chateau d’If and Other Stories in April 2012, a year before he died at the age of 96. No one is entirely sure how many books he produced in all that time, and estimates range from 60 to as high as 90.

Not too surprisingly, one of the marvelous things about Jack Vance is that I’m still discovering his work. I’ve never read his Durdane trilogy from the 1970s, for example — and in fact, I acquired a complete set for the first time last April at the Windy City Pulp & Paper show here in Chicago. Before I settled in to read it, I had a look back at its publishing history (doesn’t everyone do that?), and discovered just how many editions there have been over the years. Here’s a quick survey of a few of the more interesting incarnations of one of Vance’s more overlooked fantasies.

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