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New Treasures: The Edge of Reason Trilogy by Melinda Snodgrass

New Treasures: The Edge of Reason Trilogy by Melinda Snodgrass

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The Edge of Reason-small The Edge of Ruin-small The Edge of Dawn-small

Melinda Snodgrass’s The Edge of Reason was originally published in hardcover with a snoozer of a cover (seriously — see below) by Tor Books in 2008. For the paperback edition in 2009 Tor recolored the cover, which I don’t think helped much. Maybe in 2009 it made sense to dress up the tale of a secret war between the forces of science and superstition as a Da Vinci Code lookalike, but here in 2015 we know better.

Maybe that’s why I never noticed The Edge of Reason when it first appeared. Why have I noticed it now? Because Tor reissued it on April 21 with a vastly superior cover by Chris McGrath (above). Seriously, this book has giant tentacles, and no one thought to feature them on the cover? This is Publishing 101, people.

Tor has not gifted us with a newer, awesomer edition of The Edge of Reason simply because Chris McGrath had a free weekend. The sequel, The Edge of Ruin, will be reprinted in paperback on July 28th (above, cover by McGrath), and the third volume, The Edge of Dawn, arrives on August 4th — also with a McGrath cover. Which also prominently features tentacles. Because that’s how you do it.

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Raya Golden on Building a Career as a Hugo Nominated Illustrator, Putting Up with Demanding Author Clients, and Her Talent for Gay Pinups

Raya Golden on Building a Career as a Hugo Nominated Illustrator, Putting Up with Demanding Author Clients, and Her Talent for Gay Pinups

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RestlessEarthSmallBlessingSkySmallIt is cover reveal day for my two upcoming novels, Restless Earth and Blessing Sky, and so these beautiful covers are being posted all around the internet. What better excuse to interview Raya Golden, the illustrator? Raya lives here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has been working as a professional artist for ten years.

Recently, she and I sat down to discuss a wide range of topics (hence the interview has a detailed guide below it that tells you where to click to hear about the topics that interest you.) First we discussed how to build a career as an artist; it isn’t easy. Then we got into the particulars of different kinds of art, from her Hugo Nominated work on George RR Martin’s Meathouse Man comic, to the graphic novel she is working on now. She was kind enough to explain the process of creating a graphic novel or comic step by step.

Then there are book covers, which present a plethora of challenges. She and I talked about everything from the design basics of an effective book cover to the challenges of portraying minority cultures. During this time I also explained the milieu and setting of these novels, which are essentially fantasy steampunk westerns.

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Future Treasures: Dead Man’s Reach by D. B. Jackson

Future Treasures: Dead Man’s Reach by D. B. Jackson

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Dead Man's Reach-smallBlack Gate readers may remember we published a popular short story by David B. Coe, “Night of Two Moons,” in Black Gate 4. In a fascinating article written for us last year, The Life and Times of a Midlist Author, David B. Coe wrote:

Writing now as D. B. Jackson, I am the author of The Thieftaker Chronicles, a historical urban fantasy series set in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The first two books, Thieftaker (Tor Books, 2012) and Thieves’ Quarry (Tor Books, 2013), have been received very well critically and did well enough commercially that Tor bought two more books from me. The first of these, the third in the series, is called A Plunder of Souls and it drops on July 8, 2014. (Please buy it. In fact, feel free to buy a few copies; they make great gifts and come in an attractive package complete with artwork by Chris McGrath. We now return to our regularly scheduled blog post…)

The fourth Thieftaker novel, Dead Man’s Reach, will be out next summer.

In addition, David (as D.B. Jackson) interviewed his main character Ethan Kaille, the Thieftaker, in a funny and very insightful post for us in July of 2013.

The fourth novel that David mentioned in his article last year, the highly anticipated Dead Man’s Reach, is finally due from Tor Books next month. It is a stand alone story, and can be enjoyed separately from the others in the series.

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New Treasures: Medicine For the Dead by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

New Treasures: Medicine For the Dead by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

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Medicine for the Dead-smallOne of the more popular books I featured in my New Treasures coverage last year was the debut fantasy novel by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson, a delightful weird western titled One Night in Sixes. The border town of Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but at sunset wake the gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight. Appaloosa Elim had to enter Sixes to find his so-called ‘partner Sil Halfwick, who disappeared inside in the hope of making a name for himself among Sixes’ notorious black-market traders.

And now the story of Appaloosa Elim continues in Medicine For the Dead, Book Two of Children of the Drought, published by Solaris in March.

Two years ago, the crow-god Marhuk sent his grandson to Sixes. Two nights ago, a stranger picked up his gun and shot him. Two hours ago, the funeral party set out for the holy city of Atali’Krah, braving the wastelands to bring home the body of Dulei Marhuk.

Out in the wastes, one more corpse should hardly make a difference. But the blighted landscape has been ravaged by drought, twisted by violence, and warped by magic — and no-one is immune. Vuchak struggles to keep the party safe from monsters, marauders, and his own troubled mind. Weisei is being eaten alive by a strange illness. And fearful, guilt-wracked Elim hopes he’s only imagining the sounds coming from Dulei’s coffin.

As their supplies dwindle and tensions mount, the desert exacts a terrible price from its pilgrims – one that will be paid with the blood of the living, and the peace of the dead.

Read the first pages at Thompson’s website. Medicine For the Dead was published by Solaris on March 24, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tomasz Jedruszek.

The Future of Fantasy: The Best New Releases in June

The Future of Fantasy: The Best New Releases in June

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A Book of Spirits and Thieves-small The-Years-Best-Science-Fiction-Fantasy-2015-small The Birthgrave Tanith Lee-small

There are precisely 30 days in June, and we’ve compiled a list of the 30 most exciting and anticipated novels, collections and anthologies being released this month. You know what that means — if you want to keep up, you’ll need to read at least one book a day (and since we’re already a dozen days into June, you better get hopping… you’re behind already!)

Our June catalog of the best new fiction includes new releases from Stephen King, Garth Nix, Mark Lawrence, John R. Fultz, Terry Brooks, Jon Sprunk, and others, as well as some spiffy reprints from James Blaylock,  Tanith Lee, Lev Grossman, Michael Moorcock, and others. But time’s a-wasting; let’s get started!

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Where Extra-planar Daemons and Dark Gods Play: Warhammer 40K: Gaunt’s Ghosts: First & Only

Where Extra-planar Daemons and Dark Gods Play: Warhammer 40K: Gaunt’s Ghosts: First & Only

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Gaunts Ghosts First and Only-smallFirst & Only
A Warhammer 40K novel
Volume 1 of Gaunt’s Ghosts
By Dan Abnett
Black Library (272 pages, $6.95, March 2000)
Cover by Kenson Low

Warhammer 40,000 is, at its core, a miniatures game artfully designed to separate wargamers from their money with peak efficiency. But it may be more broadly known as a shared-universe fiction franchise which occupies several shelves in the tie-in fiction wasteland west of “Z” at your local book retailer. Our very own John O’Neill has covered several books in the ongoing Horus Heresy saga, and odds are that even if you’ve never picked up a book, you’ve noticed the Black Library imprint occupying ever more space on the New Releases rack.

WH40k occupies a gray area between science fiction and fantasy. I’d categorize it most accurately as a very grim shade of space opera, but extra-planar daemons and dark gods play a central role in its varied mythology, and there are sci-fi races which correspond to elves, orcs, and even undead (with heavy shades of Terminator). It’s primarily a canvas on which to tell stories about war, and so none of the various factions are particularly given to the arts of peacetime.

The majority of WH40K fiction is stories about the Space Marines (Adeptus Astartes for purists): genetically enhanced super soldiers who go into battle against alien and daemonic hordes clad in heavy power armor and carrying an assortment of massive guns and chainsaw swords. They tend to be hyper-manly, grim, serious, and generally without concerns besides waging war.

Honestly, I’ve found most of the WH40K fiction I’ve sampled to be fairly shallow. Every story is perpetual war and violence, with characters who exist only as warriors, moving from battle to blood-drenched battle. Most of the time, I’ve felt that any sense of deeper meaning to the carnage gets obscured, leaving little more than loving descriptions of weaponry and slaughter.

But there are diamonds in the ashes, and Dan Abnett’s work shines brightest of them all.

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Vintage Treasures: Dragonflight and Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

Vintage Treasures: Dragonflight and Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

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Dragonflight McCaffrey-small Dragonquest McCaffrey-small

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern is one of the most famous and bestselling science fantasy series of all time. All told there are sixteen novels, written between 1968 and 2006, the last two in collaboration with her son Todd.

The artist most closely associated with it is probably Michael Whelan, who was hired to paint the cover for the third novel, The White Dragon, published in June 1978. The White Dragon became the first bestseller in the series, and Whelan was hired by Ballantine to create new covers for the first two novels, Dragonflight and Dragonquest, late in 1978. He did a fine job, and was subsequently hired for the next four volumes in the series.

But I still admit a great fondness for the early 70s covers of the first two books (above), both painted by Gino D’Achille. Both books were Ballantine paperback originals. The covers are more whimsical and fairy-tale like, and speak to me of 1970s fantasy.

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The Series Series: Shieldwall: Barbarians! by M. Harold Page

The Series Series: Shieldwall: Barbarians! by M. Harold Page

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Shieldwall BarbariansThings you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular Black Gate reader:

  • When one of the Black Gate bloggers has a new book out, there’ll be posts here about it. Many posts, and that’s a good thing.
  • We bloggers like to cheer each other on. Writing can be a discouraging business, but celebrating each other’s good news is one of its great pleasures.
  • I will tell you straight up what I think a book’s virtues and shortcomings are, even if the book is by a fellow Black Gate blogger. I do give the occasional gushing review, but not indiscriminately.

I lay it out like that because there’s exactly one thing I wish were different about M. Harold Page’s new book, Shieldwall: Barbarians!, and it’s something I fully expect the next volume in the series will satisfy.

So, on to the story:

A brother chases warbands, and then armies, across the ragged edges of the Roman Empire, right into a city besieged by Attila the Hun, because that’s what it will take to rescue his sister from slavery. On the way, young Prince Hengest’s own warband doubts his readiness to lead them. Can a boy fostered among Romans ever truly become a man of the Jutes? And as their odds of finding Princess Tova look slimmer and slimmer, why should they keep risking their lives far from home against foes they have no quarrel with? The man who was to marry Tova, hoping to claim Hengest’s crown for himself, feeds those doubts. That insubordination will end in blood, sooner or later.

Hengest is too civilized for his barbarian kinsmen, too barbaric for the fading nobility of the empire, and too late to side with Attila, whose army encampment spreads as far as the eye can see. The young Jutish prince and his men will take the job the doomed city of Aurelianum offers them. Doomed — for Aurelianum cannot possibly stand against Attila, can it? What Hengest must do is find his sister, wherever her captors have hidden her in the city, and get her out through the carnage when at last Aurelianum falls and releases him from his oath to protect it.

Good thing Hengest is a master of improvisation, because nothing plays out as he expects.

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Vintage Treasures: Jamie the Red by Gordon R. Dickson with Roland Green

Vintage Treasures: Jamie the Red by Gordon R. Dickson with Roland Green

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Jamie the Red-smallThieves World is one of the most endlessly creative concepts in the history of fantasy. Nearly four decades after it was first conceived, it’s still surprising me.

This time the surprise came in the shape of Jamie the Red, a 1984 fantasy novel written by Gordon R. Dickson and Roland Green and published by Ace Books, with a cover by Thieves World artist Walter Velez. It’s a surprise because, up until last week, I never knew it existed, despite the fact that I’ve been collecting Thieves World books for 37 years. And also because a little investigation revealed that it’s one of the most important books in the storied history of Thieves World — and for a fascinating reason.

But let’s back up. Who the heck is Jamie the Red, and just what does he have to do with Thieves World?

For our first clue, let’s turn to Paul Shackley’s Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. In August 2013, Paul wrote an entry titled Jamie the Red, where he said, in part:

Maybe everyone else out there already knew this but I certainly did not. When, in “The Gate of the Flying Knives” (Poul Anderson, Fantasy, New York, 1981), Anderson’s character, Cappen Varra, receives help from his friend, Jamie the Red, that friend is a Thieves’ World character in his own right and is even the title character of a novel by two other authors.

Paul was the first to tip me off about Jamie the Red. Yes, Jamie is a Thieves World character, and he does appear rather prominently in a Poul Anderson’s TW story. But Gordon R. Dickson was not even a Thieves World writer… so how the heck did he end up writing a Jamie the Red novel? And why isn’t there a Thieves World banner on the cover?

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Future Treasures: Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan

Future Treasures: Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan

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Queen of Fire Anthony Ryan-smallI first took notice of Anthony Ryan with the publication of Tower Lord (2014), the second volume in the New York Times bestselling Raven’s Shadow trilogy (why do I always discover series with the second volume?) The series began with Blood Song (2013); by the second book, Ryan was being called “David Gemmell’s natural successor.” In the final volume, Vaelin Al Sorna must help his Queen reclaim her Realm — despite the fact that his enemy has found a dangerous new collaborator, one with powers darker than Vaelin has ever encountered…

“The Ally is there, but only ever as a shadow, unexplained catastrophe or murder committed at the behest of a dark vengeful spirit. Sorting truth from myth is often a fruitless task.”

After fighting back from the brink of death, Queen Lyrna is determined to repel the invading Volarian army and regain the independence of the Unified Realm. Except, to accomplish her goals, she must do more than rally her loyal supporters. She must align herself with forces she once found repugnant — those who possess the strange and varied gifts of the Dark — and take the war to her enemy’s doorstep.

Victory rests on the shoulders of Vaelin Al Sorna, now named Battle Lord of the Realm. However, his path is riddled with difficulties. For the Volarian enemy has a new weapon on their side, one that Vaelin must destroy if the Realm is to prevail — a mysterious Ally with the ability to grant unnaturally long life to her servants. And defeating one who cannot be killed is a nearly impossible feat, especially when Vaelin’s blood-song, the mystical power which has made him the epic fighter he is, has gone ominously silent…

Queen of Fire will be published by Ace Books on July 7, 2015. It is 642 pages, priced at $28.95 in hardcover, and $14.99 for the digital edition.