Black Gate

I’ve been covering a lot of new and upcoming anthologies recently — from John Joseph Adams’s Dead Man’s Hand to Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 8 and George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois’s massive Rogues. Nothing wrong with that. But every once in a while, I like to settle down with something a little more weighty. Not just a quick read, but a genuine fat fantasy with an epic scope, huge cast of characters, and intriguing premise. Ben Peek’s The Godless, the first installment of a new series, weighs in at 562 pages and looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

The Gods are dying. Fifteen thousand years after the end of their war, their bodies can still be found across the world. They kneel in forests, lie beneath mountains, and rest at the bottom of the world’s ocean. For thousands of years, men and women have awoken with strange powers that are derived from their bodies. The city Mireea is built against a huge stone wall that stretches across a vast mountain range, following the massive fallen body of the god, Ger.

Ayae, a young cartographer’s apprentice, is attacked and discovers she cannot be harmed by fire. Her new power makes her a target for an army that is marching on Mireea. With the help of Zaifyr, a strange man adorned with charms, she is taught the awful history of ‘cursed’ men and women, coming to grips with her new powers and the enemies they make. Meanwhile, the saboteur Bueralan infiltrates the army that is approaching her home to learn its terrible secret. Split between the three points of view, the narrative of Godless reaches its conclusion during an epic siege, where Ayae, Zaifyr and Bueralan are forced not just into conflict with those invading, but with those inside the city who wish to do them harm.

The Godless will be published on August 19 by Thomas Dunne Books. It is 562 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Bailey Cunningham’s Pile of Bones, the first novel of Parallel Parks, came out in July of last year and introduced us to Wascana Park, which transforms into the magical kingdom of Anfractus after midnight, and the group of ordinary university students who step inside and become a company of heroes — warriors, bards, and archers in a real-life role-playing game. (See our write-up from last August here.)

Now in the second volume, the stakes are raised and the team must learn to function without one of their most important members. Path of Smoke will be released late next month, which gives you plenty of time to get caught up with the first volume!

The company of heroes has thwarted the plan of the power-hungry basilissa to conquer Anfractus, but not without a cost. Andrew’s character, Roldan, died, leaving him cut off from the mystical realm without any memory of its existence. If the others reveal the park’s magical nature to Andrew, his banishment will become permanent. So they must hide their nighttime adventures — and hope that his memory returns.

Pursued by the basilissa’s forces, the rest of the group keeps a low profile in Anfractus until they uncover an unholy alliance between their enemy and the silenoi, satyrlike creatures who hunt humans — an alliance that threatens to cross the barrier into the real world.

And while his friends struggle to prevent an invasion in both worlds, Andrew receives a visitor determined to restore his memory of Anfractus by leading him down a very dark path…

Path of Smoke will be published by Ace Books on July 29, 2014. It is 304 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $5.99 for the digital version.

I hear good things about these Burton & Swinburne adventure novels by Mark Hodder.

The series opened with The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Sept. 2010) and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man (March 2011). Come on, you have to love them just for the titles. Book #3, Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, arrived in January, 2012, and #4, The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi, in July of last year. In regards to that last book, Steampunk godfather KW Jeter noted, “Mark Hodder vaults to the front of the new steampunk writer’s pack.” Time for me to jump on board now, I think.

SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK!

It’s 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire’s most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London’s Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton!

Spring Heeled Jack isn’t alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he’s experiencing one hallucination after another-visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about… what?

When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined-a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!

The Return of the Discontinued Man will be published on July 8, 2014 by Pyr Books. It is 339 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.