Black Gate

I managed to miss A Turn of Light when it was released in trade paperback last March. A pity, as I’ve tried to keep up on the novels of Julie E. Czerneda ever since her first, A Thousand Words for Stranger, landed at my door back in 1997. The fact that she’s a fellow Canadian just adds an extra layer of awesome.

In the 17 years since her debut, Julie has published no less than four highly regarded science fiction trilogies: Trade Pact, Stratification, Species Imperative, and Web Shifters. But with her latest, she turns to epic fantasy for the first time and I’m keenly interested in seeing where she’ll take the genre.

The pastoral valley of Marrowdell is home to a small pioneer settlement of refugees, lush fields of grain, enigmatic house toads — and Jenn Nalynn, the miller’s daughter. Life here is full of laughter and peace, as well as hard work, and no one bothers overmuch about the outside world. Except Jenn Nalynn. Jenn longs to travel, to seek what’s missing in her life. Not that she’s sure what that is, but since this summer began, she’s felt a strange and powerful yearning. She’s certain she’ll find what she needs, if only she can leave the valley.

But she must not. Jenn is turn-born and cursed, born by the light of two worlds and bound to both. For the valley is more than it seems. Long ago, a cataclysm of misused power pinned Marrowdell to the Verge, a place of wild magic, home to dragons and even stranger creatures. Should Jenn step beyond Marrowdell, she will pull the worlds asunder. To prevent this, powers from the Verge have sent a guard to watch over her, a disgraced dragon Jenn knows as Wisp, her invisible playmate. Wisp’s duty is to keep Jenn in Marrowdell. By love, if he can. By her death, if he must.

But time is running out. What Jenn unknowingly feels is the rise of the Verge’s magic within her, a magic that will threaten her and those she loves. Worse, this summer will end with a Great Turn, and strangers seeking power at any cost have come to Marrowdell to try to force an opening into the Verge, to the ruin of all.

A Turn of Light, the first in the Night’s Edge series, will be published by DAW on March 4th. It is 822 pages, priced at $8.99 for the paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The second volume, A Play of Shadow, is scheduled to be released in November. Check out her website for fresh updates.

I’m not sure why, but everyone on the Internet seems to be showing the wrong cover for Reflected. The artwork — a beautifully spooky silhouette of a woman reclining by a mist-covered, moonlit lake — is correct, but the text is wrong, and the title is at the top, instead of the bottom. Amazon’s cover is wrong; so is Barnes & Noble. Even Goodreads is showing the pre-release version. The correct cover, scanned from the hot-of-the-presses copy in my hot little hands, is at right.

Well, at least they’re all talking about the book. Reflected is Rhiannon Held’s third novel, the second sequel to her very popular debut Silver, an urban fantasy which introduced the Roanoke were-pack and the deadly monsters which threaten them.

The Were have lived among humans for centuries, secretly, carefully. They came to America with the earliest European colonists, seeking a land where their packs could run free. Andrew Dare is a descendant of those colonists, and he and his mate, Silver, have become alphas of the Roanoke pack, the largest in North America.

But they have enemies, both within their territory and beyond the sea. Andrew is drawn away to deal with the problem of a half-human child in Alaska, leaving Silver to handle the pack and his rebellious daughter just as a troublemaker from Spain arrives on the scene.

Reflected is the third in the series, following Silver (2012) and Tarnished (2013). It was published by Tor Books on February 18, 2014. It is 336 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Visit Rhiannon Held’s website here.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London novels are one of my favorite new series. io9 calls them “The perfect blend of CSI and Harry Potter.” I’ve never watched CSI, but I imagine that can’t be that far off. I think Diana Gabaldon is very close when she describes them as “What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz.”

Even those quotes don’t do justice to how funny these novels are. They’re tightly plotted, too; just the right mix of humor, suspense, and genuine character development. The latest in the series, Broken Homes, just landed this month. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

My name is Peter Grant, and I am a keeper of the secret flame — whatever that is.

Truth be told, there’s a lot I still don’t know. My superior Nightingale, previously the last of England’s wizardly governmental force, is trying to teach me proper schooling for a magician’s apprentice. But even he doesn’t have all the answers. Mostly I’m just a constable sworn to enforce the Queen’s Peace, with the occasional help from some unusual friends and a well-placed fire blast. With the new year, I have three main objectives, a) pass the detective exam so I can officially become a DC, b) work out what the hell my relationship with Lesley Mai, an old friend from the force and now fellow apprentice, is supposed to be, and most importantly, c) get through the year without destroying a major landmark.

Two out of three isn’t bad, right?

A mutilated body in Crawley means another murderer is on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, who may either be a common serial killer or an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man — a man whose previous encounters I’ve barely survived.

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You don’t have time to keep up on all the great work produced in the fantasy and horror fields, year after year.

You may think you do. But trust me, you don’t. There are fantastic new novelists emerging all the time — folks like Laird Barron, Theodora Goss, Genevieve Valentine, and Ekaterina Sedia — and new masters of the short story, like Karen Tidbeck, Ken Liu, Rachel Swirsky, Mike Carey, and many others. How are you going to keep up?

Believe it or not, that’s not a rhetorical question. I have the answer right here: Paula Guran’s indispensable annual collection The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. It’s like a cheat sheet covering all the exciting new — and established — writers in the genre. Read it every year, and I guarantee you’ll be talking intelligently about the latest literary trends in dark fantasy at your next party. (You’re on your own picking out what to wear, though. Just remember: no white after Labor Day.)

Paula Guran doesn’t provide the lengthy annual summary typical of some Year’s Best collections. Instead she gives the space over to fiction — over 500 pages of the best short stories of 2013, culled from magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Postscripts, Cemetery Dance, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Subterranean, Lightspeed, Apex, and Shimmer, and anthologies like The Book of Cthulhu 2, Hex Appeal, Shotguns v Cthulhu, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, Black Wings II, and many others.

This is the fourth volume of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, but the first one I’ve gotten around to. In our defense, we’ve at least covered several of Paula’s other recent anthologies, including Season of Wonder and Weird Detectives.

Here’s the book description.

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