Browsed by
Category: Series Fantasy

Unbound Worlds on 7 Great Occult Detectives

Unbound Worlds on 7 Great Occult Detectives

Comments 0 Comment
Greywaker Kat Richardson-small Ben Aaronovitch Midnight Riot-small Simon Green Something from the Nightside-small

Matt Staggs seems to be most productive blogger over at Unbound Worlds, the house blog of Penguin Random House. He’s certainly produced most of my favorite stuff over there recently, including 4 Epic Fantasy Novels Written Before The Lord of the Rings, Have a Look at D&D Creator Gary Gygax’s FBI File, and 3 Great Novels to Read After You’ve Seen Wonder Woman.

But the piece I find myself returning to multiple times in the past two weeks is his June 5th article “7 of Urban Fantasy’s Great Occult Detectives,” in which he showcases some of the recent heroes and heroines who’ve followed in the footsteps of famous ghost hunters like Carnacki The Ghost Finder, Jules de Grandin, Aylmer Vance, John Thunstone, Titus Crow, and many others. Staggs proves this proud sub-genre is far from dead, and his proof includes series from Jim Butcher, Daniel José Older, Seanan McGuire, Laurel K. Hamilton, and others. Here’s a few of my favorites from his list.

…

Read More Read More

A Fast-Paced Blend of Space Opera and Military SF: The Outriders Series by Jay Posey

A Fast-Paced Blend of Space Opera and Military SF: The Outriders Series by Jay Posey

Comments 0 Comment
Jay Posey Outriders-small Jay Posey Sungrazer-small

Jay Posey is an interesting guy. His work is known to millions around the world — millions of gamers, anyway. He was the Senior Narrative Designer at Red Storm Entertainment, creator of the million-selling Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six franchises. He branched into novels in 2013 with Three, the opening volume in what eventually became the Legends of the Duskwalker trilogy, a futuristic weird western set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland peopled by augmented humans, cyborgs, and the deadly Weir. It became the bestselling series at Angry Robot, and helped put the imprint on the map.

His newest effort is the Outriders series, featuring a crack team of nearly immortal super-soldiers in clone bodies. Bull Spec magazine called it “Military science fiction with a twisty plot and a complex political landscape… A great read for lovers of science fiction adventure!”, and SFF World labeled it “A high-paced blend of near-future space opera and military sf… good fun.” The first volume was published as a paperback original last year by Angry Robot; the highly anticipated sequel arrives next month.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Dark Sky and Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks

Future Treasures: Dark Sky and Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks

Comments 0 Comment
Dark-Run-Mike-Brooks-small Dark Sky Mike Brooks-small Dark Deeds Mike Brooks-small

Mike Brooks’s space opera Dark Run, published last year by Saga Press, was one of the most acclaimed SF debuts of 2016. The Keiko and its crew of smugglers, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers travelling Earth’s colony planets successfully took on a job that could pay off a lot of their debts, in a corrupt galaxy where life is cheap and criminals are the best people in it. In the sequel Dark Sky, arriving in hardcover and trade paperback next month, Captain Ichabod Drift and his crew sign on for a new smuggling job that soon goes south when they’re separated and caught up in a dangerous civil war.

When Ichabod Drift and the Keiko crew sign on for a new smuggling job to a mining planet, they don’t realize what they are up against. The miners, badly treated for years by the corporation, are staging a rebellion. Split into two groups, one with the authorities and one with the rebels, Drift and his crew support their respective sides in the conflict. But when they are cut off from each other due to a communication blackout, both halves of the crew don’t realize that they have begun fighting themselves…

Dark Sky (322 pages, $26.99 hardcover/$16.99 trade/$7.99 digital) will be published by Saga Press on July 11, 2017. It will be followed this fall with the third volume, Dark Deeds, in which a ship-wide vacation leads to the second-in-command being taken hostage by a criminal mastermind.

…

Read More Read More

The World is Not the Way it Was: Downside Ghosts by Stacia Kane

The World is Not the Way it Was: Downside Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Comments 0 Comment
Unholy Ghosts-small Unholy Magic-small City of Ghosts-small

A decade ago, the shelves of my local bookstores were groaning under the weight of countless paranormal romances. Urban fantasies featuring baddass women and the dangerous men they desired (including vampires, werewolves, sorcerers, aliens, zombies, buff mannequins, and all manner of sexy and not-so-sexy undead) thoroughly dominated the genre.

Today, the paranormal romance is dead. Not even undead — totally dead. That particular vein of fantasy has been thoroughly played out, and we are not likely to see it return in our lifetime. I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go; paranormal romance was never my favorite subgenre, and while it was at its peak it so thoroughly dominated the market that it seemed to choke out everything else.

Still, hidden in every genre and subgenre, there is always good, innovative work. Amongst the derivative pseudo-erotica about well-groomed vampire lords and werewolf bikers was a handful of real gems, produced by writers using the trappings of paranormal romance to craft truly fun urban serials, and those who had tweaked the formula to come up with something uniquely their own. Now that the roaring tide has finally receded on paranormal romance it’s time to do a little beachcombing, picking out treasures in the sand. My first pick is the Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane, set in a dark and ominous world where the dead have risen, the living are threatened every day, and the Church of Real Truth seized power when governments around the world collapsed.

…

Read More Read More

Steampunk, Voodoo, and the Walking Dead: Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

Steampunk, Voodoo, and the Walking Dead: Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard

Comments 0 Comment
Something Strange and Deadly-small Something Strange and Deadly back-small

For readers with dark tastes and a deep-seated love for romance, I recommend Something Strange and Deadly, the first in a trilogy by Susan Dennard, author of Truthwitch.

Why, you might ask? Well, Dennard has a supreme understanding of how to enhance gothic themes with an addictive steampunk flourish, and captivate her readers with antagonists you come to enjoy more than the protagonists. (Okay, that’s a stretch. But she outdid herself with her villain). Do you know how to spend a blissful Saturday evening curled up under your favorite blanket drinking tea, while freezing rain crashes against your window in the coal black darkness of the night? Then you, my friend, know the right way to appreciate this diamond in the rough.

Eleanor Fitt, a ferociously intelligent sixteen year-old from a disgraced aristocratic family in Philadelphia, longs for the return of her older brother, Elijah. When she becomes entangled in a swarm of the walking dead at the famed exhibition, a harbinger of her brother’s possible doom delivers a telegram with a cryptic message that gives her a clue to his whereabouts.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Kangaroo Too by Curtis C. Chen

Future Treasures: Kangaroo Too by Curtis C. Chen

Comments 0 Comment
Waypoint Kangaroo-small Kangaroo Too-small

Curtis C. Chen’s debut novel Waypoint Kangaroo was a Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel. Not your typical SF adventure, it featured a secret agent sent on a forced vacation after screwing up once too often. James Patrick Kelly called it “A high tech thriller set on a passenger liner headed for Mars, featuring a wisecracking secret agent with a super power that will blow your mind,” and Charlie Jane Anders said “This Kangaroo could just be your new favorite wisecracking interplanetary adventurer.” The sequel, a brand new tale of outer space adventure, arrives in hardcover next week.

On the way home from his latest mission, secret agent Kangaroo’s spacecraft is wrecked by a rogue mining robot. The agency tracks the bot back to the Moon, where a retired asteroid miner — code named “Clementine” — might have information about who’s behind the sabotage.

Clementine will only deal with Jessica Chu, Kangaroo’s personal physician and a former military doctor once deployed in the asteroid belt. Kangaroo accompanies Jessica as a courier, smuggling Clementine’s payment of solid gold in the pocket universe that only he can use.

What should be a simple infiltration is hindered by the nearly one million tourists celebrating the anniversary of the first Moon landing. And before Kangaroo and Jessica can make contact, Lunar authorities arrest Jessica for the murder of a local worker.

Jessica won’t explain why she met the victim in secret or erased security footage that could exonerate her. To make things worse, a sudden terror attack puts the whole Moon under lockdown. Now Kangaroo alone has to get Clementine to talk, clear Jessica’s name, and stop a crooked scheme which threatens to ruin approximately one million vacations.

But old secrets are buried on the Moon, and digging up the past will make Kangaroo’s future very complicated…

Kangaroo Too will be published by St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books on June 20, 2017. It is 308 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by David Curtis.

New Treasures: Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

New Treasures: Skitter by Ezekiel Boone

Comments 0 Comment
The Hatching-small Skitter Ezekiel Boone-small

Ezekiel Boone (who also writes mainstream fiction under the name Alexi Zentner) published his debut horror novel last July. The Hatching, the tale of an Earth overrun by spiders, was called Arachnophobia meets 2012, and Publishers Weekly praised it as “An apocalyptic extravaganza of doom and heroism… addictive.”

The sequel Skitter arrived in hardcover from Atria/Emily Bestler Books last month. What can you expect in the second volume of a spider apocalypse saga? Let’s say that things don’t look good for mankind, and leave it at that. Spider apocalypse. Yeee…. I get the jitters just thinking about it.

First, there was the black swarm that swallowed a man whole, the suspicious seismic irregularities in India that confounded scientists, the nuclear bomb China dropped on its own territory without any explanation. Then, scientist Melanie Guyer’s lab received a package containing a mysterious egg sac; little did Dr. Guyer know that, almost overnight, Earth would be consumed by previously dormant spiders that suddenly wanted out.

Now, tens of millions of people around the world are dead. Half of China is a nuclear wasteland. Mysterious flesh-eating spiders are marching through Los Angeles, Oslo, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and countless other cities. According to Dr. Guyer, the crisis may soon be over.

But in Japan, a giant, glowing egg sac gives a shocking preview of what is to come, even as survivors in Los Angeles panic and break the quarantine zone. Out in the desert, survivalists Gordo and Shotgun are trying to invent a weapon to fight back, but it may be too late, because President Stephanie Pilgrim has been forced to enact the plan of last resort.

America, you are on your own.

We covered The Hatching here last year. Skitter was published by Emily Bestler Books on May 2, 2017. It is $26 in hardcover, and $7.99 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Ace Novels of Patricia C. Wrede

Vintage Treasures: The Ace Novels of Patricia C. Wrede

Comments 9 comments

Lyra series Patricia C Wrede-small

On Thursday I was carefully stacking books in the vast subterranean treasure vault known locally as the Cave of Wonders (and which my wife calls, much more prosaically, our basement), when I found something unusual: a stack of unopened boxes. That’s a mystery worth investigating. I carted them back through winding tunnels and secret passageways until I reached our library, and pried them open with a crow bar.

Wonder of wonders! They were packed with vintage paperback and strange magazines. It’s like Christmas!

They were doubtless eBay booty that got hastily stashed in the basement because company was coming over five years ago, or something similar. Who knows. I have no recollection of them, so it’s like getting a surprise package from my former self. And, man. What great taste that guy has! There was an odd assortment of magic magazines from the early 1970s (chiefly The Linking Ring, which is packed with the most fabulous ads for trick cards, books, and neato magic books), a set of DAW volumes by Neal Barrett, Jr., and the collection of 80s Ace paperbacks by Patricia C. Wrede pictured above.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Queen of Swords, Book 3 of the Golgotha Series, by R.S. Belcher

Future Treasures: The Queen of Swords, Book 3 of the Golgotha Series, by R.S. Belcher

Comments 0 Comment
The-Six-Gun-Tarot-smaller The Shotgun Arcana-small The Queen of Swords RS Belcher-small

R.S. Belcher’s last novel, The Brotherhood of the Wheel, was selected as one of the best horror novels of the year by the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. For his next novel, he returns to Golgotha, the Weird Western setting of The Six-Gun Tarot (which RT Book Reviews called “Fascinating… like a mashup of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Deadwood,”) and The Shotgun Arcana (“Golgotha is the wildest of the Wild West, attracting mystics, minor deities, alchemists, seers, and fanatics in a fantastical romp” — Publishers Weekly). It arrives in hardcover from Tor later this month.

1870. Maude Stapleton, late of Golgotha, Nevada, is a respectable widow raising a daughter on her own. Few know that Maude belongs to an ancient order of assassins, the Daughters of Lilith, and is as well the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Anne Bonney, the legendary female pirate.

Leaving Golgotha in search of her daughter Constance, who has been taken from her, Maude travels to Charleston, South Carolina, only to find herself caught in the middle of a secret war between the Daughters of Lilith and their ancestral enemies, the monstrous Sons of Typhon. To save Constance, whose prophetic gifts are sought by both cults, Maude must follow in the footsteps of Anne Bonney as she embarks on a perilous voyage that will ultimately lead her to a lost city of bones in the heart of Africa ― and the Father of All Monsters.

One of the most popular characters from The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana ventures beyond Golgotha on a boldly imaginative, globe-spanning adventure of her own.

…

Read More Read More

Princesses, Space Battles, Monsters and Aliens: The Sirantha Jax Novels by Ann Aguirre

Princesses, Space Battles, Monsters and Aliens: The Sirantha Jax Novels by Ann Aguirre

Comments 4 comments

Grimspace Wanderlust Doubleblind Sirantha Jax

I love adventure science fiction, but I’m a little shy of all these open ended series. I want to fall in love with a series, sure… but do I want to fall for a publishing endeavor with an uncertain future, one that could easily be derailed by an author illness, a fickle market, publishing setbacks or other unexpected tragedy? Who needs that anxiety and potential heartache? Not me; I have three teenagers.

Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary, since most of the adventure SF I like tends to be part of series. But there are a few completed story arcs, out there — not many, but a few. Successful series that have wrapped up with a beginning, middle, and an end. And one of those is Ann Aquirre’s 6-volume Sirantha Jax cycle, a far-ranging space opera in a well-realized universe that left fans happy with a satisfying concluding volume.

My friend Sharon Shinn was one of the first to alert me to these books, with her review of the opening volume Grimspace: “Sirantha Jax doesn’t just leap off the page — she storms out, kicking, cursing, and mouthing off. No wonder her pilot falls in love with her; readers will too.”

…

Read More Read More