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Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent by Joe Bonadonna

Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent by Joe Bonadonna

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oie_2452510XuzP2C1Joe Bonadonna’s a friend of Black Gate and, I’m proud to say, a friend of mine. He’s also a heck of a teller of hardboiled action and adventure tales. After too many years out of the toilsome fields of swords & sorcery, he returned in 2010 with a top-flight collection of short stories about one Dorgo Mikawber, dowser of magic and handy with a saber. I discovered Joe and that book, Mad Shadows (2010) here on the virtual pages of Black Gate, and reviewed it over on my site about four years ago.

After another significant hiatus he’s returned with a second collection of Dorgo’s adventures: Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent (2017). That’s a lot of title for a book that just crosses the two-hundred page mark, but it gives a nice sense of the pulpy goodness that lies betwixt its covers.

Dorgo Mikawber was raised in an orphanage, served in the army, and now makes his living as a magical investigator and finder of lost people. Last time out Dorgo’s adventures took him all over the continent of Aerlothia on the world of Tanyime. This time around his wanderings are more limited, starting in the countryside just beyond his home city, Valdar.

MS II is a fix-up. It’s made up of three separate tales, each linked to the other, weaving a larger story of Dorgo’s fight against the mysterious Order of the Serpent and its leader, Ophidious Garloo.

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New Treasures: The Atlanta Burns Novels by Chuck Wendig

New Treasures: The Atlanta Burns Novels by Chuck Wendig

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Atlanta Burns-small Atlanta Burns The Hunt-small

Chuck Wendig is the author of the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy, the Miriam Black novels, The Heartland Trilogy, and many other fine novels. His two-volume series for Skyscape books, Atlanta Burns, piqued my interest… maybe it’s the covers, or maybe because I’m a Veronica Mars fan. Here’s Chuck’s intro to the series from his website.

Veronica Mars on Adderall. Nancy Drew meets Justified.

I wrote this book a couple years ago, and published it as two separate volumes — a novella, Shotgun Gravy, and a follow-up novel, Bait Dog. (The latter published with the help of Kickstarter.) It was a foray into young adult and crime writing at the same time, and the result was something with which I was honestly very happy. Atlanta Burns is a character after my own heart: she is a real-deal social justice warrior, an underdog who helps other underdogs — a saint to freaks and geeks, a foe to bullies and racists and other human monsters.

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The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks

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“It is night and the night has no end.”

Matthias Tannhauser

I have read all sorts of hyper-violent books: thrillers; crime; horror; even some fantasy. Nothing, and I mean absolutely, utterly nothing, comes close to Tim Willocks’ The Twelve Children of Paris (2014). Seven years after his adventures during the Great Siege of Malta chronicled in The Religion (and reviewed here), Matthias Tannhauser, ex-Janissary and current Knight of St. John, comes to Paris in search of his wife, Carla. It is August 23rd, 1572, just hours before the start of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

The massacre was the result of the tremendous instability the Reformation had caused to France. During the ten years preceding the massacre, France had fought the first three of the Wars of Religion. Primarily a struggle between two noble houses, the Calvinist House of Conde and the devoutly Catholic House of Guise, the kings strove to maintain a balance between them and avoid bloodshed. When it seemed the Protestants had gained too much power and threatened that of King Charles IX, he authorized twenty-four hours of killing. The plan was to eliminate the leaders of the Protestant cause, many of whom had come to Paris for the wedding of Charles’ sister, Margaret, to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Not counted on was the terrible enmity the strongly Catholic Parisians held for the Protestants. Instead of a day, the carnage lasted for several days and spread out into the countryside. Estimates vary from five to thirty thousand dead.

Into this brewing hellstorm Matthias Tannhauser rides. Carla, noblewoman and renowned player of the viol da gamba, has been summoned to play at a concert for the royal wedding. Though eight months pregnant, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse a royal summons. Tannhauser, away on business in North Africa, has returned to France and ridden to Paris to join his wife. Upon hearing of an assassination attempt on Protestant leader Admiral de Coligny and the consequent cancellation of the musical performance, Tannhauser decides he must find his wife and remove her from a city on the brink of civil collapse. Unfortunately, he has only the slightest idea of where she might be.

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The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

The Omnibus Volumes of Cassandra Rose Clarke: Magic of Blood and Sea and Magic of Wind and Mist

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Magic of Blood and Sea-small Magic of Wind and Mist

Angry Robot is one of the most innovative (and successful) new genre publishing houses in the last decade. Not every aspect of its journey has been equally successful, however. Its Strange Chemistry imprint, launched in 2011 to publish young adult SF and fantasy, shut down in 2014… but not before publishing highly acclaimed new work by Martha Wells, Jonathan L. Howard, and three early novels by Cassandra Rose Clarke: The Assassin’s Curse (2012) and its sequel The Pirate’s Wish (2013), and The Wizard’s Promise (2014). A fourth novel, The Nobleman’s Revenge, the sequel to The Wizard’s Promise, was never published.

Clarke was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for her first novel for adults, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, in 2013, and late last year Saga Press reprinted the book in a new trade paperback edition. Now they’re doing the same with Clarke’s Strange Chemistry novels. The Assassin’s Curse series will be reprinted in a handsome omnibus edition, Magic of Blood and Sea, arriving in hardcover in early February. And The Wizard’s Promise and the previously unpublished The Nobleman’s Revenge will appear in Magic of Wind and Mist in 2018.

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New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

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Lords of Dyscrasia-smallI met Seth Lindberg at the World Fantasy Convention back in October. He co-moderates the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, one of the rare groups that pays a lot of attention to genre magazines, like Cirsova and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He also maintains a fairly active (and excellent) blog — check out his recent reviews of Joe Bonadonna’s Mad Shadows II, and Skelos issue #1.

He’s also an acclaimed S&S author in his own right. Joe Bonadonna wrote a rave review of his first novel Lords of Dyscrasia here at Black Gate last year. Here’s Joe.

Lords of Dyscrasia (an abnormal or disordered state of the body or of a bodily part) is touted as “Graphic Sword and Sorcery,” but to me it has more in common with the dark fantasy of Clark Ashton Smith and the gothic tones of Mervyn Peake’s first two Gormenghast books. There is some nice Lovecraftian shading to this novel, as well, with a touch of Edgar Allen Poe to lend it a feverishness of tone, and even a psychedelic flavor in style.

While Lindberg channels his influences with a deft hand, he has mapped out a beautifully grotesque world that is truly his own unique creation. This book was described to me as being part of the Grimdark subgenre of dark fantasy, and it is indeed a grim, dark tale….

This is a complex and well-written novel, very difficult to describe. The settings and the atmosphere are rich in color and texture, and story’s pace is almost relentless: it rushes along like a bullet train, with very few stops along the way. Although Lysis Endeken is the main character, it is the weird and wonderful Doctor Grave who really rises above all others.

I bought a copy of this novel from Seth at the convention, and I’m glad I did. It’s become the foundation of a popular new S&S series, and the second volume, Spawn of Dyscrasia, was published in 2014.

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A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

A Detective With the Mind of a Criminal: The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, by Edgar Wallace

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The Casefiles of Mr JG Reeder-smallWordsworth Editions published dozens of titles in their Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural imprint (or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS), featuring classic tales of detection, horror and ghostly doings from Robert E. Howard, Rudyard Kipling, Sheridan Le Fanu, William Hope Hodgson, W.F. Harvey, Edith Nesbit, Oliver Onions, E.F. Benson, and many others.

Wordsworth has revamped the entire series (see their website for the dramatic redesign), and they’re letting all the older titles gradually go out of print… which means it’s definitely time to snatch up those I still don’t have. Like The Casefiles of Mr. J G Reeder, an omnibus collection of three pulp-era books by popular British thriller writer Edgar Wallace.

How on earth did you piece together all this? he asked in wonder. Mr Reeder shook his head sadly. I have that perversion, he said. It is a terrible misfortune. I see evil in everything. I have the mind of a criminal.

Let us introduce you to the enigmatic J. G. Reeder, a timid, gentle middle-aged man who carries a furled up umbrella and wears an old-fashioned flat-topped bowler hat. He is one of the great unsung sleuths of mystery fiction, created by the prolific Edgar Wallace, the King of Thrillers. Despite his insignificant appearance, Reeder is a cold and ruthless detective who credits his success to his criminal mind which allows him to solve a series of complex and audacious crimes and outwit the most cunning of villainous masterminds.

This volume is a rich feast for crime fiction fans, containing the first three volumes in the Reeder canon: two novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep; and the classic collection of short stories, The Mind of J. G. Reeder.

Edgar Wallace was an enormously popular mystery and thriller writer of the 20s and 30s. More than 160 films have been based on his work, and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine was a popular digest magazine in the mid-60s. But perhaps his most famous creation was the script for King Kong (1933); he died of complications of diabetes while working on revisions with director Merian C. Cooper.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Pellucidar

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Pellucidar

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Pellucidar-1st-Edition-Cover-smallWelcome back to the concave world of Pellucidar and the second novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s series of adventures within the globe: the eponymous Pellucidar. ERB left readers in suspense about the fate of hero David Innes at the close of At the Earth’s Core, but only a year later delivered audiences from the tension and closed out a duology about the Imperial Conquest of the Pellucidar. (And we still have five more volumes to go after this.)

Our Saga: Beneath our feet lies a realm beyond the most vivid daydreams of the fantastic… Pellucidar. A subterranean world formed along the concave curve inside the earth’s crust, surrounding an eternally stationary sun that eliminates the concept of time. A land of savage humanoids, fierce beasts, and reptilian overlords, Pellucidar is the weird stage for adventurers from the topside layer — including a certain Lord Greystoke. The series consists of six novels, one which crosses over with the Tarzan series, plus a volume of linked novellas, published between 1914 and 1963.

Today’s Installment: Pellucidar (1915)

Previous Installments: At the Earth’s Core (1914)

The Backstory

During the mid-teens, Edgar Rice Burroughs frequently wrote with the aim of creating two-part novels. The books we know today as The Mad King, The Cave Girl, and The Eternal Lover are combinations of an original novel and its closely connected sequel. The Pellucidar series might have gone the same way. The sequel to At the Earth’s Core was written at this time and serves as an immediate follow-up that brings the story of its first novel to a conclusion. If Burroughs hadn’t returned to the setting fourteen years later and continued writing more about Pellucidar, it’s possible that At the Earth’s Core and Pellucidar would be considered a single novel today — probably simply titled At the Earth’s Core. (My title choice would be Conquest of the Earth’s Core.)

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Future Treasures: The Weight of the World, Book 2 of the Amaranthine Spectrum, by Tom Toner

Future Treasures: The Weight of the World, Book 2 of the Amaranthine Spectrum, by Tom Toner

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In this business you get used to seeing breathless blurbs on everything, from the latest fat fantasy to the newest stack of midlist paperbacks. But if you’re not completely jaded, you can still detect genuine buzz.

That’s what I’m sensing with the debut novel from Tom Toner, The Promise of the Child, a space opera set in the far-distant 147th Century. Tor.com said it’s “Among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years,” and Adam Roberts called it “Absolutely brilliant… space opera like you’ve never seen it before.” Karl Schroeder proclaimed it “Utterly absorbing; a tremendous adventure… One of the most ambitious and epic-scale pieces of worldbuilding I’ve read,” and Booklist said “This is the kind of novel that could develop a cult following.”

The Promise of the Child was published in hardcover by Night Shade Books in September of 2015, and reprinted in trade paperback last October. On January 24th the second novel in the Amaranthine Spectrum, The Weight of the World, finally arrives in hardcover and digital formats from Night Shade.

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A Doctor in a Torture State: Susan R. Matthews’ Under Jurisdiction Novels

A Doctor in a Torture State: Susan R. Matthews’ Under Jurisdiction Novels

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Baen Books continues its fine tradition of attractive, inexpensive omnibus editions of top-notch science fiction. Most recently they’ve turned their attention to the Under Jurisdiction novels of Susan R. Matthews, the tales of a doctor of conscience who is a faithful servant of the Bench, where institutionalized torture is an instrument of State. This is a grim (and often controversial) series, as Lisa DuMond noted in her SF Site review of the first two novels:

Andrej Koscuisko wants nothing more than to be a doctor: a surgeon. His father wants him to carry on the family honour by enlisting with the Fleet in its glorious fight to basically control everything. Andrej manages to resist his father’s will for a time, finally giving in only with grudging obedience and quiet resistance. Because, in his position with Fleet, he will indeed be a ship’s chief medical officer — and, incidentally, Ship’s Inquisitor… How can a person dedicated to preserving life and obliterating suffering combine the two functions of the position?

With relish. Amid the blood and screams and seared flesh of the workroom, Andrej Koscuisko will meet his personal monster. A man of honour, compassion, and empathy will find a sexual passion such as he has never known in the agony of his helpless captives. Even as he uses his wits and the amazing skills he has developed to save the lives of others.

Facing this chilling dichotomy is the first step in a life that will tear away at his sanity and self-worth… Throughout the two books, the greatest miracles are pulled off by Matthews herself… More miraculous is the sleight of hand Matthews manages with the character of Andrej. Time and again he enters the workroom to become something we can’t even let ourselves dream about. He emerges, blood-stained and aroused, only to crash into self-loathing.

The opening novel, An Exchange of Hostages, was published by Avon Books in 1997 and nominated for both the Philip K. Dick Award and the John W. Campbell Award, and came in fourth in the poll for the Locus Award for Best First Novel.

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Check Out the Serial Box Omnibus Collections from Saga Press

Check Out the Serial Box Omnibus Collections from Saga Press

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bookburners-small tremontaine-small

Over in their own corner of the internet, Serial Box is conducting a quiet little revolution in modern fantasy. Tapping into the power and availability of digital readers, Serial Box has brought a very old concept — serialized fiction — into the 21st Century.

Although maybe television is a better comparison. Like TV, Serial Box offers multiple stories in a rich variety of genres, and they release new episodes every week. Each of their serials typically runs for a “season” of 10-16 weeks, and each is written by a team of talented writers. The stories are easy to jump into, the individual episodes are standalone (but contribute to a larger story arch), and each episode is available in both digital and audio formats. There are five ongoing series so far:

Tremontaine — The prequel to Ellen Kushner’s famed Riverside series (Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, The Fall of The Kings)
Bookburners — A secret team of agents hunts down dangerous books containing deadly magic
ReMade — 23 teenagers all die the same minute, and wake up in a world of robots, space elevators, and dense jungle
Whitehall — An historical tale of Catherine of Braganza, filled with Intrigue, romance, and scandal
The Witch Who Came In From the Cold — Spies and sorcerers battle for home and country in Cold War Prague

Now Saga Press has created omnibus collections of Bookburners (coming January 31) and Tremontaine (May 2), as well as The Witch Who Came in from the Cold (June 13). Here’s all the deets.

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