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New Treasures: High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel, edited by George R.R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass

New Treasures: High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel, edited by George R.R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass

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wild-cards-high-stakes-smallWild Cards is one of the longest-running shared universes in existence, outlasting Robert Asprin’s Thieves World, Emma Bull and Will Shetterly’s Liavek, C. J. Cherryh’s Merovingen Nights, and many others (the only one with a comparable run I can think of is Janet and Chris Morris’ Heroes in Hell, which began in 1986). The first volume, Wild Cards, was published in 1987 by Bantam Books; there have been 23 novels and anthologies since then, from 31 authors and four different publishers. That’s a heck of a run.

The premise of the series is pretty appealing for anyone who likes superheroes or pulp fiction.

In the aftermath of World War II, an alien virus struck the earth, endowing a handful of survivors with extraordinary powers. Some were called aces – those with superhuman mental & physical abilities. Others were termed jokers – cursed with bizarre mental or physical disabilities. Some turned their talents to the service of humanity. Others used their powers for evil.

Wild Cards is their story.

It’s been in the news recently primarily because it’s the next big series licensed to television by George R.R. Martin, hot on the heels of his globe-spanning success with Game of Thrones. Universal Cable Productions (The Magicians, Mr. Robot) acquired the rights this summer, and brought on co-editor Melinda Snodgrass as executive producer.

The 23rd book (excuse me, “mosaic novel” — really an anthology with a fancy name) in the series is High Stakes, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, John Jos. Miller, David Anthony Durham, Caroline Spector, Stephen Leigh, and Ian Tregillis, and edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass. It was released in hardcover by Tor on August 30.

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John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, Books One and Two

John Crowley’s Aegypt Cycle, Books One and Two

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613744Elsewhere in the hallowed halls of Black Gate, you can find my musings on what I consider to be among the best and most endearing fantasy novels ever written, Little, Big. Perhaps its author, John Crowley, could have hung up his spurs after that one, certain that his honorifics were now firmly in place, his spot in the pantheon assured. But then, Little, Big was never a major financial success, never “popular,” and besides, Crowley is that rare jewel, a writer who is also a thinker, and he wasn’t done thinking.

Among the works that have followed is The Aegypt Cycle, beginning with The Solitudes and Love and Sleep, then extending into Demonomania and Endless Things. I read The Solitudes in early 2015, and, having finished, set it down with a pensive hmmm, the same restless yet satisfied noise made by those who encounter an attractive puzzle box more devious and brilliant than themselves.

At the risk of sounding like a bent brown puppet from The Dark Crystal, let me repeat that: Hmmm.

Little, Big is sufficiently mysterious for most mortals, the equivalent of a buffet so satisfying and sumptuous that one reaches the end and returns at once to the beginning, eager to begin again. (Which I, in fact, did; I read the damn thing twice in a row.)

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Future Treasures: Where the Time Goes by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Future Treasures: Where the Time Goes by Jeffrey E. Barlough

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Back in July, Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed the opening novel in Jeffrey E. Barlough’s Western Lights series here at Black Gate.

I’m not exactly sure what made me buy Dark Sleeper… I’m thinking it was more the Jeff Barson painting of woolly mammoths pulling a coach across a dark, snow swept landscape. Whatever the reason, I’m happy I did, as the book turned out to be a very strange and often funny trip through a weird and fantastical post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

In Barlough’s fictional world the Ice Age never fully ended. With much of its north covered by ice and snow, medieval England sent its ships out around the world looking for new lands… With great cities such as Salthead and Foghampton (located around the same places as Seattle and San Francisco), the western colonies flourished and expanded. Then, in 1839, terror struck from the heavens… Something crashed into the Earth, and almost instantly, all life except in the western colonies, was obliterated and the Ice Age intensified. Now, one hundred and fifty years later, the “the sole place on earth where lights still shine at night is in the west.”…

For nearly twenty years now Barlough has been creating a truly unique series that has seems to have escaped too many readers’ attention… If you have the slightest affinity for the works of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, or the steampunk works of Tim Powers and James Blaylock, then I highly recommend Dark Sleeper.

The ninth novel in the series, Where the Time Goes, sees Dr. Hugh Callander return home to find the town of Dithering gripped by fear. Livestock are being lost, and townsfolk are mysteriously disappearing. Is it poachers, thieves or murderers? Or might the ancient tales of a ravenous beast in the nearby cavern of Eldritch’s Cupboard be true? Where the Time Goes arrives in trade paperback from Gresham & Doyle on October 31st.

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Caterers to the Damned, Zombie Gladiators, and Lovecraft’s Dreamlands: Catching Up With Tor.com Publishing

Caterers to the Damned, Zombie Gladiators, and Lovecraft’s Dreamlands: Catching Up With Tor.com Publishing

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One of the most exciting developments in publishing over the last year has been the blockbuster launch of Tor.com publishing. They’ve really shaken up the industry with a knockout line-up of original novellas — including the Nebula award-winning Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel Polansky’s Hugo-nominated The Builders, Emily Foster’s acclaimed epic fantasy The Drowning Eyes, and many more.

A big part of the reason I enjoy about the Tor.com novella line so much — beside the fact that they’re fun, easy reads — is that the publisher has shown a willingness to experiment with series fantasy. And so we have Guy Haley’s post-apocalyptic adventure The Emperor’s Railroad, set in a world of strange robots and gladiatorial combat with zombies; Paul Cornell’s Witches of Lychford, in which a trio of New England witches warily guard the boundary between two worlds, and a gateway to malevolent beings beyond imagination; Andy Remic’s Song For No Man’s Land trilogy, The Great War retold as an epic fantasy featuring a subterranean Iron Beast; Matt Wallace’s Sin du Jour books, featuring the comedic misadventures of New York’s exclusive caterers-to-the-damned, and others.

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Vampires, Frozen Worlds, and Gambling With the Devil: The Best of Fritz Leiber

Vampires, Frozen Worlds, and Gambling With the Devil: The Best of Fritz Leiber

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In my last post I reviewed The Best of Stanley Weinbaum, the first volume in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. In this one I’ll review the second in the series, The Best of Fritz Leiber (1974). The introduction was done by the excellent sci-fi/fantasy author Poul Anderson (1926-2001). The cover was by Dean Ellis (1920-2009), though a later 1979 printing (see below) has a cover by Michael Herring (1947-).

Fritz Leiber is probably best known for his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser sword and sorcery tales. At least, that was my introduction to him. He also produced some of the most well-loved horror tales of the twentieth century, such as “Smoke Ghost” and “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.” I’ve read some of his science fiction in The Book of Fritz Leiber (Daw, 1974) and Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories (Night Shade Books, 2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Charles N. Brown. But it was interesting to read a book dedicated completely to Leiber’s science fiction (though there are one or two stories that I’m not sure fit this moniker).

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Try India’s Lord of the Rings: The Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi

Try India’s Lord of the Rings: The Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi

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It’s not often that something truly original and new crosses my desk — and when it does, it’s usually from a writer who ventures far from the well-trod paths of Western Fantasy, like Nnedi Okorafor, Ken Liu, or Nisi Shawl.

So I was very intrigued when I received a copy of The Oath of the Vayuputras, the closing volume of The Shiva Trilogy, which the Hindustan Times calls “India’s Lord of the Rings.” A massive, sprawling epic, The Shiva Trilogy is nothing less than a tale of ancient civilizations, gods, and a holy war for the very soul of India. It has become an international bestseller, with over 2.5 million copies in print.

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Read an Original Short Story in the World of The Lazarus Gate and The Iscariot Sanction at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi Blog

Read an Original Short Story in the World of The Lazarus Gate and The Iscariot Sanction at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi Blog

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Mark Latham’s new novel in The Apollonian Case Files, The Iscariot Sanction, was published by Titan Books on September 20. It’s the follow-up to The Lazarus Gate and, in honor of the occasion, the popular Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog at BarnesandNoble.com has posted a brand new story set in the same world, “The House of the Dead.”

Mark Latham’s two novels of The Apollonian Case Files, The Lazarus Gate and The Iscariot Sanction, take place in an alternate Victorian Age in which Her Majesty’s Empire is under attack by supernatural threats, and only a mystery “gentlemen’s club” stands in the way of total oblivion. They’re great fun, mixing elements of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft, James Bond and H.G. Wells, with a setting we love spending time in — which is why, in honor of the release of the latest in the series, we’re pleased to present an original short story set in the same universe. Enjoy!

Read the complete story here.

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In 500 words or Less … The Wurms of Blearmouth by Steven Erikson

In 500 words or Less … The Wurms of Blearmouth by Steven Erikson

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the-wurms-of-blearmouth-smallWhen someone asks my favorite fantasy series, Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen is usually one that I mention. It’s one of those sprawling epics with great characters and a complex, vibrant world that sucked me in and inspired me to write fantasy of my own.

After the series ended, I grabbed the next Erikson book I could find — The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach — and was delighted. I read the next in that series, Crack’d Pot Trail … and put it down after a couple chapters.

Erikson’s most recent work is a series of prequels (which I avoid) and his other recent books haven’t interested me, so when I found another Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella, The Wurms of Blearmouth, I almost didn’t pick it up.

Overall, though, this latest tale was satisfying. The theme in the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach stories seems to be that everyone is a terrible person, but the residents of Spendrugle take things to a new level of depravity. I balked a little at first with the female characters specifically, who are stupid or vile or both — but then I realized that you can describe every character from Wurms that way, and so I got over it (mostly). In this case, Erikson is very “equal opportunity” when it comes to negative characteristics, so don’t be turned off by what’s depicted in the opening chapters (you probably will be anyway).

The real point to these stories, after all, is to follow famed necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach and their manservant, Emancipor, from screwed-up situation to screwed-up situation; they’re the real draw for me, and Erikson consistently entertains me with the way that they go about doing evil work without seeming to care about the consequences.

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The Fierce Love of Thieves: Thieves of Islar by James Shade

The Fierce Love of Thieves: Thieves of Islar by James Shade

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Some of us think of our siblings as friends for life. Those of us who have siblings also know that much of the time, your bonds can transcend friendship, and sometimes not in a good way. Both forms of love between siblings are lovingly rendered in James Shade’s debut novel, Thieves of Islar.

Young Jaeron, Chazd and Avrilla deAlto lose their father, Henri, in a tragic house fire. To avenge him, the siblings form a guild with their closest friends and relatives in order to squash his murderer under their feet. But that’s not the only mystery Jaeron intends to solve, unbeknownst to his siblings. And their father’s murderer has a diabolical plan in mind.

Shade has a brilliant way of painting exquisite portraits of his characters. His description of the deAlto’s Uncle Ardo and his regrets remains firmly lodged in my memory. Shade gives every character who appears in his tale a purpose, and he renders their purposes with tremendous care. There’s a reason why you’ll come away remembering the names of the core characters.

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Future Treasures: The Wall of Storms, Book II of The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu

Future Treasures: The Wall of Storms, Book II of The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu

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The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu’s debut novel, was nominated for the Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It was also one of four launch titles for Saga Press, and it helped make that fledgling publisher one of the most respected publishing houses in the genre.

Next week Saga release The Wall of Storms, the second volume in what’s now being called The Dandelion Dynasty. It arrives in hardcover on October 4th. Here’s the description.

In the much-anticipated sequel to the “magnificent fantasy epic” (NPR) Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders.

Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara — and chaos results.

But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara’s savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.

The Wall of Storms is 880 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Sam Weber. Read an interview with Ken, and an excerpt from the book, at io9.