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A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

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Best Short Novels 2004-small Best Short Novels 2005-small Best Short Novels 2006-small Best Short Novels 2007-small

Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early Jack Vance from Subterranean Press.

But the work that truly made me a Strahan fan was a brief (four volume) series he did exclusively for the Science Fiction Book Club, Best Short Novels. I’d been a member of the SFBC since the age of twelve but, after leaving Canada for grad school in 1987 and moving around after that, I’d let my membership lapse. I received plenty of invites to rejoin after settling here in St. Charles, but it was Strahan’s first volume in the series, Best Short Novels: 2004, that finally enticed me to do it. I’ve never regretted it.

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Future Treasures: A Gathering of Shadows, Book 2 of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Future Treasures: A Gathering of Shadows, Book 2 of A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

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A Darker Shade of Magic-small A Gathering of Shadows-small

V.E. Schwab made a considerable splash with her first book from Tor, the superhero tale Vicious, which Matthew David Surridge called “a well-paced and sharply-structured novel” in his BG review. She began an ambitious two-volume series with A Darker Shade of Magic, published last year by Tor. The second and concluding volume, A Gathering of Shadows, arrives in hardcover next month.

A Darker Shade of Magic introduced us to Kell, a magician and ambassador who travels between parallel Londons, carrying royal correspondence between universes. He’s also a smuggler. When a thief named Delilah Bard robs him, and then saves him from a nasty fate, the two find themselves on the run, jumping between worlds. As the second volume begins, Kell is visited by dreams of ominous magical events… as strange things begin to emerge from Black London, the place of which no one speaks.

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Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

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I’ve been on something of a Fletcher Pratt kick recently, ever since I purchased a fine collection of old paperbacks that included five of his books, including The Well of the Unicorn and Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (co-written with L. Sprague de Camp), both of which I recently wrote up as Vintage Treasures.

Way down in the bottom of that box was a copy of The Compleat Enchanter. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Everyone who collects classic American fantasy has two or three (or five or six) copies of The Compleat Enchanter. It’s something of a classic, in a worn sort of way. It doesn’t get much attention these days, because it’s a light, humorous tale, the very opposite of the kind of thing that usually interests me. And so, out of habit, I didn’t give it much attention.

That was a mistake. I’ve ignored The Compleat Enchanter for the better part of 40 years, but when I finally picked it up this week I was quickly captivated. Yes, it is a screwball fantasy, about a psychology professor named Harold Shea who stumbles on equations that transport him into parallel universes, and who uses this ability to visit magical worlds shaped by the mythologies and legend of Earth. But it’s also crammed full of crisp dialog and surprising twists, and the unique charm of De Camp and Pratt, two American masters who were obviously having a lot of fun with the their creation.

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Future Treasures: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

Future Treasures: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

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Tim Akers has written some acclaimed fantasy — including The Horns of Ruin and The Burn Cycle (Heart of Veridon, Dead of Veridon, and the collection Bones of Veridon) — but epic fantasy is something new. He’s jumped in in a major way, with the impending release of The Pagan Night, the 605-page opening volume of The Hallowed War, which Booklist sums up as “high adventure, great characters, suspense, and dramatic plot shifts… an engaging, fast-paced entry in a popular subgenre.” You can read the brief book summary by clicking on the image above… by why do that when you can get the full, five-paragraph version at Tim’s website?

The second volume in the series, The Iron Hound, is scheduled to be released in January of next year, and The Winter Vow in January 2018. In the meantime, you can find the opening volume at your favorite bookstores on January 19, courtesy of Titan Books. It is 605 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Alejandro Colucci, and the interior maps (yay, maps!) are by David Pope.

Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound

Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound

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Hell Bound-smallHell Bound
By Andrew P. Weston
Perseid Press (464 pages, $23.85 paperback/$8.90 digital, November 5, 2015)
Cover art and design by Roy Mauritsen

Hell Bound is the latest novel by Andrew Paul Weston, best-selling author of The Guardian series, The Cambion Journals, and The IX, (which I reviewed for Black Gate here.) Hell Bound is also the latest novel in the Heroes in Hell shared-world universe, created by author/publisher Janet Morris.

The main character in Hell Bound is Daemon Grim, Satan’s bounty hunter, also known as the Reaper. Not only does he hunt down any damned soul in Hell who gets on the wrong side of His Satanic Majesty, he has the power to visit our world and harvest those who belong in Hell, souls Satan wants in Hell now. Grim can travel between Earth and Hell using a special sickle or scythe that can open portals between the two realms. This scythe also possesses a powerful weapon called God Grace’s, which gives Grim the ability to utterly destroy souls. Since there’s no death in Hell as we know it, (the Damned are already dead) there is instead Reassignment, a twisted version of resurrection handled by an unsavory character known only as the Undertaker. However, there is Oblivion — total obliteration into non-existence. Grim’s weapon gives him the power to send souls howling into eternal nothingness.

The plot concerns Grim’s mission to track down Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, the English physician who in real life was the brilliant and infamous Lambeth Poisoner. Cream has been stealing long-hidden relics and angelic weapons from the Time of the Sundering, when Satan and his followers were cast out of Heaven. All history and knowledge of the Sundering is banned in Hell, but Cream may have illegal access to Satan’s bureaucratic network.

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The Series Series: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

The Series Series: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

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The Girl with Ghost Eyes-smallHere’s a great problem to have:

Your first novel just appeared in bookstores a couple weeks ago, and you’re getting ready to host an author event. It’ll be a night of martial arts movies that inspired your story of a Daoist exorcist priestess battling malevolent ghosts in 1890’s San Francisco Chinatown. You’ll have a full house. You’re all set to give opening remarks, to field questions, and to sign autographs. Lots and lots of autographs. There’s just one problem.

The book has sold out.

Not just at all your local bookstores. Not just at the local warehouses of the big distributors. At the offices of the press that published you, and at all of Amazon, too.

Your word of mouth is so strong, an entire print run’s worth of readers couldn’t wait for author events or the holidays. They had to have your book right now. Your publisher is scrambling to print a second run to satisfy all that glorious demand, but it won’t come in time for this night’s autographing.

Man, I would love to have a problem like that. But if it couldn’t happen to me, I’m delighted that it did happen to my longtime friend M.H. Boroson.

I want to tell everybody at Black Gate how awesome The Girl with Ghost Eyes is, but I can’t pretend to objectivity about this book or its author. How can I be objective about a friend who’s been important to me since we met at 14 in a writing summer camp? I’ll have to let Publishers Weekly, and all those other review outlets that are notoriously stingy with starred reviews, do that whole objectivity thing in my stead. Brilliant, dazzling, wonderful, thrilling, say various objective reviewers who haven’t known Matthew for two-thirds of their lives. Glad they got that all those adjectives checked off for me, because really, those words do belong in any review of The Girl with Ghost Eyes.

What I can do is tell the readers who gather here why this book they might not immediately realize is for them is exactly the kind of book Black Gate readers love.

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New Treasures: Conspiracy of Angels by Michelle Belanger

New Treasures: Conspiracy of Angels by Michelle Belanger

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Conspiracy of Angels-smallMichelle Belanger is something of a celebrity with modern vampire subculture. She was featured on five seasons of A&E’s Paranormal State as an advocate for the “vampire community” (whatever that is), and she wrote several of its foundational texts, including The Black Veil, an ethical guide for vampires. If you’re a vampire nut, she’s your girl.

Closer to our interests, she’s also the editor of several horror anthologies for Llewellyn Publications, including Vampires in Their Own Words: An Anthology of Vampire Voices (2007) and Walking the Twilight Path: A Gothic Book of the Dead (2008). Late last year she released her debut novel, Conspiracy of Angels, the first of the Novels of the Shadowside.

When Zachary Westland regains consciousness on the winter shores of Lake Erie, his memories are gone. All he has are chaotic visions of violence and death… and a business card for Club Heaven. There Zack finds the six-foot-six transexual decimus known as Saliriel, and begins to learn what has happened.

Alarming details emerge, of angelic tribes trapped on Earth and struggling in the wake of the Blood Wars. Anakim, Nephilim, Gibburim, and Rephaim — there has been an uneasy peace for centuries, but the truce is at an end.

With the help of his “sibling” Remiel and Lilianna, the lady of beasts, Zack must stem the bloodshed before it cannot be stopped. Yet if he dies again, it may be for the final time.

Conspiracy of Angels was published by Titan Books on October 27, 2015. It is 426 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the print and digital editions. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd.

New Treasures: A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

New Treasures: A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall

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A Crown for Cold Silver-small A Crown for Cold Silver-back-small

I can’t keep up on a fraction of the new fantasy published every year. But fortunately, I’m not the only one who lives in my house. My children — whom not so very long ago didn’t absorb any fantasy unless it was read to them while curled in my lap — buy and read their own books these days. And occasionally they excitedly talk my ear off about about how much they loved some new discovery. That happened with my eldest boy Tim, a 20-year old physics student, who picked up a copy of Alex Marshall’s debut novel A Crown For Cold Silver last week, and who refused to be parted with it for the next three days. He read a great deal of epic fantasy last year, but I can’t recall any book getting him as excited as this one.

Calling A Crown For Cold Silver a ‘debut novel’ isn’t precisely accurate. There aren’t any other books by Alex Marshall on the shelves. But according to industry scuttlebutt, Marhall is a pseudonym for an established author who’s decided to strike off in new direction — as Megan Lindholm successfully did as Robin Hobb, and Tom Holt as K.J. Parker. A Crown For Cold Silver forms the first part of The Crimson Empire; the second volume, A Blade of Black Steel, is scheduled to arrive on May 26.

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The Winds of Winter Won’t Arrive Before Season Six

The Winds of Winter Won’t Arrive Before Season Six

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Martin The Winds of Winter-smallLate yesterday, George R.R. Martin confirmed that the sixth volume of his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire will not be published before the new season of Game of Thrones debuts on HBO. The Winds of Winter was scheduled to arrive in March, before GoT debuts in mid-April, and Martin’s publisher Bantam reportedly had ramped up to fast-track the book for publication, as long as Martin delivered the manuscript by December 31. On his blog yesterday, Martin confirmed he’d blown the deadline, and that the official publication date is now up in the air.

Here it is, the first of January. The book is not done, not delivered. No words can change that. I tried, I promise you. I failed… I worked on the book a couple of days ago, revising a Theon chapter and adding some new material, and I will writing on it again tomorrow. But no, I can’t tell you when it will be done, or when it will be published. Best guess, based on our previous conversations, is that Bantam (and presumably my British publisher as well) can have the hardcover out within three months of delivery, if their schedules permit. But when delivery will be, I can’t say. I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out…

I never thought the series could possibly catch up with the books, but it has. The show moved faster than I anticipated and I moved more slowly. There were other factors too, but that was the main one. Given where we are, inevitably, there will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of Game of Thrones that have not yet happened in the books. For years my readers have been ahead of the viewers. This year, for some things, the reverse will be true. How you want to handle that… hey, that’s up to you.

While Martin has been notoriously slow with the last books in the series (it’s now been almost five years since the release of the fifth volume, A Dance With Dragons; that book appeared six years after A Feast for Crows), he’s worked hard to keep fans updated. And earlier this year, he released excerpts from Winds as a gift to fans. Just two books remain in the series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring; Martin has indicated that both will be massive (1,500 manuscript pages each).

New Treasures: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace

New Treasures: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace

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Slavemakers Joseph Wallace-smallJack McDevitt called Joseph Wallace’s 2013 novel Invasive Species, the tale of an explorer who stumbles on a new species of wasp in an African rainforest, “Brilliant.” His newest thriller is a sequel to that book, and it opens with humans on the verge of extinction.

If you like postapocalyptic adventure tales, this one looks original and intriguing. Check it out.

It’s Their Territory Now

Twenty years ago, venomous parasitic wasps known as “thieves” staged a massive, apocalyptic attack on another species — Homo sapiens — putting them on the brink of extinction.

But some humans did survive. The colony called Refugia is home to a population of 281, including scientists, a pilot, and a tough young woman named Kait. In the African wilderness, there’s Aisha Rose, nearly feral, born at the end of the old world. And in the ruins of New York City, there’s a mysterious, powerful boy, a skilled hunter, isolated and living by his wits.

As the survivors journey through the wastelands, they will find that they are not the only humans left on earth. Not by a long shot.

But they may be the only ones left who are not under the thieves’ control…

Slavemakers was published by Ace Books on December 1, 2015. It is 384 pages, priced at $9.99 for both the paperback and digital editions.