Black Gate

Robert Jordan’s 15-volume The Wheel of Time series is one of the most popular fantasy series written in the last 50 years, with over 44 millions copies sold (second only to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, with 60 million). It hasn’t enjoyed the same level of scholarship as Martin’s epic… but all that changed with the arrival of a single book, the massive 815-page Wheel of Time Companion, published by Tor Books on November 3.

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. Over the course of fifteen books and millions of words, the world that Jordan created grew in depth and complexity. However, only a fraction of what Jordan imagined ended up on the page, the rest going into his personal files. Now The Wheel of Time Companion sheds light on some of the most intriguing aspects of the world, including biographies and motivations of many characters that never made it into the books, but helped bring Jordan’s world to life.

Included in the volume in an A-to-Z format are:

– An entry for each named character
– An inclusive dictionary of the Old Tongue
– New maps of the Last Battle
– New portraits of many characters
– Histories and customs of the nations of the world
– The strength level of many channelers
– Descriptions of the flora and fauna unique to the world
– And much more!

The Wheel of Time Companion will be required reading for The Wheel of Time‘s millions of fans.

The Wheel of Time Companion: The People, Places and History of the Bestselling Series was written by Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons, and published by Tor Books on November 3, 2015. It is 815 pages, priced at $39.99 in hardcover and $19.99 for the digital edition.

Mark Latham has had an interesting career. He’s the former editor of White Dwarf, Games Workshop’s flagship magazine, and the head of their ultra-successful Warhammer 40K line. He’s also a game designer is his own right, with several tabletop games to his credit.

His debut novel, The Lazarus Gate, is the opening volume in a new Victorian supernatural series. Captain John Hardwick, a tough but troubled army veteran, is recruited by a mysterious club to combat a growing threat to the British Empire. It’s an intriguing new gaslight fantasy, reminiscent of James Blaylock and Arthur Conan Doyle.

London, 1890. Captain John Hardwick, an embittered army veteran and opium addict, is released from captivity in Burma and returns home, only to be recruited by a mysterious gentlemen’s club to combat a supernatural threat to the British Empire.

This is the tale of a secret war between parallel universes, between reality and the supernatural; a war waged relentlessly by an elite group of agents; unsung heroes, whose efforts can never be acknowledged, but by whose sacrifice we are all kept safe.

The Lazarus Gate was published by Titan Books on September 29, 2015. It is 399 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Tor.com has had some impressive success with their stellar line-up of Fall novellas. Their first title, Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2015, and after a strong critical response for the second novella, Witches of Lychford, Paul Cornell has already announced a sequel.

Their most recent release, Matt Wallace’s Envy of Angels: A Sin du Jour Affair, the first entry in a new urban fantasy series, was published on October 20. Matt Wallace is also the author of the futuristic sports thriller Slingers. The sequel to Envy of Angels, Lustlocked, has already been announced for January. (Click on the front and back covers above for bigger versions.)

Envy of Angels is the seventh title in Tor.com‘s debut publishing venture, which includes exciting new releases from K. J. Parker, Nnedi Okorafor, Alter S. Reiss, Daniel Polansky, and many others. Tor.com‘s Marketing & Publicity Manager, Mordicai Knode, talked about the genesis of the line in his first article for us, “Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases.”

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Two years ago, after the release of his novel The Rithmatist, I noted that Brandon Sanderson was one of the hardest-working writers in this industry. By my count, I put his production for 2013 at 2,046 pages of fiction — still less than his output for 2010, but who’s counting.

It’s 2015, and what the heck — let’s count. Using Al von Ruff’s Internet Science Fiction Database, I did a very rough tabulation of Sanderson’s output over the last six years, considering fiction books only (no short stories or non-fiction).

It’s up and down, as you might expect. But for those counting along at home, that’s 7,618 pages over six years, or 1,270 pages per year. That’s pretty damned impressive.

Of course, we don’t count success as a writer by raw output, but by quality. And there, too, Sanderson excels. In 2006 and 2007 he was nominated for the John W. Campbell award for best New Writer, and he has won the David Gemmell Legend Award twice, for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two novels in his ambitious ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. His 2013 novella The Emperor’s Soul was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and won the Hugo Award.

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