Black Gate – Page 1115 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Marvel Feature: Red Sonja 1

Tuesday, October 23, 2012 MichaelPenkas Comments 1 comment

There were a few bumps in the road to Red Sonja’s enduring success as a character/franchise. One of them is the rushed work on Marvel Feature 1, which was meant to be an audience test title. The rationale was that Sonja would appear in several issues of Marvel Feature and, if sales were good enough, would be awarded her own title.

But this really doesn’t read like an audition. It reads more like a fill-in issue. First of all, the story is only eight pages long. Red Sonja finds an ancient temple, mercy-kills a priest who’s been tortured, fights a pack of unarmed satyrs, and gets in one sword-fight. The artwork by Dick Giordano is good, but it’s not Barry Windsor-Smith or John Buscema (the two artists most strongly associated with the She-Devil up to this point). There’s none of the banter that she enjoyed with Conan and no hints of the character’s tragedy. The rest of the issue is a one-page text by Roy Thomas explaining the character’s background and a reprint of the story from Savage Sword of Conan 1 (now in color) where she killed a sultan after he forced her to take a bath.

Honestly, you don’t even get any of the monsters you see on the cover. No demons. No snakes. No skeletons in robes. And it’s a great cover, with Sonja in her trademark bikini, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. She’s even kicking a snake while slashing at the “hordes of Hell.” It’s only sleazed up a little with the cheesecake pose in the corner label (which gets changed on issue 2).

In short, it’s a decent story, but nothing that would show readers unfamiliar with the character why Red Sonja is more than just a female Conan.

(originally published November 1975, Marvel Comics) (reprinted January 2007 in Adventures of Red Sonja Volume 1, Dynamite Entertainment)

Next Week: It Gets Better

Win a Free Copy of A Magic Broken

Monday, October 22, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Last Monday, Black Gate blogger Theo Beale announced the publication of A Magic Broken, a new novella that marked his first foray into epic fantasy:

A Magic Broken is a tale of ruthlessness, courage and deceit. The novella tells the story of Captain Nicolas du Mere, an exile fleeing the death of his rebel lord, and Lodi, son of Dunmorin, a brave dwarf dedicated to rescuing his fellow dwarves from slavery. Their dangerous paths meet, but in a manner that is anything but predictable.

Theodore Beale is the author of Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy, which Howard Andrew Jones called “Entertaining… Beale should be applauded for trying to create a medieval fantasy that more accurately replicates historical reality than many of his peers” (Black Gate 14).

A Magic Broken is an appetizer to Theo’s forthcoming epic fantasy novel, A Throne of Bones. It is currently available for Kindle and Nook for just 99 cents.

Theo has graciously offered 25 copies of the digital version of A Magic Broken free to Black Gate readers willing to share their thoughts in a review on Amazon.com. If you’re interested, send an e-mail to the editor with the title “A Magic Broken” expressing your willingness to read it and write a review, and we’ll e-mail you your free copy.

No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. A maximum of 25 free copies will be awarded. Not valid where prohibited by law. I have no idea where giving away free books might be prohibited, but our lawyers make us say that. Winners responsible for all taxes. Eat your vegetables.

Update Wednesday, Oct 24: We have now passed the 25 response mark, and there are no additional copies to give away. Thanks for all your interest!

Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet, Part IV: My Heart Laid Bare

Monday, October 22, 2012 Matthew David Surridge Comments 3 comments

My Heart Laid Bare For the past three weeks, I’ve been looking at Joyce Carol Oates’s Gothic Quintet, in preparation for the publication of the fifth book in the sequence, The Accursed, set for next March. I started off with 1980’s Bellefleur, which I thought was brilliant. Then I looked at 1982’s A Bloodsmoor Romance, which I found interesting, but not up to the first book’s level, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the romance genre. Last week, I considered Mysteries of Winterthurn, from 1984, which impressed me quite a bit. Now, this week, I look at 1998’s My Heart Laid Bare.

It may be worth noting that while My Heart Laid Bare was published in 1998, it was written in 1984. Similarly, The Accursed, under its original title The Crosswicks Horror, was first completed in 1981. Both books were revised in the years since, and I wonder if that might help account for the fact that My Heart Laid Bare has a rather different feel than the other ‘Gothic’ books. Nothing evidently supernatural happens in it. It’s only nominally Gothic in atmosphere, and the narration’s relatively straightforward — it’s told in omniscient third-person, unlike Bloodsmoor or Winterthurn, and is stylistically more restrained than Bellefleur (which admittedly is not saying much). Still, it’s a wild, wide-ranging look at American life in the early part of the twentieth century, incorporating several self-consciously melodramatic touches. It fits in with its predecessors nicely, and overall serves to round off Oates’s Gothic sequence as we’ve had it so far.

The book follows grizzled con-man Abraham Licht and his sons and daughters, from 1909 through to the Great Depression. A prologue suggests that they’re the descendants of a scheming eighteenth-century servingwoman who impersonated her mistress, was caught and sent to America; at any event, the novel shows us the Lichts consistently changing identities, some of which are false and some of which become true. Besides Abraham, we have his three biological sons, his older boys Thurston and Harwood and his younger Darian; his two daughters, Millie and Esther; and his black adopted son, Elisha. Over the course of the book, the children leave and betray and (occasionally) return to Abraham, as Abraham himself plots for money, for power, and, perhaps most importantly to him, for another marriage.

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The Business of Writing: Joining the Community

Monday, October 22, 2012 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 9 comments

I spoke to some creative writing students at a local university last Friday and I tried to tell them something it took me a long time to understand: when you begin your writing career, you’re joining a community.

By writing career, I mean your first published work. In my case, I was first printed in a ‘zine titled Gauntlet. Before I submitted my story to the magazine, about the only thing I knew about Gauntlet was that it was open to heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery. I was making a common mistake — I didn’t know the market.

It’s hard to know ALL the markets, especially when, in those bygone days of yore, to know about the magazine you had to buy an issue. (Most of those little magazines couldn’t be leafed through at local bookstores because they weren’t carried.) Today we submitters have it a little simpler because most magazines have web sites where fiction can be sampled. And, of course, an increasingly large number of magazines ARE e-zines.

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November Brings the Final Volume of Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch Series

Sunday, October 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Those of you who wait until a series is completed before picking up the first volume (especially if, like me, you wait until it arrives in paperback) will be glad to hear that DAW Books will be releasing Tad Williams’s Shadowheart, the fourth and final volume in his well-reviewed epic fantasy series Shadowmarch, in mass market paperback on November 6th:

Southmarch Castle is about to be caught between two implacable enemies, the ancient, immortal Qar and the insane god-king, the Autarch of Xis. Meanwhile, its two young defenders, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick, are both trapped far away from home and fighting for their lives.

And now, something is awakening underneath Southmarch Castle, something powerful and terrible that the world has not seen for thousands of years. Can Barrick and Briony, along with a tiny handful of allies, ordinary and extraordinary, find a way to save their world and prevent the rise of a terrible new age — an age of unending darkness?

I bought Williams’s first novel, the cat fantasy Tailchaser’s Song, in 1985, and have followed his career with interest ever since. His massive Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (starting with The Dragonbone Chair in 1988) catapulted him to the front ranks of epic fantasy writers, and the 4-volume Otherland series, beginning with City of Golden Shadow (1996) and ending with Sea of Silver Light (2001), proved he was as proficient with science fantasy.

The first novel in his latest series, Shadowmarch, was published in hardcover in 2004. Just as with Otherland, Shadowmarch was initially announced as a trilogy, but the third book became so large and unwieldy it was broken into two volumes. It’s been a long wait for the fourth and final installment, but epic fantasy fans are nothing if not patient.

Shadowheart will be released by DAW Books on November 6. It is 840 pages for $8.99 in paperback; the digital version is $9.99,

Black Gate Online Fiction: “A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw

Sunday, October 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Young members of a secretive Order of wizards investigate a series of strange kidnappings, and discover a sinister and ancient conspiracy:

“Nathan, who do you think has the ability to turn a person into a puppet like that?” Aulus asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone in the Order — ”

“Exactly. In the Order. What about outside the Order?”

Nathan looked at Aulus hard. “You’re not talking about a renegade Dominus, are you?”

“No, I’m not. I’m talking about a different society altogether.”

“But the only other society would be the Necromancers. We wiped them out centuries ago!” Nathan said.

“What if the Order is wrong about their fate?” Aulus stood up and began pacing in the tiny room. “What if there were more of them, and better hidden, than we thought? Nathan, that man today was dead and walking. He was undead, a Soulless.”

Nathan did not want to admit that the Necromancers might still be around. If they were, the world was a lot more dangerous than he wanted to believe. “But, Aulus, how have they remained hidden all these years? They would have died out years ago… unless you think they’ve finally discovered the secrets of immortality.”

“Who says they haven’t?”

Donald S. Crankshaw has published short stories in Daily Science Fiction, Aoife’s Kiss, and Coach’s Midnight Diner. He lives in Boston. Author photo by Kristin Janz.

You can see the complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Aaron Bradford Starr, Sean McLachlan, Harry Connolly, and Jason E. Thummel, here.

“A Phoenix in Darkness” is a complete 50,000-word short novel of dark fantasy offered free of charge. It will be published in three parts.

Read Part One of “A Phoenix in Darkness” here.

Dark Regions Press releases Crooked House by Joe McKinney

Sunday, October 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I don’t know about you, but as Halloween approaches I’m seeing a lot more horror movies, books, and graphic novels cross my path.

As Goth Chick loves to point out, it is the Season. And if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to overlook some of its more intriguing titles, especially from the small press. Fortunately, Black Gate has you covered.

Dark Regions Press specializes in horror and dark fiction, and have published hundreds of authors such as Bentley Little, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Tim Waggoner, and many more. This Tuesday, October 23rd, they are publishing Crooked House by Bram Stoker Award winning author Joe McKinney:

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.

Those words were true when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote them in 1851, and they were true in 1933, when a fire burned half of Crook House to the ground, taking James Crook’s wife and two sons with it. A disgraced bootlegger and former pro baseball player, James Crook returned from prison to find his house, and his life, a pile of cinders. Broken and insane, he rebuilt Crook House, putting his pain and loneliness into every timber.

But Hawthorne’s words are still true today, and nobody knows that better than Dr. Robert Bell, who has just moved into Crook House as part of his hiring package from a small Texas college. He soon discovers that Crook House is more than just a new beginning for himself and Sarah and their daughter Angela. For the Bell family, Crook House is a place where the past still lives, and its horrors waiting for the next drowning man.

With Crooked House, Joe McKinney brings you a chilling novel in the vein of The Shining by Stephen King, a haunted house tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned.

Joe McKinney is the author of Flesh Eaters, Dead City, Mutated, and more. Crooked House will be available as a leather-bound deluxe lettered hardcover and as a signed and numbered limited hardcover. Find complete details and order information at Dark Regions.

Apex Magazine Subscription Drive

Saturday, October 20, 2012 Soyka Comments 1 comment

Apex Magazine is having a subscription drive from now until November 15^th. Featuring the work of folks such as Catherynne M. Valente, Mary Robinette Kowal, Sarah Monette, Ken Liu, Elizabeth Bear, Rachel Swirsky, Jennifer Pelland, Kij Johnson, Geoff Ryman, and Maureen McHugh, Apex Magazine earned a Hugo Nomination for Best Semiprozine in 2012. Here’s the pitch:

Yearly subscriptions are available through the Apex website and Weightless Books. For $17.95, $2.00 off the normal subscription rate, you can have 12 months of Apex Magazine delivered to you in the file format of your choice: ePub, mobi, or PDF. That’s at least 24 brand new short stories dropped into your eager little hands for the price of an anthology. Plus, you get the reprints, poetry, nonfiction and interviews. Quite a deal, right?

Subscribe via Weightless Books
Subscribe via Kindle
Subscribe via Apex

Not convinced you want to commit to a whole year or (I like this scenario better) don’t want the hassle of having to renew your subscription each year, Amazon can help you out. For only a $1.99 a month, Apex Magazine will be auto-delivered straight to your Kindle. You never have to think about it again. On the first Tuesday of every month the new issue will be right there waiting for you, ready to go with you wherever you want to take it, no more need for a clunky computer or an internet connection once it’s downloaded.

New Treasures: Melanie Rawn’s The Diviner

Saturday, October 20, 2012 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Melanie Rawn’s first novel, 1988’s Dragon Prince, was an immediate success. Twenty-four years later, it’s still in print — on something like its 50th printing — and so are both of its sequels. If that’s not an auspicious debut, I don’t know what is.

Rawn certainly didn’t rest with the Dragon Prince trilogy. From 1991-94, she published the Dragon Star trilogy; in 1996 the collaborative novel The Golden Key (with Kate Elliott and Jennifer Roberson); and 1994 and 1997 saw the release of the first two novels of the Exiles trilogy. Rawn practically had her own shelf on every bookstore in North America — nine fat fantasy novels, all still in print.

And then… nothing. Her last publication of the 90s was a short story in A Magic-Lover’s Treasury of the Fantastic in 1998. The Captal’s Tower, the final novel in the Exiles trilogy, has been listed as “forthcoming” since 1997.

She emerged from nearly a decade of silence in 2006, breaking away from epic fantasy with Spellbinder, a modern urban fantasy of the territorial disputes and sex lives of Manhattan witches. In a note in that book, Rawn spoke of battling clinical depression and the need to move on to other projects to help her recovery. The sequel Fire Raiser arrived in 2009.

Last year she returned to epic fantasy for the first time in nearly 15 years with The Diviner, a prequel to The Golden Key:

The only survivor of royal treachery that eliminates his entire family, Azzad al-Ma’aliq flees to the desert and dedicates himself to vengeance. With the help of the Shagara, a nomadic tribe of powerful magicians, he will finally be able to take his revenge — but at what cost?

The Diviner was released in paperback by DAW books on August 7th. It is 438 pages, and priced at $7.99 for both the digital and print versions.

Cover Your Naked Books, Please

Friday, October 19, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

On Tuesday, I mentioned a few of the vintage anthologies I bought from the collection of Martin Harry Greenberg at the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show. I’ve been enjoying them quite a bit, and I certainly couldn’t argue with the price.

However, most of them were coverless. Maybe Greenberg used those beautiful old dust jackets to wrap Christmas presents, I dunno. Anyway, they look a little odd that way on my shelves.

But we live in the era of the Internet, when you can find anything you want from the comfort of your couch, so I figured I could find a cover for the 1949 Merlin Press edition of From Off This World, maybe. As enjoyable as that book is, it would look a lot better with that Virgil Finlay wraparound cover. I’m not asking much — just a brand new dust jacket for an obscure 60-year old hardcover from a forgotten publisher. Give it up, Internet.

And you know what? I found one.

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC sells over 7,700 high-quality reproductions of dust jackets for rare and collectable books. Mark Terry, the mad genius behind the company, tells us it is the sole funding for his “Dust Jacket Archive Project.” He’s traveled all over North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas and Jamaica, scanning collections and accumulating over 50,000 jackets. Nice work if you can get it.

Just browsing through his online catalog is fascinating. His SciFi/Fantasy/Supernatural category includes over 800 vintage covers from Gnome Press, Arkham House, Doubleday, and many other publishers. I immediately fell in love with the cover to Shivers, a 1932 British anthology in the Creeps series, from Philip Allan & Co. Just look at the skinny stick dude menacing that plucky young English lass. You know something untoward is in the wind, and no mistake.

The facsimiles are a little pricey (averaging around $22), but I’ve seen much worse in the collector’s market. I’m tempted to buy a handful, to dress up my coverless books and even replace some of the more tattered dust jackets in my collection. And I think I’ll buy a facsimile dust jacket for Shivers, too. I don’t have a copy of Shivers, but I’m willing to grab a random hardcover, throw away the jacket, and put this one on it. Because, damn.

Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC operates out of San Francisco. Their website is here.