Jeffrey E. Barlough’s Western Lights series may be the best fantasy books you don’t know about. I didn’t know about them either, until Jackson Kuhl’s review of Strange Cargo in Black Gate 8. Jackson has called Barlough “a wonderful yet unappreciated fantasist… a talent I invite everyone to sample.” In his review of Anchorwick, the fifth novel in the series, he summarized the intriguing setting this way: In a world where the Ice Age never ended, a cataclysm has reduced humanity to…
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Fletcher is no stranger to the readers and fans of Black Gate. His articles and reviews are not only well-written, insightful and entertaining, they are extremely popular, as well. He is the “reviewer extraordinaire,” and his reviews have led me to read many books. I trust his opinion and his taste in what makes for a good novel. Fletcher is also one of the most voracious readers I have ever met; even in my prime, when I was reading about…
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Black Gate had 1.26 million page views last month, very nearly a record. Much of that bump in traffic was due to a series of very popular posts. Derek Kunsken has long been one of our most popular bloggers — his interview with Christopher Golden was our third most popular article in October, and last month his piece on Rebirth: DC’s corrective reboot was #5. But he thoroughly dominated the charts in July, claiming both the #2 slot, with his look back at Marvel’s…
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Well, sad to say, there are just not that many swords & sorcery stories to round up this month. The big guns, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Grimdark Magazine, (the latter delayed while they run the Kickstarter for their anthology, Evil Is A Matter of Perspective) were silent. Beneath Ceaseless Skies’ two May issues didn’t have anything that fit the S&S bill. None of the other magazines yielded stories to review either. Only the stalwart Swords and Sorcery Magazine came through, just like…
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I stumbled on my first copy of Black Static, issue #40, at a Barnes and Noble here in Chicago last year, and I was very impressed. The magazine is beautifully designed and illustrated, with top-notch writing and some great columns. It’s exactly the kind of thing I like to take with me on long plane rides. I’ve been tracking down subsequent issues and writing about them here, because I think you deserve to know about them. Also, because really excellent…
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One of the most common questions I hear from readers and non-writers is Where do you get your ideas? A lot of writers I know have a glib answer like: my cat, my muse (often the same critter), my subconscious (but in other words, we don’t know), or my favorite: a P.O. Box in Spokane. But sometimes, authors — and I think especially SFF authors — will say a book idea came from two or three separate things considered at…
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Fantasy readers expect the world of a fantasy novel to be different from our mundane reality. There’s magic afoot — of course the world operates differently. The author paints the fantastical milieu and we enter it primed to believe, donning those 4-D glasses that let us accept strangeness. It’s a more-than-willing suspension of disbelief. We don’t ask for justifications, as long as the fantastic elements of the world are internally consistent. It’s in the tradition. But with fantasy as re-imagined history…
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[Apologies in advance for not being politically correct enough to call this the Black Gate Holiday Gift List. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, kindly ignore this post. Or use our suggestions to buy something for yourself, we won’t tell anyone.] If you’re a Black Gate fan, we already know a lot about you. You’re almost certainly a fantasy devotee, well-read, with impeccable taste, and accustomed to the natural adoration of your peers. Pretty close, right? And you’re probably also a…
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Anchorwick Jeffrey E. Barlough Gresham & Doyle (387 pages, $14.95, October 2008) Of all the books I’ve reviewed for Black Gate, the one that sticks in my head is Jeffrey Barlough’s Strange Cargo, which I reviewed way back in 2005 for BG #8. Grumpus that I am, of course I dinged it. I still stand by the review years later, though I feel some guilt about it too. Barlough is such a wonderful yet unappreciated fantasist that to judge him…
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208 pages, $9.95 On Sale July, 2005 Edited by John O’Neill Published by New Epoch Press Cover Art by Kenn Brown Interior Art by Chuck Lukacs, Bernie Mireault, and Denis Rodier Buy this issue — only $9.95 plus shipping & handling! FICTION “The Turning of the Tiles” by Iain Rowan Dao-shi, the wily exorcist of “Looking for Goats, Finding Monkeys,” returns in an epic tale of ghosts, assassins, and treachery in ancient China. “Turn Up This Crooked Way” by James…
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