Search Results for: brandon crilly

Forbidden Magic, Murder, and Disco: The Carter Archives by Dan Stout

Dan Stout’s The Carter Archives: Titanshade, Titan Day, and Titan Song (DAW, 2019-21). Covers by Chris McGrath Whenever an author wraps up a trilogy, we bake a cake in the Black Gate offices. But what if it’s not actually, like, a trilogy? What if the third book is just a rest stop on a long and exciting journey toward five books? Or seven? Or, Wheel-of-Time like, a stupendous 12 volumes (or 14, or whatever the heck it is)?? If it’s…

Read More Read More

Revisit the Fabled City of Brass: S. A. Chakraborty Wraps The Daevabad Trilogy with The Empire of Gold

It’s always a delight to watch a talented writer successfully wrap up a fantasy series. And that’s especially true of S. A. Chakraborty’s The Daevabad Trilogy, which opened with one of the most popular debuts of the last few years. The City of Brass. Here’s what Brandon Crilly’s said in his enthusiastic review right here at Black Gate in 2018. Chakraborty creates a world that’s nuanced and detailed. It has exactly the vivid freshness we continue to need in the fantasy genre, as…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Unreconciled, Book 4 of Donovan by W. Michael Gear

The Donovan series: Outpost, Abandoned, Pariah, and the forthcoming Unreconciled. Covers by Steve Stone. W. Michael Gear knows his way around a science fiction series. He wrote the Way of Spider trilogy in the late 80s, the Forbidden Borders trilogy in the early 90s, and some, what, 20 novels in the First North Americans series, co-written with his wife Kathleen O’Neal Gear? This is a man who knows how to plot for the long haul. His latest is the Donovan…

Read More Read More

The Story Bright Should Have Been: The Carter Archives by Dan Stout

Covers by Chris McGrath Dan Stout’s novel Titanshade was one of the breakout hits of 2019. W. Michael Gear called it “A masterpiece of a first novel,” John DeNardo picked it as one of the Best Books of March, and Black Gate columnist Brandon Crilly selected it as one of his Top Five of the year, saying: Titanshade is the story Bright should have been. Stout provides this fascinating, pseudo-dieselpunk world populated by unique creatures instead of orcs and elves. It…

Read More Read More

Monsters, Pirates, and Ghosts: The Revenger Series by Alastair Reynolds

Cover designs by Blacksheep and Lauren Panepinto The Revenger series is one of the most successful SF series in recent memory. Opening novel Revenger (2017) was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book; SFX called it “By far the most enjoyable book Reynolds has ever written.” Sequel Shadow Captain arrived last year, and quickly won over critics; the Guardian called it “A swashbuckling thriller — Pirates of the Caribbean meets Firefly.”…

Read More Read More

io9 on All the New SF & Fantasy You Need to Know About in February

As the months go by I feel the loss of the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog keenly. It shut down on December 16th of last year, firing all freelancers and halting production of new content. That included Jeff Somers’ monthly survey of the best genre books, which I’d grown to depend on to keep me reliably informed. Fortunately there are fine other resources for book junkies, like Cheryl Eddy’s monthly new book column at io9/Gizmodo. This month Cheryl looks at…

Read More Read More

What Happens After the Greatest Con in History: The Quantum Garden by Derek Kunsken

Covers by Justin Adams Derek first appeared in Black Gate in issue 15 with his short story “The Gifts of Li Tzu-Ch’eng.” He’s been our regular Saturday evening blogger since 2013, producing nearly 150 articles on diverse topics such as web comics, Alan Moore, Star Trek, New York ComicCon, Percy Jackson, Science Fiction in China, and much more. His first novel, The Quantum Magician, was published by Solaris on October 2, 2018. In his Black Gate review Brandon Crilly said, The worldbuilding here is intricate,…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less: The Privilege of Peace by Tanya Huff

The Privilege of Peace (Peacekeeper #3) by Tanya Huff DAW Books (352 pages, $7.99 paperback, $12.99 eBook, June 19, 2018) I’ll often come back to one of my favorite lines from Peter Capaldi’s run as The Doctor: Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again, too, and that’s always happy. It’s one of those simple quotes that applies to a lot in life, and guess what – it applies to writing and reading, too. As much as we clamor…

Read More Read More

Wordsmiths: An Interview with Waubgeshig Rice

A while back at Can*Con 2017, I had the pleasure of meeting author and journalist Waubgeshig Rice for a panel discussion on post-apocalyptic fiction and First Nations perspectives in Canada. The panel came together partly because Waub was beginning to promote his then-forthcoming novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, which released in 2018 from ECW Press (and I reviewed a little while ago here). Despite being incredibly busy with different projects, Waub was game for a one-on-one interview to discuss Moon and…

Read More Read More

Adventure in One of the Most Famous Locales in Fantasy: The City of Brass by S. A Chakraborty

The fabled City of Brass, magical home to djinni and efreet, is the setting for but a single tale from The Arabian Nights, but it has nonetheless loomed large in readers hearts and minds through the centuries. For D&D players of course it has a special significance, as it features prominently in the history of the game (including on the famous cover of Gary Gygax’s Dungeon Masters Guide). But no modern writer has laid claim to it as passionately and as…

Read More Read More