Black Gate – Page 338 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Enchantment, Heartache, and Mystery: The Blackthorn & Grim Trilogy by Juliet Marillier

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cover art by Arantza Sestayo

If you visit the bookstore every couple of weeks like I do, you stay on top of the latest titles. You spot the exciting new books early, and learn the names of future genre superstars. Or you stumble on books you’ve overlooked for five years and think they’re brand new, like I did last week.

The book in question was Dreamer’s Pool by Juliet Marillier, author of the 6-volume Sevenwaters Series. Looked new to me. Read the back and thought, “This sounds cool.” Took it home. Found out there are sequels, the most recent published two years ago. I guess I’m not nearly as hip as I thought I was.

Well, what the hell. Now I have a complete trilogy to enjoy instead of a single novel, so I suppose there’s an upside. Set in the mystical landscape of ancient Ireland, the series sounds like a winning combo and magic and mystery. The opening volume earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

Marillier (the Sevenwaters Series) opens the Blackthorn & Grim epic fantasy series by sweeping readers into a lavishly detailed world full of enchantments, devotion, heartache, and mystery. Blackthorn, an embittered wise woman, longs for vengeance against the wicked lord responsible for her grievous loss, her imprisonment, and her coming execution. Conmael, a handsome fey nobleman, offers her freedom if she will travel to Dalriada, provide healing help to all who ask, and forsake revenge for seven years… She settles at Winterfalls, home of the humane Prince Oran of Dalriada, and eventually solves a tortuous magical puzzle for him. Marillier’s fascinating narrative, based loosely on Irish myth and centered on women’s empowerment, never slips into sentimentality… a tasteful feast for the imagination.

Dreamer’s Pool won the Aurealis Award for Best Australian Fantasy Novel in 2014. Here’s the description.

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Exploring Bahariya Oasis, Egypt

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 Sean McLachlan Comments 2 comments

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A view of Bahariya Oasis from my camp on the outskirts of Biwati

When visiting Egypt, it’s hard to tear yourself away from the Nile Valley. After all, that’s where you’ll find the vast majority of temples and pyramids, as well as the lively city of Cairo, currently one of my favorite cities in the world.

On my previous trips to Egypt I’ve often looked longingly at the western horizon, wondering about the oases that are strung out across the desert far to the west of the river. Finally last month as part of researching my next novel, I got to visit one of them.

Bahariya Oasis is about 370 kilometers (230 miles) southwest of Egypt’s capital. The old caravan route (the one my characters have to take), was a waterless ten days on camel. I only had to endure a long ride on a cramped bus through a dreary landscape. This part of the Western Desert is not pretty. It’s flat, with few changes in terrain, and not even any real sand dunes to look at.

After this minimalist landscape, the road leads up a ridge of black volcanic stone and to an overlook above a wide valley. The entire valley is green with palm groves and cultivated land. The effect is startling, and must have been even more so for the travelers in the old caravans. The valley measures 94 kilometers (59 miles) long and 42 kilometers (26 miles) wide.

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John DeNardo on Terrific Science Fiction & Fantasy for Every Kind of Reader in March

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

A Memory Called Empire Arkady Martine-small

I don’t know why I even try to keep up with all the new science fiction and fantasy every month. It’s literally an impossible task. Well, impossible unless you’re SF Signal founder and ace Kirkus reviewer John DeNardo. When he was a child John was bitten by a radioactive bookworm, and now he has literary superpowers. Probably. It’s the only explanation that makes sense, anyway.

Fortunately for mankind, John uses his awesome powers for good. Meaning he catalogs all the coolest science fiction and fantasy new releases every month, and summarizes them for eager readers in a handy format. Here’s the highlights for March.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Mahit Dzmare is the newly-assigned ambassador of an independent mining station. Her predecessor, she learns after the fact, was killed in a highly-suspicious accident. While Mahit maneuvers to keep the station from being absorbed by the ever-encroaching reach of the Teixcalaanli Empire, she must also find out who is behind the murder and save herself from the same fate.

WHY YOU MIGHT LIKE IT: High stakes political intrigue abounds in this fast-paced story.

A Memory Called Empire is Arkady Martine’s debut novel, and the opening volume in the Teixcalaan series. Black Gate author Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries) calls it “a murder mystery wrapped up in a political space opera, and deeply immerses the reader in a unique culture and society.” It is 464 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover/$13.99 digital; it will be published by Tor Books on March 26, 2019.

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Mr. Death, a Red Sun, and a Wedding Crasher: Your March/April Science Fiction and Mystery Print Magazines

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Asimov's Science Fiction March April 2019-small

Analog Science Fiction and Fact March April 2019-small

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine March April 2019-small

Twenty-five years ago I scoffed at the idea of ordering books on the internet. As if! Well, I’ve come around a bit on that front. But I still very much enjoy browsing the magazine rack in person on a lazy Saturday afternoon, picking up favorite mags and rooting around hopefully behind the gardening periodicals for new discoveries.

Barnes & Noble still has a wonderful magazine selection, vast enough to keep me busy for hours every week. And yes, I do find a few new mags — this week it was 3×3 Illustration Annual No.15, a 420-page full color magazine of the best in innovative commercial illustration, and Parade Magazine’s Best of Star Trek issue, because you can never get enough Star Trek. But as usual, the magazines I took home with me were the old standards: Asimov’s, Analog, and an impulse buy, the latest Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Asimov’s looks particularly appealing this month. It’s a special tribute to Gardner Dozois, who died last year. It features memorials from fourteen of Gardner’s friends, including George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, Jack Dann, Pat Cadigan, and ten others. There’s also novellas from Greg Egan and Allen M. Steele and short stories by Michael Swanwick, Jack Dann, Eileen Gunn, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Tom Purdom, and others. But the highlight for me is Lawrence Watt-Evans “How I Found Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” the sequel to his Hugo Award-winning “Why I left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” one of the finest SF short stories of the past three decades.

Analog has stories by James Van Pelt, James Gunn, Jack McDevitt, Bud Sparhawk, and much more — plus “Beneath a Red Sun,” the story responsible for the absolutely stompin’ cover art by Dominic Harman. And Alfred Hitchcock, which I haven’t cracked open yet, has stories by O’Neil De Noux, Eric Rutter, Mat Coward, and many others.

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone – 3 Good Reasons: Not Quite Dead Enough

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

I have written a LOT about Sherlock Holmes and Solar Pons — some of it here at Black Gate. I even write newsletters about each one. And I had a pretty neat hardboiled/pulp column here. But my favorite mystery series, bar none, is Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. I’ve read and re-read each story multiple times and never tire of them. I even adapted one of the old Sidney Greenstreet radio shows into a pastiche (more of those are coming).

The genesis of Hither Came Conan (which I’m sure you’re following here at Black Gate) was actually an essay I wrote for my first (and so far only) Nero Wolfe Newsletter: 3 Good Things. Since I have far more writing projects (including a similar Robert E. Howard Newsletter) planned than, you know, actually written, issue two of The Brownstone of Nero Wolfe isn’t in the immediate future. So, as time allows, I’m going to write up some new 3 Good Reasons entries and post them here under the Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone moniker. I’d read and write REH and Wolfe just about all day, if I could. So, here we go…

Welcome to the first installment of 3 Reasons. With a goal of eventually tackling every tale of the Corpus, I’ll give three reasons why the particular story at hand is the best Nero Wolfe of them all. Since I’m writing over seventy ‘Best Story’ essays, the point isn’t actually to pick one – just to point out some of what is good in every adventure featuring Wolfe and Archie. And I’ll toss in one reason it’s not the best story. Now — These essays will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned!

The Story

It’s World War II and Archie is ‘Major Goodwin’, working for military intelligence. The Army wants Nero Wolfe to help with a particularly tricky issue, and the corpulent detective won’t talk to anyone. Archie is assigned back to the Brownstone to talk some sense into Wolfe. He finds the world’s most ordered household routine turned upside down and is dragged into a case brought to his attention by Lily Rowan.

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Can You Write Several Books per Month? Maybe You’re Not Crazy

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 James Enge Comments 6 comments

As Sean McLachlan ably discussed here at Black Gate last week, there’s an evolving internet storm about a romance writer who discovered, to her surprise, that some of her novels “have plagiarism.” She says it happened without her knowledge; she was working with a ghost-writer on those, and she’s taken them all down. She is the object of much scorn on the internet today, and probably for some time. Indeed, in the future she may have to find a pseudonym under which to publish the fiction she does not write. (Click the image above for details.)

Attendant to that storm, though, is the issue of how much one person can reasonably be expected to write in a month. Some people say “several books” and other people say “are you crazy?” and then terrible things and animated GIFs start to happen.

As it happens, this is the sort of thing about which I have very little knowledge and lots of opinions so HERE IT ALL IS.

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Future Treasures: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

Monday, March 4, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Kameron Hurley’s debut novel God’s War, which eventually became part of her Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy, was nominated for a Nebula Award; she won a Hugo in 2014 for Best Related Work. Her big space opera from last year, The Stars Are Legion, showed a very difference side to her, and was one of the most acclaimed books she’s ever published, with an Honorable Mention for the James Tiptree Award, a nomination for the Campbell Award, and a fifth-place finish for the Locus Award for Best SF Novel.

Her latest is something new again — a science fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars. It’s based on a short story with the same title originally published in John Joseph Adams’ Lightspeed Magazine (read it here); the novel version arrives in hardcover from Saga Press in two weeks.

They said the war would turn us into light. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back… different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief — no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero — or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

The Light Brigade will be published by Saga Press on March 19. It is 354 pages in hardcover, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Eve Ventrue.

See all our recent Future Treasures here.

Hither Came Conan: Iron Shadows in the Moon, the Bible, and Dark Horse

Monday, March 4, 2019 Bob Byrne Comments 6 comments

Timothy Truman turned sixty-three recently. Truman is one of the leading graphic book writers and artists in the industry. He was a cornerstone of Dark Horse’s Conan line, both writing and drawing.

Truman scripted “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” which Morgan Holmes recently expounded on. So, today we’ve got a bonus Hither Came Conan post, looking at Dark Horse’s version. Along with some discussion of the ‘before and after’ in that storyline.

The Free Companions covered issues 16 -18 of Dark Horse’s Conan The Cimmerian run. They picked up the storyline after the end of “Black Colossus,” with Conan at Yasmela’s side, to the disapproval of the Khorajans. He rescues her brother, king Khossus, but by story’s end, is displaced by Prince Julion of Muric (Al-Muric), an exiled stepson of King Strabonus.

Issues 19 – 21, Kozaki, cover Conan leading the Free Companions. After being dismissed from Khorajan service by Al-Muric, they raided willy nilly, building up some enmity.

But all of this is muddled together, as Dark Horse has Conan, near dead, in the swamps of the Ilbars River, the lone survivor of the Free Companions. And until Shah Amaruth shows up, pursuing Olivia, the story is a mélange of flashbacks involving Conan, Olivia’s story, and activity in the swamps. It will take more effort than it’s worth to sort through all that, so I’ll just work in a relatively linear fashion, time-wise.

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A Time Travel Epic of Grand Scale and Everyday Life: Time’s Children by D.B. Jackson

Sunday, March 3, 2019 Margaret S. McGraw Comments 1 comment

Time’s Children is the first novel in a new series called The Islevale Cycle, by D. B. Jackson, one of my favorite fantasy authors. Jackson excels at fully realized worldbuilding, including nature, culture, history, religion, politics — the grand scale and everyday life. Islevale is no exception: a large collection of islands with a great variety of culture and nature among them, as well as travel by ship on the waters between. Our young hero Tobias has been raised in Trevynisle, trained in practical and magical studies. He is quickly swept into his travel adventure on a merchant sailing ship, and then to various city and wilderness locations throughout Islevale.

The magic of Islevale centers around Travelers: Walkers, who can travel through time; Spanners, who can move instantly between great distances; and Crossers, who can move through solid objects. The magic is a combination of innate talent and the use of special tools to calibrate each destination. Tobias is a Walker, and we learn the intricacies of these magical abilities through his experiences.

Time travel is a challenge for any storyteller, and Jackson builds a solid and realistic framework for the Walkers. The amount they move forward or back in time is added to their physical body. For instance, if Tobias goes back one week in time and then returns the one week day to his original “present,” his body ages two weeks, although his mind and memory would only have aged the amount of time he experienced during the “trip.” Trevynisle’s governing rules prevent Walkers from going more than one year past or future. But Tobias accepts a mission to go fourteen years in the past — he leaves his “present” as a fifteen-year-old boy and arrives in the body of an almost-thirty-year-old man. The characters wrestle with the mechanics and morality of time travel and their actions in the past, present, and future — their choices have real consequences, anticipated or not.

I also particularly enjoyed the elements of daily life that affect the characters and the action. When Tobias is called before the Lord Chancellor of Trevynisle, he comes immediately from sword practice — hot, sweaty, and concerned about appearing in such rough condition. When he rescues infant Sofya, he suddenly has to deal with feeding, changing and caring for a baby — in addition to evading assassins still intent on completing their mission!

Tobias is not our only point of view character — in fact, we see the story from many different perspectives, including the antagonists. I enjoy this kind of storytelling, and Jackson does an amazing job building the richness of the world and presenting each point-of-view character with their own voice. In addition to the broad cast of human characters, there are other intriguing species in Islevale — mostly dangerous to humans. On Trevynisle, Tobias has befriended Droë a mysterious Tirribin who becomes an integral part of the story. Through Droë, we learn of other magical creatures whom the humans only know as “demons,” such as the predatory Belvora, all bound by the oaths and laws of the Distraint. I was pleasantly surprised to see Droë become a more central character, and I hope to see more of her and the other “demons” in the rest of the series.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: “Can These Bones Lie?” by Ted Reynolds

Sunday, March 3, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

The Analog Award was launched in 1979 for works published in the magazine in the preceding year. The Short Story category was one of the original categories and has been given every year the award has been in existence. It was won the first year by Orson Scott Card for his story “Lifeloop.” In 1980, it was won by Ted Reynolds for his story “Can These Bones Live?” Reynolds was nominated again the following year in the same category for the story “Meeting of Minds.”

Reynolds opens “Can These Bones Live?” with a cliché. His main character awakens and doesn’t know where she is, having to explore the world anew and figure out what is going on. One of her earliest memories is that she has actually died, so she would seem to be in some sort of afterlife. Unfortunately, Reynolds spends too much time working this cliché as his never named viewpoint character continues to move through her uninhabited world, searching for other people, food, or any recognizable landmark. Her sole indication that she is still somewhere on Earth is her ability to recognize the Moon.

Eventually, Reynolds does take his story in a different, and unique direction, although it happens at a leisurely rate and he doesn’t really give the reader a reason to care about his protagonist. Eventually, she falls asleep and begins to commune with the Roanei, an alien race that informs her that humanity has gone extinct and she is the last human. If she requests it, the Roanei can bring humans back from extinction, but if they decide not to, the human race will remain dead.

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