Black Gate – Page 591 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid

Thursday, November 10, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

S. J. Kincaid’s debut novel Insignia, the tale of a war between governments and corporations that rages across the solar system, grew into an ambitious trilogy, and was optioned by 20th Century Fox.

Her newest novel is a story of galactic court intrigue, the tale of what happens when the galaxy’s most deadly weapon masquerades as a senator’s daughter and a hostage of the galactic court. It is available now in hardcover from Simon & Schuster.

A Diabolic is ruthless. A Diabolic is powerful. A Diabolic has a single task: Kill in order to protect the person you’ve been created for.

Nemesis is a Diabolic, a humanoid teenager created to protect a galactic senator’s daughter, Sidonia. The two have grown up side by side, but are in no way sisters. Nemesis is expected to give her life for Sidonia, and she would do so gladly. She would also take as many lives as necessary to keep Sidonia safe.

When the power-mad Emperor learns Sidonia’s father is participating in a rebellion, he summons Sidonia to the Galactic court. She is to serve as a hostage. Now, there is only one way for Nemesis to protect Sidonia. She must become her. Nemesis travels to the court disguised as Sidonia — a killing machine masquerading in a world of corrupt politicians and two-faced senators’ children. It’s a nest of vipers with threats on every side, but Nemesis must keep her true abilities a secret or risk everything.

As the Empire begins to fracture and rebellion looms closer, Nemesis learns there is something more to her than just deadly force. She finds a humanity truer than what she encounters from most humans. Amidst all the danger, action, and intrigue, her humanity just might be the thing that saves her life — and the empire.

The Diabolic was published by Simon & Schuster on November 1, 2016. It is 403 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by There Is Studio.

Reading The Sheriff of Babylon

Wednesday, November 9, 2016 Sean McLachlan Comments 4 comments

28953137 I didn’t read many comics growing up. My pocket money was very limited and if I had a spare dollar, I was far more likely to spend it on a used fantasy or science fiction paperback than a comic book. It wasn’t that I didn’t like comics, it was simply a matter of practicality. A paperback would give me a couple of days of entertainment while a comic would only last an hour.

What comics I did read were never of the superhero variety. I liked grittier stuff like Sergeant Rock and Eerie. And of course every straight male adolescent growing up in the 1980s liked to sneak a peek at Heavy Metal.

Now that I’m older and have more spare cash, plus a kid getting into comics, I’m beginning to learn about a vast field of literature I’ve missed. Superheroes still don’t interest me (or my son) but I’ve found some really good stories set in the real world.

One of the best is The Sheriff of Babylon, published by Vertigo. A collection of the first six issues is out now.

The setting is Baghdad in 2003, as the American occupiers scramble to reorganize the country. Former police officer Christopher Henry has taken a lucrative contractor job to help train the new Iraqi police force. When one of his recruits gets murdered along with his entire family, Christopher tries to investigate the killing. He enlists the aid of Nassir al Maghreb, a former police investigator from Saddam’s regime who everyone from the CIA to a shadowy militia seem to be after. He also joins forces with Saffiya al Agani, a female Iraqi politician who spent most of her life in exile in the United States and has returned to join the interim government. Soon they find themselves in over their heads trying to make sense of Iraq’s Byzantine politics and warring factions.

Writer Tom King worked a brief stint in Iraq as a CIA operative and brings an insider’s knowledge to the story. Artist Mitch Gerards knows his subject too, and fills the larger panels with telling details.

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Where Fae Inhabits Diners, Dive Bars and Trailer Parks: The Gallow & Ragged Books by Lilith Saintcrow

Wednesday, November 9, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

By following so much independent and standalone fantasy, I think I tend to neglect a lot of fantasy series — especially urban fantasy. But much of the most popular fantasy being published today is in the form of exciting and fast paced urban fantasy series. Like Lilith Saintcrow’s Gallow & Ragged dark fantasy trilogy, which Patricia Briggs calls “A true faery story, creepy and heroic by turns… I could not put it down.”

All three volumes in the series have appeared in the last sixteen months — a pretty fast paced publishing schedule, too. The books are:

Trailer Park Fae (352 pages, $14.99 trade paperback/$7.99 digital, June 23, 2015)
Roadside Magic (368 pages, $14.99 trade paperback/$7.99 digital, January 26, 2016)
Wasteland King (352 pages, $15.99 trade paperback/$9.99 digital, July 26, 2016)

This is an intriguing series that’s been getting a lot of attention. Publishers Weekly called the opening volume “far darker and lovelier than the title suggests.” If you enjoy adventure fantasy, it could be well worth checking out. Click on any of the images for bigger versions.

Amazing Stories, May and June 1965: A Retro-Review

Wednesday, November 9, 2016 Rich Horton Comments 1 comment

Here we come to the very last two issues of Amazing edited by Cele Lalli.

The editorials, as ever by Norman Lobsenz, consider the difficulty of accurate and precise time measurements, and a very brief discussion of David Bunch, the writer readers of Amazing and Fantastic loved to hate. Lobsenz quotes Bunch (“I’m not in this business… to entertain. I’m here to make the reader think… chastise him for the terrible… world we allow… The reader I want is the one who wants the anguish… All space must look askance at us.”)

This last Lalli issue was the last issue Bunch would appear in (not surprisingly) for over three years — he didn’t return to Amazing until late 1968, under editor Barry N. Malzberg — and the only one for which he had the cover story. (One suspects the June cover was partly Lalli and Lobsenz saying, “Heck, we don’t care anymore, we’re going to promote what WE like!”) The covers are each by Gray Morrow. There are only two interior illustrations, both in May, by Morrow and by Virgil Finlay.

The letter column is gone, again perhaps in view of the upcoming sale of the magazines. Robert Silverberg conducts the book review column, The Spectroscope, sharply and indeed acerbically, to good effect. In May he reviews an Avalon Books reprint of George Allen England’s Darkness and Dawn, a somewhat famous piece of proto-SF. Silverberg calls it “a cruel resurrection,” and indeed it does seem awful (and shockingly racist) as described. He also covers Walter Cole’s Checklist of Science Fiction Anthologies (with much praise) and The Worlds of Robert F. Young (“I am not fond of the writing of Robert F. Young” – given that Young was a Goldsmith/Lalli regular, this is a perhaps brave statement – and a sensible one!)

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Sarah Avery on “The War of the Wheat Berry Year”

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Sarah Avery’s story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” first appeared in the Black Gate 15, our last print issue. Since then, Sarah has had a stellar career — winning the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her novel Tales from Rugosa Coven, editing an anthology with David Sklar, and successfully Kickstarting The Imlen Brat, a novella featuring the heroine of “War of the Wheat Berry Year,” when she was a child adopted into a perilous royal court. Now Great Jones Street has reprinted a revised version of “The War of the Wheat Berry Year.” Here’s Sarah.

In 2003, I wrote a fantasy short story about.. a turncoat. I gave her many of the attributes we see so often — an army of followers who are Other to her, a homeland with blatant unresolved injustices, an offstage villain who is suitably repellent. But I gave her a few other things, too, that the usual turncoats don’t have.

She faces someone she loves on the battlefield. Someone she owes, who has done her lifesaving kindnesses she can never forget or repay. He’s angry, and his anger has its reasons. Quite apart from her betrayal of their nation, she has betrayed him, humiliated him, endangered him, put him in the position of having to make choices he finds unbearable. Worst of all, she has put him in the position of having to kill her or to die trying…

A few years later, “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” was my first professional sale. I sold the story to John O’Neill at Black Gate — he put me through three rounds of revisions for clarity, and I’ll always be grateful for his patience. In 2009, when the magazine was about to transition from print to online publication, my story appeared in the last print issue. Some things about the first published version of the story hold up pretty well, well enough that Great Jones Street picked it up for reprint this year.

Read Sarah’s complete article on the reasons for her revisions, “Conscientious Turncoats, Or Why I Stopped the Virtual Presses on “The War of the Wheat Berry Year,” at Great Jones Street.

Future Treasures: Jack Ketchum’s Off Season: 35th Anniversary Edition From Dark Regions Press

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Jack Ketchum’s debut novel Off Season created something of a sensation when it first appeared as a Ballantine paperback in 1980. Partially based on the legend of the Scottish cannibal clan led by Sawney Bean (which also inspired Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes), the novel was heavily critiqued for its over-the-top violence, and Ballantine eventually withdrew it from circulation. Now, to celebrate the book’s 35th anniversary, Dark Regions Press is returning the book to print in a special unexpurgated edition, with a new short story and afterword by the author, and a gorgeous wraparound cover by David Stoupakis.

The Ultimate Edition of Jack Ketchum’s Debut Novel That Shocked the Horror Scene in 1980

Jack Ketchum’s debut novel Off Season made a huge impact on the horror scene with its initial publication in 1980. It became so controversial that the original publisher withdrew their support of the novel. Now award-winning specialty publisher Dark Regions Press is bringing Ketchum’s debut novel back in its best form yet.

The 35th anniversary edition of Off Season includes the author’s originally intended version of the novel (unexpurgated), a new short story based in the Off Season universe, a new afterword from the author, the novelette “Winter Child,” five full page interior illustrations by Tomislav Tikulin and stunning full color wraparound dust jacket artwork by David Stoupakis.

Here’s the complete wraparound cover.

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Last Term: Honor’s Paradox by P.C. Hodgell

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

oie_854428zsyhwbhz — Another tawdry Caldwell cover

Can you tell I really like P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series? Not once have I followed up a review of an author’s book with a review of her next one. And in three weeks I’ll review the next one as well. In between there’ll be a short story roundup and then, provided the Canadian mail runs well, Chris Carlsen’s Shadow of the Wolf.

Last week, I wrote that Bound in Blood (2010) was essentially a story where just a bunch of stuff happens to Hodgell’s cat-clawed heroine, Jame. That’s pretty much the feel in Honor’s Paradox (2011) as well, but this time there’s more apparent purpose. The story is told in Hodgell’s usual mix of the funny, the tragic, and the sublime. One final time, the setting is the Kencyrath military school, the randon academy.

Again, the setup:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one: feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges; heavily-muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen; fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle, one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to make a life on Rathilien.

Now, the power of the Three-Faced God seems to be reappearing. The Kencyrath believe that only the Tyr-ridan, three Highborn reflecting the three aspects of their god — destroyer, preserver, and creator — will be able to defeat Perimal Darkling. Jame, raised in the heart of Perimal Darkling, is fated to be the Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys.

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Self-published Book Review: Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon

Monday, November 7, 2016 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’d love to get more submissions.

Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon is actually two stories. One is a sword and sorcery epic, “The Emperor of the Red Planet”, about a tyrant who rules his people with an iron fist, and the five people who unite to defeat him. The other story is about six school boys, including Odran, the first person narrator.

Odran is disliked and bullied at the all-boys’ school he attends, and like many such boys, he daydreams about his antagonists getting their comeuppance. And in his dead grandmother’s house, instead of the elephant figurine he’d been promised, Odran finds a copybook, and in it reads the story of Nardo. Like himself, Nardo is lonely and unhappy, but Nardo is also an heir of the line of Starnovers, the family that rules the red planet. And with the Empress’s death, he claims her talisman, an elephant figurine that allows him to control the demonic creatures behind the Starnovers’ power.

The story in the copybook grows longer with the reading, each chapter seeming to reflect Odran’s life, fulfilling his dreams in Nardo. So that when Odran’s bullies steal and damage his lunchbox, he next reads about how the now aged Emperor Nardo gets revenge on his enemies by stealing those things that are most precious to them. But Odran can’t entirely control the story, and when the five enemies unite in order to defeat Nardo, he can conceive of the obstacles they face, but the characters themselves are too real to play along. Soon Odran realizes that the reason the characters are so real is that the book seems to be stealing pieces of the people he knows, giving life to the characters in the story while removing critical pieces from the personalities of the originals. And as the five enemies in the book are growing into the heroes of a dark Sword and Sorcery story, the real life counterparts are becoming worse and worse.

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Check Out the Recent Fiction at Tor.com

Monday, November 7, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

blue-is-a-darkness-weakened-by-light-small

One of the (many) reasons I enjoy Tor.com is the enormously diverse range of fiction, compliments of Tor’s large cast of contributing editors. The sixteen stories posted there in the last three months were selected by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Justin Landon, Diana Pho, Liz Gorinsky, Melissa Frain, Susan Chang, and other fine editors. They include YA fantasy, horror, hard SF, urban fantasy, dystopian SF, space opera, dark fantasy, post-apocalyptic SF, and historical fantasy. What’s not to love?

A new story is posted at Tor.com every week. Not sure which ones you’d enjoy most? That’s what Tangent Online is for. Here’s Seraph on Rebecca Campbell’s “The High Lonesome Frontier,” illustrated by Linda Yan (above left).

As I drifted along these memories of the man who wrote the song, and the woman who sang it, and the mother who loved it, and the granddaughter who wasn’t even sure it was real yet loved it anyways… I realized the true beauty of this story, and the legitimacy of its claim to being science fiction. This story is of a 4th, or perhaps 5th-dimensional viewpoint, following the thread of this one song in a direct course from one life to the next, experiencing it all as a single moment in time, yet never in a linear fashion, as if the story itself is the river of which the song forever echoes, where does that water run. Magnificent.

Read Seraph’s review here. And here’s Jason McGregor on Lettie Prell’s hard SF tale “The Three Lives of Sonata James,” illustrated by Kevin Hong (above middle).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: ‘Dirk Gently’ is Not ‘Timeless’

Monday, November 7, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

I love Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the novel by Douglas Adams. Which you know because you read my Black Gate post about it. And I liked the sequel, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. And there were some good bits in the third novel, unfinished at Adams’ death.

And, I thought that the BBC miniseries starring Houdini & Doyle’s Stephen Magnon was worth watching. I own audio books of Adams reading Dirk Gently and the excellent BBC radio play of it. So, I’m a fan. I was leery after seeing the trailer for the new BBC miniseries starring Elijah Wood (not as Gently, however). It didn’t look like it was very true to the style of Adams’ books.

I’ve watched the first two episodes. Except for discussing BBC’s Sherlock post-season two, I’m usually pretty positive with my Black Gate posts here. If you are looking for more of that sunshine, skip the following and scroll on down to my review of the new show, Timeless.

With six of eight episodes yet to air, the new Dirk Gently is a festering pile of tripe. It bears almost no resemblance to Adams’ character, and even disregarding that, it’s a ridiculous mess of a show in its own right. Max Landis, who it appears wanted to imitate Quentin Tarentino while showing everyone how talented he is, all but completely ignores Adams’ work.

There is barely a shadow of the actual Dirk Gently in this series. Samuel Barnett’s character is totally clueless, almost completely helpless and neither clever nor funny. He just rolls along with no real insights or ability to influence events. That sound like Adams’ character? And, he’s not even the star, as the show is really about Gently’s reluctant assistant, Todd, played by Wood.

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