Future Treasures: The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams

Future Treasures: The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams

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the-heart-of-what-was-lost-tad-williams-smallTad Williams’ massive Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (The Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and the 1,100-page To Green Angel Tower) was one of the biggest fantasy series of the late 80s and early 90s. Set in the world of Osten Ard, the books were enormously influential on an entire generation of fantasy writers. Patrick Rothfuss called it “Groundbreaking… changed how people thought of the genre, and paved the way for so much modern fantasy. Including mine,” and George R. R. Martin said it “Inspired me to write my own seven-book trilogy…. It’s one of my favorite fantasy series.”

Tad Williams returns to Osten Ard for the first time in over two decades with The Heart of What Was Lost. It arrives in hardcover next month from DAW, and will be followed by The Witchwood Crown (the opening novel in a brand new series, Last King of Osten Ard) in April 4, 2017.

At the end of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Ineluki the Storm King, an undead spirit of horrifying, demonic power, came within moments of stopping Time itself and obliterating humankind. He was defeated by a coalition of mortal men and women joined by his own deathless descendants, the Sithi.

In the wake of the Storm King’s fall, Ineluki’s loyal minions, the Norns, dark cousins to the Sithi, choose to flee the lands of men and retreat north to Nakkiga, their ancient citadel within the hollow heart of the mountain called Stormspike. But as the defeated Norns make their way to this last haven, the mortal Rimmersman Duke Isgrimnur leads an army in pursuit, determined to end the Norns’ attacks and defeat their ageless Queen Utuk’ku for all time.

Two southern soldiers, Porto and Endri, joined the mortal army to help achieve this ambitious goal — though as they venture farther and farther into the frozen north, braving the fierce resistance and deadly magics of the retreating Norns, they cannot help but wonder what they are doing so very far from home. Meanwhile, the Norns must now confront the prospect of extinction at the hands of Isgrimnur and his mortal army.

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A Neglected Master: The Best of Henry Kuttner

A Neglected Master: The Best of Henry Kuttner

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In Henry Kuttner’s short story “The Voice of the Lobster,” a character who is trying to escape some enemies muses to himself that he wishes he were a Cerean. In a footnote Kuttner includes the following: “The inhabitants of Ceres were long supposed to be invisible. Lately it has been discovered that Ceres has no inhabitants.” (p. 135).

Such is the typical humor of The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975), the fourth installment in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. The previous volumes in this series all had insightful afterwords by the featured author, but Kuttner’s book does not contain one. Primarily, I take it, because Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) had already been dead for over a decade and a half by the time of publication. A shame though, given how the previous author afterwords in this series shed much light upon the subtext of their stories.

The introduction for this volume was done by the late and legendary Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). As with the previous three volumes, the cover art was by the amazing Dean Ellis (1920-2009).

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Cemetery Dance 74/75 Now on Sale

Cemetery Dance 74/75 Now on Sale

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cemetery-dance-74-75-smallI’m used to Cemetery Dance being a slim newsprint publication, so imagine my surprise on Saturday when I saw the massive 200-page trade paperback at right in the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble (click the image for a full-sized version).

The huge double issue is the biggest issue of CD I’ve ever seen. On the website, editor Richard Chizmar explains the necessity for this Goliath-sized installment.

This special issue not only features an original, never-before-published novella by Joe Hill, but the issue grew so large that we have to publish it as our FIRST-EVER oversized trade paperback version of the magazine and our first double issue since #17/18 way back in the day! This change is just for this issue, so we can fit all of the amazing content we received. We’ll be back to normal with the fall issue. All subscribers to the magazine WILL receive this special issue with your subscription, no additional purchase is required.

Cemetery Dance #74/75 is a special Joe Hill issue. It was published in both trade paperback (available now for $14.95) and a signed limited-edition hardcover (shipping soon for $60). It has new fiction from Joe Hill, Glen Hirshberg, Bruce McAllister, Ray Garton, and others. Here’s the complete contents.

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Why Swords & Sorcery?

Why Swords & Sorcery?

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oie_521202xl2lgoypAbout twenty years ago, I bought John Clute and John Grant’s The Encylopedia of Fantasy. I wasn’t reading much standard fantasy at the time, having abandoned it for science fiction and crime stories. As I pored over the Encyclopedia’s entries, several authors I’d never read caught my attention, enough so that I went out and bought books by them. That was I how I came to read Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry and Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. While I liked parts of them, they struck me as long-winded and overwrought for much of their length. I also realized I was done with stories of willowy elfs, doughty dwarfs, and emo heroes — the seemingly standard players in most of what I was reading. If that was the current state of fantasy, I was all right without it.

I was drawn back to the genre a few years later, though, when I became aware of Night Shade Books publishing hardcover omnibuses of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories and novels. As a monster fan of Wagner, I jumped at the chance to replace my battered paperbacks. As soon as I got them I found myself compelled to read them. I hadn’t read Wagner’s fantasy in several years, and had almost forgotten how visceral a punch it packs (click for my reviews of Death Angel’s Shadow and Night Winds). His stories grabbed me and shook me in a way none of the writers like Kay or Williams had. Battle scenes in epic novels seemed bloated in the light of Wagner’s taut action sequences. The Kane stories were both darker and more vivid than most of the epics I had read. And whatever else about the character of Kane, he never mopes or whines, as I found too many modern epic heroes prone to doing.

When I finished rereading all the Kane stories, I practically ran to my shelves looking for anything else that might affect me the same way. The obvious choices were Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. I had read both authors’ works several times previously, but not for nearly twenty years in both cases.

Howard met my needs, Moorcock less so. Howard remained the ur-swords & sorcery writer, a teller of ripping yarns of the first caliber. This time around Moorcock struck me as too intent on holding the material at a distance, as if part of him was slumming, or maybe just putting on a show to make some shopworn points about heroism, politics, and religion.

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Old Dark House Double Feature V: The Cat and the Canary (1939) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

Old Dark House Double Feature V: The Cat and the Canary (1939) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

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The Cat and the Canary
Paramount Pictures (1939)
Directed by Elliott Nugentdard
Written by Walter de Leon and Lynn Starling
Starring Bob Hope, Paulette God, John Beal, Douglass Montgomery, and Gale Sondergaard

Growing up, I never quite understood the appeal of Bob Hope. At the time, he was an oldish guy who told mostly unfunny jokes, usually while holding a golf club. I wasn’t familiar with his many film roles of yore and I’m still not familiar with a lot of them.

But he comes off better in old dark house movies such as The Ghost Breakers (1940) and The Cat and the Canary (1939). His wisecracking, scaredy-cat persona in these films was considerably more appealing than his golf club wielding standup persona of later years.

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Modular: Boldly Go … with Star Trek Adventures RPG Playtest

Modular: Boldly Go … with Star Trek Adventures RPG Playtest

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A Starfleet away team encounters some complications in Star Trek Adventures RPG.

A Starfleet Away Team encounters some complications in the Star Trek Adventures RPG

Though Star Trek is one of the most popular franchises in science fiction and fantasy, it’s been over a decade since there has been a tabletop roleplaying game in production set in the Star Trek universe. That’s about to change in 2017 with the release of Star Trek Adventures from Modiphius Games.

The game is currently in development, but if you’re interested in checking it out, you don’t have to wait until 2017. Modiphius has just begun an open alpha playtest, allowing people across the world to begin playing games set in the world, test out the rules system, and provide feedback in time for the final design of the game.

Last Friday, I was able to get together a group to do a trial run of the first open playtest adventure. Though there’s no telling exactly which mechanics will stay the same through the playtest process, what is clear at this very early stage is that Modiphius is putting together a game that captures the feel of Star Trek in a tabletop roleplaying game.

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New Treasures: The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

New Treasures: The Hidden People by Alison Littlewood

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the-hidden-people-alison-littlewood-smallI admit the recent mini-boom in “pioneer fantasy,” which drops readers into a world of dark superstition, has a lot of appeal to me. Much of it is set on the American pioneer, but not exclusively.

The latest entrant is Alison’s Littlewood’s (A Cold Season, The Unquiet House) newest fantasy The Hidden People, which is set in rural Britain in the 1850s, and which Booklist calls “The perfect book to curl up with on a chilly fall day… will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.”

In 1851, within the grand glass arches of London’s Crystal Palace, Albie Mirralls meets his cousin Lizzie for the first — and, as it turns out, last — time. His cousin is from a backward rural village, and Albie expects she will be a simple country girl, but instead he is struck by her inner beauty and by her lovely singing voice, which is beautiful beyond all reckoning. When next he hears of her, many years later, it is to hear news of her death at the hands of her husband, the village shoemaker.

Unable to countenance the rumors that surround his younger cousin’s murder–apparently, her husband thought she had been replaced by one of the “fair folk” and so burned her alive — Albie becomes obsessed with bringing his young cousin’s murderer to justice. With his father’s blessing, as well as that of his young wife, Albie heads to the village of Halfoak to investigate his cousin’s murder. When he arrives, he finds a community in the grip of superstition, nearly every member of which believes Lizzie’s husband acted with the best of intentions and in the service of the village.

There, Albie begins to look into Lizzie’s death and to search for her murderous husband, who has disappeared. But in a village where the rationalism and rule of science of the Industrial Revolution seem to have found little purchase, the answers to the question of what happened to Lizzie and why prove elusive. And the more he learns, the less sure he is that there aren’t mysterious powers at work.

The Hidden People was published by Jo Fletcher Books on November 1, 2016. It is 368 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cool and Lam are Back!!!!

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cool and Lam are Back!!!!

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coollam_heatErle Stanley Gardner is best known as the creator of Perry Mason. Mason, of course, was the famous lawyer portrayed almost three hundred times (!!!) by Raymond Burr, spanning three decades of television. But Gardner was a prolific pulpster who wrote far, far more than just Mason stories.

For example, his Ed Jenkins was one of the early hard boiled detectives appearing in Black Mask. And under the name of A.A. Fair, he wrote twenty-nine thoroughly entertaining novels about the mismatched PIs, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. And that’s who we’re going to talk about today. Make sure you read to the end for some very cool news (No, don’t just jump ahead to there, please!).

Cool and Lam appeared in twenty-nine novels over thirty-one years, with the final tale coming out the same month Gardner passed away.

Bertha Cool, profane, massive, belligerent and bulldog, sat back of her desk, her diamonds flashing in the morning sunlight as she moved her hand over a pile of papers….

Bertha Cool said, “Now, don’t make any mistakes about Donald. He’s a go getter. God knows he hasn’t any brawn, but he has brains. He’s a half-pint runt and a good beating raises hell with him, but he knows his way around.

Donald can find her if anyone can. He isn’t as young as he looks. He got to be a lawyer, and they kicked him out when he showed a client hot to commit a perfectly legal murder. Donald thought he as explaining a technicality in the law, but the Bar Association didn’t like it. They said it as unethical. They also said it wouldn’t work…

‘Donald came to work for me, and the first case he had, damned if he didn’t show ‘em there was a loophole in the murder law through which a man could drive a horse and buggy. Now they’re trying to amend the law. That’s Donald for you!”

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Wordsmiths: An Interview with Leah Bobet

Wordsmiths: An Interview with Leah Bobet

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an-inheritance-of-ashes-smallGreetings, folks! As an addition to my reviews at Black Gate, I will be occasionally interviewing some of the authors and editors I talk about (if I’m lucky enough to know them, or they’re gracious enough to agree). I’m fascinated with the idea of getting into the mind of creative people, and some of the best conversations I have in my day-to-day are with other writers, so I’m hoping to capture some of that insight in this “Wordsmiths” series.

My inaugural interview is with Leah Bobet, whose novel An Inheritance of Ashes I reviewed last week. Here’s a short bio, courtesy of the Can*Con 2016 website:

Leah Bobet is a novelist, editor, and bookseller with Bakka-Phoenix Books, Canada’s oldest science fiction bookstore. Her novels have won multiple awards, with her most recent, dustbowl literary fantasy An Inheritance of Ashes, receiving the Prix Aurora Award, the Sunburst Award, the Copper Cylinder Awards, and an Ontario Library Association 2015 Best Bets selection and being shortlisted for the Canadian Library Young Adult Book Award and the Cybils.

Leah lives and works in Toronto, where she makes a lot of jam, knits sweaters, and is learning game design. Visit her at www.leahbobet.com.

I hope you enjoy!

I have to get this out of the way immediately — this novel is absolutely friggin’ awesome. One of its greatest elements (in my opinion) is the vividness of the world you’ve created. Did anything particular inspire it?

First off: Hey, thank you! That’s always incredible to hear!

There were a few definite inspirations that went into the world of An Inheritance of Ashes. The first? Well, non-player characters.

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Future Treasures: Nine of Stars by Laura Bickle

Future Treasures: Nine of Stars by Laura Bickle

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nine-of-stars-laura-bickle-smallLaura Bickle is the author of the Dark Alchemy weird western series (Dark Alchemy, Mercury Retrograde), featuring geologist Petra Dee and her coyote sidekick Sig, which have been described as “Stephen King’s The Gunslinger meets Breaking Bad.”

Nine of Stars is the newest Petra Dee novel, and also the first Wildlands novel, which the publisher describes as “an exciting new series that shows how weird and wonderful the West can truly be.” I don’t see a lot of contemporary Weird Westerns, so consider me intrigued.

Winter has always been a deadly season in Temperance, but this time, there’s more to fear than just the cold…

As the daughter of an alchemist, Petra Dee has faced all manner of occult horrors – especially since her arrival in the small town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the creature now stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and leaving only their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface of the return of Skinflint Jack, a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of an ancient bargain.

The new sheriff in town, Owen Rutherford, isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on the trail of both an unsolved case and a fresh kill – a bizarre murder leading him right to Petra’s partner Gabriel. And while Gabe once had little to fear from the mortal world, he’s all too human now. This time, when violence hits close to home, there are no magical solutions.

It’s up to Petra and her coyote sidekick Sig to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being hunting them all – before the trail turns deathly cold.

Nine of Stars will be published by Harper Voyager on December 27, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $4.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent coverage of Weird Westerns here.