Goblin Fruit Winter 2016 Now Available

Goblin Fruit Winter 2016 Now Available

Goblin Fruit Winter 2016-smallAfter a one-year hiatus, online magazine Goblin Fruit has returned. Hurrah! They address their missing year in this issue’s Note from the Editors:

We sowed Winter, and we reaped it for a year.

We lay fallow. We withdrew. We shrank into the earth and tucked our roots about us. We shut our eyes, huddled into the brittle dark, and we sank.

While Winter rimed the waves, we sank. While Spring warmed the earth, we sank. While Summer ripened the grain, we sank. While Autumn fell about us in riotous colour, we sank, until the circle of our Winter closed, and we found ourselves in a Deep Place.

We are forbidden to speak of where we went. We are forbidden to speak of what was spoke. We are forbidden from sharing anything but our own words and the fruit of the labour we took with us, the triumph of our trade.

Goblin Fruit is a quarterly online magazine that publishes poetry of the fantastical, poetry “that treats mythic, surreal, fantasy and folkloric themes, or approaches other themes in a fantastical way.” Each quarter has a theme and a feature artist. This issue, art by Grant Jeffery frames poems by Isabel Yap, Jane Yolen, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, Sonya Taaffe, Toby MacNutt, and many others.

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The Series Series: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

The Series Series: The Pagan Night by Tim Akers

The Pagan Night-small

It’s a tempting mistake to see The Pagan Night as an attempt to pare George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series down to a more manageable scale. At first glance, the setting appears to be an old-school medieval European fantasy world with knights, peasants, heraldry, tournaments, and dark forests full of monsters.

Those dark forests are where Akers gets up to some impressive hijinks.

You may know the old saw about how a conquered people’s gods will become their conquerors’ demons. Akers takes that mythological observation and gives it a literal, visceral physicality that owes more to Miyazaki’s brilliant Princess Mononoke than to anything out of European myth or folklore. The novel’s conquered Tenerrans are animists — their customs look like those of European tribes, but their worldview seems to owe its greatest debt to Shinto.

But here’s a divergence: what happens to the gods who arise on their own from the natural world, now that the human rites that managed relations with them are outlawed? The gods go feral, mad, destructive. They must be killed again and again, only to come back again and again, always less like their old selves… until maybe they don’t anymore, and the land begins to die. Unless they can be protected in secret by the faithful.

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Future Treasures: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley, Book 3 of The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

Future Treasures: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley, Book 3 of The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

The Emperor's Blades-small The Providence of Fire-small The Last Mortal Bond-small

I usually don’t bother to read the first volume of a new fantasy series. I’m not a patient guy… when I find something I love, I generally don’t like to have to wait around for the next volume.

But that policy was severely tested with Brian Staveley’s debut fantasy novel The Emperor’s Blades, the opening volume in the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne. The reviews were glowing, and the sequel, Providence of Fire, only upped the ante. Andrew Liptak, writing at io9, called the second volume “the Perfect Blend of Politics, Magic and Action,” saying:

Staveley delivers a solid and suitably epic adventure that ratchets up the action and muddies the waters, all while completely throwing all expectations out the window. Staveley’s Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy is set in the Annurian Empire, a wonderfully immersive fantasy world that was rocked with the death of its Emperor. In the first volume, the Emperor’s three children, Kaden, Valyn and Adare, scattered throughout the empire, were forced to come to terms with his death and confront the massive conspiracy that lead to his assassination.

The second volume continues this already outstanding series, with a thrilling fantasy adventure that blends together politics, action and magic…

The third and final volume arrives in two weeks — just enough time for me to read the first two. Excuse me while I clear my calendar. The Last Mortal Bond will be published by Tor Books on March 15, 2016. It is 656 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital version. Richard Anderson produced the cover art for the entire series, including this volume. Tor.com has released the first seven chapters, and you can download Chapters 1-7 of The Emperor’s Blades for free here.

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

Tommy Guns, Prohibition, and…. Magic?

Black City Saint-smallEpic fantasy has been and I think always will be a mainstay of the fantasy genre as a whole and it is for this which I am of course well-known thanks not only to my Dragonrealm saga, but also such shared worlds as Dragonlance, World of Warcraft, Pathfinder, Iron Kingdoms, and more. I certainly enjoy epic fantasy as well, naturally having read among so many others the Lord of the Rings. Still, as with most readers, I also enjoy a variety of other offerings in fantasy, especially urban fantasy… which leads me to Black City Saint.

I have delved a bit into urban fantasy in the past, most notably Frostwing. Still, although I utilized Chicago as the background in that novel and two others, never before Black City Saint has the city, its history, and the characters been so entwined. It’s far simpler to merely set a story in a modern setting that everyone knows and put in those touches that remind the reader where they are. More complex — and at the same time more exciting for me as the author — is to turn to a time period that, although not all that long ago, remains sharply different from that in which we live. Having grown up around the Chicago area, I had heard many of the names, many of the stories, concerning the prohibition era. Always a fan of the mystery genre, I assumed that I might use those stories in that way, but the notion of Nick Medea entered and changed everything.

I love the mixing of genres. Some of my favorite novels include mysteries with magic. It was therefore not at all surprising to me that I took a few steps farther than I had with my previous excursions into urban fantasy and introduced into Roaring Twenties Chicago possibly the least likely protagonist — St. George of dragon fame.

And, yes, the dragon came with him.

Adding a character such as St. George into the mix meant making certain that the world he lived in had even more depth. With his lengthy life, that meant research had to go back beyond the Roaring 20s, which in turn brought into the story new elements that not only helped cement character development, but added to the depth of the city itself. The actual history of Chicago became a character of its own, molding the story and the protagonists in the process.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: “My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)

Discovering Robert E. Howard: “My Very Dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” (Valentine’s Day—Robert E. Howard Style)

One Who Walked Alone Novalyne Price Ellis-smallFor those of you who searched for the right way to describe your feelings for that certain special someone on February 14, Robert E. Howard might have been be a good source. After all, he was a wizard with words. And he did have a novel approach when it came to romance. As Bob Howard explains to Novalyne Price Ellis in her book One Who Walked Alone:

[M]en made a terrible mistake when they called their best girls their rose or violet or names like that, because a man ought to call his girl something that was near his heart. What, he asked, was nearer a man’s heart than his stomach? Therefore he considered it to be an indication of his deep felt love and esteem to call me his cherished little bunch of onion tops, and judging from past experience, both of us had a highest regard for onions. (106)

REH expanded this “indication of his deep felt love and esteem” in future letters to include:

“My very dear little Bunch of Radishes” or “My very dear Beans, Cornbread and Onions” or “My dear Sausage and Big, Brown Fluffy Biscuits as well as sliced red beets with butter over them.” (110)

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Changa: Before the Safari by Milton Davis

Changa: Before the Safari by Milton Davis

oie_14244n24u2oHPRemember swords & sorcery? You know, the wild, adventurous storytelling that brought most of us here together at Black Gate. I’ve put it on the back burner for the last couple of months, choosing instead to delve into epic high fantasy. But a few weeks ago I got a message from sword & soul impresario/writer/publisher Milton Davis, who wanted to know if I’d be interested in reading the new Changa collection, Before the Safari, pre-publication. Is Conan’s hair square-cut? Does Ningauble have seven eyes? Is Elric bad luck for his friends? Yes. There are a few perks to reviewing at Black Gate and this is one of them. (The hard copy won’t be hitting the shelves until July, but you can get the e-book right now).

Changa Diop, for those not familiar with him (and every self-respecting S&S fan should be by now), was once a prince of the Bakongo people, but his father was overthrown and killed by the sorcerer Usenge. In the original collections, Changa’s Safari 1, 2, and 3 (reviewed by me and Joe Bonandonna), we learned that Changa eventually ended up enslaved and forced to fight in gladiatorial combat. He was rescued from his bloody life by the Swahili Belay. A merchant, Belay taught Changa his trade and eventually made him heir in preference to his own sons.

The three Safari books tell of Changa’s great adventure as he takes his merchant fleet from 14th century Sofala, in present day Mozambique, across the Indian Ocean to China and back again. If you have the slightest interest in old school S&S, these are right up your alley. Changa Diop is an adventurer of heroic proportions and deeds, worthy of standing alongside any of the S&S greats. Constantly pushed to his limits, he faces off against demons, pirates, evil sorcerers, and monsters — lots and lots of monsters.

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New Treasures: Positive by David Wellington

New Treasures: Positive by David Wellington

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Some genres just go together. The weird western. The cyberpunk thriller. The fantasy private eye. David Wellington thinks that two genres that go together are the zombie novel and the Mad Max-style road adventure. You know what? I think he’s right.

I wasn’t exactly looking for a new zombie novel, but Positive has won me over. David Wellington is also the author of the classic zombie novel Monster Island (2006), and its sequels Monster Nation (2006) and Monster Planet (2007). Seanan McGuire calls Positive “One of the best zombie novels I’ve read in years… harrowing, brutal, brilliant,” and Booklist says it’s “recommended to readers of all epic-scale fantasy.”

Positive was published by Harper Voyager on November 24, 2015. It is 576 pages, priced at $9.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition.

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Wrap Up Their Epic Conan Re-Read

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Wrap Up Their Epic Conan Re-Read

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Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward have completed their epic re-read of every complete story of Conan the Cimmerian written by Robert E. Howard. They’ve been blogging about the project at howardandrewjones.com, and we’ve been following along with the viewers at home. In their wrap-up, Howard and Bill look over the vast catalog of Conan pastiches.

Howard: Such a fantastic character practically begs to have more adventures told about him, which is probably why the regrettable Conan pastiche industry popped up. Well, maybe not entirely regrettable, because I’ve read some I’ve really enjoyed…

Bill:  I’m actually looking forward at this point to checking out the many pastiches I’ve never read — I’ve got a stack of Ace Conans that I’d started reading before we came up with the plans for this epic reread… I’ve never read the deCamp and Carter pastiches, or the other stories by REH that de Camp Frankensteined into Conan tales. It’ll be a while before I jump into that series, though, as [I’ll] be rereading all the REH tales again as well. As for other pastiches, I’ve only read a few — Wagner’s Road of Kings was good, and, of course, Hocking’s [Conan and the] Emerald Lotus is terrific.

Read the complete exchange here.

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February 2016 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

February 2016 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

Nightmare Magazine February 2016-smallThe February issue of online magazine Nightmare contains original short stories from Rose Hartley and Dennis Etchison, and reprints from Seanan McGuire and Adam L. G. Nevill.

Original Stories

No Other Men in Mitchell” by Rose Hartley
If I’m gonna tell this story, I’m gonna have to start with the men. In Queensland — right in the middle of it, bum-fuck-nowhere is the word — there’s a town called Mitchell. It has two pubs and a mechanic who services the road trains that pass through, and its only claim to fame is birthing Australia’s shortest-serving Prime Minister ever. I got to know Mitchell’s mechanic while I was driving road trains over the Warrego Highway between South Australia and Queensland.

Princess” by Dennis Etchison
When the woman flips the visor down, a weak glow flickers on around the mirror. She reaches above her head for the dome light. “Turn it off,” the driver tells her. “I have to check my makeup.” “Off.” He squints at the road and the taillights smearing past like wet blood cells in the fog. “Can’t see where I’m going with that thing on.” “Walter, please…” The driver lifts one fist from the steering wheel and finds the switch in the headliner. Behind him, tiny electronic voices chirp in the dark.

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Future Treasures: The Lyre Thief by Jennifer Fallon

Future Treasures: The Lyre Thief by Jennifer Fallon

The Lyre Thief Jennifer Fallon-smallJennifer Fallon’s popular Hythrun Chronicles began with The Demon Child trilogy (Medalon, Treason Keep, and Harshini); the Wolfblade trilogy (Wolfblade, Warrior, Warlord) followed soon after. All six were published in hardcover by Tor in the US.

After a decade, Fallon returns to the world of the Hythrun Chronicles with The Lyre Thief, the first novel in a new trilogy. It’s a tale of powerful magics, byzantine politics, sweeping adventure and romance, and it arrives in hardcover from Tor next month.

Her Serene Highness, Rakaia, Princess of Fardohnya, is off to Hythria, where her eldest sister is now the High Princess, to find herself a husband, and escape the inevitable bloodbath in the harem when her brother takes the throne.

Rakaia is not interested in marrying anyone, least of all some brute of a Hythrun Warlord she’s never met, but she has a plan to save herself from that, too. If she can just convince her baseborn sister, Charisee, to play along, she might actually get away with it.

But there is trouble brewing across the continent. High Prince of Hythria, Damin Wolfblade, must head north to save the peace negotiated a decade ago between the Harshini, Hythria, Fardohnya, Medalon and Karien. He must leave behind an even more dangerous conflict brewing between his wife and his powerful mother, Princess Marla.

…And in far off Medalon, someone has stolen the music.

Their quest for the tiny stolen lyre containing the essence of the God of Music will eventually touch all their lives, threaten everything they hold dear and prove to be far more personal than any of them can imagine.

The Lyre Thief will be published by Tor Books on March 8, 2016. It is 445 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. Read “First Kill,” a short story set in the world of the Hythrun Chronicles, for free at Tor.com.