Black Gate – Page 924 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Harry Potter Returns in New Short Story by J.K. Rowling

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Earlier today, J.K. Rowling posted a brand new 1,500-word story featuring Harry Potter at her Pottermore website. Titled “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quidditch World Cup Final” and written as a July 8th Daily Prophet article by gossip correspondent Rita Skeeter, the story highlights the media circus surrounding the reunion of Potter and those who fought beside him to bring down Lord Voldemort, at the 2014 Quidditch World Cup Final in the Patagonian Desert in Argentina. Here’s a snippet:

The Potter family and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army have been given accommodation in the VIP section of the campsite, which is protected by heavy charms and patrolled by Security Warlocks. Their presence has ensured large crowds along the cordoned area, all hoping for a glimpse of their heroes. At 3pm today they got their wish when, to the accompaniment of loud screams, Potter took his young sons James and Albus to visit the players’ compound, where he introduced them to Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum.

About to turn 34, there are a couple of threads of silver in the famous Auror’s black hair… The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone. Requests for information as to its provenance merely produced the usual response from the Ministry of Magic… So what are they hiding? Is the Chosen One embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem?

While there’s little dialogue in the “news piece,” the story is surprisingly satisfying, briefly featuring Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, most of the Weasley clan, and a handful of others, including Harry’s sixteen-year-old godson, the half-werewolf Teddy Lupin. In her catty tabloid style, Rita Skeeter skillfully highlights major events in the lives of our favorite characters since the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sixteen years ago — there’s even a nice twist at the end.

Read the complete story at Pottermore (free registration required).

The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers

Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 1 comment

I have loved the work of two-time World Fantasy Award-winning and two-time Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Tim Powers ever since I read The Anubis Gates (one of the foundational works of steampunk) back in 1984. Since then, I’ve been equally thrilled by a number of his other books, including The Stress of Her Regard, his tale of artists and vampiric monsters; Last Call, about the search for the Fisher King in Las Vegas; and Three Days to Never, involving time-travel, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin.

Every few years I feel the pull to revisit his third novel, The Drawing of the Dark (1979). It’s a swords & sorcery adventure set in 1529 and climaxing during Suleiman the Magnificent’s siege of Vienna.

Briefly, The Drawing of the Dark is about the adventures of Brian Duffy, an aging soldier of fortune who encounters a stranger with an offer of employment at just the time circumstances require him to flee Venice.

The old man who’d hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.

“Sit down, please,” he said, waving at the chair.

“I don’t mind standing,” Duffy told him.

“Whatever you prefer.” He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. “My name is Aurelianus.” Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off. “And what is yours?”

Duffy blinked. “What?”

“Oh! I’m Brian Duffy.”

Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. It began popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.

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New Treasures: Flight of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus

Monday, July 7, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I picked up a copy of Susan Klaus’s debut novel over the weekend, and so far have been intrigued. It’s romantic fantasy dressed up as science fiction, in which a young woman returns to the jungle planet of Dora, where long ago she was saved by a male harpy with beautiful golden coloring. But the human colonists of Dora treat harpies like dangerous animals and hunt them like wild game.

This morning, I read a guest post by Klaus at SF Signal, where she reveals that Flight of the Golden Harpy was inspired by an encounter with Brad Pitt while she was an extra on Oceans Eleven:

The guy wasn’t a disappointment… Brad is even more gorgeous in person. After 12 hours of gawking and drooling, I learned he was also a nice, down-to-earth guy. But his looks and personality had nothing to do with my book dedication or why he’s my main man and character in my books. It came from how Brad was treated when he first walked on the set. The extras immediately mobbed him. He smiled, signed their autographs, and [posed] for their little cameras, desperately trying to appease the crushing crowd. It was sad. Even on a closed set, he was smothered and harassed. Going out in public must be a nightmare for him. Sure he’s handsome and has fame, and fortune, but is it worth a hectic stressful life with the press and fans constantly stalking and pursuing him like wild game…

I drove home and realized that good-looks can have drawbacks, especially in his case. That night I started writing my fantasy about a jungle planet with the point of view of the beautiful winged harpies, half-bird, half-human creatures that can’t understand mankind or why humans hunt and kill them for their wings that become mounted trophies on a wall. I gave Brad Pitt credit because he inspired the story, and the novel is also dedicated to our vanishing wildlife.

Flight of the Golden Harpy was published by Tor Books on June 17, 2014. It is 400 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Murder By Decree

Monday, July 7, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

Thanks in large part to Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per Cent Solution (book and film), Sherlock Holmes had a revival of popularity in the mid seventies. This resulted in an under-appreciated British-Canadian big-screen effort, Murder By Decree.

The most famous detective had tackled the most famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, in 1965’s A Study in Terror. Originally conceived as a sequel to Christopher Lee’s under-achieving Sherlock Holmes & The Deadly Necklace, John Neville played a solid Holmes, though saddled with Donald Houston’s doofus of a Watson.

A bit lurid, it’s a good Holmes film, though promoted to appeal to Adam West’s very popular ‘Batman’ TV show crowd (“Here comes the original caped crusader”).

The Ripper File was a book based on Jack the Ripper, a BBC miniseries in which two popular TV detectives investigated the Jack the Ripper case. That miniseries introduced Joseph Sickert and his royal conspiracy theory (later turned into Stephen Knight’s book, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution) to the world.

Director and producer Bob Clark (whose next film, improbably, would be Porky’s) built his story around The Ripper File. There are several variations of the royal conspiracy theory and Murder by Decree changes some (but not all) of the names and follows one of them.

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Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: A Forensic Analysis

Sunday, July 6, 2014 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 7 comments

For the last two years, Wizards of the Coast has been getting feedback on their new “5th edition” set of rules from playtesters all across the world. July 15 marks the official release of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, giving the world the first glimpse of the final version of these rules. Unfortunately, the D&D Starter Set provides only pregenerated characters with some advancement rules through level 5, and some basic mechanics, so it doesn’t consist of a full set of game mechanics or character creation rules.

In other words, it’s not enough to give us a full idea of what the final rules for 5th edition will look like … but it does provide enough information to get some hints about how the upcoming edition of the game will be structured. In general, the goal seems to be to streamline the system, making it very accessible to new gamers, but still providing enough substance and versatility that more experienced gamers will find the system desirable. It’s a tough balancing act, but looking over the D&D Starter Set, I feel a growing sense of confidence that the new system will achieve these objectives.

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Self-Published Book Review: Destiny’s Heir by Casey Neumiller

Sunday, July 6, 2014 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

Casey Neumiller’s Destiny’s Heir is the first book of a planned epic fantasy series. Like most novels starting off a series, a goodly portion is spent introducing the characters and the world. For centuries, Letale’s kings have ruled with the guidance of the Magi, who both advise the king and, when necessary, combat the servants of the Dark One. But a few decades ago, a new king assassinated the old line and declared the Magi outlaws, flipping the theology by declaring that the Aethir whom the Magi serve is the Dark One and the former Dark One is the Light One. It seems odd how easily most people accept this, but there are enough real world examples of a paradigm shift in belief systems that I don’t consider it too unbelievable.

The story follows two parallel plot lines, that of the Magi apprentice Arraya and that of the thief Ben, alternating between them for each chapter. From Ben’s point of view, this is a heist story. He and his friends, Zeke and Corin, have been asked by the leader of their guild in Jepitsa to assist in stealing one of the most valuable items in the kingdom, the queen’s crown. There is no actual queen, so the crown’s kept in storage, where it can be easily claimed by a clever thief with the right items, which Ben, Zeke, and Corin spend most of the novel attaining.

Corin, however, has some doubts about the guild-leader Allen. She thinks he means to make off with the crown while leaving the rest of them to take the blame, doubts which Ben is unable to put to rest.

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CJ Henderson, December 26, 1951 – July 4, 2014

Sunday, July 6, 2014 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Neil Baker, publisher of The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, informs us that fantasy short story writer and novelist CJ Henderson lost his battle with cancer earlier this week.

His first novel, Brooklyn Knight, was published by Tor in 2010; it was followed by one sequel, Central Park Knight (2011); his short story collection, Where Angels Fear, was released by Dark Quest Books in 2010. I first encountered him with Kolchak and the Lost World (Moonstone, May 2012), one of several licensed tie-in novellas he wrote featuring the great occult investigator Carl Kolchak, which I bought at the Moonstone booth at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show in April.

Neil writes:

A prolific writer for decades, CJ had a successful collection of novels to his name, numerous short stories for a wide selection of publishers and comic books for Marvel, DC and others. He also wrote books featuring Kolchak, wrote for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series and collaborated with William Shatner on Man of War.

Personally, I only got to know him through my first publication, and he was an open and generous soul. He fought the disease all the way to end, determined to make it out to future conventions to sell more books and meet more fans, and in his many emails to me he would discuss his fight, his deep love for his wife and his passion for writing.

CJ leaves a legacy filled with hard-boiled characters, ripping yarns and good humor. He will be missed.

CJ Henderson died on July 4, 2014. He was 62 years old.

Future Treasures: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

Sunday, July 6, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Two years ago, Matthew David Surridge posted a review of The Quantum Thief, the first novel in Hannu Rajaniemi’s far future adventure trilogy. We focus on fantasy at Black Gate, but the magical and baroque setting Rajaniemi created seemed more science fantasy than SF and it caught my attention. Here’s how Matthew summed up the book:

Centuries in the future, Jean le Flambeur is a master thief, imprisoned in a virtual-reality jail: every day he makes choices, and dies, and is reborn. Until he’s freed by a violent woman named Mieli from the edge of the solar system, and taken to Mars. There, he must regain old memories he locked away from all possible recovery when he was literally a far different person than he is now. A youthful detective, hi-tech superheroes, and posthuman intelligences are waiting to complicate his task, which seems to have ramifications on an interplanetary scale…

It’s primarily, I think, within a lineage that goes back at least to Arthur C. Clarke, fusing precise language and dramatic plots with a sense of the sublime clothed in scientific theory… it also plays with another lineage, older than sf, one at least as old as Robin Hood: the righteous outlaw thief.

The second volume, The Fractal Prince, was published in hardcover in November 2012. I just received a copy of the third (and final?) volume: The Causal Angel, which goes on sale next week. The blurb promises this volume contains “the ultimate fates of Jean, his employer Miele, the independently minded ship Perhonnen, and the rest of a fractured and diverse humanity flung throughout the solar system.” Sign me up.

The Causal Angel will be published by Tor Books on July 15th. It is 292 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Kekai Kotaki.

Watch The First Full-Length Trailer for The Boxtrolls

Saturday, July 5, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Waahh!! The Boxtrolls movie is ALMOST UPON US.

As I reported when the teaser trailer was released last July, this is sort of a big deal for me personally. The Boxtrolls is based on Alan Snow’s hilarious fantasy Here Be Monsters, the last book I read out loud to my three children. I could tell it was time to give up our night-time reading sessions because they grabbed it from me when I stopped and started reading it on their own.

Here Be Monsters is the opening volume in the YA series The Ratbridge Chronicles – a fantasy series so overlooked that America forgot to publish it — and is being adapted into a feature film by the creators of Coraline and ParaNorman. The second book in the series is Worse Things Happen at Sea, which was finally released in the US just last year. The third volume, Thar She Blows, came out last December.

The Boxtrolls will be released on September 26 by Laika animation studio. It is directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi and stars the voice talents of Ben Kingsley, Simon Pegg, Elle Fanning, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Toni Collette, and Jared Harris. Check out the trailer below, and then go get in line now.

Kirkus Looks at The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I – IV

Saturday, July 5, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Over at Kirkus Reviews, Andrew Liptak continues his thorough and excellent survey of vintage science fiction with a look at one of the most important anthology series in the history of the genre: the four-volume Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Here he is on the first volume:

The book appeared as a hardcover in 1970 under the title The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One: The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Times, chosen by the members of the science fiction writers of America. Silverberg, in the introduction, described the anthology as “nearly definitive an anthology of modern science fiction stories as it likely to be compiled for quite some time.” The book sold well, and sold out within a year. Doubleday sold the rights to Avon Books, which published a paperback edition in July 1971; it would go through dozens of printings in the coming decades. In 1971, it placed first in Locus’ annual poll for best Anthology/Collection…

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes 1 & 2, are perhaps the finest SF anthologies of the 20th Century and even today they serve as a superb introduction to the genre for modern readers. (The only comparable books I can think of are The Hugo Winners, Volumes I and II, edited by Isaac Asimov.) I dearly love my Avon paperback editions, which are sturdy and well-read.

Read the entire article here. Or have a look at some of Andrew’s previous articles, including:

Kirkus Looks at Astounding Science Fiction
Kirkus Looks at Galaxy Science Fiction
Kirkus Looks at Donald A. Wollheim and the Ace Double
Kirkus Looks at The Meteoric Rise and Fall of Gnome Press
Kirkus Looks at Andre Norton’s Young Adult Novels