Sam Sykes Finally Gets A Cool Cover in the US!

Sam Sykes is returning to share more of his cynical wit with us later this year. The City Stained in Red will be the start to a new trilogy called Bring Down Heaven that centers around Lenk and his merry band yet again. From the sounds of things they'll be mired even deeper than before. 

Sykes has been plagued by eye popping yet odd cover direction with the Aeons Gate trilogy so I'm quite happy to see that his new publisher in the US, Orbit have opted for something with a darker tone and probably more mass market approach (still no dragonman).

US Design by Lauren Panepinto

The UK cover was released a while ago and Gollancz too tried something very different and to go along with it here is the blurb to whet your appetites:

Long before he was sent to hell, the Aeon known as Khoth-Kapira was the closest thing to a living god the world had ever known. Possessed of a vast intellect, he pioneered many of the wonders that persist in the world long after he was banished. Nearly every fragment of medical, economic and technological progress that the mortal races enjoyed could be traced back to him. But with his wonders came cruelty beyond measure: industrialized slavery, horrifying experimentations and a rage that would eventually force the world to bow to him.

UK Design by Benjamin Carrè

Now, as Khoth-Kapira stirs, the world begins to shudder with disasters yet to come.The epicenter is the city of Cier'Djaal. A religious war between two unstoppable military juggernauts begins to brew. The racial fury among many peoples of the world is about to explode. Demons begin to pour from the shadows at the head of a vicious cult worshipping dark powers.
And Lenk finds himself in the middle once more, his fate and the fate of Khoth-Kapira interlinked as the demon attempts to convince him of his earnestness.

'Your world is breaking around you,' He Who Makes says, 'let me fix it. Let me help you. Let me out.'

The City Stained Red should be out in early October January 2015 in the US and late August 2014 in the UK. And because my dreams have been answered here is the Dragonman I've been wanting.

French cover to The Skybound Sea by Marc Simonetti

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INTERVIEW | Peter Higgins author of Wolfhound Century

Every once in a great while a new author bursts on to the scene that is so different from everything else being published I have to sit up and notice and shout a bit about it. This year that author is Peter Higgins with his debut Wolfhound Century. It is a strange novel to be sure, but that is its greatest strength. Think China Mieville with more of a Slavic Folklore bent, but with the speed of a LeCarre novel. If that sounds like a heady mix it is yet a good one and making it feel startlingly original. Higgins has published short fiction in such places as Asimov's Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, but his novel was my first exposure to his work. It certainly won't be the last.

**********

MH: Wolfhound Century is a dark, fast paced visage of a Russia that never was. But it is so much more than that. What is your barroom description of Wolfhound Century?

HIGGINS: If I’d just arrived in the bar, I’d say that Wolfhound Century is an SF-fantasy-thriller set in an immense totalitarian state, the kind that spies on and murders its own citizens, but it's also a world of giants and golems and sentient rain, with an alien presence deep in the endless forest. There are elements of Russian and central/northern European history, art and literature lurking beneath the surface, if you want to look for them.

If I’d been in the bar for a while, I’d say it was inspired by books like Gorky Park, but written by someone who’d read a lot of Gene Wolfe and John Crowley and the folklore of the endless Slavic forests, and had grown up in the Cold War, with a life-long attachment to the dark, extraordinary history of Soviet Russia. Someone who’d read Nabokov’s memoirs and random pages from the 1914 edition of Baedeker’s Russia. I might add that one of the root ideas is that painters like Chagall and Malevich weren’t painting abstract or fantastical parables, they were simply recording what they saw.

And if I was still there at closing time, I’d be talking about the archetypal 20th century struggle between, on the one hand, the totalitarian idea of the individual as an atom of the state, subjected and reduced by the overwhelming forces of history, party and state, and on the other hand, the conception of each and every human being as a huge and partly unconscious world of emotion, perception, imaginative potential and creative imagination. Then I’d have to get my coat and go home.

MH: What came first? The world, the angels, or Vissarion?

HIGGINS: The world came first, definitely, or rather, two worlds: a northern and central European world of slow rivers, birch forests, wintry Baltic shores, and that 20th century world of revolution and war, marching crowds and gulags and state police, writers and artists and composers and dissident intellectuals.

But it was when the detective, Vissarion Lom, came on the scene that the story really began to come together. A door opening. I saw that the book could be – needed to be – a thriller. And Lom, the decent policeman who realizes he’s working for an indecent regime, would have to confront the cruel realities of that regime. He meets a woman who works in a factory and wants to change the world, he’s opened up (quite literally), and he begins to explore the wilder, stranger extremes of his world. There’s potentially more in Lom’s future than being a detective. In some ways he’s like Severian, the wandering exile from the torturer’s guild in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun. (The near-anagrammatical relationship between Severian and Vissarion isn’t accidental.)

The ‘angels’ are immense beings that fall out of the sky, dying or already dead, and their mined, abraded torsos litter the continent. The regime appropriates them as a justification for its mythology of itself: in a sense, it’s a parallel with the way totalitarian dictators claim to embody wider, universal forces, the inevitability of history. When one angel survives the fall and starts to reach out, to speak, to influence, some people want to listen. They want to subject themselves to the greater, more certain power. And the really dangerous ones think they might be able to use it …

MH: One of the themes I was struck by was the land fighting back for its very survival and you've given them avatars of a sort with the palubas. Which gives it a very Robert Holdstock vibe.

HIGGINS: I’m glad you mentioned Robert Holdstock! I’m a huge fan of Mythago Wood, and even more of the sequels like Lavyondyss and The Hollowing, where the things in the wood get wilder and more extreme. It’s astonishingly vivid and free and unconstrained writing. I find Holdstock’s imagination massively inspiring. The idea in Wolfhound Century that the world – not just the forest but the rain, the air, the mud, the rivers – are watchful, active and potentially dangerous, owes a huge amount to him.

So the forest in Wolfhound Century – its endlessness, the avatars that come out of it – is proudly Holdstock-ish. But Holdstock’s wood is very English: superficially, on the outside, it’s small, only a couple of miles across, and in a specific, almost-mappable English location. Only when you go in and get lost there do you learn how immense it is on the inside. It draws you in, dilates time. And nothing escapes from it: the mythagos that cross its borders soon fade. The forest in Wolfhound Century, on the other hand (like the forests of Russia and central Europe) really is huge. It dominates the psychic terrain. The regime tries to close the forest off and blind the people to it, but their cities are full of forest things. Forest presences. Forest influence. Several of the principal characters themselves have forest roots, which they grow more aware of and try to understand. And the forest asserts itself: it reaches out and participates. As you say, it fights back. Fangorn and the ents are in there somewhere.

That idea, that everything is alive, has other roots too. It’s central to shamanism, for example. It runs deep in the Russian, Nordic and central European forests and Siberia, and comes through in the folklore from there. That world view was still influential in 20th century Russia, and not just as a primitive relic. There’s a fantastic quote from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Cosmist who drove early Soviet thinking about the human colonisation of space and transhumanism:
‘There is no substance which cannot take the form of a living being. The simplest being is the atom. Therefore the whole universe is alive and there is nothing in it but life.’

This concept – panpsychism, sentient matter – shaped my thinking about the Wolfhound Century forest, and also about the angels: where they come from, what they’re made of, how they do what they do. And what unfettered or assisted human perception can tap into.

MH: With Wolfhound Century you've subverted Stalinist Russia as well as Slavic mythology, but this is clearly not the Russia we know. Possibly a deep past alternative history, but this world appears very much separated for ours. Are you worried that people will feel you've appropriated a culture? Have you had any feedback from Russian natives?

HIGGINS: No, I really don't feel like I've appropriated another culture.

As you say, in Wolfhound Century I’ve drawn on Russian history and culture. I haven’t taken them straight, I’ve re-imagined them and mixed them up with other things that aren't Russian. I’ve felt a responsibility to my sources and I’ve tried to write as well as I can. I'm very much aware that the history which my book stands sideways to was real – millions died and millions more had their lives ruined – and I've tried to let that awareness show through in Wolfhound Century. How far I've succeeded, whether I've always got it right, that's something for readers to make their own minds up about. It's not for me to say. But I’ve never worried that this book, the way I've written it, was trespassing across some kind of frontier into another culture's territory, and personally I don’t think the artists whose work I’ve drawn on – including writers like Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Pasternak and Nabokov, and painters like Chagall – would recognize that idea of their cultural separateness – those barriers of difference – either.

If I can give you one example of what I mean, Mandelstam was Russian but he wrote about Charles Dickens, Beethoven, Rome, the ancient Scottish poet Ossian, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and Notre Dame in Paris. He saw continuity between ancient Greece and Russia: he said they met on the shores of the Black Sea. And he specifically denied the relevance of personal background to his work: of himself he wrote, 'it is enough to speak of the books he has read, and his biography is done'.

Other writers and artists I've drawn on maybe wouldn't use such stark terms as Mandelstam, but they all have the same deep involvement with a culture that goes way beyond Russia. They're part of a shared, complex, three-thousand-year old, wide-ranging, multi-linguistic, allusive tradition. It's one culture, modernist and frontierless, that may take account of local and national differences and inheritances but isn’t limited by them. And the precarious existence of that culture in a totalitarian state is part of the story Wolfhound Century is trying to tell, and it’s part of its way of trying to tell it.

I’m sitting at home at the moment, about 1300 miles from St Petersburg. The idea that, somewhere between here and there, there might exist a line of separation, a cultural and historical boundary drawn across Europe, doesn't feel right. That’s one of the reasons the Cold War was so cruel and why we celebrated when the wall came down. But even when the Cold War was at its height, we read books and listened to music and watched films from the territories of the Eastern Bloc.

I don’t know if maybe someone 1300 miles away from me in St Petersburg is writing an SF fantasy about a weird version of London during World War II, with a Prime Minister who’s a bit like Churchill and with writing that draws on Dickens or Virginia Woolf or Dylan Thomas. But I hope someone is. That would be awesome. And it would be fantastic if Wolfhound Century finds Russian readers. I'd love to know what they make of it. Of course, they’ll see that it’s not written in the same way that someone who lives in Russia would have written it. The imagined elements in it are my response to, my engagement with, Russia and what happened there, but it’s written from my perspective and it couldn’t be anything else.

MH: Do you have a favorite Russian folk tale? And if so did you integrate it into the Wolfhound Century in some form?

HIGGINS: Well, there’s a fantastic tradition of Russian folk tales. Sadko. Prince Ivan. Baba Yaga. The Fire Bird. The Snow Maiden. They’re part of the background to Wolfhound Century, certainly, they’re in the air: but in terms of integration into the story, they’re not really primary sources, as far as I’m consciously aware.

More specific sources were Siberian shamanism and the Slavic folklore of the wild forest. The palubas that come out of the forest and the wind-walker in the White Marshes are based on Slavic conceptions of wood spirits. I found a lot of material for the forest in a collection from 1918: The Mythology of All the Races, edited by Louis H Gray, particularly the Slavic and Finno-Ugric volumes. And the Pollandore and the mythology that surrounds its creation owe a fair amount to the story of the Sampo and other parts of the Kalevala from Finland.

MH: Wolfhound Century ended a bit abruptly. What made that a good breaking place and what can we look forward to with the sequel Truth and Fear?

HIGGINS: I thought you might ask me about the ending! There is a longer story arc and I wanted to leave Wolfhound Century with a sense of doors opening rather than closing, and - for the characters - a return to battle with a greater sense of who the enemies are and what's at stake. Not an ending, but a moment to take breath. Like Gene Wolfe, "Here I pause, having carried you, reader, from gate to gate......"
Truth and Fear, which is coming out early in 2014, widens the story out. I'm not going to say too much, but you'll see a lot more of the bad guys and what they're up to, and more about some of the things that were off-stage rumblings in Wolfhound Century, as well as other quarters of the city of Mirgorod and some new places on the continent.

And some new characters. And some big surprises. And a finish that'll knock your socks off and leave you wanting more ...

MH: What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

HIGGINS: "If someone tells you you’re doing too much of something in your work, then do it more, because that's your true voice."
A friend who's an artist told me that.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

HIGGINS: For winter, a pull-on woolen cap: the acme is a Kangol Squad with a cuff. For rain and sun, a crushable bush hat in buffalo hide, easy to shove into a backpack. And for all seasons and all purposes except looking natty, there was my white canvas Tilley “Endurable” T3 Traditional, in many ways the finest of them all, which alas I seem to have lost.

MH: Sorry about the hatloss. Always remember a lost hat is never forgotten. I feel your pain having lost one of my old standbys last year. I also have a different hat for each season. Well, multiple hats for each season. Another important, life directing question: Scotch or beer?

HIGGINS: If I've just tramped twenty miles across Scottish moorland through mist and rain, then Scotch, but otherwise definitely beer.

MH: What books are you reading at the moment?

HIGGINS: Not for the first time, I'm making a determined attempt on the lower slopes of Gravity's Rainbow.

MH: That's a heavy one. I appreciate all your time. Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

HIGGINS: Just to say, thanks for inviting me to do this. It's been a lot of fun. I'll be lurking somewhere at World Fantasy Con 2013 in October if anyone wants to say hello.

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GUEST POST | Industrialization in Epic Fantasy by Brian McClellan

The Industrial Revolution was a time of great change in our history. There were immense technological breakthroughs as well as wave after wave of political and social reform. The class system was breaking down and kings were being pulled from their thrones. Unprecedented economic growth swept across large parts of the world.

This most important of times in human history is often either maligned or ignored by epic fantasy.

The precedent for this seems to have been set by Tolkien. In his Lord of the Rings series, industrialization and technological advancement only seems to happen among the orcs. This is portrayed very well in the film where we can see great clouds of toxic pollution hanging over Mordor, and in Sarumon's lands he tears down the ancient forests to fuel and make room for belching factories to arm his Uruk-hai.

Tolkien focuses on the negative aspects of the industrialization, and why wouldn't he? During the Industrial Revolution people were crammed into dirty, overpopulated cities. Streets overflowed with trash and raw sewage. Rivers became toxic with the filthy runoff. Mining and logging on a large scale destroyed the countryside. All of this industrialization created a world in which it was possible to equip armies for world wars—a fact that Tolkien saw first hand.

There are plenty of others who focus on the disadvantages of technological progress in their epic fantasy. The starkest of these are post-apocalyptic epic fantasy; these are fantasy worlds that take place on a future Earth after nuclear war. Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire trilogy is one example, while Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman's Death Gate Cycle is another. In these worlds we see the ultimate endgame of industrialization—near annihilation.

In Promise of Blood, I wanted to treat the Industrial Revolution differently. Not as the means of evil, as Tolkien did, or advancement toward a nuclear holocaust, but as the simple wheels of progress. There is no inherent evil in industrialization—only what man decides to do with the results.

So I asked the question. "What place does magic have in an industrializing world?" The answer I found: a big one.

In my novels, the old school of magic—the Privileged with their elemental sorcery—are deeply entrenched in the nobility of the world. Along with the nobility they oppose this new rising middle class of capitalists and the factories and unions that come with them. At the same time they don't mind getting rich off the backs of the working man, or the canal being built over the mountains that will enable the import of more luxury goods.

The new powder mages, with their sorcery based on gunpowder, embrace industrialization. How better to produce more gunpowder and flintlocks? Factories help the Adran army become the best equipped among all the Nine Nations. The greater population density of the cities make it easier to find and recruit more powder mages.

Then there's the Knacked and their talents. The sorcery of the commoners is turned to whatever use they can find for it. Inspector Adamat uses his perfect memory to aid in his investigations. Olem becomes Field Marshal Tamas' bodyguard because he doesn't need sleep. The commoners adapt. They use their magic to better themselves in an increasingly complicated world.

There are some that might argue that industrialization takes the "epic" out of "epic fantasy." They might say that writing in this time period goes against the whole spirit of the genre. I don't agree. I think there are magic and heroes, good and evil, adventure and intrigue to be found in an industrial world and that the Industrial Revolution opens up a whole new set of possibilities for epic fantasy. Magic does not fade with technological advancement. It adapts along with the people that use it.

*****
Brian McClellan lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, two dogs, a cat, and between 6,000 and 60,000 honey bees (depending on the time of year). He began writing on Wheel of Time role playing websites at fifteen. Encouraged toward writing by his parents, he started working on short stories and novellas in his late teens. He went on to major in English with an emphasis on creative writing at Brigham Young University. It was here he met Brandon Sanderson, who encouraged Brian’s feeble attempts at plotting and characters more than he should have. Brian continued to study writing not just as an art but as a business and was determined this would be his life-long career. He attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp in 2006. In 2008, he received honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. In November 2011, PROMISE OF BLOOD and two sequels sold at auction to Orbit Books. It is due out in April of 2013. More info can be found on his website or on twitter.


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Cover Unveiled for The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan

One of the debuts I've most been looking forward to this year is Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood. It is a meaty looking Fantasy with a society that is working its way towards the mechanical age. You see guns are worked in, but there is still magic in the world. And Gods walk the Earth. This falls firmly in the up-and-coming sub-genre Flintlock Fantasy, which has been starting to come out in the fiction of Abercrombie, Weeks, and Chris Evans, but this appears to be the first to go for it full throttle.  Promise of Blood isn't even out until April, but we've already got a chance to see the cover for the sequel The Crimson Campaign, which won't be out until February next year.

Art by Michael Frost and Gene Mollica, Design by Lauren Panepinto

I'm not always into photo realistic images, but these covers more than work for me. They evoke a beautifully textured and detailed world that knows the dirty side to warfare.  Bravo to Orbit for the attention to detail. Here's the blurb for Promise of Blood since we don't want to ruin things for the sequel this early. Now do we? No, I thought not.

It's a bloody business overthrowing a king...
Field Marshal Tamas' coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas's supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

It's up to a few...
Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

But when gods are involved...
Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should...

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Cover Unveiled for The Tyrant's Law by Daniel Abraham

Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and the Coin has become one of the most solid Fantasy series over the last 2 years and the covers so far while being quite nice in a traditional yet modern sort of way have so far gone the weapon route for art, but this time for the third book, The Tyrant's Law, Orbit is treating us to some flaming monsters! Magic has been part of the books though not the focus, but stakes certainly seem to be rising in that area. Here's the blurb, but those who are behind in the series may just want to keep it to gazing at the cover:

The great war cannot be stopped.

The tyrant Geder Palliako begins a conquest aimed at bringing peace to the world, though his resources are stretched too thin. When things go poorly, he finds a convenient target among the thirteen races and sparks a genocide.

Clara Kalliam, freed by having fallen from grace, remakes herself as a "loyal traitor" and starts building an underground resistance movement that seeks to undermine Geder through those closest to him.

Cithrin bel Sarcour is apprenticing in a city that's taken over by Antea, and uses her status as Geder's one-time lover to cover up an underground railroad smuggling refugees to safety.

And Marcus Wester and Master Kit race against time and Geder Palliako's soldiers in an attempt to awaken a force that could change the fate of the world.

The Tyrant's War will be out in May and like the first two books will be an immediate get for me. Also, Abraham along with his co-conspirator Ty Frank will also be writing a Han Solo POV novel in the Star Wars universe under their James S.A. Corey name though no release date has been announced. This also reminds me I have to get to Caliban's War soon. Maybe it will be my Thanksgiving vacation treat...

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US Cover Unveiled for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Photo by Gene Mollica, Michael Frost, and Lauren Panepinto

Orbit just premiered the US cover for Red Country, which follows the style of the latest trade paper editions by them seen below. It definitely seems that Orbit is dropping the A from the title so I'm curious if Gollancz will as well. My earlier post reveals a fairly big spoiler for this volume, which is further shown in the cover above for the eagle eyed. Now that I've seen this I'm eager to see what Gollancz has up its sleeve as I've always considered those the definitive editions coverwise.

Here again the the official blurb:

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to her bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier.

Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust . . . .

Publication has been confirmed for November stateside and October in the UK. As much as I want to enjoy Spring and Summer, Fall can't get her quick enough.

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REVIEW | Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles--until they are hired to pilfer a famed sword. What appears to be just a simple job finds them framed for the murder of the king and trapped in a conspiracy that uncovers a plot far greater than the mere overthrow of a tiny kingdom.

Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires in order to keep a secret too terrible for the world to know?

Michael J. Sullivan's The Riyria Revelations has quite a storied past. It all began with The Crown Conspiracy, which was published through a very small house and then books 2 through 5 were self published by the author and his wife after the original publisher had financial problems. The series quickly found an audience online and became kindle best-sellers, which lead the 6 book series to be sold to Orbit to be released as 3 omnibus editions.

I have been hearing about this series for about nearly two years and they garnered quite nice reviews from many of my blogger compatriots, but I still went into the first Orbit omnibus Theft of Swords a bit trepidatiously. But venture forth I did as I'm a sucker for omnibuses, after all. Filled with mystery, a possibly mad ancient wizard, and empires teetering on destruction Theft of Swords will captivate you with an effortless style.

Theft of Swords contains book 1 The Crown Conspiracy and book 2 Avempartha. I think it is the second title that at first threw me off when I heard about the series as I couldn't wrap my head around it, but have since learned that it refers to one of the places visited in the novel as is the case with another book in the series.

The Crown Conspiracy starts things on a strong note and is a classic example of Sword & Sorcery. The focus is clearly on the thieves as well as action and mystery instead of magic, but there is plenty more entered into the formula such as politics and the deep history of the land that is covered well enough to ground you in this world. Royce and Hadrian aren't two knuckle head sword jockeys though. They are an elite duo who try to use their brains before their brawn, but aren't always too particular who they kill as they are hired by both sides to pull thefts and assassinations or whatever job their employers are willing to shell the gold out for. The Crown Conspiracy's greatest attribute is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. The prose is so easy you'll forget you're reading for long periods and come away having felt you just watched an fun packed movie in your mind. What stays with you is the story, the characters, and the sense of having just made new friends.

The point of view switches at times from the thieves Royce and Hadrian to Arista, a princess of the main kingdom the story is set in. She provides a nice balance to the aloofness of Royce and Hadrian while contributing much to the conspiracy of the story. Royce and Hadrian are two of the most likeable characters going in Fantasy. Their subtle and not so subtle interactions work so well and let you in on all of their little jokes. The story moves across the kingdom after the pair is falsely accused of a high crime and escape only to land into even more trouble. Long lost secrets are uncovered and plots are averted only for greater danger to occur. All in all, The Crown Conspiracy is a very smooth ride and one that I'll think fondly of for quite some time.

Avempartha the second book on the other hand while still quite entertaining is a bit shakier especially in terms of pacing. As with the first book the perspectives includes Arista, but this time she is more of a passenger than protagonist and I found her sections just completely jarring and slow compared to the intrigue of Royce and Hadrian. Stakes are definitely getting great as larger powers are making moves in the land. At first the trope of finding a sword as with the first volume felt a bit done, but Sullivan miraculously makes this aspect all the more endearing the second go around. Royce in attempting to break into an ancient Elf stronghold, which brings a whole aspect little explored in TCC.. Avempartha is building to something much bigger as this series progresses. The briefly seen wizard from the TCC is a very beguiling character. In some small ways he reminded me of a more laid-back Bayaz. Is he the destroyer of kingdoms or the savior? That's still not clear, but Sullivan has left me enough crumbs from the loaf to want more.

Theft of Swords is definitely lighter fair. There isn't any sex to speak of and for a story with plenty of death it doesn't come off as overly bloody or graphic Sullivan sure knows how to spin a yarn that connects you to the characters even as he teases out . Theft of Swords is just good old fashion fun with endearing characters. Even when you can tell where the story is headed it is still just as fun finding out how they got there. I give Theft of Swords 8 out of 10 hats. Sullivan has made a Riyria fan out of me and I'll definitely be reading the next two omnibuses Rise of Empire(December release) and Heir of Novron(January release) that are coming out in quick succession. The books would certainly be appropriate for a YA crowd and serve as quite a good introduction to what good traditional Fantasy can be.

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A Few New Orbit Covers

Orbit's Spring/Summer releases have been making their way out in the Internet ether and many are looking quite good.  Some of these covers are not completely final, but should be close to the end product.

2313 is Kim Stanley Robinson's first book since Galileo's Dream and is the start of him working with Orbit.  Originally 2312 was slated to be released in February, but got pushed back to May.

The year is 2313. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity’s only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Caliban's War is the sequel to Leviathan Wakes, which was quite the start to a series so I'm eager to see where Franck and Abraham take it from here. The second book in the Expanse series should be out June 2012.

We are not alone.

The alien protomolecule is clear evidence of an intelligence beyond human reckoning. No one knows what exactly is being built on Venus, but whatever it is, it is vast, powerful, and terrifying.

When a creature of unknown origin and seemingly impossible physiology attacks soldiers on Ganymede, the fragile balance of power in the Solar System shatters. Now, the race is on to discover if the protomolecule has escaped Venus, or if someone is building an army of super-soldiers.

Jim Holden is the center of it all. In spite of everything, he’s still the best man for the job to find out what happened on Ganymede. Either way, the protomolecule is loose and Holden must find a way to stop it before war engulfs the entire system.

The King's Blood is Abraham's next Epic Fantasy following in the footsteps of The Dragon's Path, which I just loved this year and proves there is plenty more to explore in the genre.  The Dagger and the Coin series continues in May.

War casts its shadow over the lands that the dragons once ruled. Only the courage of a young woman with the mind of a gambler and loyalty to no one stands between hope and universal darkness.

The high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up, and everything will be remade. And quietly, almost beneath the notice of anyone, an old, broken-hearted warrior and an apostate priest will begin a terrible journey with an impossible goal: destroy a Goddess before she eats the world.

Orbit has plenty more and is still pushing out plenty of omnibuses as they have The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks and King Maker, King Breaker by Karen Miller planned for next year.

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Covers Unveiled for The Riyria Revelations series by Michael J. Sullivan

Art by Larry Rostant

The Riyria Revelations series was originally self-published and received many accolades online after a grassroots effort on the part of Michael J. Sullivan and his wife. After the books took off Sullivan decided to try the traditional route again and got major interest from Orbit Books who are releasing the six book series as 3 omnibuses including the never before published sixth volume. The first omnibus Theft of Swords will be out in November with the other two volumes following a month separately.

Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater, make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles – until they are hired to steal a famed sword from the palace of the king and find themselves caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow the empire. Sentenced to death, they have only one way out, to get involved in the plots of the nobles and save the kingdom from itself.


Can one thief and his master swordsman of a friend keep their heads above water long enough to survive? Much less solve the mystery that threatens to topple the crown itself?


…and so begins this epic tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.

For the series Orbit has created a very commercial yet appeal design. The clocks don't bother me at all on these and I especially like the icons above the author's name, which is a nice nod to the GRRM style while not being too overbearing. It is also interesting to see these after the working versions that Yeti showed off during his recent interview with Sullivan, which gave a more action oriented feel while these give more of a Epic feel. At least to me.  I already picked up the first volume at BEA so expect to hear more about these in the coming months and feast your eyes on the rest of the series Rise of Empire and Heir of Novron.

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REVIEW | The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

"Unhappy the land that is in need of Heroes." -Bertoldt Brecht

About ten years after the events of The First Law Trilogy the Union and the North (lead by Black Dow) are battling for supremacy in the region and things have been bloody. But things are only going to get bloodier before it is finished if things like this can ever truly end. One battle over three days will decide the fate of thousands and leave just as many mired in the mud. There are no heroes. Only survivors.

The Heroes brings Abercrombie's biggest cast of characters to date flipping through dozens of view points. Just don't get attached to anyone in particular. This is war and it is a bloody one, but aren't they all? Abercrombie smartly included a persona glossary at the beginning of the book to keep all the players in perspective, but it is best to refer to it only as you need to since it can spoil the surprise of a few notable characters who pop-up.

"Corporal Tunny had long ago acquired a reputation as the fiercest sleeper in his majesty's army. He could sleep on anything, in any situation, and wake in an instant ready for action, or, better still, to avoid it."

The Heroes evokes the feeling of a military Fantasy perfectly as it travels across the battlefield from the view of those at the top to the lowly footmen stuck in the swamps. It reminded me quite a bit of Glen Cook's The Black Company, especially a certain Corporal Tunny. For those concerned, The Heroes is not all the doom, gloom, and causticness of Best Served Cold, which however entertaining you found it left most of us a bit cold. The Heroes livens things up and turns a battle that shouldn't mean anything in a place that doesn't mean much to anyone to an event that changes the face of the North featuring many of the side players from The First Law Trilogy.

Abercrombie really gets you down into the mud and blood of battles entrenching you next to all the warriors as they rise and mostly fall deeper and deeper into the mud with some perspectives lasting only a few paragraphs. The viewpoints flows easily from one scene to the next once you realize how often the view changes. The Heroes is filled with cravens, madmen, the corrupt, and those in to deep to wade themselves out of danger and a few people that aren't as deplorable and just want to live through the day. The story focuses on 3 main figures all of who have their own idiocracies in the style Abercrombie has become known for.

"Dignity ain't much use to the living, it's none to the dead."

One problem I had was the lack of a standout character or two as opposed to Abercrombie's other books. I've always found one or two characters I couldn't wait to get back to such as Logan and Glotka in The First Law or Friendly in Best Served Cold. I know, I know. I like them good and crazy. With the flipping of perspectives so much you get a surprisingly good sense of who most of the characters are that they hardly left me wanting for more. So this might be a case of overdoing expectations.

"Wondering what strange convergence of mischances could have allowed this madness to happen. And what other one might allow him to get out of it alive."

But the action, dark humor, and all the tension kept me captivated and pushing forward along with the fantastic battle sequences that are exquisitely executed. Shivers is even more of a scary fuck than he was in Best Served Cold and would probably appear more so to those who haven't read BSC. The Heroes shows that Abercrombie's considerable talents are being used quite well and while I still didn't fancy The Heroes as much as his Trilogy it is still sure to be one of the best Fantasy releases this year. In the end the story seems very small in comparison to the events of the First Law Trilogy, but it does lead to some tantalizing ideas concerning one of our favorite characters from the trilogy.

The Heroes ultimately makes you think about war and everyone's place in it and how hardly anyone wishes to take part for the right reasons. I give The Heroes 9 out of 10 hats. As if Abercrombie hadn't already cemented his place in Fantasy The Heroes proves he is a modern master. The Heroes can certainly be read as the standalone it is intended as, but you get a lot more out of the characters if you're read The First Law. I can't wait to see what Abercrombie has brewing for us next.

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Cover Unveiled for The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham

The Dragon's Path could be Daniel Abraham's breakout best-seller. Even given how much Abraham's Long Price series is loved and has been praised it has never realized the sales his original publisher wanted. But Orbit has picked up the ball for The Dagger and the Coin series, which is supposed to be a more traditional style Epic Fantasy. The cover most definitely fits the mold of Epic Fantasy covers and is much brighter than the cover that leaked out a few months back. It also adds a lot more depth than the earlier cover, but I'm not sure about the shadow horse figure which I didn't care for on Richard K. Morgan's The Steel Remains as well. The Dragon's Path is one of my most anticipated novels for 2011. Lauren Panepinto from Orbit had this to say:

The cool thing about the world of The Dragon’s Path is that the titular dragons are part of the ancient past of the current civilization — without giving too much away, I’d say it’s kind of like imagining that the Roman Emperors had been dragons, and so much history has passed that all that is left is artifacts (like, say, a sword), myths, and folklore that some people believe and others doubt. And of course now, there is an ominous threat of history perhaps not being quite as dead and buried as was hoped.

And here is the official blurb to whet your appetites:

Summer is the season of war in the Free Cities.

Marcus wants to get out before the fighting starts. His hero days are behind him and simple caravan duty is better than getting pressed into service by the local gentry. Even a small war can get you killed. But a captain needs men to lead — and his have been summarily arrested and recruited for their swords.

Cithrin has a job to do — move the wealth of a nation across a war zone. An orphan raised by the bank, she is their last hope of keeping the bank’s wealth out of the hands of the invaders. But she’s just a girl and knows little of caravans, war, and danger. She knows money and she knows secrets, but will that be enough to save her in the coming months?

Geder, the only son of a noble house is more interested in philosophy than swordplay. He is a poor excuse for a soldier and little more than a pawn in these games of war. But not even he knows what he will become of the fires of battle. Hero or villain? Small men have achieved greater things and Geder is no small man.

Falling pebbles can start a landslide. What should have been a small summer spat between gentlemen is spiraling out of control. Dark forces are at work, fanning the flames that will sweep the entire region onto The Dragon’s Path — the path of war.

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INTERVIEW | Brent Weeks on the Durzo Novella and More

The Night Angel series established Brent Weeks as part of the new school of Epic Fantasy authors going for the darker path while also embracing his own twisty style of story telling.  In the past Weeks mentioned his intention to return to the world of Night Angel, but not until after he finished the Lightbringer series, which  started strongly with The Black Prism.  But he has a special treat in store for all the Night Angel fans out there.  As mentioned earlier Brent Weeks has just finished a Durzo Blint short story. I couldn't help but try to find out more and Brent was kind enough to answer my questions.

WARNING: If you haven't read the Night Angel series there is something mentioned below that can be considered a spoiler.

MH: This Durzo novella sort of came out of nowhere. What made you want to delve back into Durzo's history? Fan response or have you always had this story in mind?

WEEKS: First, I should throw a caveat in here. Technically, it's a novelette--it's 16,000 words (60-ish pages), and a novella is 17,000 to 40,000. But I called it a novella in my tweet because, heck, who's ever heard of a novelette? So readers should expect like a really long short story, rather than a short novel. I'm an epic fantasy writer, so I'm incapable of writing a short novel. However, blowing way past the limits of a short story--that, I can do.

My sneaky idea, which I have no idea if it will really work out, because the creative mind loves what it loves, is to do one Durzo short story between each of the Lightbringer novels. That way, I'm keeping something alive for the fans of Night Angel, I'm getting to experiment and do something different while engaged in a multi-year project, and I'm showing more of the world I'll eventually come back to after Lightbringer is finished. Durzo has been around for a long time, and I've always thought it would be fun to tell more stories about him.

The story came out of nowhere because it's got a really different flavor. I demand more of my readers in this one. Quite honestly, I didn't know if I could pull it off. So I didn't want to sell it before I wrote it and then be obligated to turn in something--because that something might not have been that great. And I worked on it for a couple weeks at the end of the summer, didn't think it was going anywhere, and then got caught up in touring, and then after touring sat down to work on the next Lightbringer book--but this stupid thing just started scratching to get out. Now that it has, I'm really quite proud of it.

MH: Does the novella have a working title? And what sort of release is planned? Your publisher Orbit announced a few months back a short fiction eBook program so that was brought to mind.

WEEKS: Well, since Orbit has only just received the story, I probably shouldn't tell you my brilliant title ideas (or crappy ones), in case those get rejected in favor of something else. Because then I'll get fans writing me, saying, "But I thought you had another short story, called X! This one was terrible. I want to read that one!"

What sort of release is planned? Ha ha ha. You think there's a plan? The Orbit short fiction program will probably be its first home, and I definitely have some other hopes--but nothing's been signed yet, so I better sit on that one.

MH: What can we expect from the novella? Does it take place right when Durzo gets his powers or earlier when he was becoming someone important in the land of Midcyru?

WEEKS: The bulk of the story is literally how Gaelan Starfire becomes Durzo Blint. So you'll see a younger Momma K, assassinations, ka'kari and more. I think it stands on its own, but it will be much more rewarding if you've read the Night Angel trilogy. I don't do a lot of hand-holding in this story. You can catch things, or just miss them. It moves really fast. I did have moments where I thought, "I could easily turn this into a full length novel." And if I didn't feel an obligation to fans to finish Lightbringer in some relatively reasonable time frame, I might have entertained those thoughts more, because this was really fun to write.

MH: What's next for you? Vacation to some fabled island where authors can relax or are you jumping into the next Lightbringer novel?

WEEKS: When I sent my agent this Durzo story for his comments, he gave me some great suggestions, and then at the end, he said, "Great story, brilliant, wonderful. Now get back to work."

So I'm back to working on Lightbringer 2: tentatively titled The Blinding Knife.

MH: Thanks for your time!


Brent Weeks is the New York Times best-selling author of The Way of Shadows, Shadow's Edge, and Beyond the Shadows. To learn more about Brent Weeks visit his blog or follow him on twitter.

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Covers Unveiled for Simon Morden's New Series

Simon Morden may be little known to most of you despite being short listed for a World Fantasy Award for his novella Another War and finalist for the Catalyst Award for his YA effort The Lost Art. He is also a rocket scientist so the science part comes easy for him.  Early next year he will debuting his new series of Dystopian Thrillers starring Samuil Petrovitch through Orbit Books. This is another case of Orbit given fans instant satisfaction with publishing a trilogy of books over 3 months with the first Equations of Life coming out in April with Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom following in May and June. Now the look for the series is quite something to behold as Orbit has stepped out of the box on the design for something that will truly mess with your visual senses.

Here is a bit from Orbit's Anna Gregson on the series and its design:

To give you a bit of background on the cover concept – we have taken advantage of some classic optical illusions, choosing images that speak to the role of Samuel Petrovitch as a physicist and mathematician. In the Equations of Life cover, the white and black centre seems to start breaking into other colours. The Theories of Flight cover plays with dimensionality and also plays off a model of space–time as Einstein theorized it. The Degrees of Freedom cover starts to break the maze-like design into cells and levels which, I think, really portrays the feeling of entrapment.

These online cover images truly don’t do the packages justice – each book has a single bright colour and in the printed version that will actually be a fluorescent ink. Spot gloss lamination and subtle embossing will heighten the effect of the illusions and make them very nice objects to pick up and stare at – they really draw you in when you see them in person.

I'm quite keen to see how these will look in finished form and plan on adding each to my shelf just to see them peeking out. I'm happy to see Orbit continue to take a daring approach on genre books. Below are larger versions along with descriptive copy for the first book Equations of Life. I found versions of the other two as well, but they seem a bit spoilery.

Samuil Petrovitch is a Russian emigre with a smart mouth, a dodgy heart and a dodgier past. He's brilliant, friendless, cocky and - even in a world where the No. 1 rule is 'don't get involved' - stands out as a selfish, miserable bastard. When an uncharacteristic act of kindness lands him in the middle of a private war between rival crime lords, Petrovitch has to make some high-risk choices. Crooked cops, gun-toting warrior nuns, exiled yakuza and crazed prophets are the least of his problems: there's something stirring in the dark corners of the Metrozone - and by the time the authorities work out what, it will be far too late. Armed only with a genius-level intellect, a natural distrust of other human beings and a prodigious vocabulary of Russian swear words, Samuil Petrovitch might just be most unlikely champion a city has ever had.

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REVIEW | The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Orbit)

I was lucky enough to get an early review copy of The Black Prism, but actually put it down after only 20 pages. I had just finished The Way of Kings the prior week and worried it was too similar in themes and style of magic. Rather than risk reading The Black Prism and judging it based off Kings I decided to hold off and read it from more a fresh perspective. Little did I know that would be about 6 books later. When I finally got knuckle deep into The Black Prism I decided I made the right call. Sometimes distance does help perspective.

The Black Prism opens on the fields of a long dead battle from the Prism War with Kip wandering around before day break in search of luxin, a substance that drafters of light (magic wielders) can create and bend to their will. Kip is the poor fat teenage boy of his village who nearly everyone pities because of his infamous and drug addled mother. What Kip doesn't know is he is bastard to the most powerful drafter in the world, Gavin Guile, also known as the Lord Prism of Chromeia and figurehead of the predominate religious/magic order. As the Prism he can control the whole color spectrum and work wonders with his abilities.

The Black Prism is among the new wave of Flintlock Fantasy, which seem to becoming more in vogue the last few years. At least in this volume the guns don't add much to the world except in a couple short scenes. Otherwise it is the magic that keeps your attention with the grey characters we've come to love from Weeks.

The magic system is one of many facets that make The Black Prism standout from other Epic works The system is amazingly detailed and believable. Drafters are able to absorb light and create objects both large, small, and intricate with it. Each color of the spectrum has its own characteristics and uses. Some are more moldable. Some more discrete and others stronger. And a very few people have the ability to draft more than one color. What Gavin can do with his abilities is truly awing at times. Performing drafting magic does have a cost for the drafter, which makes the use of the magic very believable. It is all in the eyes. The color wrights who have overdone their use of magic were a nice touch, especially those crazy blues.

Many of the main characters appear at first blush to be typical archetypes, but Weeks managed to surprise me again and again with the depth they have. His greatest strength as a writer to date has been hiding secrets in plain site yet still making them just difficult enough to decipher that you have to laugh at yourself for not realizing the truth. All the characters hold secrets and as they are revealed each is in turn bigger than the last.

Weeks often leaves you wondering who the real hero is and whichever way you go you will be sure to change your mind as the story unfolds. The Black Prism has a whole Man in the Iron Mask angle that came off fresher than I expected as he created a character with some serious psychological problems.  There are some flaws mostly with character development.  Kip could have used some more background development in connecting the reader to his mentality and curt tongue possibly with an added scene involving his mother earlier on. And the the ladies didn't seem to be used to their utmost, but in this regard Weeks has laid the groundwork for bigger things for them in future volumes.

Weeks blew my expectations away as the story zooms though leaving you wanting more, but still satisfied at being introduced to this world and its major players. For those that were thrown off by a certain aspect of the first section to The Way of Shadows have no fear as there is none of that here. The Black Prism is still quite a brutal book with a high body count and some very gruesome scenes, especially one towards the beginning. It wouldn't be a Weeks novel without him pushing the envelope to give characters justification for their actions. I give The Black Prism 8.5 out of 10 hats. The ending builds momentum well for the next volume. For fans of Epic Fantasy with a gritty edge this is a must and the start to a very strong trilogy. Orbit has created a fun little game/quiz to tie-in with the book that helps you figure out what color drafter you are.


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FREE FICTION | The Black Prism by Brent Weeks sample chapters

Orbit has the first 3 chapters of The Black Prism by Brent Weeks up on their site, which certainly gets my Epic Fantasy juices going.  Thanks to TheBlackPrism.net for the tipoff. Also, a word of warning. I bet these are not the final version as Weeks only recently finished the manuscript and edits are still underway, but this is the best glimpse we've gotten so far especially after the spoilery synopses to date.

The Black Prism
Chapter 1
Kip crawled toward the battlefield in the darkness, the mist pressing down, blotting out sound, scattering starlight. Though the adults shunned it, he’d played on the open field a hundred times–during the day. Tonight, his purpose was grimmer.

Reaching the top of the hill, Kip stood and hiked up his pants. The river behind him was muttering obscenities, or maybe that was the warriors beneath its surface, dead these sixteen years. Kip squared his shoulders, ignoring his imagination. The mists made it seem he was suspended, outside of time. But even if there was no evidence of it, the sun was coming. By the time it did, he had to get to the far side of the battlefield. Farther than he’d ever gone searching.

Even Ramir, wouldn’t come out here at night. Everyone knew Sundered Rock was haunted. But Ram didn’t have to feed his family; his mother didn’t smoke her wages.

Gripping his little belt knife tightly, Kip started walking. It wasn’t just the unquiet dead that might pull him down to the evernight. A pack of giant javelinas had been seen roaming the night, tusks cruel, hooves sharp. They were good eating if you had a matchlock, iron nerves, and good aim, but since the Prisms’ War had wiped out all the town’s men, there weren’t many people who braved death for a little bacon. Rekton was already a shell of what it had once been. Thealcaldesa wasn’t eager for any of her townspeople to throw their lives away. Besides, Kip didn’t have a matchlock.

Nor were javelinas the only creatures that roamed the night. A mountain lion or a golden bear would also probably enjoy a well-marbled Kip.

A low howl cut the mist and the darkness hundreds of paces deeper into the battlefield. Kip froze. Oh, there were wolves too. How’d he forget wolves?

Another wolf answered, farther out. A haunting sound, the very voice of the wilderness. You couldn’t help but freeze when you heard it. It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.

Wetting his lips, Kip got moving. He had the distinct sensation of being followed. Stalked. He looked behind himself. There was nothing there. Of course. His mother always said he had too much imagination. Just walk Kip. Places to be. Animals are more scared of you and all that. Besides, that was one of the tricks about a howl, it always sounded much closer than it really was. Those wolves were probably leagues away.

Before the Prisms’ War, this had been excellent farmland. Right next to the Umber River, suitable for figs, grapes, pears, dewberries, asparagus–everything grew here. And it had been sixteen years since the final battle–a year before Kip was even born. But the plain was still torn and scarred. A few burnt timbers of old homes and barns poked out of the dirt. Deep furrows and craters remained from cannon shells. Filled now with swirling mist, those craters looked like lakes, tunnels, traps. Bottomless. Unfathomable.

Most of the magic used in the battle had dissolved sooner or later in the years of sun exposure, but here and there broken green luxin spears still glittered. Shards of solid yellow underfoot would cut through the toughest shoe leather.

Scavengers had long since taken all the valuable arms, mail, and luxin from the battlefield, but as the seasons passed and rains fell, more mysteries surfaced each year. That was what Kip was hoping for–and what he was seeking was most visible in the first rays of dawn.

The wolves stopped howling. Nothing was worse than hearing that chilling sound, but at least with the sound, he knew where they were. Now… Kip swallowed on the hard knot in his throat.

To continue reading: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3


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