Year: 2015

Review: THE EMPEROR’S BLADES by Brian Staveley (Tor)

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Staveley-1-TheEmperorsBladesUKA superb, must-read debut epic fantasy

The circle is closing. The stakes are high. And old truths will live again…

The Emperor has been murdered, leaving the Annurian Empire in turmoil. Now his progeny must prepare to unmask a conspiracy. His son Valyn, training for the empire’s deadliest fighting force, hears the news an ocean away. And after several ‘accidents’ and a dying soldier’s warning, he realizes his life is also in danger. Yet before Valyn can act, he must survive the mercenaries’ brutal final initiation.

The Emperor’s daughter, Minister Adare, hunts her father’s murderer in the capital. Court politics can be fatal, but she needs justice. Lastly Kaden, heir to the empire, studies in a remote monastery. Here, the Blank God’s disciples teach their harsh ways, which Kaden must master to unlock ancient powers. But when an imperial delegation arrives, has he learnt enough to keep him alive, as long-hidden powers make their move?

There was much hype around The Emperor’s Blades when it was released last year. Naturally, being the ornery and difficult fellow, I decided to wait. And wait. As the weeks passed, I became distracted by other things and other new books. Then I moved to Canada. After the arrival of the sequel, The Providence of Fire, I decided I had waited long enough, and started reading The Emperor’s Blades (wow, that was one long, convoluted tale that was utterly unimportant and uninteresting…). And then I kept reading. Well into the night, multiple times. With only a couple of niggles, I can sum things up thus: Believe the hype. This is a great novel and the beginning of something special. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “Thinking Like A Monkey” by Gareth L. Powell

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PowellGarethL-AuthorPicOne of the largest challenges I faced while writing my ‘Macaque’ trilogy (Ack-Ack Macaque, Hive Monkey and Macaque Attack – all published by Solaris Books) was in writing chapters and scenes from the point of view of my main character.

Ack-Ack Macaque really is a monkey. He’s not a guy in a rubber suit. So, I felt duty bound to make him act like one. I had to imagine how a monkey (even a monkey whose intelligence has been boosted to human-like levels by artificial implants) would react in given situations and interact with the other characters in the book.

For instance, early in the first book, he warns somebody he’s just met not to smile at him, as, to a monkey, baring one’s teeth can be a challenge, as can sustained eye contact.

“Don’t take it personally,” he says. “It’s a primate thing.” Continue reading →

Excerpt: KING OF MORNING, QUEEN OF DAY by Ian McDonald (Open Road)

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McDonald-KingOfMorningQueenOfDayORAvailable in as an eBook via Open Road Media, today we have an excerpt from Ian McDonald‘s King of Morning, Queen of Day. Here’s the synopsis:

Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award and the Prix Imaginales: Three generations of women share a mysterious power—one that threatens to destroy them.

In early-twentieth-century Ireland, life for Emily Desmond is that of the average teenage girl: She reads, she’s bored with school, and she has a powerful imagination. Then things begin to change. Her imagination is so powerful, in fact, that she wills a faerie into existence—an ability called mythoconsciousness. It’s this power that opens a dangerous door that she will never want to close, and whose repercussions will reverberate across time.

First to be affected is her daughter, Jessica, who, in the mid-1930s, finds that she must face her mother’s power by using the very same gift against her. Then, in the near future, Jessica’s granddaughter, Enye, must end the cycle once and for all—but it may prove too powerful to overcome.

The novel is currently part of Open Road Media’s “Coming of Age” eBook promotion. Continue reading →

Cover: KILLING PRETTY by Richard Kadrey (Voyager)

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I’m a big fan of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series, and I just stumbled across the cover for the seventh novel, Killing Pretty. Due to be published in July 2015 by Voyager Books in the UK and US, I was unable to find a synopsis… Nevertheless, here’s the cover, which continues the very cool, vintage-pulp movie poster feel:

Kadrey-7-KillingPrettyUS

Also on CR: Reviews of Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha From Hell, Devil in the Dollhouse, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Killing Pretty

Excerpt: THE AUTUMN REPUBLIC by Brian McClellan (Orbit)

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McClellanB-PM3-AutumnRepublicIf you’ve been reading Civilian Reader for the past couple of years, you’ll have noticed that I’m a big fan of Brian McClellan‘s Powder Mage series – the novels and novellas have all been great. The third and (possibly?) final novel – The Autumn Republic – will be published by Orbit Books on February 10th, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the story ends. Orbit US have provided me with the second chapter to share with you all. You can read the first chapter over on Orbit’s blog, here.

Before we get to the excerpt, however, here’s the synopsis:

The capital has fallen…

Field Marshal Tamas returns to his beloved country to find that for the first time in history, the capital city of Adro lies in the hands of a foreign invader. His son is missing, his allies are indistinguishable from his foes, and reinforcements are several weeks away.

An army divided…

With the Kez still bearing down upon them and without clear leadership, the Adran army has turned against itself. Inspector Adamat is drawn into the very heart of this new mutiny with promises of finding his kidnapped son.

All hope rests with one…

And Taniel Two-shot, hunted by men he once thought his friends, must safeguard the only chance Adro has of getting through this war without being destroyed…

If you’d like to read more, here’s what else is on CR: Interview with Brian McClellan, Guest posts on Favourite Novel and Protagonist Ages in Epic Fantasy; Reviews of Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign

Now, on to the excerpt…! Continue reading →

Interview with ANDY McNAB

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Let’s start with an introduction, just in case there are people who haven’t heard of you: Who is Andy McNab? 

I was in the army for 18 years. Eight years in the infantry and the remainder in the Special Air Service. The first book I wrote was about my experience during the first Gulf War, Bravo Two Zero. It became the biggest selling war book of all time. So that then kicked off a second career as a writer, then a script writer and film producer. The books are doing well – they have now sold just over 30 million copies worldwide.

McNabA-LS3-NewEnemyUKYour third Liam Scott novel, The New Enemy, will be published by Random House in the UK, in January. How would you introduce the series to a new reader, and what fans of the first two books expect?

Liam is a typical 16-year-old who joins the army as a Junior Soldier. As well as all the normal things 16-year-olds start to experience – drink, girls and mates – he goes through his infantry training and eventually to Afghanistan. There his experiences include not only the “bang bang” that you would expect from a story set in a war zone but also his own worries and fears around all this. Will he let himself down when he has to step up to the plate and do what he’s trained and paid to do? Or worse, will he let his mates down and look weak when he’s under fire? Continue reading →

Review: DEATH AND DEFIANCE by Various (Black Library)

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Various-Death&Defiance(HH)A collection of Horus Heresy novellas

Words alone can no longer convey the horrors of the war that now grips the Imperium. In what should have been an age of enlightenment and glorious triumph, instead warriors on both sides reel from the twin agonies of betrayal and bloodshed. The hatred of a sworn foe, the ire of a primarch, or the unholy wrath of a daemon-lord – none but the mighty Space Marines can hope to weather such torments unscathed…

Death and Defiance is the latest anthology from Black Library – originally, it was only available as a hardcover (possibly at the Black Library Weekender?). The short stories it contained were recently made available through the publisher’s website as individual eBooks. Naturally, given my addiction to Horus Heresy fiction, I snapped them up right away. On the whole, it’s a very good collection. Surprisingly, though, my favourite author featured did not deliver the best story (in fact, it was by far the weakest). Continue reading →

Review: KAREN MEMORY by Elizabeth Bear (Tor)

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BearE-KarenMemoryUSAn interesting Weird West adventure

“You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”

Hugo-Award winning author Elizabeth Bear offers something new in Karen Memory, an absolutely entrancing steampunk novel set in Seattle in the late 19th century — an era when the town was called Rapid City, when the parts we now call Seattle Underground were the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes bringing would-be miners heading up to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront. Karen is a “soiled dove,” a young woman on her own who is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house — a resourceful group — and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap — a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

This is the first novel by Elizabeth Bear that I’ve read. Lauded far and wide, throughout the SFF online community, I had very high hopes for Karen Memory, a weird Western adventure/crime story. It mostly lived up to them. There’s much to like in the novel, certainly, but there was one consistent thing that didn’t work for me. Nevertheless, it’s quite an enjoyable read. Continue reading →

Upcoming: New John Sandford Fiction

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Longtime readers of CR will know I’m a huge fan of John Sandford‘s various series – be it the Lucas Davenport/Prey series, the Virgil Flowers spin-off series, or the Kidd & LuEllen series, I’ve loved them all. So, I’m happy to share the information for two upcoming 2015 releases from the author, including the 25th Prey novel:

Sandford-25-GatheringPreyUSGATHERING PREY

They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes—they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them.

Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she’d befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody’s killing her friends, she’s afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She’s hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Letty tells Lucas she’s going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty’s getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman’s story, though, he begins to think there’s something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger—but just may change the course of his life.

Gathering Prey is due to be published in the US by Putnam, on April 28th 2015.

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SandfordCook-SM2-OutrageOUTRAGE, w. Michele Cook

Shay Remby and her gang of renegades have struck a blow to the Singular Corporation. When they rescued Shay’s brother, Odin, from a secret Singular lab, they also liberated a girl. Singular has been experimenting on her, trying to implant a U.S. senator’s memories into her brain—with partial success. Fenfang is now a girl who literally knows too much.

Can the knowledge brought by ex-captives Odin and Fenfang help Shay and her friends expose the crimes of this corrupt corporation? Singular has already killed one of Shay’s band to protect their secrets. How many more will die before the truth is exposed?

The second novel in Sandford and Cook’s The Singular Menace YA series, it follows Uncaged (which I still need to read). It’s due to be published in North America by Knopf for Young Readers, on July 14th 2015.

Marvel STAR WARS Featurette

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Here’s a mini-featurette on the recently-published STAR WARS #1, in which series writer Jason Aaron, editor Jordan D. White, and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso talk about the creation of the new ongoing series:

[youtube http://youtu.be/H_Hiky7fT2s]

There were 69(!) variant covers for this issue (which is frankly insane). A good number of them are pretty cool (Skottie Young’s is great). Personally, I think I like the Midtown Comics exclusive the best:

StarWars-01-MidtownSpeaking of of Skottie Young, he’s produced three covers – for Princess Leia #1, Star Wars #1, and Darth Vader #1 – that can be stitched together into a single image (via MTV News):

StarWars-SkottieYoungCovers