Year: 2017

Interview with GERALD BRANDT

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BrandtG-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Gerald Brandt?

You sure don’t start with the easy questions, do you? Chances are you’d get different answer if you asked this on a Tuesday than if you asked on a Friday. I guess I’m a dad first and foremost. I’m quite surprised at how much my kids, not necessarily define me, but make me who I am. After that I’m an author, and last on the list I’m a computer guy. Hey, it’s a living. I rock climb, I ride motorcycles, and I walk the dog every morning.

Your new novel, The Rebel, is due to be published by DAW in November. It’s the third novel in your San Angeles series, and looks rather cool. How would you introduce the series to a potential reader, and what can fans of the first two novels expect from this latest installment?

Everyone likes to say their book is “X meets Y”, like “Bladerunner meets Snow Crash.” I tend not to do that. I describe the San Angeles series as eighty percent thriller and twenty percent science fiction, with a pace that will leave you breathless (I hope). It’s got assassins that will stop at nothing to get the job done, corporations that are as huge as they are corrupt, massive sections of land taken over by cities that reach up to seven levels high. And, in the midst of it all, a motorcycle courier that has seen too much to be left alone. Continue reading →

New Books (October)

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Featuring: David Annandale, Asa Avdic, Myke Cole, Jeffrey Cranor, Tom Doyle, Karen Ellis, Spencer Ellsworth, Joseph Fink, James Alan Gardner, Kevin Hearne, Mike Lawson, Paul McAuley, Seanan McGuire, Adam O’Riordan, K.J. Parker (x3), C.L. Polk, Gareth L. Powell, Jane Robins, Paul M. Sammon, John Sandford, Christine Schutt, Jon Skovron, E.J. Swift, K.B. Wagers, Bill Willingham, Christopher J. Yates, Liz Ziemska

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Interview with CHRIS BROOKMYRE

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BrookmyreC-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Chris Brookmyre?

I am a writer from Glasgow, Scotland, author of twenty-one novels, eighteen of them crime thrillers. My novel Black Widow won the 2016 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and in 2017 was named Theakstons Old Peculier British Crime Novel of the Year. As well as writing books, I collaborated with videogame developers RedBedlam to adapt my 2013 novel Bedlam into a first-person shooter that was released in 2015 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Your latest novel, Places in the Darkness, has recently been published by Orbit. It looks really interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader?

It is a thriller in the tradition of the great Shane Black movies like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, about two mismatched investigators forced to work together, but with two major differences. One is that the buddy cop duo are both women, and the second is that the whole thing takes place aboard the Ciudad de Cielo (City in the Sky), a space station where 300,000 people live and work developing what would be the Earth’s first interstellar craft. It is a place where ambitious scientists and engineers go to work on cutting edge technology, but also where many people go to escape the things that went wrong in their lives back on Earth. The city’s private police force boasts that there has never been a murder aboard (though they do have a liberal interpretation of what constitutes an accidental death), but that changes when a dismembered body is found floating in zero-gravity. Continue reading →

Interview with JAMES ALAN GARDNER

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GardnerJA-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is James Alan Gardner?

I’m a Canadian writer and editor who’s written nine novels and numerous short stories. I’ve won the Asimov’s Readers Choice award (twice) and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, as well as being a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula. I have two degrees in Math, half a degree in Geology, and a second-degree black sash in kung fu.

Your new novel, the fantastically-titled All those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, will be published by Tor Books. It looks rather fun: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

It’s Book 1 of a series that takes place in modern times on an alternate version of Earth. In this world, vampires, were-beasts and demons came out of the closet in 1982; they offered to make anyone a Darkling like themselves in exchange for 10 million dollars. Within a few decades, most of the world’s rich and powerful had become Darklings.

Then superheroes showed up. They’re everyday people, members of the 99% who serve as a counterbalance to the supernatural power of the affluent 1%. The action of the book follows four university students who gain superpowers in a laboratory accident and find themselves entangled in Darkling shenanigans. Continue reading →

Interview with DAVID DALGLISH

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DalglishD-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is David Dalglish?

I’m a somewhat nerdy guy who grew up playing way too many video games, writing custom D&D campaigns, and re-reading Salvatore’s Dark Elf Trilogy an unhealthy number of times. Now I’m a dad of three, still just as nerdy, and still playing way too many games.

Orbit Books has recently published the final book in your Seraphim trilogy, Shadowborn. How would you introduce the series to a potential new reader, and what can fans of the first two books expect from the finale?

The apocalypse happened, and hundreds of years later, the tiny remnant of humanity lives on floating islands above an endless ocean, while above, the sky burns nightly with fire. Using prisms possessing magical powers, the elite of these islands fly about in fanciful gold and silver wings throwing fireballs and blasts of lightning at one another, until the prisms run out and they close in for mid-air sword fights. Continue reading →

Excerpt: ONE THOUSAND MONSTERS by Kim Newman (Titan)

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NewmanK-AD-OneThousandMonstersToday, we have an excerpt from Kim Newman‘s fifth Anno Dracula novel, One Thousand Monsters. Published by Titan Books, here’s the synopsis:

From London to Tokyo…

In 1899 Geneviève Dieudonné travels to Japan with a group of vampires exiled from Great Britain by Prince Dracula. They are allowed to settle in Yōkai Town, the district of Tokyo set aside for Japan’s own vampires, an altogether strange and less human breed than the nosferatu of Europe. Yet it is not the sanctuary they had hoped for, as a vicious murderer sets vampire against vampire, and Yōkai Town is revealed to be more a prison than a refuge. Geneviève and her undead comrades will be forced to face new enemies and the horrors hidden within the Temple of One Thousand Monsters…

Now, read on for the extract!

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Excerpt: THE DYING GAME by Åsa Avdic (Windmill/Penguin)

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AvdicA-DyingGameUKToday, we have an excerpt from a novel I’m really looking forward to reading: Åsa Avdic‘s The Dying Game. Published in the UK by Windmill Books, here’s the synopsis:

‘Oh, it’s really quite simple. I want you to play dead.’

On the remote island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a 48-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees, and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment is to stage her own death and then observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure?

But as soon as Anna steps on to the island she realises something isn’t quite right. And then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins…

The Dying Game is out now, published in the UK by Windmill Books, and in North America by Penguin. Now, on with the excerpt!

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Excerpt: HUNT YOU DOWN by Christopher Farnsworth (Zaffre)

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FarnsworthC-HuntYouDownUKToday, we have a short excerpt from Christopher Farnsworth‘s latest thriller, Hunt You Down. The second novel in the author’s John Smith series, it is published in the UK by Zaffre today. Here’s the synopsis:

John Smith is no ordinary gun for hire.

Smith is a man of rare gifts, and he knows your every thought…

Hired to track down a shooter targeting the rich and famous, Smith must complete his mission before another attack takes place. But when a website on the dark net is found to have connections to the murders, Smith realises that taking down a shadowy figure who has weaponised the internet will prove more difficult than he first thought.

And no matter how hard he tries, this criminal mastermind continues to remain one step ahead.

The novel is published in North America by William Morrow, as Flashmob. The first novel in the series, Kill File, is also published by Zaffre and William Morrow. Now, here’s the excerpt…

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Upcoming: 84K by Claire North (Orbit)

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NorthC-84KUSA new Claire North book is always something to cheer. The only problem is that we have to wait until next year… 84K, the author’s fifth novel, sounds fantastic:

What if your life were defined by a number?

What if any crime could be committed without punishment, so long as you could afford to pay the fee assigned to that crime?

Theo works in the Criminal Audit Office. He assesses each crime that crosses his desk and makes sure the correct debt to society is paid in full.

But when Theo’s ex-lover Dani is killed, it’s different. This is one death he can’t let become merely an entry on a balance sheet.

Because when the richest in the world are getting away with murder, sometimes the numbers just don’t add up.

84K is due to be published by Orbit Books in the UK and US, in May 2018.

Also on CR: Reviews of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch, the Gamehouse Trilogy, The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Quick Review: IRONCLADS by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris)

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TchaikovskyA-IroncladsAn interesting new SF war novella with a twist

Scions have no limits

Scions do not die

And Scions do not disappear

Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad – the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war – but something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Now Regan and his men, ill-equipped and demoralised, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover how his suit failed. Is there a new Ironcladkiller out there? And how are common soldiers lacking the protection afforded the rich supposed to survive the battlefield of tomorrow?

A new book from Adrian Tchaikovsky is always something to be cheered. Ironclads is something a little different — although, given Tchaikovsky’s growing body of varied work, this is perhaps something that we can now expect? Ironclads is an interesting re-imagining of the world: corporations have come to dominate the new world, but supernatural elements of the old world are pushing back. A squad of American soldiers are thrown into a special mission, and everything they thought they knew about the war turns out to have been wrong… Continue reading →