Year: 2019

Review: KONRAD CURZE — NIGHT HAUNTER by Guy Haley (Black Library)

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HaleyG-HHP12-KonradCurzeA look at the Night Haunter’s spiral into madness, and his last hours

Of all the Emperor’s immortal sons, the primarchs, it is Konrad Curze whose legend is the darkest. Born in the shadows of Nostramo, a world of murderers, thieves and worse, is it any surprise that he became the figure of dread known only as the Night Haunter?

Heed now the tragic story of the creature Konrad Curze, master of the Night Lords Legion, of how he became a monster and a weapon of terror. He who once served the Imperium saw the truth in a maddening universe and the hypocrisy of a loveless father. From the blood-soaked gutters of his hiveworld upbringing, to the last days of his ill-fated existence, Curze is a primarch like no other and his tale is one to chill the very bone…

In this, Guy Haley’s third Primarchs novel, readers get a fascinating look at Konrad Curze: the Night Haunter, and gene-father of the Night Lords, the Emperor’s terror troops. A nuanced examination of Curze’s place in the expanding Imperium, as well as an account of his final hours — lost to madness, despair and bitterness. Continue reading →

New Books (April-May)

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Featuring: Troy Carrol Bucher, Gordon H. Chang, Dhonielle Clayton, John Connolly, Jennifer Giesbrecht, Stanley B. Greenberg, Georgia Hardstark, Guy Haley, John Hornor Jacobs, Kel Kade, Karen Kilgariff, Cassandra Khaw, Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael Laurence, Yoon Ha Lee, Nick Mamatas, Kassandra Montag, Tamsyn Muir, Brian Naslund, Anna Pitoniak, Christopher Ruocchio, John Sandford, Mel Stanfill, Jon Steinhagen, Neal Stephenson, Breanna Teintze, Chuck Wendig, Jen Williams

Continue reading →

Quick Review: ONE WORD KILL by Mark Lawrence (47 North)

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LawrenceM-IT1-OneWordKillThe first in the Impossible Times series

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange — yet curiously familiar — man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help — now.

He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.

Challenge accepted.

Mark Lawrence is best known for his three excellent grimdark fantasy series — The Broken Empire, The Red Queen’s War, and Book of the Ancestor. I’ve been a fan of his work since Prince of Thorns, which I was able to get as a review copy. One of the first things that struck me was how good a writer Lawrence is — something that is immediately apparent in everything he writes. In One Word Kill, the author shows that he’s just as adept writing in the real world as he is in his dystopian and fantasy settings. This was a lot of fun. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “The Challenge of the Middle Books” by D.B. Jackson

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JacksonDB-AuthorPicMy newest book, Time’s Demon, comes out on May 28 from Angry Robot Books. This is the second book in The Islevale Cycle, my time travel/epic fantasy trilogy, which began with Time’s Children (October 2018). This was a challenging – and ultimately rewarding – book to write for a number of reasons. Time travel stories are always difficult to construct because of the constant danger of creating paradoxes, anachronisms, and plotting loopholes. Epic fantasies come with their own challenges – the need to balance and keep track of multiple narrative strands and point of view characters.

Finally, and most importantly for our purposes today, Time’s Demon is the second book in a trilogy – the dreaded middle book – and as such it presented a unique set of issues. Now, not everyone is foolish enough to take on time travel in their novels, and hard SF, space opera, urban fantasy, grimdark, steampunk, and other varieties of speculative fiction are not necessarily any easier to approach than epic fantasy. But most if not all of us writing in our genre will eventually confront the dreaded “middle book” problem. So I would like to discuss my approach to second books. Continue reading →

Interview with TJ BERRY

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BerryTJ-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is TJ Berry?

I write science fiction, fantasy, and horror from Seattle. I’m originally from the New York City area, so I have a lot of opinions on the subject of pizza. I’m a survivor of the 2016 six-week Clarion West Writer’s Workshop — also known as sci-fi summer camp. In a previous life, I owned a bakery, and one of my enduring skills is whipping up a batch of cookie dough from scratch in under three minutes. That comes in handy more often than you’d imagine.

Your next novel, Five Unicorn Flush, will be published by Angry Robot in May. The sequel to Space Unicorn Blues, how would you introduce it to a potential reader?

Five Unicorn Flush picks up after the magical Bala have disappeared from the universe and the authoritarian Reason regime has devolved into chaos. All of the cheap labor and magical faster-than-light fuel that humans exploited to fuel their intergalactic expansion are gone. One angry man, Cowboy Jim Bryant, has decided to take the last remaining faster-than-light warship and hunt down the Bala and return them to captivity. His former partner and current nemesis, Captain Jenny Perata, is hot on his tail, keen on stopping him. Continue reading →

Interview with SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA

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OkungbowaSD-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Suyi Davies Okungbowa?

I was born and raised in Benin City, Nigeria to parents in academia, so reading and stories have always been a big part of my life. Benin’s an ancient city, see, dates back to the 11th century, so there isn’t much going on there. I experienced most of the world through books (and cable TV, haha). I had my primary, secondary and tertiary education within the same walls of the University of Benin. Since then, I’ve moved around a bit, working in engineering, professional services, marketing and communications and digital learning. Currently, I’m an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where I also teach writing to freshmen and sophomores.

Your debut novel, David Mogo, Godhunter, is due to be published in July by Abaddon. It looks really interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader?

Well, I initially pitched the book to David [Moore] as American Gods-meets-The Dresden Files, set in Lagos. Since then, I’ve heard it called everything from Constantine-meets-Black Panther to a godpocalyptic thriller. To a potential reader, I’d say if you took a demigod’s identity crisis, mixed it with a failing, overcrowded city’s god infestation, and set a wizard’s fire under it, what you get is David Mogo, Godhunter. It features Yoruba orisha mythology, but also draws on myths and legends from other Nigerian ethnicities like the Edo pantheon (where I’m from) as well as the Urhobo and Igbo. Continue reading →

Interview with ANNA KASHINA

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KashinaA-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Anna Kashina?

I tend to think of myself as a jack of all trades. So, here, naming just a few, I am a fantasy author, a mother, a ballroom dancer, a biomedical scientist, a native Russian speaker, a fan of martial arts, and a niffler – not always in this order. I draw on all these in my writing, every day.

Your latest novel, Shadowblade, will be published by Angry Robot in May. It looks interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

It’s a standalone adventure fantasy with elements of romance, which could potentially be a series. The main character, Naia, starts off as a misfit trainee in the elite order of Jaihar blademasters, and works her way through the ranks, only to be thrown into the most dangerous and high-profile assignment their order has ever seen. It has a lot of action, politics, fancy blade fights, and of course, romance. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “Worldbuilding PIMP MY AIRSHIP” by Maurice Broaddus

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BroaddusM-AuthorPicI’ve often told the story of how the short story “Pimp My Airship” started as a joke gone awry on Twitter. When the story was actually requested, I had to build a world. The main criticism the story received was that there seemed to be a lot of world that the reader barely gets to see in the five-thousand-word story. When I fleshed out the origins of the Star Child, it led to the novelette “Steppin’ Razor”; and a throwaway line about “the Five Civilized Nations of the northwest territories and the Tejas Free Republic” led to the novella Buffalo Soldier. I won’t lie, the criticism still followed me. Perhaps they had a point about how much world I can compact into a story. That’s because my favorite part of the writing process is worldbuilding since that’s when I really get to play. For Pimp My Airship, I allow myself plenty of room to build out my world. Its creation centers around three areas: Continue reading →

Interview with RONAN FROST

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SavileS-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Ronan Frost?

Well the official bio would tell you he’s a Brit living overseas, who has worked for the MoD and done some fairly interesting stuff. What it wouldn’t tell you is sure, he did all that, but he’s also a name I made up. It’s not a huge secret, given the decision was made to put my real name on the back cover with the quotes ‘Writing as Steven Savile…’ which kinda gives it away. How Ronan came to be, well, my editor wanted me to write a book like my bestselling novel, Silver, which just so happened to feature one Irish gent, Ronan Frost as one of the lead characters. So when we needed a name for the contract it seemed only right to give my editor what he’d asked for. Ahem.

So, instead we’ll tweak this one and say ‘Who is Steve…’ to give you a fairer idea who is on the other end of this. 49 year old ex-pat, living in the wilds of Sweden surrounded by trees, more trees and err, more trees. I swear there must be a few thousand for each living soul. More than that. I emigrated 22 years ago. I spent the early days over here teaching English and History, but turned full time as a writer back in 2006 when I signed to do a trilogy of fantasy novels for the popular game world Warhammer. I’ve done all sorts of weird and wonderful jobs, including writing the storyline for the massive computer game Battlefield 3, and most recently writing adventures and monster manuals for a couple of popular roleplaying games. Continue reading →

Trailer: STUMPTOWN (ABC)

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Announced during the TV upfronts last week, ABC’s Stumptown is based on the graphic novels series of the same name. The series stars Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother, Marvel’s cinematic universe). There are a couple of other crime/cop shows that were announced, but this is definitely one of the more interesting, to me. Looking forward to watching it. Here’s the network’s synopsis:

Based on the “Stumptown” graphic novel series, follows Dex Parios (Cobie Smulders) as a strong, assertive, and sharp-witted army veteran with a complicated love life, gambling debt, and a brother to take care of in Portland, Oregon. Her military intelligence skills make her a great P.I., but her unapologetic style puts her in the firing line of hardcore criminals and not quite in alliance with the police. Continue reading →