Fantasy

Upcoming: THE WAKING FIRE by Anthony Ryan (Orbit)

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RyanA-TheWakingFireAbove is the cover for Anthony Ryan’s next novel, the first in a new epic fantasy series — Draconis Memoria (that’s a very fantasy/heavy metal series title…). I quite like it — there’s a similarity to the recently-unveiled cover for Tom Lloyd’s next novel, but only in general positioning of Big Beastie and Puny Human…

I still haven’t read Anthony Ryan’s debut fantasy trilogy, The Raven’s Shadow, for some reason. Maybe I should get on that? Anyway, here’s the synopsis for The Waking Fire:

For decades the lands of the Ironship Syndicate have been defended by the ‘blood blessed’ – men and women able to channel the powers contained in the potent blood of wild drakes. Elite spies and assassins, their loyalty has established the Syndicate’s position as the greatest power in the known world.

Yet now a crisis looms. The drake bloodlines are weakening, and war with the Corvantine Empire seems inevitable. The Syndicate’s only hope of survival lies with the myth of a legendary drake, whose powerful blood might just turn the tide of the war – if it even exists.

The task of hunting down this fabled creature falls to Claydon Torcreek, a petty thief and unregistered blood blessed. He’s handled many valuable things in his time (most of them illegal) but nothing as priceless as his nation’s future.

The Waking Fire is due to be published by Orbit Books in July 2016.

Review: ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders (Titan/Tor)

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AndersCJ-AllTheBirdsInTheSkyUKOne of the most anticipated novels of the year… fizzles

Patricia is a witch who can communicate with birds. Laurence is a mad scientist and inventor of the two-second time machine. As teenagers they gravitate towards one another, sharing in the horrors of growing up weird.

When they later reconnect as adults, Laurence is an engineering genius living in near-future San Francisco, trying to stop the planet failing apart through technological intervention. Meanwhile, Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the magically gifted, and works with her fellow magicians to secretly repair the earth’s ever growing ailments.

As they each take sides in a cataclysmic war between science and magic, All the Birds in the Sky sees Laurence and Patricia try to make sense of life, sex and adulthood on the brink of the apocalypse.

This novel is perhaps one of the most anticipated of the year — with glowing reviews proliferating around the internet, and praise coming in from such luminaries as Michael Chabon, expectations have been high pretty much since it was announced. Anders writes quite beautifully, at times, and there’s little doubt that she is an author of talent. I know a lot of people who have loved this novel. Unfortunately, however, All the Birds in the Sky failed to ever take off for me. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “Looking for God in Melnibone Places : Fantasy and Religion” by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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TchaikovskyA-AuthorPicI ran a workshop at a convention last year on world building. It would be accurate to say that it was a section of a world building workshop I’ve been running for several years, because whenever I set out a bunch of topics, I generally manage about a third of them before we get hung up on something, and the rest never gets touched.

This time round, I dived into social conventions: governments, class systems, and then we hit the brick wall of religion and that is where the discussion firmly stayed.

This recurred to me while editing The Tiger and the Wolf because one of the main ways this series differs from Shadows of the Apt is the spiritual dimension. The insect-kinden of Shadows are aware of the concept of gods but have no truck with the idea. Their attitude to the numinous (those who can even conceive of it) is as something to master and control, not appease or worship. For Tiger I wanted to explore a culture that lived in constant dialogue with the spiritual. The various tribes’ ability to shapeshift is the cornerstone of a religion that, though it finds different expressions in different tribes, links them all together with a common cosmology. Continue reading →

Guest Post: “How to Build a Dragon” by Marc Turner

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TurnerM-AuthorPicIf I asked you to picture a dragon in your mind, what would it look like? It would probably have wings and breathe fire. It might also have scales and a long barbed tail. As for the rest of its body, though, it would just look… well, dragon-y, right?

If a winged and armoured reptile is the basic template for a dragon, its other physical characteristics can vary hugely. When I was younger I did some roleplaying, and my game-world of choice was that of the Dragonlance novels. In those books, you find a real menagerie of dragons. Different breeds come in different colours, and breathe out different things. So, you get the quintessential red fire-breathing dragon, but you also get white frost-breathing dragons and blue lightning-breathing dragons. Those different breeds vary in size and power, and live in different habitats. Continue reading →

Interview with JACEY BEDFORD

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BedfordJ-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Jacey Bedford?

I’m a British writer who qualified as a librarian and then spent twenty years as a full-time folk singer touring the world with vocal trio Artisan. Since the band retired from the road I’ve become a booking agent, fixing music tours for other performers. I work from home and split my time between my music business and my writing. I’ve sold short stories to anthologies and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. My first two novels for DAW, Empire of Dust and Crossways, both science fiction, came out in 2014 and 2015 respectively and Winterwood, my first historical fantasy, comes out in February 2016. Continue reading →

Interview with CLIFFORD BEAL

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BealC-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Clifford Beal?

I’m a former defence journalist turned PR professional who started writing books on weekends in what was left of my spare time. My first published book, back in 2007, was actually non-fiction 18th century maritime history.

Your next novel, The Guns of Ivrea, will be published by Solaris in February. It looks pretty awesome: How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

It’s an old-school epic fantasy set in a Mediterranean-like world very similar to our own 15th century, but inhabited by not just men and women but also merfolk and a bestiary of mythological creatures. The plot revolves around some interesting characters: A pirate turned admiral, a jaded mercenary, a monk on the run, and an inquisitive mermaid who all find an unlikely common cause as their kingdom slowly drifts towards war. It is the first in a series I’m calling “Tales of Valdur”. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE MIRROR THIEF by Martin Seay (Melville House)

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SeayM-MirrorThiefUSAnother novel that has frequently popped up in my Goodreads and Amazon recommendations, as well as a number of “Most Anticipated Books of 2016” lists, The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay sounds pretty fascinating:

A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining literary masterpiece in the tradition of Cloud Atlas.

One of the most audacious and confident debuts in years, The Mirror Thief is a masterful puzzle: a genre-hopping novel that combines an intricate, fast-paced mystery with serious literary ambition. Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its serendipitous mix of entertainment and literary merit.

The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world’s most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination — was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing? — the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however — a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose — has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city’s terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten …

Meanwhile, in two other iterations of Venice — Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today — two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret…

All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down — an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice… and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of literary art.

The Mirror Thief is due to be published by Melville House, in May 2016.

Upcoming: THE DEVIL’S EVIDENCE by Simon Kurt Unsworth (Doubleday/Del Rey UK)

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Unsworth-2-DevilsEvidence

The Devil’s Detective, Simon Kurt Unsworth‘s debut novel, was a deliciously dark take on Heaven-and-Hell. Specifically, it focused on Fool, one of Hell’s Information Men — what passes for a detective in a place where the most brutal and depraved of crimes is everyday life. I thought it was an excellent, twisted and gripping thriller. This year, Fool returns in the sequel, The Devil’s Evidence. Here’s the synopsis:

Hell is burning out of control. Thomas Fool, Hell’s first Information Man tasked with investigating the endless stream of violence in Hell, has been promoted to the head of the newly expanded Information Office. Now in command of a legion of Information Men, his new position finds him hated by demons and almost revered by humans. He alone has survived the wrath of demon and angel alike, but he stands alone and at the center of a brewing crisis. New on the scene is the Evidence, a shadowy department whose officers do not investigate; they punish and spread fear. And its leader, Mr. Tap, is gunning for Fool.

Fool is ordered to accompany a political delegation to Heaven, and his arrival coincides with an impossible — and sinister — discovery. A dead body. Murder in Heaven. Violence, corruption, and fear are the currency of Hell, and how does one investigate a crime where these concepts are paradoxes? As the bodies pile up, Fool sees disturbing connections between Heaven and Hell. He must follow clues in a strange land where nothing is as it seems and danger can present itself in any form.

What follows is a phantasmagoric, mind-bending thriller as exciting and unsettling as anything in recent fiction. The Devil’s Evidence is an electrifying, provocative novel filled with stunning set pieces and characters who will live on in your deepest nightmares.

The Devil’s Evidence is published on July 5th in the US, by Doubleday; and on October 6th in the UK, by Del Rey. The Devil’s Detective is also published by Doubleday and Del Rey UK, and is out this month in paperback. Here are the covers:

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Upcoming: THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF HOPE by Claire North (Orbit)

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A couple of days ago, Orbit unveiled the cover (above) for Claire North‘s highly anticipated next novel, The Sudden Appearance of Hope. Given how much I’ve loved all of Claire North’s books, this is very easily in my top five most anticipated novels of 2016. Maybe even the most anticipated of the year.

You might have met Hope Arden before. In fact, you might have met her a hundred times.

But there’s no way that you’ll remember who she is. Because Hope’s unique problem… is that she’s the girl the world forgets.

It all started when she was sixteen years old. A slow declining, a kind of isolation, one piece at a time. Her father forgetting to drive her to school. Her mother setting the table for three, not four. A teacher forgeting to chase her missing homework. A friend looking straight through her and seeing a stranger.

No matter what Hope does – the words she says, the people she hurts, the crimes she commits – you will never remember who she is. That makes her life tricky. But it also makes her dangerous.

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is due to be published in all English-language territories in May by Orbit in UK, Redhook in US (there may be a slightly different cover for the North American market, but I’m not sure — I’ll share if there is).

Also on CR: Reviews of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Touch, The Gameshouse Trilogy

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Review: THE MAGICIAN’S LAND by Lev Grossman (Penguin/Arrow)

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GrossmanL-M3-MagiciansLandUSA most satisfying conclusion to The Magicians trilogy

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.

Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory — but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

The Magician’s Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole.

I left this for far longer than I intended: I thoroughly enjoyed both of the previous books in the series, The Magicians and The Magician King. The Magician’s Land is a great, gripping conclusion, and exceeded my high expectations. This is a must-read trilogy for all fans of fantasy. Continue reading →