Fantasy

Upcoming: “Children of Fire” by Drew Karpyshyn (Del Rey)

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I actually stumbled across this novel via NetGalley a little while ago (I really need to get my ass in gear and read-and-review it…). Today, though, I caught a Tweet by Del Rey UK with the British cover artwork, so I thought I’d finally share it on the blog. Out of the two, I think I prefer the UK cover (it’s darker and, dare I say it, grittier), although I do like that they’ve maintained the overall colour palette for the newer UK artwork (on the left).

This is the best synopsis I was able to find, from Random House (New Zealand, strangely)…

Wizard, Warrior, Prophet, King. The Immortal Daemron, know as the Slayer, was all these things before his ascension.

Trapped in a realm of Chaos for centuries by the Old Gods, using a magical barrier known as The Legacy, a last desperate ritual will herald the return of Chaos to the human world, and the lives of four children will never be the same.

The mortal realm is a balance of secular and religious authority, with The Order of the Crown holding much power over humanity, its members gifted with amazing abilities and all children with magical talents are theirs to claim.

Cassandra, Vaaler, Scythe and Keegan grow up in different places and with different lives, but all share the taint of Chaos magic. As various factions struggle to find the best solution to the coming return of Chaos, the fate of the world is in their hands.

I’ve enjoyed some of Karpyshyn’s Star Wars novels, so I’m intrigued to see how good his own stuff is. Hopefully I’ll get to this in the not-too-distant-future.

[Incidentally, yes – I do have better access to the internet for a little while, which should see an up-tick in posting for a week or so.]

Guest Post: “History & Riyria” by Michael J. Sullivan

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Long-time readers of Civilian Reader will know that I’m a big fan of Michael Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations series (re-issued by Orbit Books in 2011-12). To celebrate the release of a prequel duology – The Crown Tower and The Rose and the Thorn – the author has penned this piece on the historical influences on his series, and the decisions he made on how to approach and incorporate these influences into his fantasy world and narrative.

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HISTORY & RIYRIA

A good deal of invented-world fantasy is based on history. While much of this may be due to writers imitating other authors who came before them, there is a very practical reason for this: familiarity. When creating a world you’d rather not do it from scratch. Even the best chefs have used frozen pie crusts or stock broth. It just saves so much time and effort and allows you to focus on the more important aspects – the story.

In fantasy you could rework everything. You could do away with leaders or councils and run anarchy. People might not need to eat or drink, but instead soak up sunlight to survive. Of course you might not have a sun either. Instead you might have geysers that emit vapors that must be absorbed. People in the new world might not believe in trade, everyone could subsist entirely on what they alone find or make, hence no economy. There might be no day and night cycle, no seasons, no linear time at all as we know it. There might be no sexes, or there might be five different ones and reproduction could require the coupling of at least three different participants. Anyone of these would be a lot for an author to explain through all of its inevitable ramifications, but all of them and all the others one would need to invent to establish a completely alien world entirely disassociated from our own would both consume massive investment of words and likely bore even the most patient reader to tears.

A good story with lousy worldbuilding is still a good story, and fantastic worldbuilding with a bad story is still a bad story.

As a result authors of invented-worlds like to use preconceived ideas already conveniently built in the minds of readers. Characters will use swords, bows, spears and shields, or flintlocks and powder kegs. No need to explain why or what they are. Day and night, summer and winter, years and hours, can all remain the same, because these basic building blocks aren’t worth altering unless that is the focus or theme of the story. Eighty percent common knowledge and twenty percent invented, and readers will have little problem jumping right in and enjoying this “alien” world you “created.”

History is also a great guide for such things as economic and political systems and also work as justification, guides, and proof of plausibility. When I was in art school a friend who was in the photography program scoffed at my efforts to painting still-life. “Why bother when you can just take a photo?” My response was that I wanted to be able to paint what couldn’t be seen, what he could never fit in his viewfinder. Before I could do that I had to master painting what was visible, so I could use that knowledge when I invented what wasn’t and still make it look just as believable. By utilizing the same rules of reflection, shadow, proportions and light, I lend credence to the incredible. This same idea applies just as assuredly to writing fiction.

When I first conceived of the Riyria Revelations, I did so while reading a college text book on Western Civilizations. I studied medieval and renaissance history, which threw off dozens of ideas that I jotted down. The missus dominicus – the agents of Charlemagne – became the basis for the sentinels in the world of Elan. Royce had some roots of his character grow out of a biography on Edward, the Black Prince of Wales. The Church of Novron and the monasteries of Maribor were inspired by the cradle-to-grave dominance of the Roman Catholic Church and the Benedictine and Franciscan orders. The Theorem Eldership came from the secret orders of knights such as the Knights Templar and the Illuminati. The lost empire of Novron was pulled from the Fall of Rome. The elves and dwarves were redefined from the Tolkien-esque tradition into something resembling the minorities of the Dark Ages. Dwarves who once long ago had their own homeland and kingdom were, in the time of Royce and Hadrian, universally disliked, distrusted, and forced into ghettos, but still sought for their uncanny skills. Jews faced similar problems in the post Roman era. In this way, the major themes of ancient life helped provide much of the framework, while the lesser known details provided inspiration for unique set pieces.

I didn’t stop there, however. I mixed and matched. Elan isn’t Earth, so I had no reason to limit myself unless I felt the need. For example, there are potatoes that historically came from the New World and were unknown in Medieval Europe. The same is true for tobacco. Sailing vessels were not at all like the great ships of the Age of Sail – the age of Nelson – but I liked the romance of a three mast ship plowing waves. I just excluded gunpowder and cannons. I loved the imagery and characterization that powdered wigs provided and so tossed those in, but kept armor and the joust from centuries earlier. I used modern military ranks because I wanted to avoid explanations of such basic concepts.

In total, I made specific and personal choices concerning what I would keep accurate and what I would change. There was no standard I followed beyond my personal taste of what I thought would make a wonderful reading experience. I wrote Revelations to be the sort of book I wanted to read, the sort of story I couldn’t find on any shelves. Equal parts realism, heroism, and simple prose so nothing stood between the reader and the story. I felt fantasy had begun taking itself too seriously and in its lofty goal of becoming a Genre Worthy of Respect, forgot the date that brought it to the dance. I felt too much of fantasy had left out the fun, the humor, the sheer blast of joy that comes from taking an arduous journey with someone you come to love and the sweaty fingers that turn the pages as they face the final showdown. This for me has always been the best of fantasy: not the worldbuilding, or the lessons in humanity, but the emotional blowout that for me, only fantasy – free of the baggage of the real world – can provide. This is what divided the books I carried with me, the ones I remembered fondly decades later, and those I forgot I ever read.

Regardless of whether fantasy is historically consistent, dark and cynical, or idyllic and heroic, all that matters is that the story and characters are good enough to make readers laugh, cry, and feel a terrible sense of loss after the last page is turned.

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Also on CR: Reviews of The Viscount and the Witch, Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, and Heir of Novron; Interview with Michael J. Sullivan, Guest Post on Gritty vs. Heroic Fantasy 

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Riyria Revelations US

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Riyria Revelations UK

Short Fiction Round-Up: Hillary Jordan, Brian McClellan, Tom Rachman & Frank Cavallo

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I’ve been reading a selection of short stories over the past couple of weeks, but I keep forgetting, or getting distracted from posting the reviews. So, to speed things up, I’ve compiled this selection of four reviews. Each is very different to the others, and offers something different. Not all of them were great, but each has something to offer the reader with a couple of hours to spare – either on a commute, or in between longer reads as palate cleansers. I had a lot more to say about one of them, but it is part of a much larger, decade-spanning series.

Reviewed: Frank Cavallo’s Into the Valley of Death, Hillary Jordan’s Aftermirth, Brian McClellan’s The Girl of Hrusch Avenue, and Tom Rachman’s The Bathtub Spy Continue reading →

Guest Post: “The Yesterday That Never Was” by Aidan Harte (Jo Fletcher Books)

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Today, I bring you a guest post by Aidan Harte, author of the historical fantasies Irenicon and The Warring States. Here, he discusses how authors perceive and play around with the historical periods they can write in…

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THE YESTERDAY THAT NEVER WAS

AidanHarte-AuthorPicFantasy and Historical Fiction are in essence extreme forms of Travel Fiction. They take us to destinations that can’t be otherwise reached. Historical Fantasy is a hybrid for brave souls looking for untraveled paths in unmapped lands. Its terrain is more expansive than it was – as the world tilts, reorienting itself to an Eastern pole, the West is no longer the default setting.

Anyone writing Historical Fiction must accomplish two, unfortunately contradictory, things:

1. Immerse the reader in another era.

2. Keep him from drowning in it.

The same onus falls on the writer of Historical Fantasy but he has an extra challenge – after building a believable world, he must test it to breaking point by introducing unbelievable elements. Happily, that’s not as difficult as it sounds. Privately, each of us believes that everyone who died before we were born was a sucker. They don’t know what we know and we can never forgive them for it. Just as the untraveled believe absurdities of foreigners, we patronise to people imprisoned in the past’s dusty mausoleum in a way we’d never treat those lucky enough to cohabitate the same point in time and space as us.

All this is to say that the average reader, whatever he tells himself, really has no trouble believing that citizens of olden times were credulous as slow-witted children. Given that, the introduction of supernatural elements is a doddle. Dragons are only marginally less improbable than the Charleston. Our condescension is not altogether without wisdom. The fact is that people living in pre-scientific societies did not delimit the supernatural from the everyday as rigorously as we Moderns. The average medieval chap would be surprised to see a unicorn, but not nearly as much as you – I’m assuming that you’re not reading this blog from an explored tract of the Amazon.

ClarkeS-JonathanStrange&MrNorrellIn the end, the fantastical elements in any novel are distracting fireworks that count for little if the bedrock of character, plot and storytelling is absent or faulty. The art is to find an intellectual and emotional connection between the reader and the past. I’ve praised Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell before, but some things bear repeating. Susanna Clarke inhabits her chosen milieu completely. Her infectious wit and generosity draws us helplessly in. The manner she treats the squabbling magicians bursting into Regency England as kindred spirits to the Romantic poets is inspired. It’s not the spells we remember so much as the awkward double act of Strange and Norrell, the noble manservant Stephen and the masterful Duke of Wellington.

That effortless marriage of voice and subject was a continuing inspiration for my Wave Trilogy, although the tone is very different. Irenicon and its sequel The Warring States are set in Etruria, an Alternate History Italy. The most challenging part of realising this medieval world was not creating the mysterious Waterfolk, or the flamboyant martial arts, or the baroque arch-villainy of Bernoulli. All that was pure imagination and came easy. What I really sweated over in the first book was rendering the conflict that was tearing the small town of Rasenna apart. It wasn’t that I lacked inspirational material; anyone perusing a history of medieval Italy will find conflict aplenty, but all the research in the world doesn’t help when you can’t see the living people underneath. You have to be able to smell their breath. It took me a while to understand why the Guelphs and Ghibellines keep quarrelling. The minutia of titles, dates and details obscured the human passions. The truth is that it wasn’t an abstract quarrel for primacy between the Holy See and the Holy Roman Empire that kept the city-states boiling. The factions’ banners were pretexts, vaporous as the shadow battles over “hinge issues” that animate the election years of our democracies. What was and is at issue was power. Who holds it. Who wants it. Once I realised that, realising the inherent drama was easier, though I still had work making a world of guilds, priests, contessas, and strange Italian names inviting to modern readers.

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This business of making readers at ease can be taken too far. The past remains another country. The average medieval person had views on morality that make the Taliban look easy going. Saints and relics occupied a space in 14th century Italy filled by iPads and smart phones today. I’ll buy just about any anachronistic mechanical contrivance in my Steam Punk novel, but nothing jars more than Victorian characters with the mores of 21st century hipsters. Why ever leave the sofa if we’re all the same?

We travel to experience the world’s variety but some contemporary authors, certainly those writing Literary Fiction, tip toe and genuflect around the issues of race, gender and age. This is patronising in a terrible new way. The joy of traveling is to see strange sights, people we’re not used to, smells that make us dizzy, flavours that make our tongues beg for mercy. Victorian authors, God bless their jodhpurs, had none of this pusillanimity. When Ryder Haggard had a yarn to spin, he waded into the unknown with aplomb – sensitivities be damned – and readers love him it.

FromHellThe sense of discovery is part of Historical Fantasy’s continuing appeal. It’s increasingly hard to imagine life Before Google, that benighted era we left behind in 1996. The world BG was a world where ignorance, speculation and rumour were the rule. The past is a place where the most fantastical things are routinely accepted. If an unmapped world could contain Australia and the Americas then why not unicorns and dragons too? The most ambitious Historical Fantasies pull us over the borders into the unknown. Peter Ackroyd (in Hawksmore) and Alan Moore (in From Hell) take the reader on tours of two very different Londons and make a convincing case that doers of dreadful deeds make their own reality. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian can be read as Historical Fantasy. Its setting is clearly the 1850’s Mexican borderlands but the villainous Judge Holden – polyglot, immortal, alchemist – is an ogre direct from the Grimm’s fairy tales. Or perhaps he’s just a flamboyant fraud. Or perhaps he’s a figment of the narrator’s imagination. McCarthy’s expansive, elusive prose allows for many interpretation.

At its best, Historical Fantasy pits its constituent parts – History and Fantasy – against each other. That inner tension, that vast uncertainty, is why we love it. Ultimately none of us are quite as sure of ourselves as we pretend to be. How pleasant to go somewhere now and again, where absolutely nothing is certain.

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Aidan Harte’s IRENICON and THE WARRING STATES are both out now, published by Jo Fletcher Books in the UK.

Also on CR: Interview with Aidan Harte, Excerpt of Irenicon

Guest Post: “The Details in the Devil” by Lou Morgan

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MorganL-Blood&FeathersFinalThere is one really, really stupid thing you can do as a writer. Monumentally, head-thumpingly stupid.

And that’s to put the Devil in your book.

Where do you start? Whatever name you give him, whatever face, Old Nick comes with some pretty hefty baggage. Trickster, manipulator, tyrant, victim, former angel or demon… he’s still the Devil. You can race with him; you can be caught between him and the deep blue sea. You can have sympathy for him (or not) and he’s even been known to wear Prada.

All this, and we’ve barely even scratched the surface… So why would anyone be crazy or arrogant enough to go ahead and write one of the most (in)famous characters in all of literature into their own book?

The answer’s simple. It’s because he’s fun. And he’s fun because he’s a challenge. Everybody’s Devil is different. The scariest one I’ve ever seen on film is Viggo Mortensen in The Prophecy. He’s scary because he talks, and it’s not just his voice but his words which are seductive; they ebb and flow as he sits there, fiddling with a rose… and then you realise what he’s saying, and suddenly he’s a thing worth fearing…

He should be seductive, in his own way – it’s what he does best, isn’t it? It’s why those pitchfork-wielding dragon-types they were so fond of in medieval art always look so strange to us. The idea of devil-as-serpent we can understand – there’s something compelling about the way a snake moves, isn’t there? – but none of us could imagine being taken in by a gargoyle.

The Devil stands for evil, after all (just look at those two words… Coincidence? Nah.) and how many of us could ever see ourselves as being deliberately evil? Not many. We use words like “seduced” and “corrupted” when we talk about people going to the dark side. To believe that anyone could simply wake up one day and decide to be truly bad, to become any of our modern definitions of evil is unthinkable – not to mention very frightening indeed – and this is where the “Father of Lies” comes in.

And that’s precisely where a writer’s headache starts.

Every writer’s Devil differs. Of course they do: just like every writer differs, and everything they’re scared of differs. There’s a good chance you’ll find an overlap (how can you not with a character like this?), but there will always be something fresh – even if it’s just the pieces of a jigsaw arranged in a new pattern; the whole being re-lit to cast unfamiliar shadows.

I imprisoned my Lucifer in a block of ice at the heart of hell… but then if you do that, doesn’t it rather take him out of the game? It depends how smart you think he is – and I wouldn’t bet against his being able to think his way around that one. If he were stupid, he wouldn’t be nearly so much trouble, would he?

MorganL-Blood&Feathers-RebellionGoing back to medieval paintings of devils and demons, it’s not unusual to see them being pulled out of peoples’ mouths, because this was a time when possession was not only feared, it was absolutely believed in. And what could be more frightening than speaking to someone you know and realising that they aren’t themselves? What could be more seductive than hearing half-truths – carefully phrased and selected to do the maximum damage possible – from the lips of someone you think you know…?

What if his mind could wander at will? What if he could hop into your head, your mother’s, your wife’s, your brother’s, your child’s? What if he could settle down like a toad in a mind that isn’t his, spitting out words that didn’t come from there and planting thoughts that don’t belong?

What’s his deal, anyway? What’s his agenda? Is he angry? Vengeful? Spiteful? Petty? Sadistic? Is he flat-out monstrous or just misunderstood? Just the same as any character, he needs his motivations and his pressure-points; it’s just that his tend to be bigger, scarier and more nerve-wracking than others.

And after all that: the knowing he’s smarter than you and more vicious than you (which is why he’s locked up, after all: he’s officially A Bad Dude) with nothing to lose and everything to gain, you’re left with one very alarming question.

What will he do to get what he wants?

Answer that, and you’ve got a Devil of your own.

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Author Bio:

Lou Morgan lives in the south west of England with her family. She studied medieval literature at university and loves cathedrals and pizza (but probably not together). Her short stories have appeared in anthologies from Solaris Books, PS Publishing and Jurassic. Her first novel, Blood and Feathers has been shortlisted for the 2013 British Fantasy Awards in both the best newcomer and best fantasy novel categories. She spends far too much time on Twitter.

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This post should really be read while listening to this song…

Upcoming: “The Age of Ice” by J.M. Sidorova (Scribner)

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Sidorova-TheAgeOfIceUKThis looks like an interesting novel. It has already been described as “boldly original and genrebending”, and it will apparently take readers “from the grisly fields of the Napoleonic Wars to the blazing heat of Afghanistan, from the outer reaches of Siberia to the cacophonous streets of nineteenth-century Paris”. Colour me very much intrigued…

The Empress Anna Ioannovna has issued her latest eccentric order: construct a palace out of ice blocks. Inside its walls her slaves build a wedding chamber, a canopy bed on a dais, heavy drapes cascading to the floor — all made of ice. Sealed inside are a disgraced nobleman and a deformed female jester. On the empress’s command — for her entertainment — these two are to be married, the relationship consummated inside this frozen prison. In the morning, guards enter to find them half-dead. Nine months later, two boys are born.

Surrounded by servants and animals, Prince Alexander Velitzyn and his twin brother, Andrei, have an idyllic childhood on the family’s large country estate. But as they approach manhood, stark differences coalesce. Andrei is daring and ambitious; Alexander is tentative and adrift. One frigid winter night on the road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, as he flees his army post, Alexander comes to a horrifying revelation: his body is immune to cold.

The Age of Ice is published by Scribner in the UK, and will be out near the end of July 2013.

Upcoming: “Gallow” Trilogy by Nathan Hawke (Gollancz)

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HawkeN-Gallow1-CrimsonShieldI caught a tweet the other day from Gollancz’s publicist that copies of the first book in Nathan Hawke’s Gallow series had arrived in their office (oh, how they tease us bibliophiles…). Naturally, this made me seek out some more information about the series. It sounds pretty cool, too. The series is comprised of THE CRIMSON SHIELD, COLD REDEMPTION, and LAST BASTION, and will be published in July, August, and September (respectively). I do like it when publishers release series in quick succession…

Here’s the first synopsis…

I have been Truesword to my friends, Griefbringer to my enemies. To most of you I am just another Northlander bastard here to take your women and drink your mead, but to those who know me, my name is Gallow. I fought for my king for seven long years. I have served lords and held my shield beside common men. I have fled in defeat and I have tasted victory and I will tell you which is sweeter. Despise me then, for I have slain more of your kin than I can count, though I remember every single face.

For my king I will travel to the end of the world. I will find the fabled Crimson Shield so that his legions may carry it to battle, and when Sword and Shield must finally clash, there you will find me. I will not make pacts with devils or bargains with demons for I do not believe in such things, and yet I will see them all around me, in men and in their deeds. Remember me then, for I will not suffer such monsters to live.

Even if they are the ones I serve.

The one thing I’m not sure about is whether or not this is fantasy or historical, or a blend of the two… Nevertheless, this sounds pretty interesting. I’ll try to get my hands on the books to review on the site. Between these and Snorri Kristjansson’s Swords of Good Men, I may come over all Viking this summer…

Here are the other two covers (all three were done by Alejandro Colucci):

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Here’s the synopsis for book two, as well (still waiting for the third synopsis to surface on the internets…):

I fought against your people, and I have fought for them. I have killed, and I have murdered. I betrayed my kin and crippled my king. I led countless warriors to their deaths and fought to save one worthless life. I have stood against monsters and men and I cannot always tell the difference.

Fate carried me away from your lands, from the woman and the family I love. Three hellish years but now, finally, I may return. I hope I will find them waiting for me. I hope they will remember me while all others forget. Let my own people believe me dead, lest they hunt me down. Let me return in the dark and in the shadows so no one will know.

But hope is rare and fate is cruel. And if I have to, I will fight.

Cover Reveal: THE WOKEN GODS by Gwenda Bond (Strange Chemistry)

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I haven’t managed to keep on top of my Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry reviewing – certainly not as much as I would like. (They have had a considerable number of awesome-sounding titles coming out recently… I really should get my act together and read more of them…)

Nevertheless, one of my favourite debut reads last year was Gwenda Bond’s Blackwood. I was very intrigued, therefore, to learn about Bond’s next novel, The Woken Gods. I didn’t know much about it, but the cover certainly nabbed my interesting…

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The US Congress, the All-Seeing Eye, Egyptian Gods…? Colour me intrigued. The Woken Gods will be published by Strange Chemistry in September 2013. Here’s the synopsis…

Five years ago, the gods of ancient mythology awoke around the world.

This morning, Kyra Locke is late for school.

Seventeen-year-old Kyra lives in a transformed Washington, D.C., home to the embassies of divine pantheons and the mysterious Society of the Sun. But when rebellious Kyra encounters two trickster gods on her way back from school, one offering a threat and the other a warning, it turns out her life isn’t what it seems. She escapes with the aid of Osborne “Oz” Spencer, an intriguing Society field operative, only to discover that her scholar father has disappeared with a dangerous relic. The Society needs it, and they don’t care that she knows nothing about her father’s secrets.

Now Kyra must depend on her wits and the suspect help of scary gods, her estranged oracle mother, and, of course, Oz–whose first allegiance is to the Society. She has no choice if she’s going to recover the missing relic and save her father. And if she doesn’t? Well, that may just mean the end of the world as she knows it.

I’m certainly looking forward to this.

Guest Post: “After Apocalypse” by Gail Z. Martin

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Martin,GZ-ReignOfAshMaybe it’s a sign of the times, but we seem to be obsessed with the end of the world.

Sure, such fascinations, both literary and religious, have come and gone in times past. It’s just our luck to live in the midst of a resurgence of end-of-the-world fatalism.

Pick your poison—climate change, asteroid collision, bio-warfare, zombies, or mad scientists, there are plenty of ways to die. Personally, I prefer magic.

In Ice Forged, and the upcoming Reign of Ash, Books 1 and 2 in my Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, mages on both sides of a devastating war use magic as their doomsday weapon. They manage to destroy civilization on their continent, and magic itself.

Apocalypse-by-mage was a twist that intrigued me. Magic, in the world of the Ascendant Kingdoms, does for them what technology does for us—heals the sick, makes routine tasks easier, reduces effort, and controls the environment. Long ago, people used to do those things without magic, but since the wild power was harnessed so that it could be controlled by humans, people have forgotten the old ways.

That makes it rough when the magic stops working.

There’s a fantastic TV series about “Life After People” that shows just how quickly the modern world falls apart—literally—when people are suddenly removed and no one is left to maintain what has been built. I watched those shows, riveted, as it speculated that in about 250 years after all people disappeared, the world would heal itself and most of our structures would be largely obliterated. We’re not as important as we think we are.

That concept served well as I imagined the apocalypse in Ice Forged. Not only do survivors of the war endure hardship because of the fire that rained down from the skies in a powerful magic strike, they also suffer because there is no magic. Few people know how to treat wounds, protect crops from pests, or do many other essential tasks. Where magic was used for infrastructure, either as a repair patch or to do something important, like keeping back the sea at the sea wall, magic’s failure results in additional disaster. Not only that, but the once-harnessed magic, returned to the wild, becomes a violent force of nature, creating dangerous storms and unnatural monsters.

So when exiled convict and disgraced lord Blaine McFadden discovers that he might be the only one who can restore the magic, the stakes are high. Trying to bring magic back might cause Blaine’s death, and there’s no guarantee the attempt will work. Even if he can restore the magic, it may not function the way it did before, and in any event, the kingdom is in rubble, its leaders dead.

It’s been said that “fortune” is the combination of “danger” and “opportunity.” If you define it that way, then Blaine McFadden is a very “fortunate” man.

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The Hawthorn Moon Sneak Peek Event includes book giveaways, free excerpts and readings, all-new guest blog posts and author Q&A on 21 awesome partner sites around the globe. For a full list of where to go to get the goodies, visit the Ascendant Kingdoms website.

Book Giveaway on Twitter: Every day from June 21-28, I’ll be choosing someone at random from my Twitter followers to win a free signed book. Invite your friends to follow me – for every new 200 followers I gain between June 21-28, I’ll give away an additional book, up to 20 books!

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Gail Z. Martin is the author of Ice Forged in her new The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga (Orbit Books), plus The Chronicles of The Necromancer series (The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen) and The Fallen Kings Cycle (The Sworn and The Dread). She is also the author of two series on eBook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures and the Deadly Curiosities Series. Her books are available in bookstores worldwide and on Kindle, Kobo and Nook.

Interview with BRIAN McCLELLAN

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Brian McClellan’s debut fantasy, Promise of Blood, has caused quite a splash in the SFF community. It blends fast-paced story-telling with a new and interesting world, and a plethora of interesting and engaging characters. Brian has already featured on Civilian Reader a few of times already. He has written two guest posts – on his favourite novel, and also Protagonist Ages in Epic Fantasy – and I have reviewed the novel already, too. He was kind enough to take some time to answer my questions about his fiction, writing practices, and more… Continue reading →