Jo Fletcher Books

Books Received (Easter Week & a Bit)

Civilian Reader Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BooksReceived-201404-17

Featuring: Mark Alder, Charles Cumming, Stella Gemmell, Terry Hayes, Sarah Pinborough, Justin Richards, Marcus Sakey, Tom Rob Smith

AlderM-SonOfTheMorningMark Alder, Son of the Morning (Gollancz)

Edward the Third stands in the burnt ruin of an English church. He is beset on all sides. He needs a victory against the French to rescue his Kingship. Or he will die trying.

Philip of Valois can put 50,000 men in the field. He has sent his priests to summon the very Angels themselves to fight for France. Edward could call on God for aid but he is an usurper. What if God truly is on the side of the French?

But for a price, Edward could open the gates of Hell and take an unholy war to France…

This has been creating quite the buzz around the UK SFF community. It took me a little while to discover that “Mark Alder” is a pseudonym for “M.D. Lachlan” (which, incidentally, is also a pseudonym…). I really enjoyed Wolfsangel and Fenrir, but have yet to catch up with the rest of Lachlan’s werewolf series. Soon, hopefully. You can read an excerpt from the novel, here.

Also on CR: Interview with M.D. Lachlan, Catch-Up Interview

*

Cumming-AColderWarUKCharles Cumming, A Colder War (Harper)

A top-ranking Iranian military official is blown up while trying to defect to the West. An investigative journalist is arrested and imprisoned for writing an article critical of the Turkish government. An Iranian nuclear scientist is assassinated on the streets of Tehran. These three incidents, seemingly unrelated, have one crucial link. Each of the three had been recently recruited by Western intelligence, before being removed or killed.

Then Paul Wallinger, MI6’s most senior agent in Turkey, dies in a puzzling plane crash. Fearing the worst, MI6 bypasses the usual protocol and brings disgraced agent Tom Kell in from the cold to investigate. Kell soon discovers what Wallinger had already begun to suspect – that there’s a mole somewhere in the Western intelligence, a traitor who has been systematically sabotaging scores of joint intelligence operations in the Middle East.

Charles Cumming is one of my favourite authors – not just of thrillers, but of any genre. I’ve fallen behind a bit, but I’m really looking forward to jumping into this novel. A Foreign Country, the first in this series, is one of the books I haven’t read, so I’ll be reading that in a few days, before starting in on this one.

Also on CR: Reviews of Typhoon and The Trinity Six

*

GemmellS-CityUKPBStella Gemmell, The City (Corgi)

The City is ancient and vast and has been waging almost constant war for centuries. At its heart resides the emperor. Few have ever seen him. Those who have remember a man in his prime – and yet he should be very old. Some speculate that he is no longer human, others wonder if indeed he ever truly was. And a few have come to a desperate conclusion: that the only way to halt the emperor’s unslakeable thirst for war is to end his unnaturally long life.

From the crumbling catacombs beneath the City where the poor struggle to stay alive to the blood-soaked fields of battle where so few heroes survive, these rebels emerge. Their hopes rest on one man. A man who was once the emperor’s foremost general – a revered soldier who could lead an uprising and liberate a city, a man who was betrayed, imprisoned, tortured and is now believed to be dead…

The paperback release of this novel arrives. I received the large, trade-paperback last year. I started reading it when I was really not in the mood for fantasy. It was very well-written, and the world was really well-realised. But at the time I found it rather slow, and a bit too heavy on the world-building over the story-telling. I’ll give it another go, hopefully, some time later this year.

*

Hayes-IAmPilgrimTerry Hayes, I Am Pilgrim (Corgi)

Can you commit the perfect crime?

Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn’t exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation.

But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found facedown in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder – and Pilgrim wrote the book.

What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruins on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God.

Another novel I’ve heard great things about, but for some reason haven’t got around to reading. It’s a biggie, but I’m really interested in reading it.

*

PinboroughS-LT2-MurderSarah Pinborough, Murder (Jo Fletcher Books)

Dr. Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, is still recovering from the event of the previous year when Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London – and a more malign enemy hid in his shadow. Bond and the others who worked on the gruesome case are still stalked by its legacies, both psychological and tangible.

But now the bodies of children are being pulled from the Thames… and Bond is about to become inextricably linked with an uncanny, undying enemy.

This is the next in Pinborough’s historical London crime novels (with a hint of the supernatural). I’m currently reading the first, Mayhem, and really enjoying it. Review pretty soon, hopefully.

*

RichardsJ-SuicideExhibitionUKPBJustin Richards, Suicide Exhibition (Del Rey UK)

WEWELSBURG CASTLE, 1940.

The German war machine has woken an ancient threat – the alien Vril and their Ubermensch have returned. Ultimate Victory in the war for Europe is now within the Nazis’ grasp.

ENGLAND, 1941

Foreign Office trouble shooter Guy Pentecross has stumbled into a conspiracy beyond his imagining – a secret war being waged in the shadows against a terrible enemy.

The battle for Europe has just become the war for humanity.

Another paperback release, and another novel I’ve been so slow about getting around to reading. I do like the sound of it, I’ve just been distracted constantly whenever I think about reading it. Maybe now I’ll get my act together.

*

Sakey-B2-ABetterWorldMarcus Sakey, A Better World (Thomas & Mercer)

The brilliants changed everything.

Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we’d only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person’s most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional… and the rest of us.

Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.

Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the president of the United States, he’s against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose – because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.

And to reach it, they’re willing to burn this one down.

This is the sequel to Brilliance, which I have but have not yet got around to reading. (That is a bit of theme for this post…) I’ve never read anything by Sakey, but I’ve heard lots of very good things.

*

SmithTR-TheFarmUSTom Rob Smith, The Farm (Grand Central)

If you refuse to believe me, I will no longer consider you my son.

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.

Your mother… she’s not well, his father tells him. She’s been imagining things – terrible, terrible things. She’s had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.

Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad… I need the police… Meet me at Heathrow.

Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother’s unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father.

Tom Rob Smith’s previous novels have been huge, international hits. Which, as with so many in an ever-busier publishing environment, I haven’t managed to try, yet. After seeing it on NetGalley, and my request being accepted, I’m hoping to get around to this very soon. Especially since I seem to have developed a real taste for international thrillers, lately.

*

Which of these catches your eye? Have you been waiting for any of them?

Recently Received Titles…

Civilian Reader Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BooksReceived-201404-01

Featuring: Anne Bishop, Carole K. Carr, Joël Dicker, Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff, Mark Millar, Gary Meehan, Isla Morley, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, Tom Rachman, Samantha Shannon, Joel Shepherd, F.R. Tallis, David Wingrove

Bishop-BJ2-HeirToTheShadowsUKAnne Bishop, Heir to the Shadow (Jo Fletcher Books)

Witch – the Queen who would bring freedom to the realms – has come, but now she is lost in darkness, and has a long road to recovery ahead of her.

While her adopted father, Saeten, waits for her to return to the living world, the third side of the triangle needed to complete the prophecy – the lover, Daemon – walks in the Twisted Kingdom on the edge of madness.

As insidious whispers and dark schemes ferment treachery and betrayal, Jaenelle must make a choice: to protect those she loves, she must be more than an heir, she must become a Queen.

The second novel in Bishop’s Black Jewel trilogy, available in the UK for the first time (as a non-import).

*

Carole K. Carr, India Black & India Black and the Widow of Windsor (Titan Books)

CarrCK-IndiaBlack1and2UK

When Sir Archibald Latham of the War Office dies from a heart attack while visiting her brothel, Madam India Black is unexpectedly thrust into a deadly game between Russian and British agents who are seeking the military secrets Latham carried.

Blackmailed into recovering the missing documents by the British spy known as French, India finds herself dodging Russian agents, seducing spies and embarking on midnight sleigh rides, not to mention ignoring the attraction she starts to feel for her handsome and exasperating British co-conspirator.

These are the first two novels in Carr’s A Madam of Espionage series (of four, with also a couple of short stories). I am quite intrigued by the series, as it looks both fun and different to what I normally read.

*

DickerJ-TruthAboutTheHarryQuebertAffairUKJoël Dicker, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (MacLehose Press)

August 30, 1975. The day of the disappearance. The day a small New Hampshire town lost its innocence.

That summer Harry Quebert fell in love with fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan. Thirty-three years later, her body is dug up from his yard along with a manuscript copy of his career-defining novel. Quebert is the only suspect.

Marcus Goldman – Quebert’s most gifted protégé – throws off his writer’s block to clear his mentor’s name. Solving the case and penning a new bestseller soon blur together. As his book begins to take on a life of its own, the nation is gripped by the mystery of “The Girl Who Touched the Heart of America”. But with Nola, in death as in life, nothing is ever as it seems.

This is one of my most-anticipated novels of the year. I’ll be reading it next-but-one (it’s always dependent on my mood, as long-time readers will know). Because before that, I’ll be reading (and have actually already started)…

*

HarrisC-MT1-MidnightCrossroadUKCharlaine Harris, Midnight Crossroad (Gollancz)

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There’s a pawnshop (where someone lives in the basement and runs the store during the night). There’s a diner (although those folk who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident: Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

If you stop at the one traffic light in town, then everything looks normal. But if you stay a while, you might learn the truth…

The start of a brand new urban fantasy series from mega-selling author of the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series. This will actually be my first read by Harris, and I will be starting it within a couple days.

*

HuffT-C4-ValoursTrialUKTanya Huff, Valour’s Trial (Titan)

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is a Confederation Marines marine. She’s survived more deadly encounters and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive than anyone in the Corps. Unexpectedly pulled from battle, Torin finds herself in an underground POW camp that shouldn’t exist, where her fellow marine prisoners seem to have lost all will to escape. Now, Torin must fight her way not only out of the prison but also past the growing compulsion to sit down and give up not realizing that her escape could mean the end of the war.

This is the fourth novel in Huff’s Confederation series – an ass-kicking military sci-fi series. It’s been available in the States for some time, but Titan have been releasing the series over the course of the past couple of years in the UK – and I’m very happy they did!

*

SecretService-KingsmanMark Millar, Secret Service: Kingsman (Titan Comics)

The world’s greatest secret agent is on the most exciting case of his career. But will the end of the world as we know it take a back seat to training his street-punk nephew to be the next James Bond?

Meanwhile, what’s the secret link between a series of kidnapped sci-fi stars, the murder of an entire town, and a dark secret from inside Mount Everest? Under Uncle Jack’s supervision, Gary’s spy skills and confidence blossom – but when the duo learn what’s behind the celebrity kidnappings, the knowledge comes at a price. The conspiracy begins to unravel, but who can be trusted when so many prominent figures seem to be involved?

I read the first issue of Secret Service when it first came out in the US. It was pretty good. I don’t really know why I didn’t keep reading it… Well, now I have the opportunity to get the whole story.

*

MeehanG-TrueFireGary Meehan, True Fire (Quercus)

Sixteen-year-old Megan is pregnant.

As she prepares to tell her family, the unthinkable happens. Her village is razed by soldiers: her grandfather murdered, her twin sister taken.

On a desperate mission to rescue her beloved Gwyneth, Megan discovers a terrifying truth – that the destruction of her old life is inextricably linked to her unborn child. The feared witch soldiers, vanquished a generation ago, have returned to see the fulfilment of a prophecy: one that will put Megan and her new friends – Eleanor, a fiery ex-aristocrat, and Damon, a wayward charmer – at the heart of the greatest war her world has ever known.

This could be interesting. Not sure how quickly I’ll get around to it, but I do hope to read this relatively soon.

*

MorleyI-AboveIsla Morley, Above (Two Roads)

I am a secret no one is able to tell.

Blythe Hallowell is sixteen when she is abducted by a survivalist and locked away in an aban­doned missile silo in Eudora, Kansas. At first, she focuses frantically on finding a way out, until the harrowing truth of her new existence settles in – the crushing loneliness, the terrifying madness of a captor who believes he is saving her from the end of the world, and the persistent temptation to give up. But nothing prepares Blythe for the burden of raising a child in confinement. Deter­mined to give the boy everything she has lost, she pushes aside the truth about a world he may never see for a myth that just might give mean­ing to their lives below ground. Years later, their lives are ambushed by an event at once promising and devastating. As Blythe’s dream of going home hangs in the balance, she faces the ultimate choice – between survival and freedom.

Never heard anything about this book or author, before it arrived in the mail. Guess I’ll just have to dive in, see what I find…

*

PratchettBaxter-TheLongWarTerry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, The Long War (Transworld)

A generation after the events of The Long Earth, mankind has spread across the new worlds opened up by Stepping. Where Joshua and Lobsang once pioneered, now fleets of airships link the stepwise Americas with trade and culture. Mankind is shaping the Long Earth – but in turn the Long Earth is shaping mankind… A new “America”, called Valhalla, is emerging more than a million steps from Datum Earth, with core American values restated in the plentiful environment of the Long Earth – and Valhalla is growing restless under the control of the Datum government…

Meanwhile the Long Earth is suffused by the song of the trolls, graceful hive-mind humanoids. But the trolls are beginning to react to humanity’s thoughtless exploitation… Joshua, now a married man, is summoned by Lobsang to deal with a gathering multiple crisis that threatens to plunge the Long Earth into a war unlike any mankind has waged before.

The second volume in Pratchett and Baxter’s shared science fiction series, The Long Earth. I haven’t read the first in the series, but I’m willing to give the series a try.

*

RachmanT-Rise&FallOfGreatPowersTom Rachman, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (Sceptre)

Tooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, but with few human beings. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. She prefers never to mention the strange events of her youth, which mystify and worry her still.

Taken from home as a girl, Tooly found herself spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors? Why did they take her? What did they really want? There was Humphrey, the curmudgeonly Russian with a passion for reading; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who sowed chaos in her wake; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader whose worldview transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he disappeared.

Years later, Tooly believes she will never understand the true story of her own life. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, raising old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers.

I’ve only read one of Rachman’s short stories, but I’m really looking forward to giving this a try.

*

ShannonS-BoneSeasonSamantha Shannon, The Bone Season (Bloomsbury)

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city – Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly – as soldiers in their army.

Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

I’m hoping to read this pretty soon – I’ve been dragging my feet. I’ve heard mixed things, but I’m going to go in with an open mind.

*

ShepherdJ-CK2-OperationShieldUSJoel Shepherd, Shield (Pyr)

Part military SF, part cyberpunk, part grand-scale space opera, and part techno-psychological thriller, the Cassandra Kresnov novels transcend the recently narrow segmentation of the science fiction genre.

In 23 Years on Fire, Cassandra discovered that the technology that created her has been misused in her former home and now threatens all humanity with catastrophe. Returning home to Callay, she finds that Federation member worlds, exhausted by the previous thirty-year-war against the League, are unwilling to risk the confrontation that a solution may require. Some of these forces will go to any lengths to avoid a new conflict, including taking a sledgehammer to the Federation Constitution and threatening the removal by force of Cassandra’s own branch of the Federal Security Agency.

More frighteningly for Sandy, she has brought back to Callay three young children, whom she met on the mean streets of Droze, discovering maternal feelings she had not known she possessed. Can she reconcile her duty as a soldier, including what she must do as a tactician, with the dangers that those decisions will place upon her family-the one thing that has come to mean more to her than any cause she now believes in?

I’ve been aware of Joel Shepherd for a little while, having seen his name and novels mentioned in Pyr’s catalogues and on their website for a while. And yet, for some reason I’ve never picked one up. They seem to be in the same sub-genre of science fiction as Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity series (also published by Pyr in the US, and Gollancz in the UK). This is the second in the series, so I’m not sure how long it will take me to catch up and read the first one before moving on to this. It does sound cool, though…

*

SmytheJ-NoHarmCanComeToAGoodManJames Smythe, No Harm Can Come to a Good Man (Borough Press)

How far would you go to save your family from an invisible threat?

ClearVista is used by everyone and can predict anything. It’s a daily lifesaver, predicting weather to traffic to who you should befriend.

Laurence Walker wants to be the next President of the United States. ClearVista will predict his chances. It will predict whether he’s the right man for the job. It will predict that his son can only survive for 102 seconds underwater. It will predict that Laurence’s life is about to collapse in the most unimaginable way.

This has a really intriguing premise. I’ve dipped in already, and am not sure what I think. I’ll come back to it when I’m more in the mood for something along these lines. Hopefully won’t be too long.

*

TallisFR-VoicesF.R. Tallis, The Voices (Pan Macmillan)

In the scorching summer of 1976 the hottest since records began Christopher Norton, his wife Laura and their young daughter Faye settle into their new home in north London. The faded glory of the Victorian house is the perfect place for Norton, a composer of film soundtracks, to build a recording studio of his own. But soon in the long, oppressively hot nights, Laura begins to hear something through the crackle of the baby monitor. First, a knocking sound. Then come the voices. For Norton, the voices mark an exciting opportunity. Putting his work to one side, he begins the project of a lifetime a grand symphony incorporating the voices and becomes increasingly obsessed with one voice in particular. Someone who is determined to make themselves heard…

I’ve never read anything by Tallis. Not sure when (or if) I’ll be able to get around to this one, but it does sound interesting.

*

Wingrove-1-TheEmpireOfTimeDavid Wingrove, The Empire of Time (Del Rey UK)

There is only the war.

Otto Behr is a German agent, fighting his Russian counterparts across three millennia, manipulating history for moments in time that can change everything.

Only the remnants of two great nations stand and for Otto, the war is life itself, the last hope for his people.

But in a world where realities shift and memory is never constant, nothing is certain, least of all the chance of a future with his Russian love…

Wingrove is the author of the multi-volume Chung Kuo series. I have the first book in that series, but for some reason I just never got around to reading it. This novel has a really intriguing premies, though, so I may get to this far sooner than the author’s previous series.

*

Which of these has caught your eye? Any other books you’ve received recently that you’re excited to get started on?

Interview with ALISON LITTLEWOOD

Civilian Reader Interview , , , , , , , ,

LittlewoodA-AuthorPicLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Alison Littlewood?

Ah, the hardest question of all… I’m a probably slightly odd person who writes probably slightly odd books! I’ve been writing dark fantasy and horror for several years now, and was lucky enough a while back to get a three-book deal from Jo Fletcher Books at Quercus. A Cold Season was picked for the Richard and Judy book club, and it went from there.

Your next novel, The Unquiet House, is due to be published by Jo Fletcher Books in April 2014. How would you introduce the novel to a new reader?

It’s a ghost story set in a rather dour Yorkshire house, following the fates of different generations of the same family. There are sections set in the present day as well as the seventies and the thirties, which each shed light on each other. It’s probably the oddest of my odd books, and in a way it’s perhaps best to read it knowing nothing at all, so I will leave it at that…!

LittlewoodA-UnquietHouseUK

What inspired you to write the novel, and where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

The first thing that made me want to write a haunted house story was seeing the house! The one in the story is based on an actual place, one that looked rather forbidding, but which I fell in love with a little bit too. I find that locations can be incredibly inspirational – some places just seem to sing to me. This house sang very, very loudly, though it wasn’t long before parts of other places I’d seen found their way into the book too: a bench with a strange carving on the back, a cupboard with nothing but an old suit hanging inside… they came together and started to have an impact on the plot. Researching the different historical periods was inspiring too, bringing new influences to bear.

Excerpt: The Unquiet House

How were you introduced to reading and genre fiction? What about horror in particular attracts you – in terms of reading and writing?

When I was younger I read anything and everything I could lay my hands on. It was only after I started writing that I began to focus more on genre fiction. My first exposure to writing horror came with a BBC writing competition, and once I’d tried it, I just found that darker ideas, those around the mysteries in life and death and somewhere in between, were the ones that got my fingers tingling. I find it an exciting genre; it looks at the big questions, the ones we’ll never be able to quite explain, and yet it seems that continuing to ask them is an integral part of being human.

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry?

I can’t really imagine doing anything else! I got made redundant from my regular job in the same week as I got a publishing contract, so it all came together at just the right time. It’s great to be able to concentrate on what I love. Of course, it feels a little different writing a novel when you know someone’s waiting for it at the end of the line, but then I’ve always been fairly disciplined about getting the words down. The main difference is that I know I can’t just write a novel and stick it away in a dusty file any more – someone’s actually going to read it! That’s rewarding but kind of scary at the same time.

LittlewoodA-ColdSeason&PathOfNeedles

Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

Not really – I always start the day with a long walk, mainly because I have a big and energetic dog who would scratch the walls down if I didn’t, but now it feels natural to blow away the cobwebs before I sit down to work. I used to have a nice ergonomic desk and chair, but these days I tend to be on the sofa with my laptop and the dog curled up next to me trying to rest his head on my keyboard.

When did you realize you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

I think deep down it’s something I’ve always wanted, mainly because I fell in love with books when I was a child, but I didn’t try it for a long time because I’d built it up to be something that other people did. I eventually forced myself to join a local writing course, just to get started, and I remember being so nervous I could hardly get the top off my pen! After that, though, I had the bug; I knew I wouldn’t stop.

What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

I think the horror genre is bigger and wider and more imaginative than people believe. Many people unfortunately have their perception shaped by horror films of the slasher variety. Horror novels do look at fear and death, but they tend to do it in much more depth and with greater sensitivity. In many ways, they’re really about love: how do we deal with losing the people and things we care about? It’s a part of life, and the novels we often define as horror are a response to that. When I started out, I felt I was on the fringe of horror, because my books are more about psychological chills than blood and guts, but now I better understand the breadth of work going on in the genre, I’m happy to call myself a part of it.

What other projects are you working on, and what do you have currently in the pipeline?

I’m working on the first draft of my next novel – a return to some dark territory, in line with the soul-snatching theme of A Cold Season. I’m also busy editing a script, along with a writer friend and a film-maker, for a potential short to be filmed this year. I’m also working on some short stories on the theme of feathers – I always find it surprising how often birds crop up in my work – for a slightly different project, a combination of mini short story collection and art book, in collaboration with an illustrator friend.

What are you reading at the moment (fiction, non-fiction)?

I’m reading The Uninvited by Liz Jensen – it’s intriguing, with a wonderful main character and a sense of the world being out of joint, with the folkloric meeting quantum physics and the modern world. I’m completely hooked. I don’t always have non-fiction on the go but I’m also reading Gossip from the Forest by Sarah Maitland, all about the tangled roots of forests and fairy tales. I find fairy tales and folklore completely fascinating. There’s something about that little possibility of magic in the world that is a part of the horror genre too.

LittlewoodA-Reading

What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

I really don’t know! What people usually find surprising about me is that I’m a writer, and more so that I write horror fiction. There’s that ‘oh, but you seem nice’ reaction, as if horror writers are all like the monster in the closet rather than the kid hiding under the bed. It’s that slasher movie perception rearing its ugly head again!

What are you most looking forward to in the next twelve months?

Hopefully moving house, mainly because I’ll be getting a bigger library. I have the shelves all planned out; the rest of the move, not so much. One track mind, me…?

Guest Post: “Influences & Inspirations” by Stephanie Saulter

Civilian Reader Guest Post , , , , , ,

SaulterS-AuthorPicI had, by any definition, an unusual childhood – I grew up in what was then a fairly remote corner of rural Jamaica, beautiful but quite isolated, in a resolutely free-thinking, non-conformist family. I have seven siblings so I wasn’t exactly lonely; but being the eldest, a voracious reader and not particularly gregarious, I never really felt I fitted in to the neighbourhood. Books were my escape hatch, my window into different times and places and worlds. They were how I worked out who I was, what I was interested in, what lay beyond the horizon.

The power of story to capture your imagination and alter your thinking and take you somewhere else had a profound effect on who I grew up to be, long before I became a writer of stories myself. And because so many stories celebrate the outsider, the loner, the person who is always second to the right of everyone else, I think they helped to reassure me that being a bit odd and a bit different was okay. You can be the hero of your own life, and it doesn’t have to be like anyone else’s life. I learned that early, and I learned it from books. Continue reading →

EVERNESS by Ian McDonald (Jo Fletcher/Pyr/Audible)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , , ,

McDonald-Everness1to3UK

A mixed-media reading experiment…

There is not one you. There are many yous. There is not one world. There are many worlds. Ours is one among billions of parallel earths.

When Everett Singh’s scientist father is kidnapped from the streets of London, he leaves young Everett a mysterious app on his computer. Suddenly, this teenager has become the owner of the most valuable object in the multiverse — the Infundibulum — the map of all the parallel earths, and there are dark forces in the Ten Known Worlds who will stop at nothing to get it. They’ve got power, authority, the might of ten planets — some of them more technologically advanced than our Earth — at their fingertips. He’s got wits, intelligence, and a knack for Indian cooking.

To keep the Infundibulum safe, Everett must trick his way through the Heisenberg Gate that his dad helped build and go on the run in a parallel Earth. But to rescue his dad from Charlotte Villiers and the sinister Order, this Planesrunner’s going to need friends. Friends like Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adopted daughter, Sen, and the crew of the airship Everness.

Can they rescue Everett’s father and get the Infundibulum to safety? The game is afoot!

Ian McDonald’s science fiction YA series – comprised of Planesrunner, Be My Enemy and Empress of the Sun – has been widely praised across the SFF community and all over the press. Despite that, it has taken me a long time to get around to giving it a try. Needless to say, it’s a lot of fun, and deserves all of the glowing reviews it has received. A must-read sci-fi series.

McDonald-Everness1to3US

Everness US Covers

I am not much of an audiobook listener. Aside from a handful of Black Library audiodramas (usually clocking in at around an hour in length), I haven’t listened to many audiobooks since I was a kid – on our frequent, long drives between Germany and Austria, or Germany and the UK, we used to listen to The Lord of the Rings and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. However, I have received both printed and audio review copies of Ian McDonald’s critically-acclaimed Everness series. So, I decided to conduct an experiment, alternating between the print and audio depending on where I was – so, at the gym, on commutes, and walking into town, I would listen to the audiobooks; when I was at home, or in a café, I would read the books. This helped me get through them much quicker than I ordinarily would have (see below for more on this). This review will, therefore, be more of a comparison between the two mediums, rather than a book review proper.

Before I compare the audio- and print-book, however, I do just want to say that this series is really good. It’s action-packed, fun, well-composed and very well-written. Everett is a great protagonist, and I loved following his story. The book is filled with great observations, characters, and above all a great story. McDonald packs just as much science as action into his story, and, while there were a couple of moments when the explanations went on just a tad longer than the pacing supported, the author never talks down to his readers. It was great, fascinating stuff. Not only that, McDonald maintains the quality throughout, too – true, the first one has that New Series Fresh Feel, when everything is a new discovery. But, given the multi-dimensional storyline, each of these novels offers plenty of new discoveries and developments to experience and shape the characters (all of whom are developed well).

McDonald-Everness1to3AUD

Everness Audiobook Covers

So. The audiobooks. Narrated by Tom Lawrence, they are actually excellent. The production is clear and very good. Lawrence’s delivery was very good, and his voice – a mixture of Richard Hammond and Rupert Grint, I thought – conveys the story very well. I think there were only a couple of moments that didn’t work for me (some of his accents weren’t great, but this was easily forgivable). Lawrence didn’t emphasise or ham-up the witty asides, which made them all the better.

The thing that made the audiobooks less satisfying than the novels is something that is entirely my issue, rather than the quality of the audio versions: the pacing. I am someone who frequently devours novels, blitzing through those I enjoy as I become hooked and Must Find Out What Happens. With an audiobook, you’re stuck at the narrator’s speed, regardless of how much you enjoy it. This is probably obvious, but given my preference for reading quickly, my switching between print and audio did mean I got through the novels much quicker than the recorded length of the Audible editions. I also find it easier to keep track of what I’m reading, rather than listening to (unless it’s from repeat listens).

Overall, then, the Everness series is a must read (or listen), and both the print and Audible editions are fantastic. If, like me, you read very quickly, then I’d recommend the print editions. But, if you’ve recently over-dosed on reading (as I had, when I started listening to these), or want a change, then these Lawrence-narrated audiobooks are great, too.

Very highly recommended series.

***

The Everness series is published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books, in the US by Pyr Books, and also by Audible. Be sure to check out Ian’s website and follow him on Twitter for more on his writing and novels.

Excerpt: “The Unquiet House” by Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)

Civilian Reader Excerpt , , , , , , ,

Alison Littlewood’s latest novel, THE UNQUIET HOUSE, is due to be published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books on April 24, 2014. Here, for your reading pleasure, is an excerpt…

LittlewoodA-UnquietHouseUKChapter Seven

Emma didn’t know when the house had changed. She had been sleeping, but when she awoke she had a sense that she had been listening to it all along, or if not listening, sensing it with her body, finding its rhythm, attuning herself to its ways.

She pushed the covers away, feeling too hot under them, but outside, the air was bitter. There was a sharp barrier between the two and once she’d crossed it, it was too late; the chill delved inside, embracing her skin, furrowing along her body, finding her spine, her legs, her feet. The room was dark, everything grainy and silver. The ceiling looked a long way off and the corners were dark, as if a child had sketched the room in stark black lines. She sat up and realised that the cupboard door was hanging open once more. How ridiculous, she thought. Monsters in the cupboard, like in a story. And then she saw the man standing quietly next to it.

He was half-dressed. He had hunched shoulders and a stocky body and slightly bowed legs, and she opened her mouth but the only sound she could make was a dry gasp. He didn’t move but she knew that he was watching her. She couldn’t see his eyes but she could just make out his rumpled vest and then she knew: the suit was his – he had come looking for it but he wouldn’t find it because she had thrown it away. Now he’d come to see where it was and instead, he had found her.

Her hands flexed. She could feel the tainted material on her skin, that shiny-musty fabric. She could see again the way she’d thrown it down in disgust, just as if it wasn’t wanted, wasn’t needed any longer.

You’re being fanciful, Emma.

She took a deep breath. She was in a strange house and there was nothing there, only an unfamiliar room full of shadows. But he was there. He didn’t move but continued to stand there, and she could feel his gaze on her, though she still couldn’t see his eyes. She could sense the hostility in his look. She became conscious of the cold on her own face, a bone-deep cold. She was alone, and for a moment that was the worst thing of all. She didn’t know why she had come here, but then she remembered Charlie, sleeping at the other end of the house. He would banish this thing. He’d grin at her and laugh, his very presence denying the possibility of its existence.

Panic took her and she pushed herself to her feet and ran, hoping – hoping – that the man wouldn’t stretch out his arm and grasp her shoulder as she passed. Then she was in the corridor and heading for Charlie’s room. The worn carpet was no protection from the hard boards beneath and her steps rang out loudly. She banged on the door, and the moment she did, she felt ridiculous. If she was so scared, why didn’t she just go in? There were no locks on the doors, nothing to stop her. And if she wasn’t, why was she at his door?

He opened it, his face full of concern. She reached for his arm and started to cry. She wanted to be held and yet a part of her didn’t want to touch him, this stranger in a strange house – in her house. Then he opened the door wider and put a hand on her arm and brought her out of the corridor, drawing her inside.

Charlie didn’t switch on the light but a slanting glow lit the room anyway and she realised his room didn’t have any curtains. There was nothing to shut out the moon which shone down, silvering the ancient carpet and the mound of his makeshift bed. She hugged herself. What must he think of her?

But he didn’t touch her. He took a step back and waited. She no longer knew what she was going to say. She was no longer sure she’d seen anything at all.

‘What is it?’ he asked at last. ‘A bad dream?’

‘No. I woke up. I thought – I thought I saw someone in my room.’

He turned towards the door. ‘There’s someone in the house? Now? All right, I’ll go and check. Have you heard him moving about – do you think he’s still in your room? Should we call someone?’

Instinctively she grabbed his arm. She felt cool skin, the roughness of his hair, and she realised he was wearing only T-shirt and shorts. He must be freezing. ‘No, don’t – I don’t think— that wasn’t it, Charlie. No one’s broken in. At least, I don’t think they have. I— it’s hard to explain, but it didn’t feel like that.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean? Did you dream it, Emma, or should I go looking?’

She paused. ‘No, I didn’t dream it.’ Her voice faltered. ‘He was real. I saw someone. I felt him looking back at me. I had to go straight past him to get out of the room. I was scared he’d touch me when I went past.’

‘And did he? Did he try to grab you?’

She shook her head. It hadn’t been like that, not someone who could grab and hold on. But someone trying to touch her would have been bad enough. She just wasn’t sure if she’d have felt it as a physical thing, a real thing. Now she didn’t know which would be worse, her feeling it or not feeling it. She reached out for him again. This time it felt more intimate, chosen rather than a reflex. She closed her fingers over his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a dream – or I don’t think it was – but it wasn’t real either. I knew he wasn’t real even while he was looking straight at me. Don’t ask me how I knew that. I just knew. He wasn’t there, not like we are, but he was still real.’

He looked at her and she replayed her words in her head, realising how stupid it sounded.

But Charlie didn’t tell her she was being fanciful. He didn’t tell her there was nothing there and he didn’t try to reason with her or name her fear. He simply twisted around so that he was standing at her side and he put his arm around her. After a while he squeezed her shoulders and he said, ‘I’ll go and take a look.’

She couldn’t see his expression as he walked out of the room. His footsteps receded, steady and sure, and there came the faint creak of a door opening and then silence. Emma listened to the sound of her own breathing. She tried to remember if she’d heard him breathing, the man in her room; she didn’t think so. She wasn’t sure what it would mean if she had. She still didn’t think he had been a real person.

After a time she heard footsteps again but they didn’t come back to this room. Instead they faded into another, and then came louder on the landing and then rhythmic on the stairs. After a time the same rhythm sounded, getting louder this time, and before the thought had fully formed in her mind that it might not be Charlie, it might be him, the door swung wide and she saw the outline of Charlie’s hair. He walked in and smiled reassuringly. ‘There’s no one there,’ he said. ‘I had a good look around – I even looked under the bed and in the cupboard, and in the other rooms and downstairs. Unless someone kept slipping into a different room while my back was turned, we’re on our own.’

She took a deep breath. ‘No, I— I didn’t think there would be. Sorry, Charlie.’

He frowned as the words sank in, and he tensed. Now he would say it: There’s nothing there, Emma. You’re just being fanciful. She could already hear the note of contempt that would be in his voice when he said it.

But he didn’t say that. Instead, she heard a low chuckle. ‘Well, you know what this means.’

I’m crazy, she thought. That’s what it means.

‘This house is even more interesting than you thought. It looks as if you’ve got a real live ghost.’

She turned the word over in her mind. Ghost. Had she really thought of it that way? She had only known that the person

in her room had come from somewhere else, that it belonged somewhere else. She hadn’t thought of it as a ghost – she hadn’t thought to name it – but now she couldn’t get the word out of her mind. It didn’t fit with the way she thought of herself. She wasn’t the sort of person who saw ghosts, or even believed in them. She pushed the idea away, something to think about later, and she forced herself to nod at Charlie. She really didn’t want to go back to her room, not now, but she couldn’t stay here.

‘Thank you, Charlie,’ she started. She found she wanted to say something else, to explain the whole thing away perhaps, but tiredness had overtaken her. She didn’t want to think about it, not now. Later maybe, when she couldn’t sleep or when she was alone. Charlie showed her out and she stood in the hallway, looking at the door to her room.

*

She knew her room was empty even before she flicked on the light and it flooded across the dingy floor and into the dusty corners. The cupboard door was open, though she couldn’t see inside. The sense of presence which had been so strong when she’d awakened was gone.

She went to the door, reaching out to push it closed once more, and froze. The suit was back again. It was hanging on its yellowing padded hanger, not pulled awry but straight and neat, the trousers sharply creased around the white shine of the bulked-out knees, the jacket hanging squarely over the top. At once she thought of grabbing the thing and taking it downstairs and throwing it out of the door, but she stopped herself even before the movement began. She didn’t want to feel that fabric on her fingers. Would the owner of the thing still be looking for it? Perhaps she’d feel his hand on her shoulder after all.

But maybe he’d already found it – she had thrown it out, hadn’t she? She’d put it in the bin outside or left it in the drawing room, she wasn’t sure which. It hadn’t been something she’d wanted in the house. He must have come looking for it, and he’d found it and placed it in here. If she was to move it again, she might make everything worse. It might even call him back.

Then a thought struck her and she flushed with heat. Charlie had come in here, hadn’t he? He’d been checking the place, being helpful. And he knew about the suit. More Savile Row, the old man.

He’d been downstairs too, while she hid in his room. Had he found the suit down there and brought it back up with him? The whole thing might have been some kind of joke. Heat spread through her. She’d thought he was helping, that he was being kind, and all the time he’d just been pulling some kind of trick. She frowned. Had she really seen a stranger in her room or had that been only another kind of trick? The kind that meant standing and watching her, in the dark – watching her sleep, maybe?

She shook her head. The suit was still there, in front of her eyes. Tomorrow she would take it outside and banish it forever; it would be gone and so would Charlie and she would get on with all the things she’d planned to do. For now, though, she had no intention of touching it. Let it stay there. She backed away and closed the door, making sure it snicked into place. It wouldn’t open on her again; she didn’t even have to think about it until morning.

She turned, still not liking to have her back to that door, just as if she were a child again, afraid of the monster in the wardrobe, and she got back into bed. The sheets had grown cold and she pulled them up to her shoulders, watching the door as she nestled her head into her pillow. Charlie had comforted her. He had been kind to her, had gone to see what was wrong, looking around the house in the dark and the cold. It couldn’t have been him. She had seen a ghost, for God’s sake. If she accepted that, it wasn’t too much of a step to suppose it could have found its suit and put it back. And that was enough to worry about, without inventing trickery of another kind: without souring the kindness of the one person in her life who appeared to be intent on helping her.

***

Guest Post: “Tower of Babel” by Aidan Harte

Civilian Reader Guest Post , , , , , , , , , ,

AidanHarte-AuthorPicMasons, like writers, learn the hard way to choose their foundation carefully. The strength of that first stone defines the structure, sets the tone. Accordingly, Chapter One of Spira Mirabilis begins with blasphemy. The Last Apprentice of Concord whips up a Children’s Crusade and instead of sending them to fight the approaching coalition led by Contessa Scaligeri, he sets them to construct a new cathedral. This is a recreation of the Tower of Babel, that structure torn down by an outraged God who then “confounded the language of all the Earth,” for good measure.

Finishing The Wave Trilogy, I found myself toiling in Babel’s shadow. This influence can be partly ascribed to the setting – cathedral building was medieval society’s engine, the focus of mathematics, engineering, art and devotion – but what troubled me was what Nimrod’s Tower says about creation. It condemns all creation as a blasphemous encroachment. What more damning indictment of the hubris of storytelling than a tower reaching to heaven, swatted aside by the greatest creator of all? The Middle East’s attitude to idolaters has always swayed between hostility and ambivalence. No accident then that Scheherazade, like Babel, springs from the fertile soil between the Euphrates and the Tigres. The lovely slave girl forever spinning yarns to keep her head from tumbling is, I like to think, the patron saint of storytelling. Her story reveals the secret of all stories: once you get in the habit of it, it’s easier to keep going than to stop.

HarteA-WaveTrilogy2014

There’s always a new twist, a cliff-hanger to escape, a long lost uncle to appear, a reconciliation or – better yet – a quarrel to be had. The deeper one is immersed, the more improbabilities one will accept. Watch the end of any Hitchcock film; it will seem overwrought, even silly, but only because you haven’t earned the heightened emotions the last act demands. Plenty of wonderful stories, like political careers, simply capsize before the finish line. The final season of The Wire is a catastrophe, but it seems churlish to say so. Instead we echo the builders of Babel: ‘Shame how it ended, but wasn’t she splendid?’

It’s a bittersweet thing to leave a place you’ve lived in for years but I’m finally saying addio to Etruria. No matter how much we rehearse farewells, they are almost always anticlimactic. Only a committed Austinian can recall the last lines of Pride and Prejudice:

“With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”

I know – yawnsville, right? Dear Jane is simply putting the chairs away and turning out the lights, but we’ve enjoyed the evening’s entertainment so much that we can’t complain if it ends in diminuendo. First impressions matter. Endings? Not so much. That last Parthian shot won’t mar a wonderful story or salvage a dull one. The battle’s won or lost long before then. Famous farewells, then, are necessarily a rare species. There’s Gatsby with his green light and boat going nowhere and Sydney Carton doing that far, far better thing. My favourite comes from Tracy Chevalier’s The Girl with the Pearl Earring. ‘A maid comes free’ is the final bittersweet flourish which makes this poignant tale linger.

Parting pickings are slim because it is a truth universally concealed that most writers are too preoccupied leaving the stage with dignity to craft something beautiful. But endings should be fashioned as carefully as the keystone that completes the arch, and not afterthoughts. Readers are well used to preposterous final acts when the air suddenly escapes. The sound of that rushing air is usually a Calvary horn. When it toots, it’s time to get your coat. The technical term is Deus Ex Machina, or God from the Machine. The phrase, as every eager Lit Grad know, originates in Greek theater when Zeus or one of his progeny would drop down and resolve things with a thunderbolt.

In Spira Mirabilis I throw a spanner in the divine machinery, asking what if God wants to help, but is powerless. I posit that God was not merely offended by Nimrod’s Tower, He was threatened. The Apprentice’s Tower is a knife to sever earth and heaven, and Contessa Scaligeri is the only one who can stop him. High stakes then. Does it come off, or does it come crashing down, leaving me with the poor hod-carriers at Babel, unpaid and gibbering nonsense?

Let’s see when the dust settles.

***

Aidan Harte is the author of The Wave Trilogy – Irenicon, The Warring States and Spira Mirabilis – published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books. Spira Mirabilis will be published on March 27th (eBook) and April 3rd (hardcover).

Also on CR: Interview with Aidan Harte, Guest Post (Yesterday That Never Was), Excerpt of Irenicon

Review: TRAITOR’S BLADE by Sebastien de Castell (Jo Fletcher Books)

Civilian Reader Review , , , , , , , , , ,

deCastellS-GC1-TraitorsBladeAn all-round brilliant fantasy debut, and one of the best I’ve read in a decade.

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike.

Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters.

All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…

Every so often, a debut novel comes along that knocks your expectations out of the park. Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamorra is one of those novels. Peter V. Brett’s The Painted Man is another. Sebastien de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade needs to be added to that list. I loved this. Continue reading →

An Interview with SEBASTIEN DE CASTELL

Civilian Reader Interview , , , , , , , , , ,

deCastell-AuthorPicBack in November, I stumbled across some information about Sebastien de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade on Jo Fletcher Books’ website. Naturally, I was very intrigued. Then, in January, an ARC of the book appeared, and I dove right in. To put it bluntly, I loved it: a perfect blend of action, intrigue, humour, and all-round great storytelling. This novel is going to cause a splash, as well it damn well should. Read on for an interview with de Castell…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Sebastien de Castell?

I guess you could say that I’m a professional wanderer. I love to take on challenges in new fields and learn everything I can. These days I write fantasy and mystery novels but in the past I’ve been a full-time musician, an interaction designer, teacher, project manager, fight choreographer, actor, and, well, lots of other things. (At least one of which I’m keeping secret until my deathbed!)

Your debut novel, Traitor’s Blade, is due to be published in March by Jo Fletcher Books. How would you introduce the novel to a new reader?

The Three Musketeers meets A Game of Thrones. It’s a swashbuckling mystery set in a country that is being torn apart by corruption and intrigue. Continue reading →

Join the Greatcoats! (Competition #1)

Civilian Reader Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Greatcoats-Seal

Due to popular demand, the eBook of Sebastien de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade has been bought forward by his published Jo Fletcher Books to February 10th! The printed edition will be published at the beginning of March. To celebrate, JFB are offering up to 100 eReview copies of the novel via NetGalley!

To enter this competition is really simple. All you have to do is tweet @JoFletcherBooks your Greatcoat name, which is worked out thus:

1. Write down the name of your first school.

2. Writing down the MAIDEN name of your Grandmother on your Mother’s side.

3. Combining the two. Simples.

The winners of this completion will be announced on the 6th of February, and will receive eReview copies via Net Galley.

In case you’re interested, my Greatcoat name is “Kensington Gollarsch” – a debonair, rakish and mischievous swordsman…

deCastellS-GC1-TraitorsBladeI’ve already read the novel, and I thought it was excellent – a real swashbuckling blast of a read, blending the tone and fun of Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers with a more modern fantasy sensibility added to the mix. Great characters, great pacing and prose. Traitor’s Blade deserves to be a hit, and I can’t wait to read the second book in the series. Here’s the synopsis:

Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike.

Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters.

All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…