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Over at Tor.com, Mordicai Knode has captured a lot of my own thoughts on First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Here he is on Gary Gygax’s original Monster Manual:

Even if you don’t play the game, you can still flip through it and think chimeras and hook horrors and mindflayers are awesome. Which follows through; even if you aren’t going to use any given monster, you can still find them interesting, and who knows, maybe flipping through you’ll find something that inspires you. I’ve built entire adventures, campaign tent poles, around a monster that tickled my fancy… I was very impressed with how closely the 1e Monster Manual adhered to my monster design philosophy: make every monster a mini-game.

Yes — exactly that. Even today, virtually every new adventure I design begins with flipping through MM (or MM II) until I see something that inspires me. These are books I’ve used more or less continuously for three decades. That’s my definition of a classic.

Here’s Mordicai on the Dungeon Masters Guide:

The items, frankly, are neat as all get out. There is a good reason that all of the items here have been re-imagined in every subsequent edition — they are fantastic… The section on artifacts is…a mixed bag. First off, the Hand of Vecna! We all agree that the Hand and Eye of Vecna are the best artifacts, right?… While the backstories are wonderful, and I appreciate the impulse to leave artifacts open for DMs to tweak…a blank list of powers is just not helpful. Which is what you get, literal blank lines printed in the book. Come on, at least give a default suggestion!

What he said. Read the complete review here.

Black Gate

I encountered The Watchers for the first time during my last trip to Barnes & Noble. There I was with an arm full of paperbacks, making my way to the register, when I spotted it on a display in the middle of an aisle.

The cover looked intriguing, in a spooky, gas-lit London sort of way. But was it fantasy? I don’t want to get stuck with another Da Vinci Code clone.

The Booklist quote on the cover called it “A seductive cosmic thriller.” What the heck did that mean? Cosmic, like Elder Gods cosmic? Thanos versus The Avengers cosmic? Or 700-pages-that-feel-like-they’ll-never end cosmic?

The back cover text wasn’t much help:

Every hour, childlike Marc Rochat circles the Lausanne cathedral as the watchmen have done for centuries. Then one day a beautiful woman draws him out of the shadows — the angel his mother once promised him would come.

But Katherine Taylor is no angel. She’s one of the toughest and most resourceful call girls in Lausanne. Until something unnatural seething beneath a new client’s request sends her fleeing to the sanctuary of an unlikely protector.

Into their refuge comes Jay Harper. The private detective has awakened in Lausanne with no memory of how he got there — and only one thing driving him forward: a series of unsettling murders he feels compelled to solve.

That doesn’t even tell me what era it is. Present day? 1880s? Were there private eyes in 1880s London? Look, is this a fantasy or not? All these books I’m holding are getting heavy.

Fortunately, you can flip through the review quotes on the first few pages while holding a book one-handed. Here’s what I glimpsed:

“An imaginatively metaphysical thriller… [cast] with fey characters and skillfully concealing until the climax whether apparent weird events haven’t been manipulated to make them seem so. This solidly plotted tale… will appeal to readers who like a hint of uncanny in their fiction.”
— Publishers Weekly

Wait, fey characters? Like, fairy fey? Or fay as in “crazy and wild-acting?” You’re not helping, Publishers Weekly.

A quick author check told me nothing. Jon Steele? Never heard of him. And that has to be a pseudonym, right? I know I’m right. Jon Steele. Come on.

Most of the other quotes I scanned were no more specific on the question of whether this was a supernatural mystery, or just an attempt to do The Bourne Ultimatum on the Thames.

“[An] atmospheric, witty, bloody, and swashbuckling tale of age-old struggles for dominion between angels and demons.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“Swashbuckling” — that’s promising. Plus, angels and demons. Could be fantasy.

“So phenomenally deep and complex. Jon Steele has written a modern thriller masterpiece, pulling from medieval Gothic myths and religious mysticism in a very unexpected way.”
—Pop Corn Reads

Pop Corn Reads? Seriously? We’re jumping straight from Publishers Weekly and Booklist to blog reviews now? That ain’t a good sign. Didn’t any newspapers review this thing?

“Faith, love, lust, murder, innocence, dangerous demons, fallen angels… meld together in to one glorious, spellbinding, addicting story.”
— Luxury Reading

Luxury Reading. Sounds like another blog. Still, we’re back to demons and fallen angels again. I’m definitely getting a fantasy vibe here.

“There’s plenty of diabolical fun to be had here.” — Kirkus Reviews

Useless.

“A carefully constructed puzzle… [an] intriguing story of fallen angels and haunting visions.” — Warpcore SF

Back to blogs again. At least this one has SF in the title. And more references to fallen angels. I don’t know if I’m up for a fantasy about angels. I adjusted my pile of books and made one last attempt.

“A wholly original thriller that seamlessly melds suspense, history, fantasy, and mysticism. Steele deftly blends elements of many literary genres into this inventive work of fiction. A tour de force — and the first in a projected trilogy.”
— BookTrib

There you go. First in a projected trilogy? That’s practically the modern definition of fantasy. I added The Watchers to my teetering stack, and made my way to the cash register.

The Watchers was published by Signet on April 2. It is 768 pages in paperback, priced at .99. The digital edition is the same price. It is the first volume of The Angelus Trilogy; the second, Angel City, is scheduled to be released June 4.

Read all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Black Gate

Official Author Website

Order the book HERE (Amazon US) and HERE (Amazon UK)

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Rob J. Hayes was born and brought up in Basingstoke, UK. As a child he was fascinated with Lego, Star Wars and Transformers that fueled his imagination and he spent quite a bit of his growing up years playing around with such. He began writing at the age of fourteen however soon discovered the fallacies of his work. After four years at University studying Zoology and three years working for a string of high street banks as a desk jockey/keyboard monkey Rob lived on a desert island in Fiji for three months. It was there he re-discovered his love of writing and, more specifically, of writing fantasy.

OFFICIAL BLURB: The Heresy Within is the first book in the debut trilogy, The Ties that Bind by Rob J. Hayes. Thanquil Darkheart is an Arbiter of the Inquisition, a witch hunter tasked with hunting down and purging heretics. Thanquil Darkheart is also something else, expendable. When the God-Emperor of Sarth tells Thanquil there is a traitor operating among the highest echelon of the Inquisition he knows he has no choice but to sail to the city of Chade and follow the Emperor’s single lead.

The Black Thorn is a murderer, a thug, a thief and worse but he’s best known for the killing of six Arbiters. These days he travels with a crew of six of the most dangerous sell-swords in the wilds. After a job well done they find themselves on the run from the law once again but the boss has good news; a new job, the biggest any of them have ever pulled. First, however, they need to evade capture long enough to secure travel to the free city of Chade.

Jezzet Vel’urn is a Blademaster; a swords-woman of prodigious skill but she knows that for a woman like her in the wilds there are two ways out of most situations; fight or screw. Truth is, all too often for Jezzet’s likes, it comes down to a combination of the two. Jezzet is chased half-way across the wilds by a vengeful warlord until she makes it to the free city of Chade. Instead of sanctuary, however, all she finds are guards waiting to turn her over for some quick gold.

FORMAT/INFO: The Heresy Within is divided into four sections with sixty POV chapters. The narration is in third person via Thanquil Darkheart, Jezzet Vel’urn and Betrim Thorn aka The Black Thorn. This is the first book of the Ties That Bind trilogy.

April 14, 2013 marks the US e-book publication of The Heresy Within and was self-published by the author. Cover art is provided by Julio Real.

CLASSIFICATION: The Heresy Within is a dark fantasy debut with terrific characterization and a twisted plotline that is very reminiscent of the works by Joe Abercrombie, David Dalglish and Scott Lynch.

ANALYSIS: This is another indie debut that came out of nowhere and was brought to my attention thanks to Amazon’s fabulous algorithm for suggesting titles. I had no clue about this book but the blurb that suggested a dark story and the excerpt that I read had me ordering the book as soon as I finished it. The book safe to say was far from a disappointment.

The story begins with Arbiter Thanquil Darkheart who is a member of the Inquisition that seeks to root out demons and those who practice the dark arts in the lands in and around the holy city of Sarth. They are an organization who based on the teachings of Volmar, have dedicated their lives trying to burn heretics and forever stamp out the dark arts. Such dedication has given them the street title of “witch hunters” and it’s one that is actively discouraged as well. Thanquil is however not a typical one and is just returning from distant mission before he gets shanghaied into an even more dangerous one. 

Jezzet Vel’urn is a blademaster, she’s also a person who thinks more of day-to-day survival than anything else. Her troubles stem from a past friendship gone sour and before long she has to decide whether she will “fight or fuck her way” out of the shit headed her way. Lastly there’s Betrim the Black Thorn, mercenary, rogue and all round deadly murderer. His name echoes throughout the wilds as a name to be feared. Having lost a few digits on his hands and feet have made the Black Thorn extremely cautious in trusting folk even those among his crew but come long he will have to decide whether he wants to remembered as just a vile mercenary or something more.

That’s the basic gist of all the POV characters however there are more and all of them crazier and scarier than these POV ones. If I had to pinpoint the one single strength of this book, I would say it’s the characterization. Very few authors manage to write such terrific characters in their debut, only a few such as Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie and Anthony Ryan come to mind but now I believe we have another addition to this list. Rob J. Hayes who writes about lowlifes and scum but writes with such wonderful application that these very characters seem fascinating gems and before long have you hooked onto their antics. This is the best part of the story, kind of reminiscent of Blake Crouch and J. A. Konrath’s serial killer thrillers wherein they explored the darker side of human depravity and power. 

Similarly the author herein focuses on people who frankly would be villains in most books however gives them three dimensional personas for the readers to enjoy reading about. Betrim, Thanquil and Jezzet are the main characters and they shine brightly through their chapters but it’s also the side character cast such as Henry, Bones, Swift, etc that make the story so much more intriguing. The POV characters Thanquil, Jezzet and Betrim are all psychologically broken people however the way they cope with their problems is fascinating to read. Plus amid all the savagery, their semi-honorable actions seem even brighter as compared to the muck around them. Sure enough some of them are still scum, act crazy, commit violence in a wild manner upon each other and normal folk, however many of them become so interesting that the readers will be forced to turn the pages to get to know them better as well as their sides of the story. This was what I loved so much about this debut, the terrific characterization, the unpredictable plot-line with all the action and bleakness.

There are plot twists galore as the story hardly moves in the direction that the readers would expect and in the end the author makes sure that the rules of the world are obeyed in the sense that no character is truly safe. There are quite a few deaths and so I would recommend that readers not read the blurb of the next books to not spoil their reads. The ending is very Abercrombie-like wherein situations are resolved but the characters are put through a psychological and physical grinder of sorts. All in all this is a kind of debut that you definitely don’t want to miss because as soon as you finish this book, you’ll want to start the next one and the one after that. The great news is that all three of them are released and therefore ready to be devoured.

Now moving onto the parts of the book that seem to be a bit deficient, namely the worldbuilding front. Sure enough there is enough history and geography provided to make it seem three dimensional but because the story focuses so much on characters and action, some readers who might want to know more of the surrounding world might not be satisfied. This book is without a map and so for cartophiles it’s a bit of a negative. Lastly those who don’t like dark fantasy or grey characters please, please avoid this book at all costs as you definitely will not be able to stomach it for all its brutality, gore and graphic nature. There’s also quite a few situations and characters that come on to the main stage without any explanation and so I hope their status and back-stories will be explained in the succeeding volumes.

CONCLUSION: Who is Rob J. Hayes, I don’t know entirely but I’m willing to bet that before the year ends, many readers will have heard his name and also become fans of his. The Heresy Within is an Indie debut and like last year’s Blood Song is a absolute gem. If you like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch or David Dalglish, make sure this is your next book. If you want a dark journey filled with action, betrayals and truly magnificent bastards of characters then The Heresy Within is the book that you should seek. DO NOT MISS IT!

Fantasy Book Critic

There’s a sub-genre known as “quiet horror,” an alternative to the explicit gore or overtly supernatural fare that’s been prevalent in horror since the eighties. Charles Grant’s much-praised Shadows series is one of the best examples you’ll find of this type of writing. There aren’t a lot of writers today who try this type of story and even fewer who succeed. Karen Heard is one of those rarely talented authors who can unsettle a reader without ever explicitly stating what has happened. It’s Dark Inside is her first collection and these six stories are hopefully only the beginning of many more to come.

The collection begins with “The Lighthouse,” a tale of isolation in the wake of some manner of unspecified disaster. “Snap” is set in what may be a not-too-distant future, wherein a photo-journalist is on a quest to find and photograph the last living elephant. “The Picture” is a different type of ghost story, where we learn about the things that can scare a man who is already dead. “Out of Order” surprises the reader by starting as one type of standard horror story before shifting into something very different as the reader is left unsure of not only what the “monster” is, but where exactly it is hiding. “The Promise” was a bit frustrating, as it depends on the protagonist not figuring out what is fairly obvious to the reader, but makes up for it with a wonderful twist ending. The collection wraps up with “Inside,” a story that leaves the reader unsure if the protagonist is beset by a supernatural menace or merely losing her mind, still managing to surprise with an unexpected (yet in retrospect completely logical) solution.

It’s Dark Inside is available in paperback for the low price of .50. For those of you on a budget, there’s the even lower-priced e-book edition for only 99 cents. For those of you on an even tighter budget (come on, already), you can preview one of the stories, “The Lighthouse,” on Ms. Heard’s blog, Misheard Fiction. Check it out and then decide if one of the best quiet horror story collections you’ll read this year is worth the cost of half a cup of coffee.

Black Gate

Fantasy Book Critic

As a film and book reviewer for a number of periodicals and websites over the years, I have often wrestled with the art of rating. To some, the awarding of stars to a particular work might seem a simple matter, but there is a craft to it, and it is one of those tasks that can be as complicated as you care to make it — you can assign a rating on gut instinct, jotting down the first number that pops into your head, or you can (as I often do) vacillate back and forth over whether you should add that extra half star.

It is also one of the most subjective undertakings. It is one thing to decide whether you enjoyed a movie; it is quite another to assign it some value on a fixed scale. First off, you, the reviewer, must decide on what criteria and within what framework you are going to base your ratings. In fact, this varies so dramatically from one reviewer to the next that the best you can hope for is to be as consistent as possible with yourself.

Believe me, there is no set, agreed-upon code among professional critics to which you need worry about conforming; you just need to make sure your readers can understand your reasoning. It is also helpful to communicate your personal tastes and preferences insofar as they influence your assessments, so that readers know where you’re coming from. Here are some other considerations…

I. Weighing the Scales

The first question is which scale to use. This is pretty arbitrary and varies greatly from one publication to the next. Perhaps the most simple was Siskel and Ebert’s “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down.” But this was a bit too austere, so they added a further designation of “Thumbs Way Up” — else how could you differentiate  a film that was an amusing diversion from a film that blew your mind?

Most use either a 4-star or 5-star scale — with other signifiers sometimes substituted for stars. A horror site might award gravestones. One online B-movie site awards Godzilla heads. The most unique rating symbol may have been Nathan Shumate’s on his Cold Fusion Video Reviews site. The cold fusion symbol was reserved for those films so jaw-droppingly bad they achieved the mythical “cold fusion” — or, at least, they guarantee an hour or two of unintentionally uproarious entertainment.

Joe Bob Briggs, the “Drive-In Movie Critic,” notoriously adds to his ratings a tally of “Drive-In Totals” (here is an example from his one-and-a-half star [out of four] review of The Devil Inside: “5 Dead Bodies. No Bare Breasts. 3-4 Beasts. Priest-Flinging”). By the way, Shumate and Briggs are two of the most consistently funny film reviewers out there, both of them exercising their wit at the expense of the lowest of low-brow cinema.

I’ve always opted for the 5-star scale, with the additional parsing of half-stars (essentially making it a 10-point scale), but I like being able to make fine distinctions. As a college professor, it drove me nuts to have, for example, a student who just missed a B grade with 79%, while another student barely eked out 70% with some eleventh-hour extra credit, yet their transcripts would record them equally as C students. How I wished the university used plusses and minuses, because clearly one was a C + while the other was a C -, and a 9% spread in quality of work — that’s a pretty significant range!

II. The Stingy Critic versus the Generous Critic

Once you have your rating scale, the next issue is how you are going to deploy those stars. Here, again, we have a strong dose of subjectivity. Sometimes reviewers are stingy with their stars, reserving that fourth or fifth one for only the distinguished few. Others are more generous — but if you leniently hand out five-star ratings to just about any work you enjoy, how do you give special distinction to that rare work that comes along and rocks your world? (Stephen King complained about the trend of movie-ratings inflation in a 2007 op-ed for Entertainment Weekly. More on that next week.)

What really got me thinking about this was that a few months ago, Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle) posted on Goodreads an explanation for how he rates works. Now, it so happens that I’ve posted reviews and ratings of both his novels on Goodreads, so I’m pretty sure he’s seen them (rare is the author who doesn’t read all the reviews of his/her work, even those anonymous ones on Amazon. Oh, maybe Stephen King or Margaret Atwood can’t be bothered to read all of them, but the rest of us — yeah).

I gave his first book, The Name of the Wind, five stars and raved about it. And, like virtually everyone else who read that book, I eagerly anticipated the second installment. The Wise Man’s Fear delivered its share of pleasures, but this time out I had a few minor criticisms; nor was it the groundbreaking work the first was (although since this is the second book of a trilogy, it is somewhat unfairly artificial to weigh the pieces without weighing the whole).

Hence, I gave it 4 stars (according to the Goodreads definition for each rating increment, I “really liked it,” but would not go so far as to say “it was amazing”). This was an instance when I wished Goodreads allowed the parsing of stars, because I might have gone 4.5. But if you give something the highest increment, aren’t you saying there’s nothing better? I try to be fairly stingy with my five-star reviews, to avoid being the critic who cried wolf by declaring any book that tickled his fancy a landmark of the genre!

Reading Rothfuss’s explanation for how he approaches rating, I discovered he is a self-professed generous star-giver. A book really has to fall short in some major way for him to knock a star off. He freely admits he wishes there was a “sixth star” option for him to distinguish the truly seminal works, being that he gives five stars to so many books and graphic novels. It seems that for a work to get two or three stars from him it really has to stink, and I’ve read enough of his reviews to recognize that he reserves one star ratings for moral condemnation — to rebuke a work for racist or sexist overtones.

If I had rated The Wise Man’s Fear according to Rothfuss’s scale, I’d have given it five stars, no question. Hey, I’m not too concerned — I’m sure Rothfuss isn’t hurt that I shorted him a star — but it does serve to illustrate the continuum that exists between the stingy and the generous reviewer.

Next week, I’ll wrap up my thoughts on reviewing with parts III and IV, which will cover critical transparency (why one should be forthcoming about personal taste and biases that might influence one’s judgment) and framework (should one judge Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure by the standard of 2001: A Space Odyssey?).

Black Gate

Official Author website
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Armageddon Bound
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Resurrection 
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of At The Gates
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Echoes Of The Past 
Read Fantasy Book Critic interview with Tim Marquitz 

Read the first chapter HERE 

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Beyond the Veil is the fifth book of the critically under-appreciated Demon Squad series. It’s a series that is a big favorite of mine because of the unique approach taken by the author. Tim’s series protagonist is a guy who would be a villain in most and would not survive more than a book or two. Frank is a guy who is shady, lecherous and immature to a certain degree but he’s also loyal, kindhearted and best of all a wise-cracking dude whose inner monologue will leave you in splits. He’s the kind of guy who they say is a diamond among the coal however you would have to dig really, really deep and perhaps the diamond might be more than flawed in a jewelers estimate. His actions though have lead many readers to be enamored of him and also a bit leery as well.  

With this being book five, the review becomes a bit hard as there will be minor spoilers for the previous four titles so be warned those who haven’t read the previous titles. With the previous book’s climatic cliffhanger, things were left precariously for Frank as his girlfriend Karra is missing and no one knows where and who took her. Frank is hellbent on involving Longinus (her father) as he doesn’t want to the ex-AntiChrist on his bad side.The DRAC folks however are wary of involving Longinus and want Frank only in a supporting role. The key to finding out Karra’s location is the alien Mihheer and he’s in no mood to talk. Frank will have to decide where his loyalties lie and how will he get Karra back and still stay sane with all the revelations that have been sprung on him and how many more secrets will he have to burden himself with. 

The last book was a lot different than the previous three volumes and I mentioned that it was a very introspective volume. This book manages to combine that introspection with the fast-paced nature of the third book. Let’s begin with why I think Tim Marquitz outdid himself with this one, firstly the action shifts to a plane other than Earth which I’ll leave the readers to RAFO. Then we finally get to know the main, main reason why God and Lucifer have left Earth. This is the biggest plus point of the book that only do we get to know the all the reasons but we get to actually “know” the fundamental crisis behind it. This was the big reveal of the book, of all the secrets that were teased throughout the past four books; we get a big dose of revelations in this one. Plus for those wishing for the action found in Resurrection & At The Gates will be heartily rewarded as Frank, Longinus and others get down and dirty in new places. 

The action sequences and plot pace are what can be expected from a Tim Marquitz novel and by this I mean they are of the fast and furious kind that leave no quarter for the protagonist and will pull the reader along. These are the shining facets of the story and I was glad to see my Tuckerized version get a stellar cameo role to play in the events of this book (continuing from the book four). Lastly with Frank, Tim has been putting him through a world of pain and in this book, he gets closure of a sort to many of the questions that have haunted his past and lingered throughout his life. As a character the readers love to see him pick himself up debacle after debacle and try to live a decent life. With the climax of this book, I can’t wait to see where he goes next. The book basically delivered on all fronts for me and so I can’t wait to see where Tim takes Frank next and what new story will he explore. Though knowing Tim’s nefarious ideas, it won’t be something that Frank will enjoy but as a reader it could be fun to read about it. 

With this book I didn’t have any complaints however the other readers will have to decide if that was the case for them as well. Beyond The Veil basically caps off the first arc for Frank Trigg in the Demon Squad series in high style. Readers who have followed the series so far will be sumptuously rewarded with world and back story revelations that surprise and astound to a high degree. If you haven’t read this series so far, kindly remedy this mistake immediately. As for urban fantasy naysayers, the Demon Squad series is the one of the many solid reasons that might change your opinion about this beloved sub-genre of mine. 

Official Author Website 

Order the book HERE 

Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Blood Skies 

Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Black Scars 

Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Soulrazor
Read Fantasy Book Critic’s review of Crown Of Ash

Read Steven Montano’s guest post on Cross-genre writing

Read an excerpt HERE

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Steven Montano’s books have made me a fan of his after I first came across his debut last year. Even though it was a bit rough, the potential within in regards to the writing and the series convinced me that this was an author worth paying attention to. Since then I’ve read and reviewed all four books of the Blood Skies series and it’s safe to say I haven’t been disappointed. Before I begin the review, I would like to re-iterate that by discussing certain aspects of the fifth book, I’ll be spoiling some of the earlier four prequels. So those readers who haven’t read the previous ones, be warned…

With the fourth book, certain events occurred that made the book a great and equally tragic one. We got a POV from Kane and it was great to see the happenings from his eyes. The author then continues his POV run by giving Ronan a narrative voice with this book and it’s a different experience as well. The story begins with not two but three distinct threads. The first one is centered on Ronan and Maur and he try to get back to the Southern Claw. The second tract focuses on Cross who is back to the land of the living but having aged nearly more than a decade with his sojourn in the Shadowlands. Lastly we get to see what happened to Danica especially after the events of the fourth book and we learn that she faces a cruel fate as did Cross in the last book. She is made to serve the vampires albeit with a different name and with a different set of circumstances

The biggest change of the series is the change in the number of POV characters, with the first two books we have had only Cross as the sole POV, however with the third book, we gained another set of eyes into the world and since then with every book, there has been a POV addition. With this book, we get to see the world via Ronan’s mind and that is a great facet for this book. The story so far has been a grim one with each book having a few character deaths and a few of those have been main characters as well. This has led to the readers never being sure who might survive in each book. With this book, the story becomes even grimmer if that was even possible with such a dark world to begin with, but the author goes out of his way to further torture his characters. Now while that doesn’t speak all too well about a person I haven’t met, I must say it makes for some fascinating reading. Steven Montano has surprised greatly with the direction of the story he’s taking and even with the world he has created, he continues to add further facets to it that make it seem as mysterious and foreboding as it was when I discovered it in the first book. 

The characterization is what makes this story such a terrific one, Cross, Danica and Ronan have been pushed physically, mentally and talents-wise. Their struggles to remain as a team and save each other make this story worth reading. With this book we learn a good deal about Ronan’s past (not that it makes him any less scary), Danica continues to evolve further and after the events of the last book she seems like a whole new person (there’s also certain plot points which facilitate this transformation) but I’m also talking about her overall character arc, which has been a great one to read so far. Maur is another of my favorite characters however doesn’t get much page time for reasons that have to be discovered by the reader. Cross also returns and furthers his evolution as the soul of his team and the person who has given it his all multiple times before and will be forced to do so again. 

The author has started a four book arc beginning with book three and this is the penultimate book in that arc as there are many references to events of the past three books. There’s also the further peeling back of the curtain for readers to understand what truly is happening behind the scenes. After being mildly disappointed with book three, the fourth book and this one have completely reinvigorated my faith and interest in this series and I can’t wait to see what happens next. The Blood Skies series comes highly recommended for readers who would like reading a heady mix of genres and books that are bloody, dark and action-packed as those by David Dalglish and Matthew Reilly to a certain degree.

Fantasy Book Critic

Tim Marquitz is an author who I discovered back in 2009 via his debut book. Since then I’ve admired his growth as a writer and also gotten to know him on a personal level. For the past year and more Tim has been trying to get his earlier books back from his previous publisher who have been nothing short of shady in their dealings with him and others. So here’s the full post that went up on Tim‘s blog last week as he recounts why Damnation Books needs to get their act together and act professional:

After filing a justice court suit against Damnation Books on November 15, 2012 for multiple counts of breach of contract, I won a small financial judgment against the publisher on April 26, 2013. The judge, however, did not feel it was within his power to rescind the disputed contracts despite finding in my favor, referring me to a higher court. (My previous post on the subject can be found here.)

However, as of my Q1 2013 royalties, I have met and well exceeded the contract terms set by Damnation Books regarding the early termination of my works, Resurrection and At the Gates.

As per Damnation Books’ contract terms (bolding mine):
 § Once a work has gone into editing and forward and the Author wishes to terminate this contract prematurely, a penalty shall be charged to the Author to cover costs of staff and artists for work already performed. This fee shall be at a minimum of .00 to a maximum of 00.00 to be determined by the time spent on preparing the work for publication and money recovered from sales of the work.

On June 6, 2012, after receiving my request for termination on April 14, 2102, the lawyer for Damnation Books, Kevin Veestra, set the fee for each of my contracted works through Damnation Books. He stated (again, bolding is mine):
 § “The Company has calculated the costs and time spent which the termination fee is intended to cover and in each instance the termination fee is ,000.”

As of February 28, 2013, Resurrection has earned Damnation Books (per their official royalty statements less 10% editing fees deducted by contract terms) a total of 82.02. At the Gates has earned them 57.60. Both amounts are substantially over the ,000 termination fees set by Damnation Books, effectively paying above and beyond the requisite (and excessive) fees for release (These numbers do not reflect profits from March or April 2013).

As such, the rights for both Resurrection and At the Gates should be returned to me as the thresholds for release have been exceeded, and then some, and my request for termination persists.

Therefore, I file this notice publicly as a statement of intent. It is on Damnation Books to do the right thing and release the rights to these two books within a reasonable time frame, per our signed agreements, or I will take further legal action against Damnation Books to force them to abide by their contract terms. (Damnation Books has been notified of this privately and has chosen to ignore my lawful request.)

NOTE: Mark Edward Hall is another author who seems to be similar compound issues with Damnation Books. For an account of his hassles, kindly head over to his blog. Its been more than 72 hours and Damnation Books still are avoiding the issue. Cover pic is a screenshot of the Damnation Books listing on the Preditors and Editors website taken on 05/05/2013.

Fantasy Book Critic

Not long ago I came across a copy of Jonathan Lethem’s second novel, Amnesia Moon. I was curious: Lethem’s best known for his recent work in mainstream mimetic fiction, but his early novels were science fiction, and he also wrote an odd take on Steve Gerber’s already-odd character Omega the Unknown for Marvel Comics in 2007. More, between 2007 and 2009 he edited three volumes for the Library of America collecting various novels by Philip K. Dick; another book Lethem edited — The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, containing extracts of a journal in which Dick recorded his visionary experiences — was published in 2011. Lethem’s also written an introduction for a recently-released collection of Dick’s short fiction, and explored the influence of Philip K. Dick on his work and life in an extended essay at his web site. Given all this, I was interested in seeing what Lethem’s early science fiction was like.

Reading Amnesia Moon, the Philip K. Dick influence is immediately and strongly apparent, in setting, tone, imagery, and structure. The novel takes place in the west of a near-future post-apocalypse United States, but nobody can really remember what the apocalypse was, or how long ago it happened. Robot evangelists preach the gospel at city corners. Some characters live only as drugs, visible only after they’re injected into the veins of someone else. Dreams are communicable. But more than any of this: the book seems to restart itself at unpredictable intervals, dropping all the narrative strands to begin what at first seems a different story, which then intersects or transforms the overall tale.

Still, Lethem’s book isn’t just a rehash of earlier work. It’s strongly evocative of Dick’s writing, yes, but has a voice of its own. Its theme, I think, is the connection between people, the communities and relationships that they make. So it insists on the reality of the perceptible universe, on the otherness outside oneself, in a way that seems to me to be unlike Dick; Lethem’s asking much the same questions, but suggests different answers. As a result, though Lethem’s style is as spare and fast-moving as Dick’s, the characters have a reality and solidity subtly unlike the characters in Dick’s fiction.

The book begins with a man carrying a message to a man named Chaos, who lives in a projectionist’s booth in an abandoned movie theatre in what used to by Wyoming. Then the perspective shifts: this is Chaos’s story. We follow Chaos as he picks up a sidekick named Melinda, a mutated thirteen-year-old girl with hair all over her body, and sets out in search of a better life — his older life, which Chaos doesn’t remember, as a man named Everett Moon. All through the book memories come and go, lives and dreams of lives pass through his head; and Chaos’ dreams are dreamt by people around him, as he seems to develop a talent to alter reality itself. His voyage takes him through a number of separate communities created by people in the wake of disaster; finally to San Francisco, where he finds out some (not all) truths about the world and himself, before he doubles back to resolve unfinished business.

The different places Chaos goes read as Dickian conceptions. They all have some element of social parody, aspects of late 20th century American life (the book was published in 1995) blown up to a grand scale. Perhaps most significant is a concern with media; from Chaos’ home in a defunct movie theatre to a community where government officials are movie stars and comic-book heroes, there’s a fascination with the way stories shape us. It’s part, I think, of a larger concern with social programming, and how we build ourselves, and how what we believe is shaped by forces outside ourselves — the robot evangelists being a particularly stark symbol of this.

In that way, the book’s examining identity, consciousness, and individuality; a properly Dickian theme. Chaos, or Moon, regains and loses memory throughout the book, as do other characters. His body is transformed. At his lowest point he literally becomes a thinking clock. But his dreams can remake the world. These are literalised metaphors, but they’re also living images: it all fits together in terms of plot and of theme. And they build through the book, to a conclusion that deliberately forsakes answering questions in favour of undermining the implication throughout that Chaos/Moon is the centre of all important events: a final acceptance, not that he’s powerless, but that there are other people with their own importance. That, under the influence of forces we cannot otherwise perceive, we all move around each other like the moon around the earth.

It’s interesting reading the book and knowing that Lethem’s moved on to mimetic fiction. As I said, it’s as spare stylistically as Dick’s work, with minimal description. But there’s a grounding in reality that is not so much at odds with the more hallucinatory or satirical aspects of the work as a distinct complement to them. There’s a complexity implied in the societies of the book, in the images and metaphors it uses, that gives it a different tone than Dick’s fiction. Above all there is that feel of reality to the characters, a depth perhaps implied by the minimalist prose but nevertheless very real. In this book, that sense of character works to make the story more credible and indeed coherent — these are fully-realised people in improbable situations. But perhaps you could argue that the book’s conclusion, that insistence on human relationships, points to a set of concerns that lend themselves to mimetic fiction.

I don’t think I’d say that Amnesia Moon is a major work, but it’s a very good minor work. That’s fitting; it’s most reminiscent of Dick’s minor writing. It’s brief, but covers a lot of ground without feeling like it’s hurrying through matter or leaving elements underexplored. Its world is disparate, confused, and therefore much like reality. It bears its influences on its sleeve, but makes something new out of them. All in all, it’s strong writing.

Matthew David Surridge is the author of “The Word of Azrael,” from Black Gate 14. His ongoing web serial is The Fell Gard Codices. You can find him on facebook, or follow his Twitter account, Fell_Gard.

Black Gate

• Nod, Adrian Barnes (Bluemoose)
• Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann)
• The Dog Stars, Peter Heller (Headline)
• Intrusion, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
• 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit) 
• Dark Eden, Chris Beckett (Corvus)

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Fantasy Book Critic