When mirror twins Seth and Hadrian Castillo travel to Europe on holidays, they don’t expect the end of the world to follow them. Seth’s murder, however, puts exactly that into motion.

From opposite sides of death, the Castillo twins grapple with a reality neither of them suspected, although it has been encoded in myths and legends for millennia. The Earth we know is just one of many “realms”, three of which are inhabited by humans during various stages of their lives. And their afterlives…

In the tradition of Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin and inspired by numerous arcane sources, the Books of the Cataclysm begin in the present world but soon propel the reader to a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and fantastic.

Proofs of Best Served Cold have slaughtered their guards, escaped from captivity and burst out into the wild, so I daresay we can expect the blogosphere to CATCH FIRE with reviews over the next week or two. In the meantime, for those of you unfortunate (or should that be fortunate) enough not to be an internet sf&f reviewer, I have a little something to whet, and, indeed, wet, your appetites for high-quality hilarious yet extremely violent and morally questionable fantasy fiction.

For the ENTIRE first chapter of Best Served Cold is available HERE, NOW on my website, free of charge, for your READING PLEASURE.

You lucky bastards

ANNOUNCEMENT

GAMES WORKSHOP PUTS SOLARIS BOOKS IMPRINT UP FOR SALE

Games Workshop PLC today announced its intention to make its Solaris Books publishing imprint available for sale.

BL Publishing, the publishing division of Games Workshop, has two imprints, Black Library and Solaris. Its core business is the Black Library, an imprint which publishes fiction set in the dark fantasy worlds of Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 settings. It has seen consistent double
digit like-for-like growth over the last 3 years.

Solaris is an original fiction imprint of BL Publishing and releases around 20 science fiction, fantasy and horror titles a year. Renowned for its back-to-basics approach and innovative marketing, this imprint was started in 2006 and has very quickly become established as a global brand in midlist, mass market fiction.

Both the Black Library and Solaris are distributed in the UK and US by Simon & Schuster.

Games Workshop’s Head of Publishing, George Mann, said in a statement: “In recent years our Black Library imprint has more than doubled in size and scope and we have decided that we should focus all our attention in growing this core part of our business. Whilst we see plenty of growth potential with
Solaris, we are looking for a buyer who is interested in developing this global brand.”

I have heard rumours of a surprising potential buyer.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Prometheus/Pyr swoop in – something of a synchronicity and partnership (Lou Anders editing a Solaris anthology and Solaris publishing MMPB of Edelman’s novels) already exists.

Rob B: this would be interesting, especially if Pyr wanted to put a toe in the UK market as well (Solaris publishes in both).

According to Paul the Monarchies reprints are going ahead whilst the new Macht books are on hold.