News

An Aside | The Monarchies of God Omnibus

By Aidan Moher June 10th, 2008

Well, the ink has dried and it’s official, Solaris Books will be publishing a two-volume omnibus of Paul Kearney’s The Monarchies of God

Kearney had this to say on his official forum:

I’ve posted this elsewhere on this site, but here goes again – I’ve finally signed the Omnibus contracts, and everything is now getting into gear. The Monarchies will be published in two volumes this autumn, the first entitled Hawkwood and the Kings, the second, Century of the Soldier…

I’ve been speaking with Mark Newton, Paul’s publicist at Solaris, and it’s clear that they really believe that Kearney can be one of the top authors in the field. If anything, The Monarchies of God was probably ahead of its time when published several years ago and should thrive in this new fantasy environment that’s seen the success of authors such as Erikson, Abercrombie, and Morgan.

I’ve been holding off on reading this series for a while now (ever since the omnibus rumours first started floating around) and I can’t wait to get my grubby little hands on this!

Review

Review | The Born Queen by Greg Keyes

By Aidan Moher June 7th, 2008

The Born Queen by Greg Keyes

The Born Queen

Author – Greg Keyes

Hardcover
Page Count: 464 pages pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: March 25, 2008
ISBN-10: 0345440692
ISBN-13: 978-0345440693

Greg Keyes is the most underread author in epic fantasy.

There, I said it.

His most recent work, a four volume cycle called The Kingdom of Thorn and Bone sets the bar for how to write a multi-volume epic fantasy without all the bloat that plagues so many other series. Keyes manages to tell an engaging, fully realized story and bring it all to a satisfying close by just the fourth book, The Born Queen.

Where Keyes excels is in the characters he crafts. Taking familiar archetypes – The Princess, The Woodsman, The Scholar, The Cocky Swordsman – he strips them down to the barest essentials and then reinvents them. The Princess, for once, is likeable; The Woodsman is an unconventional ladies man; The Scholar ends up kicking some ass; The Cocky Swordsman is most honorable and self sacrificing. When we were first introduced to the characters in The Briar King, I had trouble seeing what the big deal was – I had seen all this before. But by the end of that first volume I understood, and that was only the beginning of where those characters would take me.

Read More »

News

An Aside | Feedburner

By Aidan Moher June 7th, 2008

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you all know that I switched my RSS feeds over to Feedburner, so if things get wonky just try readding my blog to your RSS reader.

Comments closed
Interview

Interview | Paul Kearney (The Missing Edition)

By Aidan Moher June 6th, 2008

Paul Kearney, author of The Monarchies of God and The Ten ThousandAlright everyone, as promised, Paul and I worked our buns off to bring this second part of the interview to light. For some reason (maybe due to angering the Irish Gods with my attempt at writing a novel set in their land…), the Internet wasn’t allowing Paul and I to connect and get the text of the interview from one side of the Atlantic to the other. But, Paul and I are made of tougher stuff than that and used brute force (Paul paddled over to North America in a Canoe) to make sure it happened.

To that end, the second half of the interview might feel a little choppy (the questions were supposed to be interlaced with those from the first part), but all of Paul’s incredible rapier wit is still intact. If you’re so inclined, you can download a PDF of the entire interview, in one long piece, HERE.
Read More »

News

I Ask You | Interviews

By Aidan Moher June 5th, 2008

In my neverending quest to make A Dribble of Ink a better publication, I decided to make a new feature, I Ask You, to get you guys, the readers, more involved in improving things.

My readership is constantly growing – from avid fans, to aspiring writers, to well established authors – and that’s a resource I’d be silly to pass up. To that end, I’ve got a couple of questions for everyone that drops by, and the theme this time is Interviews.

What makes a for a good interview?

Readers: What kind of questions do you like to see? What do you like the author to talk about? How long do you like the interviews to be?

Authors: How can we, the bloggers, keep the interviews from getting stale? What do you most enjoy speaking about? What questions would you like to be asked, but never are?