Posts Tagged: Fantasy

News

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson announced, with release date

By Aidan Moher February 28th, 2013

The second volume of Brandon Sanderson’s oh-crap-Tor-needs-someone-to-fill-the-hole-left-by-the-end-of-the-Wheel-of-Time series, The Stormlight Archives, now has a name and a release date.

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Sanderson speaks a bit about the project and the title:

The Way of Kings was Kaladin’s book. He will have a lot to do in Book Two, of course, and you can expect some great sequences within his viewpoint. However, the flashback sequences in Book Two belong to Shallan. In my notes for the series, I had planned for Shallan’s book to be named after the tome she is given at the end of the first novel: The Book of Endless Pages. On Roshar, that is a book of knowledge that can never be completed—because people should always be learning, studying, and adding what they’ve learned to it.

[…]

Lots of people weighed in with their feelings on Stormlight Two. For a while, I toyed with titles that still had “book” in them, as I liked how that fit with Shallan’s scholarly nature. The Book of Lies was one of these, as was The Book of Dusk and Dawn. (As a side note, being a fan of Magic: The Gathering makes naming things harder sometimes, since the creative team over at Wizards has named A LOT of cards—and the titles I think of sometimes sound too much like things they’ve done. That’s why Book of Fact and Fiction was dead the moment it occurred to me.)

[…]

In the last few months, the title that has really been sticking with me is Words of Radiance. (Admittedly, “radiance” is a synonym for “light,” but at least it’s a step away.) With “words,” it still has a slight tie to my original desire to have “book” in the title, and I believe it’s significantly meaningful for people who have read the first novel. It also works very well for reasons that I can’t tell you now without spoiling the story.

Hey, it’s not cover art (or even news about who the artist will be), but we all pathetically salivate for even the smallest drop of information about our favourite authors, don’t we? Words of Radiance is set for a tentative November, 2013 release.

Review

Review of The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

By Larry Nolen February 27th, 2013

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

Publisher: Tor Books - Pages: 1008 - Buy: Book/eBook

In my last commentary, I commented about how one of the major reasons why I decided to do these re-reading projects was to learn more about myself as a reader and critic and to explore how my takes on various novels had changed over an intervening period of several years. For the first three Wheel of Time novels, my overall attitude had shifted only slightly. I still liked the first book, The Eye of the World, better than the second and third volumes, The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn. What I liked and why, however, had changed, sometimes drastically.

In particular, I found even the first three volumes to contain several annoying features. Among them, average, pedestrian prose, laziness in using quirks and invented stereotypes to describe characters and imagined cultures, and the beginnings of what author/critic Adam Roberts has referred to as “decor-porn.” Despite these annoying narrative features, I was able to enjoy those three volumes as long as I focused on viewing the books as a sort of quest narrative. If I had devoted more time to looking at the numerous “prophecies” and their ilk and tried to predict as-yet-untold events rather than concentrating on the story at hand, I suspect I would have grown bored quicker than I have. Read More »

News

Gardner Dozois joins Clarkesworld as Reprint Editor

By Aidan Moher February 26th, 2013

Clarkesworld40500On Friday, February 22nd, it was announced my Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, that the well-regarded Speculative Fiction magazine will be adding a new reprint section, headed by Gardener Dozois, an equally well-regarded anthologist.

The official press release details the additions:

Clarkesworld Magazine, a leading science fiction and fantasy magazine, has named award-winning editor Gardner Dozois (pronounced “doe-zwa”) to helm its new reprint department. In his role as reprint editor, every month Gardner will draw upon forty years of experience to select two exemplary science fiction stories published during the last three decades. The first of these stories are scheduled to appear in the April 2013 issue of the magazine’s online, digital and print editions.

“Since my heart attack last year, when readers responded with encouragement and support, I’ve been trying to find a way to say ‘thank you’,” said Neil Clarke, Clarkesworld Editor-in-Chief. “The reprint department had been on our wish list for some time and when the opportunity to work with someone of Gardner’s caliber arose, I knew I had found the perfect way to express my gratitude.”

Clarkesworld has long been one of my favourite SF magazines and it’s wonderful to see them joining together with someone like Dozois. With John Joseph Adams at Lightspeed, Ann VanderMeer and Ellen Datlow at Tor.com, and Johnathan Strahan at Eclipse, it’s interesting to see some of today’s best short fiction editors continuing to become as important to online markets as they are to the long-running tradition of print anthologies.

Feature Article

My 2013 Hugo Nominations & Recommendations

By Aidan Moher February 25th, 2013
A Dribble of Ink's 2013 Hugo Nominations & Recommendations

Welcome to my 2013 Hugo nominations and recommendations. Here I will be collecting the novels, writers, films and videogames that I believe are deserving to win a Hugo award. I have not filled out every category, for one reason or another, but there is a nice variety here, all of which entertained me in 2012. Also included in these nominations and recommendations are other notable items for your consideration. These are generally items that I’ve not read or experienced yet but come well-recommended by people I trust and are on my plate to do so before the nomination process.

This list is still a work-in-progress and can (and will change) before the nomination period ends on March, 10th. I hope you find something of interest here. Enjoy.

Best Novel

If you look at the list of 2012-published novels I read last year, it might be no surprise that, as of now, I do not have enough novels to fill my ballot in this category. Between now and the nomination deadline I will be doing some catch-up, and I’ve included those novels in the ‘Other Notables’ section, but it 2012 was not a particularly strong year for me. The novels I include below, however, I believe in fully.

THE KING'S BLOOD by Daniel AbrahamThe King’s Blood by Daniel Abraham
(REVIEW // Buy: Book/eBook)

Geder Palliako’s star is rising. He is a hero of Antea, protector to the crown prince, and darling of the court. But storms from his past are gathering, and with them, a war that will change everything.

Cithrin bel Sarcour founded a powerful bank on stolen wealth, forged papers, and ready blades. Now every move she makes is observed, recorded, and controlled. Unless Cithrin can free herself from her gilded cage, the life she made will be for naught; war may provide just the opportunity she needs.

An apostate priest sees the hidden hand behind all: a long-buried secret of the dragon empire threatens everything humanity has built. An age of madness and death approaches, with only a few doomed heroes to stand in its way.

Last year, I chose to nominate Abraham’s The Dragon’s Path over Leviathan Wakes, his SF collaboration with Ty Franck, published under the name ‘James S.A. Corey.’ Leviathan Wakes made the ballot, The Dragon’s Path did not. I still believe in that nomination and that Abraham is behind some of today’s most interesting and exciting Fantasy. The Dagger & The Coin takes the comfortable, adventurous Fantasy built by Terry Brooks, David Eddings and Raymond E. Feist and imbues it with an intelligence and depth that sets it apart from the rest of the field. The King’s Blood is an improvement on The Dragon’s Path on every level and continues to prove Abraham’s worth the genre. As I said in my review, “It’s about time we stop comparing Abraham to other authors, and start comparing other authors to him.”

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Art

Bradley P. Beaulieu leaves publisher, re-launches The Lays of Anuskaya as self-published series

By Aidan Moher February 21st, 2013

A few days after announcing his next trilogy, The Song of the Shattered Sands, Bradley P. Beaulieu announced today that he has left his former publisher, Night Shade Books, and will be republishing eBook editions of The Lays of Anuskaya, as well as entirely self-publishing the final book in the series, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh. These new editions will feature new covers.

The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Straits of Galahesh by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Flames of Shadam Khoreh by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Beaulieu gives reason to his decision to redesign the covers for their eBook release:

As part of the gear-up for the release of my third book, The Flames of Shadam Khoreh, I’m also re-releasing The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh. I have to admit some disappointment that the previous versions didn’t have a unifying theme. So I designed these around that basic premise, that they would look and feel like a series. I hope I’ve hit the mark.

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