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Free Readin’, Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

By Aidan Moher September 5th, 2012
Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

‘Some men just like to burn,’ said Lamb.

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Thanks to Joe himself, we have an early look at his sixth novel, a standalone called Red Country, that mixes traditional Fantasy with a Western motif. Early word is that Red Country is one of Abercrombie’s best novels, though after being lukewarm on Best Served Cold and hearing conflicting opinions on The Heroes, I’m still not sure what to think of that. Either way, the excerpt looks good.

You can read the excerpt from Red Country on Joe Abercrombie’s website.

Art

Ooh, a map for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

By Aidan Moher July 25th, 2012
A Map for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

A Map for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie, art by Dave Senior and Laura Brett – Click to Embiggen

Abercrombie on the map:

The Heroes was very focused in time and place, detailed, forensic almost, the ground all important – faux military history, in a sense, so the map needed to look detailed, professional and precise as well, with the positions of units added in for an extra veneer of military exactitude. This time around the story is taking place in an expanse of largely unmapped, scarcely settled wilderness so it made sense that the map be much rougher, less accurate-seeming, more woolly and suggestive without too much worry over blank spaces, a drawn on the back of a beermat by a fella with a big beard sense.

We all like a good map, don’t we? I do appreciate, too, that there is a slight red cast to the colour palette used for the map, making this, literally, a red country.

Art

Cover Art for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (UK)

By Aidan Moher July 11th, 2012
Cover Art for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (UK)

Map by Dave Senior and Daggers by Didier Graffetaption

Yep, that’s an Abercrombie cover. Yep, still awesome. There’s also a full spread and a finalized synopsis:

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

They burned her home.

They stole her brother and sister.

But vengeance is following.

Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.

Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…

I’d’ve liked to have seen a different palette, since this one treds so closely to what we saw with Best Served Cold and The Heroes, but that’s really my only complaint. Great stuff, better than the US cover. A few weeks ago, I gathered together everything we know about Red Country, check it out, if you’re interested.

Review

Review of Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds

By Justin Landon June 5th, 2012
Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds

Blue Remembered Earth

By Alastair Reynolds
Hardcover
Pages: 512 pages
Publisher: Ace
Release Date: 06/05/12
ISBN: 0441020712

EXCERPT

Blue Remembered Earth. Great title, isn’t it? The evocative image of leaving Earth behind, only to remember its color in the blackness of space. It’s an image that resonates on a visceral level. It also perfectly describes the nature of the technological period imagined — the moment when Earth no longer becomes the center of humanity. Vast in scope and dense with character development and world building, Alastair Reynold’s newest novel is a return to Utopian science fiction whose story isn’t about the darker side of humanity, but the boundaries of our collective horizons.

Set one hundred and fifty years in the future, Africa has become the dominant technological and economic power. Crime, war, disease, and poverty have been banished to history courtesy of mandatory implants that curb and/or correct deviant behavior. While humanity has colonized the nearby planets, Earth remains the center of attention with known(ish) physics underpinning the whole operation.

Geoffrey Akinya is heir to the corporate super power that makes much of it possible. He’s also a loner, living on the family estate and conducting experiments on the endangered elephant population that lives there. When his grandmother and company founder, Eunice, dies, Geoffrey’s more entrepreneurial cousins task him to ensure the family’s name remains unblemished after mysterious assets come to light.

Entitled rich kids, a black sheep, an artist, the old guy, and a few insensitive assholes.

It’s really as simple as that. Blue Remembered Earth is a classic quest novel. One clue leads to the next, leads to the next, leads to an eventual big reveal that opens up a host of new possibilities for future novels. Given this standard narrative structure, Reynolds’s novel places a premium on thematic exploration, characterizations, and world building. The degree to which he does it makes the novel a rousing success despite a plot that’s as inventive as hyperdrive.
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Feature Article

Everything we know about A Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

By Aidan Moher March 30th, 2012

Beware, there are spoilers here for The First Law trilogy, specifically the ending of A Last Argument of Kings.

A Red Country is the next novel set in Joe Abercrombie’s popular fantasy world that readers first discovered in The First Law trilogy. With Abercrombie recently finishing a first draft of the novel, and some interesting news about the plot, I thought it would be a good time to go over the details of what we know about A Red Country.

First, we have this early synopsis from Abercrombie’s blog, from February 2012:

Shy South comes home to her farm to find a blackened shell, her brother and sister stolen, and knows she’ll have to go back to bad old ways if she’s ever to see them again. She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier. Their journey will take them across the lawless plains, to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feuds, duels, and massacres, high into unmapped mountains to a reckoning with ancient enemies, and force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, a man no one should ever have to trust…

While the confirmed conclusion of Nicomo Cosca was pleasing (he’s one of Joe’s more convincing creations, if you ask me), the real discussion was centred around the few sentences describing Shy’s namless uncle: “She sets off in pursuit with only her cowardly old step-father Lamb for company. But it turns out he’s hiding a bloody past of his own. None bloodier.”
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