47North, Amazon’s science fiction imprint, has just released Dave Duncan’s extraordinary new novel Against the Light in paperback, audio and e-book, with a promotional giveaway of the e-book for Prime members.

In Against the Light  the Hierarchy, high priests of the religious order the Light, has installed King Ethan as the monarchical figurehead, ruling both the magical kingdom of Albi and its predominant religion. Scattered throughout the land, worshippers in the old ways of the Earth Mother are persecuted as heretics. And when young missionary student Rollo Woodbridge returns home to Albi, he is immediately arrested for heresy and treason, setting off a chain of events that plunges the land into utter chaos.

The Hierarchy has more treacherous motives, however, and when Rollo is rescued from jail, his family’s home is destroyed—but Rollo and his siblings are left alive. While Rollo tries diplomacy to end the religious and political conflict, his brother and sister swear vengeance. With the hours to deliverance counting down and their lives hanging in the balance, they must decide whether to stay and fight or leave Albi forever in the suspenseful, action-packed Against the Light.

If you like Against the Light as much as we think you are going to, you’ll find lots more Dave Duncan fiction on his author page on the E-Reads website.

Dan Simmons

John Kwok, a leading Amazon reviewer and blogger, has chosen Dan Simmons as one of “the best living American writers of science fiction.”

“Dan Simmons is a prolific award-winning writer of both excellent mainstream and science fiction and fantasy fiction. His ‘Hyperion Cantos’ (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion) raised the stakes with regards to writing literary space opera science fiction, drawing from sources as diverse as the poetry of John Keats and cyberpunk. A more recent literary space opera is his superb take on the Homeric epics, Iliad and Odyssey, set on a distant future Earth and Mars; Ilium and Olympos. One of my favorite novels of his is a most engrossing fictional account of the writer Ernest Hemingway indulging in spying on Nazis in Cuba during the early years of World War II, The Crook Factory [Mulholland Books reissue coming soon]. Dan Simmons’ latest novel is the near future dystopian thriller Flashback.”

E-Reads carries two masterpieces by Simmons, Phases of Gravity and Song of Kali.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about fans it’s that they are what you might call completists. That is, they’re not completely happy until they possess every single one of their favorite author’s works.

If you’re a John Norman completist you will be thrilled to know that E-reads has finished publication of every book-length work produced by John Norman over the length of his distinguished career. If there’s a gap in your library, you can now fill it by visiting John Norman’s author page and clicking on the missing books.

Having made this declaration we now have to qualify it by reminding you that John Norman has not retired. Not even close. He continues to produce magnificent new fantasies. I happen to be looking at two of them.

One is The Totems of Abydos, decades in the making. We’ll be releasing it in the spring of 2012. The other is Conspirators of Gor, volume 31 of the Gorean Saga. You’ll be hearing more about them as we come up to their publication date. We know you won’t forget. You are, after all, a John Norman Completist.

In Pock’s World, a thrilling story of adventure and suspense by master storyteller Dave Duncan, five flawed individuals must decide the fate of an entire world.

On the outskirts of the Ayne Sector sits Pock’s World. Years ago, humankind settled the planet. Now, it might or might not have been infested by humanoid aliens, hidden amongst the populace, waiting to interbreed and use humans as incubators for their parasitic spawn.

Five people are chosen to travel to the quarantined Pock’s World to find out whether it should be sterilized of all life–a ruthless priest, a scandal-seeking reporter, an ambitious politician, a bureaucrat, and a questionable billionaire. Each has his or her own agenda as to what they wish to find on that distant planet. Instead, they discover the unexpected–a web of deceit, love, politics, and religion. With very little time left, there don’t seem to be any simple answers in the complicated universe of Pock’s World.

“Entertaining, fast-moving and thoughtful SF, with engaging characters.” – S. M. Stirling

You can purchase the e-book of Pock’s World here, or click here to buy the printed version published by Edge.

Anything can happen under a Christmas Moon. Even a miracle that the Three Kings would have appreciated.

Pregnant, unwed and down on her luck, history teacher Emma Carlyle is facing the worst Christmas of her life. Needing some research for her master’s thesis on legendary Wyoming lawman J.D. McNulty, she makes a Christmas Eve drive to South Pass City, where J.D. was buried. But…

Heading home, she loses her way in a storm. After her car vanishes, she ends up in 1870, half-frozen and in labor, on the doorstep of a remote mountain cabin. When J.D. himself opens the door with a pistol in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other…well, let’s just say that sparks start flying. These two lost souls are clearly meant for each other. But there’s one problem. Emma has studied everything about J.D.–and she knows he has only a few weeks to live.

Maybe, until then Emma didn’t believe in miracles. But this is the time of the Christmas Moon , and, as we said, anything can happen.

Author Elizabeth Lane has penned a sensual time travel romance with an inspiring message that will send chills down your spine. Christmas Moon is an E-Reads original, never before published. For other Elizabeth Lane novels visit her author page.
RC

Air Force lieutenant Rick Walsh has just gotten off a twelve-hour flight from Guam at the Tucson Airport. All he wants right now is too see his girlfriend Maia and maybe have a short rest before reassignment. What Lieutenant Walsh finds instead is a month-old infant and a mystery that spans two universes.

Maia has disappeared, leaving behind her newborn, Gus, a baby with Walsh’s eyes. It seems that a disturbing number of Tucson residents have gone missing as well and the authorities don’t have a clue. As Walsh races to track down Maia and her possible kidnappers, a conspiracy unfolds as the search leads him deep into the desert and then on to someplace…else. What awaits Walsh in this other land proves sinister and dangerous, and it seems to have its eye on our world.

In Dragon Season , author Michael Cassutt weaves classic suspense and modern fantasy into a wild ride that readers won’t soon forget.

Dave Duncan fans clamoring for restoration of the middle volume of his King’s Blades trilogy will get their wish.  E-Reads has just reissued Lord of the Fire Lands 

We asked Duncan to tell us about the writing of this book, and we got far more than we bargained for when he revealed an amazing secret to us. You can read it here.

To bring you up to date, Raider and Wasp have spent five years at Ironhall studying to become Blades, expert swordsmen whose talents stand unmatched. Magic both enhances the Blades’ fighting skills and binds them in lifelong duty. But, when Raider and Wasp are selected to protect the king of Chivial himself, they refuse, an act unprecedented in the living history of the Blades.

Now on the run for their “treasonous” act, the two gifted swordsmen must escape to the Fire Lands, where pirates, monsters, and mixed allegiances wait around every corner. As old hatreds and still-fresh tragedies come to light, these young swashbucklers must confront both harsh truths from the past and a present swarming with their would-be brothers at arms seeking vengeance and intending punishment.

Dave Duncan’s Lord of the Fire Lands serves as a splendid bridge between The Gilded Chain and Sky of Swords. Engaging and complex, it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel or in combination with the rest of the trilogy. Either way, readers are in for a smart, thrilling adventure that cuts as sharp as the edge of a knife.

“Sophisticated structure and themes…will satisfy both fantasy fans looking for high adventure and those more interested in rich characterizations.” – Publisher’s Weekly.

We asked Dave Duncan to write something for us about Lord of the Fire Lands, the middle novel in his King’s Blades trilogy. When he did he revealed a secret that many readers may find incomprehensible but every professional writer will recognize.

**********************

When asked how I write, I always stress the importance of knowing the ending of a book before writing the beginning. There are exceptions, though, and Lord of the Fire Lands was certainly one of them.

In its first version, it ended with the treaty negotiations, a scene that is still there. I was working well ahead of my submission deadline back then, so I put the MS aside to marinate while I worked on something else. When I came back to it to apply a final polish, I decided that the ending was too abrupt. So I wrote some more. That didn’t work. I tried again, with the same result. And again.

At that point Radgar, who is probably the most complex character ever to emerge from my word processor, completely took over. I have had characters awaken to a life of their own and try to upstage everyone else—Katanji in “The Seventh Sword” series, for example—but none quite as vividly as Radgar did then. He dictated the ending you will now find.

“You can’t do that!” I protested. “It’s barbaric. Moreover, you are completely ruining the final book.”

“The third book is your problem,” he replied, “and I certainly am a barbarian. This is my story, and this is how it must end.”

I argued as much as I dared, but Radgar was both armed and exceedingly dangerous, as you will see. Eventually he convinced me that this was indeed how he would act. The proof was that I did not need to change anything that had happened earlier, so “his” ending was correct for his story. I didn’t approve, but I had to let it stand. I took the dog for a long walk and worked out how I could salvage the rest of the trilogy. When the hardcover came out, I received so many protests from readers that we added a warning in the mass market edition, to the effect that you could read any book in the series, but not two, or you would have to read all three.
+ + +

E-Reads’ release of Firelands plugs a hole in the first series, “Tales of the King’s Blades”. The first book, The Gilded Chain, and the third, Sky of Swords, have never been out of print.*

The second series, “Chronicles of the King’s Blades” is also available in its entirety; these three books follow the Blades’ adventures after the reign of King Ambrose: Paragon Lost, Impossible Odds, and The Jaguar Knights.**

I also wrote a trilogy of YA novellas, “The King’s Daggers”, which E-Reads has re-issued as a single novel, The Monster War. That fills a story gap in the first series. So now you have all seven to look forward to.

PS: The Blades have been translated into at least seven other languages. Take a look at the cover of the French edition of The Gilded Chain and you will see how they struck a chord in the land of d’Artagnan.

Dave Duncan

November 23, 2011

* The Gilded Chain and Sky of Swords are available as HarperCollins e-books.

** Also available as HarperCollins e-books

Relatives by George Alec Effinger

Ernest Weinraub, Ernst Weinraub, Ernst Weintraub—three slightly different versions of the same name, the same man. Each incarnation of Weintraub/Weinraub inhabits a slightly different version of our world: Ernest Weinraub lives in a maddeningly overcrowded New York, a hellish near-future world where sanity and life are imperiled by a nightmare of pollution, overpopulation and manic power games played by the six despotic men who rule Earth; Ernst Weinraub is a poet and an intellectual who lives in a decadent world in which America has never been colonized, Europe and Asia are crumbling, and Africa has only one populated city, a world where drink, drugs and sex reduce human being to little more than animals and a man feels himself being sucked under with all the others; Ernst Weintraub, an idealistic revolutionary, lives in a world in which the Allies lost the First World War to “Jermany” and people are forced into a terror-ridden underground existence as tyranny rides roughshod over man and civilization.

The single factor uniting these startlingly different worlds is Weinraub/Weintraub. But even he is molded and distorted, it would appear, by the various environments and societies, and his problems seem entirely different in each of the three worlds. Yet, as the book progresses, both he and the reader learn that neither time nor place matters—every person must sooner or later make certain basic decisions.

Relatives is a novel about personality and about duty, chiefly one’s duty to the state. The Weinraub/Weintraub variations are carefully orchestrated so that each tells the same story while presenting vastly varying reasons for a single outcome. Once having experienced these three powerful visions of an individual’s interaction with society, one is compelled to consider, and reconsider, the foundations of moral and social responsibility.

Lots more Effingers in e-book where this one came from. Click here to see them.

Though agents and editors are expected to be enthusiastic about books they’re involved with, a steady diet of hyperbole can elicit tedium and skepticism. Of a particularly partisan agent an editor once sneered “He thinks every book he handles is Moby Dick.” For that reason, as regular readers of this column know, it has to be a truly prodigious book to make me depart from my natural caution.

Steven R. Boyett’s Mortality Bridge is a prodigious book.

Channeling Orpheus, Dante and Faust, Mortality Bridge is a stunning, brutal—and surprisingly funny—quest across a Hieronymous Bosch landscape of myth, music, and mayhem; and across an inner terrain of addiction, damnation, and redemption.

Cory Doctorow writes: “Mortality Bridge is a gutwrenching novel about loss and redemption, deserved guilt and betrayal, with an antihero whose quest is at once the stuff of cracking adventure stories and a tragic tale of facing up to one’s own cowardice and weakness…Niko’s race through Hell is one of the greatest supernatural adventure stories of recent memory, surpassing Niven and Pournelle’s classic Inferno (itself a very good novel on a similar premise, even if it does turn on the power of Hell to redeem one of history’s great monsters). It is not a mere allegory about sin and redeption, cowardice and nobility: it’s also a damned good story, which sets it apart from almost all existential allegories.”

Hugo award-winner John Scalzi writes: “Luminously tragic, darkly funny, and deeply moving, all in turns and sometimes all at once. Boyett is one of the very few writers who will make you eager to go into Hell, and not worry about whether you return.”

In a starred review Publishers Weekly declared: “Dark, grotesque, and eerie, Boyett’s behemoth reimagining of Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld blends Faust and Dante with Greek myth… Through unusual turns of phrase, violent and bloody imagery, heartrending introspection, and mythic tone, Boyett (Elegy Beach) explores themes of betrayal, redemption, and personal sacrifice in a tortured landscape of bedlam and pandemonium ”

Fantasy Literature reviewed Mortality Bridge in these terms:”Brilliant. An unforgettable tale of one man’s journey to Hell. The writing is filled with vivid sensory detail. I was pushed to my limits by this one. Immeasurably sad. Moments of transcendent joy and beauty and compassion. A very well-written book that made me feel intense emotion. I recommend it.”

And an Amazon reviewer wrote, awarding five stars, declared: “Mortality Bridge is the Steven R. Boyett book I’d been waiting for. I thought that book was coming last year when I heard a long-awaited sequel to Boyett’s wonderful fantasy novel, Ariel, was coming out. That sequel, Elegy Beach, was good but less intense than the original, like Boyett was trying to rekindle energy for a world that had enthralled him almost 30 years earlier. Like Nietzsche, I love only what a man has written with his blood, which Ariel was but Elegy Beach came a bit short of.

“But Mortality Bridge is the best Boyett so far. It has all the wonderful imagination in its plot as Ariel had, but it is far better written, simply beautiful prose. Boyett fuses two powerful myths, Faust and Orpheus, and sets them in modern times. Like Faust, the rock musician main character Niko has made a deal with the devil that costs him his beloved girlfriend’s life, and like Orpheus he descends into hell to retrieve her. The hell he describes is ghastly and spellbinding, and his journey through it has you turning pages faster than anything Stephen King ever wrote. The passage through hell, which constitutes most of the novel, is so vividly described, so mesmerizing, that I could visualize it as clearly as if it were a movie, and a great movie it would be.

“The best thing about the book, which raises it above even Ariel, is that it is the product of not only an intelligent but now a fully matured mind able to grasp the metaphysical implications of its profound subject matter. It takes on questions of immortality, the nature of the psyche, the forces that may or may not govern the universe and treats each with the astute wisdom it deserves. It seldom insists on any answers to these questions; rather, like all our best teachers, Boyett leads us to deeper questions. The finest book I’ve read in a long time.”

E-Reads is publisher of the e-book of Ariel, Boyett’s stunning debut novel.

Richard Curtis