A new Karen Lord novel is always a special occasion for me. This one did not disappoint. It is quite a complicated and thoughtful book, as I’ve come to expect from Karen. If that’s the sort of thing that appeals to you, then you’ll enjoy this one too. Further details are available in my review.
Worldcon is approaching fast, and The Green Man’s Foe is officially launching on August 15th, the first day of Worldcon. We should, barring disasters, have paper copies for sale at both Worldcon and Eurocon. One of my current tasks is to work out how many copies to have shipped to Ireland.
The convention sale prices for the book will be €10/£10 for the paperback and €15/£15 for the hardcover. They’ll probably be about 1:1 by then. If you want to pay in US$, talk to Kevin or myself.
If you want to be sure of getting copies, please email me and let me know how many and which format(s). If you want copies of The Green Man’s Heir as well, let me know.
The book will be available from Francesco Verso’s Future Fiction company in the Dealers’ Room. I’ll be on the stand as much as I can. While you are there I suggest you pick up a copy of his new anthology, World Science Fiction #1: Visions to Preserve the Biodiversity of the Future, which contains stories from authors from all over the world. He’s also having a launch party (Saturday, 17 August, 12:30-13:30, Warehouse 2 (WH2), first floor, Point Square) but I won’t be there as I’m being interviewed for Scott Edelman’s fabulous Eating the Fantastic podcast.
I will also carry some books around with me, so you may be able to get a copy at one of my programme items. Juliet may do the same. I don’t know as yet whether she will have a signing, but I don’t know if you are allowed to sell books at a signing.
Francesco and I will also be at Eurocon in Belfast so if you are only going to that convention you can pick up there book there. Be warned that we may try to sell you a pre-support for the Fiuggi Eurocon bid, which you will want to buy because a) it is near Rome, and b) the 2021 Worldcon will be in the USA which may be an unsafe destination for many of us.
And finally a reminder that you can pre-order the ebook from either Amazon or Kobo. Those links are for the UK stores, but the book is available internationally.
Here’s a piece of news I have been sitting on excitedly for a few days now. The Green Man’s Heir is a finalist in the Best Fantasy Novel category at the British Fantasy Awards. Naturally I think this is thoroughly deserved. Juliet is a great writer. She was a finalist in the BSFA Awards last year in the Non-Fiction category (for an essay in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, a book which won Non-Fiction in the BFS Awards), but this is her first major fiction nod since 2000 when The Thief’s Gamble placed 5th in the Locus Award for First Novel. This has been way too long in coming.
Congratulations are also due to Ben Baldwin whose magnificent cover has played a huge part in the book’s success. And to editor, Toby Selwyn, because everyone needs an editor and Toby certainly made the book better.
I am, of course, irrationally pleased that a book that draws its inspiration from a legend of the wild wood is up for the Robert Holdstock Award.
This is the first time that any book I have published has been up for a major award. I am absolutely delighted about it. It shows that even the smallest presses can produce great fiction. And more importantly it shows that the original premise of Wizard’s Tower — the idea that previously successful writers whose sales have taken a dip are not over the hill and can produce great work again if properly supported — is indeed correct. Mainstream publishers please take note.
Obviously I will be in Glasgow for FantasyCon. This will involve a certain amount of rearranging schedules because I was supposed to be elsewhere that weekend. But somehow I have to be at that award banquet.
Preparations for the publication of The Green Man’s Foe continue apace. I’m hoping to get proof copies of the paper editions later this week, but in the meantime you can pre-order the ebook editions via the following links:
Pre-orders aren’t a huge issue for me because I’m not going to be making any publisher decisions based on them. Nor do I expect to see the book in best seller charts, or indeed stocked in bookstores. However, they are very important for Juliet because mainstream publishers look at those figures and if they see a book they don’t know from an author they do then they ought to pay attention. And of course Amazon will take notice. Discoverability is everything on Amazon, and a large number of pre-orders will help the book hugely when it becomes available.
What does matter to me is how many copies to take to Ireland. I don’t want to run out early in Worldcon, and equally I don’t want to be stuck with a large pile of books to take home. So I’m looking into possible ways that I could allow people to buy the book for collection at Worldcon or Eurocon.
Earlier this year the Dublin Worldcon asked members to sumbit suggestions of good LGBT+ representation in SF&F as part of a project with Dublin Pride. That list has now been published and you can find it here (Google Docs spreadsheet). There’s a lot I could add (no Cat Valente!), but that’s my fault for being too busy to contribute. On the other hand there are books there I hadn’t heard of, which is an excellent indicator of the state of the field because years ago I could have named pretty much all of them very quickly.
As This is How you Lose the Time War is now available in shops I figured it was a good time to stick my interview with Amal El-Mohtar up on Salon Futura. This is mostly what went out on Women’s Outlook, minus the music, but all in one easy chunk. My review of the book is here. Enjoy!
The winner of the 2019 Arthur C Clark Award was announced last night. I am absolutely delighted that the prize went to Tade Thompson. I’ve been telling people about Rosewater for over 2 years, and of course it won the Nommo in 2017. It was also a Campbell Award finalist in 2017 (that’s the SF novel award, not the new writer one). Sometimes it can take a book a while to break into the big time.
The upside of this is that I have a couple of interviews with Tade in which he talks about the book.
This one is from 2017. The sound quality is a bit poor, but there’s more about Rosewater in it.
This one is from FantasyCon last year.
The nice people at Oxford University Press sent me a review copy of their new edtion of The Poetic Edda, as translated by Professor Carolyne Larrington. There’s not a huge amount I can say about the text, partly because the stories are so familiar, and partly because I’m in no position to comment on the quality of the translation, save to say that Prof. Larrington is an acknowledged expert in the field.
So instead I have chosen to focus in on a few small bits of the text where we have evidence for queer identities in Norse society. Naturally this involves Loki rather a lot. Again I’m not really in a position to talk authoritatively about translations, but I do have views on what we can and cannot say about ancient societies.
All of which means that the end result is less of a review and more of a short essay on queer Vikings. If you have been wondering about all this gender fluid stuff about Loki in comics, or in Rick Riordan’s books, I can point you at some of the evidence for that intepretation. If that is your cup of tea, you can find the review here.
When considering when to do a cover reveal for The Green Man’s Foe, Juliet and I decided that the Summer Solstice would be an ideal time. The Green Man, after all, is deeply connected to the natural world. And frankly, he’s going to need a bit of sunshine to help deal with this guy.
When you do a good job for someone, there’s a strong chance they’ll offer you more work or recommend you elsewhere. So Daniel Mackmain isn’t particularly surprised when his boss’s architect brother asks for his help on a historic house renovation in the Cotswolds.
Except Dan’s a dryad’s son, and he soon realises there’s a whole lot more going on. Ancient malice is stirring and it has made an alliance in the modern world. The Green Man expects Dan to put an end to this threat. Seeing the danger, Dan’s forced to agree. The problem is he’s alone in a place he doesn’t know, a hundred miles or more away from any allies of his own.
A modern fantasy rooted in the ancient myths and folklore of the British Isles.
It is, of course, another genius piece of art by Ben Baldwin. Juliet and Toby-the-Editor are just putting the final touches to the text. And when they are done I get to do the layouts. I’m still planning on having the book available at Worldcon. Once I have everything I need in my paws I will put the book up for pre-order.
Last week I ran an interview with Amal El-Mohtar on my radio show. The main reason for talking to her was the fabulous new novella that she and Max Gladstone have coming out any day now. There has been a lot of excitement about this book, and having read it I can see why.
I should give thanks here to Jo Fletcher Books for sending me an ARC. I don’t often get them these days, and generally only when I specifically ask for them from people I know. And I only ask for books when I am pretty sure that I will love what I get.
If the review appeals, and you haven’t yet listened to the interview, you can find it via the link here for another week or two. After that I will put it on Salon Futura where it can stay for as long as I’m around to pay for the hosting. This digital world is so strange. On the one had we have access to vast quantities of stuff, and on the other much of that stuff will vanish in a puff of electrons once the creator is no longer paying for it to be available. Take backups, people, and give them to others for safekeeping.
Hmm, where did that come from? Too much thinking about time, I suspect.
Still, before I start getting maudlin, here’s the link to the review.
Slowly but surely I am catching up with the book reviews. The latest is of Kameron Hurley’s very smart military SF novel, The Light Brigade. This is a book that is very much aware of its place the the history of space war novels. If you have read The Forever War and Starship Troopers you will pick up references.
It can’t have been an easy novel to write, with the lead character switching back and fore through time as the story progresses. My congratulations to Hurley and her editor for keeping it all together. If you want to learn more about the book, click here.
Last March I happily announced that The Thief’s Gamble by Juliet E. McKenna had become the first book from Wizard’s Tower to reach 1,000 sales. I was really pleased by that. It had taken 6 years to get to that point.
Sales of that book are now fast closing in on 1,500, because Juliet’s stock has risen significantly among readers. That’s because of The Green Man’s Heir, which I can now happily announce has sold more than 10,000 copies.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect that Wizard’s Tower would ever publish a book that was that popular. The additional good news is that I have just read the sequel, The Green Man’s Foe, and it is a real page-turner. Juliet is already posting snippets of it on her Twitter feed, and we’ll have more news about it later in the month. I am expecting to have the book available at Worldcon.
I’d been hoping to get a few book reviews published while I was at Ã…con, but I was having way too much fun at the convention. Maybe now I can catch up.
I’ll start with the latest book in Tim Pratt’s lovely space opera series. I very much enjoyed The Wrong Stars last year, and The Dreaming Stars did not let me down.
What I love most about this series is that it hits a whole bunch of buttons with regard to diversity and representation, but still manages to be proper space opera as well. Our heroes get to go up against very serious science fictional threats, and deal with them in the approved manner.
The review contains some spoilers for The Wrong Stars, but hopefully nothing that will spoil your enjoyment of the second book. The third book is due out towards the end of this year and I’m very much looking forward to it. (And I wish you could get the books more easily. British bookstores do stock some Angry Robot books, but generally not Tim’s, which is very poor of them.)
To read my review, click here.
Hello from the Ã…land Islands. I’m not exactly on holiday, because email chases me everywhere. Also I have two programme items at the con and I have the charity walk for One25 to finish. But I am doing my best to have some downtime.
Thus far there has been a lot of travel, including the now-legendary boat trip from Turku to Mariehamn. I have also done my first programme thing, which was chatting with this year’s Guest of Honour, Amal El-Mohtar, about steampunk. But mostly I see to have been walking, sleeping and eating.
One interesting development this year is that Silja Lines now have a selection of beers brewed especially for sale on the ferries. I have picked up a couple of porters to try. Also dinner this evening was at Dino’s (Achipelacon attendees may remember it as the place with portraits of dead rock stars) in part because they are one of the few places that stocks Stallhagen’s Baltic Porter.
I don’t have a lot more to add at this point except to say that This is How You Lose the Time War is brilliant and there will be a review posted soon.
There aren’t many authors whose latest book I will grab and read immediately. Emma Newman is one. It has taken me a little while to get around to writing the review, but we are there now.
As I explain in the review, we have got to the point in the Planetfall series where it is hard to talk about the latest book without giving spoilers for the previous ones. If you haven’t read any of these books yet, you are missing out, and should catch up before reading on. If you are up to date, my review of Atlas Alone is here.
I used to hate reviewing books before they were available in the shops. My readers would only get angry with me when they discovered that this great story I had told them about was still weeks away from being available.
These days things are different. The book trade, for reasons best known to itself, has become obsessed with pre-orders. If a book doesn’t sell enough copies before it is actually available, it is deemed a failure almost regardless of how many copies it eventually sells. Which is why review copies are now getting made available months in advance.
I got a copy of the new Guy Gavriel Kay novel back in February. I wrote a review immediately on finishing it, but I have saved it until now to post it. I understand it is due out in the UK on May 14th, so you still have time to pre-order it, but you don’t have too long to wait to get your own copy.
It is a new Guy Gavriel Kay novel. You know you want it. But just in case you need convincing, or you want to go down the rabbit hole of Renaissance Italy history before reading it, my review is here.
The Green Man’s Heir has been on sale at Amazon UK all month. A month-long deal is never going to reach the intensity of sales of a single-day sale, so we won’t be #1 in all science fiction and fantasy again, but the book is currently #1 in Folklore, which is nothing to be sneezed at because it gets us a fancy ribbon on the sale page and more exposure.
It looks like the book will sell around 900 copies in the month, which will take us very close to 10,000 lifetime sales. I’m very pleased with that. And it bodes well for the sequel which is well underway and should be available at Worldcon.
And this, folks, is the sort of thing that can happen when you show faith in a brilliant writer like Juliet E. McKenna. Mainstream publishers please take note.
Also, if you are in the UK and still don’t have a copy of The Green Man’s Heir, go get one now while the sale is still on.
There’s so much good SF&F being published at the moment. It is almost as if the universe has noticed the void left by the death of Gene Wolfe and is rushing to fill it. There’s no one of Wolfe’s class that I have noticed yet, but there are some very good debut authors.
I have had to be a little restrained in talking about Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire because too much enthusing over how cleverly she uses an SF idea to set up the plot would be spoilery. I want you all to have the pleasure of working it out for yourselves. You can read what I have felt safe to talk about here.
Few things get a book up to the top of my To Read pile quicker than it being by Ian McDonald. I’ve been waiting eagerly for the final installment in the Luna series for some time. Obviously it had to be out in time for Worldcon, where he is the Author Guest of Honour. So it is available now (sort of). If you want to see what I made of it, click here.
I get all sorts of odd PR emails from publishers, many of which are of no interest to me whatsoever. This one was different. I grew up on Asterix books, and while I know they are not quite the same these days as there has been turnover in the creative team, a new one is always of interest.
The book will be called Asterix and the Chieftan’s Daughter. The basic plot is that Vercingetorix, the famous Gallic leader who defied Caesar, had a daughter. She has now come to the little village in Amorica. The blurb doesn’t explain why, other than that she’s on the run from Caesar, but I’m assuming that she will want Asterix and co to support her in a rebellion against the Romans.
The book is due for publication on October 24th. Full press release here.