Good review of The Pattern Scars

Popcorn Reads liked Caitlin Sweet's The Pattern Scars, writing: "The Pattern Scars sweeps the reader up... This is not light reading by a long shot but it’s worth every minute of it if you’re into dark fantasy."

Read the review!

The Pattern Scars is now available!

10 Questions with Claude Lalumière

Writing about Writing sat down with Claude Lalumière, author of The Door to Lost Pages and Objects of Worship. He offers a fascinating insight into his writing style, his position on sexuality in fiction, and his Lost Myths project.

Check out the interview here!

Buy Lost Pages or Objects of Worship!

Short-but-sweet review of The Thief of Broken Toys

"Lebbon has created a heartbreaking story with The Thief of Broken Toys. The loss and longing of Ray are painted so adeptly that I felt that heaviness in my chest, tears threatening to show themselves. Very subtle in its horror, but it is indeed there. One of the best, I’ve read this year." - John Boden, Shock Totem

The review is here. (third review on the page)

Our page on The Thief of Broken Toys is here.

Rope of Thorns is "everything you hope for in a sequel"

The Turned Brain loved Gemma Files' latest Hexslinger novel: "Really 'Rope of Thorns' is everything you hope for in a sequel, but so rarely get. The plot is advanced, a greater understanding of characters is granted, new and interesting characters are introduced. Files' prose remains a delight to read, the cadence of her sentences captures the wild west setting perfectly, and the images she paints are a fascinating mix of frontier practicality and magic bred surrealism."

Read it here.

Order A Rope of Thorns here.

Chimerascope on Canadian Science Fiction Review

"Reading Smith’s stories is like taking a series of guided tours through strange places — you don’t expect any bombshells to be dropped on you but you do expect to see something new and memorable. Chimerascope delivers that in spades and is well worth the price of admission." - Helen Michaud, The Canadian Science Fiction Review

Read the review here.

Learn more about Chimerascope here.

SpecFic Colloquium Blog: Daniel Rabuzzi

“Benedick: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

Beatrice: A bird of my tongue is better
than a beast of yours.”

-- Much Ado About Nothing, (Act I, scene 1: lines 138-140), William Shakespeare, c. 1600.

Fairy tales, myth, legend and other traditional story genres have long provided women (almost universally it seems, though that hypothesis needs to be tested) with subtle and subversive vehicles for self-expression.

If men controlled and commanded the power of words in the front room­―consider, for instance, the etymology of “parliament”­―women crafted a contrapuntal commentary in the back room. The counterpoint continues to this day in modern speculative fiction, not least in the many explicitly feminist retellings of traditional tales of the marvelous. The power and appeal of the old stories as ways for women to contest male speech or to reshape discourse altogether seem undiminished (if anything, they may be growing). Most intriguing, woman-centered fairy tale themes and motifs thrive today not only in written form but influence, often strongly, popular music and the visual arts.

Since the 1960s, feminist and/or post-modernist scholars have studied vigorously and with great insight both the original fairy tales and myths of the world and literary adaptations of the same. See work by, for instance, Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, Steven Swann Jones, Marina Warner, Cristina Bacchilegia, Kay Stone, Vanessa Joosen, Valerie Paradiz, Jack Zipes, Daryl Cumber Dance, Donald Haase, Helen Pilinovsky, Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Lewis Seifert, Marcelle Maistre Welch. (I will include a bibliography in my full-length SpecFic Colloquium paper). Their findings have become a core part of feminist theories of reading, poetics and literature generally, and have―somewhat more tentatively―­been connected to the work of scholars exploring issues of race, ethnicity, colonialism and class. Among many others, see work by Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar, Elaine Showalter, Patricia Meyer Spacks, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Valerie Lee, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Susan Sellers, Toi Derricotte, Sheila Rowbotham, Cheryl Wall, Margaret Ezell, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

Over the past few decades, writers of many stripes have continued to revise and re-fashion fairy tales (and/or folkloric elements more generally) to make feminist points, in a project that goes back at least to Marie-Jeanne Lheritier de Villandon’s “Les Enchantements de l’eloquence” and Madame d’Aulnoy’s Histoire d’Hypolite in the 1690s. To name a handful from a long list:

Nalo Hopkinson, Sonya Taaffe, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, A.S. Byatt, Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Tanith Lee, Angela Carter, Terri Windling, Kate Bernheimer, Theodora Goss, Joan Aiken, Virginia Hamilton, Robin McKinley, Ellen Kushner, Cat Valente, Margaret Atwood, Emma Donoghue, Erzebet YellowBoy, Nnedi Okorafor, Patricia McKillip, Malinda Lo, Theodora Goss, Bharati Mukherjee, Jeanette Winterson, Delia Sherman, Helen Oyeyemi, Gail Carson Levine, and Margo Lanagan.

Even when folklore or fairy tale do not frame or focus a modern work of fiction, themes from folkloric traditions crop up in “mainstream” works more frequently than is sometimes acknowledged. Toni Morrison’s work comes to mind, and that of Dacia Maraini, to name just two. Modern poetry is also full of fairy tale references, even that published far from the usual fantasy genre outposts.

“Imaginary gardens with real toads in them” fascinate so much that a growing number of journals and sites devote themselves to the sub-genres: The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts (founded 1987), SurLaLune Fairy Tales (1998), Cabinet des Fees (2005), Fairy Tale Review (2005), Goblin Fruit (2006), Enchanted Conversation (2010). And then there are the anthologies, above all the Windling & Ellen Datlow series begun in 1993 with Snow White, Blood Red.

At the SpecFic Colloquium we will talk about the resurgent interest in fairy tale and myth, specifically the desire to write and read them “against the grain.” I particularly want to learn more about traditions other than the various European ones and about current literary practice that is not Eurocentric.

Most of all: I want to explore how the renewed excitement for fairy tales―and especially the subversive elements of fairy tales (pace fans of Disney)―­has spread into other popular media, in particular music. Just as women have (re)shaped the fairy tale canon on the page over the past several centuries, they appear to be doing the same in the musical realm.

Male composers have freely used motifs from fairy tales and myths to create some of the dominant pieces in the Western canon. Think of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Haydn’s The Fishwives and The World on the Moon, Mahler’s Wunderhorn sequence, Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird and Princess Maleine, Stravinsky’s The Firebird, and­―towering over them all in its attempt to produce a Gesamtkunstwerk, a myth updated to encompass and overwhelm all other works―Wagner’s Ring.

In the past few decades, female musicians have been (re)claiming those themes, reworking them into works of their own, often in opposition to the dominant male canon, sometimes (most subversive of all!) indifferent to the male perspective­―creating music that is not defined or definable in terms of male categories.

Working in and around a wide variety of musical forms, and with a wide sweep of perspectives, the following artists nevertheless appear to share an underlying approach in terms of deploying fairy tale and mythic motifs in their music: Angelique Kidjo, Bjork, Missy Elliott, Grace Jones, Enya, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, Rihanna, Kimberly Perry, Mediaeval Baebes, Alison Krauss, The Dixie Chicks, Anoushka Shankar, Goldfrapp. Yes, an idiosyncratic list. . .very far from complete. . .and begging to be queried and to be added to!

Surely one major impulse came from the British Neo-Folk movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, led by Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, Annie Haslam of Renaissance, and Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span. Stevie Nicks further propelled Faerie onto the concert stage and into popular music (and I think Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle did the same, each in her own inimitable style). Sometimes the fairy tale overlay is explicit, self-referential even, as with many of those working the (all too often twee) Celtic Twilight angle. Other times it is less self-conscious, and more oblique.

I will end this teaser with album cover images to bolster my suggestion about the inroads of fairy tale into modern pop music, ­and to spark the conversation when we meet in Toronto in October.

See you there and then!

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The 2nd Toronto SpecFic Colloquium will take place on Saturday October 15, 2011 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Register now at http://chiseries.ticketleap.com/specfic-colloquium/.

***

Daniel A. Rabuzzi's first novel The Choir Boats, put out by Chizine Publications, debuted at WorldCon 2009 in Montreal. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Shimmer, Sybil's Garage, Chizine, Abyss & Apex, Mannequin Envy, Goblin Fruit, and Scheherezade's Bequest.

Daniel majored in the study of folklore and fairytales as an undergraduate at Harvard, with a minor in comparative lit and history. He spent two years on fellowships at the University of Oslo's Institute for Folklore Studies, collecting oral histories in Norway and in England (with results published in journals of folklore in the U.K., Sweden and Denmark). He earned a master's at The Fletcher School at Tufts, and then a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in early modern German gender and cultural history. In all, Daniel spent eight years in Norway, Germany and France. He is married to the woodcarver and artist Deborah Mills, who also illustrated his book. They live in New York City.

In Spring 2012 CZP will publish The Choir Boats sequel, entitled The Indigo Pheasant.

SpecFic Colloquium Blog: Peter Watts

Modern mythologies, you say.

Forget the usual suspects. Forget gods and yeti and the other, more overt fantasies that clog bookstore shelves where hard-SF used to be back in better days. Forget Lost and X-Files (ah, I see you have already—good, good). At least try to forget that absurd paradigm that places "people of faith"—those who worship magical sky fairies and believe they'll go to Space Disneyland when they die—on an exalted rung of the human hierarchy, rather than sending them off for therapy with the other nutbars. Forget the good ol' days the good ol' boys from the Tea Party reminisce about: the times before gummint regulation strangled Murrikan innovation with all those nanny-state laws about clean water and child labor, back when Mexicans stayed on the right side of the border and every nigger knew his place.

Forget "Change We Can Believe In". The only change you can really believe in takes place in very small increments, takes thousands of generations to get noticed, and was pegged by a dude called Darwin back in 1859.

They're all worthy myths, if by "myth" you mean a fictional construct that resonates so strongly the gut just knows it speaks to some metaphorical Truth even if its factual claims are batshit crazy. They all benefit someone, somewhere; some even increase the reproductive fitness of whole societies (generally by uniting those societies in a bloodthirsty campaign to eradicate the competition, but nobody said fitness was pretty). Still, in the grand scheme of things, they're pretty small potatoes. Religion may be ubiquitous across the planet, but the fact that believers keep killing each other over whether the messiah wants us to cast away our sandals or gather sandals together suggests a certain lack of commonality. Lost and The Obama Administration stopped resonating the moment it became obvious they didn't have a clue what they were doing, and their appeal was always pretty limited anyway.

You want to dig your teeth into a real myth? Something that has 100% market penetration across the whole damn species, a myth as powerful now as it was before we even were a species? Here's one: the myth that there isn't a big honking hole in the middle of your visual field.

Here's another myth: the sky is blue. In fact the sky is colorless; there's actually no such thing as color outside the imaginations of human minds.

And another: that you have even the slightest control over your own actions, that you are anything but mech made of meat.

The fact is, pretty much everything we perceive is a myth; it feels real, we know it's real, and the fact that our gut "knowledge" happens to contradict the laws of physics gives us way less trouble than it really should.

I'll be going into this a bit on October 15th. I'd invite you to join me — even reassure you that the whole talk won't be a complete downer, that I plan on leavening the nihilism with the occasional joke — but really, there'd be no point.

I have no more influence over your actions than you do.

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The 2nd Toronto SpecFic Colloquium will take place on Saturday October 15, 2011 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Register now at http://chiseries.ticketleap.com/specfic-colloquium/.

***

Peter Watts (www.rifters.com) is an awkward hybrid of biologist, science-fiction author, and (according to Homeland Security) tewwowist. Described by the Globe & Mail as one of the best hard-sf authors alive, his work has been translated into a dozen languages. His first novel (Starfish) was a NY Times Notable Book, while his sixth (Blindsight)— a philosophical rumination on the nature of consciousness with an unhealthy focus on space vampires — has become a core text in such diverse undergraduate courses as "The Philosophy of Mind" and "Introduction to Neuropsychology". It also made the final ballot for a shitload of domestic genre awards including the Hugo, winning exactly none of them (although it has, for some reason, won multiple awards overseas). This may reflect a certain critical divide regarding Watts' work in general; his bipartite novel behemoth, for example, was praised by Publishers Weekly as an "adrenaline-charged fusion of Clarke's The Deep Range and Gibson's Neuromancer" and simultaneously decried by Kirkus as "utterly repellent … horrific porn". (Watts happily embraces the truth of both views.)

Watts' 2009 novelette "The Island" was reprinted a dozen times and finally won the damn Hugo, possibly because fandom wanted to give DHS the finger. "The Things" seems to be racking up the hits as well: an unabashed piece of fanfic which is nonetheless sitting in several Best-of-Year collections, and has already won a couple of awards. His most recent novel (Crysis: Legion) once again transcends boundaries, elevating the Video Game Tie-In to the giddy status of "not-horrible potboiler." (His sidequel to Blindsight is currently overdue.) Both Watts and his cat have appeared in the prestigious journal Nature.

SpecFic Colloquium Blog: Mike Carey

I confess to being out of my depth when I talk about myth. But I think most people are. Certainly most of the definitions that come down to us seem to be inadequate. Some anthropologists argue that myths necessarily deal with the doings of gods and superhuman figures. Others suggest that myths describe the creation of the world or the nature of primary natural forces, or that they justify transient or arbitrary social orders by rooting them in an ancient and immemorial past.

But for any rule, it’s easy to think of a dozen exceptions: which suggests to me that there’s something wrong with the rules. Ruskin’s definition – that myth is “a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first” – is at least honest about its own inadequacy.

But we believe we know a myth when we see one, and we’re usually right. There are tell-tale signs. One of them is timelessness: myths usually tell of a time before the memory of anyone living, and before the records of any human culture. Another is persistence: myths survive because they’re tenacious. Often, they originate in societies that have no written language, but then are transmitted through many generations until finally a culture comes into being which can capture them in a permanent record–although we suspect that by that time, the original stories may mean something different to those recording them than the meanings they held for their unknown originators.

From certain angles, at least, all of this seems to be a long way away from the stories told in modern fantasies–but I think there’s a continuity, or at least a very promising and telling set of correspondences, with my own work and with the work of many of the fantasists I love best. Our stories aren’t myths by any regular definition, but maybe they serve some of the same functions as myths and are best understood in the light of that tradition.

The talk I’m going to deliver at the symposium takes its title from a poem by Wallace Stevens, Some Friends from Pascagoula, which both begs the listener for a story and at the same time provides the story that it’s asking for. “Speak of the dazzling wings” is a command that obeys itself. And myths, I think, are the stories that enact themselves–the stories that happen all over again, or for the first time, or both, in the very act of being told. I think that may turn out to be one of their functions–to take us out of our own belated time into a dawn time that’s also a mental state.

I’m still in the process of putting my messy ideas together, but I hope to refer to Lord Dunsany, China Mieville, Italo Calvino, Gene Wolfe, George Orwell and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need all the help I can get.

I’m going to take a crack at R.D. Laing, too. His introduction to his own extended essay, The Politics of Experience, begins with the assertion that “Few books today are forgivable.” I want to try to prove that the books we lovers of sci-fi, fantasy and horror adhere to and write are among those few.

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The 2nd Toronto SpecFic Colloquium will take place on Saturday October 15, 2011 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Register now at http://chiseries.ticketleap.com/specfic-colloquium/.

***

Mike Carey was born in 1959 in Liverpool, England, where both his parents worked in a bread factory and Mike "got [his] first glimpse of hell." He began writing the Eisner-nominated Lucifer monthly -- a story about the devil's quest for autonomy in a deterministic universe -- for DC/Vertigo in 1999 after working on several projects for Caliber Comics and the British the sci-fi anthology 2000 AD. Lucifer has been described as "a work of genius in the dark fantasy genre" and "the best fantasy comic around." Other writing credits include Hellblazer, Batman: Gotham Knights, Flinch, Sandman Presents, My Faith in Frankie for DC/Vertigo, and Ultimate Elektra for Marvel, and the Felix Castor series. In the introduction to the 2001 collection Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway, Neil Gaiman describes Mike Carey's stories as "...elegantly told, solidly written" and Carey himself as "...easily one of the half-dozen best writers of mainstream comics and climbing."

SpecFic Colloquium Blog: Matt Moore

On the subject of modern mythologies, my first thought was the term is a contradiction. "Mythologies" implies ancient religions—tales of ancient cultures' pantheons of gods that convey lessons on right and wrong, identity, why the world is how it is. But in modern times, what stories do we have? There are folks tales or favourable interpretations of history, but a few myths do not make a mythology.

Giving this subject more thought, however, I see that our modern age is in fact rife with mythologies, full of pantheons of heroes and villains.
Sports fans recall "glory days" of their teams, the roster full of offensive dynamos or impassable defensive player with near-superhuman abilities. Hard done by towns stick by their hard done by sports teams, regardless of their record, with near-religious devotion. And fans of rival teams argue with the religious fervour of true believers.

Professional wrestling takes mythologies to another level. Two wrestlers begin a rivalry, but unite against a common foe and forge a powerful friendship. (Gilgamesh and Enkidu anyone?) All the while, fans gravitate toward heroes or villains based on traits they admire or emulate—sportsmanship, bravado, mercy, vanity. And these careers can last for decades, forging long, complex stories.

Comics are modern mythology due to both the pantheon of characters and the devotion of fans. The committed track the histories of characters with the fervor of biblical scholars, able to tell you if Jason Todd ever met Gentleman Ghost and rising a cry of heresy if an off-hand comment contradicts an event from 15 years ago. Unless, like the Great Flood, some crisis (or "Crisis") wiped the slate clean to start over again.

Science fiction and fantasy universes, like Star Trek and Star Wars, present mythologies growing more complicated with each new episode, film, novel, comic or game. Fans discuss the canonical authority—a religious concept—of each medium. Is the Dark Horse or Marvel version of Star Wars accepted as correct in the event of a conflict? That is to say nothing of the near-religious rivalry between these two groups. If violence was as tolerated today as in ancient times, I have no doubt blood would be spilled at many science fiction conventions as Star Wars and Star Trek fans face off, each declaring the other as heretic.

Yet this all begs the question: Why? In ancient times, why did so many tales—of Thor battling Jörmungandr, Zeus' conquests, the various incarnations of the sun god Ra—come about? Looking at them, we see tales of morality, caution, identity. Lessons to entertain, explain the supernatural and reinforce cultural norms. What's more, they were interesting.

Western monotheistic religions are no less worthy of study or interest, and certainly contain lessons of morality, but with a smaller cast of characters. Perhaps as a people we need large, complex cast of heroes, villains and everything in between so we can align ourselves with one. This allows us to be a part of something larger than ourselves, but still consider ourselves special and distinct. In the past, cults and sects arose to worship different deities—sometimes the lesser known ones. Today, there are those who extol the virtues of Guy Gardner over Hal Jordan or proudly sport Aura Sing costumes.

And such large pantheons full of heroes, villains and everything in between reinforces the notion that the world is not as clear-cut as good and evil.

With electronic communication making it easier for tales to be told, I have no doubt more and more mythologies will arise, be debated and either grow or fall. Just like in ancient times. My hope is they provide us with comfort and a sense of belonging in such a large world.

***

The 2nd Toronto SpecFic Colloquium will take place on Saturday October 15, 2011 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Register now at http://chiseries.ticketleap.com/specfic-colloquium/.

***

Matt Moore' short fiction has appeared in a variety of print, electronic and audio markets including On Spec, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Cast Macabre and the Tesseracts Anthologies. His short story "Touch the Sky, They Say" has been nominated for this year's 2011 Aurora Award's Best Short Story category. He blogs at mattmoorewrites.com.

SpecFic Colloquium Blog: Stephen Michell

I was at a party a weekend or two ago, drinking Sleeman Original and eating delicious catered food. The ramblings of a blond-haired British gentleman caught my interest: he presented the idea that dreams create a culture's mythology. I liked the idea. The image of a whole society dreaming: a giant gelatinous mass of faces and eyes, grand and petite, awake, hungry, breathing.

The myths of Bronze Age Greece are the most prominent in my mind. The stories of Heracles, Perseus, David, and poor, perpetually-disembowelled Prometheus, are stories that invoked a sort of idolatry within ancient Greek culture. The characters and events of myth were idealized versions of their own society; men with colossal strength, women with boundless beauty, courage, honour, all were hopes, aspirations, dreams perhaps, of the society.
Indigenous North American mythology, though perhaps more abstract and unusual to our Greco-derived sensibilities, is still characterized by the same sort of idealism: stories of Raven, Coyote and Nanabush abound, all of whom are synonymous with the Trickster. These tales tell of journeys across vast landscapes, spiritual interactions with animals, and a greater understanding of nature and the universe: an expression of our society’s dreams, waking or with eyes closed.

I’m not mad. I am, however, a touch disconcerted. When I pause to think of my own mythology, of the tales and stories that echo some aspect of my hopes and dreams, and I draw a blank. Perhaps the heroes of our day are celebrities, writers and actors, great minds of art, or perhaps they’re innovators, brilliant thinkers, or money makers―I don’t know. But it makes me wonder: if Western Civilization is partially derived from the thoughts and wonders of ancient Greece, where then stands the contemporary Cyclops? What lake or labyrinth hides the modern Minotaur, the killer Kraken, the monsters of today?
. . . Perhaps they’re reading this, or perhaps they’ll be attending the 2011 Toronto SpecFic Colloquium―you should be.

***

The 2nd Toronto SpecFic Colloquium will take place on Saturday October 15, 2011 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue). Register now at http://chiseries.ticketleap.com/specfic-colloquium/.

***

Stephen Michell is a student at the University of Toronto as well as a fledgling writer, with his first publication in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine. Working as a writer in Kensington Market, he has much time for self-reflection, and believes he has nearly “found himself.” He is currently reading Crime and Punishment, and enjoying it, though he still contends that Red Dragon offers the best first sentence he’s read. He is also sort of on the market for an agent. Say hey to him at the 2011 SpecFic Colloquium; he’ll be the guy quietly drinking coffee, digesting the words and wonders that are spinning around him.

Eutopia "thoughtful, accomplished, recommended"

"Eutopia accomplishes what the best horror fiction strives for: gives us characters we can care about and hope for, and then inflicts on them the kind of realistic, inescapable, logical sufferings that make us close our eyes a little at the unfairness of not the author, but the world — and all the while with something more to say for itself than the world is a very bad place.

Thoughtful, accomplished, and recommended." - Leah Bobet, Ideomancer

Read the review!

Find out more about Eutopia!

Great Briarpatch review

SF review blog MentatJack posts about Tim Pratt's upcoming Briarpatch: "This is my favorite Pratt so far and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes their fantasy mixed with contemporary reality, but is searching for something more (and weirder) than the typical urban fantasy."

Click here to read the review.

Click here to preorder Briarpatch.

Interviews and views from Simon Logan!

Two pieces today for all you punk lovers. First, Terribleminds gives us a juicy, meaty interview with Katja from the Punk Band author Simon Logan.

"Q: Your work and writing philosophies seem to embody a punk aesthetic. How can writers embrace that, and why should they? (Or, perhaps, why shouldn’t they?)

A: For me the attraction of the punk aesthetic is to properly reflect yourself and your energies and interests in your work. Be inspired by what other people are creating but focus on creating that inspiration within yourself rather than just replicating what others have done."

You can read the interview here.

Second, Ed Gorman's blog has a large quote from Logan in which he announces a sequel to Katja!

Read it here.

Buy Katja from the Punk Band here.

Isles review in Geek Speak

"There’s a lot to like about [Isles of the Forsaken] ...it’s beautifully written. It’s complex and ambitious in scope, which I always appreciate. Even better, it’s actually about something other than “The Vampire Gets Laid, Volume 10,000,” which, let’s just say, I’ve been seeing a lot of lately." - Kate Nagy, Geek Speak magazine

Click here to read the review.

Click here to buy Isles of the Forsaken.

ChiZine shoutout on The Ranting Dragon

Fantasy news site The Ranting Dragon listed two upcoming ChiZine books in its post 'Most Anticipated September Releases' - Briarpatch by Tim Pratt and The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet. Congratulations, you two!

Read the post.

Preorder Briarpatch...
or The Pattern Scars.

Great review of The Choir Boats

Reader's Refuge got their hands on Daniel A. Rabuzzi's The Choir Boats, and loved it: "This is exactly the sort of story I love. The world Rabuzzi creates in The Choir Boats is fascinating. I love Yount, its customs, and its history. My only complaint is that I didn't see enough of this new world."

Click to read the review.

Click to buy The Choir Boats.

Tahlia Newland reviews Isles of the Forsaken

"This is a book not to miss. I recommend [Isles of the Forsaken] to all fantasy fans. If you liked Graceling, you will probably like this one. I cannot fault it in any way, so I give it 5 stars." - Fantasy author Tahlia Newland

Read her review here.

Learn more about Isles of the Forsaken here.