There are two enormous book sales going on right now, and my Mennik Thorn novels, SHADOW OF A DEAD GOD, NECTAR FOR THE GOD, and STRANGE CARGO, are part of both sales. You can get all three books for 99p/99c each in the UK and US. (Sorry, Amazon doesn’t allow the same sale reductions outside those territories.)
First up is the SPFBO finalist sale. SPFBO is the most reputable and high profile contest for indie fantasy books, and over 40 finalists from all years, including most of this year’s finalists, are in the sale.
The new Mennik Thorn novel, STRANGE CARGO, is now available to pre-order. It will be published on July 29, 2022, but if you order it now, it will be waiting for you on publication day. Pre-orders are really helpful for authors, because they raise the profile of our books, so if you are thinking about getting this book, grab it now!
Blurb
What do a smuggling gang, a curse that won’t go away, and a frequently lost dog have to do with each other?
Answer: they’re all here to disrupt Mennik Thorn’s hard-earned peace and quiet.
As the sole freelance mage in the city of Agatos, Mennik is used to some odd clients and awful jobs. But this time, one of his clients isn’t giving him a choice. Mennik might have forgotten about the smugglers whose operations he disrupted, but they haven’t forgotten about him. Now he is faced with a simple ultimatum: help them smuggle in an unknown, dangerous cargo or live his life in fear of their revenge.
Time is running out for Mennik to find an answer, and things are about to get completely out of control.
Every now and then, you will see someone object to the presence of potatoes in a fantasy story. The argument goes that, because potatoes originate from South America, having them appear in a pseudo-Medieval, pseudo-European fantasy is an anachronism.
And I don’t care.
If you’re writing a secondary world fantasy based loosely on Medieval Europe, let’s be honest, you’re working with a lot of assumptions already. You’re assuming that somehow, on a world with a different geography, geology, climate, history, and pre-history, humans have not only managed to evolve but that they have evolved weapons, ways of living, customs, and diets that are similar to those that evolved here on Earth, in Europe.
That’s stretching credibility to an extreme. But it doesn’t end there. You’re assuming that, for the most part, the same plants and animals (plus some random fantasy ones) evolved also, again despite the differences in the world, even including perhaps the addition of magic.
How about birds? Birds are fucking crazy. How likely are birds?
As most people know, birds are dinosaurs. They are descendants of the very few, small species of dinosaur that survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, when the giant asteroid smashed into Earth and wiped out most life, just like we’re descendants of the small mammals that survived. If the asteroid hadn’t hit, or if it had hit a different spot, no birds. No birds. Your fantasy novel requires an identical extinction event with identical effects if you want birds. That’s not happening.
That’s hardly the only example.
Your secondary world fantasy (and mine) makes no sense at all. It is based on a series of such unlikely coincidences and assumptions that it wouldn’t happen.
And, bearing all that in mind, you’re hung up about this fantasy world having potatoes in a European-modelled region rather than a South American-modelled region? Or the idea that, in that world, there might have been trade in potatoes between those equivalent regions a few hundred years earlier than happened on Earth?
So, no, I don’t care about potatoes in your fantasy. Put them in. Turn them into chips. Add ketchup. Why not?
SHADOW OF A DEAD GOD has made it through to the final round of the 2020 Booknest Fantasy Awards in the self-published category. It’s up against some of the biggest names of self-published fantasy, so if you enjoyed it, please give it a vote and let’s see if we can keep up with them!
It’s publication day for my fantasy short story collection, AT THE GATES AND OTHER STORIES.
I didn’t set out to be a short story writer. I always thought I would write novels (and I do, of course), but there is something irresistible in the perfection of a whole story contained in a short, well-crafted package. It’s the glint of sunlight that hints at an ocean, a single flower instead of a whole garden.
Most of my short stories were written in a ten year period between 2001 and 2011, although I’ve continued to write the occasional short story since, and this collection includes one story, Slipper of Glass, that was written in 2020 and has never been published anywhere else.
I’ve been really lucky with my stories. They’ve been published in a whole range of professional magazines and anthologies, from Interzone and Strange Horizons to Realms of Fantasy and The Year’s Best Fantasy, but this is the first time that I’ve gathered what I think are the sixteen best in a single volume.
I love these stories, and I hope you will, too. You can buy the collection as an ebook pretty much anywhere that sells ebooks, and you can buy a paperback version via Amazon.
This collection contains sixteen stories, with about 70,000 words of fiction. I hope there will be some stories in there that you love as much as I do.
I’m going to post a longer discussion of this on my newsletter, but in the meantime:
A Wind from the Wilderness, at the time of writing this review, is a semi-finalist in the current SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off), a competition to find the best self-published fantasy book, and it deserves its place.
This is a historical fantasy, mostly set during the first crusade as a Frankish and Greek army makes its way towards Jerusalem. It focuses mainly on three characters, A Syrian boy, Lukas, a Turkish girl, Ayla, and a Frankish count, Saint-Gilles. Lukas is a refugee in time, cast forward by dark magic four hundred and some years from his own time and caught up in the crusade. Ayla is looking for revenge against the Watchers, a group who killed her father.
The book follows their journey.
The book that this most reminded me of was A Game of Thrones (not surprising, perhaps, with A Game of Thrones being strongly influenced by history and historical fiction itself), not in the specific events but in the style of story. We have that same mixture of the young people (Lukas and Ayla) trying to get home and get revenge, joined with the battles and political scheming, mostly shown through Saint-Gilles’ point of view. The writing is vivid and lush. I don’t know much about the period, but the author convinced me that she did, and the details are immersive.
Oddly, as a fantasy fan, the part of the story that interested me least was the magic. It lacked the believability and the richness of the historical parts of the book, and sometimes I wished this was a straight historical novel. I had a few minor nitpicks. Although the writing was very good, there were a couple of places where Lukas spent a lot of time swallowing and gulping, and there were a few repeated words and phrases. All of this would be easy to fix in another copyedit, but it didn’t distract from my enjoyment. There were also a couple of chapters from other points of view that didn’t really add anything for me.
This is an extremely strong book. If you like historical fantasy or just historical fiction, I highly recommend this. Beware, though, if you can’t cope with harm to children, because there is one incident that may distress you, but I don’t want to give spoilers.
I’m looking forward to the sequels, which I understand will follow other members of Lukas’s family who have also been lost in other time periods.
Those of you who take an interest in self-published fantasy novels might well be aware of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, a competition to find the best self-published fantasy novels. It’s now in its sixth year, and every year it highlights the cream of self-published fantasy. It’s run by author Mark Lawrence in association with ten book review blogs, and it winnows down 300 entries to 10 finalists and, eventually, one winner.
If you don’t follow self-published novels, you’re probably in the same place as I was a few years ago, knowing that there must be some great self-published novels out there, maybe even having come across a few through recommendations, but not knowing how to find the best ones from among the, honestly, crap.
Self-publishing has come on a lot in the last five or so years. It has become more professional and higher quality, and the best self-published books are every bit as good as best traditionally-published books. But the problem of finding those books has remained the same. Until I came across this competition, I had concluded that I just wasn’t going to reliably find good self-published books.
Here are some of the great books that I’ve discovered from finalists in the SPFBO competition:
Check some of them out. They really are worth your time. And there are many others. Here’s the full list of finalists and winners (scroll down that page). I’ve got plenty on my TBR, just waiting for me to get them, books like Alicia Wanstall-Burke’s Blood of Heirs, Virginia McClain’s Blade’s Edge, and Barbara Kloss’s Gods of Men.
When I decided to self-publish Shadow of a Dead God, the sixth edition of this competition was just about to start, so I entered. I think the competition does a great job at finding fantastic books. I have no idea if I’ll make it to the finals — undoubtedly ever year some great books don’t even get that far. Arguably the most egregious example is the magnificent Senlin Ascends, by Josiah Bancroft which fell at the first round and which I think many people since have agreed is an exceptionally good book. But there are always more than 10 deserving books each year, and not every one of them can be a finalist. Even if my book falls by the wayside early on, I am really enjoying being part of the community of writers and judges taking part in this. Even this early on in this year’s competition, I’ve come across some really good books.
You can follow along in the competition in the Facebook group, or if you don’t like Facebook, you can keep an eye on the progress of entries on the official competition webpage.
“Fast-paced, quick-witted, deftly plotted and as well-thought-out as it is well-written. Highly recommended.”
– Juliet E. McKenna, Author of The Tales of Einarinn and The Green Man’s Heir
“Recommended for readers of The Lies of Locke Lamora and anyone who loves fantasy mystery starring a delightfully reluctant, unlikely, foul-mouthed and golden-hearted hero.”
– Katrina Middelburg, Read. Ruminate. Write.
I have been lax, and slack, and inefficient. I finished this wonderful book a week ago and I haven’t reviewed it yet. Let’s fix that.
First up, let’s get the basics out the way. The Bone Ships, by RJ Barker, is a magnificent book. It really is. Barker’s previous Wounded Kingdom trilogy (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, King of Assassins) was very good, but this is a massive step up, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that this is Barker’s masterwork.
The basic story is simple enough. The Hundred Isles have been fighting a war against the Gaunt Isles for generations. In this world of scattered islands, the battles are fought on the seas between ships built from the bones of gigantic, extinct sea dragons. Over time, with no new supply of bones, ships have become only more valuable. Then a new sea dragon is spotted making its way through the islands. If either side hunts and kills the dragon, the vast haul of bones will prolong the war for many more generations.
Joron Twiner is the Shipwife (captain) of the black ship the Tide Child. Black ships are old, decaying bone ships crewed by women and men condemned to death. Rather than take his ship into battle, Twiner has laid up in an isolated bay, found a tumbledown shack and is slowly drinking himself into oblivion, leaving his crew to their own devices on board ship. And there he remains until the day that Lucky Meas turns up to challenge him for the position of shipwife. Lucky Meas has been condemned to the black ships after losing her position in the fleet, but she’s not taking it lying down. After defeating Twiner and sparing his life, she sets about getting the Tide Child into shape. Because Lucky Meas has a plan: she will not let either the Hundred Isles or the Gaunt Isles capture the sea dragon. She will protect it in its passage through the archipelago, fighting off both sides if necessary, until it is beyond reach and then she will kill it, denying the bones to everyone and hopefully hastening the end of the war.
The Bone Ships is simply the story of the Tide Child as it carries out its mission.
Like I said, a pretty simple story, right?
Well, at that level it is. But where The Bone Ships really shines is in its world building and its characters. Barker dives deep into a very alien world. Much fantasy – most fantasy, and I include my own in this – is based approximately on locations, cultures, and history from our world. The Bone Ships really isn’t. In the ocean-based, ship-focused story, there are obvious echoes of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and CS Forester’s Hornblower, but Barker has created a complex, unique world to set the stories in and then he has followed through rigorously to the consequences of this world. It’s worldbuilding that informs every aspect of the books. Any examples don’t really do justice to the immersive nature, but let’s take a few anyway. The Hundred Isles is a strongly matriarchal culture, and this manifests itself not just in the political set-up or people’s positions, but in the language. Ships are always ‘he’, the captain is the shipwife, people are referred to as ‘women and men’, not ‘men and women’, and so on. The ships, being built of bone, have different names for their components. The masts are ‘spines’, the front is the ‘beak’.
But that’s just scratching the surface. From the birdlike wind wizards, the gullaime, to the brutal sacrificing of first-born children (luckily not explicitly described on the page, for those of us who don’t have the stomach for that), and a complex set of shipboard customs, this is an intricate and very different society. It is also not one that is admirable. Anyone born disabled in any way or born to a mother who dies in childbirth is consigned to an explicit underclass.
The complexity of the worldbuilding could cause some problems as the reader flails for familiarity – and a few reviews reference that – but it didn’t for me, and the reason for that was the characters. There are a quite a lot of them, but all of them are well-realised and convincing, and they are what lead you into the story. Joron Twiner and Lucky Meas, being the leads, are the most interesting, but there are plenty of other great characters. They are our guides into a world that at first is difficult to understand but which becomes increasingly convincing.
There isn’t a great deal of fantasy set aboard ships for some reason. Robin Hobbs’s Liveship Traders series is the most obvious example, and The Bone Ships deserves comparison with Hobbs’s books, in tone as well as in it’s shipboard setting.
The Bone Ships is exhilarating, engrossing, and thrilling in equal measures. I loved the time I spent in the company of the crew of the Tide Child. A few readers may find themselves cast adrift by the alienness of the fantasy setting, but I don’t think most will. I understand there was a glossary in the book, but I didn’t have consult it once and didn’t even realise it was there until I saw other people mention it.
I should note here that RJ Barker sent me a paperback copy of this book for review. This did not in any way affect my opinion of the book or my review. In fact, I ended up reading an ebook copy that I bought myself, partly because the paperback was so pretty I didn’t want to crease it, but mainly because I wanted to keep reading at night without a light.
One note, though, and I feel I should include this, because I’ve noted it for some self-published books recently and I want to be fair: there were quite a few typos in the ebook edition. Not so many that it interfered with my enjoyment of the book, but they were noticeable. I don’t know if the print edition shares those.
The Bone Ships is the first in the Tide Child trilogy, and I for one can’t wait for the next.
I mean, not a wrap with a nice gift card and a ribbon, but more of a kind of a wrap with a bit of old newspaper and some hastily stuck-on tape (yes, I’m aware I’m mixing metaphors). But it’s still a wrap, okay?
In other words, I have finally – finally! – finished the first draft of my new novel. And, yeah, I’m pretty excited about that!
This is my first novel for adults that I’ve done since I knew what I was doing with this writing thing. Not only have I now finished the first draft, but I like it! It’s very me. We’ve got cool magic and dead gods and murders and people getting the shit kicked out of them and all the swearing I couldn’t put in my middle grade novels.
The first draft has come in at almost exactly 100k words. I already know there are some bits I’m going to cut and some bits I’m going to insert and a whole bunch of bits that I’m going to fiddle around with, but I reckon it’ll come out not too far from that total.
Okay, that’s the good stuff. Here’s the stress: I don’t have a title for my book! I always have a title for my books when I start, even if they eventually change. But this one? Nope. I kept thinking I would come up with one eventually, but I didn’t and I still can’t think of one and, and, and. Please give me a title. Any title. Your title will do. Do you have a good title for your book? Can I steal it? Pretty please? Okay, I’m stealing it.
I’m planning to take a month off this book then plunge into the rewrite during our summer trip to America.
And now I have to think of something else to write.
