Archive for Orbit UK

New Series from Daniel Abraham!

I’m delighted to announce that Orbit has acquired World English Language rights in The Dagger and the Coin, a new series from Daniel Abraham. Daniel is, of course, the author of the acclaimed Long Price Quartet, which Orbit will publish in the UK at the end of January 2010, in two omnibus-style volumes.

Changing direction a little, The Dagger and the Coin will be epic fantasy on a grand scale, Very much in the tradition of George R. R. Martin‘s wonderful A Song of Ice and Fire –  fast-paced and filled with war, intrigue, sex, murder, magic, great fortunes lost and won, dark gods, crime, exotic races, fantastic set pieces, dragons, underground resistance movements and strange occult powers.

In Daniel’s own words: ‘In the way that The Long Price Quartet was a semi-tragic meditation on the epic scale of an individual life, The Dagger and the Coin is a love letter to fantasy adventure intended to keep the reader from getting enough sleep..’

‘I’m very conscious of the influences I’m cultivating going into it – Walter Tevis, Alexandre Dumas, Tolkien, J. Michael Strazinski, Joss Whedon, GRRM, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Dorothy Dunnett, Tim Parks – and I’m trying to take the things that I love about each one of them and make a stew out of it. It’s set right at the friction point between the medieval period and the renaissance, so we’ve got knights and kings, but we also have merchant houses and finance. There’s some magic of the understated sort. There’s political intrigue. There’s a girl who was raised as the ward of a Medici-style bank, there’s a high nobleman who’s gotten himself and his family in over his head, there’s an emotionally scarred mercenary captain straight out of Dumas.

‘The point of it all is to make a book that reads to me now the way that the Belgariad did when I was 16. I’m going to be swimming in everything I think is cool for the next year, and I’m really looking forward to it

And for our part, Orbit is hugely excited to be publishing The Dagger and the Coin internationally. The combination of Daniel’s vision and talent and the grand canvas offered by epic fantasy promises to make The Dagger and the Coin something truly special. But don’t just take our word for it. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Junot Diaz says:

‘Daniel Abraham is one of the reasons the fantasy genre continues to haunt my dreams. Abraham is fiercely talented, disturbingly human, breathtakingly original and even on his bad days kicks all sorts of literary ass. Welcome to the world of the andats, of the haunted extraordinary poets, a world where men enslave ideas, where these slaves scheme to avenge themselves, where every bad deed spawns more, a world where after the treachery, the conspiracies, the journeys, all that’s ever left in the end are the consequences. Welcome to Daniel Abraham. If you are meeting him for the first time I envy you: you are in for a remarkable journey.’

A remarkable journey, indeed. Welcome aboard!

Charles Stross: Double Star

July sees the publication of not one, but two, new Charles Stross books – the paperback of Saturn’s Children and the hardback of Wireless.

Saturn’s Children is Charlie’s homage to the late Robert Heinlein, as the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted from this post’s title. It also gives Charlie a sixth consecutive Hugo shortlisting for Best Novel, which is a remarkable achievement – even the great Robert Silverberg only managed four.  Audaciously told without a single human character, it is nonetheless replete with humanity as well as Charlie’s trademark dark humour, clever plotting and 100-mile-an-hour ideas.

Wireless, is a new collection of short fiction, including Locus Award-winning novella ‘Missile Gap’, Bob Howard story ‘Down on the Farm’ (read an extract here), ‘Unwirer’, a collaboration with fellow Prometheus Award-winner Cory Doctorow and the hitherto unpublished novella ‘Palimpsest’. Running the full gamut of Charlie’s incredible imagination, which, as everyone knows, goes up to eleven, Wireless is a snapshot of a writer at the height of his powers and a wonderful introduction to an essential voice in modern science fiction.

As multi-award-winning editor and anthologist Gardner Dozois says ‘Where Charles Stross goes today, the rests of science fiction will follow tomorrow.’

The zombies aren’t coming… they’re already here.

I’m very pleased to announce that we have acquired a new science fiction trilogy from new author Seanan McGuire writing as Mira Grant. The first book in the series, called FEED, tells the story of a small group of journalists living in an America infested with zombies. Twenty years after The Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are invited to cover a rising political star in the race for the White House and find themselves on the trail of the biggest story of their lives. This is a delightful, action-packed read that presents a fully-realized dystopia—a future America ruled by fear where the people don’t leave their houses and the truth is harder to find than ever before.

Mira Grant is an amazing new talent and we are delighted to be publishing her. We’ve barely announced and already the buzz is rolling: Look for this in stores in the US and the UK in Summer 2010.

Did we mention it’s bloody?

Praise for Brian Ruckley’s Fall of Thanes continues to snowball (*) around the web.
Over at the Hotlist, Pat calls it :

Dark, bloody, depressing, uncompromising, with a poignant ending that should satisfy most fans and characters that stay true to themselves till the very end, Fall of Thanes is an impressive conclusion to what is definitely one of the best fantasy series of the new millennium.

At Grasping for the Wind, John writes:

“The story has a great sense of oppression about it, and readers will wonder if all will finally end well for the characters we have come to appreciate.”

And The Mad Hatter’s Book Reviews says:

“Fall of Thanes is one of the bloodiest books I have read in the last few years save The First Law trilogy although the Godless series may have a higher body count.”

UPDATE: Simon over at BookGeeks gives it a great review as well:

Fall of Thanes was for me a strong conclusion to a very enjoyable trilogy, a sequence of books that embodies everything I enjoy about traditional epic fantasy, and I look forward to seeing what Brian Ruckley does next.”

Uncompromising. Bloody. Cold. Now that’s what we’d call a perfect beach read!

(*) This being The Godless World, that snowball is probably gritty and specked with blood and bits of mail.

The David Gemmell Awards

On Friday night, Orbit UK attended the inaugural David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy, and a thoroughly enjoyable night was had by all. We were particularly excited, with our Brent Weeks on the five-book shortlist for The Way of Shadows [UK/US/ANZ]. Brent didn’t actually carry off the final award, but to win his place on the shortlist he fought off a strong list of almost eighty nominees so no mean feat. Surely Kylar would be proud!

The black-tie event was rather appropriately held at the Magic Circle headquarters in London, and we had to scale a rune-encrusted spiral staircase to reach the intimate plushly-red theatre. Or take the lift. All very atmospheric. And we were then treated to a short piece from Druss’s call to arms, read by James Barclay, before the ceremony itself. Our Hachette sister company Gollancz published the winning title in the UK, Blood of Elves, by Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski. However, as already reported, this was published by Orbit in the US so we also had cause to celebrate this too.

Jo Fletcher of Gollancz received the award itself – a huge great axe – on behalf of Andrzej Sapkowski courtesy of the Raven Armoury, but the short-listed authors also gained their very own mini-Snaga axes (to fight off the competition in future, no doubt …) We caught a few shots of Brent Weeks’ prize before putting it in the post to him, so see below for these. Other highlights included a charity auction, where prizes such as a rare first edition of Legend, use of a Jaguar for the weekend and the right to be written into Stan Nicholls’ next novel were up for grabs. Money raised went to Medecins Sans Frontieres. Here are some other comments, pictures, blogs etc. from the night from the British Fantasy Society, SFX and the MyFavouriteBooks blog.

The award itself is designed to honour the memory of David Gemmell and also to raise the profile of fantasy fiction in the UK. We don’t currently have a fantasy award to call our own, and organiser Deborah Miller and her team thought it was high time they did something about this, helped by French genre publishers Bragelonne, sponsoring this year’s event. Read more on Deborah’s mission here. Certainly the first event was a huge success and long may it continue! It’s great that fantasy talent can be recognised and rewarded in this way and if brings more people to enjoy the books, that’s great news too. And that’s not just from the Publisher’s point of view, honest.

There are plenty of fine things said about The Way of Shadows [UK/US/ANZ] on the Gemmell Award site and other reasons to read the book, if more are needed, are as follows:

‘A proper good yarn … Weeks tells his tale skilfully and tautly. And he dazzles with some jaw-dropping moments’ SFX
‘This unapologetically grim fantasy fable serves up a heady mix …. never wears out its 650-page welcome’ DeathRay
‘The most impressive debut novel I’ve read this year’ SFFworld.com

(more…)

An Interview with a Knight

Ever wonder where those fierce looking warriors on the front of fantasy covers come from? Brian Ruckley has a fascinating interview over at his blog now with the (real life!) knight pictured here.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at home when I got a text from a friend. It was a jpg, and I couldn’t quite make out the image. I handed my phone to my son, and he squinted at it saying, ‘It looks like YOU! Yeah, I think it is you, on a poster or maybe a book cover … Fall of Thrones? No, the Fall of THANES?’

Read more

Set Sail With Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson makes his epic fantasy debut this month with his newest novel, THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, a thrilling tale of high seas adventure set against a backdrop of two nations at war, fighting for control over the world they know as well as Terra Incognita: the wider and far more mysterious world beyond, the world they have yet to discover, and explore – and survive.

And a rollicking story is not all Anderson has for his readers this time around. As an innovative companion to THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, Anderson has also co-written (with his wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for an epic rock CD, “Terra Incognita: Beyond the Horizon,” based on one of the book’s storylines. Anderson says, “My work has always been heavily influenced by music, especially progressive rock—but Terra Incognita truly takes this into new territory.”

UK Jacket
UK Cover

Accomplished keyboardist and composer Erik Norlander of the group Rocket Scientists came aboard early on to write the music and produce the recordings. Vocals are by James LaBrie, of Dream Theater; Michael Sadler, of Saga; John Payne, of Asia; and Lana Lane, the “Queen of Symphonic Rock”. Additional artists performing on the CD are members of the groups Kansas, Shadow Gallery, IQ, Ghost Circus, Under the Sun, and Prymary. Together, the creative team has sold over 45 million recordings worldwide.

Links

Orbit En France

We are delighted to announce that French publisher Calmann-Levy will be launching a new Orbit imprint in October 2009. On the launch list will be authors Kristin Cashore, Brandon Sanderson, J.V. Jones, Stephen R. Lawhead, and Mark Chadbourn. Orbit launched in the UK in 1974; in 2007, we launched in the US; and last year we launched in Australia. Orbit in France will be committed to publishing the most exciting SF and Fantasy authors — both new and established — from around the world, and we wish them every success for their launch and in the years ahead

The Edge of the World

This month sees our international publication of The Edge of the World by Kevin J. Anderson, the international bestselling author of the Saga of Seven Suns space opera sequence and, of course, co-author of the bestselling Dune prequels. The Edge of the World, Book One of Terra Incognita, is the beginning of a series that promises an incredible ride through a fully-realised fantasy landscape – and seascape. It’s a compelling, rollicking, maritime epic fantasy, set in a world modeled after Europe in the great Age of Discovery.

It is a time of sea monsters and mermaids, lost islands and ghost ships, leviathans and weather witches, in which brave captains in sailing ships explore the uncharted regions of the world, where even the finest maps are marked only with ‘Here Be Monsters’ or ‘Terra Incognita’. 

UK Jacket
UK jacket

After generations of friction, the leaders of two lands meet in the holy city of Ishalem to bring an end to the bloodshed and to divide the world between them.

Sadly, this new spirit of fellowship is shortlived. A single tragic accident destroys, in minutes, the peace that took years to build. The world is once more cast into the fires of war – and this time the flames may burn until nothing remains. From the highest lord to the lowest servant, no man or woman will be unchanged by the conflict.

The Edge of the World (US Jacket)
US jacket

But while war rages across both continents, a great quest will defy storms and sea serpents to venture beyond the horizon, where no maps exist – to search for a land out of legend. It is a perilous undertaking, but there will always be the impetuous, the brave and the mad who are willing to leave their homes to explore the unknown.

Even unto the edge of the world . . .

International bestseller Kevin J. Anderson gives us a story writ large on a canvas as big as the globe, but told through the eyes of the very human men and women caught up in events beyond their control. The journey to The Edge of the World starts here . . .

Orphan’s Triumph by Robert Buettner

Jason Wander has had to deal with a lot. First the Slugs wiped out his family, then they tried to go after his planet. Now he’s going after them…

After forty years of fighting the Slugs, mankind’s reunited planets control the vital crossroad that secures their uneasy union. The doomsday weapon that can end the war, and the mighty fleet that will carry it to the Slug homeworld, lie within humanity’s grasp.

Since the Slug Blitz orphaned Jason Wander, he has risen from infantry recruit to commander of Earth’s garrisons on the emerging allied planets. But four decades of service have cost Jason not just his friends and family, but his innocence.

When an enemy counter stroke threatens to reverse the war and destroy mankind, Jason must finally confront not only his lifelong alien enemy, but the reality of what a lifetime as a soldier has made him.