Field Marshal Tamas has a message for the aristocracy of Adro. Watch the trailer below and prepare for the coming revolution.
PROMISE OF BLOOD (US | UK | AUS) is available everywhere in hardcover, ebook, and audio formats. Read the first four chapters here or become a fan of the series on Facebook.
*Footage by Gene Mollica and Michael Frost
PROMISE OF BLOOD (US | UK | AUS) is out today in hardcover, ebook, and audio formats. This is the first book of an exciting epic fantasy trilogy by debut author, Brian McClellan. In the video below, Orbit editor Devi Pillai is going to tell you about what’s so great about The Powder Mage Trilogy and why we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it, dear readers. Enjoy!
More Stories:
Read the first four chapters from PROMISE OF BLOOD
Become a fan of The Powder Mage Trilogy on Facebook
Request a signed book plate from Brian McClellan (while supplies last)
“The Difficulty of Names”
Listen to an audio excerpt from PROMISE OF BLOOD
“Researching Realty for a Fantasy World”
Download a wallpaper for your computer and favorite electronic devices
Goodreads interviews Brian McClellan
Check out the cover of book 2: THE CRIMSON CAMPAIGN
“Learning to Write from Brandon Sanderson”
Mark your calendars: on April 23rd Brian will be on reddit/r/fantasy answering your questions.
PROMISE OF BLOOD (US | UK | AUS) the debut epic fantasy novel by Brian McClellan will be out in only one more week! We’re thrilled by the response we’ve received for this new series launch, and one thing that keeps coming up is how much you all love the cover. And for good reason! Michael Frost (photo), Gene Mollica (illustration) and Lauren Panepinto (design) knocked it out of the park. Oh and here’s another fun fact: the model for Field Marshal Tamas was stunt double for Pierce Brosnan in the Bond films. How cool is that!?
So here is a set of wallpapers for your computer and electronic devices, and if you haven’t done so already, become a fan of The Powder Mage page on Facebook and read the first four chapters from PROMISE OF BLOOD early.
1024 x 768 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200 | iPhone | iPad | Facebook
Terry Brooks‘s latest epic fantasy book BLOODFIRE QUEST (UK | ANZ) has been released this month. It’s the second book in The Dark Legacy of Shannara series and is delighting fans everywhere:
‘Nearly every page is filled with tension and passionate storytelling . . . Bloodfire Quest is a fine follow-up to Wards of Faerie and continues to prove that The Dark Legacy of Shannara is one of the most exciting and satisfying trilogies that Brooks has written in years’ A DRIBBLE OF INK
‘Shannara fans will delight in Brooks’s twists, sorcerous action, skilled characterizations, and rapid-fire storytelling ‘ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘Shannara continues to deepen, and Brooks continues to color his world with new hues . . . BLOODFIRE QUEST is an epic adventure packed into 350 pages, delivering more of a punch than many trilogies provide in three books’ BOOK REPORTER
Don’t forget that if you live in the UK, there’s just under a week until Terry visits for the first time in over 5 years. There’s a facebook group here for his signing on 3rd April at 6pm at Forbidden Planet London.
And don’t fear if you can’t make it – UK fans still have time to submit questions and will receive an awesome dragon skull badge at the same time…
Ian Irvine’s REBELLION (UK|US|ANZ) is released this week, an epic fantasy novel in which characters Tali and Rix lead the revolution against an evil sorcerer’s corrupt regime. In this second volume in Ian’s Tainted Realm trilogy, former slave Tali must return to her underground homeland to free her people, while Rix battles besieging armies above.
We thought we’d celebrate REBELLION with a post on the long tradition of rebellions in fiction – here are some of the most iconic rebels we’ve found . . . but who are your favourites?
Lucifer – Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.
Milton’s charismatic depiction of Lucifer battling his creator in PARADISE LOST caused strong feelings in all who read it –William Blake said he was ‘of the Devil’s party without knowing it’. Milton definitely gave Lucifer all the best lines! One of literature’s first anti-heroes, Milton’s Lucifer influenced writers from the Romantic Poets to modern fantasy authors such as Philip Pullman, Anne Rice and Neil Gaiman.
Robin Hood and the Merry Men – He was a good outlawe, and dyde pore men moch god.
Was this Nottingham-based outlaw actually fictional? Was he a peasant or disowned aristocrat? Did he prefer a sword or a bow? We can’t be sure – so much has been lost to history! Our first written record of ‘Robyn Hode’ is found in a ballad dated around 1450, and the tale has grown since then – it’s no wonder – an outlaw who steals from the rich to give to the poor is an attractive fantasy even now.
Friends of the ABC – Do you hear the people sing?
The resistance group in Victor Hugo’s LES MISÉRABLES has become something of a symbol for doomed and idealistic youth. These ill-fated young students ultimately die on the barricades, the June Rebellion in which they took part defeated by the soldiers of King Louis Philippe I. The group’s name is a pun on ‘abaissés’ – a word in French meaning lowly or abased, which when pronounced sounds much like the first three letters of the alphabet.
The Rebel Alliance – It’s a trap!
How could we leave out the ultimate sci-fi dissidents, The Rebel Alliance, a.k.a. ‘Rebel scum’? The Alliance to Restore the Republic numbers characters such as Luke, Leia and Han Solo among its members, and was formed by senators who disagreed with Emperor Palpatine’s power grabbing ways – although some versions of STAR WARS canon actually imply that the Emperor himself had a hand in making it, never imagining that it would become a serious threat…
V – Remember, remember the Fifth of November…
Alan Moore’s graphic novel V FOR VENDETTA featured this alphabet-obsessed anarchist, the valiant, violent and vengeful V. Corrupt politicians beware! Moore drew on influence such as George Orwell’s 1984 and the contemporary politics of Thatcher and Reagan in creating his dystopian Britain. The Guy Fawkes mask worn by this character has been adopted as a symbol by the activist group Anonymous, and the masks have been worn at political protests all around the world.
Airships have somehow ended up becoming the ultimate symbol of steampunk fiction. But as much as we love their appearance in established steampunk classics such as Gail Carriger’s fantastic Parasol Protectorate novels, Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER and Stephen Hunt’s COURT OF THE AIR, I’m making a plea that we remember the humble airship does not have to remain in the domain of steam – and the punkification thereof!
I think it’s really time to claim back the airship for epic fantasy. What got me thinking about this was Terry Brooks’s new Dark Legacy of Shannara series, starting with WARDS OF FAERIE (UK / ANZ) and continuing with the recently released BLOODFIRE QUEST (UK / ANZ).
Airships have been in Terry Brooks’ novels for a while, ever since ILSE WITCH I believe, but it’s in his brand new series The Dark Legacy of Shannara that they’re really coming into their own. I couldn’t help thinking – I really, really want to own one of these airships.
Terry Brooks’ airships are like the suped-up, turbo charged versions of the common airship we’re all so familiar with. They’re powered by the sun – using ambient-light sails, something called diapson crystals and radian draws. Light gets converted into energy, and then this energy is expelled through what’s called the parse tubes. They’ve also got sails to gather extra power from the wind. They can easily fly at 1000 feet, and they’re kickass.
In WARDS OF FAERIE, things only get more exciting on the airship front. You don’t have to have read any previous Terry Brooks novels to enjoy this brand new novel, and you don’t have to know a lot about what’s gone before in airship automobile history to appreciate just how cool Terry’s speed-demon designs are.
To set the scene, there are two twins, Redden and Railing Ohmsford, who are thrill-seekers, risking life and limb racing special modified airships of their own design called Sprints.
Now I’m not into fancy cars, superbikes or private jets, but there’s something about these airships that really gets me salivating . . .
Sprints were one wicked pair of machines . . . Painted black from mast to keel, light sheaths black as well to better absorb the power of the sun, they had long, narrow hulls stripped of everything that might slow them down . . .
The controls were set to either side of a shallow depression that served as a cockpit, all within easy reach of the pilot. The pilot lay on his back with his head slightly elevated, facing forward down the length of his body toward the bow . . . Inside the cockpit, the thrusters and steering levers were manipulated by a combination of hands and feet, the cords that ran from the levers to the sheaths, rudder, and fins drawn so tightly that even the smallest amount of pressure would produce a response in the vessel’s handling . . .
These slender black monsters weren’t designed as transports; they were built to race.
*HUMANA, HUMANA* . . . It would be pretty cool to pull up outside Orbit Towers in one of those.
Now Terry Brooks certainly isn’t the only author to be using airships in a fantasy setting. A number of other authors doing this in books that are just as much fantasy as pure steampunk (Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadow of the Apt books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and Neil Gailman’s STARDUST come to mind…).
But I think that Terry Brooks really is one of the pioneers making airships truly sexy. If anyone can think of sexier airships then I’d be open to opinions!
But all I’m going to say for now is, to quote an Amazon reviewer, “Hold onto your diapson crystals – Shannara is back!”
Everyone remembers their first time.
Mine was back in the mid-1990s. A close friend excitedly showed me a book called THE SWORD OF SHANNARA (UK | ANZ) that his jetsetting pilot father had picked up for him from a bookstore in America. I remember being impressed at its sheer size and being immediately drawn to both the cover (a glowing magic sword, what more could a thirteen-year-old boy want?) and the gorgeous interior illustrations by the brothers Hildebrandt. I forget what gushing eulogy my friend gave about the book, yet it was positive enough for the novel to stick in my mind. Faced with the horrors of a two-week family holiday a short time later, I purchased a copy of THE SWORD OF SHANNARA, thinking it might prove a decent distraction for a fortnight.
It didn’t – because I burned through the novel in two days. I was already a fan of fantasy, having devoured Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the late Brian Jacques’s much-loved Redwall series, but this was the first time I’d read an adult book – and I was hopelessly smitten. I loved every page, every word. For hours at a time I lost myself in this mythical world, enthralled by the plucky heroes’ dangerous adventure to save the land from darkness. I may not have realised it at the time, but that reading experience was a watershed moment in not just my reading tastes, but my entire life. (more…)
Orbit is so excited to announce that Terry Brooks will be visiting the UK for the first time in over 5 years! He will be in London on holiday but has spared an evening to schedule an event at Forbidden Planet – on Wednesday 3rd April at 6pm. He will be signing copies of the first in his new series, Wards of Faerie (now available in paperback) and his new hardback Bloodfire Quest (out 12th March). Like our Orbit UK Facebook page for full details and updates.
And for all Terry’s UK fans who can’t make it to London, never fear… whether you can attend the signing or not, every person who emails a question for Terry to orbit@littlebrown.co.uk will receive a Bloodfire Quest badge! We will film his answers so everyone gets to ‘meet’ him. Plus the top three questions will win a signed and dedicated book. (UK entrants only).
Join us to celebrate a great year for a legend of the fantasy genre! 2013 is an especially exciting year for Terry as his full Dark Legacy of Shannara series will available, with the last novel in the trilogy, Witch Wraith, publishing this July.
Last week I mentioned the diversity of heavily armed societies a reader might expect to find in a High Epic tale like THE GATHERING OF THE LOST (UK|ANZ) – which got me thinking about the importance of conflict to epic fantasy generally, and about the specific conflicts in the Wall of Night series’ world of Haarth.
The Importance of Large-Scale Conflict In Epic Fantasy
Something I’ve discussed before in relation to epic fantasy – particularly in my Big Idea post for THE HEIR OF NIGHT (UK|ANZ) – is the way in which classic epic stories speak to our human condition through juxtaposing the internal conflicts of the protagonists with the external conflicts in which they are engaged. Nations and worlds are often at stake; at the very least major paradigm shifts and world-altering events provide a way of exploring more personal struggles and human cost.
The conflicts that characterize the Wall of Night series honour that epic tradition. (more…)
When embarking on a High Epic tale like THE GATHERING OF THE LOST (UK|ANZ), with its diversity of heavily armed societies, making an inventory of the epic armoury becomes a priority. Any good armoury, after all, should comprise an array of weapons – some magical, some mythic, some even real – that may, depending on circumstances, save the day for one’s protagonists.
The Soul-Sucking Sword
A favoured contender for any self-respecting High Epic tale has to be The Soul-Sucking Sword. After all, they do abound within the annals of the epic literature we love: from Elric of Melniboné and Stormbringer, to CJ Cherryh’s Morgaine with Changeling, and Steven Erikson’s Anomander Rake and Dragnipur. Even Robin McKinley’s (far) more benign Blue Sword has an ambivalent sense of humour. When the chips are down, a soul-sucking sword – or one that can drop whole mountain ranges, like the Blue Sword – has to be handy to any protagonist with worlds to save and a destiny to fulfil.
There may not precisely be soul-sucking swords in THE GATHERING OF THE LOST, but there is reference to black blades:
“Fool!” the old woman spoke with asperity despite her cut and bruised mouth. “She’s carrying black blades—that’s how she defeated the siren worm five years ago. That’s where all your power is going now, too, unless I much mistake the matter.”
“Black blades—fables for children!” Boras said, but Garan noticed they had all taken a step back.”
There is also a frost-fire sword with a liking for geasas—but to say any more than that might be a spoiler.
The Spear of Power
Spears of power are almost as popular in the epic armoury as soul-sucking swords. Tolkien’s Gil-galad carried Aiglos, which “none could withstand”, into battle against Sauron at the end of the Second Age, while the Irish hero, Cuchulain, possessed the Gáe Bolg, the spear of mortal pain. Whether the spear of power is quite as effective as a soul-sucking sword remains moot however. Tamora Pierce’s heroine, Keladry, may wield the glaive to good effect in the “Protector of the Small” series, but proficiency with a spear does not preserve Oberyn Martell in George RR Martin’s “A Son of Ice and Fire.” Nor does it appear to have done Kaladin a great deal of good, so far, in Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. (more…)
