The Book Plank

The Fire Gown by Michael Swanwick, Mongolian Wizard #2  A second “Mongolian Wizard” tale from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Michael Swanwick – continuing an epic of magic and deception in an alternate Europe of railroads and sorcery. . Just last week I read the first story in the Mongolian Wizard series of Michael Swanwick, and I enjoyed it. I have been recently reading a new thing Bookburners which is a serialized fiction, like a tv show but in short story format and actually I got the same feeling from this series of Michael Swanwick. Even more so with finishing this second story. Each story is like a little episode.  Picking up directly from The Mongolian Wizard , Ritter and his wolf Freki have travelled to Great Britain. In the first story Franz-Karl Ritter was recruited by Sir Tobias Gracchus Willoughby-Quirke to the British Intelligence services. Having narrowly escaped death there, he now sets foot on the stable grounds of Great Britain. Well...

Author interview with John Gwynne Author Bio: I was born in Singapore while my dad was stationed there in the RAF. Up until he retired that meant a lot of traveling around, generally a move every three years or so. I live with my wife and four wonderful (and demanding) children in East Sussex. Also three dogs, two of which will chew anything that stands still. I have had many strange and wonderful jobs, including packing soap in a soap factory, waitering in a french restaurant in Canada, playing double bass in a rock n roll band, and lecturing at Brighton University. I stepped out of university work due to my daughter’s disability, so now I split my time caring for her and working from home - I work with my wife rejuvenating vintage furniture, which means fixing, lifting, carrying, painting and generally doing what my wife tells me to do... And somehow during this time I started writing. I’ve always told my children stories at bed-time, and they pestered long and hard for me to ...

Media Alert: Sharp Ends, the upcoming short story collection of Joe Abercrombie Gollancz and Orbit to publish Sharp Ends , a collection of gritty short stories by Joe Abercrombie Gollancz  and Orbit US are thrilled to announce that they will be publishing a stunning hardback collection of superb short stores featuring best-loved characters from the world of The First Law, by Sunday Times bestselling fantasy author Joe Abercrombie. Gollancz will publish the collection in the United Kingdom and Orbit in the United States. The short stories will be a mix of original and reissued short stories collected together for the first time, including the Locus Award-winning “Tough Times All Over.” The brand-new shorts will feature some of the most popular characters from the First Law world, including Glokta, Jezal, Logen Ninefingers, Bethod and Monza Murcatto. Joe Abercrombie said: “I’m very pleased that some widely scattered shorts are going to be brought together in one vo...

Uprooted by Naomi Novik Her people rely on the cold, ambitious wizard, known only as the Dragon, to keep the wood's powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman must be handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as being lost to the wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia - all the things Agnieszka isn't - and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But no one can predict how or why the Dragon chooses a girl. And when he comes, it is not Kasia he will take with him. Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Naomi Novik is best know for her Temeraire series, an alternate history story featuring dragons. I have seen...

Media Alert: Gollancz fest line up Anouncement Official Press release:  Gollancz Announces Programme for The Gollancz Festival 2015 Gollancz, the science-fiction and fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, is delighted to announce the programme of The Gollancz Festival 2015 taking place at Waterstones Manchester Deansgate, 16 October 2015, and Waterstones London Piccadilly, 17 October 2015. We are also thrilled  to reveal partnerships with The Prince Charles Cinema and The Gamer’s Bus. The award-winning Gollancz Festival 2014 was the first of its kind – an integrated multi-platform, digital and physical one-day book event f eaturing live participation from almost 50 writers. Amongst other brilliant results, #GollanczFest reached nearly 9 million timelines on Twitter and has been watched nearly 18,000 times on You Tube. Tickets for the 2014 event at Waterstones Piccadilly sold out in three weeks.  Even bigger and better, the Gollancz Festival 2015 wi...

The Three-body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu), Three Body Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision. I have had my eye on this book for quite sometime now, and luckily Head of Zeus published this book early 2015 and were kind enough to surpise me with a review copy. I have been a long time fan of Science Fiction and this genre comes in many forms. The Three-Body Problem  is however in a bit of a league of its own when it comes down to how Cixin Lui uses several tropes in the story. Cixin Liu focuses on the science in th...

The Mongolian Wizard by Michael Swanwick, The Mongolian Wizard #1  With "The Mongolian Wizard," Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Michael Swanwick launches a new fiction series at Tor.com -- beginning with this story of a very unusual international conference in a fractured Europe that never was. Last week I came across the most recent Mongolian Wizard story of Michael Swanwick, THe Night of the Salamander , over at Tor.com. I like the story a lot but it left like I was missing something. And no wonder, The Night of the Salamander is already the fifth book in The Mongolian Wizard series. Browing a bit more on Tor.com I found the story that start it all. Also called The Mongolian Wizard. The Mongolian Wizard  starts with a very nice first sentence that readily got me in the mood for the story." The wild griffins for which the region was famous were sporting in the sky above the snow-clad peaks of the Riphean Mountains when Sir Toby arrived at Schloss Greiffenhor...

Author interview with Ari Marmell Author bio: Ari Marmell was born in New York, moved to Houston when he was a year old, moved to Austin when he was 27, but has spent most of his life living in other worlds through a combination of writing and roleplaying games. He has been writing more or less constantly for the last dozen years, though he has only been paid for it the past five. He is the author of multiple roleplaying game supplements including work on Dungeons & Dragons. Ari lives in Austin with his wife, George, and two cats. ---------------------------------------  Hi Ari welcome over at The Book Plank and for taking your time to answer these few questions for us! BP: First off could you give us a short introduction as to who Ari Marmell is? What are your hobbies, likes and dislikes? AM: Well, I’ve been a sci-fi/fantasy fan for as long as I can remember. I’m a die-hard gamer—not computer games; I have no problem with them, I’m just not terrib...