Blood Debt

Stargate Your Engines

Joseph Mallozzi, executive producer of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, is a big SF&F reader – and you know it’s always interesting to me to discover people from the filmic side of the genre who are. He’s such a heavy reader, in fact, that each month Joe picks two science fiction titles and two fantasy titles and asks his readership votes for one of each to read and discuss.

Recently, our own Sean Williams’ The Crooked Letterlost out to The Princess Bride (which, to be fair, has the advantage of also being a famous film), but Joe has decided to read The Crooked Letter anyway. And he invited his readership to do so as well. Now, thanks to our publicity director, Jill Maxick, Pyr willl be helping Joe host a contest on his blog for those readers that join him. As Joe explains:

“Free copies of The Blood Debtto three lucky readers who finish The Crooked Letter and are ready to continue the series. Winners will be announced sometime in mid-January so start reading.”

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Something to Crow About x 3

Three new Pyr reviews up at SFCrowsnest.

First up, Eamonn Murphy’s review of Alan Dean Foster’s Sagramanda (A Novel of Near-Future India):

“Someone once said of George Bernard Shaw that he couldn’t write a boring sentence. Alan Dean Foster can but he doesn’t write very many of them. Even when adapting less than excellent animated ”Star Trek’ scripts, he turns in a good line or two. Presenting his own plots and characters his prose is frequently divine, full of apt phrasing and neat similes. If nothing else, this book is a pleasure to read. Happily, there is something else, mostly a good plot, an interesting cast of characters festooned with hi-tech gadgets and a rich setting…”

Then Tomas L. Martin reviews Sean Williams 2nd and 3rd Books of the Cataclysm. Here’s Tomas on Book 2, The Blood Debt:

“Williams is a great writer and an even better world-builder. Comparisons can be made to China Mieville’s Bas-Lag work with its assorted weirdness and willingness to bend and break the traditional tropes of fantasy worlds. This doesn’t feel like a fantasy adventure novel typically does. Its towns, citizens, technology and magic feel significantly alien and new which is a great and welcome achievement… Overall, Sean Williams has produced that rare of gems, a fantasy book that really feels like you’re visiting a new world, rather than a rehashed version of somebody else’s milieu. The easy style and likeable banter between protagonists makes the book an enjoyable read and the plot keeps you wanting to come back for more. Expect to buy all four if you get the first!”

And here is Tomas on Book 3, The Hanging Mountains:

“Sean Williams’ impressive world-building and enjoyable style and plot surprised me, providing me with the most enjoyable fantasy reads I’ve experienced since finishing China Mieville’s The Scar…Sean Williams is writing an important series here that does a great service to the fantasy genre by encouraging it to break tradition. His powerfully creative world-building should stand as a call to arms for fantasy writers to leave the world of Tolkien-aping lands behind and really start being adventurous. Read all three of ‘The Books Of The Cataclysm’ and when the fourth is released, buy that, too. I know I will be.”

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Cataclysmic Contest

Fantasy Book Critic is hosting a Sean Williams Giveaway. Three lucky winners will be awarded the first three volumes of The Books of the Cataclysm by Sean Williams: The Crooked Letter,The Blood Debt,and The Hanging Mountains.Giveaway ends Tuesday, July 31, 2007 – 11:59AM PST.

“…the mind-blowing concept is enough to make me want more. ” Fantasy Book Critic

“[E]xplores the nature of life, death, and reality. Big subjects, but with the precision of an archaeological expert, Williams is more than up to the task. There is a lot to admire in Williams’ epic fantasy, the wide range of global religions and myths of which his afterlife is comprised, to the characterization of the protagonists. The story has the mythic resonance of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and American Gods, the dark fantasy/horror one might associate with something like Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, the multiple universes/realities of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion mythos, and the strange, weird creatures one might associate with China Miéville’s Bas-lag novels. Williams imagined world is equal part those novels which preceded his, but fortunately, there is enough newness to both the approach and vision to make this the work of a singular vision….” [R]eading many of the other titles Lou Anders has published with Pyr, I shouldn’t have been surprised with both the quality of the writing and the breadth of Williams’ imagination. Like a lot of the other books published by Pyr, Williams captures what makes a tried and true genre like Epic Fantasy so popular and enjoyable of a genre and spins a tale with his unique voice. This is the type of book you finish and can’t wait to read the sequel.”- SFFWorld.com

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Love Stricken & Agoraphobic: An Interview with Sean Williams

John Scalzi, he of Old Man’s War and The Android’s Dream, has been interviewing an author a day all week over on his AOL blog, By the Way. After wonderful interviews with Karl Schroeder, Karen Traviss, Charles Stross and Sarah Hoyt, Scalzi concludes his week with an interview with Sean Williams. They talk about publishing on two continents, writing solo and in collaboration, creator owned worlds vs shared universes like Star Wars, and how love can strike you at the oddest moments. Along the way, they also find time to discuss Sean’s marvelous Books of the Cataclysm, of which two (The Crooked Letter, The Blood Debt) are now published here via Pyr in the US. Of The Blood Debt, Sean says:

“The book is simultaneously a chase novel and a romance, with various people trying to rescue family members and maintaining or starting relationships along the way. Love strikes us in the oddest places sometimes, and at the most awkward times. Its perversity is what makes it so addictive, I think. If it always came when and how we wanted to, where would be the fun in that? I’m getting married next year, to a wonderful woman who, like me, thought she would never tie the knot. That we’re both willing and eager to do this thing that we’ve resisted for so long, with other people, is testimony to the amazing transformations that love can wreak, for good or ill, on the unsuspecting. To a certain extent, The Blood Debt is also about that.”

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Love X 3 from the LJ

This from the LIBRARY JOURNAL September 15, 2006 Issue:

Foster, Alan Dean. Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-Future India. Pyr:Prometheus. Oct. 2006. c.290p. ISBN 1-59102-488-9. $25. SF Taneer is an Indian scientist who has stolen a secret project code from a multinational corporation. On the run from both the organization and his unforgiving father, he meets and falls for Dephali, a beautiful woman of India’s untouchable class. Add a farmer-turned-merchant, a Kali-worshipping Frenchwoman, a chief inspector, and a man-eating tiger and the result is a fast-paced urban adventure set in a near-future India of high technology and desperate people. The prolific author of the Pip and Flinx novels (his latest, Trouble Magnet, publishes in November) adds to his considerable body of work with this polished hybrid of page-turning action and taut suspense that belongs in large collections. [For another novel about a future India, see Ian McDonald’s River of Gods.-Ed.] —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

Meaney, John. To Hold Infinity. Pyr: Prometheus. Sept. 2006. c.529p. ISBN 1-59102-489-7. $25. SF When newly widowed biologist Yoshiko Sunadomari travels to the planet Fulgar to reconnect with her estranged son Tetsuo, she discovers that he has run afoul of the Luculenti, the planet’s genetically changed ruling elite, and is now wanted for murder. Yoshiko undertakes a mission to clear Tetsuo’s name, putting herself directly in the path of Rafael Garcia de la Vega, whose nefarious schemes hold the planet in social and political turmoil. The author of the Nulapeiron Sequence (Paradox; Context; Resolution) has crafted a far-reaching vision of a future filled with potentials for both darkness and light, as seen through the eyes of a remarkably gifted and devoted woman. An excellent choice for most sf collections. —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

Williams, Sean. The Blood Debt. Pyr: Prometheus. (Books of the Cataclysm: Two). Oct. 2006. c.476p. ISBN 1-59102-493-5. $25. FANTASY Sal Hrvati’s estranged father has brought a creature from the Void Beneath into the world, and now Sal and his friends embark on a quest to find his errant father. Their journey takes them on a search for magical artifacts on the floor of the great crack in the earth known as the Divide. The second installment in the author’s “Books of the Cataclysm” series (after The Crooked Letter) follows the adventures of three companions who battle the unknown to save their families. Set partly in the modern world and partly in a fantasy environment drawn from archetypal myths and legends, this epic belongs in most fantasy collections. —SF/FANTASY By Jackie Cassada, Asheville Buncombe Lib. Syst., NC

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