The following is an interview with Jon Sprunk regarding the release of his new fantasy novel, Sun and Serpent. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Sprunk about the inspiration behind the novel (which serves as part four within The Book of the Black Earth series), his creative process in bringing the story to life, what readers can anticipate from this latest installment in the series, and more!
What if the descendants of pregnant African slave women, thrown overboard for being too burdensome to their kidnappers, become merpeople and developed a new culture and community under the sea? That’s the premise behind Rivers Solomon’s novella, The Deep.
What does one do when an entire country comes calling? Penny White faces her strangest challenge yet, when representatives of Les Etats Units (Daer’s equivalent of the United States) arrive on her doorstep with a unique request: They need Penny to negotiate with bees from Earth and convince the buzzing insects to return to their native world. The disillusioned vicar steps up to the challenge even when an opportunistic praying mantis with a penchant for Southern sayings becomes part of her entourage. Can Penny successfully solve political issues between nectar-loving species? Will negotiating with distinctly non-human inhabitants of Daer be the last straw?
Weird Tales is a legendary magazine whose roots go back to the 1920s and served as the proving grounds of many influential horror and weird authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Frank Belknap Long. The periodical has exchanged hands and creative editors over the last 100 years, with many long spells of inactivity peppered throughout. The newest issue of Weird Tales, number 363, is the first issue in five years and sees prolific speculative fiction author Jonathan Maberry at the editorial director’s helm.
In July, I received the opportunity to review the first two books in the Young Adventurer's Guide series. I've waited ever since for the chance to pick up the remaining books in the series and, as luck would have it, Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeons & Tombs recently crossed my desk.
The People’s Republic of Everything is the most recent short story collection from auteur author Nick Mamatas. Containing fourteen short stories and one novella, People’s Republic strays away from clear-cut genre definitions (unlike Mamatas’ prior collection, The Nickronomicon, which focused on Lovecraftian and cosmic horror) and instead veers into general speculative fiction. While the stories within People’s Republic may not be uniform in tone, setting, or style, they are all unified in conveying Mamatas’ left-aligned politics. While overtly political, People’s Republic is never preachy; its politics are seamlessly integrated into the stories, which range from the comedic to the tragic, from steampunk to folkish.
Sabbath is the newest novel from Nick Mamatas, author of I Am Providence, Bullettime, and The People’s Republic of Everything collection. At its heart, Sabbath is a neo-peplum story in the sword and sorcery vein, but a delight to genre fans as it takes on a cinematic quality, borrowing elements from fare such as Highlander, Terminator, Army of Darkness, Warlock, Beastmaster 2, and even 8 Heads in a Dufflebag.
On the Night Border is a collection of fifteen horror short stories by New York-based writer James Chambers. The stories within the collection are a mixture of previously published stories and ones appearing for the very first time. The tones and subgenres of the stories vary, from ghost tales (“Lost Daughters”) to possession (“Marco Polo”) to rich folks who have a dark, evil side to them (“The Many Hands Inside the Mountain” and “Picture Man”). Some stories dabble in other universes and IPs, such as Cthulhu Mythos-compatible stories (“A Song Left Behind in the Aztakea Hills,” “Odd Quahogs”), Lin Carter’s Anton Zarnak (“A Wandering Blackness”), Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (“The Chamber of Last Earthly Delights”), and even '70s cult classic Kolchak the Night Stalker (“Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Lost Boy”).
The Duff meets Dungeons & Dragons. Clueless meets Conan. Princess Diaries meets Percy Jackson. Sword and sorcery meets high school romance. Such are the appropriate descriptors for R. Litfin’s The Lost Noble, the first book in her Chronicles of Royal High series which combines elements of high fantasy with young adult sentiments.
The most important thing to remember with any Watt O’Hugh novel is that time is not linear; in Watt’s case, it’s not even sequential most of the time. It’s been several years since I read the first two installments in Watt’s adventures as reluctant Western hero, time roamer, and member of the movement against the Sidonians, so re-entry into his quirky, time-defying story was a bit like participating in a polar bear swim: slightly terrifying, a little disconcerting, but ultimately refreshing and memorable.