Updates

Hear ye, hear ye! Gather around for the newest gossip!

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Orbit Books announced the acquisition of a new series from the author of the Raven's Shadow series (Blood Song, Tower Lord and Queen of Fire), Anthony Ryan.  The new series is named Draconis Memoria and the first book, The Waking Fire, will be released in July 2016. Here's the blurb for this new Epic series:

Anthony has always created memorable characters, and the protagonists of his latest tale are his finest creations yet. Clayton Torcreek is a straight-talking small-time criminal, while Lizanne Lethridge is a formidable spy and assassin. Both of them are ‘Blood-blessed’ – able to consume the blood of wild drakes, which grants them spectacular abilities. 

As the Ironship Protectorate and the Corvantine Empire prepare for war, these two individuals will both find themselves embroiled in the ongoing hostilities. Clay must venture into the uncharted wilds in search of an expedition that disappeared under mysterious circumstances, while Lizanne must go undercover in enemy territory in order to locate an ancient artefact that may just swing the balance of the war – but only if she can reach it first.

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Next up is Scott Lynch, with less good news.  The Thorn of Emberlain, the fourth book in the Gentlemen Bastards sequence is delayed.  Even if that's not the first time for Lynch, this time, he seems enthusiastic as to the length of this delay. A 2016 date is the target.

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Shining in a more positive light is the fate of R. Scott Bakker's The Unholy Consult, the finale of the Aspect-Emperor trilogy. Back in June, Bakker shared a sad news, the publication process being on hold. It seems that the pressure from the fans to the publisher paid off since the process is now back on track and a date should be announced soon enough! Great work guys!

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Finally, I wanted to share to interesting free reads that ought to give you a nice taste of two upcoming novels for September, Twelve Kings (no more in Sharakhai) by Brad (no more P.) Beaulieu and Sunset Mantle by Alter S. Reiss.

Tor.com first chapter of Sunset Mantle

Gollancz first three chapters of Twelve Kings

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A Crown for Cold Silver extract and update

With the release of Alex Marshall's ''debut'' right around the corner (A Crown for Cold Silver will be out April 14th) I picked up the ARC to try to post a review soon after its release. With more than 50 pages in, I have to say that so far, it looks like a solid ''debut''.

I also searched for a map of Marshall's world (it would be of great help) and it's still not available online. However, it will be posted soon by Orbit.

Aside from the extract, which I hope will give you a nice enough taste of what were looking at, I found out that: "Alex Marshall is a pseudonym for an acclaimed author who has previously published several novels in different genres.". That's why I put quotation marks on the debut...

So far, I wasn't able to find out who Alex Marshall is. Anybody knows?

Anyway, here's the link for the extract (it includes 7 chapters):

CrimsonEmpire

Kameron Hurley's The Mirror Empire, cover and excerpt

Richard Anderson made a name for himself as a Fantasy cover illustrator with the cover art for John R. Fultz's Books of the Shaper sereis (Seven Princes, Seven Kings and Seven Sorcerers) and most recently the beautiful covers for the first two books in Brian Staveley's The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series, The Emperor's Blade and The Providence of Fire.  The Wizards of the Coast and  Guild Wars 2 artist developed a distinctive style and when I first saw the cover for the upcoming The Mirror Empire, book one of the Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley, there was no doubt as to whom was behind the cover art.

The good looking cover unveiling created a buzz on the blogosphere for Hurley's next book. Kameron is also behind the Bel Dame Apocrypha series (God's War, Infidel and Rapture).  Here's the blurb for book coming out on September 4th from Angry Robot and a link for an excerpt by Tor.com for the prologue and first chapter.

On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past… while a world goes to war with itself. 

In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. 

As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war, a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress. 

Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself. 

In the end, one world will rise – and many will perish.

Excerpt

Extracts - Hulick, Patrick and Salyards

Three interesting extracts have surfaced on the web recently and they might give you a nice taste of upcoming novels. We're talking about Den Patrick's The Boy with  the Porcelain Blade, Sworn in Steel by Douglas Hulick (finally it will be in our hands soon) and Jeff Salyards' Veil of the Deserters (I have very high expectations for this one).

Enjoy!

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From Gollancz

The Boy with the Porcelain Blade

Den Patrick

Chapters one, two, three and four

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From Tor

Sworn in Steel

Douglas Hulick

Chapters one and two

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From Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

Veil of the Deserters

Jeff Salyards

Chapter 2

Fifteen chapters of Sanderson's Word of Radiance

Brandon Sanderson's second book in the Stormlight Archive, Words of Radiance, will be released on March 4th.  For those of you who want to read some of it before it comes out, Tor has posted new excerpts of the novel.  As of now, you can read the prologue, chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 and 2 interludes...

Follow the link if you're interested!

Words of Radiance extract

Considering that the most anticipated 2014 Fantasy novel for the readers of this blog (look at this poll) is Words of Radiance, book two of The Stormlight Archive, this extract should an interesting for many readers. Gollancz posted the full extract here.  The book will be out in March 2014.  Here's a glimpse (that's quite a long chapter...):

Lift 

Lift had never robbed a palace before. Seemed like a dangerous thing to try. Not because she might get caught, but because once you robbed a starvin’ palace, where did you go next? 

She climbed up onto the outer wall and looked in at the grounds. Everything inside—trees, rocks, buildings—reflected the starlight in an odd way. A bulbous-looking building stuck up in the middle of it all, like a bubble on a pond. In fact, most of the buildings were that same round shape, often with small protrusions sprouting out of the top. There wasn’t a straight line in the whole starvin’ place. Just lots and lots of curves. 

Lift’s companions climbed up to peek over the top of the wall. A scuffling, scrambling, rowdy mess they were. Six men, supposedly master thieves. They couldn’t even climb a wall properly.
“The Bronze Palace itself,” Huqin breathed. 

“Bronze? Is that what everythin’ is made of?” Lift asked, sitting on the wall with one leg over the side. “Looks like a bunch of breasts.” 

The men looked at her, aghast. They were all Azish, with dark skin and hair. She was Reshi, from the islands up north. Her mother had told her that, though Lift had never seen the place. 

“What?” Huqin demanded. 

“Breasts,” Lift said, pointing. “See, like a lady layin’ on her back. Those points on the tops are nipples. Bloke who built this place musta been single for a looong time.” 

Huqin turned to one of his companions. Using their ropes, they scuttled back down the outside of the wall to hold a whispered conference. 

“Grounds at this end look empty, as my informant indicated would be the case,” Huqin said. He was in charge of the lot of them. Had a nose like someone had taken hold of it when he was a kid and pulled real, real hard. Lift was surprised he didn’t smack people in the face with it when he turned. 

“Everyone’s focused on choosing the new Prime Aqasix,” said Maxin. “We could really do this. Rob the Bronze Palace itself, and right under the nose of the vizierate.” 

“Is it…um…safe?” asked Huqin’s nephew. He was in his teens, and puberty hadn’t been kind to him. Not with that face, that voice, and those spindly legs. 

“Hush,” Huqin snapped. 

“No,” Tigzikk said, “the boy is right to express caution. This will be very dangerous.”

Excerpt for Bledsoe's He Drank and Saw the Spider

The next Eddie LaCrosse book, He Drank and Saw the Spider, is almost upon us!  It will be out in a month, on January 14th 2014.  Meanwhile, Tor.com posted an excerpt.

Here's a glimpse.  The full excerpt is for chapters one and two.

The battles had been hard, the gold had been scarce, and the company—other mercenaries like me, most of them older, all of them unsophisticated as bricks—had gotten on my nerves. So I deserted. Or, as we called it in the trade, “chose to pursue other opportunities.” That was the whole point of hiring out your sword arm instead of actually joining an army, wasn’t it? 

I was a young man that summer: long-haired, beardless, and still hiding behind a mercenary’s blade from the truth about myself and my past. There wasn’t a tavern wench I hadn’t known, a farm girl I hadn’t tried to know, or a noble lady I hadn’t considered getting to know. I drank often, ate whatever came my way, and took what I needed when no one was looking. I was Eddie LaCrosse, no longer Edward, the heir to the LaCrosse barony in Arentia, and I went where the wars were. Unless, of course, the war turned out to be boring. 

And that’s how I ended up in an Alturan forest just below the mountain foothills, minding my own business and pissing on a tree, when a man entered the clearing screaming and running for his life. A moment later he exited, pursued by a bear. 

I fastened my pants and took off after him on foot, knowing my horse was useless in the undergrowth. Over the past sixteen years, I’ve often wondered why I did that. I was all business in those days, and business meant gold. I wanted to sign up with the Alturan army, then about to go to war with its neighbor Mahnoma and its paranoid king, Gerald. But instead of sticking to my plan, I ran to help a stranger without even a second thought. I suppose I believed there might be a reward for rescuing him. Yeah, that must’ve been it. 

The man’s screams and the bear’s roars made them easy to find, but by the time I reached the top of a ridge and looked down into the little gully, it was too late: the bear had him. He lay beneath the beast, curled into a ball facedown on the ground, screaming as the great claws sliced into his unprotected back. The animal bellowed and snapped, trying to get a clean bite on the man’s head.

The Dark Defiles final extract

Richard Morgan posted a fifth and final extract for the third book in the A Land Fit for Heroes series, The Dark Defiles.  The book will be coming out in April 2014.

There were times he dreamed that the cage had taken him after all; that he made some impassioned speech confessing guilt and repentance on the floor of the Hearings Chamber, and offered himself up for the sentence instead.  That the Chancellery law-lords in their enthroning chairs and finery murmured behind their hands, deliberated amongst themselves for a space and finally nodded with stern paternal wisdom, and the manacles were unlocked and his wife and children set free.  He saw it with tears in his eyes and a sobbing laugh on his lips, saw Sindrin kneel on the cold marble, weeping and hugging at little Shoy and Miril, while Shif junior just stood and looked back at him across the chamber with mirroring tears standing in his own young man eyes. 

Then he woke, to his chains and the memory of what had really been done. 

Sprayborne tilted on her anchors beneath him, yearned seaward on the currents from the river’s mouth.  The damp cold of dawn seeped in through the portholes over his head and brought with it from the mudflats a stench like death. 

At other times, maybe triggered by that reek, it was nightmare that took him – he dreamed, keening deep in his throat as he slept, that the rusted locks fell off the gibbet cages where they’d been heaved over the side and come to rest on the estuary’s silted bed, and now Shoy and Miril swam free, glitter-eyed and skeletal in the murky water, rising into the light to knock at Sprayborne’s hull and call for their father to come out and play…… 

Living punishment, as severe as the law allows, pronounced law-lord Murmin Kaad grimly into the anticipatory quiet of the Hearing Chamber.  Meted out to reflect the severity of your sins against the Fair City and its allies, and to serve as clear example to others.  Shif Stepwyr, you will see your bloodline extinguished, you will be imprisoned in the vessel you used to commit your crimes, and you will be given the rest of your natural span to reflect upon the evil you have done in this world. 

He screamed when he heard it, and sometimes, waking from his dreams, he echoed those screams again.  Screamed and tore at his fetters until he bled from the old scarred wounds once more, screamed as he had in the Hearing Chamber, for the Salt Lord to come for him, for the whole fucking Dark Court to come if they willed it, to take his soul, to take him away, to any kind of torment but this, if he might just first pay back the rulers of Trelayne for what the justice they had meted out. 

No-one came. 

[...]

And for the other extracts:

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Visitation Rites

Quest Fellow Blues

The Calm Before the Storm

The Emperor's Blades excerpt

The hype machine is in full swing for the debut Fantasy novel of Brian Staveley.  Tor posted the first seven chapters of the book, The Emperor's Blades, book one of the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne. It will be released on January 14th 2014.  With that exposure, some mentions by bloggers and a catchy and beautiful cover art, the novel is given every chance to suceed, let's hope it can deliver.

Here's the blurb and the link for Tor's excerpt:

Brian Staveley’s The Emperor’s Blades on Tor.com

When the emperor of Annur is murdered, his children must fight to uncover the conspiracy—and the ancient enemy—that effected his death. 

Kaden, the heir apparent, was for eight years sequestered in a remote mountain monastery, where he learned the inscrutable discipline of monks devoted to the Blank God. Their rituals hold the key to an ancient power which Kaden must master before it’s too late. When an imperial delegation arrives to usher him back to the capital for his coronation, he has learned just enough to realize that they are not what they seem—and enough, perhaps, to successfully fight back. 

Meanwhile, in the capital, his sister Adare, master politician and Minister of Finance, struggles against the religious conspiracy that seems to be responsible for the emperor’s murder. Amid murky politics, she’s determined to have justice—but she may be condemning the wrong man. 

Their brother Valyn is struggling to stay alive. He knew his training to join the Kettral— deadly warriors who fly massive birds into battle—would be arduous. But after a number of strange apparent accidents, and the last desperate warning of a dying guard, he’s convinced his father’s murderers are trying to kill him, and then his brother. He must escape north to warn Kaden—if he can first survive the brutal final test of the Kettral.

Lloyd's Moon's Artifice extract

Tom Lloyd new book, Moon's Artifice is set in a new setting, stepping away from his Epic Fantasy series Twilight Reign. Tom categorized his new novel as ''a fantasy action/conspiracy thriller''  The book will be released on November 21st and Gollancz posted an extract of the first chapter.

Enjoy (here)!

The prohibition on gunpowder weapons for lower castes has been in force for centuries and is obeyed across the Empire of a Hundred Houses. No such ban on lenses or telescopes exists, yet with our Gods residing in bright constellations in the nearer sky, common sense remains the first obstacle to progress.  

From A History by Ayel Sorote 

For one glorious moment he was flying. Starlight shone wetly on the black slates below – the air around him was still, but charged like a God’s breath before the thunder. On the edges of his vision were faint yellow strands of light that spilled around doors and half-shuttered windows. He stared down as though trying to count the cobbles below the slate-tiled roof. Night’s serene hands cradled him and for that moment he felt the cares of the world slough away as sudden, beautiful clarity washed over him. 

Bastard fucking fox. 

 Irato fell. With shocking speed the awning jumped up to meet him and black lights burst before his eyes. Head and chest smashed into the tiles with a crack that seemed to rip right through his skull. His mind filled with the white noise of pain that momentarily tore him from the world as the air was punched from his lungs. 

The divine stars burned a trail through the night as he was yanked around by the force of impact. Then the ground struck him with the heavier thump of meat on the butcher’s block. The delicate tinkle of glass vials chimed around the cobbled street. Irato felt pieces patter as gently as summer rain on his close-cropped hair. A sense of warmth flowed over the black emptiness where his body had once been. 

Numbness fleetingly consumed him, sucked him down into the belly of the earth before pain burst hot and jagged to wake him. Unable to command his limbs, Irato lay helpless and stunned – too dazed to recognise the sensations flowering in his damaged body. His arm lay crookedly beneath his chin, tilting it up to look over the blurry grey cobbles of the street. A pale, indistinct shape wavered directly in front of his eyes. His heart thumped two loud beats before the sight suddenly resolved into sharp focus. It was a shard of glass two inches long and shaped like a stiletto, pirouetting delicately in the groove between cobbles, barely a hand span from his eye.

Excerpts - Hair, Karpyshyn, Scull, Deas and Dalglish

Want to get an early taste of upcoming books or read a sample of newly released ones?  Here's some of them that surfaced in the last weeks:

Mage's Blood
by David Hair
Excerpt from Tor.com
My review

A Dance of Cloaks
by David Dalglish
Prologue from Orbit books

The Grim Company
by Luke Scull
Excerpt from Tor.com
My review

Children of Fire
by Drew Karpyshyn
Excerpt from Random House

Dragon Queen
by Stephen Deas
Chapters one and two from Gollancz

150 free short stories from Tor

Tor is giving for free the assembled collection of original stories in ebook format (more than 4000 pages and a big file to download).  The offer is up until July 31st, so hurry up if you want to pick it up.  It includes more than 150 short stories by authors such as Daniel Abraham, Alex Bledsoe, Jay Lake, Ken Scholes, Peter Orullian, Bradon Sanderson and many many more.

Here's the link.

Mark Lawrence free short story

While waiting for the return of Jorg (Mark Lawrence's Emperor of Thorns will be released in August) in a full length novel, Harper Voyager let's you read a short story for free from the author, featuring the young Prince/King/Aspiring Emperor. It's called Sleeping Beauty.

Here's the link.

Enjoy!

The Thousand Names excerpt

The Thousand Names by Django Wexler is one of the most anticipated debut releasing in 2013.  The first book of The Shadow Campaigns series will be out on July 2nd and Tor.com posted an excerpt of the book.  Here's the blurb and an extract of the excerpt :)

Enter an epic fantasy world that echoes with the thunder of muskets and the clang of steel—but where the real battle is against a subtle and sinister magic....  

Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, commander of one of the Vordanai empire’s colonial garrisons, was resigned to serving out his days in a sleepy, remote outpost. But that was before a rebellion upended his life. And once the powder smoke settled, he was left in charge of a demoralized force clinging tenuously to a small fortress at the edge of the desert. 

To flee from her past, Winter Ihernglass masqueraded as a man and enlisted as a ranker in the Vordanai Colonials, hoping only to avoid notice. But when chance sees her promoted to command, she must win the hearts of her men and lead them into battle against impossible odds. 

The fates of both these soldiers and all the men they lead depend on the newly arrived Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich, who has been sent by the ailing king to restore order. His military genius seems to know no bounds, and under his command, Marcus and Winter can feel the tide turning. But their allegiance will be tested as they begin to suspect that the enigmatic Janus’s ambitions extend beyond the battlefield and into the realm of the supernatural—a realm with the power to ignite a meteoric rise, reshape the known world, and change the lives of everyone in its path.

Excerpt link

Four soldiers sat atop the ancient sandstone walls of a fortress on the sun-blasted Khandarai coast. 

That they were soldiers was apparent only by the muskets that leaned against the parapet, as they had long ago discarded anything resembling a uniform. They wore trousers that, on close inspection, might once have been a deep royal blue, but the relentless sun had faded them to a pale lavender. Their jackets, piled in a heap near the ladder, were of a variety of cuts, colors, and origins, and had been repaired so often they were more patch than original fabric. 

They lounged, with that unique, lazy insolence that only soldiers of long experience can affect, and watched the shore to the south, where something in the nature of a spectacle was unfolding. The bay was full of ships, broad-beamed, clumsy-looking transports with furled sails, wallowing visibly even in the mild sea. Out beyond them was a pair of frigates, narrow and sharklike by comparison, their muddy red Borelgai pennants snapping in the wind as though to taunt the Vordanai on the shore. 

If it was a taunt, it was lost on the men on the walls, whose attention was elsewhere. The deep-drafted transports didn’t dare approach the shore too closely, so the water between them and the rocky beach was aswarm with small craft, a motley collection of ship’s boats and local fishing vessels. Every one was packed to the rails with soldiers in blue. They ran into the shallows far enough to let their passengers swing over the side into the surf, then turned about to make another relay. The men in blue splashed the last few yards to dry land and collapsed, lying about in clumps beside neatly stacked boxes of provisions and equipment.

“Those poor, stupid bastards,” said the first soldier, whose name was Buck. He was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man, with sandy hair and a tuft on his chin that made him look like a brigand. “Best part of a month in one of those things, eatin’ hard biscuit and pukin’ it up again, and when you finally get there they tell you you’ve got to turn around and go home.”

“You think?” said the second soldier, who was called Will. He was considerably smaller than Buck, and his unweathered skin marked him as a relative newcomer to Khandar. “I’m not looking forward to another ride myself.”

A plethora of excerpts

Want to get an early taste of upcoming books or read a sample of newly released ones?  Here's some of them that surfaced in the last weeks:

The Garden of Stones
by Mark T. Barnes
Chapter one from Tor.com

A Discourse in Steel
by Paul S. Kemp
Chapter one from Tor.com

Steelheart
by Brandon Sanderson
Prologue from AV Club

The Tyrant's Law
by Daniel Abraham
Prologue from Orbit Books

Magician's End
by Raymond E. Feist
Chapter one from Tor.com

The One-Eyed Man
by L.E. Modesitt Jr
Chapter one from Tor.com

The Flames of Shadam Khoreh
by Bradley  P. Beaulieu
First five chapters from Brad

The Dark Defiles extract #4

Richard Morgan posted a fourth extract for the third and possibly last book (still not confirmed) of the A Land Fit for Heroes series, The Dark Defiles.  The book should be out in August later this year.

The Calm Before the Storm

They waited a full day and night for Ringil Eskiath to show. 

Everyone was briefed, everyone knew their place.  The locals hid in their homes, the League privateers held ambush positions down at the harbour and all along the edges of the bay.  Lookouts took the high ground at either end, and the watchtower at Dako’s Point.  Certain among the imperial marine prisoners were held in a beer cellar not far from the docks, ready to be hauled out and used for bargaining or simply as shields.  Klithren sat at a table in the Inn on League street, played dice against himself and waited for word. 

Ornley held its breath. 

The privateers were sanguine – they knew how to sit tight.  It was part of their trade to wait, sifting the haze at the horizon for signs of enemy shipping or a change in the weather, sometimes for days on end, and nothing to break the monotony but the soft rocking of the vessel on the swell.  You learnt patience out there, you had to.  No percentage in getting all riled up ahead of time.  The fight, the storm – these things would be upon you soon enough.  Take the empty hours and breathe them in like pipe-house smoke, they’d be yours for a meagre enough span in the end. 

The townspeople were less sanguine.  Maybe if you were a soldier boy you could sit scratching your arse like this all day long, but gouging a living out of the Hironish isles took work.  You were up with the dawn or before, out to sea and casting your nets, or into the surrounding hills to tend your livestock.  There were dry-stone walls to be maintained, crops to be checked for blight, crows and gulls to be kept at bay, eventually the harvest; thatches to be renewed or repaired after storms, peat to be dug and cut and stacked for drying.  Nets to be mended, hulls to be ripped of barnacles, scrubbed and pitched; there was gutting and cleaning, salting, packing, the smokehouse to tend.  Did these bloody blade artists ever stop to think how food ends up on their plates and fire in the grate to keep out the chill?  Thank the Dark Queen we never got that garrison they promised us after the war, if this is all they’re good for……

[...] 

And for the other extracts:
Tidings of Comfort and Joy
Visitation Rites
Quest Fellow Blues

Excerpts, samples, extracts and maps!!!

You want to get acquainted with the books you're still hesitating to pick up?  You want to get some taste of them before buying them?  Look no further, here's a list of excerpts, samples or extracts from the Fantasy novels currently generating hype or coming soon.  Moreover, here's the maps for A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan.

Fade to Black
by Francis Knight
Chapter one from Orbit
Chapter two from My Bookish Ways

The Daylight War
by Peter V. Brett
Part of chapter four from Tor

River of Stars
by Guy Gabriel Kay
Chapter one from Far Beyond Reality









Trinity Rising
by Elspeth Cooper
Chapter one and two from Tor










Promise of Blood
by Brian McClellan
Chapter one from Brian's The Powder Mage Trilogy Facebook page (you have to 'like it' to read it)












Blood and Bone
by Ian C. Esslemont
Chapter one from Tor

A Natural History of Dragons
by Marie Brennan
Preface and Chapter one from Tor








Maps for A Natural History of Dragons:

Martins' The Winds of Winter new excerpt

George R.R. Martin posted today a new excerpt of The Winds of Winter, the sixth and penultimate book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. So far, Martin still hopes to finish the book for 2014 but with the experience of A Dance with Dragons, we never know.  The excerpt is from the PoV of Arianne.

The Winds of Winter excerpt

Bakker's Unholy Consult excerpt

R. Scott Bakker gifted the forum site Second Apocalypse with a nice little teaser this week-end in the form of the first chapter from the final volume in the Aspect-Emperor trilogy, The Unholy Consult. Bakker also shared this interesting tidbit:

The book is inching toward completion, and barring any revisionary madness (no relation), looks like it will be even more of a behemoth than The White-Luck Warrior.

Here's the link to the excerpt. Beware, Madness, the forum user who posted the exclusive mentions that the chapter is full of major Unholy Consult spoilers...

Extracts - Morgan and Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie and Richard Morgan both posted extracts from their upcoming novel, Red Country for Joe and The Dark Defiles (A Land Fit for Heroes book 3) for Richard.  Here are the links and extracts from the extracts:

Red Country

The Dark Defiles

***

They were laughing when they clattered over the rise and the shallow little valley opened out in front of them.  Something Lamb had said.  He’d perked up when they left town, as usual.  Never at his best in a crowd. 

It gave Shy’s spirits a lift besides, coming up that track that was hardly more than two faded lines through the long grass.  She’d been through black times in her younger years, midnight black times, when she thought she’d be killed out under the sky and left to rot, or caught and hanged and tossed out unburied for the dogs to rip at.  More than once, in the midst of nights sweated through with fear, she’d sworn to be grateful every moment of her life if she ever got to tread this unremarkable path again.  Eternal gratitude hadn’t quite come about, but that’s promises for you.  She still felt that bit lighter as the wagon rolled home. 

Then they saw the farm, and the laughter choked in her throat and they sat silent while the wind fumbled through the grass around them.  Shy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, all her veins flushed with ice-water.  Then she was down from the wagon and running.

‘Shy!’ Lamb roared at her back, but she hardly heard, head full of her own rattling breath, pounding down the slope, land and sky jolting around her.  Through the stubble of the field they’d harvested not a week before.  Over the trampled-down fence and the chicken feathers crushed into the mud. 

She made it to the yard – what had been the yard – and stood helpless.  The house was all dead charred timbers and rubbish and nothing left standing but the tottering chimney-stack.  No smoke.  The rain must’ve put out the fires a day or two before.  But everything was burned out.  She ran around the side of the blacked wreck of the barn, whimpering a little now with each breath. 

***

He felt the change as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the croft.  It came on like icy water, sprinkling across the nape of his neck and his shoulders. 

He tilted his head a little to send the feeling away, traced a warding glyph in the air, like taking down a volume from a library shelf.  Around him, the croft walls grew back to an enclosing height they likely hadn’t seen in decades.  The boiling grey sky blacked out, replaced with damp smelling thatch overhead.  A dull, reddish glow reached out to him from the hearth.  Peat smoke stung his throat.  He heard the hoarse whistle of breathing, the creak of…… 

A worn oak rocking chair, angled at the fireside, tilting gently back and forth.  From where he stood, Ringil could not tell what was seated there, only that it was wrapped in a dark cloak and cowl. 

The ward he’d chosen was burning down around him like some torched peasant’s hut.  He felt the fresh exposure shiver through him.  Reached for something stronger, cracked finger-bones etching it into the air. 

“Yes – becoming quite adept at that, aren’t we.”  It was a voice that creaked like the chair.  Wheeze and rustle of seeming age, or maybe just the breathlessness at the end of laughing too hard at something.  “Quite the master of the ikinri ‘ska these days.”