| Alex Bardy | Sarah is one of the hardest-working authors I know, and she’s also written for the award-winning BBC TV series Torchwood as well as several gory crime thrillers, including Murder and Mayhem, the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy, a number of horror novels like London-based Feeding Ground, Tower Hill, and The Reckoning, as well as the truly heartbreaking Stay With Me, a story about The Death House, a place where terminally ill children are sent to die. She really is one-of-a-kind and deserves a much wider audience, so make a point of discovering her work if you haven’t already. Looking ahead, we have quite a few goodies to look forward to as summer passes slowly into autumn (that’s fall to you guys!), so here’s a quick look-see . . . One person getting a revival of sorts is Andre Norton, a great author of fantasy and science fiction who died just over a decade ago—her unforgettable Witch World series (begun in 1963 with Witch World) is but one of many she has gifted to the fantasy community, and—in line with her achievements within the industry, including the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award back in 1998, and the Science Fiction Writers of America even naming an award after her—there is heaps of her work due to be republished over the next few months, so do please keep an eye out for them care of Open Road Media and Amazon. com. Other things to look out for include Larry Niven’s classic Ringworld (published by Tor/Seven Seas, July 2014) making its transition to a graphic novel/comic format—the first part of which has probably already appeared in US comic and bookstores by the time you read this; and a young man called Joe Abercrombie who has unleashed (or rather, reinvented) the concept of so-called ‘grimdark fantasy’ through his grittily hardhitting First Law series, as well as several other books set in the same universe. My favourite Abercrombie novel remains Best Served Cold, published back in 2012; it’s a straightforward fantasy tale of a woman wronged and an intricate and somewhat gory account of how she exacts revenge on each and every one of those who wronged her. Nasty stuff indeed, but filled to the brim with great characters, a number of sticky ends, and an air of smug satisfaction for the reader . . . Joe Abercrombie’s new series is a trilogy of YA novels, beginning with Half a King (published by Gollancz, July 2014), and to be followed in due course by Half a World and Half a War—it’s the tale of a one-armed Prince Yarvi who unexpectedly becomes a king following the untimely death of his father and brother, but who is himself just as unexpectedly
unseated by betrayal and deception . . . you can guess what happens next as he embarks on a quest for vengeance, but despite the predictable outcome you can guarantee that Abercrombie will make it a journey to remember . . . No time or space for a classic this time round, but I promise a return to form next time. Toodles . . .
ABOUT THE COLUMNIST Alex Bardy lives in a very dark place, below a small dank stairwell, beneath a dark step, under a speck of dirt, tucked away in a cold, dark emptiness, somewhere on the fringes of the charming, historical city of York, in the North Yorkshire area of the UK. He also writes as DenizenOfTheUniverse under his Twitter moniker: @mangozoid. He is a contributor, reviewer, and word-lender to the British Fantasy Society, and an active member on the board of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA), mainly responsible for the design/ layout of their publications, coupled with an occasional foray into writing/interviewing.
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