New Releases 9/1/15

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Hardcovers

The Desert and the Blade: A Novel of the Change by SM Stirling

In his Novels of the Change, New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling presents “a devastated, mystical world that will appeal to fans of traditional fantasy as well as post-apocalyptic SF.”* Continuing their quest that began in The Golden Princess, two future rulers of a world without technology risk their lives seeking a fabled blade…

Reiko, Empress of Japan, has allied herself with Princess Órlaith, heir to the High Kingdom of Montival, to find the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutting Sword, a legendary treasure of an ancient dynasty that confers valor and victory to its bearer. Órlaith understands all too well the power it signifies. Her own inherited blade, the Sword of the Lady, was both a burden and a danger to her father, Rudi Mackenzie, as it failed to save the king from being assassinated.

But the fabled sword lies deep with the Valley of Death, and the search will be far from easy. And war is building, in Montival and far beyond.

As Órlaith and Reiko encounter danger and wonder, Órlaith’s mother, Queen Matildha, believes her daughter’s alliance and quest has endangered the entire realm. There are factions both within and without Montival whose loyalty died with the king, and whispers of treachery and war grow ever louder.

And the Malevolence that underlies the enemy will bend all its forces to destroy them.

Germanica by Robert Conroy

Best-selling alternate history master Robert Conroy returns to World War II, this time for a dangerous last stand of the Nazis in the heart of the Alps.

GERMANICA, ÜBER ALLES!

Deep in the heart of Europe's Alps in the redoubt called Germanica, Nazi propaganda master Josef Goebbels and a battalion of Nazi zealots hold out against a frantic final Allied push to end World War II. With Churchill losing his election, De Gaulle consolidating his rule over a newly liberated France, and Stalin asserting his own nefarious land-grab in Eastern Germany, only America, led by its untried new president Harry Truman, remains to face the toughest of Nazi warriors as they hunker down for a bitter fight to the last man.

Goebbels knows that if he can hold out just a bit longer, the war weary of the Western nations will back away from unconditional surrender for Germany, and he and his zealots can remain in power never to answer for their war crimes, and able to prepare for the moment when their hateful Nazi ideology is ready once again to rise from its alpine grave and strike at the heart of humanity!

But there are Americans and a few stalwart Europeans just as determined to put a final stake in the Nazi heart. It is now up to heroes in the making such as newly minted O.S.S. operative Ernie Janek, commando Captain Scott Tanner, and formerly enslaved Czech "Jew" Lena Bobek, to bring down the dark Nazi menace growing like a cancer in the mountainous heart of the continent.

Paperbacks

Chapelwood: The Borden Dispatches by Cherie Priest

From Cherie Priest, the award-winning author of Maplecroft, comes a new tale of Lizzie Borden’s continuing war against the cosmic horrors threatening humanity…

Birmingham, Alabama is infested with malevolence. Prejudice and hatred have consumed the minds and hearts of its populace. A murderer, unimaginatively named “Harry the Hacker” by the press, has been carving up citizens with a hatchet. And from the church known as Chapelwood, an unholy gospel is being spread by a sect that worships dark gods from beyond the heavens.

This darkness calls to Lizzie Borden. It is reminiscent of an evil she had dared hoped was extinguished. The parishioners of Chapelwood plan to sacrifice a young woman to summon beings never meant to share reality with humanity. An apocalypse will follow in their wake which will scorch the earth of all life.

Unless she stops it…

Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale

Perfect for fans of action-adventure and historical fiction—including novels by such authors as Bernard Cornwell, Steve Berry, Naomi Novik, and Harry Turtledove—this stunning work of alternate history imagines a world in which the Roman Empire has not fallen and the North American continent has just been discovered. In the year 1218 AD, transported by Norse longboats, a Roman legion crosses the great ocean, enters an endless wilderness, and faces a cataclysmic clash of worlds, cultures, and warriors.

Ever hungry for land and gold, the Emperor has sent Praetor Gaius Marcellinus and the 33rd Roman Legion into the newly discovered lands of North America. Marcellinus and his men expect easy victory over the native inhabitants, but on the shores of a vast river the Legion clashes with a unique civilization armed with weapons and strategies no Roman has ever imagined.

Forced to watch his vaunted force massacred by a surprisingly tenacious enemy, Marcellinus is spared by his captors and kept alive for his military knowledge. As he recovers and learns more about these proud people, he can’t help but be drawn into their society, forming an uneasy friendship with the denizens of the city-state of Cahokia. But threats—both Roman and Native—promise to assail his newfound kin, and Marcellinus will struggle to keep the peace while the rest of the continent surges toward certain conflict.

Dream Paris by Tony Ballantyne

Anna is doing her best: there are lots of other seventeen year olds who are living alone in the partially rebuilt ruins of London. She hopes that by keeping things clean and tidy and by studying hard she can keep the dreams away...But then a tall, dark stranger with eyes like a fly enters her life. He claims to know where the missing people of London have ended up. He might even know the location of Anna's missing parents. Anna can help, but to do that she will have to let go of what little normality she has managed to gather around herself and begin the journey to Dream Paris.

If Then by Matthew De Abaitua

James has a scar in the back of his head. It’s where he was wounded in the Battle of Suvla Bay in August 1915. Or is the scar the mark of his implant that allows the Process to fill his mind with its own reality?

In IF, the people of a small English town cling on after an economic collapse under the protection of the Process. But sometimes people must be evicted from the town. That’s the job of James, the bailiff. While on patrol, James discovers the replica of a soldier from the First World War wandering the South Downs. This strange meeting begins a new cycle of evictions in the town, while out on the rolling downland, the Process is methodically growing the soldiers and building the weapons required to relive a long lost battle.

In THEN, it is August 1915, at the Battle of Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles campaign. Compared to the thousands of allied soldiers landing on this foreign beach, the men of the 32nd Field Ambulance are misfits and cranks of every stripe: a Quaker pacifist, a freethinking padre, a meteorologist, and the private (once a bailiff) known simply as James. Exposed to constant shellfire and haunted by ghostly snipers, the stretcher-bearers work day and night on the long carry of wounded men. One night they stumble across an ancient necropolis, disturbed by an exploding shell. What they discover within this ancient site will make them question the reality of the war and shake their understanding of what it means to be human…

Lady of Magick by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

Sylvia Izzo Hunter brought “both rural Brittany and an alternative Regency England to vivid life”* in The Midnight Queen, her debut novel of history, magic, and myth. Now, in her new Noctis Magicae novel, Sophie and Gray Marshall are ensnared in an arcane plot that threatens to undo them both.

In her second year of studies at Merlin College, Oxford, Sophie Marshall is feeling alienated among fellow students who fail to welcome a woman to their ranks. So when her husband, Gray, is invited north as a visiting lecturer at the University in Din Edin, they leap at the chance. There, Sophie’s hunger for magical knowledge can finally be nourished. But soon, Sophie must put her newly learned skills to the test.

Sophie returns home one day to find a note from Gray—he’s been summoned urgently to London. But when he doesn’t return, and none of her spells can find a trace of him, she realizes something sinister has befallen him. With the help of her sister, Joanna, she delves into Gray’s disappearance, and soon finds herself in a web of magick and intrigue that threatens not just Gray, but the entire kingdom.

War Stories Volume 1 TP by Garth Ennis

For the first time in a decade, the original War Stories are back in print! Fully re-mastered, these stunning works have never looked so good. Featuring some of the finest war comics ever created, with scripts by Garth Ennis (Preacher, Crossed, The Boys) and art by some of the biggest names in comics. Johann's Tiger: Drawn by Chris Weston (The Filth).A German tank crew face their own damnation in the twilight of the Second World War, as old ghosts and old sins catch up with them. D-Day Dodgers: Drawn by John Higgins (Pride & Joy). British soldiers in the remote Italian campaign find themselves fighting a forgotten war, while others closer to home reap the glory. Screaming Eagles: Drawn by Dave Gibbons (Watchmen). Exhausted by years of combat, American paratroopers come to the end of the road- and are suddenly granted a strange reward. Nightingale: Drawn by David Lloyd (V for Vendetta). A Royal Navy escort ship on the nightmarish Arctic convoy run hits trouble - and only the ultimate sacrifice will earn her crew redemption.

E-Books

What Could Possibly Go Wrong by Jodi Taylor

Join Max in the sixth instalment in the off-the-wall bestselling Chronicles of St Mary’s series by Jodi Taylor.

Max is back! New husband, new job, and a training regime that cannot fail – to go wrong!

Take one interim Chief Training Officer, add five recruits, mix with Joan of Arc, a baby mammoth, a duplicitous Father of History, a bombed rat, Stone Age hunters, a couple of passing policemen who should have better things to do, and Dick the Turd.

Stir well, bring to the boil – and wait for the bang!

To readers, authors and publishers...

Is your story going to be published in time for the next New Releases? Contact us at ahwupdate at gmail dot com.  We are looking for works of alternate history, counterfactual history, steampunk, historical fantasy, time travel or anything that warps history beyond our understanding.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.

Review: The Boys by Garth Ennis

Guest post by Chris Nuttall.

Garth Ennis is a writer, IMHO, with a rather strange career.  Sometimes, he can write very well.  Sometimes, he can expose the little flaws in other comics.  And sometimes, he is just too disgusting for words.

I am no prude.  I do not start screaming for the book burners when I see a naked breast in a comic book.  Those who read books clearly marked as intended for an adult audience have no right to whine when their feelings are offended because they see something that they might consider adult.  I see no point in complaining about comic books that feature hardcore violence – The Ultimates, for example – or even the dreaded S-E-X.  Garth Ennis, however, goes well over the line more than once, to the point where his disgustingness actually interferes with the story.

This pops up quite a bit in Preacher, which featured a character with a face like an arse (gleefully illustrated by his name), and Kev, where poor Kevin Hawkins is persistently interrupted in increasingly degrading conditions by members of various Irish groups that want a little revenge on the former SAS soldier.  (He starts out as being on the toilet, then in the midst of sex, then while masturbating...)  Indeed, it becomes very clear that Ennis hates superheroes, to the point of humiliating them as much as possible.  The all-powerful Authority is brought down by a single man with a gun in their first Ennis story, then humiliated time and time again in their next appearances.  And Ennis wrote the (non-disgusting) Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, which has the Punisher killing every Marvel hero in the universe.

A trend that runs through almost all of Ennis’s writing is illustrated nicely by Butcher, from The Boys.  “With great power comes the certainty that you’re going to turn into a complete fucking cunt.”  Power corrupts; corruption leads to depravity...indeed, I don’t think I can recall a single Ennis villain who wasn't a depraved monster when the lights were out.

On the face of it, The Boys is a comic book series where a secret black-ops team – The Boys – are charged with policing the world of superheroes, using blackmail, beatings and the occasional bloody slaughter to keep the supers in line.  This is a cool concept, so cool that I kept on with The Boys long after I would otherwise have given up in disgust, purely in the hope that it would return to its original formula.  But it didn't.

One good rule with writing basically runs “show, don’t tell.”  Right from the start, we are told that Butcher, the team’s leader, is the most dangerous and cunning man in the world.  The problem is that Butcher simply doesn’t act the part of a reasonably smart man, let alone a version of Nick Fury.  He’s a devious bastard, all right, but he isn't super-smart.  But then, the plot depends largely on him being an idiot at the right moment.

Perhaps his greatest mistake is recruiting Wee Hughie from Scotland to serve as the latest member of The Boys.  Hughie is a likeable chap – don’t get me wrong, I would like him if we met – but he’s a complete idiot.  He has no talent for violence at all, a complete lack of awareness of the world he’s entered – and is something of a coward.  Butcher does have a fairly good reason for recruiting Hughie – Hughie’s first girlfriend was killed by a super and Hughie wants revenge – but he never tries to train Hughie properly.  Hardly what one would expect from a tactical genius.  Rather more like Duck Dodgers.  And Hughie’s origin story – his life prior to The Boys – is freaking stupid.

Hughie complains in one comic that his role on the team is the comic relief.  That might be true – he suffers a whole series of embarrassing mishaps – but I lost my patience for it long ago.  Recruiting Hughie was a damn stupid move.

The rest of The Boys are equally strange.  Mother’s Milk, easily the most pure-hearted member of the team, has to drink his own mother’s milk (yes, like a baby) to remain strong and healthy.  Quite how he managed to become an Army Ranger with that little handicap is beyond me.  The Frenchman has an origin story that manages to play on every insulting stereotype about France in existence (we are told that it might be simple delusion on his part, as he served in the Foreign Legion and native Frenchmen are not supposed to be able to do that) while the Female, a mute psychopath, has an origin that owes more to horror movies than common sense.

But these guys are basically normal compared to most of the supers.  Apart from Tek-Knight – a cross between Batman and Iron Man – and Annie January, they are a horde of depraved monsters with superpowers, lawyers and a complete lack of scruples.  The Big Bad of the series, a version of Superman, is a monstrous nut with an ego problem, blamed for butchering Butcher’s wife.  (He didn’t – and that reveal is pretty damn boneheaded in a series that is full of boneheaded moments.)  There are a few hints at the beginning of the series that have the superhuman teams go out on missions, before that is dropped pretty quickly.  I think that that was a sign that Ennis was actually updating his background as the series progressed, rather than having it all worked out beforehand.

Behind the supers is the shadowy Vought-American Corporation, which apparently controls most of the world’s superhumans.  VA is freakishly incompetent for a defence contractor (apart from the superhumans, who are not exactly perfect weapons, all of their products fail) and it’s really quite hard to see why they’re still in business.  It is true that some very bad weapons systems have continued in service – the first version of the SA80 and the Snatch Land Rover – for quite some time, but VA is dangerously incompetent.  Their mistakes lead to the destruction of an entire American army in Vietnam.  (And yet history seems to run on a similar path.)

In theory, VA wants to put their supers into defence as living weapons.  Part of the backstory is governed by attempts to prevent them from doing just that.  However, by the time of the story, VA has managed to get their Vice President into office; Vic the VP, a ghastly parody of George W. Bush.  (Take all the bad things they said about Bush, triple them and you might be able to imagine Vic.)  Towards the end of the series, Vic becomes President before being murdered by the Big Bad.

Part of the whole problem with the series is that it takes jabs at comic book cliches rather than trying to tell a story.  In Get Some, the villain is a superhero who has been ordered to represent the gay community, even though he isn’t actually gay.  (One character lamp-shades this, pointing out that being lectured on crystal meth by a guy dressed up as a lunatic is thoroughly absurd.)  A little later on, the Seven’s attempt to stop crashing airliners fails spectacularly.  The supers all team up on a mission...and spend the time relaxing on an island resort and enjoying themselves with an orgy.

Superhero comic book clinches are not the only targets of Ennis’s series.  There are jabs as homophobia (although the whole issue of homosexuality is handled surprisingly well), organised religion (Oh Father, a superhuman linked to the Church, is a paedophile), the CIA’s multiple intelligence failures prior to 9/11, reality TV pageants and many more.

But it is the overall disgusting nature of many of the scenes that make it hard to regard The Boys with anything other than cringing horror.  One superhuman has a mental bug that makes him want to fuck everything, including a cat, an android and an owl.  Wee Hughie, unable to get into the toilet, has to take a shit on the floor of said superhuman’s cave.  Love Sausage’s costume shows his entire penis, covered in latex.  Later, Wee Hughie accidentally performs oral sex on Annie when she’s menstruating...it never seems to stop.  And you really don’t want to know how the Monkey got his name.

The quality of the artwork varies wildly.  Some issues, drawn by Robertson, fit in perfectly.  Others do not, giving the series a cartoonish look that doesn't fit, or characters that are largely unrecognizable.

Overall, I am left shaking my head in disbelief.  Mostly, I curse comic book editors at Marvel and DC for cancelling series that I like.  This time, I think DC was pretty much right.  The Boys is an excellent example of what happens when an editor doesn't exercise more control. Cut out half the disgusting sections, revise half the plot points and you might have a worthwhile story.  As it is, The Boys is a train wreck careering down the hill to disaster.

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Chris Nuttall blogs at The Chrishanger and has a website by the same name. His books can be found on Amazon Kindle. Check out his new book The Royal Sorceress and vote for his novel The Empire's Corps for the Self-Published Author Awards.