Tag: books

Castalia House is extremely pleased to announce that SUPERLUMINARY: THE WORLD ARMADA by John C. Wright is now available for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Although the Lords of Creation survived the awesome onslaught of the world-killing space vampires, there is nowhere in the lifeless galaxy that they can hope to hide their planets and people forever. How can they hope to destroy what is already dead?

The vampiric necroforms are a massive empire of anti-life, terrible beyond all imagining, ruling a vast network of dead stars and planets they have drained of all life. Aeneas, the Emperor of Man, realizes that if the human race is going to survive, he is going to have to find a way to re-seed the entire galaxy with life while burning down the interstellar undead empire with the precious light it cannot bear. And not only does Aeneas have to do the impossible, he is going to have to do it while keeping a wary eye out for the ruthless betrayer at his back.

SUPERLUMINARY is the latest and most brilliant creation of science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, the Dragon-award winning author of THE UNWITHERING REALM, THE GOLDEN AGE, MOTH & COBWEB, and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. THE WORLD ARMADA is the third and final book in the trilogy.

Rather like Awake in the Night Land, you cannot appreciate the full brilliance of Superluminary until you have read the whole thing and see how John C. Wright manages to pull the whole thing together on multiple levels. In my opinion, with Superluminary, John C. Wright firmly establishes himself as the greatest science fiction writer of his generation and one of the all-time greats. It’s the combination of brilliance, originality, and consistency that serves to elevate him beyond the likes of Neal Stephenson and China Mieville, both of whom are indubitably great SF writers, but unlike Mr. Wright, they simply do not manage to scale the literary heights again and again with such magnificent reliability.

I initially thought Superluminary was over-the-top fun, John C. Wright amusing himself by seeing if he could go the notorious Worldkiller one better. Then, when I reached the part about why faster-than-light travel is a very bad idea and why there has been such a mysterious lack of alien contact with the solar system, I realized that it was something deeper and darker than that. But not until finishing THE WORLD ARMADA did I grasp just how uniquely astounding is the work as a whole. And it is not a coincidence that every single one of the 41 reviews for the first two books in the series rate them both 5 stars.

From the earlier reviews:

• Grand design space opera turned up to 11! For everyone who liked The Golden Age but thought it might have been just a bit too talky, this has the same over the top world building but starts off with the main character’s assassination…and then things start to get really wild.
• What an amazing mind to think up this story (with all its intricate and entangled details) and then make it understandable!
• Seriously, WAR DYSONS? I didn’t think he could do it. I didn’t think Mr Wright could take the already delightfully extravagant story begun in The Lords of Creation and make it bigger and wilder…. Oh ye of little faith, how wrong I was.
• Spectacular classic space opera. If you know your classical SciFi and loved the family politics of Nine Princes in Amber, the weird super science of The World of Null-A, the immense galactic war of the Lensmen series, then you need to buy and read this book right away. 
• His best work since Awake in the Night Land.

Bishop Thomas Cranberry finds himself at a loss when he is confronted by a thief and realizes some disturbing truths about himself. The experience sends him in search of the men who are increasingly absent from the Church, who find themselves at a loss in a world that has gone increasingly feral, and who feel that they have nowhere to go and no one to whom they can turn for support. In listening to them and attempting to understand their plight, he finds an unexpected mission.

The Heretics of St. Possenti is for listeners who want the backstory of the story and for those who want to know how one inspired man can make a difference in a fallen world. It is a novel for those who need inspiration to get them though the day and those who look for unusual ways to accomplish the mission. It is for people who understand and respect the old ways but know that sometimes a seed cannot grow without splitting the pavement.

Narrated by Wade Schoenemann The Heretics of St. Possenti is 12 hours and 2 minutes long.

This may very well be the greatest audiobook ever produced. I’m not kidding. It’s right up there with Douglas Adams reading his own The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Owen Stanley’s satirical novel is brilliant, of course, alternating between darkly and ridiculously funny, but Gabrielle Miller’s narration, in her unique Australian accent, takes it to a new level of hilarity. I guarantee the way she does Roger Fletcher’s sneering laugh will crack you up, and her effortless switching between the roughneck and posh accents is spot-on.

And if you think you recognize the voice, let’s just say that you do and leave it at that.

THE MISSIONARIES is six hours and 41 minutes. You will not want to miss it. It’s that good.

Castalia House is very pleased to announce the publication of Superluminary: The Space Vampires by science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright.

The Lords of Creation have learned that although they rule the solar system with their god-like scientific knowledge, there are even more powerful forces to be feared lurking out in the dark depths of space.

The vampiric necroforms are a massive empire of anti-life, terrible beyond all imagining, ruling a vast network of dead stars and planets they have drained of all life. And at last they have come to the Nine Worlds, seeking to destroy the last refuge of living things to be found in all the dying universe. But how can the Lords of Creation even hope to stop the nightmarish undead monstrosities when they are bitterly divided by pride, jealousy, and mutual suspicion?

SUPERLUMINARY is the latest and most outrageous creation of science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, the Dragon-award winning author of THE UNWITHERING REALM, THE GOLDEN AGE, MOTH & COBWEB, and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND. THE SPACE VAMPIRES is the second book in the series.

SUPERLUMINARY is arguably John C. Wright’s darkest, most mind-boggling work to date. It’s spectacular space opera on the very grandest scale, so grand that no description can possibly do it justice. It simply has to be read in order to be believed. No one writing in science fiction today thinks bigger or does it better.

From the reviews of Superluminary: The Lords of Creation:

• Space opera on a Grandmaster scale. This is an easily read story, with grand science concepts and speculation, and a great deal of human nature on display. I recommend it for any young man over the age of nine, who wants to discover just what’s larger and more powerful than a Death Star (hint: think big, no, … BIG).
• No living writer has captured the spirit of E. E. Doc Smith like J. C. Wright. I’ve heard it said that Wright is the greatest living Science Fiction author. Perhaps he is. But J. C. Wright is far and away the greatest pulp author publishing today.
• Another masterpiece by Wright. John C. Wright’s books expand the imagination like no other author in the field. Just when you think you know where his story is going he takes a hard turn, and then again. This book does so every chapter, and never lets up the gas. A ton of fun.
• I’ve been waiting for years for John C. Wright to write a new space epic better than his Golden Age trilogy and I think this is it! If you like Wright’s Awake in the Night Land, get this. In science fiction, Wright is peerless.
• JCW ramps the pace up to eleven. The Lords of Creation is an explosive tale of space travel, family intrigue, assasination, nanobot resurrection, life force, death force, and forbidden knowledge of the power to create and destroy. Highly recommend.

You have no idea how many ways to kill you are lurking in the little laboratory of mass destruction known as your neighbor’s garden.

Gardening is just a hobby for most – but for some, it’s a matter of life and death. 

Who keeps killing soil scientists and agriculture industry executives around the world? If you dare to ask, you may end up as the next corpse left to serve as garden compost. When gardener Jack Broccoli and his boss are targeted by a radical farming cult, Jack’s entire life is turned upside-down as he’s forced into a terrifying world of international agro-industrial intrigue. 

TURNED EARTH is a frighteningly funny novel by master gardener David The Good and the first in the Jack Broccoli series of gardening thrillers.

This is one of those books you have to read to believe that it’s real. Yes, it’s a gardening thriller, and somehow, inexplicably, the concept actually works. Also, it appears that gardeners have considerably more ways to kill you than ninjas, hit men, and the U.S. Marine Corps combined. I am now officially terrified of all those little blue-haired women who spend their days laboring painstakingly over their well-tended laboratories of mass destruction.

From the first review of TURNED EARTH: A Jack Broccoli novel:

• This might the world’s first garden thriller ever to be published. Imagine Mel Bartholomew meets Liam Neeson as written by a graft of Douglas Adams and Dave Barry, and lyrics by David Byrne, if it had lyrics. You aren’t going to read the secrets of Life, the Universe, and Everything, but you will be asking yourself “How did I get here?” and “That’s not my house” which is more of a statement than question.

All war is murder for profit.

Some corporations are just more open about it.

WARDOGS INCORPORATED is one of the largest and most professional mercenary corporations operating in the Kantillon subsector. If you need a bodyguard, an assassination team, or an armored cavalry regiment complete with air support, WARDOGS Inc. can provide it for you… for a very steep price.

Fresh from the nuclear-scarred battlefields of Ulixis, Tommy Falkland and his squad mates are happy to be assigned to a simple corporate bodyguard contract when the interstellar corporation Datacon Verlag inadvertently offends a seriously strange religious cult with an advertising campaign and turns to Wardogs Incorporated for protection. But the contract proves to be considerably more challenging than expected when the executive they are guarding ends up dead, murdered by a military-grade toxin, and they find themselves ordered to track down his killer. But how do you solve a murder when your two primary skills are breaking things and killing people?

HUNTER KILLER is the second in the WARDOGS INC. series of military science fiction novels. From the reviews of the first book, BATTLESUIT BASTARDS:

• Excellent MilSF. Gritty and no nonsense mercs far into Earth’s history. Its the Acendency now, the world of Quantom Mortus. Thoroughly enjoyed this and looking to more in what must be a series. The mercenaries, their tactics, combat moves are all there. You could actually get a low level tactical and some strategic education from novels like this. Obviously written by someone who knows of the craft of war.
• This is what I call military science fiction. I could tell from the first two lines that this book was going to be worth the read! The opening was very strong. There is no time for afternoon tea for these guys, because there is so much action.
• Surprisingly good yarn. Well realised universe. Lots of action. Very much in the mercenary companies idiom. Easy to race through to find out what happens next. Expert writing and pacing.
• Wardogs is a fun romp through the Quantum Mortis universe by a new author. I loved the story and the characters it was non-stop action from beginning to end. I’m hoping to see many more Wardog stories. If you like Drake, Ringo, Carr, or Stirling you should enjoy this book.
• The book compares well to David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, the original book on Sci Fi Mercs. This takes place in the world of Quantum Mortis, where you have super advanced technology, in a universe that resembles city states. And with a fight going on with AIs. This is a mercenary company, publicly traded with stock options, in that universe. 

No more songs of Ice and Fire for you, at least not this year:

George R.R. Martin is confirming what Game of Thrones fans have increasingly suspected: The long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire saga, The Winds of Winter, will not be out in 2018 (here are some of the best fan reactions to this news).

The author revealed the decision in a press release announcing a publication date for Fire and Blood, his upcoming history of the Targaryens which has clocked in at a massive 989 pages long.

“No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least,” Martin wrote. “You’re going to have to keep waiting for The Winds of Winter. You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year. I do want to stress… indeed, I want to shout… that Fire and Blood is not a novel. This is not a traditional narrative and was never intended to be… let’s call this one ‘imaginary history’ instead. The essential point being the ‘history’ part. I love reading popular histories myself, and that’s what I was aiming for here … (Though there are enough stories here for twenty novels. Battles, bloodshed, betrayals, love, lust, horror, religious wars, politics, incest, historical revisionism, all the fun stuff) .… As for me, I’m returning once again to The Winds of Winter.”

I can, however, confirm that the full A Sea of Skulls will be released this year. The hardcover will definitely be available for Christmas.

JRR Tolkien is releasing a new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which sounds right up my alley.

In the latest sad episode of the saga of George R. R. Martin’s next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, never being published, legendary deceased author J.R.R. Tolkien has reportedly finished another book before Martin could complete Winds of Winter. Not only is the legendary Lord of the Rings author publishing a new book before Martin, but he’s publishing them at a faster rate in general. Tolkein’s new book, The Fall of Gondolin, which will be published in 2018, follows 2017’s Beren and Lúthien, meaning despite being dead since 1973, Tolkien is somehow able to release books at a rate of one per year, while Martin hasn’t released a new ASOIAF book since 2011’s A Dance With Dragons.

The Fall of Gondolin is billed as the first “real” story of Middle Earth, and tells of the fall of the titular city to dark forces. Edited by Tolkein’s 93-year-old son, Christopher Tolkien, the book was reportedly written while J.R.R. Tolkien was convalescing after the Battle of the Somme. The Guardian, which broke the story, provides a summary of the story:

The book, said publisher HarperCollins, sets the “uttermost evil” of Morgoth against the sea-god Ulmo. Morgoth is trying to discover and destroy the hidden city of Gondolin, while Ulmo is supporting the Noldor, the kindred of the elves who live in the city.

The story follows one of the Noldor, Tuor, who sets out to find Gondolin; during his journey, he experiences what the publisher described as “one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth”: when Ulmo, the sea-god, rises out of the ocean during a storm.

When Tuor arrives in Gondolin, he becomes a great man and the father of Eärendel, an important character in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. But Morgoth attacks, with Balrogs, dragons and orcs, and as the city falls, Tuor, his wife Idril and the child Eärendel escape, “looking back from a cleft in the mountains as they flee southward, at the blazing wreckage of their city”.

It might seem shocking that a deceased author could publish two books in his popular fantasy series in just two years, while Martin has taken over 7 years to provide fans with the penultimate chapter of his series and seems unlikely do so before HBO finishes Game of Thrones, the television adaptation that had to chart its own course after lapping Martin. However, it’s worth noting that, being dead, Tolkien needn’t be distracted by things like LiveJournal or WildCards books, so he has a distinct advantage.

Look for The Fall of Gondolin sometime this year. Don’t bother looking for The Winds of Winter. It’s never coming out.

They may well be right. I strongly suspect that George RR Martin simply can’t write at the same level as his previous books in the series anymore, and he knows it. Being a gamma, he’d rather not even try than take the risk of trying, failing, and destroying his literary legacy.

That’s my current theory, anyhow. And it’s totally not based on any concerns about the rest of A Sea of Skulls living up to the first two-thirds….

All war is murder for profit. 

Some organizations are just more open about it.

WARDOGS INCORPORATED is one of the largest and most professional mercenary corporations operating in the Kantillon subsector. If you need a bodyguard, an assassination team, or an armored cavalry regiment complete with air support, WARDOGS Inc. can provide it for you… for a very steep price.

Tommy Falkland is proud to be a Wardog. And he’s delighted when WDI’s executives sign a massive contract to arrange for a little regime change on a no-account low-tech planet that looks like a highly profitable cakewalk. But when the transportation company unexpectedly fails to deliver their armor and artillery dirtside, Tommy and his fellow Wardogs find themselves caught in the middle of the killing zone.

And there they learn that bullets will kill a man dead just as quickly as a plasma bolt.

Some of you have been saying you want more Quantum Mortis. Well, here is more Quantum Mortis. Graven Tower is not the protagonist, but the events taking place in the new series are roughly contiguous with those of A Man Disrupted and are occurring in the same subsector. You can consider Wardogs Inc. to be one of our responses to the stunning success of Nick Cole’s bestselling Galaxy’s Edge series…. but there are others on the way soon. And yes, Wardogs Inc. will be appearing in comic book form, illustrated and colored by the two gentlemen responsible for the action-packed cover.

And “action-packed” barely begins to describe this series. It is, like the Wardogs themselves, off the chain. An excerpt from Chapter 1:

We unceremoniously stuffed the bodies into the small personnel airlock and flushed them out into space.

“Sergeant Thrasher, cargo is clean,” I reported.

“Find anything interesting?”

“Mostly just industrial equipment. Construction stuff,” I said. Four-eyes cut in, “To be precise, mining equipment.”

“Roger,” Squid said. “No problems?”

“Nothing illegal. Some more slug-throwers though, in wood crates,” I said.

“Not our business. Everyone meet up on the bridge in five. We’ve cleared our bodies here, we’ll finish there.”

“Roger,” I replied. Park hammered the tops back on the boxes, then exited cargo. I reset the seals on the door and we headed up to the bridge. It wasn’t a huge ship, so no lifts. Just ladders and stairs like an old atomic model.

We entered the bridge just as Private Ward was dragging out the body of the captain. Park saluted the dead man ironically and Jock laughed.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now we wait for a new crew,” said Squid from the late captain’s chair, a flask in his hand. “Lieutenant says their ship is on the way and they should be here within the hour. At ease for now.”

I looked around the bridge. Everything looked clean and well-maintained, though it was an older ship. Garamond read the name plate on the wall. Registration 1001x235htfg22789.113. Gruppo ENIL-EX, Valatesta.

I took off my helmet and set it on the navigation table next to a personal tablet, still displaying a colorful picture story its owner would never finish. Probably lots of time to read on freighters.

Almost exactly an hour later, a sleek black transport pulled alongside and hailed us. A few moments later, the boarding party joined us. The men wore the same navy blue jumpsuits of the guys we’d just spaced. Gruppo ENIL-EX uniforms, I assumed.

Their leader engaged with Sergeant Thrasher and a severe little man walked up to me. “Do you mind?” he said, then powered up the nav board. He tossed the tablet onto a chair as I gathered up my helmet.

“Good to meet you too,” I said, getting out of his way.

“Hmm,” he said, keying in some numbers.

“So,” I pressed, partly because I was annoyed, “got a hot date, then?”

“Not likely on Ulixis,” he sniffed.

“What? You don’t like furry chicks?” I remember jokes about the women of Ulixis, though I really only had a vague idea where the place was.

“Go away, Wardog, I’m working,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

I considered shooting him in the back of the head, just on principle, then decided I’d rather not lose my bonus today. Squid didn’t take kindly to freelancing.

What would you ask Jesus? I was thinking about this the other day. Actually, I was thinking about what I would ask Aristotle if I could. What is the single most pressing question to which I would like to know the answer? And then I wondered what other people would do… and I realized that while there weren’t very many people with questions for Aristotle, there were probably an awful lot who would have questions for Jesus. And that made me think about what a singularly fascinating book that might make.

Anyhow, if you’re interested, send me no more than 500 words about the one single question that you would ask Jesus Christ if you had the chance. All I want to know is your age, your sex, and your religion or lack thereof. Please also explicitly grant me permission to include your question in the book in your email.

Attachments should be .rtf, .docx, or .odt. Single-spaced, no tabs, no formatting, and no more than 500 words. If I get at least 100 questions and they prove to be sufficiently varied and interesting, I’ll edit them and put them together. I’ll also contact a few well-known individuals and ask them to contribute a question.