Rosemary Kirstein

My pal Geary Gravel is continuing the re-release of his early novels, so you can keep catching up on what you’ve missed of his ourvre so far.

The latest title to return is Return of the Breakneck Boys, Book 2 of the Fading Worlds series.  The tale picks up where A Key for the Nonesuch left off, with our  protagonist, unheroic normal-guy  Howard Bell (previously dropped willy-nilly into the middle of deadly alien war-games), now the leader of his very own battle-gang, and planning an insurrection against the mysterious organizers of the forced wars.  And in pursuit of that end, Howard and his warrior-woman partner Alaya must leave the Burroughs-esque enviroments of the Fading Worlds wars, and head to —

Um. Earth.

The Fading Worlds series is a lot of fun, and a good turnaround of genre tropes about mighty Earthmen battling foes on barbaric alien worlds.  Things are not quite what they seem, and Geary handles it all with wit and grace. And  I really do enjoy Howard Bell as a character — I always sort of envision him played by Tom Hanks.

Cover by illustrator Cortney Skinner, who has known Geary for nearly as long as they’ve both been alive.

In other news not about me…

The World Fantasy Awards were announced last week.

Check out the newly redesigned award!

The winners were:

Novel: The Sudden Appearance of Hope, Claire North (Redhook; Orbit UK)

Long fiction: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, Kij Johnson (Tor.com Publishing)

Short Fiction: “Das Steingeschöpf,” G.V. Anderson (Strange Horizons 12/12/16)

Anthology:  Dreaming in the Dark, Jack Dann, ed. (PS Australia)

Collection: A Natural History of Hell, Jeffrey Ford (Small Beer)

For the full list, pop over to Tor.com (an excellent source for SF/F news, info and free reads).  Or go right to the World Fantasy Convention website.

(I’ll get to the post about my local library next — but I wanted to get the news out about Geary’s book ASAP.  To allow you that much more time before Christmas to buy it.  You’re welcome.)

Geary Gravel’s Fading Worlds books are coming back into print, starting with A Key for the Nonesuch.

Aside from being a pal, Geary is a writer whose work I really enjoy (these two facts are possibly not unrelated).  His Fading Worlds books answer the question: What if a regular, normal person was dropped into an Edgar Rice Burroughs-ish adventure?

Well.  Howard Bell does rise to the occasion.

And I happen to know for a fact that the second book, Return of the Breakneck Boys, is also in the pipeline for republication Real Soon Now.  And that subsequent volumes of the series are in the works.  (True fact.  I have had the pleasure of reading bits of them.)

Why there’s the famous author right now, chuckling in a worldly-wise manner over his aperitif.

Looks like at the moment only the paperback version is out, but I know that an ebook is soon to come.

Which I shall instantly snatch up.

ETA: Here’s the paperback version on Amazon.com.

(Inexplicably, the paperback and Kindle versions aren’t linked to each other… if you go to one and click on “see all formats” it does not show you the other format!  But it does exist in both formats. )