This Week's Jo Fletcher Books Giveaway: The City's Son by Tom Pollock!

Important notice: I am still searching for one of my winners. The user known as Ally r won a copy of Irenicon by Aidan Harte!



This week's Jo Fletcher Books giveaway is a trade paperback copy of The City's Son by Tom Pollock! I'm very excited about this one because my son loves it. But you don't have to believe him - look at this starred review from Publisher's Weekly!

*"Glittering and gritty . . . Gorgeously written and brimming with bizarre urban creatures, this darkly imagined and sometimes painful tale should delight fans of Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Holly Black."

Running away from her traitorous best friend and her distant father, teenage graffiti artist Beth Bradley is looking for a new home. What she finds is Filius, the ragged crown prince of London’s underworld—a place where glassy spiders steal voices on telephone wires, railwraiths terrorize the train tubes, and deadly scaffwolves stalk the shadows.

Reach, the malign god of demolition, is on a rampage, destroying the creatures of hidden London to lay claim to the skyscraper throne. Caught up in helping Filius raise an alleyway army to battle Reach, Beth soon forgets her old life. But when the enemy claims her best friend, Beth must choose between the acceptance she finds in the streets and the life she left behind.

I think Skyscraper Throne is a great name for a series. There are lots of fantastical thrones out there, from my own Petal Throne to George R R Martin's Iron Throne. So I have an idea. Name your own fantasy/SF throne to enter this contest.

On Friday I will pull out one of my many-sided dice and roll up a winner. The winner will email his/her/hir address (I hope) to Mazarkis (dot) Williams (at) gmail (dot) com and shortly thereafter receive his/her/hir copy.

Good luck!

+++

This contest has now ended. We had some great throne ideas! The winner is Johann Pollard! Congratulations! Please sending your snail mail info to mazarkis (dot) williams (at) gmail (dot) com!

Next JFB Giveaway: Blood's Pride by Evie Manieri!

Congratulations to Archaism, the winner of Mage's Blood! He will be receiving his free book soon. Previous winners:

Ally r (Irenicon)

Emmanuel Sanya (The Pilgrims)

Congratulations! Ally and Emmanuel, please send your mailing info to Mazarkis (dot) Williams (at) gmail (dot) com for your free copies.

Today's giveaway is Blood's Pride by Evie Manieri!

This book has not been released yet in the United States! Americans, jump on this and get a first look + the British cover!

Rising from their sea-torn ships like vengeful, pale phantoms, the Norlanders laid waste to the Shadar under cover of darkness. They forced the once-peaceful fisher folk into slavery and forged an alliance with their former trading partners, the desert-dwelling Nomas tribe, cutting off any hope of salvation.

Now, two decades after the invasion, a rebellion gathers strength in the dark corridors of the city. A small faction of Shadari have hired the Mongrel, an infamous mercenary, to aid their fledgling uprising--but with her own shadowy ties to the region, she is a frighteningly volatile ally. Has she really come to lead a revolution, or for a more sinister purpose all her own?

This book features a desert-dwelling peoples named the Nomas. To win a copy of Blood's Pride, please name another desert culture from a sci fi or fantasy book. On Friday I will roll a die and randomly pick a winner! Good luck!

+++

This giveaway has ended. The winner is Periklis Begzos. Congratulations!

Next JFB Giveaway: Mage's Blood by David Hair

Important Note before We Begin!

Our previous winners are:

Ally r (Irenicon)

Emmanuel Sanya (The Pilgrims)

Congratulations! Ally and Emmanuel, please send your mailing info to Mazarkis (dot) Williams (at) gmail (dot) com for your free copies.

Clearly I need a better way to contact my winners.

On to business. Today's giveaway is Mage's Blood by David Hair!

Most of the time the Moontide Bridge lies deep below the sea, but every 12 years the tides sink and the bridge is revealed, its gates open for trade. The Magi are hell-bent on ruling this new world, and for the last two Moontides they have led armies across the bridge on 'crusades' of conquest. Now the third Moontide is almost here and, this time, the people of the East are ready for a fight ... but it is three seemingly ordinary people that will decide the fate of the world.

That was pretty short, so I'll add some reviews. I see Amazon smunched his reviews together into one paragraph as they did to me. I separated them here for easier reading:

'The writing is crisp, the characters full of vigour and desires which when they become banded together really gives the story something to focus upon as the bonds grow stronger' Falcata Times. 

'This is one of those books that is so epic, that gets you so involved and is such an investment in time and emotion, that there is a little sting of regret that the ending had to come at all and you immediately want to go back to the beginning and see how much riper it is second time around' British Fantasy Society. 

'This book has the best parts of the epic fantasy genre and adding to that also has a conflict that promises to be epic' Fantasy Book Critic.

So you want this book, right? Respond below with a cool name for a bridge ("Moontide" and "Bridge of Despair" are already taken), and I will enter you into the contest. Friday I will announce the winner so stay tuned!

+++

This contest is now closed. The winner is archaism! Archaism, please send your mailing info (see instructions above).

Giveaway: The Pilgrims

This week's Jo Fletcher Books giveaway is The Pilgrims (paperback) by Will Elliott.

Here's the copy:

Eric Albright, a twenty-six-year-old unemployed journalist, and Stuart Casey, a homeless old drunk, fall through a door in a graffiti-covered wall into the strange world of Levall, where a mountain-sized dragon with the powers of a god lies sleeping beneath a great white castle. Here they are the otherworlders, Pilgrims, and their lives are never going to be the same again. 

In the castle the sinister Lord Vous rules with an iron fist as the Project, designed to effect his transformation into an immortal spirit, nears completion. But Vous' growing madness is close to consuming him, as is his fear of the imaginary being named 'Shadow'. And the arrival of the otherworlders in Levall is about to lend substance to that fear. 

No one has ever seen what lies beyond the impossibly vast Wall that divides Levall, but the Pilgrims possess powers strong enough to break it down. If they do, what will enter from the other side? Will Elliott's brilliantly subversive and creative imagination twists the conventions of the genre to create an unforgettable alternate-world fantasy.

Same deal as last week: You have seven days to comment on this blog and be entered into the contest. This time let's make it a bit more interesting - tell me what you think happens after the events in the copy (e.g., "the dragon eats them").

Next Friday I will roll my die (whichever kind is appropriate - I have many) and choose a winner. If you win, you will send your mailing info to me at Mazarkis (dot) Williams (at) gmail (dot) com. But I won't send the book - the amazing Nicola Budd over at JFB will do that much faster than I ever could. Approximately one week later you will have your Pilgrims paperback!

Good luck.

+++

This contest is now closed. The winner is Emmanuel Sanya.

A (hooded) man of many covers...

He was Mark Charan Newton's hooded man first on The Book of Transformations, he turned left and suddenly found himself striding the Cerana sands bearing The Emperor's Knife on my cover. With an about turn to the right he menaced the world from Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon and found himself talking in Polish. A beat later and the man's spouting fluent Spanish from Robin Hobb's excellent Assassin's Apprentice.

Who is this masked hooded man? Where will he turn up next? Where else has he been already?

Putting to one side the issue of this stock-character-of-easy-virtue I hope that the fact four such varied and fine (though I say it myself) novels lurk behind his menace is a fact that puts fresh shine on the well-worn directive never to judge a book by its cover.

I'm offering a prize of arguably huge value (call it a bounty) to the first person to spot our man in action on any other covers, and a prize of immeasurably less value to anyone who finds an example of cover re-use involving 5 or more covers!

News and Events

Hey there,

Teresa Frohock has the results of her gender-bending experiment posted on her blog. The results, it turns out, are what you would expect from random guessing. Her experiment suggests that one cannot tell from prose whether the writer was a man or a woman.

Meanwhile I have a guest post over at A Dribble of Ink, in which I discuss publishing with an unknown gender.

Don't forget to enter the competition for a copy of Irenicon.

Finally, I forgot to show off what my sister made me for Christmas:

It's a t-shirt! Jealous? I'm afraid to wear it.

Next blog post: fantasy book covers, or more specifically, why does the man who appears on TEK keep wandering around other peoples' covers?

Irenicon Giveaway

Get ready, for we Jo Fletcher authors are going to be giving away each others' books! This week I will be giving away Irenicon by Aidan Harte.

The river Irenicon was blasted through the middle of Rasenna in 1347 and now it is a permanent reminder to the feuding factions that nothing can stand in the way of the Concordian Empire. The artificial river, created overnight by Concordian engineers using the Wave, runs uphill. But the Wave is both weapon and mystery; not even the Concordians know how the river became conscious - and hostile. But times are changing. Concordian engineer Captain Giovanni is ordered to bridge the Irenicon - not to reunite the sundered city, but to aid Concord's mighty armies, for the engineers have their sights set firmly on world domination and Rasenna is in their way. 

Sofia Scaglieri will soon be seventeen, when she will become Contessa of Rasenna, but her inheritance is tainted: she can see no way of stopping the ancient culture of vendetta which divides her city. What she can't understand is why Giovanni is trying so hard to stop the feuding, or why he is prepared to risk his life, not just with her people, but also with the lethal water spirits - the buio - that infest the Irenicon. Times are changing. And only the young Contessa and the enemy engineer Giovanni understand they have to change too, if they are to survive the coming devastation - for Concord is about to unleash the Wave again...

Just add your comment below, and when the week is up, I will roll a d6 or d20 or d100 (whatever's appropriate) and there will be a winner! (Books will efficiently be mailed by Nicola Budd of Jo Fletcher Books, instead of inefficiently by me.)

Good luck!

UPDATE This contest is now closed. Rolling . . . 

The winner is ally r! Please send mailing info to mazarkis (dot) williams (at) gmail (dot) com. Congratulations!