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Tag: Epic Fantasy

Events / What's New

Tor Books Announces Programming for Phoenix Comic-Con 2014

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Once again Tor (Booth# 646) continues our wildly popular *in-booth signings and giveaways, offering you a chance to meet your favorite authors up close and personal and pick up free books.

Friday, June 6th

Saturday, June 7th

  • 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Creating Your Fantasy World
    Peter Orullian
  • 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Microsoft XBox Panel
    Peter Orullian

Sunday, June 8th

Make sure to follow @Torbooks on Twitter for up to date information and last minute events!

All Tor Booth signings are on a first come first serve basis and while supplies lasts. Limit one book per person.

What's New

Starred Review: Storm Riders by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes

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Image Place holder of - 32“Sheer epic fantasy fun.”
Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes’ Storm Riders got a starred review in Kirkus Reviews!

Here’s the full review, from the July 16th issue:

starred-review-gif Action, adventure, revenge, political intrigue and magical technology soar in the second volume in the Dragon Brigade series (Shadow Raiders, 2011).

Father Jacob Northrop and Sir Ander Martel have confirmed the identity of the bat-riding, demon-disguised attackers responsible for massacres and collapsing buildings. The Bottom Dwellers, descendants of an island sunk by powerful magic, have spent 500 years plotting retribution against all other countries of the world and developing the use of contramagic, spells which destroy other magical constructs. Unfortunately, the mere mention of contramagic is considered heretical, and the Grand Bishop will do anything to hide the church’s complicity in the Bottom Dwellers’ plight. Meanwhile, Capt. Stephano de Guichen of Rosia and his friends are powerless to counter the threat, as they’re stranded on a remote island—unless Stephano can persuade the island’s wild dragons to help. And Freyan spymaster Sir Henry Wallace also opposes the Bottom Dwellers (whom he inadvertently funded), while seeking what advantages he can for his own country. The novel is a great ride, offering shifting political alliances, thrilling battle sequences, angst-y romance and hairpin plot twists. Basing each fantasy nation’s language and culture on a European country is a bit of a cheat, but that’s outweighed by the floating palaces, magically steered dirigible ships and wyvern-drawn carriages. The series is also blessedly rich in strong, intriguing female characters, including Miri, the stubborn captain of the balloon ship Cloud Hopper; her mute, damaged but magically powerful sister, Gythe; Eiddwen, the ruthless mistress of disguise who serves the Bottom Dwellers; and especially Countess Cecile, the true power behind the Rosian throne, who has hidden her marriage to an executed traitor and her love for their apparently bastard son Stephano so that her many enemies will not target him.

Sheer epic fantasy fun.

Storm Riders published on July 16th.

What's New

Tor announces acquisitions of two new novels by Brandon Sanderson

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Tor announces acquisitions of two new novels by #1 New York Times bestselling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson

 

Sanderson to publish new Mistborn novel in late 2011 followed by The Rithmatist in 2012

Tor Books is proud to announce the acquisition of two new novels by acclaimed fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, whose recent book Towers of Midnight, Book Thirteen in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time®, recently debuted at #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and ABA National Indiebound bestseller lists.  Sanderson is also the author of New York Times bestselling novels The Way of Kings, The Gathering Storm, The Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, Elantris, and the middle grade “Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians” series.  He is currently working on A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume in The Wheel of Time, and planning a sequel to The Way of Kings.

Sanderson’s first new project will be an original, standalone short novel set in the universe of his Mistborn trilogy (Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages).  Sanderson previously announced plans for a sequel trilogy set in the far future of that world, and the new novel, entitled Mistborn: The Alloy of Law, is set during a frontier era where “allomancy” meets gunplay.  The Alloy of Law will be published in late 2011.

Sanderson’s second project, titled The Rithmatist, was first drafted in 2007 and perfected this year.  Set in an alternate-history America where magic users (called “Rithmatists”) battle wild chalk creatures, The Rithmatist introduces Joel, a student at the Rithmatist academy with great interest in but no ability to use the magic.  But when students start vanishing, it’s up to him to expose the sinister figure behind the disappearances.  The Rithmatist will be published in 2012 after the publication of A Memory of Light.

This year and next will also see major publications  in the Wheel of Time franchise, including the graphic novel adaptations of New Spring (January 2011) and The Eye of the World: Volume 1 (September 2011) before the landmark publication of A Memory of Light, the final volume in the series.  The third annual JordanCon will take place April 15–17 2011 in Atlanta, GA.  Pre-registration is currently ongoing at www.ageoflegends.net.

Fore more information visit www.brandonsanderson.com.

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Author Features

The Way of Kings: An Introduction

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Image Placeholder of - 11By Brandon Sanderson

I’ve been asked to introduce The Way Of Kings to you. And I have no idea how to start.

This is an odd position for me. Before, I’ve found it easy to explain my novels. Each one was built around one or two central premises. The gang of thieves who want to rob an immortal emperor. A man cast down by a terrible, magical disease and forced to rebuild a society among those similarly afflicted. A boy who finds that librarians secretly rule the world.

Kings has stymied me each time I’ve tried to describe it. I often end up talking about its creation. (How I started work on it over fifteen years ago. How I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words worth of worldbuilding for it. How much the project has come to mean to me over the decades.) But such things describe the book but don’t actually tell you anything. And so this time, I’m going to try to talk about what The Way Of Kings is.

It’s a book about characters I love. I’ve begun to build a reputation as the “magic system” guy. The author who creates interesting types of magic for every book he writes. On one hand, this delights me, as I do put a lot of effort into the magic in my books. But a great book for me isn’t about a magic, it’s about the people that the magic affects.

The book started its life many years ago being about a young man who made a good decision. I wrote the entire book that way before realizing I’d done it wrong. So I started over from scratch and had him take the other fork, the more difficult fork. The fork that cast him into some of the worst imaginable circumstances, ground him against the stones of a world where there is no soil or sand on the ground.

My goal: to prove to myself, and to him, that the ‘good’ decision was not actually the best one. The Way Of Kings is his story, though he shares the space with several others. They’ll get their own books later in the series.

I want to tell you more, but I don’t have the space here. I want to talk about the art in the book (it’s ambitious, unlike anything I’ve seen tried in an epic fantasy novel before.) I want to talk about the scope of the series, the distinctive world which is so much larger and more real than anything I’ve worked on before. I want to explain the book.

But, for now, I think it’s best to just show you instead.

Enjoy.

The Way of Kings (978-0-7653-2808-3) by Brandon Sanderson was released August 31 from Tor.

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This post originally appeared on Tor.com and was featured in the Tor/Forge September newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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