Mark Charan Newton Signs a New Two-Book Deal

Mark Charan Newton, the author of Nights of Villjamur (review) and City of Ruin (review) has signed a new two-book deal, for an undisclosed five-figure sum. You can read the official press release on Newton's blog alongside his comments.

His current Legends of the Red Sun series will remain as a tetralogy, as he had always planned. These two books will continue the series, taking place in the same world. As he puts it himself "The history is large enough for me to have some fun with."

As a reader, I'm very excited about this good news. As you can see from my reviews, I think very highly of the first two books of Legends of the Red Sun series. And the promise of getting more of that is exciting indeed.

Congratulations Mark! Looking forward to reading your new books!

Review: City of Ruin by Mark Charan Newton

Title: City of Ruin
Author: Mark Charan Newton
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Top
Publishing Date: 4 Jun 2010
Hardback: 400 pages
Series: Second book of the Legends of the Red Sun tetralogy.

Summary

Welcome to Viliren! Despite the rapidly changing climate of the Boreal Archipelago and the beginning of an ice age, Viliren still looks like a wealthy and healthy city ruled by free democracy instituted by Portreeve Lutto. However the illusion of greatness disappears quickly as you set foot in the underground where the rotten heart of this city beats, where democracy doesn’t exist and where the king is the intimidating Malum.

Viliren is where the paths of Investigator Jeryd and Commander Brynd cross. Jeryd flees Villjamur and finds himself tracking a mysterious and merciless serial killer in Viliren, while Commander Brynd has the impossible mission of preparing the city defenses against the approaching genocidal Okun tide.

Viliren is also the destination of Randur, Eir, Rika and Denlin who left Villjamur behind on a rickety boat. They have a long and a perilous journey to live through.

Don’t Judge A Book By It But...

I'm not sure that I like this cover art. The person on the cover, probably Commander Brynd, looks almost manga-like to me. Although, I like Brynd's looking over his shoulder, which probably intends to convey the uneasiness he feels in Viliren. After having read the book, I can think of a few other ideas that, in my humble opinion, would have suited the book's spirit better:

Instead of Brynd, we could have seen Jeryd looking over his shoulder in a dark alley. And not viewed from directly behind him but from a bit higher. Or even a picture of Viliren, from the harbor, the point of a ship visible in the foreground breaking the ice and progressing towards the city.

Review

And I used to think those nights in Villjamur were full of freak shows, Jeryd thought. This place is twice as bad.

If I was asked to write a very short review, I would use the excerpt shown above. Because, ladies and gentlemen, in this second book of Legends of the Red Sun series, Newton is braver. He mixes the same ingredients he let us taste in Nights of Villjamur but his elixir is bolder this time. I imagine there's a risk in being brave, but I think Newton does an excellent job in keeping the reader captivated and surprised, and in creating an unusual setting that is not absurd but that creates an intriguing world full of mysteries and astonishments.

In City of Ruin, Newton gives us back some of the characters that we met in the first book and the reader has the pleasure to discover some very interesting new personalities. Just like in Nights of Villjamur, these characters are alive and they are colourful: some darker than others. The reader ends up caring for them easily.

Even though it starts slightly slower than the first book, City of Ruin quickly picks up pace. The story contains a lot of surprises, unfortunately not all of them good. It also contains a fair amount of military action, which I really enjoyed. As I mentioned earlier, it is braver in including unusual fantasy elements. I especially loved the horror-scented parts.

An aspect that I appreciate very much in books running well balanced parallel stories is the lack of a single central hero and the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the protagonists. All the characters add colour to the tale however none of them is indispensible. Therefore, the reader is always left anxious about the fate of their favorite character while reading about their actions.

Newton also continues his world building in this second book of the series. The reader is given more information about the various aspects and the history of this world, which answers some of the question marks appearing in the reader's mind throughout both books. At the same time, it opens up more questions, hopefully to be answered in the future installments.

I was lucky enough to be able to read Nights of Villjamur and City of Ruin back to back. What a treat this was! If you are looking for a full-bodied fantasy series with pleasantly unusual traits and satisfying twists and turns then pick up your copies. I absolutely loved both books and I'm looking forward to reading the third installment.

Rating: 9.5/10

Quotes

"Amusing that you assume merely seeing will confirm reality. If one sees a stump of a tree in a field at dusk, it may resemble the form of another human, and your fears may creep in, but it is still a tree. One should question what is being seen, at all times." - Artemisia

"When someone has no future, they look in the other direction" - Malum

"It takes one individual genius to recognize another" - Bellis

Cover/Fantasy Artist: Jesse van Dijk

I came across Jesse van Dijk's work on an on-line forum and I really liked it. Two of his works, shown above, are used on two of the books of the German fantasy author, Alexander Lohmann (unfortunately I don't speak German so I won't be able to comment about Mr. Lohmann's books) and they are outstanding in my opinion.

If you visit Jesse van Dijk's site, you'll see various other book covers and some of his personal and commercial work. Especially where he plays with the light, he can create some amazing fantasy settings (clicking on the images will take you to Jesse van Dijk's site directly):

Update: In case you're wondering about the English translation of Alexander Lohmann's books, I contacted Bestei Lübbe, the German publishing company. They don't hold the translation rights and they kindly forwarded my enquiry to the author himself. I'll update this post when I hear more about this.

City of Ruin and Two of Its Chapters

Last night, I finished reading Mark Charan Newton's City of Ruin. Sequel to the brilliant Nights of Villjamur, that I reviewed very recently, City of Ruin doesn't deceive. I loved it and I'm going to post my review during the week.

City of Ruin is going to be published in June in the UK. But in the mean time, you can check two of its chapters on the author's blog.

Happy reading!

Gamers! Donate $20 to Haiti Relief and Get $1482-Worth of E-Books

Are you a gamer? DriveThruRPG has an incredible incentive for gamers willing to donate money to Haiti relief efforts. For a simple $20 donation, you can download $1482-worth of e-books.

This is a very generous offer and I hope the gaming community's response will be as generous.

Review: Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

Title: Nights of Villjamur
Author: Mark Charan Newton
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tor Books
Publishing Date: 5 Jun 2009
Hardback: 400 pages
Series: First book of the Legends of the Red Sun tetralogy

Summary

It is getting colder every day in Villjamur. Its inhabitants, much luckier than the thousands of refugees camping at the gates, are trying to get ready for the Freeze, the ice age that's going to last 50 years.

Villjamur is home to investigator Rumex Jeryd who finds himself working on a mysterious murder case. Villjamur is the destination of Kapp Brimir, a young man native to Folke, who is trying to save his mother under a false identity. Villjamur is what commander Brynd Lathraea's army is protecting. It is where Tuya Daluud is working... It is a city where, on a typical night, you would hear a Banshee keening in the distance, see a flash of magic with the corner of your eye, or hear a lute playing sevenths in some tavern nearby, accompanied by the dreary tune of an off-key singer. This is a city where at night you would easily see shadows stepping out of alleyways behind you, or hear the sound of ghostly feet scuffing on the cobbles. Villjamur is a city that breeds paranoia... and with good reasons...

Don't Judge A Book By It But...

I liked the cover art when I first saw it, well before reading Nights of Villjamur. After reading the book, I think it represents very well the picture of the city that the story is painting. Majestic but old, snow covered but dark, beautiful but dangerous...

Review

The irony of the weather, I started to read Nights of Villjamur, a book that tells the story of people who face an ice age, when we had been living the coldest days in fifty years. Anyway...

It's hard to live up to the expectations, especially when the expectations are set extremely high after numerous highly praising reviews. This was the case with Nights of Villjamur when I had the opportunity to read it. When I think about it, I should have read this book long time ago. Not that I read all the books as soon as they're released but some of the bloggers whose tastes I trust, have posted excellent reviews about it. So, I should have listened to these reviewers and read one of the best books of 2009 in 2009.

Nights of Villjamur is a fast-paced and strongly-captivating book. It sticks to your hands and it becomes very hard to even take a break. I remember, by the time I reached chapter 9 I was totally sold. All I could think of was the story and its various characters who are not flat or black and white. In this book, the evil is not pure evil, the good is not dressed in white. They are multi-dimensional and they are believable. In the book, there are also many enthralling story threads running in parallel and its 46 chapters are pretty well-balanced.

In this first book of the Legends of the Red Sun tetralogy, Newton has created a very interesting world with numerous races. In the very beginning, I thought that the story was unfolding on Earth, in a very far future. Because the sun is red (probably a red giant) and it is dying, just like our sun will be in 5 billion years. However, it soon becomes obvious that it's about a planet with two moons.

The magical system is very smart and, I dare say, logical. I liked the way the magic worked, the way magical items are worked and the dangers involving untrained use. I'm not going to get into more details as I don't want to spoil it. I think you'd like to discover it yourselves.

Please don't hit me for being such a stereotype fantasy reader but one of the things that I first check in a fantasy book is a map. It's just that I like to visualize the world and keep it in my head while I read the story. To tell you the truth, the lack of a map didn't bother me much in Nights of Villjamur but I heard that the paperback might get a map yet.

I don't want to get into discussing things like New Weird or Old Peculiar, and I'm not going to pretend that I can do a good job at it. All that I know is that Newton has created an amazing story that dances among various genres and sub-genres. It is a dangerous thriller but it also contains traits of horror. It is fantasy but it also touches science-fiction. All this is mixed so well in this book that it was a true delight to read.

If I had read Nights of Villjamur in 2009, the year of its publication, it would have been one of my top two books of 2009. Now that I read in 2010, even though the year is very young, it's going to be hard to best it. The bar is raised very high.

Rating: 10/10

Quote

"Remember, this city is a city of legends. Long have poets written about the nights of Villjamur" - Urtica

Curiously...

Mark Charan Newton pays tribute to Arthur C. Clarke by citing Clarke's third law in Nights of Villjamur: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Know Thy Numbers

Series are very popular in fantasy and science-fiction. And of numbered series, trilogies are the most popular ones, probably because they date back to ancient times, to the festivals of ancient Greece. However, just like the word trilogy, there are others that cover series from 2 to 10 works:

Number of Works	Name (Greek)	Name (Derivative)
2	-	Duology can be used.
3	Trilogy
4	Tetralogy	Quadrilogy is occasionally used.
5	Pentalogy
6	Hexalogy
7	Heptalogy
8	Octalogy
9	Ennealogy
10	Decalogy