Cover art for HALF A KING by Joe Abercrombie

io9 have released the (presumably American) cover art for Joe Abercrombie's next novel, Half a King.The first in a new trilogy aimed at a somewhat younger audience than his previous work, it will be published on 8 July in the United States by Del Rey and around the same time in the UK by HarperCollins.

io9 also have an extract from the novel which is worth checking out.

Joe Abercrombie sells new fantasy series to HarperCollins Voyager

Joe Abercrombie has announced the signing of a new three-book deal with HarperCollins Voyager. The new books will be set in an alternative-history version of Europe (so not the First Law world) and will be loosely connected to one another rather than forming a single story, so not a trilogy in the formal sense of the word. The new books will also be aimed a wider audience than his previous books, with the books being able to be read by both adult and youngsters.

The first book will be called Half a King and will be published in July 2014. The sequels, Half the World and Half a War, will follow in January and July 2015. According to Abercrombie:

"With this trilogy I’ve set out to do something a little different—shorter, tighter, and with a broad, page-turning appeal—while still giving readers the vivid characters, crunching action, twisting plots and black humour that I’m known for."


Commissioning editor Jane Johnson at HarperCollins:

"I've never experienced such universal enthusiasm for a project in all my years at HarperCollins. We received the submission on a Wednesday and by Thursday afternoon everyone had read and adored it - the whole building was buzzing with the huge potential for this series. Nick Lake (Children's), Emma Coode (Voyager) and I discussed a cross-divisional strategy and on that basis offered immediately. Both Nick and I have been fans of Joe's adult work since The Blade Itself, but I had no idea he had so many other fans in-house."

According to Joe's blog, Joe's next First Law project (probably a new trilogy) will remain at Gollancz, with a publication date to be determined but unlikely to be before 2017. Joe has also confirmed that his worldwide sales have now reached the ballpark of 3 million.

A glimpse of a FIRST LAW world map

The First Law comic adaptation has given us a glimpse of a world map for Joe Abercrombie's fantasy world. On his blog, Abercrombie has confirmed that the map is mostly accurate and canonical. On the following image the map is shown with the existing maps of the Old Empire to the left and Styria to the right, whilst at the bottom is an attempt to combine them into one image.

Obviously, the comic strip image is small, somewhat compressed and not entirely to scale with the published maps, though it is possible to get a good sense of what's going on and what is where. I will try to use this information to construct a clearer map at a later date.

The island in the middle is clearly Midderland, the island-continent on which the heart of the Union and Adua are situated, whilst to the north lie the Northlands, with Angland likely being the peninsular immediately to the north-west of Midderland. Kanta is one of the two landmasses to the south; likely the one to the south-west, with Dagoska located on the narrow peninsular reaching up towards Midderland (it's also possible that both landmasses to the south are Kanta, with the sea between them being a very large bay rather than a separating ocean).

Neil Gaiman to publish a new NEVERWHERE story (with some help from George R.R. Martin)

Way back in 1996, Neil Gaiman penned the BBC mini-series Neverwhere, adapting it into a novel a year later. Almost immediately after the story first appeared, fans noted a continuity error where the character of the Marquis de Carabas recovered his coat after it had apparently vanished forever. Gaiman promised to explain all in a short story, enigmatically entitled 'How the Marquis Got His Coat Back', but got a bit side-tracked with other projects.

The Marquis de Carabas as portrayed by Patterson Joseph in the original BBC TV series of Neverwhere.

It's been a while coming, but the story will finally appear in a new anthology entitled Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. Rogues - the thematic sequel anthology to 2010's Warriors - will likely be published some time in 2014.


The full story list is as follows:

George R.R. Martin “Everybody Loves a Rogue” (Introduction)
Joe Abercrombie “Tough Times All Over”
Gillian Flynn “What Do You Do?”
Matthew Hughes “The Inn of the Seven Blessings”
Joe R. Lansdale “Bent Twig”
Michael Swanwick “Tawny Petticoats”
David Ball “Provenance”
Carrie Vaughn “The Roaring Twenties”
Scott Lynch “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane”
Bradley Denton “Bad Brass”
Cherie Priest “Heavy Metal”
Daniel Abraham “The Meaning of Love”
Paul Cornell “A Better Way to Die”
Steven Saylor “Ill Seen in Tyre”
Garth Nix “A Cargo of Ivories”
Walter Jon Williams “Diamonds From Tequila”
Phyllis Eisenstein “The Caravan to Nowhere”
Lisa Tuttle “The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives”
Neil Gaiman “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back”
Connie Willis “Now Showing”
Patrick Rothfuss “The Lightning Tree”

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

Gold has been discovered in the hills and mountains of the Far Country, that untamed frontier beyond the Old Empire and far to the west of the Union. Prospectors, mercenaries and those eager to find a new life flock to those lands, only to find the greed and violence of their pasts following them, even those of honourable intentions. Shy South and her adopted father are searching for missing kinfolk, kidnapped for purposes unknown. Their pursuit across the Far Country leads them into an alliance with a fellowship of the plains, a caravan hoping for a better life in the distant mining town of Crease. But, with rebels gathering in the mountains and Nicomo Cosca and his Company of the Gracious Hand also on a sworn mission to root them out for His Majesty's Inquisition, this is a journey where nothing will turn out as hoped.

Red Country is Joe Abercrombie's sixth novel and his third semi-stand-alone set in the same world as The First Law sequence. As with its two immediate predecessors, Best Served Cold and The Heroes, Red Country can be read by itself, but regular readers will pick up on a lot of nods and winks to previous novels, from cameo character appearances to the ongoing development of a 'cold war' between two opposing factions.

The book moves between several major POV characters. Shy is our main protagonist, but shares a lot of the page-time with Temple, a lawyer in Cosca's army whose moral centre is gradually crumbling in the face of so much pain and violence. Other characters also flitter in and out of the story, with Abercrombie re-using the 'POV handover' trick from The Heroes to great effect several times, where the perspective shifts between several characters in succession to help clearly tell the story of a battle or confrontation. As usual with Abercrombie, the characters' personalities and motivations are convincingly laid out and developed, and there are some nice pay-offs for returning characters (Cosca, in particular, gets some fairly thorough character development here). One slight flaw is that the storyline following one of the kidnapped children never seems to really develop, and feels like it either needed several more chapters dedicated to it or the whole thing dropped and the reader (like Shy) made to discern for themselves what happened off-page.

The novel has been billed as 'Joe Abercrombie's Western' and there is certainly a degree of that in the book's influences. Brief nods to The Searchers, Unforgiven and the mighty Deadwood can be discerned, though unexpectedly the most constant cultural reference is the original Star Wars movie: one brief line of dialogue by Obi-Wan Kenobi inspires an entire subplot in the novel. However, there are significant deviations from the Western motif. The West in this case is the long-abandoned northern provinces of the Old Empire, festooned with ruins from ancient times, rather than a totally virgin and untamed land (apart from the natives, of course). The area is also (relatively) close to the Old Empire, the Union and the North, making it much more of a cultural melting-pot and having it effect (and be effected by) events in more established lands than you might expect. Finally, there's no six-shooters, with everyone falling back on the old stand-bys of swords and bows. More or less.

The tone of the book is bloody and cynical, with Abercrombie's trademark line in black humour preventing things from getting too depressing. However, the cynicism feels a little harder-edged and a bit blacker than in his previous books, the humour perhaps a tad less prevalent. It's still a page-turning, well-written book with points to make about human nature, but at times the tone feels wearier than his previous books. However, this also ties in with a feeling of tragedy underpinning the book, one that results in a grimly satisfying pay-off at the end (and one element of the novel that is completely lifted - if appropriately - from a Western).

Red Country (****½) is Joe Abercrombie doing what he does best, writing a story of violence, mayhem and vengeance and the effect it has on all-too-human characters. As with his previous stand-alones, the book works as both a satisfying novel in its own right and also moves a lot of political and religious pieces into position to be (presumably) used to good effect in his next work, a full-on trilogy. Some may find the cynicism a tad overwhelming at times and at least one of the subplots doesn't quite work as well as it could have, but this is a strong effort from one of the better writers in the genre. The novel will be available on 18 October in the UK and 13 November in the USA.