Mark Chadbourn

Even More Best of 2009

The Best of the Year lists keep pouring in, and Pyr keeps placing on them.

Fantasy Literature has posted FanLit’s Favorite Books of 2009, and I’m thrilled to see Joel Shepherd’s Sashaand Mark Chadbourn’s The Silver Skullon the list, as well as the UK edition of Jasper Kent’s Twelve.

Meanwhile, Grasping for the Wind has posted their Best Reads of 2009, and in the category of “Best Adventure Novel,” a category “designed to be broad, focusing on the adventure aspect of a story, not its setting per se…. to highlight the book that had a similar effect to the watching of an action movie,” they select Diving into the Wreckby Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Not surprising given all the comparisons to Star Trek and Babylon 5 the book is garnering.

Meanwhile, Rob Will Review… has posted The 10 Best Books I Read in 2009.  These aren’t necessarily books published in 2009, so he includes (and we are pleased to see) Chris Roberson’s 2005 novel, Here, There & Everywhere,coming in at #5, ahead of some writers named Neil Gaiman and Dave Eggers. Rob writes:

On the surface, Here, There & Everywhere is actually a joyous romp through time and space–the life story of a singularly unique woman, Roxanne Bonaventure, who, from a young age, is gifted with a very special bracelet, which she dubs “the Sofia,” that allows her to spend her life zigzagging through time and space…Underneath the larksome exterior, however, Roberson’s novel has a rather serious subtext.  Although most of the time, Roxanne has a ball traipsing across the universe, she can also be a deeply lonely individual…Here, There & Everywhere captures the alienation of a time traveler’s life in a profound yet subtle manner that never overwhelms the story with pathos but which keeps the novel–even in its most thrillingly pulpy of moments–cushioned in a layer of emotional reality that beautifully complements its jaunty surface…

Happy New Year!

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Non-Stop Action and the Return of S&S

The Silver Skullby Mark Chadbourn has made Stevereads 2009 Honor Roll:

“An old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery novel, complete with two staples of that long-lost and much-lamented sub-genre: non-stop action and a hero whose very perfection ought to make him annoying, but doesn’t. You’ll be mighty entertained.”

Meanwhile, author and reviewer Paul Witcover has included it in his Best of the Year list as well. 

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For Your Viewing Pleasure: The Silver Skull

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Cover Illustration © Chris McGrath
Design by Jacqueline Cooke

A devilish plot to assassinate the queen, a cold war enemy hell-bent
on destroying the nation, incredible gadgets, a race against time
around the world to stop the ultimate doomsday device…
and Elizabethan England’s greatest spy!

Meet Will Swyfte—adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit, scholar and the greatest of Walsingham’s new band of spies. His exploits against the forces of Philip of Spain have made him a national hero, lauded from Carlisle to Kent. Yet his associates can barely disguise their incredulity—what is the point of a spy whose face and name is known across Europe? ??But Swyfte’s public image is a carefully-crafted façade to give the people of England something to believe in, and to allow them to sleep peacefully at night. It deflects attention from his real work—and the true reason why Walsingham’s spy network was established. ??A Cold War seethes, and England remains under a state of threat. The forces of Faerie have preyed on humanity for millennia. Responsible for our myths and legends, of gods and fairies, dragons, griffins, devils, imps and every other supernatural menace that has haunted our dreams, this power in the darkness has seen humans as playthings to be tormented, hunted or eradicated. But now England is fighting back! ??Magical defences have been put in place by the Queen’s sorcerer Dr. John Dee, who is also a senior member of Walsingham’s secret service and provides many of the bizarre gadgets utilised by the spies. Finally there is a balance of power. But the Cold War is threatening to turn hot at any moment… ??Will now plays a constant game of deceit and death, holding back the Enemy’s repeated incursions, dealing in a shadowy world of plots and counter-plots, deceptions, secrets, murder, where no one… and no thing… is quite what it seems.

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A Whole New World…

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Robert William Berg has written a very articulate analysis of Mark Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule trilogy (World’s End,Darkest Hour,Always Forever),and in so doing, he puts his finger on what I was first drawn to about the series:

What Chadbourn has done is take the framework of The Lord of the Rings and set a similar quest in modern day Britain. Tolkien’s work was a celebration of Celtic and British mythology. He was attempting, in the manner of an archeologist/historian to create a credible retelling and homage of his homeland’s mythology, through intricate, meticulous research. Chadbourn’s series springs from a similar impulse, but instead of reinvisioning the past, he lifts the mythology, wholecloth, and drops it into the present. The Lord of the Rings is, ultimately, the tale of how magic gradually began to leave the everyday world. Age of Misrule is the tale of how it returned. And there is no better setting than Britain, which seems to be one of the few places in the world that not only still has a rich mythological tradition but still has areas that have been all but untouched by the modern day, where one can travel an hour away from a modern, bustling city and find oneself at a medieval castle or abbey or even Stonehenge.

I told Mark he has to take me on a walking tour one day, but only if he can guarantee we won’t return and find 100 years have magically passed…

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Valdemar Font in Age of Misrule

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The Scriptorium is a great site for interesting fonts, but I didn’t expect it would be a great site for a book review! But they spotted our use of their most excellent, most unusual font, Valdemar, on the cover of Mark Chadbourn’s World’s End (Age of Misrule Book One).And, thankfully, they approve of the use we put their font to:

The overall result is excellent, and it’s just the kind of book Valdemar was designed for. I also quite like the cover art by John Picacio, which is surprisingly conceptually reminiscent of the cover Howard David Johnson did for my Ysgarth RPG.

As to the book itself, I’m happy they think it lives up to its cover:

World’s End is quite an engaging read. It’s well written and fast-moving, thematically reminiscent of some of the work of Robert Holdstock or Neil Gaiman, but much more commerically written for broad audience appeal.

Thanks guys! That’s a great quote! Keep up the good work that makes our work good! As you says, “A good read with a great font as part of a really appealing cover design. What more could you ask for?”

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For Your Viewing Pleasure: Mark Chadbourn’s The Silver Skull

6 Comments /
Cover Illustration © Chris McGrath
Design by Jacqueline Cooke
Coming October 2009
A devilish plot to assassinate the Queen, a Cold War enemy hell-bent on destroying the nation, incredible gadgets, a race against time around the world to stop the ultimate doomsday device…and Elizabethan England’s greatest spy!

Meet Will Swyfte – adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit, scholar and the greatest of Walsingham’s new band of spies. His exploits against the forces of Philip of Spain have made him a national hero, lauded from Carlisle to Kent. Yet his associates can barely disguise their incredulity – what is the point of a spy whose face and name is known across Europe?

But Swyfte’s public image is a carefully-crafted façade to give the people of England something to believe in, and to allow them to sleep peacefully at night. It deflects attention from his real work – and the true reason why Walsingham’s spy network was established.

A Cold War seethes, and England remains under a state of threat. The forces of Faerie have been preying on humanity for millennia. Responsible for our myths and legends, of gods and fairies, dragons, griffins, devils, imps and every other supernatural menace that has haunted our dreams, this power in the darkness has seen humans as playthings to be tormented, hunted or eradicated.

But now England is fighting back!

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For Your Viewing Pleasure: Mark Chadbourn’s Darkest Hour

2 Comments /
Darkest Hour© Mark Chadbourn
Cover Illustration © John Picacio
Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht


The eternal conflict between the Light and Dark once again blackens the skies and blights the land. On one side stand the Tuatha de Danaan, golden-skinned and beautiful, filled with all the might of angels. On the other are the Fomorii, monstrous devils hell-bent on destroying all human existence. And in the middle are the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, determined to use the strange power that binds them to the land in a last, desperate attempt to save the human race. Church, Ruth, Ryan, Laura and Shavi have joined forces with Tom, a hero from the mists of time, to wage a guerrilla war against the iron rule of the gods. But they didn’t count on things going from bad to worse …this is the stunning continuation of a powerful fantasy saga by one of Britain’s most acclaimed young writers.

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Is There a Silver SFnal Lining to the Recession?

Been talking about the economy as relates to SF with Mark Chadbourn, whose Age of Misrule trilogy we’ll be publishing in a few months. He kindly lets me repost his thoughts here:

My joint major at university was economics, and the upshot of that is I’m always out-of-cycle with everyone else. I’m worrying six months ahead of an economic downturn when everyone else is smiling, and I’m smiling when everyone else is miserable, which sometimes doesn’t win friends.

It seems we’re on a cusp now: a couple of months to see if the measures all Governments are introducing actually start getting people spending (which is the key in any recession – if people save everything goes into a downward spiral). But in six months we should be seeing the very early stages of an up-tick. Any company which weathers the next six months should be in a good position.

Somewhere I’ve got a talk I occasionally give about how genre is the marker for great social and political events. One of the strands is how SF/F/Crime always does *exceptionally* well in economically difficult times – if you plot it out on a graph, it becomes very clear. But just think with SF in the thirties and seventies. Horror, incidentally, does well in boom-times.

If I was on the stock market, I’d be advising investors to put their cash in SF/F for the next few years because, as you’re finding, it’s going to do really well. It would be good if someone could pitch this theory to the major chains, because if they got behind it, everyone would benefit (and it would become self-fulfilling).

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