Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz, godslayers, are relentless travelers in a treacherous world of magic, gunpowder, and adventure.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Garth Nix’s Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz, a collection of short stories featuring the witch knight and his puppet sorcerer, including one brand new tale excerpted below. Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz is out now from Harper Voyager.
In this raucous, steampunk tale a sacred order of scientist nuns battle against vicious Invaders from Mars and their murderous machines in an ongoing conflict that has lasted centuries.
As with all authors my own work has been influenced by the writers I have read, particularly those I read in my childhood and early adulthood. I’ve written about this before, and many of those influential authors are fairly obvious simply from my age and their visibility in the late 1960s and 1970s. Writers like Ursula Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, Joan Aiken and many more, who were incredibly important to me and whose work I still re-read and who have been and continue to be a strong influence.
But for this article, I decided to pick out four books and authors who are now generally not so well known—and certainly not as well known as I think they should be —whose work also had a great influence upon me.
Garth Nix returns to the Old Kingdom with Terciel & Elinor, the never-before-told love story of Sabriel’s parents and the charter magic that brought them together—and threatened to tear them apart. A long-awaited prequel to a classic fantasy series, Terciel & Elinor publishes November 2nd with Katherine Tegen Books. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt below!
My first job out of university was in a bookshop. Dalton’s Bookshop in Canberra, the federal capital of Australia, which is in some ways a kind of mini-me of Washington, D.C. crossed with an Australian country town. Dalton’s was the biggest and best bookshop in the city, a family-owned business that was spread over two floors of a large building in the city centre. A spiral staircase joined the two floors and we liked to slide down the banister and jump off the end to land in front of a customer and ask, “Can I help you?”
A girl’s quest to find her father leads her to an extended family of magical fighting booksellers who police the mythical Old World of England when it intrudes on the modern world…
We’re excited to share an excerpt from The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, a new fantasy from Garth Nix—publishing September 22nd with Katherine Tegen Books.
Some days you find out that the world is nothing like what you think it is.
An archaeologist named Tamara working near Hadrian’s Wall is approached by a very annoyed-looking, silver-haired woman with an incomprehensible message: The game is moving on, the time has come to play a hand, and Tamara is on point. Time to find the Necessary Arthur and get down to business!
Sir Magnus Holmes, cousin to the more famous Sherlock, is asked to investigate the appearance of an otherworldly knight carrying a legendary sword in the cellar of a Victorian London pub.
A Soviet political prisoner is ordered to use her unique talents to explore a strange scientific phenomenon. It could be a trap…or a way out.
More than a century has passed since Liliath crept into the empty sarcophagus of Saint Marguerite, fleeing the Fall of Ystara. But she emerges from her magical sleep still beautiful, looking no more than nineteen, and once again renews her single-minded quest to be united with her lover, Palleniel, the archangel of Ystara.
It’s a seemingly impossible quest, but Liliath is one of the greatest practitioners of angelic magic to have ever lived, summoning angels and forcing them to do her bidding. Four young people hold her interest: Simeon, a studious doctor-in-training; Henri, a dedicated fortune hunter; Agnez, a glory-seeking musketeer; and Dorotea, icon-maker and scholar of angelic magic.
The four feel a strange kinship from the moment they meet but do not suspect their importance. And none of them know just how Liliath plans to use them, as mere pawns in her plan, no matter the cost to everyone else…
Garth Nix, bestselling author of the Old Kingdom series, crafts a new fantasy with Angel Mage—available October 1st from Katherine Tegan Books.
Much of what makes books work for readers and makes them continue to work for generations of readers over long periods of time is the transfer of emotion. Often, when trying to work out why a book appeals, people will point to particular characters, or the plot, or the invented world, or the prose. All these things are of course vital parts of how a book delivers its effect, but I think readers often forget that what they like most is what all the nuts and bolts of the writing are making, the overall experience they create.
Books can make us laugh, cry, smile, curl up in contentment or despair, jump up and shriek, run out of the room, and recite passages to friends and family. They can provide relief or ratchet up anxiety; they can deliver hope and triumph and deep satisfaction at a world set to rights. Books help us feel an enormous range of emotions as we experience the lives of others through the medium of story.
It’s how we feel as we read a book that makes it memorable (or not).
“Fire Above, Fire Below” is about the crisis that the dying of a dragon living below a major city causes, and the pact made many years earlier to deal with such a situtation.
This short story was acquired for Tor.com by consulting editor Ellen Datlow.
