Joe Abercrombie’s next novel, Red Country, is due out in the UK from Gollancz on October 18 and in the US from Orbit on October 23.  I know what I’ll be reading over the Thanksgiving break (unless I can score an ARC first).  Gollancz has released the UK cover.  That’s it on the right.

From what I’ve been able to learn, it seems to be a Western in a fantasy setting, where a woman seeks revenge out on the frontier.

 Here’s the wraparound cover:  

The US cover looks like this:

 Finally, if you’re wondering what the book is about, here’s the jacket copy: 

“They burned her home.
They stole her brother and sister.
But vengeance is following.
Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she’ll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she’s not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb’s buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried.
Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust…”

Leo Grin, founder of the now highly collectible The Cimmerian journal and former manager of the website of that name (see links to the right), has posted a blog in which he takes many of the more popular contemporary fantasy authors to task for how dark and (in Leo’s view) nihilistic their work is.  One of the people he singles out is Joe Abercrombie, who has responded.  This has, as some of you know because you’ve also responded, set off a huge online…we’ll call it a lively discussion in the comments of both blogs as well as other places.  Abercrombie includes links to some other sites taking up the discussion, although I’ve not had time to read them yet.  (This is the sort of thing that makes you forget about deadlines, like that addition to a lab I need to have written by the end of the day.)

I see both “sides” of the discussion, although I’m not sure that taking sides is wise or productive, as well as finding points in both posts that I agree with, as well as some I don’t.  I’m going to be buried under grading the first wave of exams by the time today is over, as well as traveling starting tomorrow afternoon.  Therefore, I’m going to refrain from weighing in on this discussion until next week, after I return and have had some time to reread Joe and Leo’s posts, as well as some of the others.  Since Leo’s last three words were “to be continued”, I’m sure there will still be plenty of discussion going when I get back.

If you haven’t read any of this, start with Leo’s post and take it from there.  And please feel free to express your opinions here if you’re so inclined.

Now back to the dayjobbery…