Tag Archives: Sebastien de Castell

The Traitor’s Blade Cuts Deep

Leave a reply

traitor's bladeTraitor’s Blade
Sebastien de Castell
Hachette
Paperback $14.99
Ebook $9.99

Traitor’s Blade is the first volume of Sebastien de Castell’s new grimdark fantasy series. His first novel, it’s a smashing debut. I can understand why it was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best first fantasy novel. It’s the one I’m pulling for.

Here’s the setup. Falcio Val Mond grew up dreaming of the legendary Greatcoats and being a hero. If you look up “idealist” in the dictionary, his picture would be there. But the Greatcoats were disbanded decades ago.

Then a combination tragedy and a new king lead to Falcio becoming the first of the new Greatcoats. This king wants to reign in the excesses of the Dukes. If you look up the word “evil” in the dictionary, their pictures will be there. (When I called this novel a grimdark fantasy, I wasn’t kidding.) The Dukes rebel. The King’s last command is for the Greatcoats to stand down and not resist the rebellion. They just need to find the king’s Charoites. He calls them a type of jewel, but that’s all he’ll say. Finding them will not be easy when Falcio has no idea where to start looking or even what they are.

The novel opens five years after the king’s death. Falcio and two of his companions from the now disgraced Greatcoats are bodyguards for a major caravan master when he is murdered and they are framed for the murder. For some reason, the city guard don’t believe a naked woman killed the man in such a brutal manner. Continue reading →

It’s Time to Vote on the Awards Shortlist

2 Replies

The awards I’m talking about, of course, are the David Gemmell Awards.  As I’m sure you know, there are three.  The Legend Award for the best novel of the year.  The Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut novel.  And the Ravenheart Award for best fantasy book cover.

abercrombie-half-a-king-203x300I’ll post the short lists below after a few comments.  I’m going to read as many of these as I can, especially among the Morningstar candidates (with one exception, which I’m not going to touch).

The Legend Award is another matter.  The reason is that most of the Legend nominees are parts of series, and they’re not the first installment.  The exception is Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, which I started reading last night.  I intend to read some of the others, but I may not make it by the deadline as I haven’t read the books that precede them.

And regarding the other award that’s generating some attention, I’ll try to read as many of the nominees for that one as possible.  I’ll read all of the short fiction nominees (that I haven’t already read) and will blog about some of them.  The same is true for Best Related Work.  Again, with one exception, I’ll try to get to as many of the novel nominees as I can, although as soon as my attention starts to drift, I’ll move on.

Here are the Gemmell nominees.  Voting closes on July 17. Continue reading →