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Best recent fanatsy debuts (or thoughts on these books)?


End of Disc One

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Get a famous webcomic book artist to mention you (for reference, this is unreal).

Proving once again that the internet really is All About Cat Pictures. (My husband said, "Have you thought about adding interior art to your book depicting blood mages casting spells on cats?") I guess at least the attraction of Exploding Kittens makes more sense than the infamous potato salad kickstarter. Me, I'm just hoping to fund enough of the production costs that I don't end up with a gaping black hole in my bank account.

(People sometimes wonder what trad publishers actually DO for a book. After costing out all the various rounds of editing & design that went into my previous trad-pubbed books, I can say, "ONE HELL OF A LOT." (Still don't regret my decision, though, which was made for reasons that have nothing to do with $$.))

And because I've done more than enough blabbing on about myself in this thread, here are a few other relatively recent fantasy debuts that I enjoyed and didn't see mentioned:

Helen Lowe's Heir of Night

Evie Manieri's Blood's Pride

Anne Lyle's The Alchemist of Souls

Doug Hulick's Among Thieves

And I'd echo the rec for John Hornor Jacobs' The Incorruptibles. I've also got on the TBR stack Amy McCullough's Oathbreaker's Shadow and Jen Williams's The Copper Promise, both of which come highly recommended by friends.

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I am almost positive I've read interviews in which Wexler says five. I'm not sure if he's under contract with Roc -- his publisher -- for the full five or just the first three, but the series seems to have found moderate success so either way this shouldn't be a problem. I am also pretty certain I've seen Staveley saying that yes Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne is a trilogy, and let's check that right now ... yep, his Facebook page contains references to it being a trilogy.



Just checked on Wexler as well and yes, his Goodreads author page says there'll be five books in the Shadow Campaigns.


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Since some of you in this thread said you were interested in the final book of my Shattered Sigil trilogy, thought I'd let you know that the kickstarter for The Labyrinth of Flame is now live:



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/593452308/the-labyrinth-of-flame



And for anyone outside the US/Canada who would like to get ebooks of the first two books in the trilogy (The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City), now's your chance! (I worked out a special arrangement for the kickstarter so I can offer all 3 ebooks to everyone, regardless of country of residence.)

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Since some of you in this thread said you were interested in the final book of my Shattered Sigil trilogy, thought I'd let you know that the kickstarter for The Labyrinth of Flame is now live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/593452308/the-labyrinth-of-flame

And for anyone outside the US/Canada who would like to get ebooks of the first two books in the trilogy (The Whitefire Crossing and The Tainted City), now's your chance! (I worked out a special arrangement for the kickstarter so I can offer all 3 ebooks to everyone, regardless of country of residence.)

Fantastic! Pledge made.

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  • 4 months later...
Late to the game, but I would rate as follows:

1) City of Stairs by Robert Bennett Jackson
2) Red Rising Trilogy by Pierce Brown
3) The Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler
4) The Grim Company by Luke Scull
5) The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
6) The Brilliance Saga by Marcus Sakey
7) The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan
8) Age of Iron Trilogy by Angus Watson
9) The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price
10) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
11) The Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence
12) A Raven's Shadow by Anthony Ryan
13) The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne
14) Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne by Brian
Staveley
15) Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu
16) No Return by Zachary Jernigan

The Expanse Series by James SA Corey, Abercrombie's new series, The Free by Brian Ruckley, Ian Tregillis' new series and Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and The Coin series are all great too but they are all old hands at this point. I am also very much looking forward to reading The Traitor Baru Cormnant by Seth Dickinson. I've enjoyed the first three preview chapters a lot.
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Well, speaking as a recently debuted fantasy author, I actually first became acquainted with Django Wrexler via his Heroes of Mazaroth novella collection. I recommend that for some truly funny material about a fairy-hunting computer debugger.

 

I also second Mark Lawrence, having just started reading his stuff and it's FANTASTIC.

 

Some new authors I recommend are the following:

 

Seth Skorkowsky: I'm really fond of his Valducan urban fantasy series which is about a holy collection of weapons wielded by a group of demon hunters. I enjoyed the first book more than the second but both are still good action-horror. They're awesome but even better is the Sword and Sorcery anthology [i]Mountain of Daggers[/i] and what I hope is the upcoming sequel, [i]Sea of Quills[/i].

 

Kenny Soward: Kenny Soward's Gnomesaga series is a funny D&D-esque fantasy series which doesn't take itself too seriously but is quite enjoyable nevertheless. It's about a group of steampunk gnomes living in a vanilla fantasy world who have to deal with an extra-dimensional invasion and all of their weird pseudo-19th century politics.

 

Rob J. Hayes: I've mentioned how much I enjoy the Ties that Bind series and even created a thread about it. The trilogy has a few rough spots but I think it's an extremely strong debut for him into the world of grimdark fantasy.

 

Shana Festa: I don't think zombie fiction quite qualifies as fantasy but I feel the need to bring her up to. I really like the Time of Death books and she was recently interviewed on the Escapist. They're pretty much the anti-Walking Dead in about an irrepressible optimist and her dog plus copious amounts of snark.

 

Tim Marquitz: The Blood War Trilogy is a really great, very contained (3 300 or so page books and it's done), series which deconstructs the sanitized good vs. evil conflicts of your stereotypical fantasy kingdom. I also loved [i]Dirge[/i], which is basically a book about a thief similar to Garret, who has to deal with the fact her kingdom is being overrun by the living dead.

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Craig Schaefer's dark and gripping debut Daniel Faust series, starting with The Long Way Down, is one hell of a urban fantasy debut.  I first dug into the series having come directly off of Dresden, and the quality of the writing and characters is incredible for a first novel.  Daniel Faust is an antivillain, a grifter, sorcerer-for-hire, and occasional thief who tries to keep what's left of his soul as he is thrown into dealings with demon princes, the circles of Hell, and even more dangerous players in the great occult game.  Also, Schaefer is a writing machine, publishing several books per year and keeping multiple series (with a new one coming out next year) in the air.  It's incredible how much better this series is than The Dresden Files, which after 15 books still has the same juvenile male gaze, mediocre writing and plotting and insufferable protagonist.

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Craig Schaefer's dark and gripping debut Daniel Faust series, starting with The Long Way Down, is one hell of a urban fantasy debut.  I first dug into the series having come directly off of Dresden, and the quality of the writing and characters is incredible for a first novel.  Daniel Faust is an antivillain, a grifter, sorcerer-for-hire, and occasional thief who tries to keep what's left of his soul as he is thrown into dealings with demon princes, the circles of Hell, and even more dangerous players in the great occult game.  Also, Schaefer is a writing machine, publishing several books per year and keeping multiple series (with a new one coming out next year) in the air.  It's incredible how much better this series is than The Dresden Files, which after 15 books still has the same juvenile male gaze, mediocre writing and plotting and insufferable protagonist.

 

I just started The Long Way Down. So far so good. Hopefully it plays out just like you described.

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...
10) The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
...

The Expanse Series by James SA Corey, Abercrombie's new series, The Free by Brian Ruckley, Ian Tregillis' new series and Daniel Abraham's The Dagger and The Coin series are all great too but they are all old hands at this point. I am also very much looking forward to reading The Traitor Baru Cormnant by Seth Dickinson. I've enjoyed the first three preview chapters a lot.

Technically the Addison is a work by an old  hand as well, Sarah Monette has been published for a decade by now.

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