The Grim Company, by Luke Scull. Just like Abercrombie, but with actual magic.

[red snow]

Your unnecessary jab is really making me want to read your book right now.

You should try and get the free version - it's probably long enough for you to make an informed opinion on whether you like it or not and whether you can think of any other authors, closer to home, who can write better?

It's Friday night. What else would a fantasy author be doing other than sitting with a laptop Googling himself?

I'm sure that's how all fantasy authors begin their descent into madness.

You could always watch GOT season 2 on blu-ray and look on enviously thinking "I'll show him, I'll have a movie made out of my books, And video games." It works for me and I'm not even an author :)

[dietl]

Playing video games and masterbating?

Funny misspelling :laugh:

But what Master are you baiting? Care to explain?

Edit: Sorry...I know...my mistake ...you try to be a master in baiting

[peterbound]

It's pretty sick how authors comment on this forum, that's actually them, right?

This book looks brill, will get it when it comes out in paperback :D

No, we raffle off the titles of: Joe, GRRM, Parris, and Sanderson every year during nekkid hatted avatar week. Don't believe anything these people say.

[polishgenius]

Your unnecessary jab is really making me want to read your book right now.

I reckon snarking at you has got him at least three sales* from this board, so it's proven a good tactic...

*My heavily detailed research method for this involved 'reading topics, seeing who replied'.

Is it just me, or is Barnes and Noble's website awful? Accessing the UK version of their website and then clicking on nookbooks, or searching anything, takes you straight to the US version of the store, at least for me. You have to go through uk.nook.com, which I can't see any mention of on their main wesbite itself.

In terms of nooks reading books from kobo and vice versa, they all take epub, but some books will have DRM on them to prevent you reading on another producer's reader. I dunno if that's the case here (it always strikes me as ridiculous anyway and a particularly mean-spirited piece of DRM anyway, since reading it on another reader prevents absolutely no-one involved in the publishing of it from getting their cut).

[Jaime's Wench]

You love me really, guys.

And I would read a sample, but... nerh...

[Luke Scull]

I'm sure that's how all fantasy authors begin their descent into madness.

You could always watch GOT season 2 on blu-ray and look on enviously thinking "I'll show him, I'll have a movie made out of my books, And video games." It works for me and I'm not even an author :)

I'll make my own video game. I actually e-mailed the creators of the Game of Thrones RPG a few years ago and asked if they needed a writer/designer. Turns out they didn't... though perhaps in retrospect they might wish they had. :)

I also wrote a proposal for a Malazan videogame. Our producer went to Steven Erikson's house to discuss it with him. I think Ian Camerson Esslemont liked it but Erikson wasn't so keen - my design for the game strongly resembled my current project, The Shadow Sun, while Erikson wanted something more akin to a first-person shooter. As you can imagine, it didn't work out, though I did receive a nice signed and personalised Subterranean Press edition of Gardens of the Moon.

Small world eh?

[red snow]

I'll make my own video game. I actually e-mailed the creators of the Game of Thrones RPG a few years ago and asked if they needed a writer/designer. Turns out they didn't... though perhaps in retrospect they might wish they had. :)

I also wrote a proposal for a Malazan videogame. Our producer went to Steven Erikson's house to discuss it with him. I think Ian Camerson Esslemont liked it but Erikson wasn't so keen - my prototype for the game strongly resembled my current project, The Shadow Sun, while Erikson wanted something more akin to a first-person shooter. As you can imagine, it didn't work out, though I did receive a nice signed and personalised Subterranean Press edition of Gardens of the Moon.

Small world eh?

Seems like it was worth a shot with Malazan if just for the special edition of the book. I can imagine a game being written/designed by the author being a novel pull (don't know if that's happened before?). Maybe you can convince Joe Abercrombie to let you develop a game for some kind of First Law/red dead redemption style game? I still can't get the Logen/Marston thing out of my head since "Red country". I'm still on the look-out for a GTA-style fantasy game. there must be one out there but I'm just not looking very hard.

[polishgenius]

I'm still on the look-out for a GTA-style fantasy game. there must be one out there but I'm just not looking very hard.

The world needs a Grand Theft Adua.

[Migey]

Oh god. A Malazan game?

Please, no. Just no.

Some things should just be kept to books. Some can work as films or shows, but there are not very many books I can think of that are worth turning into a game. A book is a narrative experience. A game is, by nature, an interactive experience in which while narrative can and should be a key and important feature, shoehorning a book into game format just doesn't seem much like a good idea unless you remove the plot of the game enough from the source material that there's not much point in adapting the book into a game in the first place. And particularly Malazan which was the literary equivalent of a total clusterfuck in book format from the start (occasionally surfacing to coherency for a few chapters or occasionally even an entire book or so, just enough to keep the damn thing readable). Adapting that stuff into a game just doesn't seem like it would work. And how the sweet fuck would one adapt the magic system into that book into something remotely playable?

Fantasy games should be original. We've done pretty well with that so far.

[Spockydog]

Oh, fuck, man, are even we calling it grimdark now?

Et tu brute...?

I don't see why not. I mean, if you gotta call it something, why not call it Grimdark?

You guys should reclaim that shit. Seriously.

[jagilki]

No, we raffle off the titles of: Joe, GRRM, Parris, and Sanderson every year during nekkid hatted avatar week. Don't believe anything these people say.

How much would Stanek go for?

[Garlan the Gallant]

So, I'll take the non-answer as a "no" for the audiobook...

[red snow]

The world needs a Grand Theft Adua.

That is a great name :)

[Luke Scull]

So, I'll take the non-answer as a "no" for the audiobook...

The audiobook is available here, much to my surprise. I didn't realise it would see a release so soon. The narrator did Prince of Thorns too.

[Luke Scull]

Oh god. A Malazan game?

Please, no. Just no.

Some things should just be kept to books. Some can work as films or shows, but there are not very many books I can think of that are worth turning into a game. A book is a narrative experience. A game is, by nature, an interactive experience in which while narrative can and should be a key and important feature, shoehorning a book into game format just doesn't seem much like a good idea unless you remove the plot of the game enough from the source material that there's not much point in adapting the book into a game in the first place. And particularly Malazan which was the literary equivalent of a total clusterfuck in book format from the start (occasionally surfacing to coherency for a few chapters or occasionally even an entire book or so, just enough to keep the damn thing readable). Adapting that stuff into a game just doesn't seem like it would work. And how the sweet fuck would one adapt the magic system into that book into something remotely playable?

Fantasy games should be original. We've done pretty well with that so far.

I generally agree with you, but of all the current major fantasy series, I'd say Malazan was easily the best fit for an RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate. The whole series is, after all, a high-level homebrew D&D game played out in novel form across multiple continents with hundreds of characters. It would be an easy thing to strip away the standard RPG races and classes and replace them with Malazan-specific variants, then start the protagonist as a lowly squad member in some far-flung corner of the Malazan Empire during the events of the series. Once you introduce warrens into the mix you can even justify having the protagonist flitting in and out of events depicted in the novels. Even the magic system, while unusual and perhaps tricky to adapt at first, would lend itself to some new and potentially interesting system design outside of the standard Vancian/mana-based approach.

For me, Malazan is not so much character or even plot-driven as it is world-driven. I read it because of the setting and Erikson's febrile imagination; stuff that translates perfectly well to game form and would give a Malazan title a massive advantage over the tepid worldbuilding efforts of even companies like Bioware. The complex storytelling of the novels could easily be ignored or strategically touched upon to enhance the protagonist's own story.

With series that are very character-driven, I agree that it is very difficult to separate the game enough from the source material/central narrative to make it worthwhile licensing as a setting. It's the old Dragonlance versus Forgotten Realms dichotomy; outside of the story of the Heroes of the Lance, the former has very little to offer while the latter is, by virtue of being a complete clusterfuck, a wonderful place to set a game in.

(I know Erikson has criticised the Forgotten Realms in the past. I always found that somewhat ironic in the circumstances.)

But I think I've derailed my own thread long enough...

[red snow]

The audiobook is available here, much to my surprise. I didn't realise it would see a release so soon. The narrator did Prince of Thorns too.

I'm surpised there's an audiobook so quickly for a new author. I'm pretty impressed at how your publisher is pushing you. Hope they can continue this with the US release as well.

[Migey]

I generally agree with you, but of all the current major fantasy series, I'd say Malazan was easily the best fit for an RPG in the style of Baldur's Gate. The whole series is, after all, a high-level homebrew D&D game played out in novel form across multiple continents with hundreds of characters. It would be an easy thing to strip away the standard RPG races and classes and replace them with Malazan-specific variants, then start the protagonist as a lowly squad member in some far-flung corner of the Malazan Empire during the events of the series. Once you introduce warrens into the mix you can even justify having the protagonist flitting in and out of events depicted in the novels. Even the magic system, while unusual and perhaps tricky to adapt at first, would lend itself to some new and potentially interesting system design outside of the standard Vancian/mana-based approach.

For me, Malazan is not so much character or even plot-driven as it is world-driven. I read it because of the setting and Erikson's febrile imagination; stuff that translates perfectly well to game form and would give a Malazan title a massive advantage over the tepid worldbuilding efforts of even companies like Bioware. The complex storytelling of the novels could easily be ignored or strategically touched upon to enhance the protagonist's own story.

With series that are very character-driven, I agree that it is very difficult to separate the game enough from the source material/central narrative to make it worthwhile licensing as a setting. It's the old Dragonlance versus Forgotten Realms dichotomy; outside of the story of the Heroes of the Lance, the former has very little to offer while the latter is, by virtue of being a complete clusterfuck, a wonderful place to set a game in.

(I know Erikson has criticised the Forgotten Realms in the past. I always found that somewhat ironic in the circumstances.)

But I think I've derailed my own thread long enough...

You have a point, but I still think that stories/worlds should be made for games, rather then the other way round. I can however understand the potential you see in a Malazan game, even if I don't think it would work.

If there is one series which I think would be perfect for game adaption, which is actually happening as far as I'm aware, would be the Mistborn series, and perhaps one or two of Sanderson's other works. Irrelevant of their merits as books (I personally like them, but I know many on this board dislike them), the uniqueness and clearly defined rules of his magic systems seem to lend themselves to a game adaption. I can easily see the Mistborn game going wrong though, as while the idea has a lot of potential, I can imagine how difficult it may be to make Allomancy work in a game.

And who cares about derailing threads! These boards wouldn't be a fraction of the fun they are if threads didn't sometimes get a little derailed, or upon occasion, flung off the rails with such force that they they land in an adjacent meadow.

[Happy Ent]

The world needs a Grand Theft Adua.

*golf clap*

[Werthead]

I'm still on the look-out for a GTA-style fantasy game.

Skyrim? Seems to be the closest fit.

[Rhom]

That's an error with the Kobo store. It shouldn't be possible to purchase the e-book from the US or Canada. My publishers are looking into it. No offence to anyone living in the US & Canada. I love you guys. Just not quite enough to tear up my lucrative contract in a fit of pique at the sheer injustice of it all...

The reason for the lengthy delay between the UK/Commonwealth and North America publication dates is that Head of Zeus, my publisher on this side of the pond, is still relatively small and can move much more quickly when it comes to bringing the book to market. Penguin publish many great fantasy authors, and it's a case of slotting me in between the heavyweights where there's a space. (So that I don't completely overshadow them, obviously).

For first-in-a-series novels, it's perhaps a good thing to have a bit of delay between release dates as the book benefits from two separate publicity pushes - but as an author and a reader, it is frustrating. North American readers can, of course, order the hardcover and have it delivered.

Perhaps I missed it... when exactly can us Yanks pick this up at the corner store?