In the Palace of Promised Immortality is a time-travel novella taking place on the planet Mercury, after, during and before the pregnancy, wedding night and birthday of Circe, the solitary time lady.
The story has the privilege of appearing in the PLANETARY ANTHOLOGY: MERCURY published by Superversive Press:
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Castalia House wisely decided to re-publish the Award winning Best Novel for 2016 SOMEWHITHER in a new multivolume format.
The second volume is out now:
SOMEWHITHER: THE DARKEST TOWER
Just to avoid confusion: this is the same story as SOMEWHITHER, merely broken into neat, bite-sized bits.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
THE UNWITHERING REALM is a massive tale of a greater and darker evil with longer reach than anything Man can imagine, of despair without bounds, of pain beyond measure, and of the faith required to surmount all three. It is a story of inexorable destiny written in the stars and the stubborn courage that is required to defy it.
In THE DARKEST TOWER, Ilya Muromets has fallen into the hands of the arrogant Astrologers who rule the multiverse through their scientific mastery of the stars. Imprisoned in their mighty Dark Tower, there is no plan he can envision that has not already been anticipated and thwarted through the evil arts of his torturers.
But Ilya is bound and determined to be a hero, and heroes do not quit simply because they face impossible odds.
THE DARKEST TOWER is the second book in THE UNWITHERING REALM, the Dragon Award-winning series by science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright, author of THE GOLDEN AGE, MOTH & COBWEB, and AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND.
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The modern book market is a fickle thing, and no one has a handle on all its changes yet. My publisher, Castalia House wisely decided to re-publish the Dragon Award winning Best Novel for 2016 SOMEWHITHER in a new multivolume format. The first volume is out now:
SOMEWHITHER: DOOR INTO NOWHERE
Just to avoid confusion: this is the same story as SOMEWHITHER, merely broken into neat, bite-sized bits.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The Door into Nowhere is a tale of a greater and darker evil with longer reach than anything Man can imagine, of despair without bounds, of pain beyond measure, and of the faith required to surmount all three. It is a story of inexorable destiny written in the stars and the stubborn courage that is required to defy it.
Ilya Muromets is an oversized young man whose father is often absent on mysterious Church missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters. Ilya works as a janitor for Professor Achitophel Dreadful of the Cryptozoological Museum of Scientific Curiosities, who warns Ilya of an unthinkably powerful enemy determined to rule the many worlds of the multiverse. And, as it happens, the Professor has left his transdimensional equipment in the basement of the Museum plugged-in and running….
So it is that Ilya, as he has secretly dreamed, is called upon to save the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter. With his squirrel gun, his grandfather’s sword, and his father’s crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world.
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Being assassinated once may be a misunderstanding. Being assassinated twice shows signs of being a conspiracy.
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Here is a flattering review from 2016 I do not recall seeing. I share it with my readers in hopes of generating additional interest in the work.
Allow me to say how refreshing it is to read words by someone who does not share an artist’s worldview, but can still judge his art as art. Objectivity was the norm one generation ago, not the exception.
From http://aetherczar.com/?p=3808
While a modern-day feudal lord prepares for marriage, his best man wrestles with his feelings for his friend’s bride and struggles to unravel the mystery of the cryptic room which is the only place in which they all can remember their true selves.
In The Iron Chamber of Memory, John C. Wright cooks up a complicated love triangle in the context of a work spanning fantasy and mystery and spiced with a healthy dose of history, myth, and legend. Wright’s tale exploits an ingenious gimmick – the concept of a secret room being the only place in which his characters can remember their true selves. They then must struggle to influence their outside selves to act so as to maintain and achieve their goals and values.
I’m not deeply religious, but I nevertheless respect the craftsmanlike way in which Wright delivers an intriguing tale drawing on English history, Arthurian legend, and Christian belief. His work is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis. As in his also excellent recent novel, Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm, Wright draws heavily on Christian themes and ideas, to deliver a solid story that stands well on its own merits. I was particularly delighted by the skillful way in which Wright wove the real-world, real-life history of the Island of Sark into his fantastical tale. A talented prose stylist, Wright’s intricate command of language may sometimes fall short of sublime, but the joy lies in observing the master at work.
Wright’s entertaining tale is well-worth the price.
I was bemused to find someone (I know not who) reading my Hugo-nominated short story, Parliament of Beasts and Birds, on a YouTube channel that said it had one prior viewing. I have posted a link to this before, so I am sure that more than one person viewed it.
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I find that reviews from customers are always more useful than those from professional reviewers, simply because the professionals are getting paid, and so they want to write columns that will be entertaining to read, which puts them under an incentive either to indulge in insult-humor quips or political posturing.
Customers, on the other hand, can give an author valuable feedback on what bits worked and what did not, and one can use the hints to improve one’s writing.
Here are several reviews of COUNT TO INFINITY from Goodreads, some complimentary, some critical, and some are oddly reverse-complimentary (that is, the complaint unintentionally compliments the book).
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This is an article from the Superversive Press site by Thomas Davidsmeier:
My bees died. They were alive at Christmas, but dead by New Year’s. It wasn’t the trendy Colony Collapse Disorder where they all leave and the hive is empty. No, it was a winter kill. They all died right there, in the hive, heads down in their comb desperately looking for honey that was only a few inches away.
Looking at my dead bee civilization, I was struck by how similar this experience was to something that I thought was impossible to imagine.
John C. Wright’s Count to Infinity is an amazing book that explores ideas and events beyond the scope of any book I’ve ever even heard of.
War tearing apart a galaxy far, far away?
Try two galaxies fighting a war with each other that rip them apart.
Men who live for thousands of years and fight duels with swords over and over because there can be only one?
Try men who live for billions of years and fight duels with unimaginably powerful weapons because there can be only one.
The fate of the world hanging in the balance?
Try the fate of all creation past and present, all who have ever lived and died, hanging in the balance.
At one point, a character realizes that civilizations have been being born, growing, doing their great work, and then dying, all for that character’s benefit. And, that character hasn’t been aware of them at all, like a person is unaware of the cells in their body that live and die for their benefit.
It was this image that my bees made real to me. My bees lived, worked, and died for their queen. And indirectly, they lived, worked, and died for me. But, like the character in Count to Infinity, I’m forced to admit that I never really knew them. Their sacrifice was one of lessers dying in service of their betters.
This happens often in stories, and John C. Wright is one of the first authors to offer an in story attempt to explain why it was happening in Count to Infinity. But, what happens in Count to Infinity that is even more emphatically superversive, is the sacrifice of a better for a lesser.
Read the whole thing here: http://www.superversivesf.com/2018/01/24/8282/
Thomas Davidsmeier first novel, Blessings and Trials, will be released by Superversive Press this Easter.
Here is a review for COUNT TO INFINITY. the final book in my Eschaton Sequence by our own Deiseach:
Astounding, epic, mind-blowing SF that finally completes the entire arc of the series and tells us the reason behind all the machinations and plots and the galactic/super-galactic/universal drive to bind all thinking entities into one giant mind.
The individual stories of Rainia, Menelaus and Ximen also are developed and come to a completion (I won’t say ‘ending’). I found the resolution of their conflict satisfying. Menelaus himself does change and mature, while remaining in spirit the same person he was – but he becomes wiser, even if he doesn’t understand how it happens.
The sheer vastness of space and time in this last novel of the entire sequence actually works well to simplify things; because events take place over billions of years, it slows down the action and permits you time to digest what you are reading and what is going on. In some of the earlier novels, things got a bit hectic because over the relatively shorter time schemes (centuries and millennia), an awful lot of activity had to go on, and it was easy to get lost on where you were, what was happening, and which new race was now in the ascendant. This last novel strips a lot of that away; now we are dealing with the (literal) galactic minds and the small-scale individual races are like cells in a human body.
I would recommend this. Enough invention and sheer breadth of scale to inspire several novels of its own, and a fine conclusion to the start, where all the things Menelaus swore to accomplish, in his rash and ignorant youth, actually do get accomplished – if not quite as he expected or planned them to happen.
…
Here below is a review of the first two fifths of LOST ON THE LAST CONTINENT, my free giveaway pulp story. This was written by a charming young fan of mine as a birthday present.
Imagine you are on a hunting trip, chasing a strange and unknown prey, when suddenly the roles are reversed, and YOU are the one being hunted. This is the starting point of the most recent episodic story, Lost on the Last Continent, on the blog of Science Fiction author, John C. Wright. As to be expected from Mr. Wright, there is nothing small about this story, and nothing is quite what it seems.
This being an ongoing story, I can only give a short review on what I think of it so far. So… what DO I think of it so far? I think Preston seriously. Cannot. Catch. A Break!
The poor dude is in a constant state of harm, fighting, or imminent death.
Perhaps the highest praise I have ever received. All glory goes to God, of course, more so in this case than most, for the author is unwise who praises not his Author when praised: but it is nice to find a reader for whom my humble work was fit and fated and meet.
http://www.coreymccleery.com/uncategorized/book-review-iron-chamber-of-memory-by-john-c-wright/
There was a time when I was suffering from a bout of spiritual darkness. A habitual sin, strong enough to be an addiction, had taken over my life. But, by God’s grace, I had been freed from it, though the scars and wounds it had left are still disappearing.
But one of the signs that I was healing came one night, when an urge struck me. An urge not to give in to that sin, but an urge to seek out something of beauty. An urge I had not felt in a while.
An urge to read poetry.
I found a free, online poem from master poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson that I drank in like it was fragrant wine, and it was a refreshing experience for the soul. Poetry, you see, is not like prose works in that there is an extra depth to it. One reads prose to experience a story the way one drinks water to quench thirst. But if prose is water, than poetry is wine.
Nowadays, modern poetry, which had abandoned meter, rhyme, imagery, and other such poetic devices as ‘too restrictive,’ is like soured and fouled wine, a disgusting swill that makes sure you remember the taste, and hate yourself for doing so. Modern poetry is about emotion, and nothing else; anything from agonized self-flagellation to unabashed profanity is lauded as ‘deep’ and ‘controversial,’ despite it being the opposite of the sort. Now, there is some therapeutic reason for this poetry. It is not all doggerel, but the raw emotion of it can both make it cathartic to the author, and sometimes the reader.That poetry may have some kernels of beauty in it, but that was not the thing that sated the urge to read poetry. I was not wanting to hunt for the beautiful needle in the haystack of emotional screams and profanity.
No, my friends. If you wish to drink in poetry, to indulge in true beauty, you must go to the masters of old. Tennyson, for example. Read it aloud, and savor the meter, the rhyme, the way the very language bends to create a musicality to the words, even without you adding melody to it. Savor the beauty of the words, how they make ideas and images conjure forth into your mind’s eye. It is an art that I thought lost, to create such things of beauty with words. Now, all who claim to practice this art tend to use obscure and bizarre metaphor, while pretentiously preening themselves over the quality of their prose.
And then there’s John C. Wright.
This is from the Amazon customer review:
This Series Just Keeps Getting Better
Wright’s Moth and Cobweb series is a fascinating glimpse into a “Twilight World,” which lies in, around, and beyond the world of bewitched humanity, who go about their lives in the Day world dazzled by fallen elven magic into not realizing the full scope of reality. In this world the Church has always stood against the forces of the Night world and other hidden evils even as most men could not perceive them, and in this series Wright pulls back the curtain and allows us to follow those born with enough magic in their blood to live in both worlds, who see the power of the darkness which hides itself from men but can choose whether to serve it or the Light which will one day banish the shadows of both Twilight and Night together, forever.
I had not seen this until a sharpeyed reader pointed it out to me:
Deep down, human beings know we’re made for something epic…
Although a modern teenager, Gil wants more than anything to become a knight. His chivalrous outlook on life has led to his expulsion from school for taking on a gang of juvenile delinquents in combat.
Thrust into the world on his own, but with the help of a talking stray dog, Gilberec trains for knighthood under the gruff tutelage of a magical bear.
But when a stranger claiming to come from his father delivers him the key to a disappearing door, Gilberec’s life will change forever. With what he finds beyond the door, Gil goes a-questing; and serious trouble finds him right away. Read the remainder of this entry »
A sharp eyed reader kindly sent me this photo from the wild. It looks like book 5 of the Eschaton Sequence has finally made an appearance in some bookstores.
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The Announcement countdown clock is still ticking. I will post it in half an hour. To aid us all to while away the time, I offer the following:
The same young and attractive fan who sent me a victory dance video for my winning the Dragon Award for SOMEWHITHER has now become a colleague and appears alongside me in the table of contents of FORBIDDEN THOUGHTS, a science fiction book specifically designed to trigger SJWs, Morlocks, and hobgoblins of who prefer PC to SF.
One the wondrous day of the elevation and deification of the God-Emperor Donald I to the Chrysanthemum Throne of America, on the occasion of his donning the Pallid Mask and erecting the Yellow Sign for his terrified yet adoring brain-slaves to adore, I thought to post this Victory Dance was apt. Read the remainder of this entry »
