Games

Chris Wooding has announced that the forthcoming fourth novel in the Tales of the Ketty Jay steampunk airship series, The Ace of Skulls , will be the final book in the series. Originally Chris had planned to write a series of self-contained adventures with a few continuing elements, but during the fourth book discovered that the number of continuing storylines he'd built up had become larger than he'd planned. He's chosen to end the story definitively rather than risk it sprawling out of control across numerous volumes. No word on what his next project will be post- Ketty Jay , but Wooding is also working on a 'remastered' ebook version of his earlier Broken Sky series of anime-influenced short novels. Wooding will be self-publishing these books himself in Kindle and ePub formats, with a date still to be decided. Good news on the Broken Sky situation, but the conclusion of the Ketty Jay sequence will be a sad day. Still, better for the author to finish it on hi...

This weekend I attended Eastercon 2012, the largest annual British science fiction and fantasy convention. This year it was held at a hotel adjoining Heathrow Airport. For the first time in its history, the convention was sold out in advance, likely due to the presence of George R.R. Martin (although having authors such as Joe Abercrombie, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Chris Wooding, Lisa Tuttle, Pat Cadigan and Cory Doctorow didn't hurt either). Finally! Time and budgetary constraints meant I could only attend for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I did manage to catch the Game of Thrones TV panel, featuring actors Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) and John Bradley West (Samwell Tarly). Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon) and Natalia Tena (Osha) could also be found around the convention, though they didn't take part in the panels. This was followed by a Wild Cards panel where GRRM talked about the long-running shared world setting with John Jos. Miller, Pat Cadigan, Paul...

The crew of the Ketty Jay , fresh from defeating an incursion of the nefarious Manes, have been hailed as heroes and have become minor celebrities across the lands of Vardia. Avoiding notoriety and seeking their next job, Captain Frey and his crew have relocated to Samarla to undertake a train heist. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a straightforward caper turns into a major crisis, with Frey's life on the line and a supernatural force hunting the crew, known as the Iron Jackal... The Iron Jackal is the third book in the Tales of the Ketty Jay series, following on from the excellent Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain . As before, the novel follows the crewmembers of the airship Ketty Jay as they get into various scrapes. Once again, Chris Wooding has delivered a tight narrative which mixes in humour, adventure, character development and worldbuilding in a near-perfect mix, but done it with even more flair and panache than the previous volumes. The book is built ...