Games

I'm now convinced that there's some kind of market research going into Mark Charan Newton's Legends of the Red Sun novels, namely just how many bad covers can you give them before they stop selling. Check out the new covers for Nights of Villjamur and City of Ruin : Well...at least the first guy doesn't have a hood. But that's probably the only good thing that can be said about them. Given the inherent visual possibilities in the cities, the winter-ravaged landscapes and the invading horde of weird monsters, I don't really understand why it's seemingly impossible to give these books good covers. Oh well.

Tor UK have signed up Mark Charan Newton for a new fantasy series, starting with a two-book contract. Provisionally entitled Drakenfield , the new series will be a first-person narrative featuring a private investigator solving crimes in a fantasy world. Newton claims this series will dial down the 'weirdness' from his Legends of the Red Sun sequence and be more like historical fiction, citing C.J. Sansom as a possible reference point. The first volume is very tentatively set for publication in mid-2013.

Mark Charan Newton's hard-to-find debut novel, The Reef , has been re-released as an ebook by Tor UK. Originally released in 2008 as a limited print edition by Pendragon Publishing, The Reef is set in the same world as Newton's Legends of the Red Sun sequence, but thousands of years and many thousands of miles removed from the events of that series. It's a strong debut novel and well worth checking out.