Pyr‘s Editorial Director Lou Anders tells us of two foreign rights acquisitions:
Pierre Pevel‘s The Cardinal’s Blades
Sam Sykes‘s fantasy trilogy, The Aeon’s Gate, which will launch in 2010 with Tome of the Undergates.
Paul McAuley‘s Cowboy Angels.
Anders also offers these descriptions of the books:
Pierre Pevel’s The Cardinal’s Blades is “a fantastic bit of swashbuckling historical fantasy slash swords and sorcery that I am head over heels about.” The book was originally published in May 2009 in France as L’Alchimiste des ombres. It’s set in “seventeenth century Paris, where intrigue, duels, and spies are rife and Cardinal Richelieu’s men may be prevailed upon to risk life and limb in the name of France at a moment’s notice. And with war on the horizon, the defense of the nation has never been more pressing.
“Danger is rising from the south—an insidious plot which could end with a huge dragon-shaped shadow falling over France. A shadow cast by dragons quite unlike the pet dragonets which roam the cities like stray cats, or the tame wyverns men ride like horses, high over the Parisian rooftops. These dragons and their descendants are ancient, terrible, and powerful… and their plans contain little room for the lives or freedom of men.
“Cardinal Richelieu has nowhere else to turn; Captain La Fargue and his elite group of men, the Cardinal’s Blades, must turn the tide. They must hold the deadly Black Claw cult at bay, root out traitors to the crown, rescue prisoners, and fulfill their mission for the Cardinal, for their country, but above all for themselves.
“It’s death or victory. And the victory has never been less certain.”
Pevel is “one of the foremost writers of French fantasy today.” He’s written seven novels, and won the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire (for Les Ombres de Wielstadt in 2002) and the Prix Imaginales (for L’Elixir d’Oubli in 2005).
Sam Sykes’s fantasy trilogy, The Aeon’s Gate will debut in 2010 with Tome of the Undergates. It will first be published in the UK. “The book is tremendous, and sits tonally very nicely between Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. It’s 180,000 words of action and great character banter that hits hard from chapter one and doesn’t let up. Here’s the description:
“Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the Shict despises most humans, and the humans in the band are little better). When they’re not insulting each other’s religions they’re arguing about pay and conditions.
“So when the ship they are traveling on is attacked by pirates things don’t go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates—a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don’t want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out.
“Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks off a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.”
Regarding Cowboy Angels, Anders says “building on [McAuley’s] success with The Quiet War (and the expected success of the forthcoming sequel Gardens of the Sun), we’ve gone back and picked up Paul McAuley’s absolutely fabulous Cowboy Angels, because, dammit, Americans need to read this one too:
“America, 1984—not our version of America, but an America that calls itself the Real, an America in which the invention of Turing Gates has allowed it access to sheaves of alternate histories. For ten years, in the name of democracy, the Real has been waging clandestine wars and fomenting revolution, freeing versions of America from communist or fascist rule, and extending its influence across a wide variety of alternate realities. But the human and political costs have proven too high, and new President Jimmy Carter has called an end to war, and is bringing troops and secret agents home. Adam Stone is called out of retirement when his former comrade, Tom Waverly, begins to murder different versions of the same person, mathematician Eileen Barrie. Aided by Waverly’s daughter, Linda, Adam hunts for his old friend across different sheaves, but when they finally catch up with Waverly, they discover that they have stumbled into the middle of an audacious conspiracy that plans to exploit a new property of the Turing Gates: it will change not only the history of the Real, but that of every other sheaf, including our own. Cowboy Angels combines the high-octane action and convoluted plots of the TV series 24 in a satirical, multi-layered alternate reality thriller.”