Lovegrove signs up for “man vs. the gods” military SF sequel

Solaris is delighted to announce that it has signed up James Lovegrove to write another book in his best-selling military science-fiction Pantheon Series.

Age of Voodoo is due for publication in 2013 and will continue the killer blend of high-octane action set in worlds dominated by religion, but not necessarily ones we would find familiar.

The series, including New York Times bestseller The Age of Odin, sets itself in alternative histories that can be read as stand-alone novels or enjoyed as a collective. Deities of old are rewritten and revitalized by Lovegrove, a talented writer who creates some truly gripping adventures.

2012 will see the publication of the next in the series, Age of Aztec, along with the ebook-only novella, Age of Anansi. The series focuses on the central question of ‘what if the Gods of Mythology were not only real but played a direct role in mankind’s lives?’

In Age of Aztec, the Aztecs' reign is one of ruthless oppression and regular human sacrifice, but in the jungle-infested city of London, one man defies them: the masked vigilante known as the Conquistador. As the apocalypse looms, the Conquistador must assassinate the mysterious, immortal Aztec emperor even as he is pursued by police inspector Mal Vaughn.

Age of Odin remained on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks earlier this year and the series also includes Age of Ra and Age of Zeus.

"It's fantastic to have another book from James in The Pantheon Series,” said Jonathan Oliver, Solaris editor-in-chief. “This is military SF like you've never seen it before: clever, funny, action-packed and epic in scope."

“The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”

– The Guardian on The Age of Zeus

About the Series
A thematic trilogy of related, but stand-alone novels, the Pantheon series addresses the theme of “men versus the gods” in three different worlds, with three different pantheons, offering three different takes. All high-action military SF books, the series has presented an armed uprising against distant but powerful Egyptian divinities, a high-powered slugfest between battle-suited humans and super-heroic Greek gods, and a gritty, intimate firefight between an infantry company and an army of ancient Norse giants.

About the Author
James Lovegrove published his first novel at the age of 24 and has since had more than 20 books out. He has also produced a sequence of teen fantasy novels, the Clouded World series, under the pseudonym Jay Amory. He is a regular reviewer of fiction for the Financial Times and lives in Eastbourne on the south coast of England with his wife Lou, sons Monty and Theo, and cat Ozzy.

The Christmas Count Down Begins!

The Christmas Count Down Begins!

Finally the time is here to deck the halls and jingle some bells but more importantly... To open the first door of our Advent Calendar!

Here at Solaris and Abaddon Books we have decided to create our own Advent Calendar for readers, old and new. And this is the perfect opportunity for all those who get a new e-reader in their stocking from Father Christmas to find out about all our best books from fantasy to horror - sorcery to aliens!

Check our blog every day as we open a new door on our calendar and post a new feature full of fantasy filler and seasonal SF for all our readers this winter. Every day we will have our recommendations for the best buys for Christmas, some free downloads and your chance to win copies of our best selling books.

Day One: The Gift of Gods

So what does the first day of Christmas bring? Not a partridge in a pear tree. Instead we are kicking off our Abaddon and Solaris Advent Calendar with The Pantheon Series by James Lovegrove.

What if the Gods of Mythology were not only real but played a direct role in mankind’s lives?

This series of military SF, including New York Times bestseller The Age of Odin, sets itself in alternative histories that can be read as standalone novels or enjoyed as a collective. Deities of old are rewritten and revitalized by Lovegrove, a talented writer who creates some truly gripping adventures:

The Age of Ra

The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and claimed dominion over the Earth, dividing it into warring factions, each under the aegis of a different deity.
Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods' influence. There, he encounters the followers of a humanist leader known as the Lightbringer, who has vowed to rid mankind of the shackles of divine oppression. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is a far more to this freedom fighter than it seems...

The Age of Zeus
The Olympians appeared a decade ago, living incarnations of the Ancient Greek gods on a mission to bring permanent order and stability to the world. 
Resistance has proved futile, and now humankind is under the jackboot of divine oppression. Until former London police officer Sam Akehurst receives an invitation too tempting to turn down: the chance to join a small band of guerrilla rebels armed with high-tech weapons and battlesuits. Calling themselves the Titans, they square off against the Olympians and their ferocious mythological monsters in a war of attrition which some will not survive.

The Age of Odin
Gideon Coxall was a good soldier but bad at everything else. Now the British Army doesn't want him anymore. So when he hears about the Valhalla Project it seems like a dream come true. They're recruiting former service personnel for excellent pay, no questions asked, to take part in unspecified combat operations. The last thing Gideon expects is finding himself fighting alongside the gods of the ancient Norse pantheon. The world is in the grip of one of the worst winters it has ever known, and Ragnarok - the fabled final conflict of the Sagas - is looming.

Solaris Rising Signing - and Ebooks on Special!

Wotcher all,

So a couple of bits of news for you today. The first,

Solaris Rising Signing at Forbidden Planet!

So this is pretty cool. Ian Whates's powerhouse anthology, Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction (spacerrific cover to the right, courtesy of our own Pye Parr), came out a couple of weeks ago, and is already causing a stir:

"After Solaris Books published ‘Engineering Infinity’ earlier this year, I pondered ‘I’d be surprised if there’s a stronger anthology in 2011′. Well, the same publisher has produced another anthology that is up there with it."
- BestSF

"The literary equivalent of a well-presented buffet of tasty snacks... the overall standard is impressive."
- SFX Magazine

"This anthology of new short stories is essential reading."
- BBC Focus Magazine

So if you haven't bought it yet - and I'll naturally be disappointed and confused if you haven't - you can roll down to London's Forbidden Planet on Saturday 26th November at 1pm, and meet some of these highly acclaimed authors! Hell, even if you've read it! I basically promise that you won't be pinned down and forced to buy another copy. Basically. Eric Brown, Pat Cadigan, Alastair Reynolds, Lavie Tidhar, Dave Hutchinson and Ian Whates will all be there, jumping to sign your books and have a chinwag. It should be a laugh.


...and the second piece of news is,

Pantheon Trilogy Ebooks Now On Sale!

Yep, you heard it. They've consistently been among our best-selling books for the whole time they've been in print, and frankly, with good reason. James Lovegrove's New York Times Bestselling Pantheon series - The Age of Ra, The Age of Zeus and The Age of Odin - are imaginative, complex, action-packed tours de force. Each stand-alone book tackles the theme of "men versus the gods" with a different pantheon and from a different perspective. And there's more coming: The Age of Aztec is due out next April (just in time for the End of the Fifth Age of the World, as predicted and dreaded by the Aztecs, natch), with two more full-length novels under way, and an extra-special, super-sekrit, cross-your-hearts-and-hope-to-die, yet-to-be-announced, hanging-on-the-edge-of-your-seats, I'm-dying-to-tell-you-but-I'd-get-into-trouble bonus novella, out next spring (I'm allowed to say this much: I hope you like spiders).

The Guardian called them "the kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write"; SFX called them "yet more proof that Lovegrove is one of the UK SF scene's most interesting, challenging and adventurous authors." And they can be yours, O gentle ebook buyer, for the low, low price of £3 per book; that's half the listed price.

Jump on Rebellionstore.com right now to pick up any of these three ebooks - in .mobi or .epub edition - for three quid, right now. Hell, get all three and you've still got enough change of a tenner to buy a scatch card. That's not bad at all.

King Rolen's Kin - enjoyed by Aussies and eBook readers alike!

Rowena just e-mailed us to say that her King Rolen's Kin trilogy is doing really well in Austrailia! It's number nine on the bestseller list in Sydney's premier speculative fiction bookstore, Galaxy Bookshop (think Forbidden Planet, just hotter 'cause they're in Austrailia).

Galaxy, obviously fans of Rowena's previous fantasy trilogy, The Last T'En, blogged about Rowena's new series last week with the jubilant words "She's back!" Rowena has written a guest post for them, here, and there's also the opportunity to win a copy of The King's Bastard.

There's more good news too - last week I created .epub and .mobi ebooks for several of our titles including Eric Brown's Helix, Necropath, Ian Whate's The Noise Within and all of Rowena's King Rolen's Kin trilogy! They should be out shortly, when the ebook elves have got them online... in the meantime check out great Solaris titles such as James Lovegrove's Age of Ra, Age of Zeus and Jetse de Vries' anthology of optimistic fiction, Shine, which we're already selling as ebooks in online ebook stores such as Amazon Kindle and Waterstones.

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The Four Authors of the Apocalypse: James Lovegrove

Michael Crichton’s State Of Fear, an anti-environmentalist diatribe fashioned roughly in the shape of a thriller, concludes with an “Author’s Message”. In part, this asserts:

I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don’t think we have to worry about them.

The late – and admirable – Crichton was a far smarter man than I will ever be. His intellectual superiority, especially in matters scientific, means his opinions on climate change and global warming carry considerably greater weight and authority than mine ever will. I’d like to believe his prophecies to be accurate.

I just can’t.

Something in my gut tells me his optimistic outlook is wrong. More than that, any optimistic outlook is wrong. If you ask me, humankind is doomed to a future of rising sea levels, extreme weather events, mass starvation, resource wars, unsustainable mass-migrations from poorer to wealthier nations, animal extinctions, power shortages, and markedly reduced life quality and life expectancy. A hundred years from now I see a global population reduced by two or three billion, almost everyone sheltering from rampant flood waters in quasi-feudal enclaves, surrounded by husks of redundant technology and fighting off invaders with a mix of modern and medieval weaponry. A little bit Mad Max, in other words, and a little bit A Canticle For Liebowitz.

The stars? Intergalactic colonisation? The outward urge? Sowing the seed of humanity across the cosmos? Not a chance. Such grand visions never come to pass. No one is prepared to pony up the trillions necessary to fund that kind of dream-scale project. No one has the vision. Governments are irredeemably short-termist. They plan five years ahead, if that. This is why I don’t write space opera. To me it isn’t SF, it’s pure fantasy.

Things to come are things to dread. My two sons will grow up in a world where the best is past and where our present era will seem like a golden age – unlimited travel, plentiful food, material affluence, technological superabundance. They will look back on my generation with envious amazement, wondering how we could have been so reckless, so lacking in foresight, so wilfully vandalistic, so damn lucky. And all I’ll be able to do, if I’m still around, is apologise and say we couldn’t help ourselves. We tried but we just couldn’t break the habits of greed and squandering. We recycled our bottles and newspapers, but we knew it was a drop in the ocean. We installed low-energy lightbulbs, but our immense flatscreen TVs made up the difference in electricity consumption. We wanted to go veggie, but the lure of a fat juicy steak was too great.

I was in the dentist’s chair the other day, having a checkup. The dentist enquired about an article I’d written in the paper, prognosticating dire times ahead for planet earth. She told me, with a grim chuckle, that I was about to have a very uncomfortable experience at her hands if I genuinely believed everything was as dark as I’d stated in that piece. She would show her disagreement as only a dentist knows how.

With scenes from Marathon Man playing in my head, I desperately racked my brains to recall whether anything I’d submitted to the FT lately matched what she was describing. Maybe some book review where I’d blithely let slip that I reckoned civilisation was screwed? Then, light dawned. There’d been a case of mistaken identity.

“Oh, you mean James Lovelock,” I said. “The great prophet of eco-catastrophe. That’s not me. Definitely not. You can put away your rather enormous drill now. I disagree with everything the man says.”

I don’t, though.


James Lovegrove has published more than 30 books, including novels, novellas, short-story collections and books for teenagers. Having unleashed The Age Of Ra for Solaris, (reviewed here by Andy Remic) he’s about to follow it up with The Age Of Zeus in April next year.

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James Lovegrove's 'The Age of Ra' reviewed by Andy Remic

Andy Remic, author of Solaris's hugely successful Combat-K series, has reviewed James Lovegrove's The Age of Ra.

I found myself tuned in (and turned on) to Lovegrove’s writing, his action, his characters and his humour. Lovegrove’s prose is as slick as his author photograph, and this man should have been picked as James Bond. If I wasn’t married, I’d woo him with chocolates, if only so I could get my hands on an early copy of the next book...

Aaaw. It's so nice to see our authors getting on, isn't it? Although sorry Andy, but I'm pretty sure James is a married man...

The full review can be found here.

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Linkspam: Nov 10th

• Solaris author James Lovegrove, of Age of Ra fame, muses eloquently on Writing about Gods and Guns.
• There's an interview with Solaris's Natasha Rhodes over here, On Vampires, Werewolves, and what would happen if Kayla Steele and Twilight's Bella Swan got into a fight...
• SciFi Latino - a new blog celebrating the contribution of Latinos and Latinas to Science Fiction, can be found here.
• The Martian Landscape or Alien Art? Wired Magazine has some haunting photographs of the surface of Mars.