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The Witch of Torinia is out today!

Fantasy fans! Today is the day to rejoice, for Clifford Beal – one of the very finest writers in fantasy today – is back!

Yes, The Witch of Torinia, book two in Beal’s Tales of Valdur series, and sequel to the superb The Guns of Ivrea, is out in the UK today! 

Intrigue, in-your-face fighting and heretical hurricanes await. Read all about this truly splendid sequel below, and click through to your retailer of choice at the bottom of the page…

The Witch of Torinia by Clifford Beal

Divide… and Conquer!

Lady Lucinda, secret sorceress of the Old Gods, has split the One Faith into bitter factions. With the help of the Duke of Torinia, she launches a war to overthrow the King of Valdur and bring back the old ways. Brother Acquel Galenus, now Magister of the High Temple of Livorna, knows he must stop her, but doubts his own faith and abilities. With powerful demons seeking to re-enter the world through Lucinda, he must find allies, but how?

Julianus Strykar, now a coronel of the mercenary company of the Black Rose, finds himself thrust into the maelstrom of civil war, but false pride leads him into a battle he may not be able to win. He soon faces old enemies and ghosts from his past.

Captain Nicolo Danamis may have regained his fleet, but the return of his long-lost father and lord, Valerian, has complicated his love affair with mer princess Citala. When the Queen of Valdur demands his help, he and Citala find themselves at the centre of palace intrigue. As they try to avert an ‘alliance’ with the Silk Empire that will turn Valdur into a puppet kingdom, Nicolo learns that the crown prince may be his bastard son.

Friendships, loves, and the future of Valdur all hang by a thread…

‘Beal keeps the action balanced expertly with complex political machinations.’
Publishers Weekly on The Guns of Ivrea

‘Fast-paced, intelligent fantasy action. A fascinating tale of intrigue, magic and war.’
Adrian Tchaikovsky on The Guns of Ivrea

The Witch of Torinia is out now!
Buy: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Google|Kobo|Rebellion Store

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Happy publication day The Guns Of Ivrea

The day has arrived! Clifford Beal’s superb swashbuckler of a story The Guns Of Ivrea is finally out in the wild. Hooray!

Cliff’s been chatting to all manner of folk about his new fantasy series, and you can check out some of the coverage below:

There’s also a review in the current issue of SFX, and plenty more to come. So, congratulations Cliff, and here’s to many more adventures in Valdur!

The Guns Of Ivrea is out now!
BUY: UK|US|eBOOK

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The Rebellion Advent Calendar: Day Fourteen

Advent is fourteen days old. The Santa Wars rumble on. 

Claus weeps, a shell of his magnificent former self. The sherry is gone, and with it his resolve. The Red One is inconsolable. Even one of Mrs Claus’s honey-cured hams can’t alleviate his malaise.

Across the Claus Compound the massed ranks of loyalist troops listen to the wails of their glorious leader. Sergeant Merrymittens, a legend among his troops, orders them to stand down.

‘Go back to your gingerbread cottages men,’ he says. ‘Wrap a present. Build a toy. Roast a bird. Enjoy the old ways while you still can. There will be no war today, but it’s coming, mark my words.’

In a dark corner of the compound, a lone elf slips through the guards and sprints off into the night, carrying with him news of the decline of Claus…

*

Where is this story going, exactly? We don’t know. Maybe you do. We’ll surely all find out soon enough, though. We anticipate some kind of resolution come Christmas Day, for some reason..

In the meantime, would you like to win an ARC of Clifford Beal’s excellent new sea-faring fantasy The Guns Of Ivrea? Of course you would!

To enter, either head over to Twitter and retweet us, or email rob.power@rebellion.co.uk with the word IVREA as the subject title. Good luck!

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Cover reveal: Clifford Beal’s The Guns Of Ivrea

Pirates! Merfolk! The briny deep! We can’t resist diving into stories set on the seven seas, and we’re willing to wager that you’ll want to join us once you’ve seen the cover of Clifford Beal’s The Guns Of Ivrea, revealed here for the very first time.  

The Guns Of Ivrea – the first of a brand new series coming from Solaris in 2016 – introduces us to Valdur, a bold new world bursting with swashbuckling storytelling, as the author himself explains:

The Guns of Ivrea is a real departure from my previous 17th century historical fantasy novels,” says Beal. “The move to high-epic and high- octane secondary world fantasy has been both challenging and exhilarating. But in many ways, Valdur is a distorted mirror of renaissance Europe with all the colour, conflict, and inventions that we know from that era. Adam Doyle’s cover art has really captured the spirit of the fantastic with his surfacing merfolk overseen by the shadow of my pirate protagonist.”  

And so, without any further ado, here’s the cover itself in all its watery glory…

Intriguing, eh? We’ll be revealing more about the world of Valdur and The Guns Of Ivrea soon.

In the meantime, remember to check back here for more Clifford Beal news, and don’t forget to follow the author on Twitter, Facebook and at the official Clifford Beal website.

Buy Clifford Beal titles including The Raven’s Banquet and Gideon’s Angel now!
But here: US|UK|eBooks

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Throw Back Thursday: Clifford Beal

Writing Gideon’s Angel

 Just what the hell was I thinking about? I had a straightforward outline for a historical novel set during Oliver Cromwell’s republic in mid-17th century England. It was to be a thriller—a la Frederick Forsyth—in which a disgruntled Royalist officer in exile returns to assassinate the Lord Protector in his own rogue operation. But someone (and you know who you are) put a flea in my ear. Why not, they said, inject a supernatural element into this plot to add a whole new level of interest? After all, magic was not unheard of in this era nor was it unusual for superstitious beliefs to co-exist with puritanical godliness.

Now, as sceptical as I was, I did not dismiss this notion out of hand. After all, reeling back to my days of misspent youth, when I was not engaging in underage drinking I was devouring genre fiction everywhere I could get it. Sword & sorcery, epic fantasy, Lovecraftian horror, space opera. You name it and I was shelling out 95 cents for a paperback down at College Hill Bookshop in Providence. My first forays into creative writing also involved horror or fantasy (trope-laden as they were replete with requisite diminutive folk and magic swords). So, upon reflection, the idea of injecting the fantastical into my historical novel became more and more appealing. A way I could satisfy both itches as it were.

So, Gideon’s Angel took a hard left turn, waved good-bye to Dumas, Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O’Brian, and entered the realm of historical fantasy. And if truth be told, I had already written a manuscript several years earlier with the same lead character, Colonel Richard Treadwell, in which this very unreliable narrator tells us that he sees the dead with alarming frequency while he fights in a horrific war in northern Germany in the 1620s.. The trouble is, no one else sees what he is seeing. The reader is left to decide whether he’s clairvoyant or just barking mad. Now, with Gideon’s Angel, a direct sequel, I could nail my colours to the mast and bring not just Colonel Treadwell but his comrades too, face-to-face with the demonic.

I hugely enjoyed writing Gideon’s Angel and letting the reader share in the knowledge of the otherworldly threat that Treadwell and his friends have to combat while trying to convince others to help them. Because in the novel, whether the characters believe it or not, demons do exist in the backstreets of London town and they’re the advance guard of an “end of days” occupation. I also had great fun injecting real people—famous or infamous—into the story whether they are d’Artagnan, John Milton or Cardinal Mazarin, and making them part of the “conspiracy”. Although these two novels form a duology, I’d love to return to Treadwell at some point in the future. Both are written such that one does not need a knowledge of the time period to enjoy them and the reader is given just enough background to float the story being told. So no worries if you failed A-level English history. Here’s your second chance.

While the Colonel takes his well-deserved rest, I’ve moved on to writing an epic fantasy series for Solaris that debuts next February. The first book is called The Guns of Ivrea, set in a world with similarities to our own renaissance Italy—but with mermen. And basilisks.  Think of it as the sort of epic fantasy that Cesare Borgia or Leonardo daVinci might have written if they were into genre fiction. Ah, I can already hear the sails snapping taut on the spars and smell the salt tang of the azure sea …

 Order: UK | US | DRM-free eBook

 

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The Weekend Report (may contain ravens)

There was no rest for the wicked at Solaris Books this weekend as we ventured in to the capital with the wonderful Clifford Beal, who was signing exclusive first edition copies of his latest book The Raven’s Banquet.

The Raven’s Banquet is the gripping prequel to the critically acclaimed Gideon’s Angel, and like that which went before it – or after it, depending on your perspective – it packs a hard punch of swashbuckling greatness. As if that wasn’t exciting enough on its own, Clifford’s marathon signing session was regally watched over by the Raven himself, who graced us with his presence to greet friends both old and new.

If you couldn’t make it to London this weekend you don’t have to miss out (because we’re nice like that); you can still get your hands on a signed copy of this limited edition first run from The Forbidden Planet webstore – but hurry, once they’re gone, they’re gone.

However, if the suspense is proving too much for you, run over to the Rebellion Store where you can get the eBook version right now.