Son of the Black Sword- now in Paperback!

Son of the Black Sword comes out in paperback this week.
Son of the Black Sword

I am really proud of this one. It is my first attempt at writing an epic fantasy. I had a lot of fun with it.

Despite me not being a *real* author, Son of the Black Sword had done pretty good.

Sales were solid. Audio book sales were excellent (due to the fantastic narration of Tim Gerrard Reynolds).

This year SotBS has been a finalist for the Audie, AML, CLFA, Rampant Manticore, H Beam Piper Memorial, Gemmell Legend, and Dragon Award.

Shockingly, despite being considered a mere purveyor of hack pulp,I actually got some some good critical acclaim for once. It made Buzzfeed’s best of 2015 list, made Audible’s best of 2015 list, got a starred review on Publisher’s Weekly, was an LA Times pick, and I know I’m forgetting some other ones.  I’ve never gotten “critical acclaim” before.

Even big time academic English professors loved it. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/2016/book-review-son-of-the-black-sword-the-saga-of-the-forgotten-warrior-i/ Dr. Collings is a respected academic, and the world’s leading expert on Beowulf or something, but he can still appreciate some good old fashioned monster stabbing!

This is one of my favorite reviews. http://www.scifiwright.com/2016/03/son-of-the-black-sword-by-larry-correia/ Because John C. Wright was blown away. And that is high praise coming from someone that skilled.

SotBS got a Jim Butcher cover quote. And true story, one day on Facebook fans were trying to decided who to vote for in the Dragon for best fantasy. Aeronaut’s Windlass is one of the other finalists. And this is a tough one, because the Venn diagram of Butcher and Correia fans overlaps a lot (though Jim’s circle is way bigger). But then Jim commented and said he thought SotBS was better.

I about died. What a class act (and brilliant author, if you’re not reading him you’re missing out).

But the best thing of all? I got Larry Elmore artwork! BOOM! Winning! 😀

Sons of the Dark Sword send to Larry C. (2)

The next two books in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior are:

House of Assassins

Destroyer of Worlds

I’ll be working on the next one as soon as I finish up Monster Hunter Siege.

 

Off to Salt Lake City ComicCon
Last Chance. Voting For The Dragon Award Closes Soon

69 thoughts on “Son of the Black Sword- now in Paperback!”

    1. I snagged the last paperback SotBS from Larry at Salt Lake Comic Con. 🙂 Last year, I got the last hardcover Monster Hunters 1-3 compendium from him. (Both signed, of course.) I sense a trend.

  1. “Aeronaut’s Windlass” was a really good book – and it was Butcher’s best non-Dresden book. If he’d written it in almost any other year it would’ve gotten my vote for the Dragon Award.

    “Son of the Black Sword” was even better.

    The real winners here are us fans, having two such fantastic books in one year.

    BTW: I like the new comment system.

    1. If Larry wants to catch up to Butcher, hes going to have to add some cats to his stories. Unfortunately, Earl keeps eating them.

      OOH! EARL HARBINGER MEETS MOUSE!

      1. I was going to say something about how Butcher writes cats like he wishes they were rather than cats like they actually are. Then I realized he writes dogs that way too. And women. And men. Let’s just say all beings are at least 100% more badass when written by Butcher.

        And I totally second a Harbinger &/vs. Mouse story.

          1. That sounds like the opening of an interesting debate, Matthew. Personally, I think Butcher has refrained from writing too much about angels, which is probably a good choice. Though I’m curious if they’ll play a larger role in later stories.

        1. “MOUSE! Spit that redneck out this INSTANT! Don’t give me that innocent look. You cheek is still wiggling!”

  2. Sorry, Larry, but to serious litteratoors the 12 pages Damien Walter has actually finished are much more important than your entire oover.

      1. After the gobsmackingly stupid mistake of the ninties (practically no new books to read, so we re-read all our old stuff. endlessly), I am willing to pay actual monies for books that *don’t suck.* Good entertainment keeps folks like us relatively sane.

        I know, it’ll be a shocker to those liberal camp-followers that instantly zip to whatever you write so they can shriek and complain about it, but we like these kind of books. Nobody’s whining in them (unless it’s the bad guy), and there’s no implausible bloody checklist. Just the good stuff, be it chopped up body parts, guns and things that go boom, hard-nosed heroes, and plots that grab you by the throat.

        Keep writing like you have, we’ll keep buying. The fact that it is a solid business policy that makes unemployable post-capitalist basement dwelling wussbags manties get all twisted is just a happy side effect.

  3. I read SotBS this weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately for my wallet, and probably, fortunately for your wallet. You are now one of my must buy as soon as it comes out authors which usually means hardback prices.

    Hope you win the ???? for SotBS.

    I also just finished the books you wrote with Mike Kupari. I think you wrote the “Lorenzo” character and that Mr. Kupari wrote the “Valentine” character. I am curious if I am right or not?

    I bought 2 copies of ” Monster Hunters Memoirs: Grunge. One to read and the other to try and get John Ringo’s and your autographs as well. You were kind enough to sign it for me already.

    Do you come to Dragon Con or does the Utah Con always conflict?

    1. I wrote Lorenzo. Mike wrote Valentine. But we also crossed over a lot editing each other’s stuff.

      I come to Dragon a lot. I was there last year. This is the first time SLCC has been on the same weekend (it was a building scheduling issue). Between SLCC and Dragon, Salt Lake is local. I hope to be back at Dragon next year.

  4. I bought the Kindle version and the Audible version jointly together and wound up listening to SOTBS pretty much non-stop at home, in my car, whenever I had a few free minutes I could bring it up on my phone. I was hooked pretty much immediately from the first chapter. I actually was heartbroken when the audiobook finished halfway through a seven-hour road trip to go visit my parents, so I restarted it and started immediately listening to it again from the beginning. I love the MHI series to bits but I can’t think of another Correia book that’s had that effect on me.

  5. Writers write.
    You write… therefore.
    Why should you care what self-appointed “elites” think? Carry on with your bad self and to hell with the nay-sayers.

    1. Don’t worry. I actually don’t give a damn. We just like to take the stupid narratives they try to spin and make them into running jokes. It drives them nuts.

    1. Larry Elmore? Yeah, he’s no good… he doesn’t have a Hugo award either!
      I am being sarcastic — I am fully aware that Elmore got Noah Warded at the 2016 Hugos. Yet I suspect that his art career will be fine without it.

  6. I meant every word of my review, Bro. Your pen is blessed with magic fire!
    In fact, it is an Ancestor Pen from Lok. If Mr Walter picks it up, it will stab him in the eye.

  7. I discovered MHI when I was ordering a bunch of Dresden files books from amazon to get caught up on the series, round about when Winter Knight was released in paperback. Amazon was doing a buy 4 get 1 free, and I needed something to fill out my order. I just happened to see MHI in the “if you like x” recommendations, and figured what the hell. Now both Jim and Larry are on my day 1 buy list and are two of the most entertaining authors to read, who both can write the hell out of an action scene.

  8. “…crack-smoking crackbrained buttcracks…”
    Mr Wright does have a way with words. I very much agree with Mr Wright’s review. SOTBS is a very serious fantasy novel in tone and quality. I love the Monster Hunter books immensely and I was pleasantly surprised to read a Correia book that was so different in style from that series. I look forward to future books of the series to see where this story will go.

    Larry and Jim Butcher are two of my favorite authors. Aeronaut’s Windless was also excellent. Both SOTBS and AW deserve awards, but to compare them is to compare apples to oranges; while both are delicious, each has its own unique taste. I hope both do well.

    I have recently finished Monster Hunter Grunge. This was an excellent collaboration and fits right in to the MH universe. I loved the humor, especially with why an 80’s book would have a 90’s title. I’ll be snapping up Sinner as soon as it comes out.

    I agree with a Mouse and Harbinger story. Better yet, I’d love to see a book where MHI joins forces with Dresden. Not likely to happen but one can dream.

    1. Yes, it’s about the swarm of Sarah Hoyt fans laying siege to the base of Yard Moose Mountain. (jes’ kiddin’)

  9. I picked up SotBS during your signing in San Diego and read it by noon the next day. My favorite fantasy novel this year. I can’t wait for the follow up.

  10. Wright’s review is well worth the read. Wouldn’t mind his take on the whole book, presuming of course that he finished it by now, 😉

    1. An RPG, maybe? Problem is, most of the players would be fisheating casteless getting killed if they do anything.

  11. I hope you don’t mind my cracking the metaphorical whip over you to get the sequels out. I am seriously jonesing after the cliffhangers.

  12. Mr. Correia,

    As a fan of your work, please keep doing what you are doing. Life is rough and everyone needs a fun escape. Thank you for filling that need.

    I know you get many of your fisked articles on facebook, but I left that site years ago. Whenever you have a moment please fisk this Brown professor’s editorial.

    https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/08/29/students-deserve-safe-spaces-campus-essay

    I work full time in banking while attending graduate school for counseling. As a conservative/libertarian, straight, non-hipster, white man, you can guess the kind of glowing acceptance I am shown for sharing my thoughts, opinions, and experiences in class or among classmates. I have long since stopped speaking in class. As in many humanities graduate programs, the professors meet each year to determine, based on your grades and what you say in-class, if you deserve to remain in the program.

    P.S. the reason people bring up trigger warnings is to claim PTSD. However, actual treatment of PTSD usually involves exposure. The exposure is needed for the sufferer to learn experiences and reactions exist on a spectrum and not everything necessitates a life or death response. Do not just believe me though. Please do your own research as to what therapies are most effective at treating PTSD and what the treatments require of the patient.

    1. The ellipsis? That’s so cis-grammar!
      The true diversity of grammar is shown by the semicolon.
      (We won’t go completely off the scale with the interrobang or the octothorpe…)

  13. This is a good week. New Correia, New Weber, New Stirling, and New (to me) Ringo all on their way to my house. This is even better than when the UPS guy brings me 47# of joy and destruction from LuckyGunner.

  14. Keep going like this, and they might be forced to upgrade you to C-List. Who knows, you might even get a book review from Damien Freakin’ Walter, Professional Writer.

  15. I am so glad this happened–that’s great!

    You should come back and re-read this blog entry every single time you are tempted to say bitterly “not a *real* writer.” You are totally a real writer and it’s time to leave that insecurity behind you. What do you care what some nobody* once said? If Buzzfeed, Audible, Publisher’s Weekly and the LA Times all think your book is one of the best of the year, then of course you’re a real writer, and any idiot who told you otherwise isn’t worthy of taking up your mental space.

    Congratulations!

    *(I can’t place the blame here, because I tried hard to find the original person who said this to you but never could because you’d repeated it so often yourself it was impossible to find the signal you amplified.)

    1. Cat,

      This one of Larry’s running jokes. It is absurd on its face, but people of far less talent and accomplishment continue to throw it at him, along with the lie that Sad Puppies was and is his personal project to win his own Hugo. It is the same way that Vox Day’s detractors call Castalia a vanity press, after it has repeatedly published high-quality fiction from new and established authors. It is in the way they portray writers like John C. Wright as a raving bigot or a has-been (that last from no less than George R. R. Martin) and scramble to find excuses for denying a Hugo to a hard-working editor like Toni Weisskopf. The only reason we pay them any mind is to expose their petty lies for what they are.

    2. Oh, don’t worry about me. All of that stuff about not a *real* writer, 500 person mandatory minimum book signings, and even being the “International Lord of Hate”, those are just running jokes that enable me to mock the bullies and jerks.

      They try a ridiculous narrative, we take it and run with it, thereby having fun, and making them look stupid.

  16. Larry: I read your new book “Son of the Black Sword.” I liked it. Thanks for writing it. Please write another one. I’ll pay you for it.

    {Spoiler alert – plot point]

    I have an Annoying Fan Question: If human wizards can turn into giant birds powerful enough to soar with the wind while carrying a full-grown human and on Earth seabirds are known to be able to cross entire oceans sailing on wind currents for days at a time without ever touching down… does anyone ever visit the other significant landmasses? If not, why not? And if so, what might they find there? Just curious.

  17. Heh. I remember a few decades back when I was published in Dragon Magazine a few times and I was over the moon when Roger Moore put Larry Elmore art on one of my Star Frontiers articles. Great feeling isn’t it? 🙂

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