Previous SFF Author: Krista Van_Dolzer
Greg van Eekhout wrote approximately 2 dozen science fiction and fantasy short stories before publishing his first novel, Norse Code. Mr van Eekhout lives in San Diego. Here’s his website.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE BOOKS BY GREG VAN EEKHOUT.
Greg van Eekhout’s California Bones generated a lot of excitement when it came out last year. Now that the sequel, Pacific Fire, is out, Van Eekhout is doing a “mini book tour.” He stopped in Petaluma, California, at Copperfield’s Books, to talk with horror editor Ross E. Lockhart about the trilogy, writing for adults versus middle graders, his love of the band Rush and his opinion about the need for a Black Widow movie. I was in the audience and made a few notes from their dialogue.
Greg Van Eekhout has written middle grade novels like Kid vs Squid, adult SF (The Norse Code) and his well-known OSTEOMANCY trilogy, set in a magical California, where sorcerers absorb the magic of mythical creatures by eating their bones. Against this backdrop, Daniel Blackland struggles to survive, and maintain his created family. The final book in the trilogy, Dragon Coast, is out now. Greg chatted with me about magic, families, tacos and the awesome power of the avocado. One commenter with a USA or Canadian address will win a copy of Dragon Coast.
Greg Van Eekhout is known here on the site mostly for his DANIEL BLACKLAND series, beginning with California Bones (here are our reviews), but he also writes middle-grade fantasy/science fiction, and adult urban fantasy. Greg lives in Southern California. He’s a very busy guy, but in between all his tasks and attending the Phoenix ComiCon he set aside some time for a few quick questions from us. Thanks, Greg!
One random commenter in the USA will win a copy of California Bones.
Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout
Stop. Look closely. Look beyond the typically stylish urban fantasy cover (the one with the nicely built young woman holding her weapon of choice with an air of defiant competence). Look beyond the title that’s both serious and punny. Inside, through pages inked with the shadows of ravens, you’ll watch the long-foretold cataclysm of Ragnarok as it rolls in a relentless wave from the dry, gray plains of Hel to… the dry, black asphalt of a California parking lot. And if you’re partial to Norse mythology or urban tales driven by fascinating characters and laser-crisp writing,
Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout
Kid vs. Squid, by Greg van Eekhout, is definitely a children’s fantasy. It comes in at a slim sub-200 pages (with pretty good-sized print) and doesn’t take much time with detailed description, rich character development, or intricate plotting. That isn’t a complaint; it’s just to say that Kid vs. Squid knows who its audience is, and while it won’t dumb things down or talk down to its readers, it also won’t stretch them.
The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout
The Boy at the End of the World is a new children’s fantasy by Greg van Eekhout, author of Kid vs. Squid. Like his first children’s book, The Boy at the End of the World is aimed squarely at the 9-12 age group. In that vein, it speeds quickly along a pretty straightforward plotline, with few twists or diversions into details of setting or character.
California Bones by Greg van Eekhout
Daniel Blackland has been raised to be a magician from at least the time he was six years old and found a kraken spine on Santa Monica Beach. He inherited his propensity to osteomancy — bone magic — from his father, a powerful magician who has made his share of enemies. More than that, he was trained, shaped and molded by his father, who wants to make him strong enough to withstand the schemes of his enemies, regardless of how that hill hurt him, physically and emotionally.
Pacific Fire by Greg van Eekhout
(Our reviews may contain spoilers for the previous novel, California Bones.)
Pacific Fire is the second book in Greg van Eekhout’s OSTEOMANCY series. The first one, California Bones, was the story of Daniel Blackland, son of a powerful osteomancer in a magical southern California. If California Bones charted the fate of Daniel, Pacific Fire belongs almost entirely to Sam,
Dragon Coast by Greg Van Eekhout
Daniel Blackland, the most powerful osteomancer in the Southern Kingdom, will go to any length to rescue his adopted son, Sam. Sam’s essence is inhabiting a huge dragon, a Pacific firedrake that is wreaking fiery devastation on huge swathes of Los Angeles. To extract Sam’s essence, Daniel needs an artifact, and he and his friend Moth will attempt a high-risk impersonation in the warlike Northern Kingdom next door.
Gabriel Argent is the Water Mage of the Southern Kingdom. He, along with his human “hound” Max,
Voyage of the Dogs by Greg van Eekhout
Voyage of the Dogs (2018) by Greg van Eekhout is a middle-grade science fiction book. Young readers will certainly enjoy this action-packed book with dog main characters. Adult dog lovers can enjoy it too.
Lopside is part of a team of “Barkonauts,” specially trained uplifted dogs who are part of the first interstellar space voyage. The Laika is aimed at a planet nicknamed Stepping Stone. Along with the human crew, embryos of cattle and sheep,
Cog (2019), a nominee for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, is the story of a robot who was built to learn. Mentally and, by all appearances, the titular character (Cog) is a 12-year-old boy whose function is to be a learning artificial intelligence. When he discovers that the best way to learn is to make mistakes, he resolves to make lots of mistakes — a decision which kicks off the narrative arc of the story.
Cog has an underdog main character,
Fenris and Mott by Greg Van Eekhout
Fenris and Mott is Greg Van Eekhout’s charming middle grade fantasy-adventure, published in 2022. Mott—short for Martha—is a Pennsylvanian recently uprooted and transplanted to southern California, and Fenris is… well, Fenris is the wolf from Norse mythology, destined to eat the moon and usher in endless winter, endless darkness, and the age of the sword.
Mott is no stranger to broken promises, and when the book opens, she has come off a long string of them. Her absentee father is famous for making promises he doesn’t keep.
The February 2015 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine opens with “The Last Surviving Gondola Widow” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The first person narrator of the story is a woman living in Chicago who works as a Pinkerton (that is, a detective employed by the Pinkerton Agency, established in 1850 as one of the first such agencies) who was on Michigan Avenue the day the Gondolas came in from the South to rain hell down on the city. Now it appears that the widow of one of the Gondolas — for that’s how the engineers who piloted them were named,
Paper Cities by Ekaterina Sedia
Bring up urban fantasy nowadays and most readers will probably assume that you’re talking about such authors as Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon and so on, but in this new anthology from Senses Five Press, which is edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Paper Cities reveals that Urban Fantasy has actually been around for almost two hundred years and can be traced as far back as the Arabian Nights.
Previous SFF Author: Krista Van_Dolzer
good summation
As you pointed out, it sounds like a *great* kids' book, and maybe that's enough for it to be. It's…
Well, darn! Because these covers are just as cute as a bug's ear!
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. A science fiction classic from the mid-1970s that I wish I had read a…
Thank you for this review, Stephanie! It's thorough, informative, and fun to read!