A Voyage to Hyperborea

[ecosophia]

I'm delighted to report that the next (and next to last) of my Haliverse novels, A Voyage to Hyperborea, is now available for purchase in print and e-book formats. Here's the back cover blurb:  

***************

Beneath Greenland's Glaciers...

 

All Toby Gilman wants is a postdoc position where he can pursue his studies in ancient Arctic linguistics and keep the secret of his nonhuman ancestry safely hidden. The bitter academic politics in his field leaves him only one option: a Miskatonic University expedition to an isolated station on the eastern coast of Greenland needs a linguist who can decipher the language of the long-vanished Hyperborean civilization. Having no other choice, he sails with the advance party to the wilderness on Tornarssukalik Inlet.

 

But the expedition is more than it seems, and he is not the only nonhuman among its members. A lethal peril threatens the survival of Earth itself, and the Great Old Ones and their deadly enemies are both in motion—and they are not alone. When disaster strikes Tornarssukalik Station, Toby must make his escape across arctic wasteland, board a tall ship crewed by undead pirates and captained by the Terrible Old Man, and face all his deepest fears in a journey in which love, betrayal, and death are constant companions—a journey that will end in the caverns far below Mount Voormithadreth, where the nightmare being Abhoth guards secrets that could end the world...

***************
Interested? Copies of the print and e-book editions can be ordered here, In the not too distant future, I also expect to have an announcement to make about audiobooks with tentacles...

Comments

Gonna have to start

[hungryghost108]

I’ve enjoyed lots of your fiction, such as Twilight’s Last Gleaming, which I’ve read three times, but have never been tempted by this series.

Listening to your podcast on Lovecraft has changed my mind, though, and I look forward to picking up the first volume.

Re: Gonna have to start

[ecosophia]

I hope you enjoy it! The series was enormous fun to write, and so far, at least, the readers seem to be giving it good reviews. (Should a Lovecraftian novel get a five-tentacle review?)

Kindle

[(Anonymous)]

Not available on Amazon Kindle JMG? That’s where I got the previous Hali books

Re: Kindle

[ecosophia]

It should be available in that format, but it sometimes takes a few days for a new title to show up there. Check back Friday or so and see if it's there; if not, let me know and I'll let the publisher know that something's gone haywire.

[(Anonymous)]

Couldn't help but notice the new profile pic. Are we going to be treated to a full archdruidical photoshoot anytime soon?

[ecosophia]

I wasn't particularly planning on it. Why?

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! You got a new picture!

[ecosophia]

The old one was starting to look embarrassingly youthful.

[(Anonymous)]

Gotta love the back matter

[ecosophia]

One of the unexpected pleasures of working with Founders House Publishing is that I get to write my own back cover blurbs. If they sound like the kind of thing you'd find on trashy fantasy novels from the 1970s, why, that's not accidental!

[deansmith]

JMG,

I remember you mentioning a Hyperborea story that was originally going to be a part of the main Hali lineup. Is this that story? And, when is it set against the main sequence stories?
BTW I'm about halfway through Nyogtha and am really digging thr KIY element to the story. I wanted to see more of the Yellow Sign in the other books, so I'm savoring this one!

Best,
Dean

[ecosophia]

Originally the sixth book of the main sequence would have been The Weird of Hali: Hyperborea. There turned out to be way too much story to fit in a WoH-sized volume, so Justin went to Red Hook instead and this spun off to become a standalone novel, which is this one. In the internal chronology of the series, this is set between Dreamlands and Providence (and so also between The Shoggoth Concerto and The Nyogtha Variations -- year 8 of the 20-year sequence of the stories, to be precise.

Thanks

[(Anonymous)]

I just bought it in both formats, so I can read it immediately - then read the print version when it snails in, and note all the lovely differences such as typographical flourishes etc. I also note that you avoided the Evil Empire of Seattle (checked, just FYI - they'll publish it print, but you've kept their paws off the electrons). Hope that helps your bottom line!

Pat in Florida

Re: Thanks

[ecosophia]

Thank you! As far as I know the EEoS will be doing a Kindle version also, but like most evil empires they're slow and not very efficient.

Oh goody!

[jpc2]

Oh, good something new to read. Ordered both.

One good thing with e-books. If you come across something interesting or an unfamiliar word it is really easy to look it up. No treks to the basement to get a dictionary in the restricted stacks.....:-)

I guess Embry, Tam, and Uldin got tired of waiting on you and went on to Amalin with out their reporter. :-)

Re: Oh goody!

[ecosophia]

I keep on trying to go back to that story and then getting distracted by something else. We'll see...

[(Anonymous)]

Will this be a part of a new ongoing series ? I really enjoyed all the 7 books in the Weird of Hali series, plus the "The Shoggoth Concerto".I will start soon "The Nyogtha Variations"...

[ecosophia]

My current plans are that this will be a standalone novel, and I only have one more novel planned in the Haliverse. Still, we'll see.

[isabelcooper]

Yay! I'd been wishing I had the WoH series to re-read (they're all in MA, and I'm in PA). Will go buy now!

[ecosophia]

Thank you!

Ordered

[jeffinwa]

Hoping that snail mail rides the turtles back to arrive soonest!

Just what's needed to entertain the imagination during these times!

A very distinguished picture!

Re: Ordered

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I hope you enjoy it.

[(Anonymous)]

Is this one readable as a stand-alone, and not any of the other WOH novels? And would it be interesting and intelligible to someone who has never read lovecraft?

[ecosophia]

You need to know the basic setting of the Haliverse novels -- that the Great Old Ones that Lovecraft wrote about are the old gods of nature, that their worshipers aren't the sinister cultists they've been portrayed as by generations of propaganda, and that there's an organization called the Radiance that's heavily armed, very powerful, and fanatically dedicated to human dominion over the entire cosmos -- meaning, of course, that they try to hunt down and kill worshipers of the Great Old Ones, and members of the nonhuman species who also inhabit the earth. Other than that, there are links to some of the other stories in the series but you don't need to know that to enjoy the story.

As for Lovecraft, no, you don't need to know his work to enjoy this one, though here again I've put in a lot of references to his stories, as well as those of Clark Ashton Smith and some others.

[migrantharvester]

Hi JMG, I’m thrilled to hear this, I’ve been wondering about which book would feature your arctic sailing research! I just finished reading the 7 Haliverse novels for the 2nd time (for some of them the 3rd), but this time all in succession, and I enjoy getting more out of them. I also of course had to give the Shoggoth duet another go as well. Free time lacking for me as it has been in the last few years, I have my ebooks converted text to speech, and they have accompanied me on many a hard day of digging swales, moving goat fencing and replacing barn roofs. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them, and I’ll be picking this one up today. They have all been very inspiring to me to stick with my studies when my progress resembles nothing more than the gort/ivy. And Brecken Kendall has become something of a patron saint as I attempt to maintain a serious and regular trad jazz guitar practice. I also really enjoyed listening to each piece of music referenced in the books as I read them - it brought out an whole other dimension.

Since finishing this Haliverse marathon a couple weeks ago, I’ve been working my way through Lovecraft’s complete works, which makes for livelier reading for me than they did before the Haliverse - case in point is Lovecraft’s Red Hook vs yours, it really reminds me of the human sacrifice debates between druids and archaeologists about human sacrifice over the last few hundred years... What an elegant way to critique Lovecraft while spinning an engrossing tale - fantastic work!

Best,
Oliver

[ecosophia]

Delighted to hear it -- and I'm glad to hear that the shutdown hasn't kept you from your work. I'm especially delighted that you followed up on the musical hints; I had those same pieces playing fairly often while I was writing Brecken's two novels.

[(Anonymous)]

Any prospect of a follow-up to The Fires of Shalsha? I just finished reading it and loved it. In fact, I stayed up most of the night the other night to finish it and then had to go to work on a few hours of sleep!

It would be interested in seeing if the proposed expedition back to Earth by the Journey Star ever happened and if the mission succeeded. There could be a really cool colonization story right there, restoring a devastated planet and then having to overcome the challenges of living on what is now an alien world. It might also be interesting to see if the colonists on Eridan were able to contact the other colonies by radio and see how things turned out for them. I would imagine there could be some great old-fashioned hard SF stories that could come of The Fires of Shalsha.

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I'm delighted to hear it.

Many years ago I outlined a sequel to The Fires of Shalsha titled Journey Star, and wrote a chapter and a half or so before shelving it, because I was quite sure nobody would ever be willing to publish it.

It's intended to be a very troubling story, dealing even more directly than the original with the conflict between irreconcilable cultures. Just for starters, the main character begins the story as the last survivor of a band of Outrunners -- the tribal people who live outside Shelter territory, and deal with the lack of assimilable protein in native Eridanian life forms by cannibalism -- and so the opening chapters have to grapple with the hideous ambivalence of the Halka war on the Outrunners: if the only way to stop the killing of Shelter folk for meat is to commit genocide, what do you do?

And that's just for starters. The Fires of Shalsha got rejected by quite a number of publishers before I finally found someone to take it. I might reconsider and write Journey Star at this point, but we'll see.

speaking of Brecken

[(Anonymous)]

I saw her picture - looked exactly as I'd imagined her - in a laundry room copy of Southern Living, in an article headed "The wisdom of Southerns mothers." Her name was Rhiannon Giddens and she's made a name for herself in African-American folk music. She was shown with her daughter Aiofe (Eefa for the Gaelic-impaired.)

https://www.southernliving.com/mothers-day/rhiannon-giddens-motherhood-lesson

Re: speaking of Brecken

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That's not too far off my conception, though it's more Brecken in The Nyogtha Variations (more confident, and more comfortable in her own skin) than Brecken in The Shoggoth Concerto (more shy, and physically awkward when she's not playing music).

[(Anonymous)]

Will you be reading the audiobooks with tentacles yourself JMG? Who better?

[ecosophia]

No, I've passed on that duty to a small audiobook firm. The guy who reads it does a very good job, fwiw.

[amritarosa]

Hooray!

B

[ecosophia]

Shoggoths whistle their appreciation in response. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Bought, read, and finished. Now down the rabbit hole to some Clark Ashton Smith...

Other Dave

[(Anonymous)]

You’ll like him. Also, if you have a Kindle, most of the works by the old Lovecraft circle are on there cheap. In the store, search “megapack.” Each megapack is 99 cents, has stories rescued from obscurity as well as classics, and typos are minimal. The people who compiled these cared enough to proofread.

[(Anonymous)]

Good evening! I'm well into the story and loving it so far. I did encounter a proof-reading mistake in the eBook that was a little jarring though, in which a pirate hands a drink to "Justin" rather than the character's actual name. A hold-over from a previous draft? Thought you'd want to know to have it fixed.

Loc. 1990 of 4641 in my Kindle app

Best regards
-Korellyn

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I wonder how that slipped through. Yes, this was originally going to be the sixth book of the Weird, as mentioned in the afterword -- but I did a search and replace several times to try to catch all names from the older version. Oh, well..

[(Anonymous)]

An all-over comment on the tale, as well as "it's a fine rip-roaring adventure and a lot of fun!" -

I'm glad you didn't send Justin Martense to the Arctic. Toby Gilman is a much better fit, and it was good to see his "last of my people" pain settled.

The Hyperborean terms for love parallel the Greek terms to a point: "aqqat" is "Sorge," or family love, which C.S. Lewis had trouble putting into English, but which I simply call "affection." "Nem" is clearly Eros. "Ilul" has no parallel in Greek that I know of, though I'm sure the Hyperboreans also had a term for Philia. Any warrior culture that wasn't raw dog-eat-dog would.

The seven intelligent races on this planet ... let me see..we met the Deep Ones, the voormis, and shoggoths in "WoH: Innsmouth. Elephants in "Arkham," when Yhoundeh was rescuing them form the zoo. The serpent folk as still around, also in Arkham. We meet them again in Hyperborea, and learn that the Deep Ones "know all the languages of the various whale nations." So, whales. That's six besides humans. I also note the only ones capable of interbreeding with humans who are still around are the Deep Ones. One wonders where the elves went, though Carter's war buddy Ronald could have told him.

Y'Houndeh turned the zookeeper into a faun. Are fauns intelligent?

Pat in Florida.

Oh, and WHAT date did you give to the combined flue epidemics and economic crash in Providence? Well, it came early, but I think people were ripe for anything that would break our slow-motion stagnating crisis. Rather similar to the public mood around 1939, perhaps?

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I'm not sure that the Hyperboreans classified their version of philia -- the word is tlau, btw -- as a kind of love; they also have several words for friendship, which they differentiate from love. As for the seven intelligent species, the canonical set (in order of their appearance on the planet) are flying polyps, shoggoths, serpent folk, night-gaunts, voormis, Deep Ones, and humans. There are quite a number of other species that nearly make the cut -- elephants and whales among them -- and I have no idea what Yhoundeh had in mind with the faun.

The economic crash begins, after a decade of unsteady contraction, with the government debt default in year 10 of the story's chronology -- during The Weird of Hali: Providence and right after The Nyogtha Variations -- and the flu epidemics started coming through a few years after that -- say, around year 12 or 13. If you start seeing help-wanted ads for well-paying jobs out west, be worried... ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

I have ordered the book and I'm really looking forward to reading it. I like the cover-art, by the way. Especially this one. Good that you have uploaded it in a high resolution since it's really worth giving the details a closer look.

Cheers,
Nachtgurke

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I've been very satisfied with the cover art I've gotten from Founders House.

[booklover1973]

JMG, on page 70 in the Kindle version of "The Mysteries of Merlin" is an error. The images for the invoking and the banishing versions of the Pentagram got switched. I don't know if this error is in the print version, too.

[ecosophia]

How annoying! Well, that's Llewellyn for you. :-(

[(Anonymous)]

According to Geoffrey Ashe (Dawn Behind the Dawn), Greek mythology before Apollo took over the Oracle at Delphi had it that Apollo and Artemis were Hyperboreans, and went back there every year in the winter. He theorizes that Artemis was a shamaness/priestess of the Bear Goddess, and Apollo may have been a smith originally. "Shamans and smiths come from the same nest," he quotes, book not in front of me to find out what.

The Terrible Old Man

[(Anonymous)]

Then I think I've got the back story on Enoch Coldcroft. He died, probably late in the 17th Century, and was picked up by the King and offered the deal he has now, and probably, certain powers we haven't yet seen. Unless the King was already his patron in the system, which would probably be unusual for a lifelong sailor. And he and his crew have dealt the Radiance many a shrewd blow after that, of course!

Late Returns

[degringolade]

I did actually write a review of the Voyage to Hyperborea over at my place. I can't post it here but it is quite positive (for me) and since my writing tends to use vulgarity sprinkled about, I will respect the rules here but give a link should anyone wish to view.

https://degringolade.dreamwidth.org/149808.html