Richard Ford’s New Titan Deal

Richard Ford has been a long-time Fantasy-Faction favourite. Whether the mad, crazy, enjoyable rush that was Kultus or the Grimdark Epic Saeelhaven (a trilogy that began with Herald of the Storm), Richard’s writing is always dark, immersive and laden with humour.

Now, I do realise that with the release date set for early-2017 we’re still about a year away, but news has recently broke that Richard Ford has been offered a deal from Titan Publishing for a new epic fantasy trilogy called “Gods of War”.

Here’s what we know so far: ‘In a world where magic has vanished, rival nations vie for power in a continent devastated by war. When a young woman demonstrates magical talent for the first time in decades there are those that will kill to obtain her power. But the girl finds that guardians can come from the most unlikely places.’

It’s a fairly limited summary, but its got everything we want to see… You’ve got the story of long-lost magic, that has been used successfully by authors such as Trudi Canavan in the Black Magician trilogy and Peter V. Brett in the Demon Cycle, a political setting, which is certainly in trend right now thanks to A Game of Thrones giving Epic Fantasy a boost, and I’m sure Richard will be putting his unique, darkly witty voice to good use in the telling of the tale too.

It’s interesting to note that just before this deal was announced Richard said that he had written around 50,000 words of the novel and still had quite some way to go (we presume, being Epic Fantasy, the draft will be around 150,000 words). To me, that suggests that Titan really liked what they saw. That’s quite the element of trust to put into an author – a deal with 2/3 of the book left to write. Indeed, Cath Trechman, Senior Fiction Editor, said: “We are thrilled to be publishing Richard’s outstanding new trilogy. He is a wonderful writer and Gods of War is gritty, character-driven epic fantasy at its best.”

Finally, I’d like to note that Titan Publishing have really been impressing me and the Fantasy-Faction team of reviewers lately. Whereas a few years back they seemed to focus heavily on movie and video game novelisations, their SFF list is growing considerably and the authors they are picking up are really worth reading – Marie Brennan, Charlie Jane Anders, Jonathan Wood, Alan Smale, Danie Ware, George Mann, Melanie Rawn, Ari Marmell, Chris Evans, Tim Akers, Daniel Godfrey, Mercedes Lackey and Marc Turner to name just a few.

The acquisition of Richard Ford’s latest series and their recent contribution to our “Most Anticipated” feature shows that they don’t plan to slowdown anytime soon either… which is great news for us readers!

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