Mark Charan Newton

Just a quick update. Today I received an email from Julie, Queen of Tor UK, telling me that I can go public with this: The paperback of Nights of Villjamur has been chosen as Waterstone’s SFF Bookseller’s Choice for the month of June. This is fantastic news, because it means the book will be displayed [...]

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I am the man of many covers. Firstly, the full wrap-around goodness. This is the new, final, ultimate hardcover dustjacket for Nights of Villjamur in the States. I love it – especially some of the design details. Why was it changed? Well, basically, not everyone at Bantam Spectra was happy with the previous version, and [...]

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My US overlord, Chris Shluep at Random House, just emailed me with some rather splendid news, and that is Tantor Media will be producing an audio version of Nights of Villjamur. So for those of you with reading difficulties, or who prefer to listen to audiobooks on commutes for your SF and Fantasy fix, or [...]

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Science Fiction legend Peter F. Hamilton (two million books sold!) dropped me a quick email to say he enjoyed Nights of Villjamur, which was rather lovely, because I didn’t even know he was reading it. Genre labels just don’t apply here. With Nights of Villjamur Mark has managed to incorporate so many wonderfully varied ideas [...]

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Americans! Feast your eyes on this. Fresh from the offices of Bantam Spectra, we have the advance reading copies of the US debut of Nights of Villjamur. Always exciting to share a picture or two. Incidentally, the typewriter in the background is purely ornamental, and I couldn’t actually find a free space to pile the [...]

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Esteemed South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, cracks open Nights of Villjamur: Nights of Villjamur is as much about the city of Villjamur — its squares, cafés and quartiers — as it is about situation or characters. Newton’s distinctive voice evokes a claustrophobic sense of place, as powerful as that of Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris, [...]

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Seems as though I’m late to my own party. Whilst the interwebs was busy fluttering with this news, I was getting my haircut and buying new shoes, and then I’ve got to cook dinner for four tonight. But anyway: ———- PRESS RELEASE – 28th January 2010 SECOND TWO-BOOK DEAL WITH TOR UK FOR MARK CHARAN [...]

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The mighty Adam Roberts has gone to town on – or more specifically to – Villjamur over on his Punkadiddle blog. At its best, though, this novel is doing something really quite interesting, stylistically speaking. Where Fat-Fantasy convention requires clear, kinetic bright-colour satisfactions, he is aiming for something more alienated, snowed-in and bare. Take this [...]

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Between Two Books gives a lovely review of Nights of Villjamur: I don’t want to get into discussing things like New Weird or Old Peculiar, and I’m not going to pretend that I can do a good job at it. All that I know is that Newton has created an amazing story that dances among [...]

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SF Crowsnest magazine this month contains a rather lovely and lengthy review of Nights of Villjamur. It kicks off with: I will now admit that this was great. A great novel, hear that? And ends with: The whole book accomplishes the task of setting up the series in a promising and rewarding way. The characters [...]

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And there’s more Nights of Villjamur year-end-best-of-round-up-awards-quite-liked-of-the-year shenanigans. Sci-Fi London puts Nights in the top ten: Nights of Villjamur is a terrific debut, it starts with a bang and keeps on going, building action upon action with terrific pace and plenty surprises before relenting and letting you catch your breath until it starts up again. [...]

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A little indulgence, if you please. Nights of Villjamur has made it onto a few best-of-the-year lists published so far. Speculative Horizons’ made it a top five read: This was easily one of the most hyped books of the year, which as we all know is not always a good thing – whether or not [...]

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