Mark Charan Newton

File this somewhere under ‘happy fanboy’:

“Newton combines strange and vivid creations with very real and pressing concerns with estimable commitment and passion.”
— China Miéville on City of Ruin

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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, and [...]

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A few comments starting to roll in already for City of Ruin.
Between Two Books says:
in this second book of Legends of the Red Sun series, Newton is braver. He mixes the same ingredients he let us taste in Nights of Villjamur but his elixir is bolder this time. I imagine there’s a risk in being [...]

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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 description [...]

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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 various [...]

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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 are genuine, the [...]

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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.
As does Dark [...]

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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 that is [...]

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Digging up some old (not that well-formed) notes on a book that I’ve been thinking about recently.
—
The Fortress of Solitude is a book that’s difficult to catagorise. With brief genre moments, and certainly many nods towards SF / comic book fandom, it describes the lives of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. One white, [...]

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A Fantasy Reader has reviewed Nights of Villjamur, and I’m really happy he got my general aim.
Nights of Villjamur is not a full-fledged epic fantasy novel. It’s the story of several disillusioned individuals every so often mixed up together in a grim epic setting, making the most of their life inside a grand city in [...]

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Another one in, this time in Total Sci-Fi Online:
The characters gracing these pages are filled with a bleak sense of determination – whether it’s for love, life, power or all three. Key in instigating this sentiment is the inescapable threat of the coming freeze, a welcome change of tack in a genre that thrives on [...]

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A review on a Russian forum, and Google translate gives us a most entertaining translation into English:

Villdzhamur – a huge city in the world, where the dying red sun. People understand that they are ahead of Ice Age.
The main character – Brinda Latrea, albino, the commander of an elite squad of Imperial Guards [...]

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