Aconyte Books – January 2021 Releases and 2020 Recap

It’s time for me to take a look at the cool new novels coming this month from Aconyte Books, but this time I’m doing something a little different, because it’s the start of not just a new year, but the second year that Aconyte have been publishing new books! As well as taking a look at the two new novels released today, I’m also going to include a quick recap of everything Aconyte published in 2020, split out by the various IPs/worlds that are featured. If you haven’t yet taken the plunge with Aconyte, this should be a great place to start – I’ll include links to all of my reviews and author interviews so you can find out more about anything that catches your eye.

January’s releases

To begin with, let’s take a look at the two new novels that are published this month. As usual, the publishing schedule sees the ebook and US paperback released first, followed by the UK paperback the following month:

  • 5th January 2021: global ebook and US paperback
  • 4th February 2021: UK paperback

Here’s the publisher’s synopsis for each book, along with links out to my author interview for each one.

Arkham Horror – Mask of Silver by Rosemary Jones
Hollywood make-up artist and costumier, Jeany Lin, travels to Arkham to work on the new “nightmare movie” by enigmatic director Sydney Fitzmaurice. The star is her sister, Renee Love, Sydney’s collaborator and lover. Desperate to outdo the thrills and terror of Lon Chaney’s popular pictures, Sydney prepares occult-infused dream sequences for Love and her co-stars to perform. But there’s more than mere imagery at play as the cast suffer recurring nightmares, accidents, and impossible waking visions. When events take a sinister turn and people start dying on set, it’s up to Jeany to unmask the monsters before Sydney’s obsessions doom them all.

Cosmic horror mixed with 1920s silent movies – I mean really, what more could you ask for? This one sounds absolutely fantastic!

Check out my interview with Rosemary Jones.

Marvel: Heroes of Asgard – The Sword of Surtur by CL Werner
Tyr, God of War and elder brother of Thor, embarks on a quest to seal his place at Odin’s side. Spurred on by loyal young Bjorn Wolfbane and the bewitching Lorelai, the trio set out to steal a sliver of Twilight, sword of the fire giant Surtur, who will one day bring about Ragnarok and destroy Asgard. But the fiery realm of Muspelheim is fraught with volcanic trolls, lava kraken, and Surtur’s brood of murderous warriors. Tyr must overcome both his own feelings and the motives of his allies, or risk triggering the apocalypse and cursing his name forever.

Werner’s first Marvel prose novel, featuring “thrilling battles against giant monsters” – where do I sign up?

Check out my interview with CL Werner.

2020 recap

Between September and December 2020, Aconyte published 13 books (12 novels and one short story anthology) set in no fewer than eight IPs, which is a pretty impressive achievement! They also announced a further eight novels to be released between January and April 2021, so in their first full year of publishing – and a pandemic year at that – they will have published at least 21 books…and counting. How’s that for a promising start?

I feel like I’ve fallen behind with my Aconyte reading a bit, but I still managed to read 10 out of the 13 published in 2020…so I’m not doing too badly! I can say with absolute confidence that I enjoyed them all – and that’s coming from someone who knew virtually nothing about any of these IPs (with the exception of the various Marvel characters, most of whom I was vaguely aware of) before I started. Having had a steady diet of Warhammer fiction for longer than I care to admit, it’s been a total joy to spend some time getting to know these new (for me) worlds, and I would urge any fantasy or science fiction fan to check them out.

I’ve reviewed all 10 of the books I’ve read so far, and published author interviews for everything that has been released up to January, so I won’t go into lots of detail about any of them here. Instead, I’ll list each of the IPs below with the titles of all the books released or announced for them, and links to all of my reviews and interviews so far. I’ll include the two January releases on the list for completion’s sake, so if you haven’t yet checked out the author interviews for them that I referenced earlier, you can find links to them below.

Arkham Horror
Pulp action and fantasy adventure in 1920s Massachusetts, pitting brave investigators against a sweeping tide of occult activity aimed at resurrecting alien gods who will consume our world.

KeyForge
Explore a world of infinite variety – wild science fantasy adventures on an impossible patchwork world of everything known (and unknown) in the universe.

Legend of the Five Rings
Warring samurai clans fight with swords and magic for the Emperor’s favor while protecting their borders from the demonic incursions of the Shadowlands.

Marvel
The astounding tales of Marvel’s iconic Super Heroes and villains brought to thrilling life in exciting new prose novels of adventure and heroism.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark
Courageous heroes embark on quests in a vibrant high fantasy realm, battling monsters, claiming treasure, and preventing the evil overlord from carrying out his vile plot.

Twilight Imperium
Intergalactic empires fall, but one faction will rise from its ashes to conquer the galaxy, in this extraordinarily diverse epic space opera.

Ubisoft
The vibrant worlds of Ubisoft’s interactive games brought to action-packed life in new prose novels.

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That’s a lot of great books either published in 2020 (or early 2021) or announced as coming very soon! If you haven’t already checked out anything from Aconyte but would fancy testing the waters, you can find a few free samplers over on the Aconyte website:

All that really remains to say is congratulations to the Aconyte team for smashing it out of the park in 2020, and thanks to the team and all the authors for so many fantastic books! I can’t wait to get stuck into all of 2021’s new releases, and find out more about what’s coming next.

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I hope this has been useful, and has maybe inspired you to give one of these cool new books a try. Whether you’re a fan of IP fiction already (Warhammer, Star Wars, Star Trek, whatever) or you just fancy some entertaining SFF or horror fun, I would really recommend you take a look at what Aconyte are doing!

If you’re in the UK and would like to support local independent bookshops, you can order any of the available Aconyte Books titles from my store on Bookshop.org*

I’d love to know what you think about this article, and whether there’s anything you would like to see more or less of in future. Let me know in the comments below, or find me on Twitter and say hi!

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