曲がり山の地下迷宮
第一巻
「親方アレンさん、赤ん坊は男の子だよ...」
オーカスでもっとも成功している鉱員グループの一つをまとめる親方アレンは、妻の出産を助けていた老婆をじっと見つめ、自分を見返すその眼差しが陰鬱としていることにひどく戸惑った。こんなに喜ばしい知らせにも関わらず苦々しい顔をしているなんて、いったい何が起きたのだろうか？だが少しすると、彼も察しがついた。子は生まれたが、その子の泣き声は聞こえない...
「私の子は死んだのか？」
人生であらゆることを目にしてきたアレンではあったが、それは簡単に口に出せる言葉ではなかった。
「生きとるよ。」ヒーラーの老婆はそう陰気に答えた後、ほとんどささやき声ですぐに言葉を付け足した。
「だけど、生きていない方がよかったねえ...」
After reaching the Ruby City, the capital of
Belial’s Dominion, I flew too close to the Coal of Hellflame and hit a
shield of palladium – a defensive dome around the Great Prince’s residence.
That put the Cursed Inquisitors on my trail, led by the demon Dantalian. The
same demon who disincarnated me.
And so I had my first death in the Inferno, and
the resurrection timer began counting down:
Remaining time to respawn 9… 8… 7…
I made my peace with Hakkar’s inevitable death
while Dantalian was talking to the imp Rofokal, another Cursed Inquisitor who
somehow managed to see the particle of Order within me – the thing that gave me
my permanent Enemy of the Inferno debuff.
As I hung in the great nothing of post-death, I
began to think, trying to figure out what would happen next.
Erdföderation, Orionsystem
Planet Rhapsodie, Sektor 3 der grauen
Zone des Sperrgebiets. Einstufung: Bedingt sicher
Abwurfzone.
DIE RETTUNGSKAPSEL schlug so hart auf dem Boden auf, dass ich für einen Moment das Bewusstsein verlor. Meine inneren Organe schienen ihre Plätze getauscht zu haben. Hey, wenigstens war ich nicht in Stücke gerissen worden. Aber viel hatte nicht gefehlt. Hätte der Motor nur zehn Sekunden früher schlapp gemacht, wäre von mir jetzt nur ein nasser Fleck übrig.
Fantasia
Second Shot
by Simon Vale
I swear she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
And she was laughing.
“Three huge wet fish,” I said. “I’m not making this
up, I swear!”
That laugh! And I was laughing along with her. Not at
my own story, which was mediocre, C+ at best. Out of sheer happiness.
The bright virtual sun hung directly
over the great city of Algora, generously pouring light over the roofs of
houses, reflecting off of colorful stained-glass windows, and drying out
puddles left from yesterday's rain. The rain had evidently been quite heavy. It
cleansed the city from dirt and garbage, sending them into the gutters, and
thus straight into the deep catacombs of Algora.
Malik
always was a joker. He grew up in a large family of immigrants from Marrakesh.
His relatives occupied a small living complex in an outer district belonging to
a rich countryman of theirs, who gave a discount to his own and didn’t punish
them when they needed an extension on the rent.
Malik
had so many cousins that they could have easily started their own basketball
league.
The head
of the family was Grandpa Yusuf, a retired general and decorated veteran whose
citizenship privileges provided sustenance for his many descendants. The
one-child limit came along only after the citizenship categories were
introduced. This meant that Yusuf not only had many children, but also an army
of brothers and sisters and the Creator only knew how many cousins. They all
followed Malik’s grandpa to the American continent and put down roots. But even
once they all had citizenship, the family was always looking for ways to earn
money.
If you want to take a look down
into a chasm, just look down the barrel of a gun. No, not when you’re busy
cleaning it, in breach of all safety regulations, but when it’s clenched firmly
in a stranger’s hand, pointing at your... let’s say, at the bridge of your
nose.
This was where it was more or less
pointing at me.
Inside it was pure darkness;
behind it was the blurred silhouette of a man. My gaze failed to focus on the
villain himself, so mortally fixated it was on the wrong end of the silencer.
Yes, “mortally” was the right word, I assure you.
Release - April 5, 2021
Pre-order on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NGVGYK1
Chapter 1
Operation log:
Hydration – complete.
Assembly – complete.
Resuscitation – complete.
Did
green letters just flash before my eyes? But my eyes are closed. How
am I
seeing letters?
Words, even...
Assembly?
Hydration? What's that supposed to mean? Damn, my head hurts. And my left
elbow... and my lower back. It hurts so bad I want to puke. Constant,
exhausting pain. Horrible pain. Not like I got hit or something. It's more serious,
something chronic... I know it for sure... or do I just feel it?
The
Land Beyond Is not the End
Chapter
1
Arriving,
Falling, and Getting In
We never managed to found out whether our bald imp had
managed to set the wooly mammoth Callowan on fire.
Obviously, a living creature would not have blown up,
but the mammoth could have gone off his rocker, making lots of noise and
causing us a lot of trouble. On second thought, that might have been for the
better. The Land Beyond wasn’t all too welcoming a place; our troubles began as
soon as we arrived.
 |
Alexey Bobl is the man behind Magic Dome Books: a literary agency and publishing house created five years ago. Since then, they’ve released hundreds of books in Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Czech and Korean languages. Today, I’m talking to Alex about books, authors and literary agents, about the differences in markets all over the world, about net literature braving the pandemic this year and its survival strategies for the coming year. |
In actual fact,
it all started when I became literary producer at EKSMO, Russia’s biggest publishing
house. It was my job to compile and produce new science fiction and fantasy series.
At some point, I read a new novel by Andrei Livadny. I remember telling him, “This
book just begs to be translated!” And he said, “Okay, go ahead, then.” And I
remember telling the same thing to Vasily Mahanenko. At the time, I didn’t have
a clear-cut idea of a future publishing business yet. Still, I decided to give
it a go. I was curious and enthusiastic, and that seemed to motivate me a lot.
Everything happened so fast. Before I got involved with EKSMO, I used to be a
writer. So being a writer, I knew what a writer needed, and being a producer, I
knew a publisher’s needs. And finally, when I was ready to combine these two
things, MDB was born.
Pre-order on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V9FT983
Release - May 17, 2021
In Place of a Prologue
It may sound trite, but every
bad story has to start someplace: a point of origin or a zero hour — call it
what you like — but after it everything goes up in flames and plummets to the
coldest climes of hell for a smoke break with the devil.
So if I’m going to
tell this story in an orderly manner, then I had better start with my death…
“Listen to me, you’ve
got to surrender peacefully!” Goha’s voice again hissed over the radio. “Why
cause a shootout? You’ll just terrorize the townspeople.”
“Come off it,” I
responded lazily, tinkering with the settings of an old laptop, its screen
displaying a low-res feed from the exterior cameras. “Why don’t you just go
ahead and offer to whack me for free, like, for ‘resisting arrest’ or
something? Nah. I’m not about to make your life that much simpler.”
“Nobody is going to
knock you off…”
Earth Federation, Orion
System. Rhapsody, Sector 3 of the Gray Zone—designated safe zone of the Range.
The ruins, near the Green Zone.
It took us about 24 hours
to reach the Green Zone borders—we had to make a stop to take care of Margot
and take a desperately-needed rest. By the time I caught up with my friends, I
was on a brink of collapse. Diss’ condition was no better. On top of being
severely exhausted, I was also withdrawing from the stimulants, heroically
fighting occasional bouts of nausea, dizziness and weakness. I knew I could
power through, of course, in the most extreme case if needed. But that wasn’t
the case. We intentionally avoided busy routes, found a dilapidated house with
an intact basement, locked ourselves in it and fell asleep, breaking all the
rules, not even bothering to have someone keep watch. Screw it. No one was following
us—we checked, and the probability of running into someone random in this area
was very low.
Kurze
Zusammenfassung von Buch 1 und 2
Planet Erde, 2074-2075
AUF UNSEREM PLANETEN
leben derzeit 20 Milliarden Menschen. Ein Drittel davon sind Nicht-Bürger:
jene, die für die Gesellschaft als wertlos betrachtet werden und daher kein
Recht darauf haben, in den Genuss der Annehmlichkeiten der Zivilisation zu
kommen. Das UN-Bildungsministerium verlangt von jedem Teenager zwischen 14 und
16 Jahren, täglich eine Stunde in Disgardium zu verbringen. Nachdem Alex
Sheppard beim Erstellen seines Charakters einen Fehler gemacht hat, der zu
Problemen beim Leveln führt, verliert er schnell das Interesse am Spiel. Über
ein Jahr lang verbringt er zusammen mit Eve O’Sullivan, einem Mädchen aus
seiner Nachbarschaft, die in ihn verliebt ist, die obligatorische Stunde auf
einer Bank neben dem Gasthaus der Sandbox.
The Vaare Star System, Meleyephatian space
Gas giant satellite Vaare I-III, Horde space docks
Mobile communication center
The huge spherical room which had previously served as a
construction hangar for the Horde's large landing ships had been hurriedly
refit as a long-distance communication center for hosting an emergency fleet
conference. That was because the preexisting communication points on every
military base or large starship couldn’t be used due to security concerns
voiced by Meleyephatian analysts. Their formidable adversary had already shown
that they could quickly trace signals to their source and send starship strike
groups there to destroy the Meleyephatian Horde's command centers. In an effort
to avoid unnecessary loss of starships and personnel, military engineers had
refit a structure at the orbital docks of the uninhabited Vaare system as a
communications center in record time. Meanwhile, another group of military
specialists had anchored a large number of gravity mines in nearby space
because they had proven most effective against the adversary's small starships in
comparison to thermonuclear munitions or antimatter charges.
