Giveaway: A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files (Int.)

As part of our Locus Challenge, we are hosting a giveaway for five electronic copies (PDF, MOBI, and EPUB) of A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files to five lucky readers, thanks to the generosity of ChiZine Publications. A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files is on the Locus recommended reading list as one of the best first novels of the year 2010. Here’s the book blurb:

Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West’s most dangerous outlaw gangs-the troop led by Reverend Asher Rook, ex-Confederate chaplain turned hexslinger and his notorious lieutenant (and lover) Chess Pargeter. Morrow’s task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook’s power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself. Because magicians, despite their awesome powers, have never been more than a footnote in history: cursed by their own gift to flower in pain and misery, then feed vampirically on each other-never able to join forces, feared and hated by all. But Rook, driven by desperation, has a mind to shatter the natural law that prevents hexes from cooperation, and change the face of the world-a plan sealed by unholy marriage-oath with the Mayan-Aztec goddess Ixchel, mother of all hanged men, who has chosen Rook to raise her bloodthirsty pantheon from its collective grave through sacrifice, destruction, and apotheosis. Caught between a passle of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook’s witchery, and the ruthless calculations of his own masters, Morrow’s only real hope of survival lies with the man without whom Rook cannot succeed: Chess Pargeter himself. But Morrow and Chess will have to literally ride through Hell before the truth of Chess’s fate comes clear-the doom written for him, and the entire world, in A Book of Tongues.

Here’s praise for A Book of Tongues:

“[T]he easily offended or those put off by a challenging narrative need not apply . . . Gangs of New York rubs against the cross-genre cheek of True Blood, mashed with a healthy dollop pf J.R.R. Tolkien by way of a dusty, mud- and semen-caked Deadwood . . . power-blending pulp fiction with profound, often poetic prose that does what all good horror fiction should do, which is mirror our collective humanity while jettisoning us into the black, blood-drenched ether . . . truly one-of-a-kind, violent, carnal and creepy.” Chris Alexander, Fangoria

“Not only is it a dark fantasy/horror novel set in the west post-Civil War, it’s a story with queer characters and relationships, from Chess to Morrow to the Reverend Rook… It was certainly a breath of fresh air to read.” Brit Mandelo, Tor.com

“Even Clint Eastwood’s stoic gunslinger from those spaghetti westerns might blanch at some of the doings here, as Files describes them with a graphic, unflinching eloquence . . . But a kind of natural poetry runs through even the worst of it, combined with an imaginative view of magic. It’s there in the title taken from one of its epigraphs, a poem by Gwendolen MacEwen. That quote opens with the title phrase and ends: ‘Beware! I know a language so beautiful and lethal / My mouth bleeds when I speak it.’ Such an image transcends mere gore, and so does this debut novel.” Faren Miller, Locus

“Boldly, brazenly, Gemma Files pushes her hands deep into the red and seeping unconscious places and finds the bits of treasure worth pulling back out into the light.” Caitlín R. Kiernan, author of The Red Tree

To enter in the giveaway, you must:

• Pledge to participate in our Locus challenge (you must comment on that post)
• Make a good faith effort to read this book by April 1, 2011 if you win
• Enter here

Best of luck, and happy reading! This giveaway ends March 9, 2011 at midnight Pacific time.

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