Category: News and Reviews

“Kathryn Ramage’s novella is an intelligent work that perfectly captures the manners, language and attitudes of the period while sustaining the usual expectations for a murder mystery. It’s also carefully structured and detailed so that it’s possible to draw up reasonably accurate maps, plans, timetable and family relationships if one has a mind to treat it as more than a casual read. All in all I found this a convincing work, neither a pastiche nor a parody of its models; and in Freddie Babington, with his faithful friend Billy Watkins, we have an amateur sleuth with a tortured history and a decent character who — dare one hope? — deserves further outings.”

From A tortured but decent sleuth, by Calmgrove.

The Wizard’s Son: ePub; Kindle; Nook.

“On the face of it, this narrative strand of applied magics is almost incidental to the human tale of a troubled young man who wants to know the truth about his origins, wants to experience and experiment with life while resisting parental constraints, and acts at times as willfully as any spoilt brat. Knowing that this novel is part of a series and that there is more to be revealed makes it easier to complete this heavy-on-details story of what can be an unsympathetic protagonist.”
The Wizard’s Son, review by Ed Pendragon, LibraryThing, May 15, 2011

Maiden in Light, the sequel to The Wizard’s Son, is now available. See http://www.minl.wapshottpress.com/2011/05/01/maiden-in-light-is-now-on-sale/ for details.

For a limited time people in the Pittsburgh area can find The Wizard’s Son and other Wapshott titles at Fleeting Pages bookstore.

Fleeting Pages Bookstore will be open from May 7 until June 7, 2011 at the former Borders in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Loscation: 5986 Penn Circle South, Pittsburgh, PA.
Fleeting Pages Bookstore, FleetingPages, April 22, 2011

If you’ve ever wanted to find Wapshott titles in a bookstore and you’re in or near Pittsburgh, well, this is your chance from May 7 to June 7.

Please cross-post and spread the word. It’s one thing to have a bookstore; it’s another to have customers.

“Some books are fantasy and other books are novels placed in a fantasy setting. This first novel by Kathryn Ramage is indeed set in a wondrous, rich and beautiful fantasy setting.”

~&~

“The characters are realistic and well done, with deep and well crafted emotions and conflicts. There’s romance, loss, love, reconciliation, anger, and much more.”

~&~

“And yes, the Father is a great and powerful wizard (he reminds me a bit of Elric), and Orlan, his son (the protagonist) has great magical potential. We see part of Orlans magical training, and a few instances where his father wields his magical power.

“But- there’s no dragons slain, no princess rescued, no epic battle scenes, no worlds saved from a Dark Lord. Thus, this may be a very good book for those tired of the ‘same-old, same-old’ and who would like a good novel that has a fantasy setting.”
A novel about a boy growing up- in a fantasy setting, by Wulfstan, April 18, 2011

“To put it bluntly: this book was surprisingly good. It wasn’t GREAT, but it was still good. Set in an alternate history, between the 1930s and 1950s, we are introduced to the child Orlan, recently orphaned, or so he thinks, until he meets his long-lost Wizard dad. And not just any wizard! This guy’s the top wizard. Orlan lives with him and becomes his apprentice, but feels that he is not fit for wizardry, as it is a cruel life devoid of human emotions and sympathies, full of war and aggression, and all that rot. So he rebels. While the story could be considered fantasy, magic plays a very small role in this book. It reads more like a coming of age, or a Bildungsroman, than it does a book about wizards.”
The Wizard’s Son by Kathryn L. Ramage, by aethercowboy, Jacob’s Conjoined Feed, October 21, 2010 (use Ctrl A to see the text)

“In the world of wizardry, the sins of the father are weighed heavily against the son. “The Wizard’s Son” is the story of Orlan Lightesblood, a son of one of the most powerful wizards in the world. But being born under a wizard is no easy task, as the training that lies ahead of him seems to be a drop in the barrel for the enemies he will inherit. “The Wizard’s Son” is an exciting fantasy, highly recommended.”
Midwest Book Review at Amazon.com

The sequel to The Wizard’s Son is expected out in May 2011.

From the back-cover blurb:

“From the top of the gate, Alys smiled down. There was no evidence of evil, yet Laurel felt it. That absence of living energy concealed something grotesque. She shuddered when she met those night eyes, repulsed as she might be by a dead mouse accidentally trod underfoot or a cold, scaly water-thing brushing against her body in a stream. Her nerves thrilled with danger. She’d seen this girl before, watching and smiling secretly. She’d sensed this presence months ago, though she hadn’t understood until now what it was. This was why she had come to New York…”

To see the cover and read the rest of the blurb, go to the sister Web site: http://www.minl.wapshottpress.com.

“What inspired you to write this book?

“I began working on this novel in grad school, when I was taking courses in Old English and medieval lit. In my first versions of the story, I used a lot of proper names and other words that were a sort of amalgamation of Old or Middle English and medieval French, as if the two countries and their languages had never become separate; the Norman Empire contains both. A lot of that has been edited out since to make the story easier to read, although I’ve tried to keep just a little taste of it in some of the names.”
August 30, 2010: Interview with Kathryn L. Ramage on SellingBooks.com.