Juno Books

Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin’ Blog has a great review of Chris Howard’s SEABORN. Do read it all as even pulling out a couple of paragraphs (like this) really doesn’t do justice:

Chris Howard is someone I will be paying close attention to from this day forward. As a debut novel Seaborn succeeds where many others in the same class have not. It puts together a fascinating new world (within our own), drawing from Greek mythology and developing that into its own unique fantasy creation. Interesting too is that Howard has brought together two separate views of this fantasy world as a junction between the world as we know it and the world as Kassandra knows it. Corina is our outside connection, pulling us into the complexities and strangeness of the Seaborn as she is pulled into it. We are able to share our learning experience with her as her imprisonment draws her deeper into the Seaborn mythos.

Not all of Howard’s novel is centered on worldbuilding, though. Seaborn is an action-packed fantasy thriller with a touch of the macabre. My expectation of the slightly flowery romantic fantasy (the literary romance, not the genre) was shattered by Howard’s unrestrained presentation of the darker aspects of his world. Kassandra is not a perfect being with untold power; she’s flawed and struggles against factors that might drive most of us insane. Aleximor, likewise, is a cunning, twisted individual whose passions for the macabre offer to the reader a gruesome (though not overboard) visual of death and reanimation. Corina, who is perhaps the most sympathetic character of the novel, is the odd-girl-out, being the only one who is “normal” by our standards. Her development throughout the novel keeps this fantasy world connected to ours (this feat is also maintained through Kassandra, who does interact with us surfacers).

However, it is the opening paragraph that gave me pause:

Seaborn has taught me a valuable lesson: never underestimate Juno Books. For some reason I had assumed that Juno Books was a publisher of romance novels with a genre twist, but the reality is that Juno Books is not that much different from any other publisher of fantasy, except that they publish novels with strong female leads.

Yeah, that was the idea. We published a wide variety of different types of fantasy, the only thing all the novels had in common is that they featured women. Of the 18 books published in 2007 three were reprints of historical fantasy; there was a “domestic” (as opposed to epic) fantasy, an anthology of romantic fantasy, a modern gothic, a Christian fantasy, the third volume of a trilogy begun in the Luna fantasy line, a dark fantasy, a literary feminist fantasy, and one or two novels of romantic supernatural suspense. There can be some debate over labels for the six or seven other novels published, but at least two would be best called “urban fantasy”.

For 2008 (and I’ll include Riversend, even it is not quite a 2008 title) we published dark fantasy, semi-epic fantasy fantasy (with clashing foes), a couple of supernatural romantic fantasies, steampunk romance, three or four “urban fantasies”, literary fantasy…not a single romance. In fact, the only book we ever published that probably meets the genre definition of “romance” was Beyond the Hedge. There was one anthology in 2006 that used the term “paranormal romance” in the title. It also had an eleven-page footnoted essay explaining why that term *might* be appropriate. Well, it wasn’t. The second volume had a new title.

So, it is nice to know that after two-and-a-half years and (almost) 32 books, people were starting to “get it.”

The new incarnation of Juno will be more closely focused on contemporary fantasy, yes. But…well…never underestimate Juno Books…

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