The Ketty Jay novels – the exclusive new cover reveal!

This week, for the second time ever, we ran a little Twitter competition: Guess the title, win the book!

The rules are as more or less exactly as you’d expect; we give you a few clues and if you’re one of the first people to correctly tweet us back with the title we’ll send you a copy of the book . . . right up until we run out of books! We had five copies of Retribution Falls this week, and your fiendish clues were:

# A new edition of this Gollancz book is being released in 2012
# The author’s debut novel was first published in 1998
# It has a two word title
# Gollancz first published this author – a relation of John Milton – in 2003
# Charlaine Harris said of it: ‘This is a wonderful book’

And we even supplied a line from the novel itself:
“ ‘I wish, just once, someone would have the guts to take us on from the front so I could shoot ‘em.’ ”

Of course, we could have supplied some slightly different clues! Did you know that this title:
# Was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2009

# Is ‘a rip-roaring full blown space pirate adventure’ (according to SFFWorld), or that ‘By the time the story ends only the grimmest of readers won’t be smiling and/or punching the air’ (according to Total SciFi). Peter F. Hamilton chimed in to say it’s ‘A fast, exhilarating read’, Joe Abercrombie added ‘It sets you down with a big smile on your face’, and Tom Holt said ‘The action is full-screen; the style sharp and polished; the air is full of whizzing bullets’

# Is written by a man who signed his first book deal aged nineteen, and has been a professional writer ever since

# Is competing in the 2012 Suvudu cage match! Frey will be taking on some bad guys in March, and you can watch all the fights as they happen here: http://suvudu.com/

# Is being reissued by our sister-imprint Indigo! (. . . well I never said that we were re-issuing it, did I? 🙂 ) with this amazing new cover from artist Larry Rostant

. . . and that’s not all! We have three brilliant covers to reveal today, because Indigo is going to release new editions of all three of the Ketty Jay novels:

Retribution Falls (which you’ve already seen in all its glory, The Black Lung Captain and The Iron Jackal!

Interested in hearing a little more about the book?

Well read on:

Frey is the captain of the Ketty Jay, leader of a small and highly dysfunctional band of layabouts. An inveterate womaniser and rogue, he and his gang make a living on the wrong side of the law, avoiding the heavily armed flying frigates of the Coalition Navy. With their trio of ragged fighter craft, they run contraband, rob airships and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

So a hot tip on a cargo freighter loaded with valuables seems like a great prospect for an easy heist and a fast buck. Until the heist goes wrong, and the freighter explodes. Suddenly Frey isn’t just a nuisance anymore – he’s public enemy number one, with the Coalition Navy on his tail and contractors hired to take him down.

But Frey knows something they don’t. That freighter was rigged to blow, and Frey has been framed to take the fall. If he wants to prove it, he’s going to have to catch the real culprit. He must face liars and lovers, dogfights and gunfights, Dukes and daemons.

It’s going to take all his criminal talents to prove he’s not the criminal they think he is . . .

Chris Wooding has already signed his first Hollywood film deal and won several awards for his writing. He is the author of, amongst others, The Fade, The Braided Path Trilogy and the Ketty Jay novels. His books have been published all over the world, translated into more than 20 languages, and his Ketty Jay novels are a critical and international success – and an ever growing phenomenon! He is a full time writer, based in London.

Want to play too? Check back right here, on this very blog, for the new competition kicking off at 1.00 p.m. next Tuesday! Usually follow @Gollancz on Twitter rather than keeping a beady eye on the blog? Don’t worry – we’ll be making sure you all know about it when the next competition goes live!