Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE Wins Independent Publisher Book Award

Justin Allen's adventure novel Year of the Horse has been awarded the Silver Medal as the second best Independent Book in the West/Mountain Region for 2010!

The "IPPY" Awards, launched in 1996, are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers. Established as the first awards program open exclusively to independents, over 2,000 "IPPYs" have been awarded to authors and publishers around the world.

Year of the Horse tells the story of Yen Tzu-lu, a child of Chinese immigrants unwillingly pressed into service by a gang of roughnecks bent on stealing a gold mine from a shadowy villain deep in the western wilderness. With Tzu-lu as our guide, we experience a landscape of legend, stand toe-to-toe with those larger-than-life heroes and villains of our shared American mythos, and learn the inescapable facts that have both enriched and plagued our nation from its inception. Resonating with echoes of Mark Twain, Larry McMurtry, and J. K. Rowling, this is a book of fabulous adventure and deep resonance. Justin Allen gives readers a picture of how America sees itself, and in so doing he offers up both a heroic vision of the past and hope for the future.

YEAR OF THE HORSE and THE ALCHEMASTER'S APPRENTICE in Philadelphia Weekly Press

Philadelphia Weekly Press includes two Overlook titles in the December round-up of Science Fiction, or nearly science fiction, books - The Alchemaster's Apprentice by Walter Moers and Year of the Horse by Justin Allen.

"Walter Moers works in a surreal fantasy world that has a unique logic to its background. Diseases inflict the city of Malaisia. Ghoolion, the alchemist-in chief, lives in an ancient castle and collects fat from rare animals. When the talking cat (crat) Echo, who may be the last of his kind, is turned out on the street when his mistress dies; he is near starvation when Ghoolian makes him an offer. He’ll be fed and amused for one full moon, and then killed for his fat. It seems a good deal at first because death is near, but as Echo recovers from the street he soon wants to break his contract. Ghoolion tells Echo his secrets as he prepares marvelous meals, making Echo The Alchemaster’s Apprentice. Echo, like all crats, can talk in any language, so he talks to the blood drinking, bat-like, leathermice; and the wise owl on the roof, Theodore T. Theodore. Soon he is working with the last Ugly in the town, Ghoolian’s enemy, a woman secretly in love with Ghoolian. I was so caught up in the tale that I had to sneak a peak at the end to discover if Echo did, indeed survive. This is a children’s book for adults who want to remember the joy of youth, but want more complexity."

"Justin Allen has translated the Hobbit into a western coming-of-age novel in The Year of the Horse. Our hero is a fifteen-year-old Chinese boy born on the banks of the great river in the St. Frances Chinatown, Tzu-lu. A great gun-fighter (wizard) comes to town to deal with Lu’s alchemist grandfather, and Lu finds himself volunteered to go on an expedition to find hidden gold. Gollem is present as an Indian chief, but the magic bullets come from Pecos Bill, which was a nice touch. There are also references to Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. The main villain is Old Scratch, i.e. Satan. The quoted reviewers didn’t catch the parallels with the classic tale because the magic is kept to a minimum, and they also didn’t catch on to the fact that the background is not quite our America. Lots of fun."

Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE "Delivers the Ultimate Dose of Escapism"

Justin Allen's Year of the Horse draws more attention this week with an excellent review by Edie Adelstein of the Colorado Springs Independent: " The Western novel may be a relic in the modern book trade, but the genre isn't completely dead to young adults, thanks to Year of the Horse. Part Zane Gray, part L. Frank Baum, this read delivers the ultimate dose of escapism, from its fantastical, episodic nature to its dime-novel flavor. Leading us through rhythmically paced exploits is a willful, but pleasantly predictable, band of friends on a journey to reach Silver City and solve a mystery. Cowboy magic and landscapes with names like Hell Mouth color the fictive West while American folk legends — ghost riders and the Yankee Ichabod Crane — fuel the plot. Charming and full of heart, Year of the Horse provides quaint reading, that, although brand-new, feels like a secret discovery from the dusty back shelf of a library. — Edie Adelstein

Justin Allen's YEAR OF THE HORSE in The Denver Post

Justin Allen's Year of the Horse is reviewed in The Denver Post: "The Year of the Horse, a Western with a distinctly different twist, is told through the eyes of Tzu-Lu, a 14-year-old Chinese boy who is in his last term of school when the story opens. Unlike the other Chinese boys he knows, he has no interest in making beds or serving drinks on stern-wheelers. He simply wants to see the world. Opportunity beckons when the famous gunfighter Jack Straw enters his grandfather's shop. The two men talk. But not until the stranger is about to leave does Tzu-Lu learn that he has been pressed into service and will be going West with Straw to a world he never knew existed. On the riverboat, he meets one of Straw's friends and soon learns that what seems to be the man's son is actually a young woman, dressed not in fine woolens but in rough denim and buckskin. His next surprise comes when he is told that "you will soon dazzle your new employers with your blasting skills." As they trek West, crossing roaring rivers and balancing along narrow ledges, Tzu-Lu learns his employer is tracking down the bandits who killed his wife and son. But it is when Tzu-Lu sees a young woman whose nose has been hacked off at the roots "for some crime" that he comes to a better understanding of the kind of world he has entered. Along with the ever-present danger are wonders: a javelina, a strange variety of pig; tapping barrel cactus for water; and Tzu-Lu learns that a particular dark-green weed is actually "Saint's Tea," good for the liver. The harsh and unforgiving landscape reveals signs of earlier travelers, and they meet a family of Latter-day Saints. Finally reaching Silver City, they find, to their dismay, not the expected cozy village but a broken-down town where the chief entertainment is watching a hanging.

While Year of the Horse contains the basic elements of a traditional Western, it also succeeds in breaking the mold with the nicely drawn character of Tzu-Lu — and it entertains in the process."

Author Justin Allen Talks About THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Justin Allen talks about his new novel The Year of the Horse in an interview on the popular blog MrsMagooReads.com:

Q: Year of the Horse is a mix of western, fantasy, and historical fiction. If you had to pick just one of the three genres to write in, which would you choose and why?
A: Darn! That’s a beast of a question. The whole basis of what I do, writing-wise, amounts to finding or making connections. How is fantasy connected to western? How is history related to fantasy? I think they’re all intertwined. Have you ever seen any of the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti-western movies? If you’re at all like me, you watch those movies and think – wait a minute, when exactly is this supposed to be taking place? You show me the Civil War, but don’t give me any details. And where are they anyway? How can that great big desert be right outside a Confederate Prisoner of War camp? That doesn’t look like any part of Georgia I’ve ever seen. Plus, how in heaven’s name does Clint’s gun always have just the right number of shells in it?
I guess that what I am trying to say is that for me these genres can not be separated. They are one and the same. They are ALL fantasy.

Q: Which of the characters in your novel do you most relate to?
A: You know, I’d like to say Lu. I really, really like Lu. Plus, he is the boy who gets chosen. But facts being what they are, I guess I am probably most like Sadie. Her upbringing is not so very different from mine. She grew up in the west, and so has a generous dollop of that coarseness that we westerners so like and admire. I think I am fairly loyal, as Sadie most assuredly is, and I hope I am as open to new ideas, new people, and new experiences (maybe I’m not, but at least I’m trying). Plus, I gave Sadie my desire to travel. I wish I could be as good-looking as Sadie, and could wind up with all her money, but those are just surface things. Money and looks aren’t everything - they’re not even the most important things. Sadie knows that, I think. I think she would agree with me in saying that character, the deepest most core attributes of a person, are what really count.

Q: What advice would you give to any aspiring young writers?
A: I’ll give you two pieces of advice - no extra charge.
First of all, read! And don’t just keep reading the same thing over and over. Read widely. New insights will come from reading books, articles and stories that seemingly have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject you think you are trying to hack out of the jungle of your mind. Read comic books and medical manuals, newspapers, blogs, the backs of cereal boxes, children’s picture books, mysteries, science fiction, the textbooks you are supposed to read for school anyway (but often don’t), plays and movie scripts, books that feel beyond your level, and books that are too young for you by far. Doesn’t hardly matter WHAT you read, merely that you READ. And second, strike adverbs from your writing. The adverb is the single most poisonous thing to be injected into any sentence. It steals from your verb, leaving it wimpy and weak. Worse yet, the adverb seldom (maybe never) adds any useful information to a sentence. The context of most any story or novel is such that the adverb is almost always superfluous. I tell you, adverbs ought to be declared illegal.

Strong Review Attention for Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Just posted on FantasyLiterature.com: "Justin Allen’s The Year of the Horse is one of the more original fantasy amalgamations I’ve come across — a mix of fantasy, historical western, and coming-of-age boys’ adventure tale peppered with some Devil and Daniel Webster / Washington Irving / Mark Twain / Zane Grey, and topped off by a heaping of multi-culturalism. . .The Year of the Horse is an enjoyable YA read that probably won’t have much cross-over adult appeal, an original and often humorous mix of historical western and fantasy with more success on the historical side than the fantasy side, with a strong central character. Recommended for YA readers with an interest in the time period and geographical setting, or for younger readers looking for a break from the usual medieval fantasy setting."

More Praise for Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

Kirkus Reviews takes a look at the splendid new novel by Justin Allen, The Year of the Horse: "When Yen Tzu-lu (nicknamed Lu) hears his grandfather speaking in Chinese with a mysterious white man named Jack Straw about some kind of mission, he never dreams that he will be plucked from his Mississippi River hometown to join it. Jack, a legendary gunslinger, is leading a group of roughnecks that includes a former slave who fought in the Union army, a Mexican outlaw and ex-Confederate John MacLemore and his daughter. They're out to reclaim a gold mine that MacLemore says belongs to him, and Lu has been hired as an explosives expert. (He's not, but only Jack knows that.) En route, the group encounters Native American tribesmen, bullying Union soldiers, supernatural ghost-riders and a dark figure who may just be the devil himself. The harsh realities of frontier travel are slightly mitigated for Lu by the pleasures of learning to ride horses and hunt. The author clearly has a great love for old-style boy's-adventure tales, but he doesn't allow the genre's tropes to keep him from trying new things. In particular, the multicultural cast of characters, while perhaps historically improbable, is refreshing, and Allen doesn't gloss over the widespread racial prejudices of the time. Best of all, however, he knows how to tell a cracking good story. Exciting, original update of the ripping-yarns formula."

Justin Allen's THE YEAR OF THE HORSE in Publishers Weekly

Justin Allen's The Year of the Horse in Publishers Weekly: "Allen, author of the historical fantasy Slaves of the Shinar, plots a supernatural wild west adventure in his sophomore outing that should hold appeal for younger readers. Chinese-American teenager Tzu-lu finds his life upended when his grandparents send him on an expedition west with famous gunslinger Jack Straw and his rag-tag crew of mercenaries. Exploring anew the tropes of the cowboy western—Indians, polygamous cultists, “Ghost Riders” and the perils of the open desert—Allen follows the gang to Silver City, the very edge of settled America, to reclaim a treasure stolen by a mysterious man known as “the Yankee,” and perhaps illuminate the fate of Tzu-lu's dead father. With a few playful nods to Washington Irving, Allen mixes western and fantasy into a high adventure coming-of-age, keeping his world's more outré elements grounded with a surfeit of dead-on historical details. "

Overlook TV: The Release Party for Justin Allen's SLAVES OF THE SHINAR

We packed into The Dead Poet last night to celebrate the release of Justin Allen's Slaves of the Shinar. Watch the video! With exclusive interviews with Justin Allen and Peter Mayer, our gentleman publisher.

SLAVES OF THE SHINAR Book Release Party This Thursday

Meet Justin Allen and join us to help celebrate the release of Slaves of the Shinar
~With drinks named for many of the characters~

THU 7/26/07
7 to 9 PM
The Dead Poet
450 Amsterdam Avenue
(between 81st Street & 82nd Street)
New York, NY 10024 :: (212) 595-5670 ::
1 Train to 79th St. Station

And mark your calendar:
Justin Allen reads from Slaves of the Shinar
Wednesday, Aug 15th - 7:00 PM at McNally Robinson
52 Prince St. New York, NY

Slaves of the Shinar galley hits Ebay

You know you've *made it* when your soon-to-be-published first novel is up for sale on Ebay. Justin Allen, today is that day. You can bid on an early reader's edition of what we think will be one of the hits of the summer. A bargain at ANY PRICE. Or you could send your buddy Jim the Publicist a quick note about why you are worthy of a galley copy (I have maybe 3 or 4 left). It's up to you. Enter the world of Shinar and embrace the rising literary star that is Justin Allen.

Overlook TV: Justin Allen on his debut novel THE SLAVES OF THE SHINAR

Justin Allen stopped into our offices today to talk about his debut novel Slaves of the Shinar, which is due out this July. Here Justin says hello and describes the unique world he's created. Enjoy!