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Grimdark Magazine presents the darker, grittier side of fantasy and science fiction. Each quarterly issue features established and new authors to take you through their hard-bitten worlds alongside articles, reviews and interviews. Our stories are grim, our worlds are dark and our morally grey protagonists and anti-heroes light the way with bloody stories of war, betrayal and action.FICTION- Beasts of the Burnished Chain by Alex Marshall (Novelette)NON-FICITON- Finding Your Author Voice by Anna Smith-Spark- An Interview with Steven Erikson- An Interview with Erik Scott de Bie- Review of Smoke Eaters Sean Grigsby- Review of The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

The final book in the Crimson Empire trilogy, a game-changing fantasy epic featuring an unforgettable warrior.Former warrior queen and now pariah, Cold Zosia wakes in the ashes of a burning city. Her vengeance has brought her to this -- her heroic reputation in tatters, her allies scattered far and wide, and her world on the cusp of ruin.General Ji-Hyeon has vanished into the legendary First Dark, leaving her lover Sullen alone to carry out the grim commands of a dead goddess. The barbarian Maroto is held captive by a demonic army hell-bent on the extermination of the Crimson Empire, and only his protégéé Purna believes he can be saved.Zosia must rally her comrades and old enemies one last time, for what will prove the greatest battle of her many legends...if anyone lives to tell it.

Villains take center stage in this collection of 19 dark and magical stories. Readers will be cheering for all the wrong heroes as some of the most fearsome, devious, and brutal antagonists perform savage deeds towards wicked ends. And why not? These characters are the champions of their own stories—evil is a matter of perspective. Contributors also include Mark Adler, Bradley P. Beaulieu, E.V. Morrigan, Peter Orullian, Matthew Ward, Kaaron Warren, Deborah A. Wolf, and Janny Wurts.

The sequel to Alex Marshall's A Crown for Cold Silver, an outstanding, game-changing epic adventure featuring an unforgettable warrior. After five hundred years, the Sunken Kingdom has returned, and brought with it a monstrous secret that threatens to destroy every country on the Star. As an inhuman army gathers on its shores, poised to invade the Immaculate Isles, the members of the Cobalt Company face an ugly choice: abandon their dreams of glory and vengeance to combat a menace from another realm, or pursue their ambitions and hope the Star is still there when the smoke clears.Five villains. One legendary general. A battle for survival.

'It was all going so nicely, right up until the massacre.'Twenty years ago, feared general Cobalt Zosia led her five villainous captains and mercenary army into battle, wrestling monsters and toppling an empire. When there were no more titles to win and no more worlds to conquer, she retired and gave up her legend to history. Now the peace she carved for herself has been shattered by the unprovoked slaughter of her village. Seeking bloody vengeance, Zosia heads for battle once more, but to find justice she must confront grudge-bearing enemies, once-loyal allies, and an unknown army that marches under a familiar banner.Five villans. One Legendary General. A final quest for vengence.

The “free market” has been a hot topic of debate for decades. Proponents tout it as a cure-all for just about everything that ails modern society, while opponents blame it for the very same ills. But the heated rhetoric obscures one very important, indeed fundamental, fact—markets don't just run themselves; we create them. Starting from this surprisingly simple, yet often ignored or misunderstood fact, Alex Marshall takes us on a fascinating tour of the fundamentals that shape markets and, through them, our daily economic lives. He debunks the myth of the “free market,” showing how markets could not exist without governments to create the structures through which we assert ownership of property, real and intellectual, and conduct business of all kinds. Marshall also takes a wide-ranging look at many other structures that make markets possible, including physical infrastructure ranging from roads and railroads to water systems and power lines; mental and cultural structures such as common languages and bodies of knowledge; and the international structures that allow goods, services, cash, bytes, and bits to flow freely around the globe. Sure to stimulate a lively public conversation about the design of markets, this broadly accessible overview of how a market economy is constructed will help us create markets that are fairer, more prosperous, more creative, and more beautiful.

In October 2001, NATO forces invaded Afghanistan. Their initial aim, to topple the Taliban regime and replace it with a more democratic government aligned to Western interests, was swiftly achieved. However, stabilizing the country in the ensuing years has proven much more difficult. Despite billions of dollars in aid and military expenditure, Afghanistan remains a nation riddled with warlords, the world's major heroin producer, and the site of a seemingly endless conflict between Islamist militants and NATO forces.In this timely and important book, Tim Bird and Alex Marshall offer a panoramic view of international involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2011. Tackling the subject matter as a whole, Bird and Marshall weave together analysis of military strategy, regional context, aid policy, the Afghan government, and the many disagreements between and within the Western powers involved in the intervention. Given the complicating factors of the heroin trade, unwelcoming terrain, and precarious relations with Pakistan, the authors acknowledge the ways in which Afghanistan has presented unique challenges for its foreign invaders. Ultimately, however, they argue that the international community has failed in its self-imposed effort to solve Afghanistan's problems and that there are broader lessons to be learned from their struggle, particularly in terms of counterinsurgency and the ever-complicated work of'nation-building.'The overarching feature of the intervention, they argue, has been an absence of strategic clarity and coherence.

The Caucasus is a strategically and economically important region in contemporary global affairs. Western interest in the Caucasus has grown rapidly since 1991, fuelled by the admixture of oil politics, great power rivalry, ethnic separatism and terrorism that characterizes the region. However, until now there has been little understanding of how these issues came to assume the importance they have today. This book argues that understanding the Soviet legacy in the region is critical to analysing both the new states of the Transcaucasus and the autonomous territories of the North Caucasus. It examines the impact of Soviet rule on the Caucasus, focusing in particular on the period from 1917 to 1955. Important questions covered include how the Soviet Union created ‘nations'out of the diverse peoples of the North Caucasus; the true nature of the 1917 revolution; the role and effects of forced migration in the region; how over time the constituent nationalities of the region came to re-define themselves; and how Islamic radicalism came to assume the importance it continues to hold today. A cauldron of war, revolution, and foreign interventions - from the British and Ottoman Turks to the oil-hungry armies of Hitler's Third Reich - the Caucasus and the policies and actors it produced (not least Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze and Anastas Mikoyan) both shaped the Soviet experiment in the twentieth century and appear set to continue to shape the geopolitics of the twenty-first. Making unprecedented use of memoirs, archives and published sources, this book is an invaluable aid for scholars, political analysts and journalists alike to understanding one of the most important borderlands of the modern world.

This new book examines the role of the Tsarist General Staff in studying and administering Russia's Asian borderlands. It considers the nature of the Imperial Russian state, the institutional characteristics of the General Staff, and Russia's relationship with Asia.During the nineteenth century, Russia was an important player in the so-called ‘Great Game'in central Asia. Between 1800 and 1917 officers of the Russian General Staff travelled extensively through Turkey, central Asia and the Far East, gathering intelligence that assisted in the formation of future war plans. It goes on to consider tactics of imperial expansion, and the role of military intelligence and war planning with respect to important regions including the Caucasus, central Asia and the Far East. In the light of detailed archival research, it investigates objectively questions such as the possibility of Russia seizing the Bosphorus Straits, and the probability of an expedition to India. Overall, this book provides a comprehensive account of the Russian General Staff, its role in Asia, and of Russian military planning with respect to a region that remains highly strategically significant today.