Fantasy Book Critic: John Jarrold client Mark Newton sells novel to Pendragon Press

John Jarrold (Ian Cameron Esslemont, Stephen Hunt) has sold limited-edition rights in THE REEF, a debut novel by Mark Charan Newton, to Chris Teague at Welsh publisher Pendragon Press. Mark has worked in bookselling, and is now an editor with Games Workshop's imprints Black Library and Solaris.

The novel, a fantastical story set mostly among the islands of an imagined world, has echoes of both Joseph Conrad and China Miéville, but is very much Mark's own invention. Mark's writing has already received this accolade from critically-acclaimed author Jeff VanderMeer: "Mark Newton is a promising new writer whose prose is dynamic and whose imagination is often startling."

"Mark was one of the first authors I took on after setting up the agency in 2004," said John Jarrold. "I'm really delighted to have done this deal, and I have no doubt his reputation will grow very quickly, within and without the genre."