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Back when I reviewed the first Noggle Stones book, The Goblin’s Apprentice, I knew there was a sequel. Of course I could only review one book at a time, and I figured I should start at the beginning. Though I really enjoyed the first volume, I didn’t want to review books in the same series two months in a row, so I couldn’t cover the second book right away. Now that it’s been a year, enough time has passed for me to take on the sequel.

The Tragic Empire takes place a few months after the events of the first book. Martin Manchester is settling in as the king of Willow Prairie, establishing alliances with the nearby realms of dwarves, ogres, and other folk. The goblin Bugbear serves as Manchester’s diplomat while pursuing his own investigations, with a particular interest in discovering what force was behind the Shadow Smith, the villainous mastermind of The Goblin’s Apprentice. To that end, he’s allowed himself to be thrown into an Áes Dána prison, in hopes of finding access to the their archives, which contain works dating back to the Coranieid Empire. After a tricky escape and some fancy diplomacy, it seems that Bugbear may get what he wants, until the US Army attacks the Áes Dána.

Which answers one of the lingering questions of the first book. We saw what happened to the town of Willow Prairie when our world of 1899 merged with a world of ogres, goblins, and dwarves, but there was no indication of what happened to the rest of the world until now. Surely someone in Washington noticed all these strange people appearing from nowhere and decided to do something about it. War against the invaders would be an obvious option.

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About a month ago I wrote an enthusiastic review of Haven — The Free City, a complete fantasy city designed and published by now-defunct Gamelords way back in 1984. One of the things I mentioned is that detailed, usable, interesting city settings are relatively rare.

I thought I’d test that theory by hunting around for a more modern urban setting, and taking it for a spin. Sure enough, they were a little sparse — a lot harder to find than another megadungeon, for sure. But there were a few. And the first to catch my eye was Jalizar, City of Thieves, a Savage Worlds setting very different from the player sanctuary of Haven. Jalizar promises danger and intrigue in spades, inviting players to don the cloak of thieves waging a righteous battle for profit and glory against a corrupt establishment.

Jalizar, City of Thieves, the Rotten Flower of the North, is revealed to your eyes in this book!

In its pages, you’ll learn the seedy ways of the Thieves’ Guild. You’ll smuggle goods into the city, fooling the Copper Helms, the corrupt city watch of Jalizar, vie for power with the Merchant Houses or, if you are really bold, venture into the dark Sewers of Jalizar where an age-old evil lurks undisturbed.

Twenty new Edges, new trappings and tweaks for the arcane backgrounds, an additional list of gear, and much more await you in this book! So sharpen your dagger, put on your black cloak, and step outside into the dark alleys of the City of Thieves!!

That’s a lot of exclamation points. Also, I’m not familiar with Savage Worlds, and I don’t know what the heck “Twenty new Edges” means. Still, I like what I see. My copy arrived this week, and first impressions are excellent. The book is beautifully designed, and the interior artwork is plentiful and top-notch. We’ll see if it holds up to a closer reading.

Jalizar, City of Thieves was written by Umberto Pignatelli and published by Gramel on October 1, 2013. It is a Sword and Sorcery Savage Worlds sourcebook for Beasts & Barbarians, whatever that means (but it sounds good). It is 199 pages, priced at $24.99 in paperback. It’s also available as a watermarked PDF at RPGNow for $10.54 (or $7.36, if you buy before March 16).

Mission Arizona, the graphic novel from indie publisher Mirror Comics, recently came out on ComiXology. I already had a paper copy and loved this take on the weird western (like the dark weird westerns Buried Eyes by Lavie Tidhar or A Feast for Dust by Gemma Files), but I knew less about making comics or the changes in the comic book industry with e-comics sites like ComiXology, so I decided to chat with Mirror. Dominic Bercier is the president and publisher (and artist of Mission Arizona), and Kristopher Waddell is the editor-in-chief and co-publisher (and the writer of Mission Arizona). Both live in Ottawa, Canada.

Mission Arizona is a dark weird western about an old west town that has an unpleasant crossing with the supernatural world. Its outlaw hero is destined, by fate and birth, to face this supernatural evil.

Derek: Where does Mission Arizona come from? It’s got a bit of a spaghetti western feel, overlaid with the destiny of facing off against a terrible evil, but begins with a travelling showman sequence. How did these different flavors make it into the mix?

Kris: My interest in writing in this genre came from my childhood experiences watching old Roy Rogers and Gene Autry westerns with my Dad. Horror has always interested me because I’m fascinated by the abject, and our culture’s obsession with fearing the other. It probably doesn’t help that I watched Nightmare on Elm Street, Jaws and Alien at a very young age.

In Mission, I really wanted to explore loss and redemption. Padre Martin Risk loses his wife and child, Samuel Risk loses his home and his family, while the town of Mission loses its soul. I wanted to write about the struggle and the consequences of dealing with loss, and the protagonist’s fight for redemption.

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  Some of the loot I brought home from the Spring Games Plus auction last year (click for bigger version)

Tomorrow is one of the highlights of my year — the Spring Auction at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, Illinois, one of the finest game stores in the Midwest, about an hour’s drive from my house.

I’ve written about the Spring and Fall 2012 auctions (in “Spring in Illinois brings… Auction Fever” and The Paris Fashion Week of Fantasy Games, respectively), and I’ve been looking forward to returning this year.

The Games Plus auctions are just about the friendliest I’ve ever attended. The store is run by a group of dedicated and professional gamers who know their stuff, and they keep the proceedings running with an experienced hand — and a quick wit. Even if I were unable to bid, I think I’d enjoy sitting in the audience, just for the entertainment value.

Of course, it’s a lot more fun to be able to bid.

As I mentioned in the previous articles, it’s important to have a budget for these things, and to conserve funds for those items you really want.

Ha, ha. A budget! Excuse me while I regain control of my writing limbs.  A budget — that’s a good one.

Let me put it another way: It’s important to keep a running total of your purchases, and always to be aware of how much money you’ve spent. Why? All that constant arithmetic will distract you from non-stop bidding. Eventually you’ll crumble up the sheet and abandon it as futile, but for a while it will help you keep a lid on things.

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Galaxy concluded its first year of publication with this issue. Horace (H. L.) Gold notes some interesting stats in his opening remarks. He mentions that about 60 stories were selected from submissions of about 3,000. That’s a 2% acceptance rate, which is better than Duotrope reports for some professional magazines today.

Still, if you’re an author planning to travel back to 1951 to try your chances on getting into Galaxy, bear in mind that you’re up against some of the founders of science fiction. It’s you vs. Heinlein; you vs. Damon Knight. That might prove more difficult than inventing a time machine.

The Puppet Masters (Part 1 of 3) by Robert Heinlein — Slug-like aliens attach themselves to human hosts and take control of their minds. They begin an invasion by controlling key individuals, city by city, steadily working their way toward the President of the United States.

A government agency, led by the Old Man (as he’s called), works alongside two of his best agents, code-named Sam and Mary. The three of them try to capture a live specimen in order to learn more about the threat and to convince the president to quarantine vast areas of the country. But with so many controlled government leaders assuring the president that there is no danger, it seems impossible to defeat the puppet masters.

I’m familiar with this story from one of its movie adaptations. This story set a standard for parasite-controlling creatures. It’s a frightening concept, not too far from the notion of zombies; in both cases the individual is lost, reduced to involuntary responses.

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Around Christmas in 1985, I walked into The House of Speculative Fiction in Ottawa, Ontario, and after browsing the shelves for a while, selected a volume. The man behind the counter that Saturday was Rodger Turner, who years later would head up the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-nominated SF Site. But back then, Rodger was a humble bookseller — and a very good one.

I asked Rodger what he thought of my selection. He shrugged. “It won’t change your life,” he said. That was one of the marvelous things about Rodger: he always gave his honest opinion. And his taste was excellent.

“You know what will change your life?” he asked. And without another word, he handed me a copy of In Yana, The Touch of Undying. That was my first exposure to the magical worlds of Michael Shea, but it was by no means my last. Today, In Yana is considered a classic of darkly humorous fantasy; it is well worth seeking out.

Bramt Hex is a student of ancient lore until a chance meeting at an inn opens infinite pathways of possibility and, touched by destiny, Bramt abandons his ivory tower for the greater world, hoping to become a maker of legends in his own right.

But the world is a fearful place peopled by cunning nobles and wily wizards, demons and ogres, vampires and vengeful ghosts, sword-wielding warriors and flesh-craving giants. And soon, Bramt’s quest for fame and wealth becomes a battle for survival — and a desperate, magic-led search for a treasure far greater than gold… the secret of immortality which can only be found in the dangerous, illusive realm called Yana…

We lost Michael Shea last month, but the gifts he left us remain. In Yana was published by DAW Books in December 1985. It is 318 pages, priced at $3.50. The cover is by Terry Oakes. It has never been reprinted.

Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and the Panama Canal was first serialized in Liberty Magazine from November 16, 1940 to February 1, 1941. It was published in book form as The Island of Fu Manchu by Doubleday in the US and Cassell in the UK in 1941. The book serves as a direct follow-up to Rohmer’s 1939 bestseller, The Drums of Fu Manchu, and is again narrated by Fleet Street journalist, Bart Kerrigan.

The previous book in the series was published just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. Rohmer chose to portray characters such as Hitler and Mussolini under thinly disguised aliases. More critically, he chose to have these threats to world peace removed by the conclusion of the book as he naively believed a Second World War would be avoided at all costs. Over a year into the war, Rohmer had to address these issues for his readers. His excuse was a brilliant one. The prior narrative had been censored by the Home Office. Bart Kerrigan was forced to alter names and events. Hitler and Mussolini yet lived.

Interestingly, Rohmer chose to pick up the story some months after the last title and reflect changes in the lives of his characters. The Si-Fan has fallen under an unnamed pro-Fascist president who counts Fu Manchu’s duplicitous daughter among his closest allies. The Devil Doctor himself has fallen from grace within the Si-Fan, as he opposes fascism at all costs. This rift threatens to tear the secret society apart as much as the war was doing the same to governments around the world.

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ERB is probably best known to people who enjoy Fantasy and SF as the creator of the John Carter of Mars series, the Carson of Venus books, and the Pellucidar world-in-the-centre-of-the-earth stories. Then, of course, there’s Tarzan, probably second only to Dumas’s Three Musketeers as a source of movies, TV shows, and comics.

Following up on my recent sword-fighting posts, I’d like to talk about two ERB novels that are much less well-known than the ones I refer to above, and yet which have the same spirit of adventure and, for me almost more important, the same emphasis on sword play.

Both The Outlaw of Torn (1914) and The Mad King (1915) are what used to be called “romantic adventures.” This wasn’t because there was a love interest (though everyone familiar with ERB’s work knows there was), but because of the extraordinary demands placed on the hero, usually for extreme action, courage, fortitude, and sacrifice.

The Indiana Jones films are probably the closest deliberate modern equivalent to this genre, and while it’s hard for us to think of Iron Man, or Spiderman, as romantic adventurers, in the way the term was understood back then, that’s exactly what they would be.

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You want to know my three favorite things? (It’s a rhetorical question; you don’t actually have to email an answer. Seriously, don’t.) Dabir, Asim, and Kaiju. Sometimes Kaiju is #2, ’cause Asim is occasionally kind of a lunkhead.

So how awesome would it be to have Howard Andrew Jones’s Arabian adventurers Dabir and Asim in the same volume as some of the most diabolical Kaiju of the decade? (Again, rhetorical question. Stop e-mailing me stuff.) For the record, if would be thoroughly awesome.

Well, I think you can tell where this is going. Kaiju Rising, the Kickstarter-funded anthology we pulled the lid back on last September, has finally landed — and left a Godzilla-sized footprint on the industry. The Kickstarter campaign was a rousing success, raising $18,562 against a $10,0000 goal, and one of the unlocked stretch goals was a new Dabir and Asim story from the distinguished Mr. Jones. Here’s what Howard had to say about his contribution:

Monsters turn up a lot in my fiction, and Kaiju style critters wandered across the stage in the first two Dabir and Asim novels. In true Ray Harryhausen fashion, The Bones of the Old Ones features a titanic battle between a Roc (the giant predatory bird of Arabian Nights fame) and a huge spirit wolf fashioned of snow and ice.

Given my interests, I naturally jumped at the chance to create a story for Kaiju Rising. In one or two of the Dabir and Asim stories I’ve referenced a deadly encounter the boys had on the ocean, and now I’m finally setting the tale down.

Howard’s story is “The Serpent’s Heart,” and it appears alongside 22 other stories focused on the theme of gargantuan creatures in the vein of Pacific Rim, Godzilla, and Cloverfield. The authors include Larry Correia, James Lovegrove, Gini Koch (as J.C. Koch), James Maxey, C.L. Werner, Joshua Reynolds, Jaym Gates, Shane Berryhill, Natania Barron, Paul Genesse & Patrick Tracy, and many others. Howard’s tale isn’t the only one to draw on existing characters; Edward M. Erdelac’s story is set in the world of the Dead West and James Swallow contributes a Colossal Kaiju Combat tie-in.

Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters was published February 9, 2014 by Ragnarok Publications. It is a massive 493 pages, priced at $4.99 for the digital version. The print version is forthcoming; its price has not yet been announced.

…began as a tool for creating Mystara-style maps and cheerfully emulates the World of Greyhawk feel.

I dare say that we Black Gate types love maps and charts of imaginary lands.

As kids, we pored over the maps in CS Lewis’s Narnia books or Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Most of us have had posters of Middle Earth or the Hyperborian Age on our walls and almost all of us have scratched out maps of imaginary places, either for the joy of it or as a DM/GM or Fantasy writer.

It’s great fun to draw a map using pencil and paper. However, there are practical limitations. It’s hard to make changes neatly, difficult to produce different versions of the same map, a fiddle to create small scale local maps, and ultimately a chore to curate all the bits of paper.

For most of us, digital is our friend, which is why I am reviewing Hexographer, a relatively inexpensive Fantasy map making tool.

Hexographer very much has its roots in old-school roleplaying.

It began as a tool for creating Mystara-style maps and cheerfully emulates the World of Greyhawk feel. However, with a range of symbol sets to choose from, it’s grown into a flexible Fantasy cartography tool. What makes it distinct is that it explicitly treats maps as collections of hexagons (though you can place items freehand as well), which makes it almost perfect for writers and gamers.

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