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Month: September 2018

VIVE LA COMPAGNIE! : In Conclusion, The Black Company Series by Glen Cook

VIVE LA COMPAGNIE! : In Conclusion, The Black Company Series by Glen Cook

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As soon as I opened The Black Company last May, I knew I was back home among a band of brothers I’d first met and come to love over thirty years ago.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                         – Fletcher Vredenburgh     

When my friend Carl lent me his copy of The Black Company back in 1984 I didn’t know what was about to hit me. I had read some gritty fantasy previously — Michael Moorcock and Karl Edward Wagner in particular had published some pretty dark stories in the 1960s and 70s — but it was all written in the old familiar fantasy style. Both Moorcock and Wagner were rooted in the foundations of swords & sorcery laid by Robert E. Howard, CL Moore, and Fritz Leiber. No matter how callous their heroes, they were ultimately still cut from recognizable heroic cloth.

Cook introduced something new. He set aside the archaic prose flourishes of all those authors, instead drawing on hardboiled fiction to give his stories a contemporary feel. There’s a rejection of the mythic, fairytale setting in the Black Company books, and a wholehearted embrace of a “realistic” world where the battlefield reeks of blood, excrement, and decay. Mercenaries pillage, rape, and slaughter, presented in some detail and matter-of-factly. Even seen through the primary narrator’s somewhat romantic eyes, there’s a businesslike miserableness in these books I hadn’t previously encountered in fantasy. As soon as I finished the book I passed it on to to my friend Jim, he passed it on to George, and on and on it went until all my fantasy-reading friends had read it.

For the uninitiated, the Black Company series tells the story of the Last Free Company of Khatovar. Led by the eponymous Captain and Lieutenant, the Company can fight with the best of them, but prefers to outwit its enemies and win its battles by means of subterfuge and sabotage. The narrator, Croaker, serves as company surgeon and Annalist. For four centuries the Company has taken one contract after another, slowly working its way north from long-forgotten Khatovar. As the first book opens, they are approached by a mysterious masked figure offering a new contract even further north, across the sea. Within the first chapter everything changes for the Company, and they are embroiled in a war like they’ve never fought before.

For readers unfamiliar with The Black Company, but up-to-date on Martin, Abercrombie, and Bakker, this might sound old hat. Trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t. At seventeen, that first book hit me like a hammer between the eyes. Here were characters who essentially went to work for Sauron’s ex-wife. Over the course of the first and second books they became the baddest, most-feared band of killers in her army. The ostensible good guys are as vicious and murdering as anybody on the bad guys’ side. There’s a bit of moral redemption in the third book, but what really drives the protagonists is a deep self-interest in survival. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, Cook took heroic fantasy out of the realm of faerie and put it into the bleak world where it belonged.

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Birthday Reviews: Lynn Abbey’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”

Birthday Reviews: Lynn Abbey’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”

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Cover by Tony DiTerlizzi
Cover by Tony DiTerlizzi

Lynn Abbey was born on September 18, 1948.

Abbey was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1980 following the publication of her first novel, Daughter of the Bright Moon, and a story in the first Thieves’ World anthology. Abbey was married to Robert Lynn Asprin, the creator and editor of Thieves’ World from 1982 until 1993, during which time she became his co-editor on the series. Abbey attempted to revive the series with the novel Sanctuary in 2002, following up with two additional anthologies. In addition to her own original novels, Abbey also wrote several novels in TSR’s Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun settings.

“In the Bleak Midwinter” was originally published in issue 242 of Dragon in December 1997, when the magazine was being edited by David Gross. It has not been reprinted, but is connected to Abbey’s novel The Simbul’s Gift.

“In the Bleak Midwinter” is set in TSR’s Forgotten Realms milieu, although not intrusively so. Ignoring a few minor references to locations, it could as easily have been set anywhere. In the beginning the story seems to focus on Caddo and Burr, an innkeeper and a dwarf who works for him. The two are staffing the bustling tavern during a raging blizzard, but Burr is well aware that once the blizzard hits is height he will feel a compulsion to leave the safety of the building and go in search of an ice cave that only forms under certain conditions. When a stranger enters the tavern, Burr learns that she is in search of the same cavern and he offers to help her, in return for which he only wants one item that is in the cave.

Abbey subverts the standards of this type of story by having Rekka decline the dwarf’s offer, leaving him behind to explore the cave on her own. Through the course of the story, Abbey not only explores a little of Rekka’s past, noting that she has acquired eternal life and is using her time to track down magical items for her personal collection, although little else interests her, as well as the ancient history of the magician Ffellsil, who has been buried in the cave for the past two millennia, and the lost civilization of Netheril to which he belonged.

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Uncanny as a Ventriloquist’s Doll: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas

Uncanny as a Ventriloquist’s Doll: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas

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Nothing is Everything Simon Strantzas hc-small Nothing is Everything Simon Strantzas hc-back-small

Art by Aron Wiesenfeld

In 2014 I wasn’t familiar with the work of Simon Strantzas, but I bought his collection Burnt Black Suns mostly on the reputation of its lead story “On Ice,” a grim novella of arctic horror. By 2018, however, Simon is the one with the reputation, and it’s growing steadily with every story.

His new collection Nothing is Everything, on sale in hardcover and trade paperback from Michael Kelly’s Undertow Press next month, has already drawn a lot of attention. Kij Johnson says “Simon Strantzas is Shirley Jackson-grade eerie,” and Camilla Grudova, author of The Doll’s Alphabet, says:

Simon Strantzas captures the creepiness of small town Ontario; there is something of Seth, of Alice Munro in his work, wonderfully tangled with the likes of Aickman and Jackson. Uncanny as a ventriloquist’s doll, but with a real, beating heart.

Undertow is simultaneously releasing hardcover and trade paperback editions with different covers. Both are very fine, but the hardcover, with art by Aron Wiesenfeld (above), is particularly arresting. The trade paperback (below) features art by Tran Nguyen. Both were designed by Vince Haig.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner’s ‘Max Allen Collins & the Hard Boiled Hero’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Frank Schildiner’s ‘Max Allen Collins & the Hard Boiled Hero’

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Gat_CollinsTrueDetective“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I met Frank Schildiner through our mutual love of Robert E. Howard’s writings and I recruited him to write the Solomon Kane entry in Black Gate‘s Discovering Robert E. Howard. We share a lot of reading interests, such as John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee and… hardboiled stories. Frank is a leading light in the New Pulp movement and he appreciates pulp and hardboiled works from ‘now and then.’ So, I was happy when he decided to write about Max Allen Collins’ best-selling hardboiled PI, Nate Heller. Without further ado, I’ll turn it over to Frank!

“I was off-duty at the time, sitting in a speak on South Clark Street drinking rum out of a coffee cup.” Nathan “Nate” Heller, True Detective

Can you get more noir than that opening line? Welcome to the word of modern hardboiled fiction, Max Allan Collins style. The road is long and twisty, but the trip is ultimately satisfying to all lovers of this style of fiction. True Detective’s star, Nathan Heller is one of the heirs to a tradition established by such luminaries as Hammett, Chandler, and Cave.

Collins established his hardboiled credits back in 1977 when he took over the daily writing of the long-established daily comic strip, Dick Tracy. His work is still considered one of the reasons the strip continued after many storyline missteps throughout the 60’s and 70’s. One of his first acts was ending the sci-fi elements as well as removing the pseudo-hippy heroes that inhabited the strips.

When we meet Nate Heller, he is a morally ambivalent plainclothes police officer residing in Al Capone’s Chicago. He got his job on the department by asking a banker uncle to pull strings – a typical move in the moral cesspool that wracked the city’s politics. Heller’s position as a detective came as a reward for his willingness to lie for the Chicago mob in a murder case.

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Birthday Reviews: Irene Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood”

Birthday Reviews: Irene Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood”

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Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City
Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City

Irene Radford was born on September 17, 1950. She has published works under a variety of pseudonyms, including Phyllis Ames, C.F. Bentley, P.R. Frost, Phyllis Irene Radford, and Julia Verne St. John.

Radford has published numerous series, many of them through DAW Books, including the Dragon Nimbus, Stargods, Tess Noncoiré, and Merlin’s Descendants. She is one of the founders of Book View Café, a cooperative publisher. She has also collaborated with Bob Brown and as an editor with Deborah J. Ross, Laura Ann Gilman, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, and Brenda Clough.

“Little Red in the ‘Hood” appeared in the anthology Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers in 2004. M.H. Bonham reprinted the story in 2011 in WolfSongs: Volume 2. When Radford and Deborah J. Ross edited the anthology Beyond Grimm in 2012, they selected the story to be reprinted again.

Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood” is much more substantial than Linda D. Addison’s vignette of practically the same name, reviewed on September 8. In Radford’s story, Little Red is the nickname for a woman who is “volunteering” to help deliver food for Mobile Meals, a service to provide food for shut-ins, although her volunteer work is ordered by the courts after she was caught shop-lifting. The assignment she pulls has her taking food to a notorious lecher who has often been banned from food delivery due to his treatment of the women bringing his food. Although the coordinator offers to postpone the delivery until they can send an escort with Little Red, she refuses.

There are hints early on that Little Red is more than she seems, as she accepts the task of bringing food to Jason Hanstable, who has the reputation of a wolf. With Radford focusing on the lengthening of Red’s fingernails as much as her decision to only wear red, it seems clear that she is a different kind of wolf than Jason, but a wolf all the same. Despite telegraphing Red’s transformation, Radford includes a twist which only becomes clear when she introduces it, allowing the non-reveal that Red is a wolf to take second place and still subvert the reader’s expectations.

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The Priceless Treasures of the Barbarian Prince

The Priceless Treasures of the Barbarian Prince

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Dwarfstar games-small

A complete set of Dwarfstar games. Probably worth more than my house.

I enjoyed Sean McLachlan’s Black Gate post last month, Wargaming with my Twelve-Year-Old. Sean and his son played Outpost Gamma, a 1981 science fiction board game of man-to-man combat on a distant colony world. You don’t see a lot of coverage of early-80s science fiction microgames these days, so I appreciated being able to share the fun.

Outpost Gamma was published by Heritage Models in 1981, under their celebrated Dwarfstar imprint. Dwarfstar, like Metagaming, Steve Jackson, and Task Force Games, produced a rich catalog of microgames aimed at younger players. Well, budget-conscious players anyway. Metagaming, who pioneered the concept of the microgame with their first release, Steve Jackson’s runaway hit Ogre, charged $2.95 for a two-color game in a small baggie. Dwarfstar did away with the baggie and upgraded to a slim box, added full color, and charged a lordly $3.95.

As a business, the Dwarfstar line wasn’t a success. Unlike Metagaming and Task Force, who released dozens of titles over the years, they produced only eight games between 1981-82. But from a creative perspective, they were a magnificent hit. Their titles included Arnold Hendrick’s classic Demonlord, simulating the desperate struggle against the Demon Empire, Lewis Pulsipher’s Dragon Rage, a game of giant monsters attacking a walled medieval city, Dennis Sustare’s Star Smuggler, a marvelous solitaire programmed adventure following the adventures of a star trader on the frontier, and the peak achievement of Western Civilization, Arnold Hendrick’s Barbarian Prince, a solitaire game of heroic action in a forgotten age of sorcery.

Superbly well-designed as they were, Dwarfstar games had one great weakness: they weren’t built to last. Paper-thin boxes and flimsy components helped keep the cost down, but did nothing for their longevity. More than 35 years later these eight games have a nearly mythical reputation among collectors, but there aren’t a lot of copies to be had. And you know what that means: the scarce copies still in good condition are very, very expensive.

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Birthday Reviews: Lisa Tuttle’s “Tir Nan Og”

Birthday Reviews: Lisa Tuttle’s “Tir Nan Og”

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Cover by Gary A. Lippincott
Cover by Gary A. Lippincott

Lisa Tuttle was born on September 16, 1952.

Lisa Tuttle won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1974. In 1982, she was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “The Bone Flute.” Unhappy with what she saw as an orchestrated campaign to sway the voters by one of the other nominees, Tuttle announced that she was pulling the story from consideration. Nevertheless, “The Bone Flute” was announced as the winner of the Nebula Award and Tuttle refused to accept it. She went on to win the BSFA Award in 1989 for her short story “In Translation.” In 2007, she won the International Horror Guild Award for Best Intermediate Form for “Closet Dreams” and in 2012 sue won the 2012 Imaginaire award for best translated story.

Tuttle published “Tir Nan Og” in the January 1999 issue of The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Gordon van Gelder. Stephen Jones included the story in the anthology The Mammoth Book of New Terror in 2004.

“Tir Nan Og” is the story of a woman “of a certain age” who has noticed that her close friends have become cat people, each of them has adopted a feline companion and has given up on male companionship. Concerned about her own situation, she is having an affair with a married man and thinks that if he leaves her she may not be able to interest another man in a relationship. She goes to speak to her friends about their own apparent acceptance of celibacy.

Although her friends are less than forthcoming, which will eventually be her downfall, it is clear to the reader what they are trying to tell her. All she gets out of it is that if she takes her boyfriend to the mountains, she should make him drink from a specific spring. Naturally, without understanding why her friends are suggesting this, things go horrendously wrong for her, although she has a sort of closure that resolves her issue.

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Fantasia 2018, Day 22, Part 4: Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings

Fantasia 2018, Day 22, Part 4: Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings

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Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly KingsThe two final movies I’d watch at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival were both in the big Hall Theatre. It’s perhaps appropriate that the first of those two aspired to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (Di Renjie zhi Sidatianwang, 狄仁杰之四大天王) was directed by veteran Tsui Hark and written by Chang Chialu. It’s nominally a prequel to two other movies, though no knowledge of those films is required.

(Before the movie played we saw a short film, “No One Will Ever Believe You,” written and directed by Frédéric Chalté. A young girl wants to play a prank on her sister, and hides in her room. But she ends up becoming a witness to a supernatural horror, and by extension so does the audience. It’s a well-crafted 6-minute short shown largely from the perspective of a girl frozen in terror, and the point of view works. Shots from inside a bedroom closet through a blind emphasise the hidden viewer; it’s not surprising, maybe, that Chalté’s other short at this year’s festival, “Le otta dita della morte,” is a tribute to the surreal paranoia of the giallo film.)

For the sake of completeness, a bit of background on Detective Dee: Di Renjie was a magistrate and duke in 7th-century China who became the hero of an 18th-century Chinese detective novel by an anonymous author. (The first part of this novel, Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu’s reign, or Wu Zetian si da qi an, would be translated into English as Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik in 1949; van Gulik would go on to write a series of his own about Dee’s adventures.) The novel shows Dee solving multiple crimes at once, with the help of dreams, a ghost, and a team of constables who skilled in martial arts; detective novels, as invented in China around 1600 (called gong’an fiction, “case records of a public law court”), often included elements of the supernatural as key aspects of the plot. At any rate, Judge Dee, or Detective Dee, has starred as the hero of numerous TV shows and films over the years in both China and the West.

Most relevant here, in 2010 Tsui Hark made Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, written by Chen Kuofu with Andy Lau as Dee. In 2013 Hark made a prequel, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, with a script he wrote with Chang Chialu. Now comes The Four Heavenly Kings, a second prequel that’s set after the second movie but before the first one. As in the last, Dee’s played by Mark Chao, Shaofeng Feng plays Dee’s foil Yuchi Zhenjin of the Ministry of Justice, and Lin Gengxin is Dee’s friend and ally, doctor Shatuo Zhong. As the movie opens, Dee’s been granted custody of the “Dragon Taming Mace,” a magical item powerful enough to save a country from any threat, or to destroy it. The somewhat sinister Empress Wu (Caria Lau) feels threatened by the mace in Dee’s hands, and plots to regain it, enlisting the aid of Yuchi Zhenjin — and a clan of wizards. But there’s something more going on behind the scenes, involving mind control, secrets of the founding of the Tang dynasty, and the mysterious Faceless Lord.

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Future Treasures: Strange Ink by Gary Kemble

Future Treasures: Strange Ink by Gary Kemble

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Strange Ink Gary Kemble-small

No surprise that as we slip into Fall, publisher schedules start to fill up with more horror volumes. What is surprising is the number of intriguing debuts I’m seeing, like Gary Kemble’s Strange Ink, arriving in trade paperback from Titan next month. Publishers Weekly thought very highly of the book; here’s a snippet from their review.

In Kemble’s taut, suspenseful debut set in Brisbane, Australia, local and international concerns combine with the supernatural. Small-time journalist Harry Hendrick wakes up after a stag party with a hangover and a new tattoo he has no memory of getting. When he starts having intense nightmares, he quickly realizes his new tattoo is far from ordinary. More inexplicable tattoos begin appearing, bringing more nightmares, which Harry suspects may actually be someone else’s disturbing memories. Those memories have strong political implications, and Harry must solve the mystery they present before a depraved villain becomes prime minister. The novel’s gritty realism viscerally and effectively conveys the discomfort of new ink, the oppressive heat of the Queensland summer, and the horrors of war and murder… This is a strong debut by a promising new voice.

Strange Ink will be published by Titan Books on October 9, 2018. It is 391 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Studio London.

See all our recent coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.