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Self-published Book Review: Sorrel in Scarlet by Peter Vialls

Self-published Book Review: Sorrel in Scarlet by Peter Vialls

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SorrelforKindle3Sorrel in Scarlet is an old-fashioned sword and sorcery tale (with just a little bit of early industrial technology), which put me in mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter series, not least because of the abundance of red and the scantiness of clothing. But there’s also the obvious parallel of the heroes finding themselves lost in a strange land and coming to the rescue of the people there. I do think this book comes across favorably in the comparison, since the heroine, Sorrel, is less superhuman than Captain Carter, and thus her adventures are more believable.

In the years before the story begins, the humans of Sendaal rose up against their dragon overlords… and lost. Sorrel is one of the few remaining pilots in Sendaal, and part of a group of rebels looking to achieve some measure of revenge. To that end, she steals a jasq–the living symbiote that provides sorcery to both humans and dragons–from Wrack, the very dragon who had cut her own jasq out and stolen her sorcery. Her daring escape goes less smoothly, and Sorrel crash lands her triplane in the Chasm. This deep rift in the ground is perpetually shrouded in mist, and those on the surface believe that it either leads to a sea or the center of the Earth. Instead, there’s a vast scarlet forest at the bottom of the rift. With her co-pilot dead and suffering from fatal injuries herself, Sorrel implants the jasq in herself in a desperate attempt to save her life. Implanting a second jasq is usually fatal, but in this case works… mostly. It heals her injuries, but causes agony whenever she tries to enter the magerealm to use sorcery.

One would think that being trapped in the Chasm with a dragon, a destroyed plane, and a non-functional jasq would be enough of a challenge, but Sorrel soon discovers that there are worse things in the Chasm. The red forest is crawling with deadly predators, orc-like graalur, and worst of all, the serpentine lloruk, creatures of legend thought to be extinct after their war with the elves. Fortunately, there are more or less friendly humans there too, and Sorrel soon finds herself trying to help them against the graalur. The lloruk are on the warpath, conquering and enslaving city after town, and preparing to use something worse on the surviving humans–a modified jasq called a larisq that can control the mind. Sorrel is desperate to help those who took her in; but it’s a task she can’t perform on her own, without any technology or magic, and she finds herself relying on her worst enemy, Wrack.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of C M Kornbluth

Vintage Treasures: The Best of C M Kornbluth

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The Best of C M Kornbluth2Cyril M. Kornbluth was one of the best science fiction writers of the 1950s. Like Stanley Weinbaum and Robert E. Howard, he died in his early thirties, leaving behind a handful of stories that would gradually make him famous.

Kornbluth was an early member of The Futurians, the legendary group of young science fiction fans that included Donald A. Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Robert A. W. Lowndes — and Mary Byers, who eventually became his wife.

Kornbluth might be virtually unknown today if not for the efforts of Pohl, his friend and collaborator, who became one of the most acclaimed editors and novelists of the 20th Century — and is still alive today. Kornbluth wrote nine novels, including six in collaboration with Pohl: The Space Merchants, Search the Sky, Gladiator at Law, Presidential Year, Wolfbane, and Not This August.

He also produced some of the most famous science fiction stories ever written, including “The Little Black Bag” and “The Marching Morons.”

On March 21, 1958, Kornbluth had arranged to meet with Robert P. Mills, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. An overnight storm had dumped snow in his driveway, and he had to shovel it out first. Running late, he was racing to make the train when he suffered a heart attack. He died on the train platform at the age of 34.

He left behind a body of brilliant work that included 57 short stories published between 1939 and 1958. In 1976, Pohl selected the 19 best for Lester Del Rey’s The Best of… series, collected as The Best of C M Kornbluth.

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New Treasures: Warhammer 40K: Pariah: Ravenor vs Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett

New Treasures: Warhammer 40K: Pariah: Ravenor vs Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett

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PariahWe don’t show Black Library and Games Workshop enough love here at Black Gate. Something of a crime, since they specialize in exactly the kind of thing we celebrate — exciting, original adventure fiction from talented writers, set in a wonderfully realized fantasy world.

Maybe it’s because my sons, die-hard Warhammer 40K fans both, keep stealing the frickin’ books the instant they arrive. Case in point: Pariah: Ravenor vs Eisenhorn, the new novel from superstar Dan Abnett. I bought it a few weeks ago and it vanished scant hours after it was delivered. I’m pretty sure it’s still in the house, somewhere. If evidence is any guide, I’ll find it on laundry day, at the bottom of a pile of gym socks.

So I have to write this relying solely on memory — and fleeting memory at that. Bear with me.

To start with, I remember the book looked great, and I sure was anticipating sitting down to read it. It brings together two of Abnett’s most famous creations: Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor, crippled hero of the Ravenor trilogy, and the infamous radical Gregor Eisenhorn. Here’s what my good buddy Howard Andrew Jones said about the earlier Eisenhorn Omnibus, which collected all three novels of the Eisenhorn trilogy and a handful of shorter works:

Dan Abnett wasn’t satisfied with creating a fabulous lead character in an action-packed space opera; he sent him to fantastic places and provides a series of detective/investigative stories full of logical turns, surprises, and plenty of action.

A pretty apt description of the Ravenor books too, now that I think about it.

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More Than Whodunit: the Science Fiction Mystery

More Than Whodunit: the Science Fiction Mystery

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Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space-smallThere’s a reason that crime or mystery is the genre most often mixed in with others. When you’re writing novel or short story, you generally go about it by finding a character and asking yourself what kind of problems a person like that would face. Then, of course, you give that person those problems; it’s the solving of the problems that forms the narrative of the story. Involving your character in a crime certainly makes for a nice problem, and of the crime problems available, murder is the one readers find most interesting – at least for novel-length narratives.

But mixing crime into your SF does present its own peculiar difficulties. As John W. Campbell suggested, it would be too easy for the writer to suddenly come up with a gadget or whizmo that would solve the crime. And Campbell was right to worry that writers might take that easy way out. Just as in fantasy mysteries, however, all you have to do to create great SF mysteries is respect the conventions of both genres.

Well, in a world where anything about writing can be summed up in the phrase “all you have to do is.”

Not all mysteries are of the classic “puzzle” type, the whodunit usually associated with Agatha Christie, but most do follow a few basic conventions. The criminal is revealed (at least to the reader); the solution makes reasonable sense within the parameters of the story (no deus ex machina); the readers had a reasonable chance of solving the problem for themselves (no withholding evidence). SF is the genre of change, exploring the impact of (usually) technological innovations or changes on humans and human society. So in the same way that fantasy mysteries have to take into account the supernatural elements of their imagined worlds, SF mysteries have to work with whatever technological changes make the world of the story different from ours. It’s how these changes lead to crimes, or help to solve them, that makes an SF mystery.

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Blogging Epic Comics’ Tomb of Dracula Limited Series, Part One

Blogging Epic Comics’ Tomb of Dracula Limited Series, Part One

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f9b76cd3-5202-4f2c-9e10-94ac14cb3aaaMarvel Comics’ mature readers imprint, Epic Comics, published a Tomb of Dracula limited series in 1991 entitled, “Day of Blood, Night of Redemption.” Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan reunited from the original series and teamed with Al Williamson to produce this visually stunning and highly ambitious four-part epic. The script faltered a bit by the end, as it really needed at least two more issues to realize its full potential; but this was an excellent effort and a welcome return to form that is deserving of more attention for its high standard of quality throughout.

The story gets underway with the introduction of two attractive young college students, Becky and Lila, who are having an affair. Becky is obsessed with the occult and unintentionally burns herself to death during a Satanic ritual one night after a rendezvous with Lila. From there, the scene shifts to a beautiful young attorney, Marlene McKenna, who is suffering from night terrors and under the care of Dr. Gregor Smirnoff. Marlene’s night terrors stem from the fact that she is married to Frank Drake and she has become obsessed with Frank’s ex-lover, the now deceased Rachel Van Helsing. Marlene has sought out her husband’s psychiatrist to treat her for her recurring nightmares of Dracula and belief that she is being possessed by the spirit of Rachel Van Helsing.

As the story progresses, we learn that it was Dr. Smirnoff who has led the students at Georgetown University, where he teaches, to practice Satanism just as he has been manipulating Frank and Marlene since introducing them to one another. Both experiments are the means to achieving his desire to locate Dracula’s remains and revive the vampire. These disparate sequences build up to a positively chilling scene where Marlene purposely disfigures her face with Frank’s razor in an attempt to emulate Rachel’s scarred visage.

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Out With the Old, In With the New: New Versus Vintage Treasures

Out With the Old, In With the New: New Versus Vintage Treasures

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secret-history4At the end of every month, I write up a brief report for Team Black Gate, the loose confederation of geniuses, experts, and oddballs who volunteer to blog here. Without these folks, you’d be looking at a whole lot of white space on the Black Gate website every morning as you sipped your coffee.

I usually take a few minutes to look over the traffic stats as I’m preparing the report. It’s interesting stuff. (Some day, for example, I’ll tell you about some of the more bizarre Internet searches that bring people to our shores… believe me, you have no idea).

There’s always a few things to ponder, though. And that’s exactly what I did last night, as the rest of my family got tired of waiting and started watching Thor without me. This time, what I pondered was the disparity in readership numbers between our New Treasures articles, and Vintage Treasures.

I first started writing New Treasures posts in October 2010, as a way to showcase the most intriguing new fantasy crossing my desk every week that I wasn’t able to cover with a full review. The first one was Tachyon Publications’ The Secret History of Fantasy, and so far I’ve written 262, or about 1-2 per week. In March 2011, I started doing the same with vintage titles (which I loosely define as anything 20+ years old), initially just as an excuse to write about James Van Hise’s marvelous Science Fiction in the Golden Age. As of this week, I’ve done 164 Vintage Treasure articles, or slightly more than one per week.

Long enough to build up an audience, in other words. I understand that the same folks who enjoy reading New Treasures may not always be interested in Vintage Treasures, and vice versa; but I certainly enjoy discovering both promising new authors and exciting older titles, and I expect I’m not the only one. So I’ve always assumed that as the audience for one grew, so would the other.

That hasn’t happened — at all. In fact, if the traffic stats for blackgate.com are to be believed, New Treasures has become the most popular feature on the blog, while Vintage Treasures are read by slightly fewer people than our legal disclaimers. Here’s a snapshot of the number of times those respective links were clicked anywhere on our pages in the month of June.

New Treasures 10,807
Vintage Treasures 174

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Pathfinder RPG: Chronicles of the Righteous

Pathfinder RPG: Chronicles of the Righteous

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ChroniclesRighteousIf you’re one of the generation of gamers who cut their teeth on 20-sided dice, you know that the mythology around the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy settings often hinge upon the machinations of deities, at times capricious and petty, at times aloof, at times all too ready to lend a not-particularly-helpful hand. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Fizban.)

The gods also play a central role in the D&D-stepchild game of Pathfinder RPG, produced by Paizo Publishing. Their setting of Golarion puts an interesting twist on the gods, by featuring a number of deities that were once mortals who ascended to godhood. The gods of Golarion are controversial and the cause of much conflict, with the desert nation of Rahadoum going so far as to outlaw the worship of any deity under penalty of death. (The atheism of Rahadoum is a central theme in James L. Sutter’s fantastic novel, Pathfinder Tales: Death’s Heretic.)

But the gods are not the only otherworldly beings that have designs on Golarion. In their recent Pathfinder Campaign Settings release, Chronicles of the Righteous (Amazon, Paizo), Paizo dives more deeply into the Empyreal Lords. These are supernatural beings from other realms who have ascended to prominence in the Outer Planes, becoming almost like lesser gods who focus on their domains of interest and gather smaller groups of dedicated followers and servants to further their interests on Golarion.

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Now to Rave: A Review of Fearsome Journeys: The Solaris Book of Fantasy

Now to Rave: A Review of Fearsome Journeys: The Solaris Book of Fantasy

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Fearsome Journeys The New Solaris Book of FantasyIn recent months, I’ve been trying to check out newer writers in the fantasy field. As visitors to this site know, one of the best ways to do this is by investigating the New Treasures posts and Black Gate Online Fiction.

But, another good way I’ve found is by keeping an eye out for newer fantasy anthologies (which are often listed as New Treasures on Black Gate). In my opinion, some of the best include David Hartwell’s Sword and Sorcery, Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan’s Swords and Dark Magic, and John Joseph Adams’s Epic: Legends of Fantasy.

When Black Gate recently announced Fearsome Journeys: The Solaris Book of Fantasy edited by Jonathan Strahan, I immediately wanted to check it out. Though I’m fairly new to the contemporary SF&F scene, I recognized most of the star lineup of authors that editor Jonathan Strahan had commissioned. Therefore, I was very interested in acquiring and reading Fearsome Journeys.

I ordered posthaste, received it, and the reading mission was accomplished. Now to rave.

Many of Fearsome Journeys’ stories fit squarely within the tradition of fantasy — which I love! For instance, many contain typical tropes such as magic, dragons, wizards, fighters, thieves, etc., as well as familiar plot angles like quests to recover treasure or kill some monster or dragon. However, as one would expect from this lineup, many are fairly experimental attempts to push the boundaries of what is, or should be, considered fantasy. Let me give a few highlights.

Glenn Cook provides another great tale of the Black Company, his popular fantasy military troop, with his story “Shaggy Dog Bridge.” Similar to Cook’s Black Company, Scott Lynch’s “The Effigy Engine” centers upon a group of (wizard) warriors called the Red Hats, who are battled-hardened cynics often attempting to just get by. This was a very interesting tale describing war contraptions that reminded me of medieval versions of the AT-AT Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back. Very cool!

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Tabletop Gaming On The Rise

Tabletop Gaming On The Rise

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Tabletop RPGs-smallThere’s an interesting article in the Times Free Press this week that examines the growing evidence that tabletop role playing is experiencing a significant resurgence.

Written by Casey Phillips, the article, “After 40 years, popularity of tabletop gaming rises despite high-tech competition,” mixes industry stats with anecdotal evidence gathered from the Chattanooga area.

D&D and other role-playing games increasingly are becoming a mainstream activity. In a 2000 survey, Wizards of the Coast — the current owners of the D&D universe of products — estimated that 5.5 million people in the U.S. regularly play tabletop roleplaying games…

With the recent growth of nerd culture through blockbuster comic book films and the growth of the video game industry, role-playing has been embraced more positively by pop culture, serving as a plot device in TV shows such as Futurama, Freaks and Geeks, Community and The Big Bang Theory…

In a 2004 essay about his introduction to D&D as a seventh grader, talk show host Stephen Colbert writes, “I… was instantly hooked. It allowed me to enter the world of the books I was reading. I put more effort into that game than I ever did into my school work.” In 2011, he also issued an on-air shout-out to “any half-elf thieves who are joining us tonight.”

I’m not sure I believe that 5.5 million people stat from Wizards of the Coast — unless maybe they define “regularly plays tabletop roleplaying games” as “daydreamed about being Legolas one time.” But I definitely concur that D&D has become tightly identified with the rise of nerd culture, and that has played a very real part in popularizing it and other role playing games. I witnessed that first hand, when my daughter asked to play after her friends watched the “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” episode of Community.

Read the complete article here.

Experience the Epic Madness of Eternal Lies From Pelgrane Press

Experience the Epic Madness of Eternal Lies From Pelgrane Press

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Eternal LiesPelgrane Press has been producing some of the most ambitious and exciting RPGs in recent memory.

They began in 2001 with one of my favorite RPGs, The Dying Earth, based on the rich world created by Jack Vance. More recently, we covered their ENnie Award-winning SF game Ashen Stars; the mammoth adventure compilation for Trail of Cthulhu, Out of Space; and their epic fantasy release 13th Age — which topped the list of 9 Most Anticipated RPGs of 2013 recently compiled by EN World.

But it’s quite possible they’ve topped all of those with Eternal Lies, a massive new campaign for Trail of Cthulhu by Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, and Jeremy Keller. The early buzz on Eternal Lies compares it very favorably to Masks of Nyarlathotep, the seminal 1984 mega-adventure for Call of Cthulhu that is frequently (and justifiably) cited as the finest role playing adventure ever written.

A decade ago, a band of occult investigators battled against the summoning of an ancient and monstrous evil.

They failed.

Now, you must piece together what went wrong. Investigate ancient crypts, abandoned estates, and festering slums. Explore choked jungles and the crushed psyches of your predecessors. Follow in their footprints and make new ones of your own. This time, there won’t be another chance. The world is yours to save… or lose.

Pelgrane Press is selling the adventure in a special pre-release bundle with the soundtrack album, print edition, and PDF. They’ve created an audio trailer voiced by Wil Wheaton, which you can listen to here.

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