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Profound Enough to Hurt: Amal El-Mohtar on Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Profound Enough to Hurt: Amal El-Mohtar on Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories-smallI read a lot of reviews (no, seriously. A lot. Of reviews). But, like everyone else, I have favorite reviewers — those who’ve guided me towards books I might not have selected on my own, or whose taste aligns splendidly well with (or is a heckuva lot better than) mine.

These days one of my go-to reviewers is Amal El-Mohtar, occasional Black Gate blogger and author — whose own short story “Madeleine” is a 2016 Nebula finalist for Best Short Story. Earlier this week Amal reviewed Ken Liu’s new short story collection The Paper Menagerie for NPR… and had more to say about it on her website.

I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction. I was at times afraid to read more. Every single story struck chords in me profound enough to hurt, whether about the love and cruelty of families; the melancholy of thermodynamics; the vicious unfairness of history and the humbling grace with which people endure its weight. Stories so often take us out of ourselves; Liu’s stories went deep into my marrow, laying bare painful truths, meticulously slicing through the layers of pearl to find the grain of sand at its heart.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories was published by Saga Press on March 8, 2016. It is 464 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital version. That origami tiger on the cover was designed, folded and photographed by Quentin Trollip. We covered the complete contents here.

See all of our coverage of the best in new fantasy book here.

Beat the British and Save New France: Empires in America 2nd Edition

Beat the British and Save New France: Empires in America 2nd Edition

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eia6The second edition of a solitaire board game about the French and Indian War sits only a few feet away from me, and it’s all I can do to keep writing this review. I’d much rather be finishing the game, the seventh I’ve played this week since I received it Monday. You see, Wolfe is marching on Ticonderoga and Monro is heading for a fort I built in the Green Mountains. I’ve whittled both of their armies down, though, so the biggest threat is General Anherst, aided by the Royal Navy as he advances along the St. Lawrence Seaway.

I love this game. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise, seeing as how I really enjoyed the original edition. I wrote about Empires in America in some detail back in 2012 right here at Black Gate. Since then, the manufacturer Victory Point Games has made a number of production advances. (You may have seen my excited post about the quality of Nemo’s War in January.) Cards are made from professional card stock, and the counters — wow, the counters may be cardboard, but they were cut with a laser, and with their brown finish they look and even feel a little like they’re wooden.

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Dungeons, Dragons, and Vampires: Curse of Strahd

Dungeons, Dragons, and Vampires: Curse of Strahd

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Cover of the Curse of Strahd adventure supplement. (Source: Wizards of the Coast)
(Source: Wizards of the Coast)

The newest Dungeons & Dragons adventure supplement, Curse of Strahd, hits the stands at gaming stores around the world and brings the classic Ravenloft gothic horror setting alive for the 5th edition.

The game is built around the classic 1983 Module 16: Ravenloft adventure, written by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Ravenloft centered on the land of Barovia, one of the Domains of Dread that has been pulled from its home world and now exists in a cross-dimensional form within the Shadowfell region of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse. One key aspect of this is that any world, any setting, can have contact with Barovia, as the barrier between the “normal” world and this dark gothic realm become weak. Adventurers become lost in a bizarre mist and find themselves in Barovia, the village that is home to Castle Ravenloft and the realm’s mysterious ruler, Count Strahd von Zarovich. This makes Curse of Strahd a potential resource for any campaign.

Curse of Strahd is really a mix of setting manual and adventure module in one, with a storyline that is extremely open-ended, with endings that (assuming the players survive) allow for continued adventures centered around the consequences of the players’ actions in Castle Ravenloft.

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February Short Story Roundup

February Short Story Roundup

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oie_1541359R5APPf00This past February was a weak month for new swords & sorcery short stories. In fact, I have only three stories to review: two, as usual, from Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and another from Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was a month, from a story reviewer’s perspective, that just fell into the gaps. Both Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Grimdark Magazine published issues last month (reviewed here already), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fantasy Scroll were bereft of anything that fit the bill. Any other periodicals that might possibly publish something that at least sort of qualifies as S&S were quiet as well. That’s okay, though. It lets me spend a little time explaining why I prefer heroic fantasy in short story form to novel.

Swords & sorcery is action seasoned with darkness, with only one or two protagonists. A S&S short story, by its very nature, is forced to focus on the action and the hero. There’s no room for protracted descriptions of feasts or lengthy discussions of magic systems. Done right, it’s all short, sharp, shock. What I’m looking for from S&S is a jolt of escapism and I find it best delivered in small, adrenaline-rich doses. Think of the greatest classic S&S characters: Conan (“Red Nails”), Jirel (“Black God’s Kiss”), Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (“Bazaar of the Bizarre”), Kane (“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”). Their greatest tales, their best remembered adventures, are in short stories, not novels.

From S&S I want crazy ideas and unflagging plot momentum, things that don’t always hold up for five hundred, let alone a thousand, pages. I want to see the world through one daring character’s eyes. The genre’s roots are in pulp fiction; the same melange of adventure and violence that gave rise to tough gumshoes and six gun-wearing cowboys. It’s simple (not simplistic) and direct: hard men and women doing hard things in a hard world. In S&S’s case, with monsters.

This doesn’t mean long form S&S isn’t good or can’t work. Of course it can. Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon and Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer show how. It’s just that most long form fantasy tends to be about the epic, the world-endangering events, and the struggles of whole nations starring casts of dozens, not a single hero. It gives the author the room to build the world he or she wants from the ground up, and fill page after page with lovingly detailed descriptions of any and everything. And that’s great and good when done well, but it’s not what I want from S&S.

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Bombs and Gorgeous Automatons: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

Bombs and Gorgeous Automatons: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

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The Watchmaker of Filigree Street-small The Watchmaker of Filigree Street-back-small

Imagine living in 1800s London and working near Scotland Yard as a telegraphist. Now, imagine how the foundations of your uneventful life are upended when a stranger saves you from a catastrophic bombing. And get this: they knew it would happen.

Thus begins The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. When Thaniel Steepleton, the disillusioned telegraphist, befriends Keita Mori, a masterful watchmaker, their lives begin to weave around the clock. Cursed with the ability to see the future, Mori struggles to live in the present whilst preventing bad things from happening to Thaniel. In the meantime, bad things unfortunately happen to Mori, considering he ranks as the premier suspect in the bombing. Later on, a brilliant physicist named Grace enters their lives and attempts to rid Mori of his ability to foretell the future.

Along with this gripping tale, we learn about Mori’s aristocratic past in a war-torn Japan. We also learn the reason why he needed to start his life anew in London. Matsumoto, a man from his past, also journeys to London and weaves in and out of Grace’s life, hoping to find a place of permanence. The two subplots strengthen the plot in their center.

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Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

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Star Trek 3 cast-small

Where’s Spock? Why, he’s right there in the director’s chair, of course. For the third cinematic voyage of the Starship Enterprise, Leonard Nimoy took on a dual role as actor and director, though the former role was somewhat minimal. Which set a pattern for numerous other Star Trek cast members. According to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, 15 cast members eventually sat in the big chair, although only Nimoy, Shatner and Jonathan Frakes directed movies.

I don’t recall if I watched The Search for Spock prior to this rewatch project. But I actually watched it twice within a month or two to make up for it. Why? Well, because it didn’t really stick the first time around. Which is to say that about the best I can do to critique this movie is to damn it with faint praise. It’s like one of the many Star Trek TV episodes that’s not bad but that doesn’t have anything special to recommend it. I think the word serviceable sums it up best.

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The Lost Level by Brian Keene

The Lost Level by Brian Keene

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oie_62316zU0eMAQ8Lost worlds, pocket universes, dimensional traveling: these are things that warm my heart. Barsoom, the World of Tiers, and the Land of the Lost are places I want to see. A sword-swinging hero and warrior princess, well that’s pretty great by me. If your reactions are like mine then you are Brian Keene’s target audience for The Lost Level (2015), his love song to a certain kind of glorious pulp adventure that there aren’t enough of anymore. On the acknowledgements page he spells out explicitly the artists whose works helped inspire The Lost Level: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Sid and Marty Krofft, Roy Thomas, Joe R. Lansdale, Mike Grell, John Eric Holmes, Karl Edward Wagner, Otis Adelbert Kline, Carlton Mellick III, and H.G. Wells. A tantalizing roll call of pulp genius. I am definitely this book’s target.

See that cover to the left? Even before I read a glowing review from Charles Rutledge, someone whose opinion I trust, that cover (by Kirsi Salonen) bellowed “BUY ME!” so loud and clear I knew I couldn’t hold out for long. Briefly, The Lost Level is the tale of a man from Earth lost in a different dimension, and his adventures alongside a warrior princess and a furry, blue alien. Now that I’ve read it… well, I really love the cover.

Brian Keene is best known as a prolific writer of gonzo horror (38 novels and 10 story collections over 13 years). His first novel, The Rising is credited with helping spark the current zombie craze, but I think it’s too good to merit the blame. I’ve only dipped a toe into his vast body of work but it’s been fun, if a little bloody. His established talent, coupled with that eye-popping cover, led me to have high hopes for the book.

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Book Review: The Mark of the Shadow Grove by Ross Smeltzer

Book Review: The Mark of the Shadow Grove by Ross Smeltzer

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I am officially out of stories, since I haven’t received any recently and I’m reluctant to go back to submissions from more than a year ago.

Shadow Grove CoverWhile I usually limit myself to self-published books in my reviews here, I’ll occasionally review small press publications if I’m asked. This month’s review is of one such book, Ross Smeltzer’s The Mark of the Shadow Grove.

The Mark of the Shadow Grove is somewhere between a novel and a story collection. It contains three novellas, “The Witch of Kinderhook,” “Lord of All High and Hidden Places”, and “The Rule of Old Blood.” These three stories are all first person, but each one has a different narrator from a different time period: a necromancer’s apprentice in the 1820s, a young coed in the 1880s, and a journalist in the 1920s. But though the stories are from different perspectives and different times, they are ultimately connected, telling the story of two intertwined families, and the dark secrets that bind them. It is Lovecraftian in its horror, with gods beyond human ken who cause madness in those who encounter them, but it has eschewed any of Lovecraft’s deities for more familiar ones.

“The Witch of Kinderhook” tells its story both through the recollections of Tom, the aforementioned apprentice, and the journal of his missing master, Carver. Carver is not much of a necromancer. In reality he is a medical examiner with a history of fraud, an unhealthy obsession with old books of supposed occult lore, and an ill-founded belief in his ability to apply science to the ancient search for reviving the dead. He has come to Kinderhook to find the witch who dwells there, sure that she knows the secrets he seeks. Carver is disappointed with what he finds, and holds the witch’s attempts to teach him in contempt. Tom, meanwhile, is drawn to the beautiful witch Katrina.

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Legend of Legacy: Laborious

Legend of Legacy: Laborious

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Atlus has been one of the major players in getting unique and interesting RPGS onto the various Nintendo handhelds over the years: From the recent side stories of Shin Megami Tensei, to my personal favorite, the Etrian Odyssey series. However, not all of them can hook me, and today’s game Legend of Legacy is a case where thinking outside the box proved to be its undoing.

Legendof LegacyLegend of Legacy starts out as most JRPGs (Japanese role playing games) do: Mysterious setting, hidden treasures and a group of heroes on a quest, but the game quickly changes things up.

You can choose one person to be the main character at the start of the game, quickly meeting and teaming up with two other characters with the option to swap party members at anytime from the starting town.

The story is just a loose reason to go exploring, and the game allows you to skip cutscenes if you so choose. Similar to Etrian Odyssey, the main point of Legend of Legacy is to explore and build an effective party.

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Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

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The World of Null-A-smallAlfred Elton van Vogt (1912-2000) is one of the great names of 20th century science fiction, and not just because the moniker sounds so odd, like it belongs to a mad scientist in a lurid Gernsbackian tale, the kind where “cosmic rays” are used to mutate the sleepy denizens of the city zoo into panicky prehistoric behemoths, which then rampage through the streets, spreading riot and chaos, thus allowing a cabal of sinister foreigners to hijack the metropolis’s secret supply of plutonium in order to build a colossal… sorry. Got a bit carried away there; once you’re in full Pulp Mode it’s hard to disengage. Back to A.E. van Vogt.

Van Vogt was a giant of the golden age of the 40’s, first appearing in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction with the short story “Black Destroyer” in 1939. In the years that followed, he dominated the pages of the magazine with countless short stories and novels that even today are regarded as classics, among which the best known are Slan, The Empire of the Atom, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, The War Against the Rull, The Book of Ptath, and The Weapon Shops of Isher. (He frequently incorporated his short stories into his full length books; van Vogt was a pioneer of the “fix-up” — a term he coined — in which a novel is cobbled together from earlier, shorter pieces.)

In an era in which many of the SF writers of the 40’s and 50’s (some of major importance) have vanished from the shelves, most of the van Vogt books I’ve mentioned are still in print, and he remains influential — and controversial. (He did a short stint as a cheerleader for L. Ron Hubbard’s dianetics, for instance.) His writing seems to be equal parts sublime and appalling, and any discussion of van Vogt must sooner or later get around to addressing one simple question: can a “classic” be a godawful, incoherent mess?

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