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September Short Story Roundup

September Short Story Roundup

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Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Sept Oct 2014-smallSeptember was a good month for swords & sorcery stories. While the next issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is still several months away, Fantasy & Science Fiction (presently celebrating its sixty-fifth year of publication) has a trio of tales. Swords and Sorcery Magazine, as every month for the past two and a half years, presented two new stories.

I started subscribing to F&SF earlier this year, but until now there haven’t been any S&S stories. Now in the September/October 2014 Issue, they’ve presented three. The first is a novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein. “The Caravan to Nowhere” is a tale in her long-running saga of the minstrel Alaric. It’s actually a reprint, with the story first appearing in the recent anthology Rogues, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. The first story in the series, “Born to Exile,” appeared in the same magazine all the way back in 1971.

Alaric is a far-traveling minstrel with magical powers. He can shift his location from one spot to another instantaneously. In a world where such sorcery is usually feared, he is always on the move, seeking fresh opportunities and material for new songs. At the story’s start, he joins a caravan into the desert hunting not just inspiration, but also legendary hidden treasure and a lost city. While the caravan master, Piros, dismisses the tales as only drunken fancy, Alaric decides it’s still worth joining the party.

Alaric discovers that in addition to its purpose of buying salt, the caravan is journeying into the heart of the desert to acquire a supply of the Powder of Desire. It gives its users visions of great wonders, but it’s ultimately dangerous and debilitating. Piros’s dissolute son is himself addicted to the substance. When they arrive at the source of the powder, things take a dangerous turn.

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Self-Published Book Review: Brush with Darkness by Jamie Maltman

Self-Published Book Review: Brush with Darkness by Jamie Maltman

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.

BrushWithDarkness-forWeb-reduced

Anyone who’s been reading my reviews for the past year and a half has gotten a pretty good idea of what I like and don’t like. I prefer my fantasy to be epic rather than urban. I was tired of vampires years ago. And I like dwarves and weird westerns. You might want to add one more “like” to that list: Romans. I’ve had a soft spot for these ancient imperialists ever since I took Latin in high school. My own fiction frequently features them, and I’m likely to read any epic fantasy which includes an homage to ancient Rome. It is, in fact, what my wife and I first bonded over. All of which brings us to this month’s self-published novel,  Brush with Darkness.

In  Brush with Darkness, the part of the Romans is played by the Pazians. The Pazians control much of the known world, including the analogs for the Greeks (the Izari) and the Jews (the Benjai). And just like the historical Romans, they are frequently at war with the barbarians living beyond their borders. The story opens with the 7th Legion chasing a group of Scentari raiders, who have just destroyed a Pazian town located in territory the Scentari were driven out of a generation ago. The chase does not go as planned, as the Scentari now have access to dark magic.

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The Monsters of Golarion: Monster Codex for Pathfinder

The Monsters of Golarion: Monster Codex for Pathfinder

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MonsterCodex

If you’ve played fantasy roleplaying games for any length of time, you’ve no doubt fought your fair share of goblins, orcs, and trolls. They can certainly begin to blend together. If you’ve fought one, you’ve fought them all, right? One of the jobs of the Dungeon Master is to find ways to keep things interesting. As I said in a post last week, “A fantasy roleplaying game is defined as much by the caliber of the villains and monsters as it is by the caliber of the players and heroes.”

One way to mix things up is to introduce more monsters, and certainly fantasy roleplaying games have no shortage of supplements that outline new and varied types of monsters.

But another way to keep things interesting is by varying up the existing pool of common monsters, giving them rich backstories and cultures, motivations and plots. In short, finding ways to really make what should be a common monster into something completely new. If you take a basic goblin template and add on 12 levels of barbarian, you have something decidedly more challenging to face!

Of course, creating all of this variability takes time and planning, which seems to be in ever-shorter supply these days. And this brings us to the Pathfinder RPG‘s newest solution: Monster Codex (Paizo, Amazon)

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Renner & Quist at Their Very Best

Renner & Quist at Their Very Best

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Check Out Time Mark Rigney-smallSamhain Publishing has just ushered in Check-Out Time, their third Renner and Quist occult mystery from the very talented pen of author Mark Rigney.

Longtime readers of my articles will recall my reviews of Rigney’s earlier work, The Skates and Sleeping Bear, which introduced me to his oddball double act.

Renner is a persnickety Unitarian minister, while Quist is a boorish ex-linebacker. Together, this unlikely duo team to solve occult mysteries. This latest addition to the quirky and delightful series takes our heroes from their usual Michigan stomping grounds to downtown Columbus, Ohio.

It seems a long-demolished hotel is doing its best to return to existence. It currently inhabits its original location in another dimension, complete with guests and staff from past decades somehow co-existing. These guests include such celebrated faces from the past as Amelia Earhart, James Thurber, Charles Dickens, and Marilyn Monroe.

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The Color Out of Time: Michael Shea Takes a Dip Into Lovecraftian Horror

The Color Out of Time: Michael Shea Takes a Dip Into Lovecraftian Horror

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The Color out of TimeI’ll mention this first about Michael Shea’s 1984 novel The Color Out of Time: the protagonists consume copious amounts of Wild Turkey. They fortify their coffee with it; they carry hip flasks full of it. This is a fact the narrator always notes casually in passing. Never are the potentially debilitating effects of alcohol mentioned; it simply occurs to the reader that these people might well be past the point of tipsy into “whiskey-river-take-my-mind” territory through much of the central action of the adventure. Perhaps that’s how they maintain their sanity. And make no mistake: sanity is but one of the possessions at stake for our heroes, because they have waded head-deep into Lovecraft territory. If they do manage to survive with their sanity intact, though, they might want to consider rehab.

The second thing I’ll mention is that because some of my own fictional excursions overlap with Shea’s foray into Lovecraftian horror — we tread similar unhallowed ground, digging up the bones of past masters of weird horror and coating them with fresh slime, if you will — I find myself contemplating the book not just as a critic, but as a writer: appreciating moves he makes while noting missteps and potential pitfalls. Ultimately, Shea’s sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 short story “The Colour Out of Space” is entertaining, but slightly off, a tad unsatisfying, and I’ll try to pinpoint why — to isolate the juncture at which it diverges from Lovecraft’s vision and to articulate how this impacts the effectiveness of the tale. (For a different take on the book, check out Douglas Draa’s review for Black Gate last year HERE.)

The premise is straightforward enough. Take the story that is generally regarded as Lovecraft’s first successful amalgam of science fiction and horror, a blend that became his unique trademark (“The Colour Out of Space” is one of Lovecraft’s most highly regarded and was always, according to Wikipedia, the author’s personal favorite. For the sake of full disclosure, it ranks high on my list of best horror stories and is one of my top two or three favorite works by Lovecraft). Start from the central event of that tale and then project its aftermath some sixty odd — very odd — years later.

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A Rogue’s Early Days: Yendi by Steven Brust

A Rogue’s Early Days: Yendi by Steven Brust

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oie_28150EMzOHUFYSteven Brust has written that Yendi (1984), second in his ongoing series about gangster Vlad Taltos, is his least favorite book. As it’s only the second of his novels I’ve read, I can’t tell you where it falls on a greater continuum of his work, but I can tell you it’s a pretty good book. Sure, the book is flawed, but the good bits far outweigh the bad. If this is the low point in the series, then I’m REALLY looking forward to the later volumes.

The first book in the series, Jhereg (read my review here), introduces Vlad Taltos, a human assassin in a magic-heavy world ruled by the Dragaerans (who are pretty much elves). In that book, Vlad finds himself forced into carrying out a complex assassination. Aided by his mini-dragon familiar, Loiosh, and several powerful and clever friends, he succeeds beyond his own expectations. It’s a blast and I’m grateful to Bill Ward for getting me to check it out.

Instead of taking the story forward, Brust goes back in time with Yendi. Here we learn how Vlad rose in the ranks of the mafia-like House Jhereg. By a combination of smarts, daring, and just enough violence, he secures a position in the gangland ecology of the Dragaeran Empire’s capital city, Adrilankha. By book’s end, he’s well on his way to becoming the successful racketeer we meet in the first book. Unfortunately for him, things happen between the beginning and end of Yendi that make for a lousy time for Vlad, but a fast-paced story for us.

The book begins with Vlad learning that another low-level boss, a Dragaeran named Laris, has opened a gaming parlor in his territory. When confronted, Laris is apologetic and presents a series of nearly believable excuses. After the meeting, Vlad informs his lieutenant, Kragar, that they have probably no more than two days to get ready for an all-out war. His intuition proves correct.

The war between Vlad and Laris is so violent that one of the five rulers of House Jhereg summons Vlad and tells him to handle his war with more subtlety, or else. Unfortunately, it’s too late to avoid the or else. Incensed by the steady string of fires and killings, the Dragaeran empress dispatches members of her Phoenix Guard to clamp down. There are curfews, restrictions on the size of gatherings, and all criminal operations are shut down.

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New D&D Monster Manual Unleashed on the World

New D&D Monster Manual Unleashed on the World

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D&D Monster Manual Fifth EditionA fantasy roleplaying game is defined as much by the caliber of the villains and monsters as it is by the caliber of the players and heroes. Though Dungeons & Dragons has always been driven primarily by the imagination of the Dungeon Master and the players, the fact is that you can usually get only so far with just the Player’s Handbook (Amazon). It has the basic rules mechanics for playing the game, but lacks the array of exotic monsters necessary to populate – and threaten – the fantasy world that the characters are exploring.

With the arrival of the new 5th edition D&D Monster Manual (Amazon), that gap has now been alleviated. This book contains a beautifully-illustrated 350 pages of monsters, adversaries, and maybe even a few allies to introduce flawlessly into 5th edition games. The name really says it all; it is a manual full of monsters. There’s an appendix of “Miscellaneous Creatures” and one of “Nonplayer Characters” which are also useful, but there is one stand-out mechanic introduced that is worth mentioning in its own right, for those who might be wondering if the book is worth picking up.

Legendary Creatures

The manual contains a class of “Legendary Creatures” which “can take special actions outside their turns, and a few can exert power over their environments, causing extraordinary magical effects to occur in their vicinity.” In addition to these “legendary actions,” legendary creatures also sometimes come along with a lair, which gives the legendary creature ability to take extra “lair actions” and may have ambient powers, representing how the legendary creature’s power has physically warped the terrain of the lair.

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“Shardik, Shardik the Power Of God!”

“Shardik, Shardik the Power Of God!”

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Shardik-smallMidway through Richard Adams’s doorstop of a book, Shardik (1974), I decided I had stumbled into the world’s longest parable.

Biblical parables are typically quite brief, but Adams pulls toward the opposite shore, reasoning that in thoroughness lies salvation. And why shouldn’t he? That tactic worked like gangbusters in his astounding debut, Watership Down (1972).

Shardik could indeed function as a serviceable doorstop, but to dismiss it out of hand would be a disservice to literature in general, and to fantasy novels in particular. Shardik is a brave, uncompromising examination of how “mere” mortals encounter and deify the exceptional, thus giving rise to portents, omens, prophecies, and ultimately continent-conquering religions.

In the case of Shardik, the talismanic inciting event takes the form of a gigantic bear, a bear of monstrous, prehistoric proportions, and this bear first flees a forest fire and then crashes, half-burned and exhausted, into a far-flung outpost of human civilization, Ortelga. Unfortunately – or not, depending on one’s point of view – the Ortelgans entertain a fervid belief that God’s manifestation on Earth will come in the form of a massive bear.

While Watership Down stayed locked within the heads of its rabbit characters, Shardik spends only a few pages at the outset inside the eponymous bear’s mind, just long enough to convince any alert reader that while Shardik may be a divine instrument, he is very much a bear, no more, no less, and will behave accordingly. After that, the story turns to Kelderek-Plays-With-Children, a hunter of simple tastes who first stumbles upon the injured, recovering bear-god.

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The Series Series: Diviners by Libba Bray

The Series Series: Diviners by Libba Bray

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The Diviners Libba Bray-smallWhat does YA urban fantasy need to breathe fresh life into its tropes? Prohibition! Not your first guess, either, was it? Yet it works beautifully.

Libba Bray set The Diviners and the series it opens in 1926, in a New York where all the superstitions have just become true, and all the forms of charlatanry have just started working. Most people don’t know it yet and the ones who find that they have powers they never believed in are still isolated and afraid.

The novel opens with two party tricks gone wrong. In Manhattan, a debutante desperate to liven up her birthday bash breaks out a Ouija board and releases something nasty. In Ohio, a girl with a world-class attitude shows off her talent for psychometry and the touch of the town golden boy’s class ring reveals his secrets to her.

She flaunts what she knows. The boy’s family is rich and powerful. Pretty soon, Evie O’Neill’s parents have to send her out of town to the farthest available relative on the soonest available train. A train to New York City, perhaps the only place on Earth big enough for Evie’s personality.

These two unquiet spirits, one living and one dead, circle around one another, both growing in power and community, through six hundred pages of suspense punctuated with bursts of laughter.

One of the things that impressed me most about The Diviners is that it’s a book about the Roaring Twenties written for a generation of readers who have, for the most part, never seen a black-and-white movie.

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Meet The Mad Mummy

Meet The Mad Mummy

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Mad Mummy 1I was first introduced to Mike Vosburg’s work through my love of Sax Rohmer. His wonderful artwork graced Master of Villainy, the 1972 biography of Rohmer by the author’s widow and Cay Van Ash. Later, I would discover Mike’s artwork also appeared in The Rohmer Review fanzine.

Many more years later, I was fortunate enough to have Mike provide the back cover illustration to my second Fu Manchu book. He also gave my daughter a gift of autographed copies of some of his professional work, which made her feel like the luckiest nine year old girl on the planet. I don’t claim to know the man well, but I adore his work and know him as a genuinely kind and generous artist.

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