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Seize Control of the Galaxy with Eclipse

Seize Control of the Galaxy with Eclipse

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Eclipse by AsmodeeI spent the better part of last year trying to track down this game. I first heard about it via the excited chatter at BoardGameGeek, where it bubbled near the top of their Board Game Rank, displacing such beloved games as Settlers of Catan, War of the Ring, and Civilization.

And, of course, it was no longer available. Released in 2011, the first printing sold out in record time and what few copies were still in the channel were commanding $200 or more. Publisher Asmodee announced it would not be available again until the second edition (which fixed some minor gameplay and production issues) was ready in late 2012.

It was a long wait. And the temptation to spring for one of those rapidly vanishing first edition copies was strong – especially as the year rolled on and there was no sign of the new edition. But patience is its own reward, or something. Anyway, it finally arrived, and I now have a copy in my hot little hands.

Eclipse is a game of interstellar conquest and intrigue, meaning you move starships around a colorful board and blow stuff up. That’s really all I needed to know to want a copy more than life itself. But we have a little room left, so I’ll pad this out by copying some stuff from the back of the box.

Apparently you can play as one of several races. I’m guessing the chubby green guy, blue alien, and bald supermodel on the cover are just a few of the choices. I picture my race of supermodels conquering the galaxy in slender battlecruisers, crushing all opposition beneath their stiletto heels, and suddenly I understand why copies were going for $200. I mean, damn. Now I want two copies.

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Red Sonja 5

Red Sonja 5

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Red Sonja 5 coverThis issue follows up from the last one, in which Red Sonja vowed to find the leader of the Lake People, who was imprisoned in the Singing Tower (just called “the tower” last issue). She is still accompanied by Mikal, the mysterious traveler from issues three and four, who, rather remarkably, has not yet tried to seduce her. The issue opens with the two of them hiding behind their horses and watching a procession of warriors in the middle of the night.

Now, if I wanted to trick someone into thinking a road is unoccupied, I wouldn’t leave a pair of saddled horses in plain sight. (“Hey, let’s hide behind the biggest clue we can find!”) Curiously, none of the riders seem to the notice the horses standing just to their right (no doubt experiencing the same lack of peripheral vision suffered by Imperial Storm Troopers and every single Doctor Who villain).

Of course, Sonja and Mikal are so pre-occupied with hiding in plain sight that they fail to notice the approach of the truands, who are basically forest-dwelling dwarves. Yes, this issue, Red Sonja fights a gang of unarmed dwarves. Unarmed dwarves dressed like pixies. Because, honestly, at this point the chain mail bikini isn’t politically incorrect enough.

Well, it should be no surprise that she easily defeats the little people, keeping one under foot for questioning. She asks him only one question: Where can she find the Singing Tower? His answer is that she should follow the dark riders. The dark riders she was following before the truands attacked. Meaning that the attack really served no narrative purpose other than to fill two pages. Ah well.

So Sonja and Mikal catch up with the riders, who seem to be moving just slow enough to make following them easy. Eventually, they lead our heroes into a valley, where they discover that (best Admiral Ackbar voice) it’s a trap. They are easily captured and Mikal is taken away. Sonja is taken to a bell tower, which is apparently the capital building of Bor Ti-Ki, the City of Bells. If you’re thinking the bell tower is the Singing Tower, Red Sonja makes the same mistake. But this is apparently a completely different tower.

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Teresa Edgerton’s Goblin Moon

Teresa Edgerton’s Goblin Moon

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Goblin MoonI’ve mentioned before that I’ve an idea that there’s a lot to be learned from some of the overlooked fantasies of the 1980s. Teresa Edgerton’s Goblin Moon was published in 1991, and it’s less obscure than some — in fact, it’s just come out as an ebook (you can find a trailer here) — but it’s still a good example of what I have in mind. And a fine and delightful tale in its own right.

Goblin Moon is the only book I’ve read by Edgerton. From what I’ve found online, she began writing with a series of alchemical fantasies, the Celydonn trilogy: Child of Saturn and The Moon in Hiding in 1989, followed by The Work of the Sun in 1990. Goblin Moon came out in 1991, as did its sequel, The Gnome’s Engine; the two books together make up the “Masks & Daggers” duology. A second Celydonn trilogy followed (The Castle of the Silver Wheel in 1993, The Grail and the Ring in 1994, and The Moon and the Thorn in 1995), but after 2001’s The Queen’s Necklace, the vagaries of the publishing industry led Edgerton to assume a pseudonym. Under the name Madeline Howard, she’s published two books of a projected trilogy — The Hidden Stars and A Dark Sacrifice. Having acquired the electronic rights to her older books, she’s begun re-releasing them as ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks. Goblin Moon’s now available at her website, with The Gnome’s Engine apparently planned to re-appear in a few months.

Moon’s an intricate and surprising book. The plot follows the fortunes of several characters: river scavengers who make a surprising find, an old used bookman who thinks he knows how to use said find, his granddaughter who is the best friend of an ailing upper-class cousin, and a mysterious nobleman with strange and possibly dreadful secrets. These plot strands run into each other unexpectedly, branch out in surprising directions, and finally more or less dovetail into a conclusion. There are elements in Goblin Moon of romance, mystery, and adventure out of Dumas or Orczy. But what really makes the book stand out is its setting, an elaborate secondary world. Most of the book takes place in and around Thornburg, a pseudo-German city in an eighteenth century filled with magic, fairies, dwarves, gnomes, trolls, and a moon whose orbit brings it visibly closer to the earth at its full. The outlines of Thornburg and the wider world are familiar, evocative of the exploits of Casanova or Cagliostro, but the details are specific, unique, and highly detailed: Edgerton’s imagined her world’s folkways and superstitions, its magic and iconography, its habits of thought and obsessions.

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Review of K. Bird Lincoln’s Tiger Lily

Review of K. Bird Lincoln’s Tiger Lily

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Tiger Lily cover
Tiger Lily cover

About a month and a half ago on this blog, I solicited submissions of self-published novels for review.  I know firsthand how difficult it is to sell fiction on your own, so I wanted to give some attention to books that are often underappreciated, both by the industry and by readers.  I received more than a few submissions–not so many that I was completely swamped, thankfully, but enough that I had to sort through the entries and decide on the one that I thought was most promising. That one was Tiger Lily by K. Bird Lincoln.

I selected this novel because the sample chapter was well-written and the premise was unique and intriguing. However, I was going out of my comfort zone in choosing it. Tiger Lily could be best described as a fantasy historical romance taking place in feudal Japan.  I’ll readily admit that that is not my normal reading material.  Since I am not as familiar with this subgenre, it’s quite possible that common and accepted tropes of it struck me the wrong way, and that I completely missed things that would bother the normal audience.  So in this review, I’ll just point out what worked for me and what didn’t, and those with more familiarity with the subgenre can take what I say with a grain of salt.

The title, Tiger Lily, refers to the main character, Lily-of-the-Valley, who was born in the year of the Tiger, which she blames or credits for every stubborn and rebellious decision she makes.  She’s unmarriageable, she’s a failure as a dutiful daughter, and worst of all, she keeps the old ways of Jindo, rather than the new Buddhist religion embraced by the Emperor.  The author admits that she sharpened the conflict between Buddhism and Jindo in the novel, as compared to the historical competition between the two faiths in Japan. Though it may be more fantasy than history, this conflict is effective as the driving force in the novel.  It’s the main motivation for Lily to keep her connection to the spirits, or kami, hidden, and is the ultimate reason behind the war she finds herself embroiled in, between the Buddhist Emperor and the Jindo-following rebels.

At the beginning of the novel, Lily doesn’t consider herself a follower of Jindo so much as of her vanished mother, who was a true practitioner. She merely enjoys walking alone in the forest, singing the forbidden songs that her mother taught her.  Until one day she runs into the local lord’s son, Prince Ashikaga, injured in the forest, and she must protect him from the fox spirit rebels.  Her songs are what allow the prince to fight and defeat the rebels in the early skirmishes.  Soon she’s swept up in the war against the Jindo rebels, where the prince sees her as the key to success, and maybe as something more.  But as they become closer, she learns that the prince has his own secrets. I won’t reveal that here, but if you know that he has a secret (which the book description tells you straight out), it’s fairly obvious what it is.

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Red Sonja 4

Red Sonja 4

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red-sonja-4-coverLast issue, Red Sonja competed in the Games of Gita, won, then killed the Queen of Athos. This issue, she’s still hanging around the city. Apparently, the queen wasn’t that popular. So her new friend, Mikal, is showing her the sights, which include a dark lake infested with shambling actors. “(T)hese strange beings, whose limbs are an eldritch mixture of beast and fowl and lowly reptile.” They slowly make their way to the aptly named “Theatre of Monsters.”

Walking into the Theatre, Sonja finds that the performances consist of monsters, who are clearly monsters wearing human masks, performing surreal renditions of standard plays. Of course, the actors behave with more dignity than the howling human audience around them. At one point, they invite Red Sonja to join their performance in exchange for a purse of gold.

Since Sonja is perpetually broke, she accepts the offer and takes the stage. But since it’s pretty much her fate to be perpetually broke, the offer of gold was a ruse and the monster performers try to kill her immediately. Several monster-corpses later, their leader is begging for mercy and offering to explain what just happened.

At this point, Mikal joins Sonja, having apparently been using the bathroom while she was fighting for her life on stage. The two of them are escorted to the lake, where the waters are parted Moses-style so that they can follow the monsters down to their underwater crystal city. There, she is told the story of how the monsters are descended from aliens whose ship crashed in the lake. After adopting water-breathing forms, they began to interbreed with various Earth animals (um, yuck) until the succeeding generations were the monsters that now occupy the city. Apparently, their leader was captured by the people of Athos and they are forced to perform as circus entertainers in order to ensure that he stays alive.

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New Treasures: Dungeon Command: Curse of Undeath and Tyranny of Goblins

New Treasures: Dungeon Command: Curse of Undeath and Tyranny of Goblins

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dungeon-command-curse-of-undeath-smallBack in August, I made some excited noises about the new head-to-head skirmish game from Wizards of the Coast, Dungeon Command.

At the time, only two Faction Packs were available: Heart of Comyr, including a human ranger, halfling sneak, dragon knight, dwarven defenders, and copper dragon; and the Sting of Lolth, which contained the drow assassin, priestess, wizard, spiders, and umber hulk.

Now, if you’re like me, you probably wondered what a “Faction Pack” was, and how a “head-to-head skirmish game” might work. But that was really secondary, because all the cool toys packed inside were more than worth the money.

If you had to justify the purchase, you could do it on those alone — Dungeon Command components are fully compatible with the Wizards of the Coast games you’re already playing. The miniatures and dungeon tiles can be used with the D&D RPG, and the unique cards provided with each miniature can be used with D&D Adventure System board games like Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and The Legend of Drizzt.

dungeon-command-tyranny-of-goblins-smallYou don’t have to be an expert on head-to-head skirmish games to appreciate that they’re a lot more fun with a variety of miniatures. So I was intrigued to see the recent arrival of two new factions: Tyranny of Goblins, containing a complete goblin warband — including bugbears, wolf riders, a feral troll, and a hobgoblin sorcerer — and Curse of Undeath, which includes the gravehound, lich necromancer, and dracolich.

Dungeon Command features themed miniature factions designed to play as unified war bands. The game eliminates luck-driven mechanics in favor of player-driven skill, creativity, and quick thinking. Each faction comes in its own box, with a dozen miniatures, a set of unique cards, dungeon tiles, and the game rules.

I’m already hearing reports that the miniatures — and the new rules set — have found favor among roleplayers looking for a quick and refined combat system. Stay tuned for further reports as we experiment with the rules here at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters. Assuming we ever stop playing with the cool minis long enough to read the rules, that is.

Both Tyranny of Goblins and Curse of Undeath retail for $39.99. They were released by Wizards of the Coast in October and November, respectively.

Red Sonja 2

Red Sonja 2

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red-sonja-2-coverHonestly, I’ve tried twice to summarize “The Demon in the Maze,” and I just can’t figure out how. It’s a psychedelic mess of gonzo insanity. It reads as if co-writers Roy Thomas and Clara Noto just switched off writing pages without any idea of where the story was heading or how it would end. The whole thing is plenty of fun; but at the end, I still can’t figure it out.

It starts with Sonja finally reaching Venzia (which she’s been heading towards since Marvel Feature 6). The first thing she sees when she’s in sight of its famous canal is two trading ships crashing into one another and sinking. Even though the ships are less a minute’s swim from shore on either side of the canal, none of the sailors survive the crash.

Sonja doesn’t really have time to consider this mystery before she happens upon a woman being attacked by three bandits. She easily kills the trio in less than a page, but a fourth bandit, hiding in the shadows, knocks her unconscious and drops her to an underground mirror maze. The mirrors mess with her head to the point where she first hallucinates herself as a withered old woman (rendered only a little hilarious by the fact that she’s still wearing the chain mail bikini), then watches as her arms transform into snakes that begin to strangle her. Realizing that it’s an illusion, Sonja calms down and lets her mind “go limp,” at which point a passage out of the maze opens up. She leaves the maze and walks into the plot of the story.

An old man (who is never named) lies dying on the ground and explains that the underground chamber is the prison for an evil wizard (also unnamed) who wants to rule the world. Apparently, the chamber is also the prison of a demon (once again, unnamed) who can only be freed by a human hand. But not any human hand (otherwise, his cell-mate the evil wizard would just free him). The demon can only be freed by a human of exceptionally strong will (translation: the evil wizard is a wimp). The demon created the mirror maze as a test: anyone with a will strong enough to see through its illusions would have a will strong enough to free the demon. The fact that the maze is littered with bones implies that a lot of other women have been trapped down here.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 11: John Carter of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 11: John Carter of Mars

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john-carter-of-mars-canaveralSo it ends here, not with a climatic epic, but with a bit of house cleaning almost fifteen years after the author’s death. The final book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s career-spanning Barsoom saga is a slender volume containing two unrelated novellas.

I’ve called this review series “Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars,” but that title is a smidgeon deceiving when discussing the two stories here. One doesn’t take place on Mars, and the other was not written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. My apologies going forward.

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. A dry and slowly dying world, Barsoom contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with nine novels, one volume of linked novellas, and two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: John Carter of Mars (1964)

Previous Installments: A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1913), The Warlord of Mars (1913–14), Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1916), The Chessmen of Mars (1922), The Master Mind of Mars (1927), A Fighting Man of Mars (1930), Swords of Mars (1934–35), Synthetic Men of Mars (1938), Llana of Gathol (1941)

The Backstory

Edgar Rice Burroughs died in 1950, two years after the publication of Llana of Gathol. Two novellas from the Mars series remained orphaned, having only appeared in magazines: “The Skeleton Men of Jupiter” and “John Carter and the Giant of Mars.” It wasn’t until 1964 that Canaveral Press published them together under the deceivingly archetypal title John Carter of Mars.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950: A Retro-Review

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galaxy-science-fiction-november-1950-smallI’m slowly making my way through my collection of Galaxy Science Fiction, continuing with the second issue, dated November 1950.

“Honeymoon in Hell” by Fredric Brown: In the futuristic year of 1962, due to some unknown cause, all of Earth’s babies are born as females. With their own ideas running out, the U.S. government turns to Junior – the largest cybernetic computer in the nation. The computer hypothesizes there could be something local to the planet causing the issue.

It suggests testing the theory by sending married couples to the moon – to see if conception in a different environment would produce males. The government chooses Ray Carmody, a former rocket pilot who was one of the few people ever to land on the moon.

To Carmody’s dismay, the U.S. teams up with Russia for the first of multiple missions, and he is married remotely to Anna Borisovna, also a rocket pilot. They land separately in Hell Crater and begin assembling a shelter, but their work is interrupted by unexpected arrivals.

This is a story that gives away its age with numerous details, but it moves along really well. It’s an interesting idea, and I liked how the plot unfolded.

“Forgotten Missionary” by Isaac Asimov: Humans land on Saybrook’s Planet, taking caution to establish a barrier between themselves and the indigenous species. Because they must. The previous explorers, under Saybrook’s guidance, found that the planet was like a single organism, and it wanted to add new species to its body. Given the opportunity, the planet’s organisms could impregnate other species, which would later birth scions with green patches of fur where their eyes should be.

When the barrier fails for a brief moment, one of the planet’s organisms sneaks aboard, disguising itself as part of the ship. Its mission is to wait until it encounters the humans’ home world before affecting all other specimens of life – otherwise, the humans would simply destroy themselves as their first explorers had.

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Red Sonja 1

Red Sonja 1

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red-sonja-1-coverFinally, after four years of guest appearances and Marvel Feature auditioning, Red Sonja gets her very own title. And judging from the cover, it’s going to be some opening story. We’ve got a wizard, a giant snake that’s about to bite her leg (even though its head’s already been cut off and guts are spilling out of its neck stump), a giant dead spider, some little gray goblin-looking guy in the background, and a unicorn. And Sonja herself is walking past her own title banner, seemingly ready to step out of her issue, bloody sword in hand, to kill YOU. “To the death” is always a good bad-ass line for an action hero, so we’re ready to see everything on this cover that isn’t Red Sonja dead by issue’s end.

Well, first of all, there’s no giant snake. There’s no giant spider. There’s no goblin. It’s just a mean-looking wizard and a unicorn. Just so you know.

The story begins with Sonja having to kill her horse after it breaks a leg. She’s still feeling pretty bad about it a few hours later when she stumbles on a group of men with torches surrounding a horse, apparently intent on killing it. Coming closer, she realizes that they’ve cornered a unicorn. Seeing a mob abusing a “helpless proud creature” bothers her to the point that she starts cutting through a dozen men to free it. Jumping on the unicorn’s back, the two of them ride away. During the struggle, the unicorn’s horn was broken off, so that it just looks like a horse with a head injury; but Sonja’s quite happy to have the beast as her companion.

So, for those who are reading Red Sonja on a subtextual level, the woman who’s sworn a vow of de facto chastity rushes to help the mythic representation of purity only after its phallic symbol is removed. Of course, there’s no reason to read any symbolism in a naked woman and a symbolically castrated beast bathing together, sleeping together, or leaning against one another in a picaresque sunset. And there’s certainly nothing about the nervous creature growing a new horn, “even more beautiful than the other,” as it gets to know Sonja. Nor is there anything to the bitter old man inciting ignorant villagers into a fury over the unnatural union of Red Sonja and the unicorn.

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