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Return of the Master Cheeser: The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

Return of the Master Cheeser: The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

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The Disappearing Dwarf-smallPublished in 1983, The Disappearing Dwarf is James P. Blaylock’s second novel, the sequel to his first, The Elfin Ship. Along with The Stone Giant (1989) they form the Balumnia Trilogy. If you have any love for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, or mouth watering descriptions of all sorts of food and drink, then these books are for you.

The Elfin Ship (reviewed here last year) is filled with constant comical digressions and expends pages on delightful, superfluous details. It’s filled with oddball characters and deliriously silly escapades. The plot is wonderfully complicated. The Disappearing Dwarf has all of those things — save the plot. It’s not that it doesn’t have a plot, it’s just not much of one.

Bored with his new life as man of leisure (allowed by the success of his travels in the previous volume), Jonathan Bing, master cheesemaker, agrees to take a trip down the Oriel River with Professor Wurzle to explore the abandoned castle of their foe, Selznak the dwarf. The castle, they quickly learn, is not empty — and definitely not safe.

From there they meet Miles (pronounce Meelays), the Magician who is hunting Selznak. He tells them that their old nemesis has reappeared, and is certainly up to no good. The magician suspects the dwarf is looking to steal a great magical orb from their friend, Squire Myrkle. Upon reaching the squire’s estate, they discover that he has vanished through a magical door that appeared in his library. The next thing we know, Jonathan, the Professor, and Miles (along with Ahab the dog), are back on board the elfin airship and headed for a doorway to the parallel world, Balumnia.

Narrative drive is nearly absent in The Disappearing Dwarf. Jonathan’s goals switch from one thing to another several times throughout the book. The adventurers spend much of the book traveling from one place to another without ever really knowing what they’re trying to achieve, other than their rather vague plan to find the squire before he falls into Selznak’s clutches. Balumnia has its own villain, a mysterious figure called Sikorsky, but as with the rest of the characters, we never get a clear sight of him or what he’s actually up to. Several characters fade away. One vanishes only to suddenly reappear with little explanation. The book moves haphazardly from one incident to another. Fortunately, most of those incidents are terrific fun.

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Thrift Shop Adventures 1: Wherein I Find Fantasy Treasures in Secondhand Stores (Greyhawk Classics and More!)

Thrift Shop Adventures 1: Wherein I Find Fantasy Treasures in Secondhand Stores (Greyhawk Classics and More!)

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“I’m gonna pop some tags / Only got twenty dollars in my pocket / I — I — I’m hunting, looking for a come-up / This is ******* awesome”
— Sir Macklemore of the Order of Thrift

When I go into town — to the nearest keep on the borderlands, say — I find it hard to pass up a quick pop-in to a thrift store. Last Friday I did my rounds in the city, hitting the trifecta: Salvation Army, Savers, and Goodwill. As with any type of hunting excursion — for instance, my single days hunting for a date at the college bars — there are highs and lows, ups and downs, mind-blowing flights of rapture and soul-crushing disappointments.

First up was Salvation Army. I always make a beeline for toys first, then books. I’ve never had much luck with toys in this particular outlet, although I did come close to a good score once: an elderly lady came up behind me at the check-out line carrying a vintage SIX FOOT LONG rubber jiggler snake! It had just been stocked on the shelf somewhere in between the time when I had looked and when I was checking out, so I’d missed it by mere minutes. It was tagged $1.99, and I immediately offered the lady ten bucks for it. She shook her head. “No, I want this. I’m thinking of putting it in my garden to keep kids out.” She actually said that.

The thought flashed through my mind “Are you crazy? That thing will be a kid magnet!” But I did not persist, just politely demurred, mentally accepting defeat. Some consolation was the fact that I had one already (they do come up on eBay occasionally, typically fetching about $20-$30).

Strike up the old Army Marching Band, though, because today was going to be a thriftastic day. Mostly thanks to a coloring book (which I’ll get to in a bit), but that wasn’t all: I was also about to unearth a tomb-full of Greyhawk.

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New Treasures: Master of Plagues by E.L. Tettensor

New Treasures: Master of Plagues by E.L. Tettensor

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Master of Plagues-smallAbout a year ago I reported on the first novel in a promising new series: Darkwalker by E.L. Tettensor. Now the second novel featuring Police Inspector Nicolas Lenoi has arrived, Master of Plagues, and it looks as intriguing.

The Nicolas Lenoi novels are set in Kennian, part of the backwater Five Villages, which seems a lot like 19th-century England if you squint. Lenoir is tasked with investigating dark mysteries in a place where folks scoff at the supernatural. These books look like a fine mix of fantasy and mystery in a fog-shrouded Victorian(ish) landscape, with plenty of original touches to keep things interesting.

Unraveling a deadly mystery takes time — and his is running out…

Having barely escaped the clutches of the Darkwalker, Inspector Nicolas Lenoir throws himself into his work with a determination he hasn’t known in years. But his legendary skills are about to be put to the test. A horrific disease is ravaging the city — and all signs point to it having been deliberately unleashed.

With a mass murderer on the loose, a rising body count, and every hound in the city on quarantine duty, the streets of Kennian are descending into mayhem, while Lenoir and his partner, Sergeant Bran Kody, are running out of time to catch a killer and find a cure.

Only one ray of hope exists: the nomadic Adali, famed for their arcane healing skills, claim to have a cure. But dark magic comes at a price, one even the dying may be unwilling to pay. All that’s left to Lenoir is a desperate gamble. And when the ashes settle, the city of Kennian will be changed forever…

E.L. Tettensor also writes under the name Erin Lindsey. We recently covered her fantasy novel The Bloodbound. Master of Plagues was published on February 3, 2015 by Roc. It is 368 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal

Future Treasures: Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Of Noble Family-smallOf Noble Family, the fifth and final novel in Mary Robinette Kowal’s popular Glamourist Histories, is due to arrive later this month.

The first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, was nominated for a Nebula Award. The previous four books in the series are:

Shades of Milk and Honey (2010)
Glamour in Glass(2012)
Without a Summer (2013)
Valour and Vanity (2014)

I had the good fortune to hear Mary read from Valour and Vanity at Capricon last year, where she talked about the effort involved in ensuring the language in these novels is appropriate for the time — including creating a Jane Austen dictionary, and making heavy use of the Oxford historical concordance, which lists words in the order in which they appeared in the English language.

Mary is also a high-profile author here in Chicago, and I first met Wesley Chu at the launch party for Without a Summer in 2013.

Here’s the description for Of Noble Family.

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George R.R. Martin Offers a New Excerpt from The Winds of Winter

George R.R. Martin Offers a New Excerpt from The Winds of Winter

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Martin The Winds of Winter-smallBack in January we reported that The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in George R.R. Martin’s epic Song of Ice and Fire series, will not arrive this year, as some readers had hoped.

But to soothe the pain a little, Martin has been releasing small bits from the novel at his website. This morning he offered up a brand new chapter, featuring the return of a character who’s been absent for a long time. Here’s a small sample.

Alayne loved it here. She felt alive again, for the first since her father… since Lord Eddard Stark had died.

She closed the window, gathered up the fallen papers, and stacked them on the table. One was a list of the competitors. Four-and-sixty knights had been invited to vie for places amongst Lord Robert Arryn’s new Brotherhood of Winged Knights, and four­ and-sixty knights had come to tilt for the right to wear falcon’s wings upon their warhelms and guard their lord.

The competitors came from all over the Vale, from the mountain valleys and the coast, from Gulltown and the Bloody Gate, even the Three Sisters. Though a few were promised, only three were wed; the eight victors would be expected to spend the next three years at Lord Robert’s side, as his own personal guard (Alayne had suggested seven, like the Kingsguard, but Sweetrobin had insisted that he must have more knights than King Tommen), so older men with wives and children had not been invited.

And they came, Alayne thought proudly. They all came.

Read the complete chapter here, and the lengthy summary of everything we know about the novel so far over at Tor.com.

New Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

New Treasures: The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett

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The Skull Throne Peter V Brett-smallThe Warded Man, the first novel in Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle series, was released in March 2009. His second, The Desert Spear (March 2010), became an international bestseller, and the third, The Daylight War, followed in February 2013. Now the fourth book in the series, The Skull Throne, has been released this week.

The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.

Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.

But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing one another and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne. In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late. Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton — rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared…

The fifth (and final?) book in the series, The Core, does not yet have a release date. The Skull Throne was published by Del Rey on March 31, 2015. It is 704 pages, priced at $28 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. Read the first chapter here.

Vintage Treasures: The Ghatti Tales of Gayle Greeno

Vintage Treasures: The Ghatti Tales of Gayle Greeno

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Sunderlies Seeking-small The Farthest Seeking

When I was running SF Site in the late 90s, I got hundreds of review books every year. Many appealed to me, though I had time to read almost none, and instead assigned them to our freelance reviewers. (Isn’t that always the way? You can have plenty of books, or you can have plenty of time, but you can never have both.)

Anyway, in the intervening 15+ years, I’ve long since forgotten most of the delightful volumes that passed through my hands. Yesterday I was in my basement — excuse me, the Cave of Wonders — making room for recent arrivals, packing up nearly a thousand old review copies to store in the attic, when I came across my dust-covered copy of Sunderlies Seeking, the first novel in Ghatten’s Gambit, a two-volume fantasy series published by DAW in 1998 and 2000.

I did remember Sunderlies Seeking. Even after 17 years, I recalled Mark Hess’s great cover and the evocative description on the back, promising a tale of adventure in a land of “convicts, rebels, and the unwanted refuse of society.” Not to mention a pair of friendly cats on the cover, helping sail a ship into the harbor. I’d never heard of author Gayle Greeno before Sunderlies Seeking crossed my desk in 1998, but after it did I sought out her other novels with great interest.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Terry Pratchett’s ‘City Watch’

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CityWatch_GuardsCoverAs readers of this column are certainly aware, I’m quite the fan of detective and private eye novels. Beyond just the guy that the whole thing is named after. As I mentioned in last week’s post on Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel, I’ve made several posts about the genre.

Related yet distinct is the police procedural (though some stories, like the aforementioned Caves, fit in both genres). As you can guess from the name, these focus on police officers, rather than private operatives. They are all over television, such as Castle, CSI (insert name here), Hill Street Blues, and brand new shows like Battle Creek. Ranging from Dragnet and The Streets of San Francisco to Hawaii Five O (which lasted 12 seasons before coming back in its current incarnation).

The literary police procedural, while popular, has a lower profile than its television version and is definitely overshadowed by the private eye story.

Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), who I consider THE master of the mystery short story, wrote more tales of New York’s 87th Precinct than I can count: and I can count to one, two, three, many (that’s a Terry Pratchett joke). Probably my favorite straight police procedurals are Tony Hillerman’s novels about The Navajo Tribal Police. The subject of a future post, they are superb police mysteries, set in the Indian reservation lands of the Four Corners. (I ended up doing a pretty solid three-part series on those fantastic books)

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Join Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward in a Swords Against Death Re-Read

Join Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward in a Swords Against Death Re-Read

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Swords Against Death-smallI’ve been enjoying the re-read of Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar stories over at Howard Andrew Jones’ website. Howard and Bill Ward have taken a break from their entertaining examination of Lord Dunsany, and have turned their keen eye towards one of the most famous sword and sorcery series of all time, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books. They open the series with an overview of the second volume, Swords Against Death, a collection of short stories. Here’s Howard.

Once I got past the short, storyless opening (“The Circle Curse”) I was engrossed. Every short story was approximately the same length, and a few were tangentially connected. It was a little like episodic television.

More importantly, it was exciting, fast-paced, brimming with magic and sword-play and horror and mystery — and beautiful women, a subject that was becoming increasingly interesting to teenaged Howard. I loved Swords Against Death so much that I read it at least six times in the next few years (oh, to have so much spare time and energy).

Swords Against Death was not only one of the first fantasy books I read, it was my introduction to true sword-and-sorcery. These days the line between sword-and-sorcery is a lot more blurred than it was in the mid ’70s. Back then you pretty much had high fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery, and I definitely preferred the latter for the grit and the kind of protagonists, not to mention the pacing.

Swords Against Death was published in July 1970 by Ace Books. It is 251 pages, originally priced at $0.75. The gorgeous cover is by the one-and-only Jeff Jones.

Read the complete overview here, and part one (a look at “The Circle Curse”) here.

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction: The Great Years edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction: The Great Years edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl

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Science Fiction The Great Years Pohl-small Science Fiction The Great Years Sphere-small

Science Fiction From the Great YearsOne of my favorite pulp reprint anthologies is Science Fiction: The Great Years, edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl and released by Ace Books in 1973 (cover artist unknown), and by Sphere in the UK in 1977 (cover by Peter Jones).

Part of the reason I like it is because it’s part of a series I remember very fondly. The second volume, Science Fiction: The Great Years, Volume II, was released in 1976. It was also part of an Ace imprint, Science Fiction From the Great Years, a line of 17 pulp classics edited and selected by Fred Pohl and published in paperback between 1972 and 1976. All bore the colophon at left. I first discovered pulps in the mid-70s, in Jacques Sadoul’s marvelous art book 2000 A.D: Illustrations From the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps, and finding these paperbacks on the shelves proudly proclaiming their pulp roots at around the same time was an exciting discovery.

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