Wrath-Bearing Tree by James Enge

Wrath-Bearing Tree by James Enge

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The first time I saw a James Enge novel on the shelf of my local bookstore, I broke into a little dance of jubilation. I’d been reading Enge’s short stories about Morlock the Maker in the pages of Black Gate — this was when BG had literal paper pages — and it was news to me that Enge had made the leap from short fiction to novels.

The blurbs on Enge’s books all say some variation on this theme: you will find no other character in fantasy literature, or maybe in literature generally, who is like Morlock the Maker. He’s a traumatized combat veteran who’s still one of his world’s great ass-kickers, yet he’s also an enthusiastically geeky mad scientist. He’s a cynic who will risk all he has to protect innocence where he finds it. He’s wickedly funny, in fewer words of dialogue than should really be possible. Read around in Morlock’s world a while, and you feel pretty soon like you know him, but you can never guess what he’ll do next. A Morlock novel! Could anything be better?

Over the next few years, Enge followed Blood of Ambrose with This Crooked Way and The Wolf Age, and it turned out the one thing better than a Morlock novel was a whole trilogy of Morlock novels.

I loved the cranky old Morlock, the character whose curmudgeonliness sometimes verged on becoming a superpower, so I am still getting used to Enge’s new Tournament of Shadows trilogy about Morlock’s origin story, which began with A Guile of Dragons and now continues with Wrath-Bearing Tree. As a young man, our hero is every bit as odd, unpredictable, noble, hilarious, tragic, clear-eyed, and difficult as his future self, but he hasn’t yet put the damage on and become the ugly old man we loved in the short stories that became This Crooked Way.

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Why I Write Fantasy

Why I Write Fantasy

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Shadow's Master Jon Sprunk-smallI’ve been doing book signings for the last few years, at bookstores and conventions. Most people you meet are very nice. Few actually buy one of your books, but they usually enjoy chatting with the author. Some are writers themselves, looking for a scrap of insight into the industry. But every so often I am asked a variant of this question:

“So why don’t you write books about real stuff?”

I’m sure these folks don’t mean to be rude. They don’t mean to insult my entire career and imply that the genre I’ve loved all my life, a genre which I personally believe has produced some of the most beautiful works of art in human history, is only suitable for children.

Of course, all fiction is “not real” in a sense, and fantasy is perhaps the genre which can seem the farthest from true life. As such, it is sometimes viewed from the outside as a literary ghetto: a kingdom of nerds, geeks, and perpetual adolescents who spend too much time at Renaissance Faires and roleplaying-game conventions. The stereotypes come fast and furious when talking about fantasy fandom.

It’s interesting how some people will accept a story about an alien from another planet who comes to Earth as an infant with superhuman powers and grows up to become humanity’s guardian. Yet, a story about a dragon (essentially a fire-breathing, sometimes-winged dinosaur) is a bridge too far for them. I feel bad for them.

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Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

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Conan Red Nails-smallOver here in England, we have a shop called ‘Poundland,’ which is pretty much what it says on the tin: a shop where everything costs a single pound, and for a boy of about ten, it was a dream come true. All the flimsy toys, dodgy sweets and budget DVDs my little mind could conjure — there was a book section as well, but it mostly consisted of either absolute rubbish or books about Simon Cowell.

But one particular day, when I was about ten, I happened to spot a diamond hidden amongst the rubbish: an anthology of stories by Robert E Howard. I’d never heard of him at the time, but the book had Conan in the title.

I had heard of Conan. My brief experience with the two movies told me I liked big swords, big monsters, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as much as the next ten-year-old, so I decided to buy it. On the train ride home, I found myself introduced to a new, vivid, and lively world, one of blood and savagery, of death and shadow, of lurking devils and skulking gods. I was exposed to a land of witchcraft, sorcerers, devils and demons, nations torn apart by brooding crusaders kings and swashbuckling puritans. It was the best train ride of my life.

“That’s all well and good, Connor,” you might say, “but what’s this got to do with prose?” Show a little patience; I’m getting to that.

What enchanted me most throughout these adventures was the prose; it just had its own nature and flavor, its own distinguished way of presenting things. I’d never encountered anything like it before; it was poetic, haunting, powerful. It lent every blow a sort of impact, made every monster tangible. Even the heroes — too powerful, too fast, too smart to ever be real — it made them come alive.

And in fantasy, where a key aspect is immersion, this is an impressive achievement. I touched upon this not too long ago with my Fantasy Face-off article; noting that prose dictates the way we see the world on the page and, therefore, how vivid and real it is. Prose overshadows flaws when it’s successful and highlights them when it’s not.

But what I didn’t mention was how prose can amplify the tone of the book. Fritz Leiber’s prose is rather light, reflecting the comic, satirical feel of his books. Howard’s is fast, rip-roaring and powerful, much like the pacing of his books and the characters within them. Tolkien’s prose, though it can sometimes be lacking, feels reminiscent of a fairy tale.

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GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

GenCon 2013 Post-Convention Recap – Part 3: The Pathfinder Booth

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One of the most fun booths at GenCon (a land of many fun booths) is the Paizo booth. They have their own table with nearly round-the-clock author signings and great promotional giveaways, plus they produce fantastic gaming products … this year, having topped previous years in all categories. Their goblin masks were ubiquitous throughout the convention hall, though I did miss the Goblin flash mob on Wednesday evening. But I did have an opportunity to spend time at the booth and talk with CCO Erik Mona about the new developments with their line of games.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

PathfinderRotRLDefinitely the biggest hit at the Paizo booth was the release of the first boxed set in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Amazon, Paizo), a massive box containing nearly 500 cards. The demo area where they were running through the game was packed and I never actually made it into a demo slot, though I did watch a few of them.  When I arrived on Thursday morning, there was a line nearly halfway down the wall of the Exhibit Hall, consisting mostly of people who were buying this game.

This isn’t a simple card game, but instead a roleplaying campaign in a box. It can be played by 1 to 4 players – that’s right, it can be played solo – who create a character, and then build a deck of equipment, allies, and magic to help progress through the events of Paizo’s classic Rise of the Runelords adventure path.

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The Other Appendix N

The Other Appendix N

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runequest2coverThe death of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and one of the fathers of the roleplaying game, provided added impetus to the already-extant (in 2008) re-evaluation and appreciation of what have come to be popularly known as “old school” roleplaying games. An important part of that re-evaluation centers on the literary origins of RPGs, particularly the books that fired the imaginations of their designers. Gygax helpfully provided us with a list of the authors who were, in his words, “of particular inspiration” to him. This list is now known quite widely simply as “Appendix N,” since it first appeared as just that, a lettered appendix at the back of his Dungeon Masters Guide (1979).

Appendix N has been much discussed over the last half-decade, becoming a significant talking point for those interested in the origins of the hobby of roleplaying. For example, there is much debate regarding the extent to which D&D truly captures the spirit of the books Gygax presented as being “the most immediate influences.” So energetic has the discussion of Appendix N become that it has not only spilled over into the wider world of fantasy (including this very site), but it has led to a mini-revival in pulp fantasy, with authors such as Abraham Merritt, Fletcher Pratt, and Margaret St. Clair (to cite but three on Gygax’s list) receiving more attention in recent years than they probably have in decades. Within the roleplaying hobby itself, Appendix N is well on its way to becoming a “brand,” with at least one RPG, Goodman Games’s Dungeon Crawl Classics, heavily promoting its own adherence to Gygax’s canon as one of its major selling points.

The creators of other early roleplaying games were usually not as forthcoming in acknowledging their literary inspirations, though there are, of course, exceptions, such as Steve Perrin and Ray Turney’s RuneQuest. First published in 1978, RuneQuest is, in its own words, “a departure from most FRP (as they are abbreviated) games” in that it is “tied to a particular world, Glorantha.” The brainchild of Greg Stafford, Glorantha is a fantasy world evocative of ancient history and myth and one of the most enduring settings in the hobby. For that reason, Glorantha is also frequently described as being both complex and idiosyncratic to the point of being inaccessible to newcomers.

I do not share this judgment of Glorantha, but I understand why some might make this claim. Fortunately, its designers offered some insight into their own inspirations in a bibliography that they coincidentally also labeled “Appendix N,” a full year before Gygax would use the same designation. Like Gygax’s own list, it is not exhaustive, but only “contains those [books] we felt exemplary or exceptional.” RuneQuest‘s Appendix N one-ups Gygax, in my opinion, by being an annotated bibliography, which provides additional insight into not just what books and authors were inspirational, but why.

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Ancient Worlds: The Island of Circe

Ancient Worlds: The Island of Circe

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AN: Hello all. My name is Liz, and you may remember me from a few years back! I was a Black Gate blogger for a brief period before life happened, as it does, in spectacular fashion. But our esteemed editor has been kind enough to invite me back! So I’ll be posting regularly now, and continuing this series. Ancient Worlds will focus on the roots of Fantasy and Science Fiction in Ancient Literature, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Circe.

Circe, Wright Barker, 1889The Odyssey is full of compelling archetypes, but she’s hard to top. She’s beautiful, powerful, terrifying, and sexy as hell. If you’ve ever been attracted to, or wanted to be (or both), the femme fatale, you should raise a glass to her.

Circe first appears in The Odyssey. As Odysseus leads the longest road trip in the history of the world, they wash up on Aiaia. Seeing a cookfire in the distance, Odysseus sends a band of men to investigate.

A few hours later, only one of them returns to inform the king that all of his men have been turned into pigs by an evil witch.

He couldn’t take those guys anywhere.

Odysseus heads off to rescue his men, again. He’s stopped by Hermes, the messenger god, who has been sent to warn him that he should eat a magical herb, moly, in order to be immune to the witch’s transformation spell.

Following this advice, Odysseus survives dinner without being turned into one of Circe’s pets. He then draws his sword and threatens to attack her. Circe responds by inviting him into her bed.

Yeah. There’s nothing even vaguely Freudian about that.

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Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

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Night Winds-small

“He’s evil incarnate! Stay away from him!”
— from Darkness Weaves

Long before the coiners of the term grimdark were born, Karl Edward Wagner was creating some of the most aggressively unheroic fantasy. There had always been a dark current to swords & sorcery from the genre’s beginnings in the 1930s with Robert E. Howard. But not even Michael Moorcock’s 1960s antiheroes prepared S&S fans for Wagner’s 1971 novel Darkness Weaves and its amoral mystic swordsman, Kane.

Six feet tall and “three hundred pounds of bone, sinew, and muscle,” Kane is cursed to live forever for rebelling against the god who created him. Peering out from his fiery red hair and beard, his blues eyes blaze with a killer’s fury — a warning to all who cross his path. Though a violent death can free him from his accursed immortality, he is determined to survive.

Over the course of three novels and seventeen stories, Kane plots and murders his way across continents and centuries. He is by turns a mighty sorcerer, a bandit lord and a lone wanderer. While it’s explicitly stated in one story that Kane is “seldom needlessly cruel,” he’s seldom sympathetic.

It’s in the two collections of short stories, Death Angel’s Shadow (which I reviewed last year at my site) and Night Winds, that Wagner crafted his greatest swords & sorcery. His novels, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves, all have their moments, but they don’t have the short, sharp, shock of the stories. While the books are memorably epic, the stories are fast-paced nightmares.

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New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

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She Returns from War-smallI love Angry Robot books. I don’t pay much attention to publishers when I’m at the bookstore. But when I’m home, and my purchases are stacked by my big green chair, it’s hard not to notice that half of them have the Angry Robot logo on the spine.

I think they’re just in tune with the kind of books I’m most interested in. Which is weird, because I’m not exactly sure what they are myself. But I know they involve great cover art, intriguing settings, and women in cowboy hats. This week, anyway.

She Returns From War is the sequel to the supernatural western The Dead of Winter, released last October. The tag line is True Grit Meets True Blood, which is clever. Have you noticed this burgeoning mini-trend of western-horror-fantasies, including Guy Adams’s The Good The Bad and the Infernal, Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill’s Dead Reckoning, and the Bloodlands novels of Christine Cody? Apparently it’s a thing. See? We’re paying attention.

Four years after the horrific events in Leadville, a young woman from England, Victoria Dawes, sets into motion a series of events that will lead Cora and herself out into the New Mexico desert in pursuit of Anaba, a Navajo witch bent on taking revenge for the atrocities committed against her people.

She Returns From War was published by Angry Robot on January 29, 2013. It is 361 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

The recent coverage Angry Robot titles we’ve covered were The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, The Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar, and The Corpse-Rat King, by Lee Battersby.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

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Arak_Vol_1_10Arak has had his share of sea serpents, vampires, Lovecraftian cave-beasties, demons, and devils. What was this comic lacking?

Legendary creatures from Greek myth, of course! So with issue 10, Arak and Valda make a side trip to Mount Olympus. And there are some surprises in store for both of them…

We open on very human terrain, in medias res. Arak and Valda, on horseback, are being ambushed by Byzantine soldiers.

Last issue, we left them adrift at sea after the Pompeian undead vengefully sank the merchant ship they were hitching a ride on. Between the two issues, we’ve skipped how they got to land, procured new mounts and (if we’re going to be nitpicky) all of their weapons and gear. Later in the issue, we’ll get a one-line flashback-thought from Arak about having purchased the horses from a Grecian farmer — but where did they get the money? Valda even still has the scrolls bearing endorsements and writs of passage from Carolus Magnus and the Pope — though given what will happen shortly, those may as well have just been lost at sea.

Anyway, while Arak and Valda are trying to be diplomatic, some of the mounted soldiers charge down the hill toward them, weapons drawn. One is nocking an arrow even as he rides, ignoring his commander’s warning cry: “Hold, archer! Do not go near them! They are dangerous!” A shame such skill as both horseman and archer is wasted, a couple panels later, on Valda’s blade. It’s on.

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Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

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Heart of Summer Having panned Merlin some weeks back, it’s time to dive headlong into one of the best fantasy films of this century, and possibly one of the best, period.

Yes, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) is that good. Director Guillermo del Toro, he of Hellboy fame, was clearly out to prove that given solid material, sufficient devotion, and a lack of Hollywood oversight, he could deliver a contender.

True, Pan does invite several divisive questions, such as why must contemporary filmed violence be so jarringly graphic? Del Toro loves jets of blood almost as much as that eternal child-man, Quentin Tarantino, and he indulges himself more than once along his tale’s labyrinthine path. But is it necessary?  Does the vivid bloodletting aid the narrative? Pan is a hybrid, true, a film about war and revolution, and such chronicles cannot easily avoid bloodshed. But as anyone who has ever seen Pan’s sewing and stitching scene can attest, this movie achieves prime “I can’t look!” status. It’s visceral; it hurts.

Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) also begs a second question, perhaps even more sinister: is it allowable to put a child (or child character) into such peril? Pan doesn’t pull its punches. Our heroine, young Ofelia (played with no affectation whatsoever by Ivana Baquero), is in mortal danger throughout this film, and unlike, say, Harry Potter or Buffy (Slayer of the Dentally Challenged Undead), there is no guarantee she will survive.

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