Michaele Jordan Reviews Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations

Michaele Jordan Reviews Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations

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dark_tales_artDark Tales of Lost Civilizations: An Anthology of Horror and Speculative Fiction Stories Unearthing our Forgotten Worlds and Societies
Edited by Eric J. Guignard
Dark Moon Books (pp 241, 25 stories, $14.37 trade paperback, February 2012)
Reviewed by Michaele Jordan

Many readers might think they knew what to expect from this book, just from the title. They would be wrong. Mr. Guignard does an astonishing job of expanding the apparent range of his title into a varied and colorful collection of almost everything under the sun, or rather, everything hidden away from the sun.

Who knew there were so many kinds of lost civilizations? The civilizations visited in these stories range from historically documented civilizations—either trampled under the march of history, as in Jamie Lackey’s story, “Quetzalcoatl’s Conquistador,” or active participants in the trampling, as in “The Funeral Procession” by Jay R. Thurston—to the entirely mythical, like that of “Gilgamesh and the Mountain” by Bruce L. Priddy. In between these two extremes, we find an intriguing half historical, half legendary lost society in Jackson Kuhl’s “Quivira”.

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Art of the Genre: The Old School Renaissance

Art of the Genre: The Old School Renaissance

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When old is new again, the reprints of 1E AD&D by WotC
When old is new again: The reprints of 1E AD&D by WotC
Almost two years ago I got fed up with rules. Well, sure, I’ve probably never been one to take rules seriously anyway, but in RPGs they can become cumbersome very quickly. This is probably one of the biggest knocks on D&D 3rd Edition, although I was still taken with the game the moment I laid eyes on it.

Since 2000, I’d regularly played 3rd Edition in some form or other, either in 3.5 or Pathfinder, and found the boundless customizations, prestige classes, skills, and feats an addictive agent as my gaming world grew. Still, at some point, all the calculations begin to wear on you and you long for the ‘good old days’ when leveling up a character meant rolling for hit points, checking every third level to see if your saving throws went down, or adding a spell or two.

This feeling of being overburdened came to a head in 2011 as I decided I’d take down my long unused and dusty 1E AD&D tomes from the shelf where they looked longingly at me day after day. There, amid the wonder of my youth, I rediscovered the simplicity of the original Gygax and Arneson texts.

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Solomon Kane Crosses the Atlantic to U.S. Movie Theaters in September

Solomon Kane Crosses the Atlantic to U.S. Movie Theaters in September

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solomon-kane-alternate-us-posterUpdate: My review.

Next month, we colonials will finally have the chance to view Solomon Kane, the film version of Robert E. Howard’s famous puritanical hero, in movie theaters. It has been a long sea voyage over the Atlantic: the movie, directed by Michael J. Bassett and starring James Purefoy in the title role, and co-starring Max von Sydow, Rachel Hurd-Wood, and the late Pete Postelthwaite, was released in England and other territories in 2009, but lacked a U.S. distributor. I almost gave up on the movie getting any kind of theatrical release, and expected it would one day find its way to the straight-to-DVD/Blu-ray market.

However, last week, Michael J. Bassett announced on his blog that the Weinstein Company’s new division, Radius Films, had acquired Solomon Kane and would release it first on premium video-on-demand (already available if you want to spring for it) and then give it a theatrical release on September 28th. So mark the date and sharpen your rapier, people of the New World.

No word yet on how wide a release this will be, but I expect it will be “limited”: select theaters in major US cities. As a Los Angeles resident, I’m confident I’ll have it within easy driving range (I live in one of the most heavily theater-populated places in the city, and I can even guess right now which theater it will show at.)

Bassett’s comments on the release pattern:

I currently have no details on the extent of that theatrical run but I suspect it will be what’s called “key” areas — so probably 15 or so cities in the US. Not world beating and it’s going to need lots of support to find the audience but there’ll be enough interest to hopefully put Kane back on the map and in a place where we can sensibly talk of sequels.

Sequels! Ambitious. Not holding my breath.

Bassett also unveiled the amazing alternate poster for the US release, seen here. I’m in love with it: the pulp adoration dripping like the blood from this illustration is intoxicating. I want it on my wall now.

What about the movie itself? Since it’s been available in many English-speaking territories for three years and to anyone who had a region-free DVD or Blu-ray player, there are already numerous reviews and opinions on the ‘net. Here are two of them. Opinions I’ve heard from those I’ve personally talked to range from “dark and great!” to “Howard and Solomon Kane in name only.” Since I haven’t seen the movie, I have no observations to make at the moment, but those who have please weigh in on the comment thread.

Nonetheless, I will be in the theater on September 28 and will give Black Gate readers my opinion soon after.

Lord of the Crooked Paths: A Novel’s Odyssey from Print to Ebook

Lord of the Crooked Paths: A Novel’s Odyssey from Print to Ebook

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lord-of-the-crooked-paths-smallThe electronic publishing revolution not only promises convenience, low prices, and the availability of “every book ever published in every language” (in the words of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos), but also offers writers like myself the opportunity to undo past missteps in the print-publishing world.

Lord of the Crooked Paths, a fantasy of adventure, love, and intrigue set among the elder gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, certainly had its share of mishaps on its journey from manuscript to paperback to ebook.

The novel began with the intersection of two ideas: Greek mythology and the historical novel. I’ve loved Greek myths since I discovered Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in high school. A college course in Classics deepened that affection, and over the following years I found myself slowly seeking out the original sources in translation. Around the same time, I began reading Alexandre Dumas’ wonderful, action- and suspense-filled historical novels.

What would happen, I wondered, if one applied the techniques of the historical novel to the mythology of ancient Greece? Not retelling familiar hero tales, but fresh, new fictional stories the reader could not already know, set against a background of accurate (“historical”) myth, with fantasy elements treated as fact and the gods themselves as the principal characters?

The obvious place to begin was as near the beginning as possible, during the Age of the Titans, and my prior reading probably represented a generous portion of the required research. In my more grandiose moments, I envisioned a sequence of perhaps ten long novels that would present the entire range of divine myth, from the Titans to the death of Pan in Roman times.

My 600-page manuscript took a year and a half to write. During the nearly three years that followed, I queried some twenty-five publishers (mostly “mainstream”) who were in solid agreement that the story wasn’t for them.

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The Wily Dalilah: Arabian Nights Feminist

The Wily Dalilah: Arabian Nights Feminist

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arabian-nights1

In a work as varied as The Arabian Nights there are naturally some portions more popular than others, probably because some are more easily adapted into standalone tales of adventure. I think we in the West are more familiar with the Nights as a concept than a whole, and many of us have only read or watched adaptions of the most famous of the tales.

Don’t presume that means that the best of the stories have all been filmed and that there is no point reading the rest. There are plenty of excellent, lesser known yarns within, and surely part of the fun of reading the nights is watching the puzzle box interrelation of stories within stories within stories. Admittedly, there are some portions that I don’t like as well and don’t revisit, as with any short story anthology, and many people feel the same, although you’re likely to get a slightly different list of favorites from whomever you speak with.

Today I want to draw attention to one of my favorite sections, “The Wily Dalilah and Her Daughter Zaynab.” If you’ve ever read my musings, you might expect this to be a tale of swashbuckling adventure set in distant locales, swimming with magic rings and djinn and evil wizards. “The Wily Dalilah,” though, is set only in Baghdad, and there is no magic to speak of within the entire story. There are no daring princes with swords, or mysteries, only a clever old woman running a series of con games. Over the course of the narrative, Dalilah, with occasional aid from Zaynab, foments so much trouble in Baghdad that she draws down the attention of the caliph himself.

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New Treasures: Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill

New Treasures: Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill

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dead-reckoning2July is a special month in the O’Neill household, and not just because it’s summer. All three of my children were born in July, which means it’s a month of birthday cake, party planning, and a lot of exchanging gifts.

My kids are readers, and one of the gifts they traditionally receive from aunts and uncles is book store gift certificates. So every year, at the end of July, we trek to the local Barnes & Noble where my children each bring home a stack of books. For Tim, the oldest, it’s usually manga — this year as many Fullmetal Alchemist volumes as he could find. Taylor is harder to predict, although she’s developed a fondness for manga herself, especially Inuyahsa and Hollow Fields. The middle one, Drew, is a little more adventurous, and this year he parked himself in front of the teen section and spent long minutes agonizing over the selection.

One of the titles he picked out caught my eye as well: Dead Reckoning, a zombie western from two much-loved fantasy writers with a history of successful collaboration. This one looks like a lot of fun, and I might read it as soon as he’s done.

It’s 1867. And something truly monstrous is breaking loose in West Texas.

Jett Gallatin expects trouble in Alsop, Texas, but not zombies. She’s looking for her lost twin brother when she enters a dusty saloon that suddenly is attacked by an army of the undead.

Together with her new friends — one a brilliant inventor, one a clever and good-looking young scout — it’s everything she can do to keep the zombies from killing or taking every living soul in their path. But who could possibly desire to control such an army? And what is it they want from the wild Texas frontier?

Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill have written more than a dozen books together, including the Shadow Grail novels and six volumes of the Bedlam’s Bard series.

Dead Reckoning was published in June by Bloomsbury. It is 324 pages in hardcover for $16.99 ($13.99 for the digital edition).

The Bones of the Old Ones Inches Closer to December Publication Date

The Bones of the Old Ones Inches Closer to December Publication Date

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bones-of-the-old-onesThis week the most exciting item to arrive at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, bar none, was the Advance Reading Copy of Howard Andrew Jones’s The Bones of the Old Ones, the sequel to his breakout fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls.

I read The Bones of the Old Ones the instant I could get my hands on it, and it was everything I hoped it would be. A rollicking adventure that follows our heroes Dabir and Asim in a daring quest across the landscape of 8th Century Arabia, Bones is packed with ancient secrets, underground lairs, dread pacts, mysterious sorcery, desperate heroism, and moments of laugh-out-loud humor. The cast is much larger than The Desert of Souls, and the stakes are higher, as Dabir and Asim race against time to prevent an ancient sorcerous cabal from plunging the world into eternal winter:

Combining the masterful fantasy of Robert E . Howard with the high-speed action of Bernard Cornwell, Howard Andrew Jones breathes new life into the glittering tradition of sword-and-sorcery with the latest tale of Dabir and Asim’s adventures. As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years…

The Bones of the Old Ones will be released in hardcover and eBook by Thomas Dunne Books on December 11. It is 307 pages of non-stop action for $24.99 ($12.99 digital), and gets my highest recommendation. Place your advance order now.

Vintage Treasures: A Box of 1950s SF and Fantasy Magazines, and the End of the First Era of Space Exploration

Vintage Treasures: A Box of 1950s SF and Fantasy Magazines, and the End of the First Era of Space Exploration

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july-ebay-lot2

I bought a box of 1950s SF and fantasy digests in an online auction at the end of July, an assortment of chiefly lesser-known magazines such as Imagination, Worlds of Tomorrow, Fantastic Universe, and Imaginative Tales. The box has been sitting in my library for three weeks while I puttered around it, like an unopened Christmas present. I finally unpacked it this morning. Just as I’d hoped, it was filled with wonders.

Holding these the day after the death of Neil Armstrong gives me the powerful sense of the passage of history. Every one of these magazines was published before Armstrong walked on the moon — in most cases at least a decade before. The era of space exploration, with all its incredible promise and danger, was firmly in mankind’s future. Looking at them now, as the first era of space exploration draws to a close with the death of its most famous hero at age 82, I feel like I’m looking back through not one but two eras, to a time when landing on the moon was something that many still scoffed at. When the future was a place where robots carried guns, aliens were green-skinned and wore khakis, and housewives walked alien dogs who didn’t know what to do with a fire hydrant.

Even setting aside all the musings on history, there’s still a lot of wonder packed into these yellowing pages. Marvelous artwork, and even more marvelous stories, from some of the brightest lights in the genre. This box of 20 magazines, which I purchased for 48 bucks, is a splendid sampling of some of the best work of the decade.

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Josepha Sherman, December 12, 1946 – August 23, 2012

Josepha Sherman, December 12, 1946 – August 23, 2012

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the-shattered-oath2Reports are pouring in that prolific fantasy writer Josepha Sherman, author of The Prince of the Sidhe novels and numerous licensed tie-in books, died on Thursday. She had been in poor health and struggled with dementia in the final years of her life.

Sherman began her career writing for The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, the animated Space Western TV series that ran between 1986 and 1989. Her first standalone fantasy novel was Golden Girl and the Crystal of Doom (1986). It was followed by more than a dozen others, including the Compton Crook Award winner The Shining Falcon (1990).

She began a lengthy and productive career writing tie-in novels for popular television and computer gaming properties in 1986 with The Invisibility Factor (Find Your Fate Junior Transformers, No 9). She produced licensed novels for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, Bard’s Tale, Highlander, Mage Knight, and Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. She also published All I Need To Know I Learned From Xena: Warrior Princess (1998), Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood (with T. K. F. Weisskopf, 1995), Mythology for Storytellers (2002), and more than 30 other non-fiction titles.

Sherman was also a prolific editor with eleven anthologies under her belt, beginning with A Sampler of Jewish-American Folklore (1992) and including Trickster Tales: Forty Folk Stories from Around the World (1996), Urban Nightmares (with Keith R.A. DeCandido, 1997), Merlin’s Kin: World Tales of the Heroic Magician (1998), and Young Warriors: Stories Of Strength (with Tamora Pierce, 2005).

Sherman frequently wrote in collaboration, producing more than a dozen books with a variety of talented partners including Susan M Shwartz (5 Star Trek novels), Laura Anne Gilman (2 Buffy novels), Mercedes Lackey (Bard’s Tale and Bardic Choices), Keith R.A. DeCandido (one anthology), Tamora Pierce (one anthology), T K F Weisskopf (one non-fiction book), and many others.

Writers including Pat Cadigan, Keith DeCandido, Theodora Goss, Nick Pollotta, Vera Nazarian, Ellen Kushner, and David B. Coe have been leaving testimonials on her Facebook page.

Steamgothic

Steamgothic

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steamgothicSteampunk is a literary subgenre that has also sprouted a lifestyle that encompasses fashion, music, and art based loosely on a philosophy of hands-on, do-it-yourselfness in an age of touchscreen virtual experience. To my knowledge, Sean McMullen’s “Steamgothic” is the first steampunk story that is also about the sensibility of the steampunk community. The narrator is an expert restorer of steam engines whose day job is to customize ultralight aircraft motors. He’s approached by a couple who have possession of an 1852 Aeronaute, a steam-powered aircraft which, had it actually flown, would predate the Wright Brothers by a half-century. He’s invited to participate in a restoration with the intent of proving this possibility. The initiative becomes the subject of a reality TV show called The Aeronauteers, and plenty of drama ensues, much of it more human than mechanically-related, with hidden motivations gradually revealed beyond postulating how if the Aeronaute had actually flown, would history have changed?

Recommended reading, even if you have only a slight interest in how the cogs actually turn. You can find it in the current Interzone.