Chris Braak Reviews Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5)

Chris Braak Reviews Princep’s Fury (Codex Alera #5)

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princeps-furyPrinceps’ Fury
Jim Butcher
Ace (740 pp, $9.99, November 2008 – November 2009 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

In 2004, Jim Butcher, author of the wildly successful Dresden Files, dropped a new epic fantasy series into the market. The Codex Alera series, which began with The Furies of Calderon, was a fascinating mash-up of imperial Roman culture, elementalist magic, monsters and politics. Princeps’ Fury is the fifth and newest volume in that series.

The book is written with Butcher’s characteristic wit and dynamite pacing. The main characters — Tavi and his friend Max, in particular — are almost invariably entertaining just to read. There is no shortage of tense moments, thrumming tension, and fierce joy when the heroes manage to outsmart or outmaneuver the seemingly-invincible villains. In Princeps’ Fury, Tavi — now the eponymous Princeps of the empire of Alera — fulfills his promise to return the lycanthropic Canim soldiers that his legions negotiated peace with in the previous novel to their homes on the other side of the sea. Once there, he discovers the Canim empire nearly annihilated by the Vord, a race of hive-minded insects that have been threatening Alera throughout the series.

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Art of the Genre: The Humor of Will McLean

Art of the Genre: The Humor of Will McLean

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I’ve managed to do a couple of posts in a row on serious topics, and although there is certainly a place for serious things in fantasy [ask Joe Abecrombie as he is the current villain of all things serious in fantasy] I like the fact that fantasy can, and should be, funny.

false-move-254Now I’m not talking Terry Pratchett funny, who I don’t really find to be that funny, and I’m also not talking Robert Asprin funny, but more along the lines of visually funny. To me, the art of gaming and fantasy began in a time when people like Gary Gygax were struggling to define what it meant to be a fantasy role-player and just was that should ‘look like’.

By the late 1970s RPG art was pretty comic book inspired, and although it went to realism with Elmore, Easley, and Parkinson, that didn’t mean that the people actually playing the games were losing hours of sleep wondering how the socio-economic events of returning to their player-character villages with massive amounts of gold would actually negatively impact the lives of the citizenry from an inflationary standpoint.

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Dark Humor and False Floors: A Review of Runebound

Dark Humor and False Floors: A Review of Runebound

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Runebound-smallA couple of years ago I was really jonesing for some good old-fashioned tabletop fantasy role playing, but I was without a group and didn’t have the time to run a solo game for my wife. Then, like a beam from heaven, we received Runebound 2nd Edition for Christmas 2009. For the next few months, pretty much any time we had a couple hours of free time, my wife would ask, “Runebound?”

Oh, yeah.

Runebound is a board game of fantasy adventure. Each player takes on the role of one from a dozen (mostly unsavory) heroes, travels the map, faces challenges of ever-increasing difficulty, gains skill and treasure, and visits cities to heal, buy items and hire allies. The goal is to be the hero who defeats the great dragon Lord Margath before he can once again rise to power. (And if he can’t be found, snuffing three other dragons will do.)

The game board is a map that would catch Bilbo’s interest, with regional names (Howling Giant Hills, Moonglow Marsh) scattered liberally about that have zero effect on game play. Each hex has one of five terrain types. To move you roll five (when healthy) movement dice. A movement die is six-sided, with each face containing two or three terrain symbols. Spending a die with the appropriate terrain symbol showing allows you to move into a hex of that type. The odds of rolling each type vary, and on many turns a player is left weighing where she eventually wants to go against where she can get right now.

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Robert Rowe Reviews the Judge Dredd RPG

Robert Rowe Reviews the Judge Dredd RPG

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Mock.indd

In this gaming review from Black Gate 14, Robert Rowe explores the world of Mega-city, the home of “the law,” Judge Dredd. I admit that I personally have never read the comic and am one of those sorry souls who only know of Judge Dredd through the Stallone film, but this review makes me want to explore the world in a bit more depth.

Judge Dredd

Lawrence Whitaker
Mongoose Publishing (268 pages, $49.95, 2009)
Reviewed by Robert Rowe

Judge Dredd is an iconic comic book character – a marvelous piece of fascist certainty in the absurdly dystopic future of Mega-City One. This new book from Mongoose Publishing is the third attempt to recreate Dredd’s world for role-players. The first was a stand-alone game, the second an RPG based on the d20 system, and this installment is a meaty tome based on the Traveller rules. Take note: you will need the Traveller Core Rulebook to play this version of Judge Dredd. As such, this game will benefit and/or suffer from the strengths and shortcomings of Traveller according to your own personal feelings about that system.

Onto the book itself. The production values are outstanding, treating the reader to full-color artwork from the inside cover’s world map of 2131 to the panorama of Mega-city one sprawled across the last page and back cover. The layout is clear and clean and after a very brief introduction jumps right into Judge creation.

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Desert of Souls: A Review

Desert of Souls: A Review

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bgdesertDesert of Souls, by Howard Andrew Jones.
Thomas Dunne Books (320 pages, $24.99, February 15, 2011)

As I write this, I’m listening to Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon, because sometimes Yo-Yo Ma’s cello just does things to a girl, you know? Anyway, it seems appropriate, so I thought I’d share.

First of all: Spoiler Alert. Probably minor ones, but you never can tell with me, so if you don’t want to know a few plot points, some specifics of the characters, interesting quotes and structural ramblings, please do not read further.

Second of all: I met the author once four years ago and have corresponded with him a few times, so there’s that. I am not an unbiased reader. But this is a blogicle for Black Gate Magazine, after all, and as we’re having a month-long celebration of Howard Andrew Jones over here, I don’t really think anyone expects me to be neutral!

…Hurray!

Third of all: I confess that I’d never read a Dabir and Asim story – in Black Gate or elsewhere – before this debut novel, so I came to it with no thought more profound than, “What pretty colors the cover has!” and “ Oh, great, now I want a scimitar too!”

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semicolonNo, the title of this post is not a typo.

I have recently spent some quality time pondering the most misunderstood of all punctuation marks: the semicolon. Specifically, what role should the semicolon play in fiction? If any?

If you cruise around Google a bit, you will find that most fiction writers come down hard on this strange Moreau of colon and comma. The post on this site is one example, and the writer quotes Kurt Vonnegut’s screed against the typographical mark: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

This shows that Mr. Vonnegut had very little faith in high school. You should know how to use a semicolon before you get to college, or else your English teachers have really been taking standing naps at the podium. (This colorful site does a nice rundown on usage.)

Okay, so I get the gist of it from the majority of fiction advisers: semicolon is sorta strange looking, works better in academic and nonfiction work, and writers can get the same grammatical effect by turning those independent clauses into two separate sentences. And there’s always the em dash (which could start up another debate.)

Except, right as I was reading over this advice, I immediately came across two books from major writers with the semicolon putting in a great amount of time — and doing amazing things.

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Frank M. Robinson’s Legendary Pulp Collection for Sale

Frank M. Robinson’s Legendary Pulp Collection for Sale

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incredible-pulpsOne of the largest and most impressive pulp collections in the world is now for sale.

Pulp historian and author Frank M. Robinson, whose books on pulps include The Incredible Pulps, Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines, and Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History, is selling his collection of nearly 10,000 pulps magazines. The sale will be conducted through John Gunnison’s Adventure House Auctions.

Adventure House has prepared a YouTube video showing a small sampling of the pulps in the collection, including Weird Tales, Spicy Mystery, The Thrill Book, Submarine Stories, Pirate Stories, and Doc Savage, here.

Highlights of the collection include rare pulps such as Ghost Stories, Miracle Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tales of Mystery and Imagination — and ultra-rare gems such as Gun Molls, Courtroom Stories, Saucy Movie Tale, Mystery Adventure, and the only only known copy of the June 1929 issue of Zeppelin Stories, which includes the near-legendary tale “Gorilla of the Gasbags.” 58 of the rarest issues in his collection are included in the MagazineArt Gallery (do a search on Frank M. Robinson).

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m glad the collection appears to be being kept together. But there’s no way I can buy it without winning a lottery.

I wonder if Patrick Rothfuss will offer to buy it for me.

Patrick Rothfuss Offers to help Nathan Fillion buy Firefly

Patrick Rothfuss Offers to help Nathan Fillion buy Firefly

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the-wise-manPatrick Rothfuss, whose second novel The Wise Man’s Fear was released last week, has published an open letter to Nathan Fillion in which he offers to assist the actor who played Captain Mal in his quest to buy the rights to Firefly:

Here’s the deal. My second book is about to come out. My publisher tells me there’s a decent chance of us selling a truly ridiculous number of copies. If this happens, I will have more money than I’ll know what to do with.

Except that’s not exactly true. I know exactly what I’d like to do with that money. I’d like to help you buy the rights to Firefly back from Fox…

Alone, all we can do is dream wistful dreams of Firefly’s return. Together, we are a team. We can gather others to our cause. With 20 or 30 of the right people, we could pool our resources and make this… happen.

You know where to find me.

Rothfuss’s first novel, The Name of the Wind, was released to wide acclaim in 2007. Both his novels are part of the Kingkiller Chronicles.

Fillion’s off-hand comment in his Feb 17 Entertainment Weekly interview (“If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to Firefly… and distribute it on the Internet”) has triggered enormous interest among fans who are hungry for any hope of the series’ return. Several fan efforts have sprung up to assist him, including helpnathanbuyfirefly.com.

It remains to be seen just how serious Fillion is, however (likely not very). Still, we can dream.

Rothfuss complete letter, published on his blog, is here.

King of the Nerds reviews Black Gate 14

King of the Nerds reviews Black Gate 14

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bglgMike Ferrante at the King of the Nerds blog has published a lengthy review of our latest issue:

Character driven stories with brisk pacing, often strange landscapes, and more often than not a boat load of action are what Black Gate is all about. It was a good time to jump on board with Black Gate since issue 14 (Winter 2010) is a double-stuffed issue clocking in at a massive 385 pages (in pdf), the print edition rivaling my 4th Edition Player’s Handbook in size. What’s most impressive about those 385 pages is the sheer amount of awesome fiction packed within… everything I’ve read has been fantastic in one way or another, and wonderfully unique as well.

He was especially impressed with “The Word of Azrael” by Matthew David Surridge:

By far my favorite story in this issue…  it was inspired by the snippets of biography that were featured in some of the old Conan novels.  As such “the Word of Azrael” reads sort of like a listing of deeds.  Brief highlights of a lengthy career that nonetheless serve as veritable seeds for the reader’s imagination.  Yet at the same time, in that sparse chronicle, Surridge still manages to convey a palpable weight to Isrohim Vey, a sense of gravitas and tragedy that a surround a character whom we know startlingly little about…  Fantastic stuff here and more than enough to make me damned glad I’m a Black Gate subscriber.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.16 “And Then There Were None”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.16 “And Then There Were None”

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SUPERNATURAL

This week starts out with a cute girl being picked up by a trucker, attempting to seduce him. But, fortunately, he loves Jesus and tries to save her, telling her that the void inside is searching for him. She laughs, talking about how God created him and abandoned him. Then she whispers a secret into his ear …

and he goes home and smashes in his family’s heads with a hammer.

Sam, Dean, and Bobby are on the case. Turns out there have been a series of hunters running into massive monster populations, with many hunter deaths. Dean observes that it’s a “straight kickline down I-80…. Looks to me like it’s a Sherman march monster mash.” The march seems to be heading straight to the town where a man bashed his family’s head in with a hammer.

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