Charles R. Saunders Reviews A Desert of Souls

Charles R. Saunders Reviews A Desert of Souls

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desertofsoulsCharles R. Saunders, author of the legendary Imaro books, has weighed in on Howard Andrew Jones’s first novel:

What, then, is so special about The Desert of Souls? Well, just about everything.

Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the Middle East during the initial bloom of Islam’s ascendance, Howard brings to life the storied past of places such as Baghdad, Basra, Mosul… To this tapestry of history, Howard adds several threads of sorcery…

The protagonists and the patron become involved in a fatal encounter in a local bazaar. Events swiftly escalate into a maelstrom of murder, theft, escape, pursuit, magic, mayhem, romance, rejection and redemption, The characters — and the reader — whirl along in a breakneck journey through a Middle East that is ancient, yet well beyond the cusp of irreversible change…

Yet for all this homage to the past, Howard also breaks new ground with this novel, which places him firmly among the ranks of such new-wave sword-and-sorcery writers as Joe Abercrombie, James Enge and Steven Erikson, to name just a few. Remember Howard Andrew Jonses’ name. You will be hearing — and reading — more from him.

Charles’ review joins the recent rave coverage from BookPage, Bush League Critic, and SF Revu.

You can read Charles’ complete review here.

These Just In…

These Just In…

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feb-2011-cover-web2 The first Realms of Fantasy resurrected under new publishers, Damnation Books, for February 2011 features the fiction of Desirina Bokovich, Richard Parks, Mark Rigney, Pauline J. Alms and Scott William Carter.  The last has a story entitled “The Time of His Life” which is described as:

It’s so difficult to find time for yourself amid the demands of family and work.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could just carve some out?  Maybe, maybe not.

Realms of Fantasy tends to favor a wee bit too much of fairy land for my tastes  (an unfair criticism, since that is, after all, a large part of its niche), but this sounded different and intriguing enough to get my immediate attention. Who after, all, hasn’t fantasized about having some private place to get away from it all?

In this case, the narrator discovers a room in which he can spend as much time as he wants on creative pursuits, but only minutes have gone by when he returns to the real life of kids and bitchy wife and work.  A Twilight Zone kind of tale that’s ultimately about resisting the allures of temptation and self-gratification.  The wife’s transformation from bitch to loving partner isn’t quite believable, though perhaps Williams is suggesting this has less to do with the wife’s actual attitude than the husband’s perception. And he does get right the marital tension between two equally tired (but for different reasons) partners with young children.  

black-static-291However, I have to wonder what the editors do here at this magazine.  Okay, maybe you can make an argument that intense cold could actually scorch, though I tend to associate it with extreme heat. But racing minds, chills going up a spine, the mere mention of a shudder should send off alarm bells to break out the red pencils and clean up clumsy phrasing that mars an otherwise decent story.

Horror magazine Black Static for February-March 2011 has new tales from V. H. Leslie, Ray Cluley, Maura McHugh, Ed Grabianowski and James Cooper.  In the “first lines that hook you into the story” department, here’s the opening to McHugh’s “Water”:

“The pot lids hopped and fizzed when Mark’s mother laid the wooden spoon down calmly, opened the back door of the kitchen, disappeared into the overgrown garden, and drowned herself in the river that flowed past their house.”

True horror lies not in the stuff of sexy vampires or ghost stories or chainsaw massacres, but within the mundane context of ordinary existence.

R.A. Lafferty Literary Estate For Sale

R.A. Lafferty Literary Estate For Sale

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past-masterSteven Silver at SF Site is reporting that the estate of R.A. Lafferty, including rights to his 29 novels and 225 short stories, is currently being auctioned off.

The source for the news appears to be an online classified ad at Locus Online, which claims that the “Current bid is $70,000+.”

R.A. Lafferty is the author of the novels Past Master, The Reefs of Earth, Fourth Mansions, and Sindbad: The Thirteenth Voyage, as well as the classic short story collections Nine Hundred Grandmothers, Strange Doings, and Lafferty in Orbit.

He won a Hugo Award in 1973 for the short story “Eurema’s Dam,” and was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Past Master.

He died in 2002.

900-grandReports have been circulating for some time that the Lafferty estate had withdrawn reprint rights to all of his work, including recent short story collections. While Lafferty’s novels have not generally drawn much attention in recent years, his short stories continue to be highly regarded.

Until recently Wildside Press had been keeping much of Lafferty’s best work in print, including Nine Hundred Grandmothers, The Devil is Dead, The Reefs of Earth, Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add?, and many others. Those editions are now out of print.

While it’s not unusual  for literary rights to go to auction, I can’t recall seeing a bulk lot of an author’s entire output auctioned at once — especially one as large as Lafferty’s.

Interested bidders can contact the Lafferty estate.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Seven – “Cragmire Tower”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Seven – “Cragmire Tower”

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3306898731_67e5eb0109“Cragmire Tower” was the seventh installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on July 17, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 21-23 of the second Fu-Manchu novel, The Devil Doctor first published in the UK in 1916 by Cassell and in the US by McBride & Nast under the variant title, The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

returnPicking up where the last installment left off, the story gets underway with Inspector Weymouth’s fruitless raid on J. Salaman’s antique shop which has now been abandoned by Fu-Manchu and his gang. Nayland Smith rapidly informs Petrie that the American adventurer and psychic investigator Kegan Van Roon is completing a book about his experiences in China where he ran afoul of a fanatical group in Ho-Nan. Van Roon has leased Cragmire Tower in Somersetshire to finish his book. Naturally, Smith believes Van Roon’s life is in jeopardy as Fu-Manchu will not wish him to finish the book for publication.

Of course, Rohmer is repeating himself for Van Roon reads like a variation on Sir Lionel Barton and Cragmire Tower recalls Reverend Eltham’s beloved Redmoat. The familiarity of the trappings does little to spoil the proceedings for this is Rohmer at his peak and sees him introducing an occult element to the series. Rohmer had a lifelong fascination with the occult and secret societies. “Cragmire Tower” remains unique in its successful blend of Yellow Peril thriller with supernatural mystery.

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Drinking in the Demonic Energy of Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

Drinking in the Demonic Energy of Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

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legend-of-sigurd-gudrunIf you like the sound and rhythm of words — and if you’re a hopeless J.R.R. Tolkien junkie — you’ll like The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun (2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Lacking either of these prerequisites, you probably won’t. And there’s not much more to say than that.

Casual Tolkien fans likely won’t buy The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and even semi-serious fans who have tackled The Silmarillion may lack the appetite for it. It consists of two long poems, around which are sandwiched an exhaustive introduction and a pair of lengthy explications/footnotes, the latter written by Tolkien’s son Christopher. Added together, this additional material is longer than the poems themselves.

The real reward of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is its wonderful language. The poems—“The Lay of the Volsungs” and “The Lay of Gudrun”—are composed in eight line alliterative stanzaic metre. Reading them makes me wish I knew the native Old Norse Tolkien of which Tolkien spoke so admiringly; the modern English is pretty darned powerful already.

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The DRAGONS are coming…

The DRAGONS are coming…

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Great news for fans of epic fantasy today: The great George R. R. Martin has announced on his web page that the long, long-awaited 5th book in his SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series is almost done. No kidding this time.

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS will be hitting stories on July 12, 2011. Although previous dates have been set and then cancelled, Martin says this one is “for real.”

In the author’s own words: “Barring tsunamis, general strikes, world wars, or asteroid strikes, you will have the novel in your hands on July 12.  I hope you like it.”

He goes on to add:  “The dragons are coming.  Prepare to dance.”

Quite possibly THE “big adult fantasy series” of our time, Martin’s SONG series has been a slow build with plenty of thrilling lesser climaxes along the way. We’ve seen the rebirth of three infant dragons into a world where they were thought extinct. We’ve seen the displaced queen whose power is rising and whose sympathetic magic hatched the eggs. We’ve seen them on her shoulder, belching tiny fires. Now it seems we will at last see the great war that has been building so steadily across the four books.

Martin’s characters are so pleasurable to read—even the villains—that returning to his world of Westeros is always an extreme pleasure. This summer just got a whole lot more interesting…

For more info visit Martin’s official site: www.georgerrmartin.com

Goth Chick News: Rubber (Need I Say More?)

Goth Chick News: Rubber (Need I Say More?)

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image004Okay, let’s be honest. I knew full well when I started writing a blog called “Goth Chick News” that I’d be putting out the welcome mat for all manner of weirdness. I’m used to the emails containing cadaver pictures, links to vampire porn sites and invitations to underground parties to which everyone apparently is expected to wear leather riding tack.

At this point I’m fairly unflappable and difficult to impress.

It’s to be expected when, until 2009, Googling “goth chick” lead you straight to several pages of sites that at best required you to swear you were over 18, and at worse required a credit card.

However, once in awhile I get an email that makes even me wonder WTF?

And those, my friends, are rare and wonderful moments indeed; like the one earlier this week I received an email containing an ad for a soon-to-be-released indy film called Rubber.

Granted, at first this correspondence nearly got flushed, being understandably mistaken for yet another solicitation of an “adult” nature. But luckily, fueled by the third triple-shot latte of the morning, and bored to sobs being in between batches of interns to abuse, I decided to roll the email-virus-dice and open it.

Major pay dirt.

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Steven Erikson Calls it a Series with The Crippled God

Steven Erikson Calls it a Series with The Crippled God

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gardens_of_the_moonSteven Erikson has completed his epic fantasy 10-book fantasy series The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The final volume — the 928-page The Crippled God, in hardcover from Tor books — went on sale yesterday.

I remember when my buddy Neil Walsh reviewed the first volume, Gardens of the Moon, for my new website SF Site a dozen years ago. Copies weren’t available in North America yet, but that didn’t stop Neil from remarking on what he told me was the most exciting new author he’d discovered in a long time:

This is an astounding debut fantasy novel. The world is fully realized and the characters are people you want to spend time with. The world history is tremendously complex, spanning hundreds of thousands of years. The character histories and interactions are equally complex and interesting…

Unsurprisingly, it’s only the first of The Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. There are 10 books planned — wait, don’t go yet. Hear me out. There are 10 books planned in the “sequence,” but each is intended to be a stand-alone story, unified by their chronicling of the lives of 3 members of the noble house of Paran, each of whom plays a key role in the history of the Malazan Empire. (In this one, Captain Ganoes Paran plays a key role by being knifed in an alley the same day he is assigned to his new command. Well, there’s actually a lot more to his involvement than that, but… read it and see.)

So, I imagine you’re wondering, “Is it true? Is this a stand-alone novel?”

Well, let’s call a spade a spade. This isn’t the first in a 10-book “sequence;” it’s the first of a lengthy, complex and intriguing series. But a series which — based on this first installment — has the potential to become known as a defining work in a market already overwhelmed with fantasy series.

the-crippled-godSome time later The New York Times reported on the unusual internet buzz that had sprung up around the book, and the effect it had on the reported 6-figure sum Erikson negotiated to complete the series. Erikson called Neil in Ottawa shortly afterwards to thank him, and I saw quotes from his review printed in bold at the top of later installments. And just as Neil predicted over a decade ago, The Malazan Book of the Fallen has become one of the defining fantasy works of the early 21st Century.

As for me, I decided to wait until the series was completed before tackling it (a lesson I learned from Game of Thrones).  I dutifully bought them as they were released, forming an impressive span on my bookshelf, looking forward to that final volume.  A span that, if my math is correct, measures exactly 10,020 pages in paperback. And so now I’ve learned another valuable lesson: waiting until the end isn’t always a brilliant plan, genius. When am I going to find six months to read it?

I may have painted myself into a corner, but hopefully you haven’t. Have a look at The Crippled God, and let us know if you think it makes a fitting conclusion to a famous fantasy series.

Hadestown: An Interview with Artist Peter Nevins

Hadestown: An Interview with Artist Peter Nevins

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bgalbumcoverOnce upon a time last November, I quoted a Greg Brown song in my LiveJournal. Greg Brown is a folk musician, and the song was “Rexroth’s Daughter,” from the album Covenant.

Now, if you know me, none of this is surprising. I often write in my LiveJournal, and I often quote Greg Brown, and yes, the song I most often quote is “Rexroth’s Daughter” — because every stanza is amazing!!!

So I was going along, being me, business as usual, when all of a sudden, an LJ friend said unto me:

“I know Greg Brown from Hadestown… which, Oh em jee, Claire, is just the most wonderful folk rock opera ever. It’s a retelling of the Orpheus story. He lures Eurydice to the underworld in “Hey Little Songbird.” I heard this song and fell in love with him. And bought the album and listen to it constantly.”

bghades1After hearing “Hey, Little Songbird,” I sort of gallumphed over to Amazon and laid all my pretty pennies down in a row.

“MINE!” I said, like the seagulls in Little Nemo.

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New Treasures: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London

New Treasures: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London

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rivers-of-londonOne of the great things about Amazon.com is that there are so many ways to browse. Which is rather ironic, considering that 10 years ago that’s the precise reason I confidently gave for why online booksellers would never replace local bookshops: you couldn’t browse.

Yeah, well. I was wrong.  You can browse.  And how. Last week I stumbled across a few hard-to-find British hardcovers in the Science Fiction & Fantasy section of their Bargain Department, and on a hunch I did a search for all titles from Gollancz, the prolific UK SF & fantasy publisher. I sorted by price and bam, I had a handy list of great bargain Gollancz books.

One that grabbed my attention immediately was Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London, in hardcover for just $14.56:

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit – we do paperwork so real coppers don’t have to – and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.

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