Search Results for: changa

The Lost Level by Brian Keene

Comments 2 comments

Lost worlds, pocket universes, dimensional traveling: these are things that warm my heart. Barsoom, the World of Tiers, and the Land of the Lost are places I want to see. A sword-swinging hero and warrior princess, well that’s pretty great by me. If your reactions are like mine then you are Brian Keene’s target audience for The Lost Level (2015), his love song to a certain kind of glorious pulp adventure that there aren’t enough of anymore. On the acknowledgements page he spells out…

Read More Read More

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

Comments 1 comment

If there was a predominate topic last month at Black Gate, it was unquestionably the Hugo Awards. Black Gate was nominated for a Hugo Award for the first time this year — an honor we declined on April 19. The Awards were presented at the World Science Fiction Convention on August 22, and our coverage of the awards and its immediate aftermath, written by me and Jay Maynard, produced the top three BG articles in August. In fact, those three…

Read More Read More

The Perfect Prescription for Perdition: Doctors in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

Comments 1 comment

Doctors in Hell Heroes in Hell, Volume 18 Edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris Perseid Press (336 pages, $19.98 in trade paperback, $7.92 digital, June 23, 2015) Cover: Pandemonium, John Martin (1789-1854), circa 1841, oil on canvas, from private collection. Cover design by Sonja Aghabekian Be careful to preserve your health. It is a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they…

Read More Read More

Dragon’s Rook (The Lost Sword, Book 1) by Keanan Brand

Comments 1 comment

Let me start by stating that I am an inconsistent person with inconsistent tastes and opinions. I tend to get overly emphatic and dramatic when discussing things I like or dislike. In the light of what I’m about to write about Keanan Brand’s epic fantasy novel, Dragon’s Rook, I need to look back and see how many times I disparaged thick books and those set in European-styled worlds. Because that’s exactly what Brand’s book is and I really enjoyed it….

Read More Read More

Celebrating 1 Million Page Views: The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

Comments 5 comments

We invited America into our home last month to sit down and talk about fantasy, and America showed up. It stuck around too, peeking under the couch cushions and rooting around in the back of the fridge. By the end of July, the Black Gate servers had racked up 1.1 million page views — a new record for us, and the first time we’ve ever crossed a million. We’re celebrating a bit this month, but not too hard. Because America…

Read More Read More

A Look Into the Heart of the Great Continent: Milt Davis’ Woman of the Woods

Comments 1 comment

Sword and Soul is a genre that embraces the pulp-style action and adventure of Sword and Sorcery with the world-building of Heroic and Epic Fantasy. It was born in the 1970s, when famed author Charles Saunders created Imaro, the first black fantasy hero in Sword and Sorcery fiction. Using the diverse mythologies, religions, histories, and traditions of Africa and its many ancient cultures, Sword and Soul offers us a look into the heart of that great continent and the rich…

Read More Read More

Sword and Soul Revisited

Comments 19 comments

Five years ago, I embarked on a writing and publishing journey, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream. By doing so, I unknowingly became a part of a legacy that began long before I decided to set fingers to keys to write my first novel. Decades earlier, Charles R. Saunders sat before a different type of keyboard to create a character that added an important perspective to sword and sorcery, Imaro.  His motivation was similar to mine, although we came to the same…

Read More Read More

How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

Comments 10 comments

It was the summer of 1969. Very much like the one described in the song by Bryan Adams. I quit the rock and roll band I’d been playing with since high school, went to work with my Dad, and had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings; a year earlier, while still in high school, I’d read The Hobbit. Now, after completing my magical journey through Middle-earth, I was totally hooked. I had found a liking — no, a…

Read More Read More