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Like a Bridge Over (Sharon Shinn’s) Troubled Waters: A Review

Like a Bridge Over (Sharon Shinn’s) Troubled Waters: A Review

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The Thirteenth House (art by Donato Giancola)
The Thirteenth House (art by Donato Giancola)

Troubled Waters
By Sharon Shinn
Ace Hardcover [400 pages, October 5th, 2010, $24.95]

I periodically go through Sharon Shinn phases. The word “thrall” comes to mind.

These fiction-consuming frenzies may last several weeks. When they end, I usually shake my fists at the sky and vow never to do it again. Ever. No more staying up every night for days on end rereading the Twelve Houses books and the Samaria series and that Jane Eyre retelling, Jenna Starborn, or Summers at Castle Auburn, or The Shapechanger’s Wife, or, or…

It’s exhausting, I tell you! The woman renders “prolific” a gross understatement.

And then I was offered up Troubled Waters to review for Black Gate. I’m not saying I snatched it out of John O’Neill’s hands as from the maw of many-tentacled Cthulhu. Or glared at him when he tried to take it back. I merely assured him, very calmly, that, Yes, I would like to review it, and oh does that mean I get to keep this copy, really, how nice, and no, that is not slobber on my chin.

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Supernatural Returns – Episode 6.12 “Like a Virgin”

Supernatural Returns – Episode 6.12 “Like a Virgin”

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SUPERNATURALWhen we left Supernatural for its winter hiatus, Death had rescued Sam’s soul from where it was trapped with Lucifer and the Archangel Michael and placed it back into Sam’s body. (And I’d made several predictions about where the plot would go.)

We return to the series with the requisite opening monster attack … but let’s get to the important part: Sam’s got his soul back.

He’s unconscious, though, and Castiel can’t tell if he’ll ever wake up. He does, however, and doesn’t seem to remember anything that’s happened after he jumped into the pit with Lucifer & Mikey. (This is to be expected, because Death could only bring him back intact by “walling off” the part of his soul that remembered the torments inflicted upon him.)

Dean decides that Sam doesn’t need to know what’s happened, so tells him that he’s been in the hellish prison for a year and a half. He explains that Death brought Sam back, but doesn’t give further details. Bobby’s reluctant but does go along with the deception, although he makes it clear that Sam will figure it out eventually. (Turns out that eventually isn’t what it used to be.)

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We Are Gods, We Are Wolves: A Review of Shadow of the Torturer

We Are Gods, We Are Wolves: A Review of Shadow of the Torturer

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shadow1The Shadow of the Torturer
Gene Wolfe
Simon and Schuster (303 pages, 1980)

In the business of reading, which is as industrious and thankless a hobby as ever there was, there are opening lines and then there are melodies, words that ring like bells and stick in your mind, forever.

It was my fortune that a creature of the second sort happened on me one extremely lucky day, in a used bookstore on the last shelf of science fiction. First, it lured me out with its eerie title.

“Shadow of the Torturer?” said I, to myself, plucking the book off of the shelf. It is the first of four books by Gene Wolfe, and the cover of the little novel I held in my hand depicted a hooded man with a bare chest and a sword.

I thought, “What an odd profession, torturing. I mean. Can you even BE a torturer by profession?”

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Three – “The Avenue Mystery”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, Part Three – “The Avenue Mystery”

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lyonsfu1“The Avenue Mystery” was the third installment of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu and Company. The story was first published in Collier’s on February 6, 1915 and was later expanded to comprise Chapters 7-10 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.

mysteriousfu2While I hold political correctness in contempt recognizing it to be censorship under a different guise, it is inevitable that in revisiting books or films of the past one encounters racial or sexist stereotypes that are now offensive. I do not support banning a work or editing for content anymore than I support minimalizing the issues raised by their inclusion. A simple disclaimer noting offensive content is contained that reflects acceptable attitudes at the time of the work’s creation should suffice to address the matter.

Readers of pulp adventure or mystery fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are accustomed to offensive stereotypes of Asian, African, Italian, Greek, and Jewish characters among others. While Rohmer’s early Fu-Manchu stories contain a good deal less racial stereotyping of Asians than film adaptations or illustrations of the character would suggest; a lamentable streak of anti-Semitism runs through “The Avenue Mystery.” This fact is all the more regrettable because the Jewish character in question, Mr. Abel Slattin ranks among Rohmer’s finest bit players.
 

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Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

Twilight Sector & Astra Titanus

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astraWith Black Gate 15 just around the corner I thought I’d start devoting some time to some products that arrived too late for us to cover, or that just didn’t fit into an issue nearly as large as issue 14.

I was particularly taken by two science fiction titles. The first is a campaign setting, and while it utilizes the Mongoose Traveller rules, it’s in a completely different universe from Traveller itself.

The other is a solo tactical board game. If, like me, you name “The Doomsday Machine” as one of your favorite classic Star Trek episodes, it’s a must have, but it’s pretty darned cool even if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

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Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

Chris Braak Reviews Turn Coat (Dresden Files #11)

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turn-coatTurn Coat
Jim Butcher
Roc (576 pp, $9.99, April 2009 – March 2010 paperback edition)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Private-eye wizard Harry Dresden returns in Jim Butcher’s Turn Coat though, in point of fact, he hasn’t been doing altogether that much investigating lately. Between wars with vampire courts and secret enemies finally getting the Black Council on the move, it doesn’t seem like Harry is going to have the opportunity to track down a missing person or provide evidence in a divorce dispute any time soon.

Butcher jumps right in with his trademark wit. The characters in Turn Coat are, by now, so familiar that they provide a little thrill of recognition just by being mentioned. Waldo Butters, for example, has next to nothing to do with the story, but I can’t help but be pleased to see him again because I like Waldo Butters. That is something that plays to Butcher’s strong suit: the dialogue and relationships are so easy and natural that they cannot help but be compelling, even when no one is doing anything.

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The Mystical Viking: Valhalla Rising

The Mystical Viking: Valhalla Rising

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valhalla_rising_poster_dkValhalla Rising (2009)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Starring Mads Mikkelson, Jamie Sives, Gary Lewis, Ewan Stewart, Maarten Stevenson.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn went into his film Valhalla Rising right as he was wrapping up post-production on Bronson, the bizarre biopic about British prisoner Charlie Bronson that turned into his biggest success and pushed star Tom Hardy into the front lines. But Bronson surprised many viewers, going against expectations of what a biopic about Charlie Bronson would be like. In the same way, Valhalla Rising flips around the conceptual idea of “Viking movie” and is unlike anything viewers might expect from an historical epic about skull-crushers like the medieval Norsemen. Valhalla Rising had its festival premiere in 2009 and a theatrical release in mid-2010, but it sits defiantly outside the mainstream. If El Topo is an “Acid Western,” then consider Valhalla Rising an “Acid Viking Movie.”

Although it clocks in at a lean 92 minutes with credits, Refn’s film moves at a slow pace and contains vast silences within a harsh landscape. The first twelve minutes contain only a single line of dialogue, and this sparse style remains consistent throughout the running time. Red-hued violence occasionally breaks out, done with no modern stylization, but there are no “action set-pieces.” This is a movie concerned with its tone and texture, telling an oblique story through implication. And for what it attempts to do, it succeeds: this is a transcendent film that creates an authentic sense of what Nordic life in the eleventh century must have felt like. Its taciturn introspection says an enormous amount about early Christian and late Pagan mysticism.

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“My Firefly Atonement” or “Get Cheap RPG Books Today Only!”

“My Firefly Atonement” or “Get Cheap RPG Books Today Only!”

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When a show with a large fan base – especially a large SF fan base – ends, the fans have some small amount of solace, because there’s usually a rich bounty of “extended universe” materials to keep the fix going for a while. Often the avid fan, deprived of new episodes of the show, can enjoy exploring the novels, comic books, and, yes, even role-playing game supplements which are created through license with the show … but all good things must end.

Last Chance to Buy Serenity & Battlestar Galactica RPGs

In recent years, one of the publishers that’s been dominant in the field of licensed RPG materials from such show – including Smallville, Supernatural, Serenity, Leverage, and Battlestar Galactica – is Margaret Weiss Productions, founded by (and named after) the legendary co-creator of the Dragonlance D&D setting and co-author of most of the relevant novels that established that setting, notably the Chronicles and Legends trilogies. These have been some great games, all built around MWP’s proprietary Cortex Rule System (reviewed in Black Gate 14). Serenity RPG was reviewed back in Black Gate 10 and my own review of the Supernatural RPG is slated to come out in Black Gate 15.

The problem, of course, is that both Serenity and Battlestar Galactica are based on franchises that have been over for quite some time. The licenses may have expired or MWP may have just decided it wasn’t profitable to keep the lines going, but the result was the following message in my e-mail today:

You have one day left to purchase The Serenity and Battlestar Galactica RPGs from Margaret Weiss Productions!

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Charlene Brusso Reviews Magic in the Blood

Charlene Brusso Reviews Magic in the Blood

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magic-in-the-bloodMagic in the Blood
Devon Monk
Roc (360 pp, $6.99, May 2009)
Reviewed By Charlene Brusso

Urban fantasy walks a fine line between engaging the reader with magic that feels real, while operating in a gritty modern setting that seems as far from magical as possible. Devon Monk’s series (starting with Magic to the Bone) is set in gray, yet somehow inviting, Portland, Oregon, offering many repurposed old buildings, and lots of colorful characters in addition to the incessant rain.

Our heroine, Allie Beckstrom, is a Hound, a magically gifted person who can sniff out the caster of any spell: really sniff, that is. Hounding can be a good way to make a living, but magic has its price since “using magic means it uses you back.” Cast a spell without deflecting the painful backwash means aches, pains, exhaustion, and worse, depending on the strength of the spell. There are rules. Legally, spells can only be cast on a person with their consent. And “Offloading” the bad side effects of magic onto another is strictly forbidden.

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Rich Horton Reviews Song of Time

Rich Horton Reviews Song of Time

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song-of-timeSong of Time
Ian R. MacLeod
PS Publishing (253 pages, $14.95, October 2008)
Reviewed by Rich Horton

Ian R. MacLeod is one of the supreme SF writers of recent years, especially at novelette and novella length, and so it is something of a disappointment that his novels seem to have struggled to find an audience. His newest work is so far only out in the U. K. from the excellent but definitely small outfit PS Publishing. Yet in considering this book I am inclined to understand its failure (so far!) to attract a trade publisher. Song of Time is not a high concept book. Indeed it is difficult to capture it with a single thematic statement. (His two Ace novels, on the other hand, were distinctly about the magical substance aether and the ways in which its use paralleled the Industrial Revolution.) Thus it is, I imagine, a bit harder to “sell” the book. And I must also add that while that is not always a shortcoming, in the present case I think it is rather. About which more later.

Song of Time opens with an aging woman rescuing a drowning man from the ocean off her Cornish house. The man, whom she calls Adam, is a mysterious figure – he has no memory, but he knows – or learns quickly – a great many things, some of which are quite unexpected. He is also a remarkably quick healer, and otherwise unusually constructed. Thus a puzzle is established – but really the book is not about this puzzle (though in the end it is solved, quite satisfactorily).

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