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A Review of The Lion of Cairo, by Scott Oden

A Review of The Lion of Cairo, by Scott Oden

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lion-of-cairo1The Lion of Cairo, by Scott Oden
Thomas Dunne Books (384 pages, $25.99, December 7, 2010)

I think it’s totally cool that the dedication page of Scott Oden’s forthcoming novel The Lion of Cairo (U.S. publication date Dec. 7) pays homage to a sword and sorcery legend:

To Robert E. Howard
whose tales of swordplay and sorcery
gave inspiration to a kid from Alabama
and caused him to take up the pen
in his own time

After the Howard name-drop you pretty much know what you’re in for: Pulse-pounding sword play, leagues of warring assassins, political intrigue, a hint of evil sorcery, and the clash of armies on a grand stage. On all these elements Oden delivers.

Though inspired by the man from Cross Plains, The Lion of Cairo is no slavish imitation of Howard. The work — book one of the Emir of the Knife trilogy — shares just as much or more in common with Harold Lamb’s Swords from the East or Steven Pressfield’s historical fiction than REH’s tales of the Hyborian Age. Cairo’s main character, the assassin Assad, is more Pale Rider than muscular Cimmerian. He’s a dude you don’t want to tangle with: Deadly with a blade instead of a six-gun; not cocky but quietly confident in his abilities; single-minded of purpose; a stone-cold killer. Though he’s an assassin Oden successfully manages to portray him as sympathetic, a killer we can get behind. It’s a pretty nifty bit of characterization.

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Pastiches ‘R’ Us (And My Two-Year Anniversary): Conan the Renegade

Pastiches ‘R’ Us (And My Two-Year Anniversary): Conan the Renegade

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conan-the-renegadeConan the Renegade
Leonard Carpenter (Tor, 1986)

Salutations, lovers of blood and thunder and me babbling about Frederick Faust! This week marks my second anniversary as a blogger on Black Gate. I’ve now held down the Tuesday spot for two years, and I believe that this missive you are now reading is my 104th post (I missed one week, but did a double-post another week during an REH birthday celebration).

Do you know what I am going to do to celebrate? I’m going to do the exact same thing I did on my first post . . . review a Leonard Carpenter Conan pastiche novel! Because I pride myself on my ability to change and adapt with the times.

Leonard Carpenter debuted on the Conan series with Conan the Renegade, which can be summed up in two words: “mercenary adventure.” Military action takes precedence over magic and wonder; most of the story unfolds in a small area around Koth and the bordering kingdom of Khoraja (seen in “Black Colossus,” which Conan the Renegade closely follows in the chronology that Tor Books was using for the pastiches at the time), and Conan’s adventuring mostly occurs within his role as a military leader and tactician. Carpenter does toss in a few horrific fantasy events, such as an unusual combat sorcerer and an ancient dungeon copied right out of “The Scarlet Citadel,” but readers who want a dark fantasy Conan should look elsewhere. Like, uhm, “The Scarlet Citadel.”

The warfare tale follows Conan to the Kothian city of Tantusium where he joins the Free Company of the mercenary captain Hundulph. Hundulph’s men are in the pay of Ivor, a Kothian prince who has risen in revolt against his uncle King Strabonus. Among the other mercenary captains rides the enticing warrior woman Drusandra, who leads an all-female band. Conan has suspicions of Ivor’s sorcerer Agohoth, a Khitan-trained wizard. This is very weird, since Conan never has suspicions about sorcerers.

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A Review of The Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin McKinley

A Review of The Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin McKinley

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outlaws-of-sherwoodThe Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin McKinley
Greenwillow Books (282 pages, $12.95, 1988)
Cover by Alan Lee

“I am no historian,” Robin McKinley writes in the author’s note to The Outlaws of Sherwood, “and never flattered myself that I would write a story that was historically accurate. I did, however, wish to write something that was, let us say, historically unembarrassing.” I’m no historian either, but I’d say she succeeded.

The Outlaws of Sherwood is, of course, a retelling of the Robin Hood legend. It also feels extremely real, despite the historical issues mentioned in the author’s note. This is a good story for people who like a touch of logistics in their fiction. In between adventures — the book has a somewhat episodic feel, although it’s building up to a definite climax — there are plenty off details that highlight the problems and solutions to maintaining a covert community in a tangled forest.

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Chilling with Miles: A Review of Cryoburn

Chilling with Miles: A Review of Cryoburn

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cryoburnCryoburn, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Baen (352 pages, $25, Oct 19, 2010)

Cryoburn shows signs of being the last Vorkosigan novel. At the very least, it marks the end of a very long multi-novel arc in the series. For that reason, among others, it’s not a good place for newcomers to sample the series. For the same reason, longtime readers of the Vorkosigan stories will want to read this book, even if it is less than Bujold’s best work. (It’s still better than most sf writers on their best day.)

Although there’s no reason why Bujold couldn’t write a sequel to Cryoburn, there is some material at the end of the book that harks back to the opening entry in the series, Shards of Honor, and in it we can also hear some darkly deliberate echoes of the first Miles novel, The Warrior’s Apprentice. It’s as if LMB is marking the end of the series with ring composition. If my description seems rather vague, that’s because I’m sparing the spoiler, here. All this stuff is a sort of codicil to the novel, anyway, having nothing to do with the main story– which makes it look that much more like a deliberate signal. (I hope I’m wrong about this.)

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.8 “All Dogs Go to Heaven”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.8 “All Dogs Go to Heaven”

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Dean gets in touch with his inner sniper.
Dean gets in touch with his inner sniper.

We start in Buffalo, New York, with a businessman’s car being attacked (along with the businessman) by a very angry dog. Lot of options: both werewolves and hellhounds come to mind.

At a roadside diner, Dean chats on the phone with Bobby in an effort to work out what to do about Crowley (the “King of Hell” who’s taken Lucifer’s place and busted Sam out of Hell), but Crowley shows up in the middle of the phone call. He’s got a job for Sam and Dean. Sam puts up a nominal protest, but he doesn’t have a soul, so how much can he really object to anything anyway. As Crowley puts it, “You’d sell your brother for a dollar right now if you really needed a soda.”

Dean, however, still has a soul and refuses to work for Crowley … until he points out that he can cause Sam pain whenever he wants, since he currently is in possession of Sam’s soul.

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Gods and Monsters

Gods and Monsters

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nammahs-kissJacqueline Carey’s third Terre d’Ange trilogy, the Moirin books, seem to be in general better liked than the books about Imriel. I can’t agree with this opinion. It might be because I read them first, and therefore had gone pretty far into Naamah’s Kiss before I got a satisfactory translation of “diadh-anam“. From context, I was forced to conclude that “”diadh-anam” was Cruithne for “plot”. As in “Jehanne, I adore you, but I find that the plot is telling me I must go to China.”

Of course all the main characters in the Terre d’Ange books have been a singularly god-ridden bunch. However, Phèdre and Imriel and their cohorts had to deal more with powers and inclinations that they received from their gods in much the same way that other heroes have received them from radioactive spiders. The actions they take are to help friends, or make bargains with enemies, or act for their country, or earn a living, or do stupid things because of lust or youth or stupidity.

Moirin, on the other hand, has a goddess that micromanages her every action. Go to Terre d’Ange. Date a hot magician. Learn tai chi. Etc., etc. The Maghuin Dhonn winds up being a character as present in the book as poor, sexy, silly Moirin herself, only a lot less interesting. It’s the Q problem. How do you use a god among mortals as a character? Alan Moore did it with Dr. Manhattan, but that worked because he let us into Dr. Manhattan’s brain, showed us what the world looked like to him. But all you ever see of the Maghuin Dhonn is just her moving her favorite character around like a chess piece; and why would you ever want to read a book about the adventures of a chess piece, when you could read about the mind behind the chess game?

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“Worms of the Earth”: Bending the rules of swords and sorcery

“Worms of the Earth”: Bending the rules of swords and sorcery

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worms-of-the-earth“Worms of the earth, back into your holes and burrows! Ye foul the air and leave on the clean earth the slime of the serpents ye have become! Gonar was right—there are shapes too foul to use even against Rome!”

–Robert E. Howard, “Worms of the Earth”

Robert E. Howard has received his fair share of criticism over the years, including the accusation that he wrote shallow, muscle-bound characters that cut their way out of every situation. Violence by strong, self-sufficient swordsmen is the end game for solving all problems in REH’s stories, his detractors argue, not wits or guile or diplomacy. For example, in his audio book survey of fantasy literature Rings, Swords, and Monsters, author Michael Drout declares Conan an uninteresting character who simply “smashes everything in his path.” L. Sprague De Camp, who penned the introductions to the famous (infamous?) Lancer Conan reprints of the 1960s and 70s, wrote that Howard’s heroes are “men of mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will, who easily dominate the stories through which they stride.” Howard wrote escape fiction, De Camp continued, wherein “all men are strong…” and “all problems simple.”

These generalizations lead casual readers to conclude that Howard considered violence to be the answer to all of life’s problems. They reduce Howard’s stories to brutish pulp escapism and denude them of subtlety or complexity. Sword and sorcery and its fans are painted with the same broad, clumsy brush by association. “Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless,” wrote Stephen King in his overview of horror and fantasy Danse Macabre (1981). “The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his pot belly miraculously gone.”

These criticisms aren’t entirely groundless. It’s rather easy to find examples of Howardian heroes hacking their way through a problem. Kull of Valusia butchering a horde of Serpent Men in an orgiastic, cathartic red fury in “The Shadow Kingdom” springs immediately to mind, for instance. Howard was in many ways bound by the conventions of the pulps in which he made his living as a writer. But there are an equal number of examples of Conan using his wits to extricate himself from situations when brute force won’t suffice, his reaver’s instinct restrained by sovereign responsibility. And of course, Howard penned many more characters than his famous Cimmerian.

Howard’s 1932 story “Worms of the Earth” features the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn on an ill-advised mission to enlist supernatural aid to defeat an invading force of Romans. In it Howard substitutes complexity and compromise for crashing swordplay and victory in arms. While “Worms” is a tale of vengeance, it’s of a rather hollow, unfulfilling sort.

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Goth Chick News: Vampire Zombies on a Plane, Snakes Not Included

Goth Chick News: Vampire Zombies on a Plane, Snakes Not Included

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image004I believe everyone has something that unnerves them, which is not in your typical things-that-are-scary category. We’ve already agreed that clowns and little kids with blank stares rank high on the creepy index, but there are other more benign items that cause the hair on the back of our necks to stand up, mainly because they exist on the outside of the everyday.

Allow me to provide an example.

A few years ago I had an opportunity to visit Cape Canaveral in Florida for a night-time launch of the space shuttle. Though the event was scuttled by technical difficulties, there was something strangely frightening about the massiveness of the shuttle (and “massive” hardly does it justice).

This monolithic structure, sitting in the middle of an otherwise vacant launch pad and lit the way it was, seemed strangely terrifying. It didn’t belong there on what looked like a normal airport runway. It was gigantic and alien and out of place. I can’t explain it sufficiently, but I had nightmares about standing near it for several weeks after. Maybe because it was in a place my mind just couldn’t agree it should be, and that turned “normal” upside down.

It was because of the chill that comes from everyday things being displaced that I picked up Guillermo Del Toro’s latest paperback release The Strain to sustain me on a recent, long plane ride. In case you aren’t familiar with Del Toro, he is the owner of the incredible imagination that brought us Pan’s Labyrinth, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film in 2007.

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Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.7 “Family Matters”

Supernatural Spotlight – Episode 6.7 “Family Matters”

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Poor Sam finds out that he doesn't have a soul.
Poor Sam finds out that he doesn't have a soul.

This week picks up right where last week’s episode left off: upon getting proof that something is wrong with Sam, Dean beat him unconscious. He awakens to find Castiel trying to diagnose him. Sam doesn’t think much of this tactic.

“You really that this–”

“What,” asks Dean, ” you think there’s a clinic out there for people who just pop out of hell wrong? He asks, you answer, then you shut your hole, you got it?”

Sam reveals that he hasn’t slept since returning from the pit. When Castiel answers how he feels – not just physical sensations – he says, “I don’t know.” And when Castiel digs for his soul, he comes up with … nothing. Looks like Sam came back from Lucifer’s prison without his soul.

“So is he even still Sam?” asks Dean.

Castiel replies, “Well, you pose an interesting philosophical question.”

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A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

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jheregJhereg
By Steven Brust
Ace (224 pages, $2.50, April 1983)

I’ve played in a lot of tabletop RPGs, including a couple of homebrewed systems and homebrewed worlds. I’ve never encountered one that goes into the culture-changing potential of resurrection, though. It’s treated as an acceptable break from reality, a way to keep things fun, one that has little effect on the world besides providing a way for the campaign’s archnemesis to keep coming back.

Jhereg, by Steven Brust, the first book in his 12-volume Vlad Taltos series, takes the notion of reliable magical resurrection and creates a society around it.

Vlad Taltos is an Easterner and a gentleman, which isn’t a common combination. Easterners are an underclass compared to Dragaerans. The Dragaeran clan called House Jhereg allows anyone, even Easterners, to buy in — a distinct advantage, since it allows them access to the Dragaeran Empire’s sorcery. Unfortunately, the Jheregs may be the most egalitarian family in the Empire, but they also operate a lot like the mafia. Citizenship is not cheap.

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