Black Gate – Page 512 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

In 500 Words or Less: Flesh and Artifice by Jaleigh Johnson

Friday, July 28, 2017 Brandon Crilly Comments 0 Comment

Flesh and Artifice
By Jaleigh Johnson
The Ed Greenwood Group (86 pages, $5.99 eBook, January 2017)

Pro tip: magic is dangerous and unpredictable. You might want to be the next Gandalf, but every type of magic in every fictional world out there carries its share of risks, and even an experienced practitioner can stumble and find themselves blown up, trapped in a pocket dimension, or awakened on a wooden table with a raven’s wing for an arm and two other creatures sharing space in your brain. That last one might seem difficult to imagine, but it’s one of the core premises of Flesh and Artifice, a novella by fantasy writer Jaleigh Johnson in the world of Stormtalons, created by Ed Greenwood.

(Full disclosure: I have a Stormtalons short story published by TEGG, too, but one of my cardinal blogging rules is to be 100% honest and as unbiased as possible in my reviews – which I hope has come across in previous posts, and continues here.)

Being part of the shared Stormtalons universe, Flesh and Artifice has to play by certain rules. One of the best things about Johnson’s writing, though, is that she manages to make everything you need to know about this world clear without any “as you know, Bob” moments or info-dumps; instead, specific bits of information are woven into the narrative where required without breaking the flow.

What surprised me about so short a work is Johnson’s ability to keep the narrative moving and make the characters clear and relatable without missing many beats. If anything, I wish Flesh and Artifice had been longer… not because I feel like there are things missing, but because I wanted to see more of what these characters are capable of and where their journeys might take them next.

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July 2017 Nightmare Magazine Now on Sale

Friday, July 28, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The July 2017 issue of Nightmare is now available, with original fiction from Caspian Gray and Caroline Ratajski, and reprints by Stephen Graham Jones and Cynthia Ward. Here’s Valerie A. Lindsey from Tangent Online:

“Promises of Spring” by Caspian Gray opens with Cody asking his high school friend, Tay, to help him stop some high school kids from summoning the witch that granted three of them their desires during a bloody ritual. Gray illustrates the high cost of making wishes without understanding how high the true cost will be. Fortunately, the one who suffered the most is able to make the best wish of all…

Caroline Ratajski’s “And With Her Went the Spring” captured my interest from the first evocative sentences. The story seems to open as you would expect with grieving parents and an outraged town, but it soon becomes more. The story moves smoothly from what happened to the viewpoints of the boy and the dead girl. The missing girl refuses to accept her fate meekly and becomes a retributive force for herself and all the girls before her.

Read her complete review here.

There’s also an editorial from John Joseph Adams (which includes a cover reveal for all of his 2017 titles at John Joseph Adams Books), the latest installment of “The H Word” (Nathan Carson shares the creepy truth about goats), author spotlights, and a feature interview with Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly.

The complete contests of the issue are listed below.

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Goth Chick News: Comics (and Potentially You) Get Dragged…

Thursday, July 27, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 7 comments

Sometimes, horror-related or not, a story is just too good not to share.

With the Chicago Comic Con still a few weeks off, the GCN staff has been glued to our screens watching all the going’s on at the mother-of-all cons, the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC for you cool kids) which wrapped up last Sunday.

Like any comic con, when you get this many people with this much…uh…passion together in one place, there are bound to be shenanigans. However the big surprise this year didn’t come to us courtesy of an over-enthusiastic cosplayer after too many adult beverages mixed with Red Bull, but instead from what has become a consistent player on the stage of WTF…the airline industry.

After gaining infamy from their “aggressive” removal of a passenger from a flight earlier this year, United Airlines prevented passengers leaving the SDCC via San Diego International, from carrying comic books in their checked baggage.

No, I’m not kidding.

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A Magisterial Account of World War II: Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk

Thursday, July 27, 2017 Damien Moore Comments 2 comments

Leaflets fall from the sky on the streets of an idyllic village in France. Soldiers fetch them from the ground as the papers collide, their ominous fluttering booming in your ears.

We follow a boy, clad in the regimental coat of a British soldier. In his eyes, we bear witness to the hardened resolve to survive. He collects the leaflets with his fellow soldiers, scrutinizing them with a benign detachment.

When bombs rip through the sky, the boy tears into a sprint. Leaflets go flying in an eerie flurry of white. He finds refuge among a barrier of sandbags, only to shoot from the post the moment another torrent of bombs descends. In the next moment, he clambers past an obstacle and reenters the place of battle. There, he confronts the staggering sight of his fellow countrymen, awaiting their departure on the shore.

Thus begins Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s magisterial account of a monumental event in World War II. In many ways, the film owes its resonance to Tommy, played by Fionn Whitehead, whom we first see comprehending the silent herald of death. He demands your attention with his earnestness to scrape through the onslaught of terror with the skin on his bones and the heart jackhammering in his ribs.

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A Tale of Two Robert E. Howard Biographies

Thursday, July 27, 2017 James McGlothlin Comments 14 comments

Dark Valley Destiny The Life of Robert E. Howard-small

Blood & Thunder The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard-small

Not so long ago, in a galaxy really close by (in fact, our galaxy), there was a tale of two biographies of the same writer. This is how the story goes. Or at least, this is what I have gathered.

Once upon a time there was a Jedi-in-training (also known as a sci-fi writer) who, tempted by the Dark Side of the Force, figured out that he could make quite a bit of money in the fantasy genre. Tolkien was selling like gangbusters at the time, so why not? Robert E. Howard (REH), a long dead Golden Age pulp writer, had all of that Conan stuff just lying around begging to be exploited utilized. So off to work the Jedi went.

But, in pursuing this decades-long venture, said sci-fi writer unfortunately and eventually went completely over to the Dark Side — full Sith Lord territory. In time, by his own reckoning, he became the de facto spokesperson for what counted as canonical Conan. And further, as a self-made REH authority, he published his own biography of Howard. The Force was strong with this one.

Fortunately though, so the tale goes, the Force eventually balanced out. A small but growing band of Jedi — fully committed to the Light Side — fought vigorously against this Sith Lord, trying to demonstrate who the true REH actually was. In time, the evil Sith Lord was defeated, and died of natural causes. But the task of undoing his dark damage against REH’s legacy would take years. And eventually a very able Jedi warrior would come along and write a new REH biography that would, among other things, hopefully undo all the damage done by the first bio.

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Crappy Parents All Around: A Look At Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson Series

Wednesday, July 26, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

At one point, I wanted to encourage my son to read more. He owned a copy of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, but he was disinclined to actually open it.

So, I got the audiobook, played the first two chapters, and then said we could listen to any chapter he had already read. And presto! He got through three of the first five books.

Listening to Rick Riordan’s first Percy Jackson series was fun enough for me as an adult too, a lot like watching a Pixar movie as a parent. There are some levels and ironies for me that my ten and eleven year old son didn’t get.

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io9 on the Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy of July

Wednesday, July 26, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Over at io9, Cheryl Eddy has been doing the hard work of cataloging the best new science fiction and fantasy month after month. Her July list — packed with brand new releases by Greg Egan, Charles Stross, Nancy Kress, Gardner Dozois, Harry Turtledove, Jay Posey, Nina Allan, Sam J. Miller, Rachel Caine, Kay Kenyon, Carrie Vaughn, Naomi Kritzer, Adam Christopher, and many others — is one of the best yet. Here’s a few of the highlights.

Marcus Sakey is the author of the million-copy bestselling Brilliance trilogy. His new novel Afterlife is set right here in Chicago, and has already been optioned by Imagine Entertainment and producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.

In this dystopian romance, a pair of FBI agents investigating a Chicago terrorist attack fall in love — a circumstance complicated by the fact that one is dead and one is still alive.

Afterlife was published by Thomas & Mercer on July 18, 2017. It is 318 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $4.99 for the digital edition.

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Future Treasures: Blackthorne, Volume Two of The Malorum Gates by Stina Leicht

Tuesday, July 25, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Stina Leicht’s first two novels were Of Blood and Honey (2011), which Sean Stiennon reviewed for us here, and And Blue Skies From Pain (2012). In 2015 she released the first novel in her new flintlock epic fantasy series, Cold Iron.

Okay, I’m not an expert on flintlock epic fantasy. In fact, I kinda thought the publisher was pulling my leg. Flintlock fantasy? Come on, you just made that up so that you’d have a section to file this under. But I did a Google search and, holy cats, it’s a legit genre and everything. Examples include Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy, D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker Chronicles, and Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series. (Check out this list for more. Use it to amaze your friends at parties!)

Blackthorne, the sequel to Cold Iron, arrives in hardcover next month from Saga Press. I have an advance copy in house and, damn. This is a big book. The first two volumes total nearly 1,400 pages. If flintlock fantasy is your thing, this book is like five pounds of Christmas. (Also, if flintlock fantasy is your thing, you’re clearly a lot more hip than I am. Don’t get excited, that ain’t much of an accomplishment.)

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July Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, July 25, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 0 Comment

As the dog days begin, my mind has been prodded back to swords & sorcery by a few things. The most important one was the the return to the fray of Charles R. Saunders, creator of the heroes Imaro and Doussouye. Just the other day, he announced the start of a new blog, Different Drumming. If you are not familiar with Saunders and his superb body of work, go at once and check out his site.

The next thing, while not exactly S&S, was that I learned the final volume of R. Scott Bakker’s Aspect Emperor series, The Unholy Consult, is about to be published. For all my issues with it, it is one of the few contemporary series that has held my interest past the first book or two.

There have also been some fun discussions among various wags over on Facebook about what a list of good introductory books to the genre would look like. I suspect it won’t be long before I’m lifted entirely from my S&S doldrums and return to reading and reviewing the stuff on a regular basis. Until then, there will still be short story roundups. Like this one.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #65 provides the publication’s usual two new stories. I like both well enough, but neither qualifies as actual S&S. The definition of “what is swords & sorcery?” has been done to death by divers hands and on numerous stages, but suffice to say there should be action and at least a touch of the dark and macabre. This issue’s two stories contain neither of those things.

“Then Will Die Your Pain,” by Tom Crowley, consists of the reflections of Konsler, an aged soldier now serving as the attendant to a knight of unclear pedigree.

Sir Garner isn’t a proper knight, just as I’m not a proper squire. There are no knights where Garner comes from, but everyone in the company calls him Sir. And of course I’m too old to be a squire. The other mercenaries say to me, “You’re gonna die out here, grandpa.” They’re probably right. I just need to finish my job first, and I’m writing this in case I don’t.

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New Treasures: Scourge by Gail Z Martin

Monday, July 24, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

According to the publicity material I have on hand, Gail Z. Martin is a bestselling writer… but that doesn’t mean I know which of her various novels have actually cracked the bestseller lists. There’s a lot of possibilities. She’s produced no less than four series in the last ten years, including seven volumes in the Chronicles of the Necromancer, four in the Ascendant Kingdoms series, three Deadly Curiosities books, and Iron and Blood, the opening book in a new steampunk series co-authored with her husband Larry N. Martin.

Her latest is Scourge, in which three brothers must find out who is controlling the abominations in a city beset by monsters. It’s the opening novel in the brand new Darkhurst series, on sale now from Solaris.

The city-state of Ravenwood is wealthy, powerful, and corrupt. Merchant Princes and Guild Masters wager fortunes to outmaneuver League rivals for the king’s favor and advantageous trading terms. Lord Mayor Ellor Machison wields assassins, blood witches, and forbidden magic to assure that his powerful patrons get what they want, no matter the cost.

Corran, Rigan, and Kell Valmonde are Guild Undertakers, left to run their family’s business when guards murdered their father and monsters killed their mother. Their grave magic enables them to help souls pass to the After and banish vengeful spirits. Rigan’s magic is unusually strong and enables him to hear the confessions of the dead, the secrets that would otherwise be taken to the grave.

When the toll exacted by monsters and brutal guards hits close to home and ghosts expose the hidden sins of powerful men, Corran, Rigan and Kell become targets in a deadly game and face a choice: obey the Guild, or fight back and risk everything.

Scourge was published by Solaris on July 11, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 in digital format.