Black Gate – Page 576 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

I’ve been a subscriber to PC Gamer magazine for over 22 years, since it launched as a British “Euro mag” in November 1993 (back in the days when computer hobby shops here in the US would carry British gaming magazines for the Amiga and the PC, and the magazines had disks taped to the cover. And there was such a thing as computer hobby shops.) The magazine has long had a terrific stable of writers — including Editor-in-Chief Gary Whitta, who famously left the magazine to become a screen writer. And he did, too, writing The Book of Eli and Rogue One, among others.

The artifact at right is PC Gamer Presents: The Ultimate RPG Handbook; I found it in the magazine section at Barnes & Noble on Saturday. It sorta looks like a regular issue of PC Gamer, except it has no ads, and is totally devoted to my favorite video game genre. Sweet!

Much of it is composed of reprints from the magazine, but there’s new stuff too — like Richard Cobbett’s massive 28-page full-color history of computer RPGs, starting with Temple of Apshai and Beneath Apple Manor, through Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, the SSI Gold Box Games, Star Control 2, Deus Ex, Witcher 3, and half a zillion titles in between. Cobbett lingers on several of the major series, like Ultima, and particularly influential games like Elder Scrolls:Arena, Baldur’s Gate, and Fallout 3. He doesn’t cover everything, of course, but his breezy style makes the whole thing entertaining and highly readable.

There’s plenty more crammed into the issue, including a feature on the future of RPGs, a long article on Witcher 3, and reviews of major new RPG releases like Fallout 4, Dark Souls III, and Tyranny (maybe they didn’t fit in the regular magazine?) There’s also a few production glitches, like the invitation on the cover to “Flip For More,” and an arrow pointing to the inside cover… which is totally blank. Nonetheless, whether you’re new to the genre or an obsessive collector who (like me) has every single game they mention, this is a terrific way to spend a few hours. Recommended.

The Ultimate RPG Handbook was published by Future Publishing in December 2016. It is 98 pages, priced at $9.99 (US edition), and 148 pages for £9.99 (UK edition). There is no digital edition, though one is promised. Get more details at the website.

Future Treasures: With Blood Upon the Sand, Volume II of The Song of the Shattered Sands, by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, the opening novel in Bradley P. Beaulieu’s epic fantasy series The Song of the Shattered Sands, was picked as one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon, BuzzFeed, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi Blog.. And in her BG review, Kelly Swails called it “epic… a complex novel with crisp prose that is a joy to read.” Of Sand and Malice Made, a volume of linked novellas set in the same world, was released in September. And now the long anticipated second novel in the series, With Blood Upon the Sand, arrives in hardcover from DAW next month.

Çeda, now a Blade Maiden in service to the kings of Sharakhai, trains as one of their elite warriors, gleaning secrets even as they send her on covert missions to further their rule. She knows the dark history of the asirim — that hundreds of years ago they were enslaved to the kings against their will — but when she bonds with them as a Maiden, chaining them to her, she feels their pain as if her own. They hunger for release, they demand it, but with the power of the gods compelling them, they find their chains unbreakable.

Çeda could become the champion they’ve been waiting for, but the need to tread carefully has never been greater. After their recent defeat at the hands of the rebel Moonless Host, the kings are hungry for blood, scouring the city in their ruthless quest for revenge. Çeda’s friend Emre and his new allies in the Moonless Host hope to take advantage of the unrest in Sharakhai, despite the danger of opposing the kings and their god-given powers, and the Maidens and their deadly ebon blades.

When Çeda and Emre are drawn into a plot of the blood mage Hamzakiir, they learn a devastating secret that may very well shatter the power of the hated kings. But it may all be undone if Çeda cannot learn to navigate the shifting tides of power in Sharakhai and control the growing anger of the asirim that threatens to overwhelm her…

With Blood Upon the Sand will be published by DAW on February 7, 2017. It is 672 pages, priced at $26 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Donato Giancola, who painted the cover of Black Gate 15. Read more in the exclusive cover reveal at the B&N Sci-Fi Blog.

Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent by Joe Bonadonna

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 7 comments

Joe Bonadonna’s a friend of Black Gate and, I’m proud to say, a friend of mine. He’s also a heck of a teller of hardboiled action and adventure tales. After too many years out of the toilsome fields of swords & sorcery, he returned in 2010 with a top-flight collection of short stories about one Dorgo Mikawber, dowser of magic and handy with a saber. I discovered Joe and that book, Mad Shadows (2010) here on the virtual pages of Black Gate, and reviewed it over on my site about four years ago.

After another significant hiatus he’s returned with a second collection of Dorgo’s adventures: Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent (2017). That’s a lot of title for a book that just crosses the two-hundred page mark, but it gives a nice sense of the pulpy goodness that lies betwixt its covers.

Dorgo Mikawber was raised in an orphanage, served in the army, and now makes his living as a magical investigator and finder of lost people. Last time out Dorgo’s adventures took him all over the continent of Aerlothia on the world of Tanyime. This time around his wanderings are more limited, starting in the countryside just beyond his home city, Valdar.

MS II is a fix-up. It’s made up of three separate tales, each linked to the other, weaving a larger story of Dorgo’s fight against the mysterious Order of the Serpent and its leader, Ophidious Garloo.

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Coming Soon: The Jurassic Chronicles

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Emily Mah Comments 0 Comment

The next installment of Samuel Peralta’s Chronicles series is set to launch on January 29th — the theme of this one is dinosaurs.

Edited by Crystal Watanabe and featuring stories from: Piers Beckley, Zen DiPietro, Ed Gosney, Laxmi Hariharan, Phillip Harris, M.J. Kelley, Stant Litore, Terry Maggert, Emily Mah (yes, that’s me), Harry Manners, Anthony J Melchiorri, Seanan McGuire, and Dinosaur Knights author Victor Milan, it offers a broad range of stories from both established veterans and new up-and-comers.

If you haven’t taken note of these anthologies, you are missing out. They feature an impressive mix of indie, hybrid, and trad pubbed authors who write science fiction and fantasy.

And this one has dinosaurs. Need I say more???

Emily Mah is a writer and the owner of E.M. Tippetts Book Designs, a company that provides formatting, cover design, and editing services for independent authors and publishers. Her last post for Black Gate was an interview with German author Emily Bold.

Black Static #56 Now on Sale

Monday, January 23, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

British horror magazine Black Static #56, cover-dated January-February 2017, is now available. Kevin P Hallett at Tangent Online has particular praise for “What We Are Moulded After” by Eugenia M. Triantafyllou:

Eleni’s harsh husband, Andreas, is dead and she has used her witch powers to recreate him from clay in this short fantasy…. However, Eleni’s cousin sees him. The cousin thinks her secret lover is still alive.

Eleni is furious that her dead husband’s mistress has seen the clay copy. Now she must destroy her creation. But as she does, she holds back from the final killing cut and leaves the clay Andreas with no legs or arms, but still with its mind. She hides the clay lump in the shed.

Days later, the real Andreas returns, alive and just as cruel as before. Can the remains of the clay version somehow protect Eleni? …an interesting and nicely written fantasy.

And “Stanislav in Foxtown” by Ian Steadman.

Stan works for mean Mr. Sharples, in this short horror/mystery. In a dying town, Mr. Sharples runs the fried chicken shop, treating Stan contemptuously. Just as long as he has money to send back to his family, Stan continues to tolerate the abusive treatment.

When he spies a fox near his home, lonely Stan decides to befriend it, giving it leftover chicken bones. Soon, there are tens of foxes coming to his old house. The leader of the foxes seems to offer a pact with Stan. Could they help him with Mr. Sharples? …a nicely written story. The mystery pulled the reader through to the end.

Read the complete review here.

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Vintage and New Treasures: Oz’s Bag of Holding: John Sandford’s Prey Series; Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy

Monday, January 23, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 4 comments

I have here a bag of holding. I am now going to pull some things out of it…

This past fall, since I do a lot of commuting to work and had become too depressed to follow my daily routine of news radio, I began listening to books on CD.

I’ve now digested 5 books in John Sandford’s popular Prey series (following detective Lucas Davenport), read by Richard Ferrone, and the first two of Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy (following retired detective Bill Hodges and his friends Jerome Robinson and Holly Gibney), read by Will Patton.

Sandford, a retired Minneapolis journalist, began writing the Prey books back in the ‘80s. The series now has 27 installments, with an additional 13 spin-off books! Looks like I’ll be spending time with Lucas Davenport in my minivan for a long time to come.

Having brought these out of the bag, I’d like to discuss two specific areas of appeal of a series like Prey. First is place. Second is chronological progression (following characters as they age). Then I have an afterthought about genre “classification.” I’ll also address “audio” vs. “printed page.” And I’ll have a few things to say about King’s foray into hardboiled detective fiction along the way.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus

Monday, January 23, 2017 Bob Byrne Comments 6 comments

If you want to read my thoughts on the season four (and hopefully series) finale of BBC’s Sherlock, click on over and read it at my blog. Because today The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes is going to talk about Solar Pons.

August Derleth, the creator of Solar Pons, passed away in 1971. Derleth’s final collection, The Chronicles of Solar Pons, a mix of previously released stories and ones never published, came out in 1973. Surprisingly, Pons would be back within a decade! In 1979, Basil Copper would release three collections of tales: The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures of Solar Pons and The Secret Files of Solar Pons. There would be three more collections, as well as a novella. Copper had written horror books for Derleth’s Arkham House imprint and he seemed like a good choice for continuing the stories.

Unfortunately, Copper’s Pons connection did not have a happy ending. He helped Arkham House editor Don Turner compile an omnibus edition of all of Derleth’s released Pons stories. However, Copper chose to do some ‘corrective editing’ of the originals, which caused a furor among the Pontine faithful. You can read Jon Lellenberg’s essay on this topic in The Solar Pons Gazette (page 45). Peter Ruber also wrote an excellent account, but I don’t have permission to reprint that.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December

Sunday, January 22, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

The top article at Black Gate in December was Foz Meadows’ “Unempathic Bipeds of Failure,” a look at the relationship between fiction and politics, which was read over 4,000 times in a scant handful of days here, before moving to its permanent home at Amazing Stories.

The second most popular blog post last month was Derek Kunsken’s enthusiastic film review for Star Wars: Rogue One, “I Am One With the Force and the Force Is With Me,” which I edited and posted with my eyes closed in case it had any spoilers. Just to prove he’s a master of all media, Derek placed a second article in the Top Ten this month: “Hammers, Chemo and Disapproving Dads: Marvel’s Thor.”

Rounding out the Top 5 this month were Fletcher Vredenburgh, with a fascinating piece on why he reads what he does, “Why Swords & Sorcery?”: our nostalgic survey of classic horror comics of the 1970s, “For the Love of Monster Comics;” and Martin Page’s tips for achieving authenticity in historical fantasy, “Truth in Historical Fiction.”

Coming in at number six was our look at the Top BG article in November, followed by the latest installment in James McGlothlin’s ongoing series on Del Rey’s seminal Classic Science Fiction line, The Best of Henry Kuttner. Ryan Harvey nabbed the #8 slot with his round-up of Marvel Studios’ recent string of hits, “With Doctor Strange Behind Us… My Ranking of the Marvel Studios Films.”

Finishing up the Top Ten was our latest Tale of Two Covers, a comparison of Alan Baxter’s Crow Shine and Sarah Remy’s The Bone Cave.

The complete list of Top Articles for December follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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New Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Reaper’s Eye by Richard A. Knaak

Sunday, January 22, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m not much of a fan of game tie-in fiction, to be honest, but I’ve been consistently intrigued by the Pathfinder fiction line, Pathfinder Tales.

Tim Pratt’s tales of Rodrick the thief have been called “Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style sword and sorcery adventure” (SF Signal), and Lightspeed and Nightmare Managing Editor Wendy N. Wagner has been praised for her “Pathfinder meets Lovecraft” series featuring the notorious pirate Jendara, and Black Gate‘s own Managing Editor, Howard Andrew Jones, has produced four highly regarded Pathfinder novels, including Beyond the Pool of Stars and Stalking the Beast.

The latest Pathfinder Tales novel comes from Richard A. Knaak, author of the bestselling Legend of Huma series for Dragonlance, the War of the Ancients trilogy, the Aquilonia trilogy for Age of Conan, and much more. It was published in trade paperback by Tor on December 6th.

Daryus Gaunt used to be a crusader, battling to protect civilization from the demons of the Worldwound, before a battlefield mutiny forced him to flee or be executed. Pathfinder Shiera Tristane is an adventuring scholar obsessed with making the next big archaeological discovery. When a talking weasel reveals that a sinister witch is close to uncovering a long-lost temple deep within the Worldwound, the two adventurers are drawn into the demon-haunted lands in order to stop him from releasing an ancient evil. Now both fame and redemption may be at hand… if they can survive.

From New York Times bestselling author Richard A. Knaak comes a novel of exploration, betrayal, and deadly magic, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

As an added bonus, the book also contains a chapter from Howard Andrew Jones’ upcoming fourth Pathfinder Tales novel, Through the Gate in the Sea, scheduled for release February 21st.

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Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation

Sunday, January 22, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 8 comments

I have here a bag of holding. I am going to pull some things out of it now…

Well, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve broken open the floodgates and moved my children on from Dungeon! The Board Game to the real deal.

This is fortuitous timing, as M Harold Page has launched a new series of posts (READ HERE) on Black Gate about introducing kids to tabletop role playing (which I have been reading with newly-relevant interest).

My daughter and son will soon be turning 8 and 6 respectively. Bringing the son in on things might have been a bit premature — he’s more apt to grab the miniatures and fight with them like action figures than to sit and patiently listen to a Dungeon Master try to paint a scenario in his mind’s eye.

To introduce these acolytes, I dug out my 1981 D&D Basic set (1981 edition). After decades of d20, revisiting this chestnut three decades later is kinda hilarious. D20 is so elegantly simple in concept: Hit a monster with AC 18? Roll a d20, add modifiers, and get an 18 or better. But with old-school D&D, no! You look at the monster’s AC and then have to consult a chart (I confess I’d forgotten what THAC0 even stood for). Cross-reference monster’s AC with character’s level to see what you have to roll. Basic? No, not really. Pretty damn cumbersome!

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