Black Gate – Page 589 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Earth, Air, Fire and Water: The Elemental Blessings Series by Sharon Shinn

Thursday, March 2, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’ve been friends with Sharon Shinn ever since we co-hosted a writing workshop at Capricon here in Chicago some years ago. Turns out that’s a great way to bond: giving grueling assignments to aspiring writers while grading their efforts with a cruel eye. Try it some time!

Something else you should try is Sharon’s Elemental Blessings series, which just wrapped up with the fourth volume, Unquiet Land, which arrived in hardcover in November. C.S.E. Cooney, in her report on Royal Airs, described it as follows.

The Elemental Blessings series… take place in the Kingdom of Chialto. It’s an exciting time in this secondary world, with “smoker cars” taking over for horse-drawn carriages, the blushing dawn of flying machines, alliances forming and falling apart with realms across the mountains and seas, the delicate balance of power between the regent, the primes of the Five Houses, and the heirs to the throne.

All of this and magic too!

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An Interlude with Messrs Brunner & Van Vogt

Thursday, March 2, 2017 Tony Den Comments 4 comments

Ace Double D-391. Covers by Ed Valigursky

Ace Doubles are a popular topic at Black Gate. I suspect there may even be a bit of friendly competition to see who can unearth items not already reviewed. While John O’Neill and Rich Horton most certainly have a lead on the rest of us, it is a pleasant experience to find a book that has not yet been dealt with and add one’s own commentary.

That was the case with D-391, originally published in 1959:

The World Swappers by John Brunner
Siege of the Unseen by A.E. Van Vogt

I took a deliberate break from my ongoing analysis of Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga to clear my mind, and I needed something to tide me over. Working alphanumerically through my growing Ace Double collection, the first unread book that came to hand was this somewhat tatty volume. (Well technically it was a western — D-034 Hellion’s Hole/Feud In Piney Flats by Ken Murray (1953) — but the allure of Messrs Brunner and Van Vogt proved too great.)

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A Sure Cure for that Listless Feeling

Wednesday, March 1, 2017 Thomas Parker Comments 17 comments

As we segue (stagger, stumble, reel, crawl, stop-drop-and roll) from winter into spring, we are faced as always with the never-ending question: “What in the world am I going to read next?”

Everyone will solve this dilemma in their own way. Dart and ouija boards, animal entrails, tarot cards, various dice systems, and the blind recommendations of pimply, pasty complexioned clerks in chain bookstores have all been resorted to by readers desperate for guidance. For many people (Black Gate followers no less than anyone else, judging from many recent posts), year-end “best of” and “top ten” lists are indispensable tools for keeping up with the best current writing… but what about the vast reservoir of older books?

If the very thought of all the classics and near-classics that you’ve never gotten around to doesn’t make all your courage drain away in an instant and set you fleeing for the hills, never to return, I have a… well, I won’t say a “modest” or “reasonable” proposal, because, as you will see, there’s nothing modest or reasonable about it — it is, rather, unashamedly megalomanic. In fact, it could be considered quite literally insane — but it works for me, and so to help keep the voices in my head under control, I would like to share my madness with you.

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New Treasures: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

Wednesday, March 1, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

A few weeks ago I spotted an intriguing trade paperback in the New Arrivals section at Barnes and Noble. But I didn’t buy it (I’m making an effort to reduce all those impulse purchases, thank you) and, by the time I got home, I’d completely forgotten the title. I spent a fruitless hour online, paging through New Release sections at multiple online sources, before I gave up. Fortunately, it was waiting for me when I returned to B&N a week later, and I bought it immediately. The moral of this terrifying story? Buy good books when you find them, damn it.

That new guiding principle served me well this week when I stumbled on Nicholas Eames’ debut fantasy novel Kings of the Wyld, which grabbed me immediately with its central conceit: an aging mercenary attempts to get the band back together for one final mission. Corrina Lawson at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog gives it two hearty thumbs up.

Kings of the Wyld… manages to be a comedy, an adventure tale, a consideration on growing older, and a sendup of fantasy conventions, all at the same time. It also has heart. In short: it rocks.

The heart comes in the form of our protagonist, Clay “Slowhand” Cooper, the moral center of the mercenary group known as the Kings of the Wyld. Or, well, “formerly known as,” because Clay is retired, working a boring job as a city guard…. It’s inevitable Clay would answer his old friend Gabriel’s call to get the band back together to tackle one more seemingly impossible task: rescuing Gabriel’s grown daughter from a city under siege. Accompanying Clay is his trusty shield, Blackheart, made from the wood of a sentient tree Clay killed. The first half of the book is a trip across the fantasy kingdom as Clay and Gabriel attempt to put their band, Saga, back together. Not so easy, especially as Gabriel first must liberate his magic sword from his ex-wife and her new husband…

The setting Eames builds around these characters made me wish this story existed in graphic novel form. There’s the Wyld Forest, teeming with treacherous inhabitants; and an amazing action sequence in a floating arena, where the group finally gets it mojo back; a pursuit via magical airship; a tense chase sequence across an ice bridge; and, of course, the inevitably epic finale. Did I mention the fight with the dragon? It isn’t really an epic fantasy until the dragon shows up.

Read Corrina’s complete review here.

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A Summer’s Day at a Local Pool… and a Bold New Voice in Horror: Altar by Philip Fracassi

Wednesday, March 1, 2017 James McGlothlin Comments 0 Comment

“How are they moving like that? she thought. A few adults were running and then — at that moment — instinct took over, and she darted toward her son, not noticing when she knocked down another woman who was kneeling and tugging at her hair, not hearing the new screams, the screams of terror that were replacing the sounds of life like a spreading fungus…” (pgs. 40-1)

Back when I was a graduate student, back when I thought I was so busy, I actually had quite a bit of time to keep up on the newest horror writers coming down the pike. Now that I’m in the so-called real life world of jobs and mortgages, I find it difficult to stay on top of new horror. But I still keep my ear to the ground, and one name that I keep hearing about over and over is Philip Fracassi and his new novella Altar. Now that I’ve finally read it, I can see what the fuss is all about.

Before getting into the story, let me first say something briefly about the creepy cover art of Altar by Matthew Revert (see his work on the cover of the 2014 tribute anthology to Laird Barron, Children of Old Leech). This cover has, as far as I can see, little to nothing to do with the story within, though it interestingly sets a good mood for later in the story. This is not a complaint, just a note to those who haven’t read it yet. I wouldn’t want this cover to foul up someone’s enjoyment of this story with false expectations. And to be fair to the publisher, I’m not sure what would’ve counted as an apt piece of art for the cover of this horror novella. Why is that?

This story is about a summer’s day at a local community pool. But it’s this seemingly innocent setting that really sets the reader up.

Though not set in any noticeably particular time period, Fracassi really transported me back to those lazy summer days when I was a kid. I was completely immersed in Fracassi’s detailed account of a family on their way to their local public pool and what happens when they get there. You can almost feel the sun, you can taste the chlorine, you can smell the suntan lotion, and you can even almost smell those nasty public restrooms. You can also remember the excitement of your friends at that age doing the sorts of things that friends at that age do at the public pool. In fact, at twenty-five pages in, which is half way through the story, I stopped to look at the cover again just to make sure I was reading a horror novella. At this point, it was just a very happy (and for me very nostalgic) story. There was nothing about it that suggested a horror story.

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Nightmare, Issue 54 (March 2017)

Wednesday, March 1, 2017 MichaelPenkas Comments 0 Comment

Usually with Nightmare, by the end of the issue I’ve picked a clear favorite story. The stories are always well-written, but there’s usually one that especially moves me. This month, we’ve got two haunted towns and two haunted families that consistently play with the concept of who is haunted and who is the haunter. And I just can’t pick a favorite.

It starts with “Things Crumble, Things Break” by Nate Southard, about a town that’s slowly dying from a chemical accident. Or from something that they’re told is a chemical accident. While the author never mentions Flint (either in the story or in the proceeding interview), it’s impossible not to read this story of a toxic, abandoned city without thinking that tragedy wasn’t at least a subconscious influence.

Next up is “Alice Through the Plastic Sheet” by Robert Shearman (originally published in Remember Why You Fear Me: The Best Dark Fiction of Robert Shearman), that starts with the familiar trope of the boring suburban family being disturbed by loud neighbors … only to veer off in a David Lynchian direction rather quickly.

“You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych” by Kathleen Kayembe starts with a noise in a locked room (yet another familiar horror trope) and slowly reveals a tale of possession that alternates between three different points of view (hence the “Triptych” in the title). Kayembe doesn’t spare with the gruesome imagery, but at its heart this is a story about family and what it means to different people. And while I normally hate horror stories that delve too much into explaining the physics behind the supernatural, this one puts in just enough that we understand the stakes, while also explaining why so many possessed people end up looking so ragged so quickly.

It all winds up with “Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin (originally published in Aickman’s Heirs, appropriately enough), another “haunted town” story that has a twist ending that actually comes up in the middle. So you might begin reading this story thinking, “Oh, I know where this is going,” and you’re right, but that twist gets revealed in the middle, leaving the reader to sink even deeper into the nightmare. Because the only thing worse than finding a monster in your closet is realizing that there’s another closet behind that one.

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A Tale of Two Covers: Swords Against Darkness

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 John ONeill Comments 30 comments

Swords Against Darkness Andrew Offutt-small

Swords Against Darkness Paula Guran-small

Last September we reported here on the massive stack of research material Paula Guran was digesting in a noble attempt to produce the ultimate modern Swords & Sorcery anthology. The project, Swords Against Darkness, now has a cover (above right), and a release date (July). It does not (yet) have a table of contents. But when it does, you’ll be the first to know.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to put Paula’s cover side by side with its namesake, Andrew J. Offutt’s groundbreaking 1977 paperback anthology from Zebra, which spawned a series of five books containing original S&S tales from Poul Anderson, Tanith Lee, Charles R. Saunders, Orson Scott Card, Charles de Lint, Diana L. Paxson, Keith Taylor, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard L. Tierney, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell, Andre Norton, and many others. Paula’s new anthology is twice as long as that slender paperback, and will come crammed with classic stories by Leigh Brackett, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, Steven Erikson, and many others.

Of course, Offutt’s version also boasted an original cover by the great Frank Frazetta, and it’s hard to compete with that. The new cover goes for a more modern look and, while I’m old-school enough to wish for cover art instead of a photo edit, I think it does the job well enough. Here’s the back cover text.

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Future Treasures: The Girl From Rawblood by Catriona Ward

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Catriona Ward’s debut The Girl From Rawblood won the 2016 August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel — an impressive accomplishment for a first novel. Critics have raved over both its unabashed gothic horror sensibilities, and its originality… no easy feat!

Comic artist/writer Mike Mignola calls it “Brilliant… the old-school gothic novel I have been waiting for… I have never read anything like it and that’s saying something.” Kelly Link says it’s “A story to satisfy the most gothic of hearts… Sentence by sentence, Catriona Ward made herself one of my very favorite writers.” And Sarah Pinborough calls it “Terrifying… a dazzlingly brilliant Gothic masterpiece.” With praise like that, I might just have to clear an entire weekend for this one.

The Girl from Rawblood will be published by Sourcebooks Landmark on March 7, 2017. It is 368 pages, priced at $15.99 in paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

In the Hot Seat: The Reviewer Gets Grilled: An Interview with Fletcher Vredenburgh

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 Joe Bonadonna Comments 12 comments

Fletcher is no stranger to the readers and fans of Black Gate. His articles and reviews are not only well-written, insightful and entertaining, they are extremely popular, as well. He is the “reviewer extraordinaire,” and his reviews have led me to read many books. I trust his opinion and his taste in what makes for a good novel. Fletcher is also one of the most voracious readers I have ever met; even in my prime, when I was reading about 2 books a week, I couldn’t top him. Tireless and energetic, Fletcher amazes me with his wonderful reviews, which are also very well written. He is not a “book critic,” however, as you’ll find out when you read my interview with him. He is a reviewer of books. A Master Review Writer. I’m happy I met him through social media, proud to call him my friend, and grateful to him for his great reviews of my books.

So let’s begin, shall we? Let’s see if we can find out what makes him tick, what he likes to read and his whole process for reviewing a book.

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Final Thoughts on Narnia. The Last Battle: A Criticism and a Defense

Monday, February 27, 2017 Nick Ozment Comments 22 comments

Well, these were my books. You know, the ones that got me forever hooked on fantasy worlds and addicted to stories untethered from the things we know. I was eight, in the second grade, when I began reading them, and they were the first to begin teaching me that precious lifelong lesson: that though you might not trod in Faerie with your flesh-and-bone feet, there are many other pathways thither.

It was this shared knowledge that made an eight-year-old American boy feel he had much more in common with an old British professor who had died a decade before he was born than he did with most people he met day to day. And that remains true to this day. My spirit is more kindred with a New York woman born in 1918 (Madeleine L’Engle) than with my next door neighbor, closer to a Japanese man born in 1941 (Hayao Miyazaki) than to many of my blood kin.

It’s because we all share the secret – both those of us who weave the stories and those who are the audience willing and eager to fall under their spell – that there are doors to Faerie hidden in our own imaginations. Whenever and wherever we might have lived, wherever we might be. It’s a gift that goes back to the Beowulf poet, and back further to Homer, and back further still; indeed, it is one of the first magical abilities that separated man from the beasts.

But lest I diverge into a long-winded tribute to the power of fantasy, let me get to the issue at hand today. I have recently revisited Narnia, this time with a fellow traveler newly discovering the wonders of other realms. My daughter, just turning eight – the exact age I was when I first went through the wardrobe – has become a big fan.

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