Last Term: Honor’s Paradox by P.C. Hodgell

Last Term: Honor’s Paradox by P.C. Hodgell

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Another tawdry Caldwell cover

Can you tell I really like P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath series? Not once have I followed up a review of an author’s book with a review of her next one. And in three weeks I’ll review the next one as well. In between there’ll be a short story roundup and then, provided the Canadian mail runs well, Chris Carlsen’s Shadow of the Wolf.

Last week, I wrote that Bound in Blood (2010) was essentially a story where just a bunch of stuff happens to Hodgell’s cat-clawed heroine, Jame. That’s pretty much the feel in Honor’s Paradox (2011) as well, but this time there’s more apparent purpose. The story is told in Hodgell’s usual mix of the funny, the tragic, and the sublime. One final time, the setting is the Kencyrath military school, the randon academy.

Again, the setup:

Thirty thousand years ago, Perimal Darkling began to devour the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. To fight against it, the Three-Faced God forged three separate races into one: feline-like Arrin-Ken to serve as judges; heavily-muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen; fine-featured humanoid Highborn to rule them. For 27,000 years, the Kencyrath fought a losing battle, one universe after another falling to the darkness. Three thousand years ago, the High Lord Gerridon, fearful of death, betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. Fleeing yet again, the Kencyrath landed on the world of Rathilien. Since then, they haven’t heard from their god and Perimal Darkling has seemed satisfied to lurk at the edges of their new home. Monotheists trapped on an alien world with many gods, the Kencyrath have had to struggle to make a life on Rathilien.

Now, the power of the Three-Faced God seems to be reappearing. The Kencyrath believe that only the Tyr-ridan, three Highborn reflecting the three aspects of their god — destroyer, preserver, and creator — will be able to defeat Perimal Darkling. Jame, raised in the heart of Perimal Darkling, is fated to be the Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys.

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Self-published Book Review: Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon

Self-published Book Review: Bookbound by Aonghus Fallon

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If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see this post for instructions to submit. I’d love to get more submissions.

bookboundBookbound by Aonghus Fallon is actually two stories. One is a sword and sorcery epic, “The Emperor of the Red Planet”, about a tyrant who rules his people with an iron fist, and the five people who unite to defeat him. The other story is about six school boys, including Odran, the first person narrator.

Odran is disliked and bullied at the all-boys’ school he attends, and like many such boys, he daydreams about his antagonists getting their comeuppance. And in his dead grandmother’s house, instead of the elephant figurine he’d been promised, Odran finds a copybook, and in it reads the story of Nardo. Like himself, Nardo is lonely and unhappy, but Nardo is also an heir of the line of Starnovers, the family that rules the red planet. And with the Empress’s death, he claims her talisman, an elephant figurine that allows him to control the demonic creatures behind the Starnovers’ power.

The story in the copybook grows longer with the reading, each chapter seeming to reflect Odran’s life, fulfilling his dreams in Nardo. So that when Odran’s bullies steal and damage his lunchbox, he next reads about how the now aged Emperor Nardo gets revenge on his enemies by stealing those things that are most precious to them. But Odran can’t entirely control the story, and when the five enemies unite in order to defeat Nardo, he can conceive of the obstacles they face, but the characters themselves are too real to play along. Soon Odran realizes that the reason the characters are so real is that the book seems to be stealing pieces of the people he knows, giving life to the characters in the story while removing critical pieces from the personalities of the originals. And as the five enemies in the book are growing into the heroes of a dark Sword and Sorcery story, the real life counterparts are becoming worse and worse.

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Check Out the Recent Fiction at Tor.com

Check Out the Recent Fiction at Tor.com

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One of the (many) reasons I enjoy Tor.com is the enormously diverse range of fiction, compliments of Tor’s large cast of contributing editors. The sixteen stories posted there in the last three months were selected by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Justin Landon, Diana Pho, Liz Gorinsky, Melissa Frain, Susan Chang, and other fine editors. They include YA fantasy, horror, hard SF, urban fantasy, dystopian SF, space opera, dark fantasy, post-apocalyptic SF, and historical fantasy. What’s not to love?

A new story is posted at Tor.com every week. Not sure which ones you’d enjoy most? That’s what Tangent Online is for. Here’s Seraph on Rebecca Campbell’s “The High Lonesome Frontier,” illustrated by Linda Yan (above left).

As I drifted along these memories of the man who wrote the song, and the woman who sang it, and the mother who loved it, and the granddaughter who wasn’t even sure it was real yet loved it anyways… I realized the true beauty of this story, and the legitimacy of its claim to being science fiction. This story is of a 4th, or perhaps 5th-dimensional viewpoint, following the thread of this one song in a direct course from one life to the next, experiencing it all as a single moment in time, yet never in a linear fashion, as if the story itself is the river of which the song forever echoes, where does that water run. Magnificent.

Read Seraph’s review here. And here’s Jason McGregor on Lettie Prell’s hard SF tale “The Three Lives of Sonata James,” illustrated by Kevin Hong (above middle).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: ‘Dirk Gently’ is Not ‘Timeless’

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: ‘Dirk Gently’ is Not ‘Timeless’

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gently_circleI love Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the novel by Douglas Adams. Which you know because you read my Black Gate post about it. And I liked the sequel, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. And there were some good bits in the third novel, unfinished at Adams’ death.

And, I thought that the BBC miniseries starring Houdini & Doyle’s Stephen Magnon was worth watching. I own audio books of Adams reading Dirk Gently and the excellent BBC radio play of it. So, I’m a fan. I was leery after seeing the trailer for the new BBC miniseries starring Elijah Wood (not as Gently, however). It didn’t look like it was very true to the style of Adams’ books.

I’ve watched the first two episodes. Except for discussing BBC’s Sherlock post-season two, I’m usually pretty positive with my Black Gate posts here. If you are looking for more of that sunshine, skip the following and scroll on down to my review of the new show, Timeless.

With six of eight episodes yet to air, the new Dirk Gently is a festering pile of tripe. It bears almost no resemblance to Adams’ character, and even disregarding that, it’s a ridiculous mess of a show in its own right. Max Landis, who it appears wanted to imitate Quentin Tarentino while showing everyone how talented he is, all but completely ignores Adams’ work.

There is barely a shadow of the actual Dirk Gently in this series. Samuel Barnett’s character is totally clueless, almost completely helpless and neither clever nor funny. He just rolls along with no real insights or ability to influence events. That sound like Adams’ character? And, he’s not even the star, as the show is really about Gently’s reluctant assistant, Todd, played by Wood.

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The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

The Doctor Is In: Marvel’s New Doctor Strange Movie

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doctor-strangeOK. I may have let on that I like Dr Strange when I wrote two blog posts about his early development in Marvel Comics:

Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era
Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era.

I just watched the movie (here’s a trailer) and have to say I really enjoyed it. I’m not going to do anything spoilery here.

Nor do I have strong feelings about the change in the Ancient One other than to say I don’t care what gender the character is, but a Himalayan mystic should have stayed Asian, despite all the stereotype problems built in the Ancient One figure anyway.

But I am doing some puzzling over what kind of Dr. Strange I just saw. Doctor Strange as a 53-year old intellectual property of Marvel Comics has stayed remarkably faithful to the origin tone, no matter what decade, or what cross-over event he’s been involved with.

Cyclops and Professor X had their turns at being evil. Magneto had his turn at being good. The Fantastic Four has rotated its lineup. Tony Stark was a carefree millionaire who got drunk and lost his company. Steve Rogers became Nomad for a time.

But other than a few failings built into the character early in the game, Strange has remained pretty consistent. But this movie didn’t hit the tone I expected.

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New Treasures: The Rise of Io by Wesley Chu

New Treasures: The Rise of Io by Wesley Chu

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the-rise-of-io-smallWesley Chu burst onto the scene with The Lives of Tao, the opening novel in the Lives of Tao trilogy. His Tor hardcover, Time Salvager, was optioned by Michael Bay. His new novel from Angry Robot, The Rise of Io, is the first in a new trilogy. Earth is in the aftermath of a civil war between two alien factions, when Ella Patel stumbles upon a couple being chased by a heavily armed gang. Soon she’s caught up in an alien investigation, and listening to a strange new voice in her head.

Ella Patel – thief, con-artist and smuggler – is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One night, on the border of a demilitarized zone run by the body-swapping alien invaders, she happens upon a man and woman being chased by a group of assailants. The man freezes, leaving the woman to fight off five attackers at once, before succumbing. As she dies, to both Ella and the man’s surprise, the sparkling light that rises from the woman enters Ella, instead of the man. She soon realizes she’s been inhabited by Io, a low-ranking Quasing who was involved in some of the worst decisions in history. Now Ella must now help the alien presence to complete her mission and investigate a rash of murders in the border states that maintain the frail peace.

With the Prophus assigned to help her seemingly wanting to stab her in the back, and the enemy Genjix hunting her, Ella must also deal with Io’s annoying inferiority complex. To top it all off, Ella thinks the damn alien voice in her head is trying to get her killed. And if you can’t trust the voices in your head, who can you trust?

Our previous coverage of Wesley Chu includes:

An Origin Story Mashed With a First-Contact Story: A Review of The Lives of Tao by Kelly Swails
New Treasures: The Lives of Tao
Time Salvager
Time Siege

The Rise of Io was published by Angry Robot on October 4, 2016. It is 352 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tommy Arnold.

A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

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Iain Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer, established himself as a major presence in the genre with his Culture series, the first of which, Consider Phelebas, appeared in 1987. Set in a far future, post-scarcity universe teeming with human and alien societies, the Culture books are wide screen space operas with a decidedly sociological-political perspective. Banks wrote a new Culture book every few years until there were ten volumes. The final one, The Hydrogen Sonata, appeared in 2012, shortly before Banks died of cancer in 2013, at the age of 59.

In 1986, right before beginning the series that would dominate the rest of his career, Banks published something rather different: The Bridge, a book that stands high in the ranks of a significant sub-genre of fantasy, those stories that deal with pre or after life states, or that take place in the nebulous regions between life and death.

The Bridge begins as a nameless man (we eventually learn that he is an affluent Glasgow professional named Alex) has a moment of inattention while driving back from a weekend of nostalgic dissipation; as he gazes at the Forth Railway Bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth just west of Edinburgh, he fails to notice the shifting traffic patterns in front of him and crashes his car. He is trapped in the wreckage of his vehicle, praying that it doesn’t burst into flames before he can be rescued. Crushed and bleeding, he lapses into unconsciousness… and awakens, whole and uninjured, on the bridge.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of John Brunner

Vintage Treasures: The Best of John Brunner

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In 1974 Lester Del Rey hit on the idea for a series of collections showcasing the best early SF writers in the field — especially those who had a publishing contract with his Del Rey imprint, naturally enough. The Classic Science Fiction line grew to roughly two dozen volumes, creating an essential library of early science fiction. It became one of the seminal SF series of my childhood, introducing me to such writers as C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, John W. Campbell, Philip K. Dick, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Robert Bloch, Jack Williamson, and many others. James McGlothlin has been reviewing them at Black Gate. So far he’s covered The Best of Stanley Weinbaum and The Best of Frederik Pohl, two of the finest books in the set.

I always thought I had a complete collection, but just a few months ago I discovered there was a late entry — The Best of John Brunner, published fourteen years after the first volume in the series. How the heck did that manage to elude me for nearly 30 years? I scrambed to find one, and soon enough located a virtually new copy on eBay for just $4 — just five cents more than the 1988 cover price. It arrived a few weeks ago.

It has been a genuine treat. Brunner is one of science fiction’s finest 20th Century practitioners, and while I’m well familiar with his novels, I’ve discovered that I’m much less knowledgeable regarding his short fiction. In fact, while I haven’t finished reading it, I’m pretty sure I’ve never read any of these stories before.

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Part Teenage Wasteland, Part Lovecraft Fever Dream: Charlie Human’s Baxter Zevcenko Novels

Part Teenage Wasteland, Part Lovecraft Fever Dream: Charlie Human’s Baxter Zevcenko Novels

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For all the resources I turn to when I want the latest book news — including Locus magazine, Facebook, Amazon, conventions, and suggestions from friends — there’s really no replacement for browsing a really great book store. The Barnes & Noble in Geneva, Illinois, is a really great book store, and I’ve made many of fine discovery there. Last Saturday was no exception, and I walked out with a copy of Apocalypse Now Now, the first novel by Charlie Human to feature sixteen year-old Baxter Zevcenko, veteran of South Africa’s supernatural underworld.

Lauren Beukes (Broken Monsters) called Apocalypse Now Now “A demented, raucous urban fantasy,” and Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim) labels it “Part teenage wasteland, part Lovecraft fever dream.” The second novel, Kill Baxter, was published in trade paperback by Titan last year, and arrives in a mass market edition this month.

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Lackington’s Issue 11 Now Available

Lackington’s Issue 11 Now Available

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Lackington's Summer 2016-rackAdrian Simmons is one of the editors of the highly-regarded Heroic Fantasy Quarterly magazine. But he’s also a fine writer in his own right, as Charles Payseur reminds us this week, in his review of the Summer 2016 issue of Lackington’s magazine, containing Adrian’s short story “How I Came to Be Raised by Balniwan the Fool.”

Just ahead of the release of their next issue, Lackinton’s has dropped the paywall on their Possessions issue and it’s a great collection of rather dark stories… there are a lot of ways that these tales circle around what it is to have possessions, and what it is to be possessed. Most of the pieces are solidly fantasy, the magic alive and well and further complicating the theme but also giving it a wild fire that casts some wicked shadows…

This story takes an interesting angle on the idea of possessions, focusing on a child living in a world defined by violence. Under the rule of their father, Alebeg, the children as possessions, less than people. He scares them and he awes them and he lives a bit like a cult leader on a hill, though with a rather Norse feel to it. So as I read [the] main possession of the story is that of the main character, who is treated more like property than a person… It’s certainly a visceral story that comes with the taste of blood and the bitterness of being someone powerless in the face of force and power. A fine way to kick off the issue!

Read Charles’ complete review here.

Every issue of Lackington’s has a theme, which gives the magazine an interesting focus. The theme this issue is “Possessions.”

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