Black Gate – Page 680 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Gardner Dozois on the New Sword & Sorcery

Monday, March 14, 2016 John ONeill Comments 27 comments

On Facebook yesterday editor Gardner Dozois theorized that the essential influence on modern Sword & Sorcery, which differentiates it from the classic pulp S&S of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, may be the Spaghetti Western.

While we’re talking about fantasy, I’ve been reading a lot of what’s being called “the New Sword & Sorcery” lately, stuff by people like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, K.J. Parker, Daniel Abraham, and it struck me what the one essential influence was that aesthetically separates the New Sword & Sorcery from the Old Sword & Sorcery, since both have sword-wielding adventurers, monsters, and evil magicians: it’s the Spaghetti Western. Clearly Spaghetti Westerns have had a big influence on the TONE of this new work. Gone are the gorgeous, jewel-encrusted temples stuffed with huge snakes and giant idols with jeweled eyes and slinky sinister priestesses in jeweled bikinis where Conan used to hang out. Instead, the most common setting seems to be a remote jerkwater village, either parched and sun-blasted or drizzling and half-buried in mud, extremely poor and mean, swarming with flies, packed with venal, dull-eyed, illiterate peasants who are barely smarter than morons, if they are, and who have no power or influence in the wider world, and certainly no money, and who stare blankly and slack-jawed at our heroes as they enter town, either kicking up clouds of dust at every step or splashing muddy water.

You know this place. Think of every degraded village in every Spaghetti Western you’ve ever seen.

Read his comment (and the fascinating discussion thread with folks like Eleanor Arnason, Joe Bonadonna, Scott Oden, Elizabeth Lynn, Christopher Fowler, Darrell Schweitzer, Lisa Tuttle, and others) here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: SH – Consulting Detective

Monday, March 14, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 9 comments

Last week, we talked about the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Game line. Today, we shift to something a bit more in line with this column’s title. Back in 1981, Sleuth Publications produced Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (SHCD). Expansions, containing additional cases followed and it was also turned in to a PC game. I never played any of these games. Which might make you wonder why I’m doing a post on it now. Well, if you’ve visited this column before, you know that I don’t let little things like that get in my way. However, I have played the 2015 reprint of SHCD and that’s what we’re looking at today.

In the game, you are one of the famed ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’ the ragged street urchins. I’ve read in reviews that you play Wiggins, but that’s not quite the case. But that makes no difference to the game: just wanted to point it out. Holmes is too busy (and presumably Watson is too clueless) to deal with some unsolved crimes, so he sends you (and Wiggins) out to do his job for him. Really, that’s what’s going on.

The game box contains five components. First is a very slender rulebook. There’s also a map of London with quadrant and building numbers. There is a London Directory that tells you where to find people and places on the map. This ID system ties back to the Casebook, which briefly describes the crime (this is where Holmes gives you your marching orders) and contains all the leads you will follow to try and solve the case. And there are some replica newspapers that contain mostly chaff, but there is also a little bit of wheat to be sorted out.

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New Treasures: Warhammer: Lords of the Dead

Monday, March 14, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I really enjoy these Warhammer omnibus editions. They’re a tremendous bargain, for one thing. They typically contain 2-3 full length novels, plus the assorted short story or two. I’ve collected more than a few, and while I especially enjoy the science fiction offshoot, Warhammer 40K, the straight-up Warhammer volumes have proven to be a reliable source of modern sword & sorcery, most notably the tales of Gotrek & Felix, C. L. Werner’s Brunner the Bounty Hunter, and Kim Newman’s The Vampire Genevieve.

I’m extremely interested in the new omnibus Lords of the Dead, which includes the first two novels in the End Times series: Chris Wraigh’s The Fall of Altdorf, and The Return of Nagash, by Black Gate blogger Josh Reynolds, author of our popular series on The Nightmare Men. Here’s the description.

The fate of The Old World hangs in the balance. Heroes rise and fall as they battle the Ruinous Powers in a last desperate attempt to save the mortal realm. The Gods of Chaos only want total destruction and their victory seems inevitable……

The Return of Nagash

As the forces of Chaos threaten to drown the world in madness, Mannfred von Carstein and Arkhan the Black put aside their difference and plot to resurrect the one being with the power to stand against the servants of the Ruinous Powers and restore order to the world – the Great Necromancer himself. As they set about gathering artefacts to use in their dark ritual, armies converge on Sylvania, intent on stopping them. But Arkhan and Mannfred are determined to complete their task. No matter the cost, Nagash must rise again.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Serial POV – In its Myriad Forms

Sunday, March 13, 2016 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

This is part 6 in the Choosing Your Narrative Point of View Series

Continuing in our exploration of 8 distinct POVs, we come to:

#5. Serial: 1st, 2nd, Tight Limited 3rd, Limited 3^rd, or Blended

The Serial POV is a common variation of Mixed View Points in genre fiction.

It’s sort of like serial monogamy. You use more than one character’s viewpoint, but you don’t go hopping around in multiple heads in the same sentence, paragraph, or scene, often not even in the same chapter. This can be done with a series of alternating 1st Person, alternating 2nd Person (Very unusual!), alternating Tight Limited 3rd, alternating Limited 3rd Person, or an alternating blend of some or all of the above.

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March/April Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

Sunday, March 13, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The longest story in the March/April issue of F&SF is John P. Murphy’s novella “The Liar,” which editor C.C. Finley introduces with, “If you’ve ever wondered what the result would be like if Garrison Keillor wrote a Stephen King story, then look no further.” In his review at Tangent Online, Jason McGregor writes:

Greg is a “liar,” which is to say someone who can tell broken things they aren’t really broken and, if he’s convincing enough, repair them with an imposition of will alone. When the old sexton can no longer perform his duties, Greg takes over and learns about the town’s secret: every November 5th, a teenager dies. Unraveling this supernatural mystery takes him back to a crashed WWII bomber nearby and another secret. Adding urgency to this fatal problem is that Greg and Pastor Julie have a budding relationship going and Julie has a wayward teenaged daughter…

[Murphy] creates interesting characters steeped in a sense of place (small-town New Hampshire) in which quite a bit does happen and, even when matters aren’t at a peak, I was content to hang out with the folks of the story. The realistic aspects are very well done, the fantasy is deftly woven in (and creative in recasting the essence of the supernatural element), and the horror adds spice.

Jason van Hollander’s cover illustrates Marc Laidlaw’s novelette “The Ghost Penny Post.” Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

Sunday, March 13, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The top article at Black Gate last month wasn’t even a BG piece, strictly speaking. It was a brief link to Matthew David Surridge’s essay The Great Hugo Wars of 2015, at Splice Today. Based on the overwhelming traffic to that article, and the high number of comments, it seems our readers are still more than casually interested in the Hugo Awards.

Number 2 on the list was M Harold Page’s look at Fool’s Assassin, and How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy Without Being Boring. As always, never underestimate the power of a great title. It was followed by our obituary for BG contributor and author Bud Webster.

Rounding out the Top Five were Matthew Wuertz’s piece on a 60-year old scandal, the Galaxy Science Fiction $6,500 Novel-Writing Sham, and Donald Crankshaw’s review of D. P. Prior’s second self-published fantasy novel Carnifex, the sequel to his popular debut The Nameless Dwarf.

Also in the Top Ten for February were Doug Ellis’ historical essay on the Great Pulp Gathering at Mort Weisinger’s House in 1937, Marie Bilodeau’s review of season one of The Flash, Fletcher Vredenburgh’s detailed look at Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Illearth War, our sneak peek at Salomé Jones’s new anthology Cthulhu Lies Dreaming, and Violette Malan’s look at Agent Carter.

The complete list of Top Articles for February 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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A Tale of Two Covers: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

Sunday, March 13, 2016 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

The Last Page Anthony Huso paperback-small

I bought the hardcover edition of Anthony Huso’s debut novel The Last Page after reading Matthew David Surridge’s review in Black Gate 12.

The Last Page is a high fantasy steampunk novel, and a love story. We follow the sexually charged relationship between the improbably named Caliph Howl, heir to the throne of the northern country of Stonehold, and a witch named Sena. The two of them meet at university, go their own ways, and then come together again after Caliph has become king and Sena has acquired a vastly powerful magical tome… what really makes the first book work is its language. The prose is strong, quick and dense in the best ways. The diction, the word choice, is inventive; the imagery is both original and concise. At its best, Huso’s language recalls Wolfe or Vance…

The last time I was in a bookstore I did a double take when I saw the trade paperback edition, which has been given a dramatically different cover. The hardcover edition (above left) was packaged as an urban fantasy, with a beautiful woman with glowing eyes on the cover. The paperback (at right) has been completely redesigned as a fantasy adventure novel, showing a huge fleet of airships massing over a sprawling fantasy landscape. If you’re not paying attention, it’d be pretty easy to mistake it for a completely different book.

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Superhero TV: Arrow

Saturday, March 12, 2016 Derek Kunsken Comments 3 comments

ga0 — The Arrow. I’ve been told by the ladies that he is easy on the eyes.

Over the last several weeks, a Canadian cadre of Black Gate‘s bloggers have formed an Alpha Flight of super-bloggers to right the wrongs of the world, especially where such wrongs take the form of you not knowing about every superhero TV show we can talk about.

This is going to be my last post in this huge comic event, and to cap off my contribution, I wanted to dig into the CW’s Arrow which has been running since 2012 and is into its fourth season. It has the same producers as The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (also running on CW) and CBS’ Supergirl, and they occupy the same universe (multiverse in the case of Supergirl).

Green Arrow is not a new DC property, dating back to 1941. Green Arrow was a Robin Hood-themed character cast in the same mold as Batman, so much so that he also started as a millionaire, had a kid sidekick, and an Arrow Car and an Arrow-Plane.

In fact, there wasn’t much to separate him from Batman for much of his early years, which begs the question of, if you’re looking for Batman, why not just buy a Batman comic?

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Future Treasures: Harmony House by Nic Sheff

Saturday, March 12, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The YA dystopian trend doesn’t seem like it will run out of energy too soon. My eyes glaze over these days when I see them at the bookstore.

There’s plenty of original and interesting YA work being produced that don’t involve nightmare dsytopian scenarios, however. Nic Sheff, author of the bestselling memoir Tweak, an account of his teen years as a crystal meth addict, and its follow up We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction, brings us Harmony House, a YA horror novel. It arrives in hardcover from HarperTeen later this month.

Something’s not right in Beach Haven.

Jen Noonan’s father thinks a move to Harmony House is the key to salvation, but to everyone who has lived there before, it is a portal to pure horror.

After her alcoholic mother’s death, Jen’s father cracked. He dragged Jen to a dilapidated old manor on the shore of New Jersey to start their new lives—but Jen can tell that the place has an unhappy history. She can feel it the same way she can feel her anger flowing out of her, affecting the world in strange ways she can’t explain.

But Harmony House is more than just a creepy old estate. It’s got a chilling past — and the more Jen discovers its secrets, the more the house awakens. Visions of a strange boy who lived in the house long ago follow Jen wherever she goes, and her father’s already-fragile sanity disintegrates before her eyes. As the forces in the house join together to terrorize Jen, she must find a way to escape the past she didn’t know was haunting her — and the mysterious and terrible power she didn’t realize she had.

Harmony House will be published by HarperTeen on March 22, 2016. It is 304 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition.

Bombs and Gorgeous Automatons: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

Saturday, March 12, 2016 Damien Moore Comments 0 Comment

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street-back-small

Imagine living in 1800s London and working near Scotland Yard as a telegraphist. Now, imagine how the foundations of your uneventful life are upended when a stranger saves you from a catastrophic bombing. And get this: they knew it would happen.

Thus begins The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. When Thaniel Steepleton, the disillusioned telegraphist, befriends Keita Mori, a masterful watchmaker, their lives begin to weave around the clock. Cursed with the ability to see the future, Mori struggles to live in the present whilst preventing bad things from happening to Thaniel. In the meantime, bad things unfortunately happen to Mori, considering he ranks as the premier suspect in the bombing. Later on, a brilliant physicist named Grace enters their lives and attempts to rid Mori of his ability to foretell the future.

Along with this gripping tale, we learn about Mori’s aristocratic past in a war-torn Japan. We also learn the reason why he needed to start his life anew in London. Matsumoto, a man from his past, also journeys to London and weaves in and out of Grace’s life, hoping to find a place of permanence. The two subplots strengthen the plot in their center.

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