Black Gate – Page 910 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Ancient Worlds: With a King Like This Who Needs Invading Hordes?

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 Elizabeth Cady Comments 5 comments

As far as heroes go, Gilgamesh leaves a lot to be desired, at least by modern standards. Gilgamesh is not a good guy. Or a good man. Or a good king.

That is in fact how the story begins. Gilgamesh is an impressive specimen, it’s true.

“Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull.
He walks out in front, the leader,
and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions.
Mighty net, protector of his people,
raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone!
Offspring of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh is strong to perfection,
son of the august cow, Rimat-Ninsun;
… Gilgamesh is awesome to perfection.”

(Translation taken from the Ancient Texts library.)

Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine and one-third human. We’re not entirely certain how that math works out: we know his mother is the goddess Ninsun and if I had to guess I would say that they considered the mother’s contribution to a child’s makeup as more weighty than a father’s. (As opposed to the Greeks, who considered the mother to be merely a biological caretaker of an implanted seed.) He’s a powerful leader, he defends his people, so what’s the problem?

He’s also ancient Uruk’s biggest frat boy.

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Future Treasures: Fearsome Magics, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Solaris Books continues to single-handedly fuel a renaissance in paperback anthologies, including two top notch science fiction anthology series: Ian Whates’s Solaris Rising, and Jonathan Strahan’s Reach for Infinity.

Next week sees the arrival of Jonathan Strahan’s Fearsome Magics, his second volume of original fantasy fiction from Solaris. Here’s what James McGlothlin said about the first, Fearsome Journeys:

Many of Fearsome Journeys’ stories fit squarely within the tradition of fantasy — which I love! For instance, many contain typical tropes such as magic, dragons, wizards, fighters, thieves, etc., as well as familiar plot angles like quests to recover treasure or kill some monster or dragon. However, as one would expect from this lineup, many are fairly experimental attempts to push the boundaries of what is, or should be, considered fantasy. Let me give a few highlights.

Glenn Cook provides another great tale of the Black Company, his popular fantasy military troop, with his story “Shaggy Dog Bridge.” Similar to Cook’s Black Company, Scott Lynch’s “The Effigy Engine” centers upon a group of (wizard) warriors called the Red Hats, who are battled-hardened cynics often attempting to just get by. This was a very interesting tale describing war contraptions that reminded me of medieval versions of the AT-AT Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back. Very cool!…

I can say — without any reservation — all of stories contained within Fearsome Journeys are extremely well-crafted… There’s no doubt that these are some of the best writers in the field today.

Here’s the book description.

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A Rogue’s Early Days: Yendi by Steven Brust

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 5 comments

Steven Brust has written that Yendi (1984), second in his ongoing series about gangster Vlad Taltos, is his least favorite book. As it’s only the second of his novels I’ve read, I can’t tell you where it falls on a greater continuum of his work, but I can tell you it’s a pretty good book. Sure, the book is flawed, but the good bits far outweigh the bad. If this is the low point in the series, then I’m REALLY looking forward to the later volumes.

The first book in the series, Jhereg (read my review here), introduces Vlad Taltos, a human assassin in a magic-heavy world ruled by the Dragaerans (who are pretty much elves). In that book, Vlad finds himself forced into carrying out a complex assassination. Aided by his mini-dragon familiar, Loiosh, and several powerful and clever friends, he succeeds beyond his own expectations. It’s a blast and I’m grateful to Bill Ward for getting me to check it out.

Instead of taking the story forward, Brust goes back in time with Yendi. Here we learn how Vlad rose in the ranks of the mafia-like House Jhereg. By a combination of smarts, daring, and just enough violence, he secures a position in the gangland ecology of the Dragaeran Empire’s capital city, Adrilankha. By book’s end, he’s well on his way to becoming the successful racketeer we meet in the first book. Unfortunately for him, things happen between the beginning and end of Yendi that make for a lousy time for Vlad, but a fast-paced story for us.

The book begins with Vlad learning that another low-level boss, a Dragaeran named Laris, has opened a gaming parlor in his territory. When confronted, Laris is apologetic and presents a series of nearly believable excuses. After the meeting, Vlad informs his lieutenant, Kragar, that they have probably no more than two days to get ready for an all-out war. His intuition proves correct.

The war between Vlad and Laris is so violent that one of the five rulers of House Jhereg summons Vlad and tells him to handle his war with more subtlety, or else. Unfortunately, it’s too late to avoid the or else. Incensed by the steady string of fires and killings, the Dragaeran empress dispatches members of her Phoenix Guard to clamp down. There are curfews, restrictions on the size of gatherings, and all criminal operations are shut down.

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New D&D Monster Manual Unleashed on the World

Monday, September 29, 2014 Andrew Zimmerman Jones Comments 2 comments

A fantasy roleplaying game is defined as much by the caliber of the villains and monsters as it is by the caliber of the players and heroes. Though Dungeons & Dragons has always been driven primarily by the imagination of the Dungeon Master and the players, the fact is that you can usually get only so far with just the Player’s Handbook (Amazon). It has the basic rules mechanics for playing the game, but lacks the array of exotic monsters necessary to populate – and threaten – the fantasy world that the characters are exploring.

With the arrival of the new 5th edition D&D Monster Manual (Amazon), that gap has now been alleviated. This book contains a beautifully-illustrated 350 pages of monsters, adversaries, and maybe even a few allies to introduce flawlessly into 5th edition games. The name really says it all; it is a manual full of monsters. There’s an appendix of “Miscellaneous Creatures” and one of “Nonplayer Characters” which are also useful, but there is one stand-out mechanic introduced that is worth mentioning in its own right, for those who might be wondering if the book is worth picking up.

Legendary Creatures

The manual contains a class of “Legendary Creatures” which “can take special actions outside their turns, and a few can exert power over their environments, causing extraordinary magical effects to occur in their vicinity.” In addition to these “legendary actions,” legendary creatures also sometimes come along with a lair, which gives the legendary creature ability to take extra “lair actions” and may have ambient powers, representing how the legendary creature’s power has physically warped the terrain of the lair.

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“Shardik, Shardik the Power Of God!”

Monday, September 29, 2014 markrigney Comments 0 Comment

Midway through Richard Adams’s doorstop of a book, Shardik (1974), I decided I had stumbled into the world’s longest parable.

Biblical parables are typically quite brief, but Adams pulls toward the opposite shore, reasoning that in thoroughness lies salvation. And why shouldn’t he? That tactic worked like gangbusters in his astounding debut, Watership Down (1972).

Shardik could indeed function as a serviceable doorstop, but to dismiss it out of hand would be a disservice to literature in general, and to fantasy novels in particular. Shardik is a brave, uncompromising examination of how “mere” mortals encounter and deify the exceptional, thus giving rise to portents, omens, prophecies, and ultimately continent-conquering religions.

In the case of Shardik, the talismanic inciting event takes the form of a gigantic bear, a bear of monstrous, prehistoric proportions, and this bear first flees a forest fire and then crashes, half-burned and exhausted, into a far-flung outpost of human civilization, Ortelga. Unfortunately – or not, depending on one’s point of view – the Ortelgans entertain a fervid belief that God’s manifestation on Earth will come in the form of a massive bear.

While Watership Down stayed locked within the heads of its rabbit characters, Shardik spends only a few pages at the outset inside the eponymous bear’s mind, just long enough to convince any alert reader that while Shardik may be a divine instrument, he is very much a bear, no more, no less, and will behave accordingly. After that, the story turns to Kelderek-Plays-With-Children, a hunter of simple tastes who first stumbles upon the injured, recovering bear-god.

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New Treasures: Die and Stay Dead by Nicholas Kaufmann

Monday, September 29, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last October, I talked about Nicholas Kaufmann’s dark fantasy novel Dying is My Business, which I called “the tale of a badass hero facing down the forces of darkness in modern-day Brooklyn.” I’m very pleased to see the sequel arrive this week — this looks like a gritty and appealing dark fantasy series I can really sink my teeth into.

In this pulsepounding sequel to Dying Is My Business, Trent, a man who can’t stay dead or retain his memories, tries to uncover his connection to a deadly doomsday cult bent on destroying NYC.

A brutal murder in Greenwich Village puts Trent and the Five-Pointed Star on the trail of Erickson Arkwright, the last surviving member of a doomsday cult. Back in the day, the Aeternis Tenebris cult thought the world would end on New Year’s Eve of 2000. When it didn’t, they decided to end it themselves by summoning Nahash-Dred, a powerful, terrifying demon known as the Destroyer of Worlds. But something went wrong. The demon massacred the cult, leaving Arkwright the sole survivor.

Now, hiding somewhere in New York City with a new identity, Arkwright plans to summon the demon again and finish the job he started over a decade ago. As Trent rushes to locate a long-lost magical artifact that may be the only way to stop him, the clues begin to mount… Trent’s past and Arkwright’s might be linked somehow. And if they are, it means the truth of who Trent really is may lie buried in the twisted mind of a madman.

Die and Stay Dead will be published on Tuesday, September 30 by St. Martin’s Griffin. It is 388 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Chris McGrath.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: An Index (So Far)

Monday, September 29, 2014 Bob Byrne Comments 5 comments

Index_Holmes — An awesome print by Tom Richmond of Holmes on screen over the years. I own print #7 of 450

Surprisingly, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has now made it to thirty posts. While I’m sure the dedicated reader types ‘Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ in the search field to call up all the posts in the series, I said to myself (I talk to myself a lot), “Bob, there’s got to be an easier way for someone to bask in the entirety of your writings so far.”

And there is! Below is an index with links to all the posts, followed by some topics likely to come.

Sherlock Holmes/Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – Introduction to the column (rather unoriginal title, eh?)

Lord of Misrule – Christopher Lee as the great detective

The Case of the Short Lived Sherlock – One of my favorite Holmes’, Ian Richardson

Creation to Death and Back – A good intro to Holmes, focusing on Doyle’s love-hate (minus the love) relationship with his most famous creation

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Vintage Treasures: The Dance of Death by Algernon Blackwood

Sunday, September 28, 2014 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Algernon Blackwood is one of the acknowledged masters of the ghost story — and also one of its most prolific practitioners. He wrote a dozen novels and published some 34 short story collections, including John Silence (1908), Incredible Adventures (1914), Ancient Sorceries and Other Tales (1927); and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (1949). He died in 1951.

In his review of Incredible Adventures, Ryan Harvey saluted Blackwood thusly:

Of all the practitioners of the classic “weird tale,” which flourished in the early twentieth century before morphing into the more easily discerned genres of fantasy and horror, none entrances me more than Algernon Blackwood. Looking at the stable of the foundational authors of horror — luminaries like Poe, James, le Fanu, Machen, Lovecraft — it is Blackwood who has the strongest effect on me. Of all his lofty company, he is the one who seems to achieve the most numinous “weird” of all…

In my view, Blackwood achieved his finest work in his earlier collections The Listener and Other Stories (1907), John Silence — Physician Extraordinary (1908), and The Lost Valley and Other Stories (1910), where he combined his weird adventures with aspects of horror and fear. These earlier classics are supernatural horror, but are also superb works of mood.

Much of Blackwood’s impressive catalog is now out of print, but not all of it. S. T. Joshi, who called his work “more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s,” and said Incredible Adventures “may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century,” has edited two contemporary short story collections: The Complete John Silence Stories (1997), and Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories (2002).

Of course, I’m most interested in the vintage paperback editions of Algernon Blackwood, and especially his 1963 Pan paperback The Dance of Death, which I recently acquired on eBay.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

Sunday, September 28, 2014 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Ah, August. We miss you already. The nights were warmer, the kids hadn’t started school, and Alice still hadn’t discovered those new paperback collections I tried to hide in the garage. It was a simpler time, a happier time. A time when I didn’t have to sleep on the couch.

Black Gate bloggers were busy in August, too. We posted 105 new articles last month, and our faithful servers in the back room worked overtime delivering 1.28 million pages views… a new record. That’s a page every two seconds, 24 hours a day. Don’t you people ever sleep?

The most popular article last month was Nick Ozment’s review of the blockbuster film The Guardians of the Galaxy. No surprise — it’s well on its way to becoming the biggest film of the year. It’s a terrific science fantasy that could well become this generation’s Star Wars.

Second on the list was Robert J Howe’s reminiscence of his time in various writer’s groups, Writer’s Workshops: Under the Black Flag. Third was Lou Anders’ article on his breakout middle grade fantasy Thrones & Bones: Why I Write What I Write How I Write it.

Fourth on the list was Matthew David Surridge’s report from the fabulous Montreal film festival, My Fantasia Festival, Day 10: Once Upon a Time in Shanghai and Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Rounding out the Top Five was Connor Gormley’s feature review of Karl Edward Wagner’s sword & sorcery classic Dark Crusade.

For this month, I tried something a little different by also including the top Categories. The biggest surprise was that one of the top items on the list (at #4, higher than any of the categories except New Treasures and Books) was the RSS feed for our Tuesday blogger James Maliszewski. Way to bring in the crowds, James!

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Eugie Foster, December 30, 1971 – September 27, 2014

Saturday, September 27, 2014 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Author and editor Eugie Foster died of respiratory failure today at Emory University in Atlanta.

Eugie announced last October that she has been diagnosed with cancer, a “malignant, fast-growing tumor, around 6cm, in my sinuses and hard and soft palate regions.” She was undergoing aggressive treatments, including a stem cell transplant, which left her vulnerable to infections. In one of her last blog posts, on August 12, 2014, she wrote:

[One] opportunistic bacteria infection has taken up residence in my lower bowels and another one has set up shop in my stomach. Not only is food unpleasant to eat but it’s not doing anything enjoyable once it hits my GI Tract, including staying put. Waaaahhhh!!

They have me on lotso antibiotics and other meds to make this easier on me. I appreciate that but honestly, I just want to be unconscious. None of this is unexpected but it all sucks. Hurry up stem cells. Graft! Graft already!!

I first encountered Eugie when she took over Tangent Online after Dave Truesdale stepped down. Her own short stories were appearing in Interzone, Apex, Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and other places; her story “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” won the 2009 Nebula Award. Jason Waltz introduced me to Eugie at Dragon*Con in 2010, at her busy press station where she produced the onsite newsletter, the Daily Dragon. I found her charming and highly articulate, filled with drive and energy, and seemingly unstoppable.

Her death was announced in a brief blog post by her husband, Matthew M. Foster. She was 42 years old.