This week I intended on doing part two of my history of Somalia, but I haven’t had time to do the research. I got bogged down in finishing an archaeology booklet I was contracted to write, as well as dealing with National Novel Writing Month (22,332 words and counting!). So we’ll talk about the medieval empires of Somalia next week. This week I want to share some photos I took at the Museo Naval here in Madrid.
Fantasy board games have tried to capture the addictive nature of role playing for decades, but without much real success. In the past few years though, a number of dungeon-delving games have come close, including Descent, Talisman Fourth Edition, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, Claustrophobia, and a few others. In his recent review of Paizo’s second Adventure Card Game Base Set, Skull & Shackles, Scott Taylor fingered another contender, this one from Paizo:
Of late Paizo had expanded their market with several new product lines, the most intriguing of which are their Boxed Set Card Games. These sets ingeniously combine card building with role-playing with table-top (Think D&D meets Magic the Gathering meets anything done by Fantasy Flight!) Indeed, it is an amazing breakthrough by the Paizo design team, and guess what, it actually works!
Bob Byrne was even more positive in his assessment of the first title in the series, Rise of the Runelords, in his August article on “RPGing with a board”
By far, the best board/card game I’ve found that emulates the role-playing experience is the Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords Adventure Card Game. The adventures get more difficult, you level up and the gear gets better. You maintain your items, spells, and levels from scenario to scenario through an entire Adventure Path, rather than start over each game play session. I’m sure I’ll post on that excellent game in the future.
While I wait impatiently for Bob’s full review, I went ahead and ordered a copy. It arrived a few days ago and, while I haven’t had a chance to play a full game yet (mostly because I haven’t figured out how to do that without tearing the shrinkwrap), it looks very promising indeed.
Well, I’m back from the 2014 World Fantasy Convention and I had a terrific time. Matthew Wuertz did a fine job with his daily convention reports… just don’t ask me where he found the time to write them. It certainly looks like he had fun, anyway, what with all the sight-seeing, panels, autograph sessions, readings, and whatnot. Me, I headed right for the Dealer’s Room, where I spent four days ogling books.
And what marvelous books! You’d think that running a website like Black Gate, I’d be more or less on top of major genre releases, right? Not so, apparently. While wandering the floor, I came across dozens (and dozens) of marvelous new titles from such splendid publishers as Prime, American Fantasy Press, Small Beer Press, Hippocampus, ChiZine, Midnight Books, Tachyon, Fairwood Press, Borderlands Press, and many others. I’ll be reporting on the most intriguing books right here over the next few weeks — starting with Daryl Gregory’s We Are All Completely Fine, the tale of a support group for people who have survived horror-movie traumas. It’s a book that’s received a great deal of attention over the past two months, and it went right to the top of my reading pile.
Harrison was the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time popping pills and not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by unreadable messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. Martin never takes off his sunglasses. Never.
No one believes the extent of their horrific tales, not until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these seemingly-insane outcasts form a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within — and which are lurking in plain sight.
Daryl Gregory is also the author of Pandemonium, Afterparty, and The Devil’s Alphabet. We Are All Completely Fine was published by Tachyon Publications on August 12, 2014. It is 192 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 fo the digital edition.
We have a hero: Gilgamesh.
We have his best friend and sidekick: Enkidu.
Logical next step: find big monster and kill it.
Luckily, the Epic of Gilgamesh has one handy. This monster comes in the form of Humbaba, a being who is massive and terrifying, who was created to be “a terror to human beings” and who acts as a guardian of the Cedar Forests.
And frankly, he’s a really weird monster. As I’ve noted before, Mesopotamian myth feels very strange to us. Four-thousand years may be a blip geologically but anthropologically it’s a massive gulf. And as illustration, I offer up the fact that Humbaba’s face is usually depicted as being constructed out of intestines.
After DAW killed the fourth Imaro novel, for nearly twenty years Charles R. Saunders’s published swords & sorcery output was limited to only a few short stories. Since 2006, starting with the reprinting of Imaro, new books from him have been appearing at a furious rate. In addition to new novels starring his established S&S characters, Imaro and Dossouye, he introduced a new pulp hero, Damballa.
Abengoni: First Calling (A:FC) is the first book in Charles R. Saunders’s foray into epic fantasy. From one of the masters of the 1970s golden age of swords & sorcery comes a project in the works for the past decade. And thanks to Milton Davis’s MVmedia, it’s seeing the light of day.
Full disclosure here: Milton Davis asked me to preview this book earlier this year and give him a blurb if I felt like it. Well, I jumped at the chance to read a new Charles Saunders book. That’s like asking if I want to hear some unreleased Led Zeppelin tracks before they hit the general public. There was no way I was going to say no. And before I go any further, I love the book and gave Milton this blurb I totally stand by:
“In Abengoni: First Calling, Charles Saunders writes the sort of epic fantasy I want to read. He tells the tale, with its large cast of sharply drawn characters and complex history, in a wonderfully spare and fast-paced style that doesn’t waste time getting to where it’s going. I can’t wait for the next book.”
When Saunders first created Imaro, his literary inspiration was Robert E. Howard. In this book, the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien is at work. He has specifically cited the two authors as his main influences. But in both cases, what he wrote was inspired by larger issues as well.
The power of place. Where we’ve been, what we see, the lighting and the weather. These things hold us, sink roots into our nervous system; they unfurl massive Yggdrasils that coil within, then twist into memory.
So it must have been for author Keith Roberts, and his encounters with Corfe Castle, in southwest England. He built his story cycle Pavane around Corfe, almost as an homage.
I understand, I do, for I first saw Corfe – indeed, the only time I have ever seen Corfe – in 1976, in the rain, with my family. I was nine, but I have never forgotten that tusk of a castle, the last spike of it spearing skyward from a sharp, steep hill, the flanks yellow-green with shaggy, unkempt grass. A chain-link fence enclosed the base of the hill, and we could not get in.
My father was furious. Rain and all, he’d had plans to hike us up that hill, to see the ruin for ourselves, up close and appropriately personal. Instead, we never got out of our rented car – it really was the soggiest of days, British to the core — but I see that spike of mortared stone to this day, standing proudly in the storm and refusing, absolutely refusing to come down.
So it is for Keith Roberts, as his stories swirl around and finally come to roost at Corfe, a rebuilt Corfe, a Corfe in an alternate history where the keep’s motte and donjon have stood the test of time, and war now, against mighty odds, with Holy Rome.
If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here. I’ve run short on books that I’ve received in the past year, so anything new has a good chance of being reviewed.
I’ve been at World Fantasy this weekend, and I fell a bit behind in writing this review, so it’s a little later than usual. World Fantasy was great fun, where I had the opportunity to spend some time with some of the esteemed luminaries of Black Gate, including Mike Allen and John O’Neill himself. Nonetheless I apologize for the delay.
This month’s book is Spirit of a Kyrie by T. L. Rese. Kityrah is a young girl with ambitions curtailed by her environment. Growing up poor in the Sallarah Desert during a famine, she and her brothers beg and steal to help their family survive on more than their meagre wolly herd. Her older sister arranges for her to be promised to the son of a wealthy family on the Shores, but Kit is unsatisfied with that life, and instead steals away to seek a new one. Through a combination of ambition and boldness, she manages to join the knights. The story is focused on her rise as a Hopeful for each of the various levels of knighthood, starting with Ash, then Furian, and finally Kyrion. For each level, she must pass a difficult and deadly test, one which most of the Hopefuls fail, many dying in the process.
T. L. Rese’s world is rich and detailed and very different from our own. A lot of the difference is in the little things: Coals that you can carry in your hand or your pocket, but that burst into flame on command. The shape-changing weapons carried by the knights, each class of knight bearing a distinct and lethal set of weapons. The wollies who seem to be dog-and-sheep hybrids, and the fire-breathing eira birds. With so much of the world different, it’s not always clear what you should expect. This is especially true when the descriptions are too spare, and the reader is left puzzling over why things work the way they do, expecting the rules to be the same as those in our world when they are not. In a few places, it sounded like the things Kit was doing were physically impossible, and I couldn’t be sure whether it was just that the world was different.
Kate Elliott is the bestselling fantasy author of Crown of Stars and Crossraods series, the Spiritwalker trilogy, and many other popular novels. Her first short fiction collection has been long awaited.
The Very Best of Kate Elliott showcases two decades of her best work, including many short stories that are long out of print, four essays appearing for the first time, and a brand new Crossroads story.
Strong heroines and riveting storytelling are the hallmark of groundbreaking fantasy author Kate Elliott (Crown of Stars, Crossroads). Elliott is a highly-compelling voice in genre fiction, an innovative author of historically-based narratives set in imaginary worlds. This first, retrospective collection of her short fiction is the essential guide to Elliott’s shorter works. Here her bold adventuresses, complex quests, noble sacrifices, and hard-won victories shine in classic, compact legends.
In “The Memory of Peace,” a girl’s powerful emotions rouse the magic of a city devastated by war. Meeting in “The Queen’s Garden,” two princesses unite to protect their kingdom from the blind ambition of their corrupted father. While “Riding the Shore of the River of Death” a chieftain’s daughter finds an unlikely ally on her path to self-determination.
Elliott’s many readers, as well as fantasy fans in search of powerful stories featuring well-drawn female characters, will revel in this unique gathering of truly memorable tales.
The Very Best of Kate Elliott will be published by Tachyon Publications on February 10, 2015. It is 501 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Julie Dillon.
I wrote about Playing the Game in a prior post about “Charles Augustus Milverton.” I much prefer this kind of Holmes speculation to the currently trendy erotic fan fiction that BBC Sherlock seems to have inspired in frightening amounts. As Holmes himself said, “unmitigated bleat!”
WARNING – THIS ENTIRE POST IS A SPOILER. If you haven’t read “The Abbey Grange,” click here and do so before continuing on.
In “The Five Orange Pips,” Holmes says “I have been beaten four times – three times by men, and once by a woman.” Might not “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” provide us the opportunity to add one to that count?
The facts as Holmes accepts them in this case: Sir Eustace Brackenstall is presented as an abusive husband when drinking. Lady Brackenstall (real name, Mary Fraser) had met First Officer Jack Croker on a voyage from her native Australia to England.
I was able to attend the World Fantasy Convention this year, for the first time since 2011, and I really had a terrific time. It was fabulous to attend all the panels, readings, parties, and events — and especially to re-connect with so many old friends, and make so many new ones. Years ago, Mark Kelly at Locus Online called World Fantasy “a reunion,” and I think that’s really the best description.
The highlight of the convention is the Sunday banquet, where the World Fantasy Awards were presented. The toastmaster for the event was the delightful Mary Robinette Kowal, who gave a highly entertaining speech about rejection, and the awards themselves were presented by Gordon van Gelder and David Hartwell. I sat at Table 25 with my new friends Amanda C. Davis and Matt O’Dowd, where we had a great view of the proceedings.
The World Fantasy Award itself is a cartoonish bust of H.P. Lovecraft sculpted by the brilliant Gahan Wilson (seen at left). It’s an extremely distinct award that honors the contributions of perhaps the finest American horror writer of the 20th Century. But using Lovecraft as the poster child for the awards has also caused some recent controversy (that surfaced twice during the proceedings.) I’ll get to that in a minute.
But first, the Awards themselves. This year’s winners of the World Fantasy Awards are:
Novel: