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Rich Horton Reviews Arctic Rising

Rich Horton Reviews Arctic Rising

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arctuic-rising-tobias-buckellArctic Rising
Tobias S. Buckell
Tor ( $24.99, hc, February 2012, 304 pages)
Reviewed by Rich Horton

Tobias S. Buckell began his novelistic career with a very nice linked trio of books that fit fairly readily with what has been called “New Space Opera” – adventure stories set in space (or at least on distant planets), the main difference between “New” and “Old” Space Opera being a greater concern in the newer stuff for non-white characters, and perhaps a lesser belief in the primacy of humanity’s position in the Universe. His career hiccuped a bit in recent years, partly simply because he was changing course to a different sort of book, but more seriously because of some health issues. But his new novel, Arctic Rising, is now out, and it’s another cracker – as full of action and neat Sfnal ideas as his first three books, but set on Earth in the near future, and taking as its subject a central contemporary concern, global warming.

The protagonist of Arctic Rising, Anika Duncan, is an airship pilot for the United Nations Polar Guard. As the story opens she and her partner notice a radiation signature on a ship entering arctic waters, but when they investigate, the ship shoots them out of the sky, seemingly a rather disproportionate response. Her partner dies, and Anika is eager to find justice for him, but soon realizes that the investigation has hit a brick wall. When she makes noise, things get worse quickly, in classic thriller fashion: Anika’s home is bombed, she’s beaten up and only barely escapes being killed. She ends up on the run with a sort of “prostitute with a heart of gold” – that is, a brothel operator who has taken a shine to her. The one clue she has leads her to a ship run by the radical Green organization Gaia, who have a plan to stop global warming. But it turns out their tech can be used in multiple ways …

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Black Gate Interviews Nathan Long, Part Two

Black Gate Interviews Nathan Long, Part Two

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ulrika-bloodforged-nathan-longThis week Black Gate picks up where we left off in Part One of our interview with fantasy and science fiction author Nathan Long.

Last week we talked about your latest novel, Jane Carver of Waar. But most readers are more familiar with the work you’ve done in the Warhammer world, where you’ve published 11 novels to date. How familiar were you with Warhammer and Games Workshop before you began writing for them?

I had worked in a game store in the 80s, just when the first Warhammer Fantasy Role Play rulebook came out, and I had read it cover to cover, though I never played it, so I was pretty familiar with the setting and the mood of the game and the world. I still had a lot of homework to do once they hired me, however. I ended up owning and reading all the army books, all the supplements, etc. Homework should always be that fun.

Tell us a bit about the differences between working in an existing world, versus one entirely of your own creation.

In one way, it’s easier, as all your world building has been done for you. It’s like being hired to write for a TV show or a long-running comic book. Quite a lot of the world and sometimes the characters have been established, so all you have to worry about is the plot and character. I never really found this limiting. There are an infinite number of stories that can be told in any world, and it was a fun challenge to come up with ideas that fit the feel of the Warhammer setting.

It can be harder when you’re asked to put specific bits of the world into specific novels. For instance, when I wrote Tainted Blood, the third Blackhearts novel, my editors wanted it set in a specific city, because they wanted it to tie into a gaming supplement that was coming out for that city. That took a little more work, but it was still fun. Every challenge is an excuse to come up with a cool solution, and I have always loved that kind of game.

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Black Gate Interviews Nathan Long, Part One

Black Gate Interviews Nathan Long, Part One

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nathan-longNathan Long is a novelist best known for his work in the Warhammer universe, most notably for his Black Hearts series and Ulrika the Vampire series, as well as penning the new adventures of the classic Warhammer duo, Gotrek & Felix. Recently, Nathan’s Jane Carver of Waar has been released to some great reviews, and is getting a lot of attention in light of the recent big budget movie adaptation of the Burroughs novel that inspired it.

Welcome, Nathan, and thanks for sitting down with Black Gate to talk about your latest novel.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Jane Carver of Waar is a Barsoomesque adventure for the modern reader, and something that treads the line between loving homage and knowing send-up of classic pulp SF. Tell us a bit about the book, and do you think readers need to be familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Barsoom, and other stories of that era to fully appreciate Jane Carver?

Jane Carver of Waar is what I used to call, before I knew any better, a “Sword and Raygun” adventure. Now I know I’m supposed to call it a Planetary Romance, but I still like mine better. It tells the story of Jane Carver, a hard-riding biker chick who gets herself on the wrong side of the law and ends up hiding in a cave that transports her to a world full of strange aliens with stranger customs. There she has a sequence of wild adventures while trying to help a not-very-heroic young alien noble rescue his kidnapped bride.

I really hope readers won’t need to be familiar with the Planetary Romance genre to enjoy the book. I did my best to make sure they wouldn’t, as that is one of my pet peeves. I dislike parodies and homages that require some knowledge of the thing being parodied. It is my belief that a book should stand on its own, even when commenting on another book or genre. A book should be a book first, thoroughly enjoyable by itself, and anything else the author wants to make it second.

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Thomas M. MacKay Reviews The Enchantment Emporium

Thomas M. MacKay Reviews The Enchantment Emporium

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the-enchantment-emporium-coverThe Enchantment Emporium
Tanya Huff
DAW (473 pp, $7.99, June 2010)
Reviewed by Thomas M. MacKay

Canadian writer Tanya Huff has well-established credentials in the speculative fiction world, having written a number of respected novels, spanning the range from traditional epic fantasy, to contemporary fantasy, to full-on science fiction. Certain common themes tend to appear in her work, though handled gracefully and without detracting from the story. Ms. Huff’s work commonly challenges any cultural bias toward inequality – whether among races, genders, or for any other reason – and questions the validity of sexual inhibitions, while never denying the real and powerful impact that love imposes.

In the Gale family, “charming” preserves its original meaning, as the Gales still follow the old ways of the Goddess and the Wild God. Twenty-four year old Allie Gale grew up learning how to cast charms and mix potions, taking her place in the third circle among her many cousins, and trying to avoid crossing the Aunties – because Gale power grows as you age, and the oldest generation of women together possess the power to change the world. But magic still can’t give you purpose, and Allie is back home trying to figure out what to do with her heart and her life after losing her job as a research assistant at the Ontario Museum and still struggling to get over her gay ex-boyfriend. When Allie’s wild grandmother, the one Gale Auntie that lives apart from the family, doesn’t come home for the May Day ritual, Allie’s restlessness grows. The next day comes word that Allie’s Gran has died and left Allie an esoteric little store in Calgary. The Aunties don’t really believe their sister is dead, but they send Allie off anyway to figure out what her Gran is up to.

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Jackson Kuhl Reviews Perfect Murders

Jackson Kuhl Reviews Perfect Murders

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perfect-murdersPerfect Murders
Horace L. Gold
Bison Books (360 pp, $19.95, May 2010)
Reviewed by Jackson Kuhl

Raymond Chandler once noted how bad directors filmed whole sequences of mundane actions that could be more simply communicated in a single shot. A man need not be shown climbing into a cab and going to the post office to receive a letter, for example – all the audience needed was an anonymous postman handing the man the letter. This kind of boring direction, Chandler believed, was a holdover from the time when film was new and watching everyday occurrences on celluloid was still thrilling.

And so it is with Horace Gold. He was, in turn, a World War II veteran, the highest paid comic-book writer in the world, and the editor of Galaxy Science Fiction for over a decade. He was also an accomplished pulp fictioneer. Perfect Murders: Pulp Fiction Classics collects six of Gold’s science-fiction detective mash-ups; a seventh, “I Know Suicide,” is a straight noir mystery. Unfortunately, most of these stories are artifacts of their time, thin plots so laden with long passages of dialogue and commonplace action that the eyes glaze and the mind drowses. …

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John Ottinger Reviews The Conqueror’s Shadow

John Ottinger Reviews The Conqueror’s Shadow

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the-conquerors-shadow1The Conqueror’s Shadow
Ari Marmell
Spectra/Ballantine (480 pages, $7.99, mass market edition December 2010)
Reviewed by John Ottinger III

The Conqueror’s Shadow is Ari Marmell’s first wholly original novel. Though published three times before under the Dungeons & Dragons trademark (Agents of Artifice, Gehenna: The Final Night), this is the first fiction Marmell has produced without a shared world. What results is a mix of epic fantasy and sword and sorcery tropes slanted slightly, ringed around with humor, peopled with not-good but not-really-evil characters, with a setting that Marmell says, “drew on all the traditional sources of fantasy. There is some historical Western Europe, some D&D, a sprinkling of Eddings and Feist.” The end result is a fast-paced epic adventure bursting with riotous humor and likable characters.

Oddly, the story begins at its ending, or at least seemingly so. Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, has conquered Denathere, a key city in the Impahallion Empire. But Rebaine makes a tactical error, and he won’t be able to hold the city against the combined might of the empire’s armies and the private armies of the Guilds. So Corvis flees, taking along as hostage the young noblewoman Tyannon, leaving his own armies to be defeated. Skip forward seventeen years, and Rebaine has settled down into the life of farmer with his wife Tyannon. All is well, until Rebaine’s two young children are threatened by the roving marauders of a new warlord, Audriss, who follows the exact same battle plan Rebaine once devised. The now middle-aged ex-warlord gathers old compatriots from his glory days to end the threat to his new life, family, and the very empire he once tried to destroy.

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Charlene Brusso Reviews The Way of Kings

Charlene Brusso Reviews The Way of Kings

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wayofkings255b8255d1The Way of Kings
Brandon Sanderson
Tor (1280 pp, $8.99, May 2011 mass market)
Reviewed by Charlene Brusso

When does the end justify the means? That is the overarching question posed in the first volume of Sanderson’s new series. It’s a tough one, and an excellent choice for exploration within an epic fantasy framework. Working on the Wheel of Time series has made Sanderson’s writing longer, but thankfully it hasn’t dulled his skill at worldbuilding, or his masterful ability to create vivid characters caught up in challenging situations.

The Way of Kings is an ancient text which discusses how to protect a nation and govern honorably. Most of its teachings, however, are poorly regarded – in fact, outright heretical – by the powerful Vorin church in contemporary Roshar, some 4500 years after it was written. The text comes from the time of the lost Radiants, noble warriors whose mighty Shardblades gave them powers beyond normal men. But the Radiants disbanded, abandoning their responsibilities, and none now knows the truth of those times. And so the text has fallen into disfavor.

Millennia later, the current king, Elhokar, has his hands full fighting off Parshendi incursions, and no time or interest in reading heretical philosophy. His father’s assassination left him in control of a vast kingdom under siege, and he is determined to do whatever he must to hold it together. The last thing he needs is to lose his top commander and most trusted advisor, his uncle Dalinar, to insanity.

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Josh Wimmer Reviews Shades of Milk and Honey

Josh Wimmer Reviews Shades of Milk and Honey

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milkhoney_fnlcoverShades of Milk and Honey
Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor (304 pp, $14.99, trade edition June 2011)
Reviewed by Josh Wimmer

If you have read anything about Shades of Milk and Honey, then you have seen it described as “Jane Austen, but with magic” or something along those lines. That is pretty much unavoidable. The novel, the first by Hugo nominee Mary Robinette Kowal, isn’t just written in a style and voice resembling that of the British author’s Regency-era romances, but also features sisters – one pretty, one smart – yearning for suitable suitors; a low-key but loving father who wants to see his girls married because he can’t provide for them forever; a cavalcade of potential husbands of various sorts; and a lot of house parties. In other words, the book takes plenty from Pride and Prejudice and the rest of Austen’s oeuvre.

What it adds is a mild but meaningful undercurrent of fantasy, and a slightly more modern-day message than might be found in the early-19th-century works that inspired it. Jane Ellsworth is unmarried and, at age 28, likely to remain that way. To recommend her, she has her wits, her emotional steadiness, and her skill with glamour – the magical crafting of visual and audible illusions, typically for aesthetic purposes. All fine qualities, but perhaps not enough to make up for her plain appearance (which Jane resolutely and admirably refuses to enhance with glamour).

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Don Lee Reviews The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead

Don Lee Reviews The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead

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huckleberry_finn_and_zombie_jimThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim: Mark Twain’s Classic with Crazy Zombie Goodness
Mark Twain and W. Bill Czolgosz
Coscom Entertainment (206 pp, $15.99, 2009)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead
Mark Twain and Don Borchert
Tor (304 pp, $13.99, 2010)
Reviewed by Don Lee

I like zombies better than vampires. It is a lot harder to prettify zombies. They shamble. They eat brains. You blow their brains out. In origin, of course, the Romero-esque brain-eating zombies have about as much to do with “real” Haitian zombies as the sexy noble vampires of Twilight have to do with the monster that is Dracula, much less the original walking bags-of-blood from whose folklore the modern literary vampire descends.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim: Mark Twain’s Classic with Crazy Zombie Goodness, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Undead are, of course, part of the recent trend of Classic Novel plus fill-in-the-blank-monster that has brought us such gems as Little Vampire Women, Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Android Karenina, Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers, The Undead World of Oz, Mansfield Park and Mummies, Jane Slayre, Alice in Zombieland, and Emma and the Werewolves. So far. …

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Chris Braak Reviews First Lord’s Fury

Chris Braak Reviews First Lord’s Fury

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first-lords-fury
First Lord’s Fury
Jim Butcher
Ace Books (784 pp, $9.99, paperback November 2010)
Reviewed by Chris Braak

Despite the phenomenal success of his better known Dresden Files, the steady-hand and breakneck pace of First Lord’s Fury suggests that maybe Jim Butcher’s heart lies in epic fantasy.

First Lord’s Fury is the sixth, and presumably final, book in Butcher’s Codex Alera series. It brings to conclusion the long war that the Alerans and their sometimes-enemies, sometimes-allies, the Canim, have been fighting against the Vord. As in previous novels, the action is split: first between Tavi’s family who, along with the survivors of Alera Imperia (which was destroyed when a volcano erupted under it) fight a holding action across what remains of Alera, pursued to its edge by the relentless insectoid Vord. Meanwhile, Tavi – Gaius Octavian himself, the new First Lord of Alera – his band of merry men, and his new army of gigantic lycanthropes, struggle to develop increasingly improbable means to cross an entire continent in time to save the last remnants of his civilization.

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