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Author: Fletcher Vredenburgh

Return to Balumnia: The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock

Return to Balumnia: The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock

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oie_930526XfElVMASix years after the second Balumnia novel, The Disappearing Dwarf, James P. Blaylock returned one last time to the series with The Stone Giant (1989). Instead of continuing the adventures of Master Cheeser Jonathan Bing, Blaylock went back in time to reveal the origins of the scandalous, piratical-looking Theophile Escargot. If the previous volumes seem inspired by the adventures of Mole and Rat in The Wind in the Willows, this one reads Toad all the way. Click on the links to read my reviews of the other two Balumnia novels: The Elfin Ship and The Disappearing Dwarf.

A secretive, conniving fellow in the two previous volumes, here we get a peek into just how Escargot’s mind operates, and what leads him to leave Twombly Town and take to the roads and high seas in search of adventure. Stirred by a fit of pique, he steals a pie his wife had locked in the cupboard. This act of domestic thievery eventually leads him into the path of certain dangerous characters, which convinces him to get out of town as fast as he can.

Escargot’s wife regularly locks all the pies she bakes in the cupboard, doling them out to him only a slice at a time in order to get him to lead a respectable life, get a job, and attend church. Unwilling to do any of those things, one night, while his wife and their daughter, Annie, are sleeping, Escargot breaks the locks and steals a peach pie. He then wanders off for a stroll in the moonlight.

When he comes home the next morning (after a run-in with a pack of goblins), he finds the door to his house padlocked and a note inviting him to never return home. Most of the town, long familiar with Escargot’s approach to life and responsibility, is on his wife’s side, leaving him with nowhere to turn. Living on river squid and apples, he relocates to a drafty, abandoned windmill for shelter while he tries to figure out what to do next.

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Dark Sleeper by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Dark Sleeper by Jeffrey E. Barlough

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oie_265522dm2u1J6BLooking back, I’m not exactly sure what made me buy Dark Sleeper (1998), the first volume of Jeffrey E. Barlough’s ongoing Western Lights series. Perhaps it was the Tim Powers blurb on the front cover, but I’m thinking it was more the Jeff Barson painting of woolly mammoths pulling a coach across a dark, snow swept landscape. Whatever the reason, I’m happy I did, as the book turned out to be a very strange and often funny trip through a weird and fantastical post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

In Barlough’s fictional world the Ice Age never fully ended. With much of its north covered by ice and snow, medieval England sent its ships out around the world looking for new lands. Some of the most successful colonies were planted on the west coast of what we call North America. Devoid of people, it is instead home to great megafauna such as smilodons, megatheres, teratorns, and mammoths.

With great cities such as Salthead and Foghampton (located around the same places as Seattle and San Francisco), the western colonies flourished and expanded. Then, in 1839, terror struck from the heavens: “Then it was a great disaster struck, a tragedy of near-incomprehensible proportions.” Something crashed into the Earth, and almost instantly, all life except in the western colonies, was obliterated and the Ice Age intensified. Now, one hundred and fifty years later, the “the sole place on earth where lights still shine at night is in the west.” For a fuller, more detailed explanation, just go here.

Dark Sleeper opens on a very foggy night; a deliberate homage, I suspect, to the equally mist-shrouded opening of Bleak House.

Fog, everywhere.

Fog adrift in the night air above the river, creeping in through the estuary where the river glides to the sea. Fog curling and puffing about the headlands and high places, the lofty crags and wild soaring pinnacles, fog smothering the old university town in cold gray smoke. Fog squeezing itself into the steep narrow streets and byways, the roads and cart-tracks, into the gutters and shadowy back-alleys. Fog groping at the ancient timbered walls of the houses — the wondrous, secret, familiar old houses — and at their darkened doors and windows, filling the chinks and cracks in the masonry and coaxing the tightly fastened surfaces to open, open.

Not your common ordinary fog but a genuine Salthead fog, drippy and louring…

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To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

To Ride a Rathorn by P. C. Hodgell

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oie_11225225XvvToolIt’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally returned to P. C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath Cycle, with the fourth book, To Ride a Rathorn. A rathorn is a deadly, carnivorous, horned, horse-like animal covered in heavy plates of ivory. For the Kencyrath, to ride a rathorn is to try to do something insane, and our heroine Jame is about to do just that. She has accepted her destiny as a crucial element of the final showdown with Perimal Darkling, a world-devouring force of chaos and evil. At the same time, several forces are arrayed against her: the enemies of her family, the weight of millennia of traditions, and terrible agents of utter darkness. Instead of just crawling away and hiding, Jame has decided to take on all comers, and figuratively — and perhaps literally — ride a rathorn.

Four books in, to say the series is complicated is like saying the sun is hot or the oceans wet. Hodgell has created one of the densest and tremendously detailed fantasy settings, and to even look at this book without having read its predecessors just might make a reader’s brain explode. But as I often ask: have you taken my advice and read the other books yet? Because you should have by now. To get a better understanding of what’s gone on before, you can read my reviews of the first three — God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, and Seeker’s Mask — right here at Black Gate. If you don’t have time, though, here’s a relatively brief synopsis:

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, the heavily muscled Kendar to serve as soldiers and craftsmen, and the 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 find their own place and survive on Rathilien.

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The Conclusion to a Grand Adventure: Hobgoblin Night by Teresa Edgerton

The Conclusion to a Grand Adventure: Hobgoblin Night by Teresa Edgerton

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oie_433623CB5VCFSUHobgoblin Night (2015) is an e-book rerelease (and revision, and repackaging, along with three previously published short stories) of The Gnome’s Engine (1991), Teresa Edgerton’s charming follow-up to Goblin Moon (1991). In it, the adventures of brave Sera Vorder and dashing Francis Skelbrooke, and the evil machinations of the faerie-human hybrid, the Duchess of Zar-Wildungen, continue.

In my Black Gate review of Goblin Moon, I wrote,

Goblin Moon is a model of what light entertainment can be. It’s not going to change your world, but it will definitely bring a smile to the face of anyone with a taste for some swashbuckling and Gothic mystery. This tale, smelling just a little of lavender and gunpowder, is a fun respite from all the bloody, cynical “realism” permeating much of modern fantasy — come to think of it, much of modern life.

Those words hold true for Hobgoblin Night, as well. There’s a little less swashbuckling and a little more Gothic mystery in this volume, but it’s just as much outright fun as its predecessor. If you have any desire to visit a world suspiciously like Europe during the Enlightenment, but with Gnomes, Fairies, Trolls, magic, and alchemy, these two books are for you.

At the end of Goblin Moon Sera, her cousin Elsie, and Jed Braun were headed off over the Alantick Ocean to the hoped-for safety of the New World. Though they had thwarted the Duchess’ evil plan to wreak dire harm on Elsie as revenge for a slight perpetrated by Elsie’s mother, they hadn’t stifled her desire for satisfaction. By stealing an ancient, mysterious parchment from the Duchess before fleeing, they had, in fact, only enraged her more.

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May Short Story Roundup

May Short Story Roundup

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oie_2824427axWPyjIhWell, sad to say, there are just not that many swords & sorcery stories to round up this month. The big guns, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Grimdark Magazine, (the latter delayed while they run the Kickstarter for their anthology, Evil Is A Matter of Perspective) were silent. Beneath Ceaseless Skies’ two May issues didn’t have anything that fit the S&S bill. None of the other magazines yielded stories to review either. Only the stalwart Swords and Sorcery Magazine came through, just like it does every single month for over four years now.

According to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a skimmington is “a boisterous procession intended to ridicule an unfaithful spouse or a shrewish wife often with effigies and a mock serenade” and “The Skimmington” is the title of B.C. Nance’s story in this month’s issue of SSM. No one in town believes wealthy landowner Daegal’s claim that his wife, Esma, ran out on him. Alden, a man who once loved the missing woman, convinces his fellow citizens to conduct a skimmington parade out to Daegal’s estate. His hope is they can shame Daegal into revealing where Esma really is. While there’s a supernatural element to the tale, it could just as easily be set in any small pre-industrial town. In any setting, though, it would remain a well told story with a haunting ending.

“Rivenrock,” by Connor M. Perry (whose previous story in SSM, “Stragglers in the Cold,” I enjoyed very much), tells of Elegia, the reborn Shepherd of Night, and her lover, Darza. Together, they are searching for the Shepherd’s ancestral home, a place called Rivenrock. Their guide is a man named Averon Thorn whom neither fully trusts, even though he claims to be a supporter of their cause. The concluding spasm of violence is brutal and affecting, but it doesn’t really provide a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Behind the events of “Rivenrock” is an ongoing struggle between the Shepherd of Night and the Lord of Morning. Each appears to have been recently reborn after having been gone for sometime. The Lord seems to have come back earlier and wields more temporal and magical power at present. The Shepherd is still finding her way, thus her need to reach Rivenrock. It’s all very vague and makes following the story less than compelling.

So that’s all there is to review this month. As usual, you should go read them and let the authors and editor know what you think.

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Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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oie_21724427RUFUMWe

Was once a captain,
the story goes,
who led me in battle,
though in death’s throes.
Oh, senores! What an apt man
was that brave captain.
— E. Marquina, The Sun Has Set in Flanders

Spain’s Golden Age ran from roughly 1492, the final year of the Reconquista, until 1659 and the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees with France. During that period seemingly endless rivers of gold and silver from the kingdom’s colonies around the world flowed into its coffers. The disciplined soldiers of her vaunted tercios (commands of about 3,000 men) were respected and feared across Europe. Great cathedrals and palaces were built and painting and literature flourished as never before.

But a rot had set in, unseen by many, by the early 17th century. Inflation, corruption, expulsions of Jews and Moors, and endless wars would render Spain a mortally wounded empire that would slowly wither away over the subsequent two centuries. In 1623, though, Madrid is a glorious city of poets and dashing swordsmen. One of the greatest of the latter is Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, the hero of Captain Alatriste (1996) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It’s been a while since I reviewed a historical adventure, so I decided to dive into the first book in this still-running series.

Disappointed with the lack of information about the Golden Age in his daughter’s textbooks, Pérez-Reverte took it upon himself to write a book exploring that dramatic period. His most obvious inspiration were the swashbuckling historical romances of Alexandre Dumas. Undoubtedly influenced by two decades as a war correspondent, his exposure to the darkness of combat also permeates Captain Alatriste.

Alatriste is a veteran of years of conflict with Spain’s recalcitrant subjects in the Netherlands and the Turks, having run away as a drummer boy at the age of 13. Now, some thirty-odd years later, the recently ended truce with the Netherlands has brought him back to Madrid. Struggling to make a living with the only skills he posseses, Alatriste sells his sword and strong arm to whomever will pay. In the past he has been hired to kill one man’s rival at court, and the lover of another’s wife. In this novel, the first of seven to date, he and the Italian swordman, Gualterio Malatesta, are hired to waylay and rob two men. Initially told not to hurt the strangers too badly, they are later given conflicting orders to, in fact, kill them. During the attack Alatriste comes to believe things are not as simple as they seem, as well as being struck by the honor of one of his two intended victims. The rest of the novel involves the fallout from Alatriste’s decision to prevent the men’s deaths, as powerful men at the center of the Empire’s complex and corrupt power structure turn their attention to the veteran sell-sword. And that’s it. That’s pretty much the plot of Captain Alatriste.

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Logical Swords & Sorcery: The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp

Logical Swords & Sorcery: The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp

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oie_1461552JKlZM7ZLLyon Sprague de Camp’s first published story was “The Isolinguals” in 1937. During the 1930s and 40s he became a significant author, writing dozens of stories and numerous novels. His time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall (1939) is considered a classic and is still read today. Alongside such genre standard bearers as Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, he is considered one of the authors responsible for bringing greater sophistication to science fiction. He was the fourth Grand Master as chosen by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1979, and in 1984 he was given the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. His 1996 autobiography, Time and Chance, won a Hugo Award. In his lifetime he was well-regarded and successful.

To call de Camp a polarizing figure is an understatement. His control over Robert E. Howard’s Conan character for so many years, his ham-fisted editing of Howard’s stories, his ruthless strangling of any effort to get pure, unadulterated Conan into print, raised the ire of readers. For an incredibly detailed history of de Camp’s relationship with REH’s work and legacy, I highly recommend tracking down Morgan Holmes’ 16-part series, “The de Camp Controversy.”

De Camp first encountered the character of Conan when his friend Fletcher Pratt tossed him a copy of Conan the Conqueror. According to Lin Carter, de Camp “yielded helplessly to Howard’s gusto and driving narrative energies.” In 1951 de Camp decided to try his own hand at Howardian swords & sorcery and wrote The Tritonian Ring. He sold it to the clunkily-titled magazine Two Complete Science-Adventure Books. 

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Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden by Jack Vance

Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden by Jack Vance

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oie_6184539ElxhnW3oLines from the song “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum sprung to mind numerous times this past week while I was reading Jack Vance’s Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden (1983). While definitely not a comedy, it is by turns familiar and peculiar, convulsive and repulsive, as well as dramatic and frenetic. And sometimes, very funny. It is also one of the most inventive, strange, and bewitching books I have had the joy to read.

His first collection, the fantasy classic The Dying Earth (which you can read about in John O’Neill’s post here), helped make Vance’s early reputation as a writer of lapidarian prose, cynical wit, and above all as an inventor of incredibly original cultures, worlds, and characters. For the next three decades of his career he seemed to eschew straight fantasy, and most of his published work was science-fiction and mysteries. In 1983, though, he released a lengthy work of fantasy, Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden (L:SG). It rapidly shifts from studies of realpolitik, to fey whimsy, to dark violence that might make George R.R. Martin blush, yet it’s never jarring but completely complementary and intoxicating.

Over the following six years he added two sequels, The Green Pearl (1985), and Madouc (1989). With the latter, Vance beat out Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers, and Jonathan Carroll, among others, to win the 1990 World Fantasy Best Novel Award.

In European legend, both the lands of Lyonesse and Hy Brasil, as well as the city of Ys, sank beneath the sea. In Vance’s novel they are found among the “Elder Isles, now sunk beneath the Atlantic, [which] in olden times were located across the Cantabrian Gulf (now the Bay of Biscay) from Old Gaul.”

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Beneath the Shining Jewel by Balogun Ojetade

Beneath the Shining Jewel by Balogun Ojetade

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oie_242157WrHge7mkFor the most part I don’t review new fantasy novels. They get all the press they need, and I don’t read that many of them (though I am seriously looking forward to R. Scott Bakker’s The Great Ordeal). Once in a while, though, there’s something that intrigues me. This week, Balogun Ojetade’s sword & soul horror story, Beneath the Shining Jewel, caught my eye. And then chewed on it and swallowed it raw.

A few years back Ojetade and fellow sword & soul/steamfunk/cyberfunk impresario and author, Milton Davis, released an anthology called Ki Khanga (2013). I reviewed it at my site, Swords & Sorcery: A Blog. Ki Khanga is a world where sorcery and super science exist side by side, Godzilla-sized beasts endanger civilization, and flame thrower-equipped elephants battle monster beetles. It’s a wild setting painted with boldness and liveliness. While I found some of the stories too thin, reading like little more than character backgrounds, others punched hard and I found myself hoping there would be more tales from Ki Khanga in the future.

Last month I asked Davis, apropos of nothing at all, if there was anything planned for his and Ojetade’s shared world. He told me Ojetade had a horror novel set in the world due the very next week. That book is Beneath the Shining Jewel.

Ki Khanga is a large ocean-ringed continent split nearly in two by a gigantic inlet called the Cleave. Tradition holds that it was made when Daarila, the creator god, used his great axe to destroy two warring magical races who had dared to storm Heaven. The axe came down and cut a hole through which all sorts of dangerous creatures and magic now creep.

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April Short Story Roundup

April Short Story Roundup

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oie_1724340vOE0YC88Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Another of 2016’s months has come and gone, which means it’s time to round up and review a batch of new short stories.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #51  presented its usual complement of two stories in April. The first is by a newcomer to the magazine’s pages, Jason Ray Carney. “The Ink of the Slime Lord” gave me nearly everything I could want from a S&S story: a wicked sorceress, dire magics, a dashing pirate, and plenty of monsters.

A trio of evil sisters with dreams of dominion run up against powerful opponents:

The Three Sisters had established a cult centered on a book bound in human skin and inked with blood. This cult threatened the priesthood of Atok-the-Million-Eyed, and for this the sisters would be punished with impunity, the leaves of their philosophy scattered to the winds.

The youngest of the sisters, Mera, “was tenacious. She was able to put her head back on her body.” Revived, she sets off for the titular ingredient in order to bring her sisters back to life as well. Her quest builds in scope as she first faces off against a single wizard, then dives into the underworld in search of a certain pirate before making for a lost and ruined city and the temple of the demonic Slime Lord.

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