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Author: Fletcher Vredenburgh

Death Angel’s Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner

Death Angel’s Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner

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Best Kane cover ever – by Stan Zagorski
Best Kane cover ever – by Stan Zagorski

I’ve read  Karl Edward Wagner‘s Death Angel’s Shadow (1973), with its three stories of Kane, the Mystic Swordsman, numerous times since first finding it in my attic in the 1970s. Before Conan’s or Elric’s, Kane’s adventures sparked my interest in swords & sorcery. Only a few years ago, I wrote a long piece about Wagner and this book over at my site, Swords & Sorcery: A Blog. I figured it was time to give it a reread and review here at Black Gate.

For the uninitiated, Kane is, in Wagner’s own words, a villain-hero. Cursed with immortality, over the course of his career he’s been an evil wizard, a crime lord, a bandit, and the general of a demon cult’s army. Sometimes he’s up against someone more diabolical than he is, but he’s never the good guy, never the hero.

This description of him gives you a sense of the wrongness that clings to him even when he’s not embarked on some nefarious plan:

It was his eyes that bothered Troylin. He had noticed them from the first. It was to be expected, for Kane’s eyes were the eyes of Death! They were blue eyes, but eyes that glowed with their own light. In those cold blue gems blazed the fires of blood madness, of the lust to kill and destroy. They poured forth infinite hatred of life and promised violent ruin to those who sought to meet them. Troylin caught an image of that powerful body striding over a battlefield, killer’s eyes blazing and red sword dealing carnage to all before it.

The three Kane novels, Darkness Weaves, Bloodstone, and Dark Crusade, are decent enough, but it’s in the short stories that Wagner’s immense talents shine most brightly. Two years ago I reviewed the collection, Night Winds (1978) at Black Gate. That book contains some of the best and darkest S&S stories ever set to paper. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters edited by Janet Morris

Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters edited by Janet Morris

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oie_15175053GW6bP5j3For the past several months I kept seeing notices for the coming release of Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters. Edited by Janet Morris, one of the true heavies in heroic fantasy, and someone I have known online for several years now, I knew this was a book I was going to be reading. That its table of contents included several writers I’m a big fan of as well as many whose names I’m starting to hear good things about made it look better and better. That it’s about killing dragons sealed the deal. So when John O’Neill asked if I wanted to review it and I could have an e-book of it, I said “YES!”

I’m happy to report that with all that buildup, it’s a terrific bunch of stories. Anthologies are great because you can pick them up and dive in anywhere and take a short, rewarding excursion into whatever genre it is. I generally don’t read anthologies from cover to cover in a short period of time. Reading for this review it turned out I wanted a break from dragon-killing when I tried to finish the book in only a few big sessions. There are a few stories that aren’t to my taste, but there are no clunkers and some real treasures in this book.

The stories, and there are seventeen of them, are presented chronologically — well, the ones set in the real world anyway. Those set in more fantastical settings are fit in among the medieval ones. In the earliest tales dragons stand toe-to-toe with the gods. Slowly, they lose that stature and become mere monsters. Deadly, true, but no longer forces of raw, elemental chaos. Eventually they’re regarded only as mythical. In the future, scientific explanations have to be found for their existence.

Janet and Chris Morris’ “The First Dragon Eater” opens the book. Narrated by Kella, a priest of Tarhunt, it tells of the battles between the Storm God, Tarhunt, and the dragon, Illuyankas. Taken from Hattan myth, it’s probably one of the earliest tales of dragon-killing. The story’s style — formal sounding, as if something recited in a temple — lends gravitas to the introduction of the monstrous worms that figure in so many world myths and fantasy stories.

“Legacy of the Great Dragon” by S.E. Lindberg moves forward into ancient Egypt, as Thoth, physician of the gods, helps Horus to find power to avenge the death of his father, Osiris, at the hands of Set. This is a wild piece, with a cosmically huge dragon and gods fighting inside of it.

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May Short Story Roundup

May Short Story Roundup

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oie_6212435zQMwrmTD (1)I’m sorry that I let April pass without a short story roundup. The outpouring of new heroic fiction continues unabated on the pages of numerous magazines the genre is lucky to have. I’m back on track and here to tell you about last month’s must-reads.

I have never left any doubt in my reviews about which is my favorite fantasy magazine, so let me start by singing the praises of Adrian Simmons and his cohorts at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Each issue has terrific cover art, two or three stories and a number of poems, and in the three years I’ve been reading and reviewing the magazine it has always been at least satisfactory and usually splendid. What makes HFQ so strong is the editors’ love for and knowledge of the genre, which is obvious by their singular ability to select and edit stories. Always true to the traditions of heroic fiction, they yet manage to publish tales that push the genre in new directions.

Issue 24 is maybe their best yet. This quarter’s artwork is a dark, brooding piece titled “Wizard With Army” by Vuk Kostic. Click this link to see the painting in its full glory.

The issue opens with Cullen Groves’ first published story, “The Madness of the Mansa,” a tale of a capricious monarch with a peculiar penchant for poetry.

Following a night in which “a great storm arose over the western ocean, and many citizens and sailors in the port of Asongai told how they had seen the demons of madness walking the black winds in the darkness.”, the ruler, the Mansa, is struck by a curious madness. From that point on he allows people to address him only poetically, using “the old meters” of songs and legends.

In the wake of the Mansa’s madness, the merchants of Asongai find themselves unable to successfully compete for his attention against the skilled singers of his tribal subjects. When a merchant named Bukra overhears the ex-gladiator, Draba, singing in a tavern, he hires him to petition the Mansa on his behalf.

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Dragon’s Rook (The Lost Sword, Book 1) by Keanan Brand

Dragon’s Rook (The Lost Sword, Book 1) by Keanan Brand

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oie_26031584LVummnLet me start by stating that I am an inconsistent person with inconsistent tastes and opinions. I tend to get overly emphatic and dramatic when discussing things I like or dislike. In the light of what I’m about to write about Keanan Brand’s epic fantasy novel, Dragon’s Rook, I need to look back and see how many times I disparaged thick books and those set in European-styled worlds. Because that’s exactly what Brand’s book is and I really enjoyed it.

I actually like novels set in pseudo-European worlds. Tolkien, King Arthur, and much of the earliest fantasy reading I did was set in such places. The best included Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain and Poul Anderson’s various excursions in fantasy.

Brave farm boys, daring princesses, wise old women, and wicked kings (plus dragons!) are endemic to the fairy tales read to me by my dad. Mysterious huts in dark forests, dire castles towering over the countrysides, and dank, fetid caves were common locales for those characters’ exploits. This is good stuff that speaks deeply to me for nostalgic and cultural reasons (about 99% of my ethnic heritage originates north of the Rhine River) and it all makes its way into Brand’s novel.

It’s just that often I feel like it has been done to death. Prior to the late 1970s, fantasy was a pretty diverse field. While Tolkien loomed above the genre, he spawned few direct imitators. In the first part of the decade, fantasy writing was all over the place. Sure, there was plenty of swords & sorcery, but there was also Roger Zelazany’s wild romp, The Chronicles of Amber, Ursula K. LeGuin’s very non-European Earthsea trilogy, and Tanith Lee’s phatasmagorical Tales from the Flat Earth (books I need to reread and review).

And then came Terry Brook’s The Sword of Shannara. For the unitiated, many of Shannara‘s events parallel those of the Lord of the Rings closely, and it was a monster success. That was enough to convince publishers and authors that the key to sales lay in the same sort of mimicry. In the years that followed, dozens of quest stories set in very familiar Euro-style worlds appeared. The worst were slavish imitations of Tolkien’s masterpiece, while the best took advantage of the familiarity of quest and fantasy tropes and used them to explore original ideas. Either way, though, Dark Ages and Medieval Europe came to be the default setting for fantasy fiction.

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Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

Into the Wastelands: Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak

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Enchanted Pilgrimage-smallClifford Simak is often described as a pastoralist, his sci-fi stories set in rural Wisconsin or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Kindly robots as well as smart and faithful dogs feature in many of his books. Scholars are more likely than soldiers to figure as his heroes. There’s more kindness and sense of wonder than violence in most of his stories.

If you haven’t read him (which wouldn’t be surprising since most of his twenty-six novels and multitude of story collections are out of print in the US), snag a battered old copy of City or Way Station to start. City holds a place in my heart as one of my favorite books. Simak brought a gentle humanity to his writing. Love of an unhurried life and respect for common decency run through many of his stories.

Inspired by John O’Neill’s post about The Goblin Reservation, I dug out the first of Simak’s three fantasy novels, Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975). In it, a disparate party of travelers leave the safety of humanity’s lands to explore the dangerous, magical Wasteland. He would revisit this theme twice more before his death in 1986, in the structurally similar The Fellowship of the Talisman (1978) and Where the Evil Dwells (1982).

I remember liking the book thirty years ago and thirty years later, I still like it. It’s fully fantasy and science fiction, both. While there are goblins, gnomes, witches, and trolls, there are also UFOs, a robot, and a traveler from an alternate Earth.

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Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez

Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez

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oie_113524h6c8tSPCMuch of my reading is for sheer entertainment. It’s like a carnival ride: you pay your money, get whipped around a little, then deposited back on the ground. The next day a fond memory of the overall experience lingers on but the details have faded away. And that’s cool. I have never regretted the time or money spent on an Agatha Christie or Stephen King novel. I’ve passed many an enjoyable hour reading (or watching) a decent bit of fiction for a transient thrill. But sometimes, there’s something so compelling about about a book that I’m drawn to it again and again over the years.

There are certain books on my shelf that have an aura around them. Three that leap to mind are The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Last Coin by James Blaylock, and Faces in the Crowd by William Marshall. In each, the combination of prose, plot, and character drew me in so deeply that I feel the desire, for various reasons, to revisit them from time to time.

With the first, I’m looking each time to absorb and understand a bit more of Bulgakov’s dense work. It’s a great story, rich with ideas on art, politics, love, and religion. With the second two I recapture a bit of the sheer joy I felt the first time I encountered the vivid characters and utterly bonkers plots. When it comes to books in this class, I can remember when I first read them, under what circumstances, and where I got them (Science Fiction Book Club, The Forbidden Planet (NYC), and borrowed from the St. George Public Library, Staten Island). I suspect Raphael Ordoñez’ Dragonfly will get added to this list.

Dragonfly is the first of a planned tetralogy. In this day of calculated, mass-marketed, trend-following books, here is a self-published adventure, practically handcrafted, with cover, map, and interior art all done by Ordoñez himself. It tells of a young prince let loose in a world of steam engines, complacent aristocrats, and tunnel-dwelling workers, and a social order on the verge of being overthrown. Ordoñez’ style hearkens back to the likes of A. E. van Vogt and Jack Vance, as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heck, as you can see from the cover, Dragonfly would look right at home on a shelf full of volumes from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

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The Tears of Ishtar by Michael Ehart

The Tears of Ishtar by Michael Ehart

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oie_351436BG5v7xydWhen my renewed interest in swords and sorcery was sparked a few years ago, one of the first and best books of new writing I found was The Return of the Sword, edited by Jason M. Waltz (reviewed at BG by Ryan Harvey). It’s filled with a passel of great stories and turned me on to several writers I follow closely to this day. Among them are Bill Ward, James Enge, and Bruce Durham. It’s the book that convinced me that there was a renaissance in heroic fiction and that it was worth blogging about.

One of the most intriguing stories, with imagery that’s stayed with me over the years, is “To Destroy All Flesh” by Michael Ehart. I wasn’t surprised to learn it was part of an ongoing series of linked stories. “Flesh” references characters and quests that clearly predate the action at hand.

Ehart’s protagonist, Ninshi, a woman from Ugarit in Bronze Age Syria, is enslaved by a flesh-eating demon, the Manthycore. She must provide corpses of warriors for the beast to devour. Her terrible master gave her immortality, great strength, and enhanced healing in order to carry out this task.

By the time I could see again, it had already begun to feed. As always, it started with the soft parts. The belly and the face were its favorites and because it fed so seldom, it showed little restraint. This time it chose to wear the head of a lion, which seemed to be well suited for the task.

It felt the force of my gaze, but did not react right away, engrossed in some particularly savory morsel from the belly of one of the corpses. I took care not to take note of which one. It is a matter of pride that I not look away, but I long ago learned to look without seeing.

She is sustained over the centuries of her servitude by the dream of freeing herself and forcing the Manthycore to restore her lover to life. That quest sets the stage for the tales collected in The Tears of Ishtar.

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March Short Story Roundup

March Short Story Roundup

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oie_2831152onP2pF5uThere are a whole lot of new-to-me goings on out there in the world of magazines and short fiction (see John O’Neill’s recent posts). So much so that I’m a little behind this month trying to catch up. I haven’t gotten to any of Beneath Ceaseless Skies most recent issues yet.

From a swords & sorcery perspective, the biggest — and potentially most interesting — new publication out there is Grimdark Magazine. The first issue, completely unbeknownst to me, appeared last fall. The third issue hit the virtual newsstand on March 25. Like the title says, it’s filled with grim and dark stuff.

The term grimdark, lifted from Warhammer 40K, was originally one of opprobrium for a certain type of fantasy, and was later taken up as a badge of honor by its creators. For those who managed to miss all the talk about the subject a few years back, here’s a quick definition: grimdark fantasy is nihlistic/realistic storytelling that moves the genre forward/destroys the genre, and features characters with realistic motives/who are utterly vile. Whether you like or hate the fiction coming out under the rubric, Grimdark Magazine, by its very nature, is going to feature S&S.

Each issue is packed with original stories, interviews with some of grimdark’s leading lights, and reviews. The magazine has a definite point of view as stated by editor Adrian Collins in the first issue:

Grimdark Magazine started out as the identification of a gap in the niche ezine market coupled with an obsession with grim stories told in a dark world by morally ambiguous protagonists.

As far as I’m concerned, grimdark is just another marketing term, like splatterpunk was for supposedly extra-bloody horror back in the mid-1980s. As much as some writers and fans have claimed that grimdark is both about introducing more realism as well as being a revolt against black-and-white morality that they say saturates much fantasy, I don’t think it’s all that different from lots of what’s gone before (just check out any of Karl Edward Wagner or Michael Moorcock’s fantasies).

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Return to the Witch World: The Crystal Gryphon by Andre Norton

Return to the Witch World: The Crystal Gryphon by Andre Norton

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oie_14001ZDaNwY6NI started slowly working my way through Andre Norton’s splendid Witch World series three years ago. I’ve written several reviews for my site and Black Gate that you can read at the links.

In The Year of the Unicorn (reviewed here) we saw the end of the great war between High Hallack and Alizon. We go back in time to the war’s vicious start in The Crystal Gryphon (1972), the seventh published novel in the series.

The Crystal Gryphon is the first volume of a trilogy about Joisan and Kerovan, a young noblewoman and her husband, a prince tainted at birth by strange magics. Married in absentia when they were only six and eight respectively, the book is told in chapters narrated by one then the other. They hail from two distant parts of High Hallack, and are not to meet for ten years, when Kerovan comes of age. As the years pass, each must struggle to forge his and her way in a conservative land wracked by local power politics and a brutal invasion.

Kerovan of Ulmsdale was born in the ruins of a building erected by the Old Ones, the magically powerful race that lived in and vanished from High Hallack long before the arrival of men. The forces that still lingered in the place changed him, giving him slanted eyebrows over yellow eyes and cloven hooves instead of feet. His mother refuses to see him ever and his father, while declaring Kerovan his heir, gives him over to a crippled soldier to raise and train.

The orphaned Joisan lives with her childless uncle, Cyart, lord of Ithkrypt, and his widowed sister, Dame Math. Together, her aunt and uncle teach her to run an estate. When war with the raiders from the land of Alizon becomes imminent, basic sword and archery skills are added to her education.

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Return of the Master Cheeser: The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

Return of the Master Cheeser: The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

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The Disappearing Dwarf-smallPublished in 1983, The Disappearing Dwarf is James P. Blaylock’s second novel, the sequel to his first, The Elfin Ship. Along with The Stone Giant (1989) they form the Balumnia Trilogy. If you have any love for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, or mouth watering descriptions of all sorts of food and drink, then these books are for you.

The Elfin Ship (reviewed here last year) is filled with constant comical digressions and expends pages on delightful, superfluous details. It’s filled with oddball characters and deliriously silly escapades. The plot is wonderfully complicated. The Disappearing Dwarf has all of those things — save the plot. It’s not that it doesn’t have a plot, it’s just not much of one.

Bored with his new life as man of leisure (allowed by the success of his travels in the previous volume), Jonathan Bing, master cheesemaker, agrees to take a trip down the Oriel River with Professor Wurzle to explore the abandoned castle of their foe, Selznak the dwarf. The castle, they quickly learn, is not empty — and definitely not safe.

From there they meet Miles (pronounce Meelays), the Magician who is hunting Selznak. He tells them that their old nemesis has reappeared, and is certainly up to no good. The magician suspects the dwarf is looking to steal a great magical orb from their friend, Squire Myrkle. Upon reaching the squire’s estate, they discover that he has vanished through a magical door that appeared in his library. The next thing we know, Jonathan, the Professor, and Miles (along with Ahab the dog), are back on board the elfin airship and headed for a doorway to the parallel world, Balumnia.

Narrative drive is nearly absent in The Disappearing Dwarf. Jonathan’s goals switch from one thing to another several times throughout the book. The adventurers spend much of the book traveling from one place to another without ever really knowing what they’re trying to achieve, other than their rather vague plan to find the squire before he falls into Selznak’s clutches. Balumnia has its own villain, a mysterious figure called Sikorsky, but as with the rest of the characters, we never get a clear sight of him or what he’s actually up to. Several characters fade away. One vanishes only to suddenly reappear with little explanation. The book moves haphazardly from one incident to another. Fortunately, most of those incidents are terrific fun.

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