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Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

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Night Winds-small

“He’s evil incarnate! Stay away from him!”
— from Darkness Weaves

Long before the coiners of the term grimdark were born, Karl Edward Wagner was creating some of the most aggressively unheroic fantasy. There had always been a dark current to swords & sorcery from the genre’s beginnings in the 1930s with Robert E. Howard. But not even Michael Moorcock’s 1960s antiheroes prepared S&S fans for Wagner’s 1971 novel Darkness Weaves and its amoral mystic swordsman, Kane.

Six feet tall and “three hundred pounds of bone, sinew, and muscle,” Kane is cursed to live forever for rebelling against the god who created him. Peering out from his fiery red hair and beard, his blues eyes blaze with a killer’s fury — a warning to all who cross his path. Though a violent death can free him from his accursed immortality, he is determined to survive.

Over the course of three novels and seventeen stories, Kane plots and murders his way across continents and centuries. He is by turns a mighty sorcerer, a bandit lord and a lone wanderer. While it’s explicitly stated in one story that Kane is “seldom needlessly cruel,” he’s seldom sympathetic.

It’s in the two collections of short stories, Death Angel’s Shadow (which I reviewed last year at my site) and Night Winds, that Wagner crafted his greatest swords & sorcery. His novels, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves, all have their moments, but they don’t have the short, sharp, shock of the stories. While the books are memorably epic, the stories are fast-paced nightmares.

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New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

New Treasures: She Returns From War by Lee Collins

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She Returns from War-smallI love Angry Robot books. I don’t pay much attention to publishers when I’m at the bookstore. But when I’m home, and my purchases are stacked by my big green chair, it’s hard not to notice that half of them have the Angry Robot logo on the spine.

I think they’re just in tune with the kind of books I’m most interested in. Which is weird, because I’m not exactly sure what they are myself. But I know they involve great cover art, intriguing settings, and women in cowboy hats. This week, anyway.

She Returns From War is the sequel to the supernatural western The Dead of Winter, released last October. The tag line is True Grit Meets True Blood, which is clever. Have you noticed this burgeoning mini-trend of western-horror-fantasies, including Guy Adams’s The Good The Bad and the Infernal, Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill’s Dead Reckoning, and the Bloodlands novels of Christine Cody? Apparently it’s a thing. See? We’re paying attention.

Four years after the horrific events in Leadville, a young woman from England, Victoria Dawes, sets into motion a series of events that will lead Cora and herself out into the New Mexico desert in pursuit of Anaba, a Navajo witch bent on taking revenge for the atrocities committed against her people.

She Returns From War was published by Angry Robot on January 29, 2013. It is 361 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

The recent coverage Angry Robot titles we’ve covered were The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, The Bookman Histories by Lavie Tidhar, and The Corpse-Rat King, by Lee Battersby.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

Blogging Arak 10: Arak Goes Greek!

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Arak_Vol_1_10Arak has had his share of sea serpents, vampires, Lovecraftian cave-beasties, demons, and devils. What was this comic lacking?

Legendary creatures from Greek myth, of course! So with issue 10, Arak and Valda make a side trip to Mount Olympus. And there are some surprises in store for both of them…

We open on very human terrain, in medias res. Arak and Valda, on horseback, are being ambushed by Byzantine soldiers.

Last issue, we left them adrift at sea after the Pompeian undead vengefully sank the merchant ship they were hitching a ride on. Between the two issues, we’ve skipped how they got to land, procured new mounts and (if we’re going to be nitpicky) all of their weapons and gear. Later in the issue, we’ll get a one-line flashback-thought from Arak about having purchased the horses from a Grecian farmer — but where did they get the money? Valda even still has the scrolls bearing endorsements and writs of passage from Carolus Magnus and the Pope — though given what will happen shortly, those may as well have just been lost at sea.

Anyway, while Arak and Valda are trying to be diplomatic, some of the mounted soldiers charge down the hill toward them, weapons drawn. One is nocking an arrow even as he rides, ignoring his commander’s warning cry: “Hold, archer! Do not go near them! They are dangerous!” A shame such skill as both horseman and archer is wasted, a couple panels later, on Valda’s blade. It’s on.

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Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

Adventures On Film: Pan’s Labyrinth

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Heart of Summer Having panned Merlin some weeks back, it’s time to dive headlong into one of the best fantasy films of this century, and possibly one of the best, period.

Yes, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) is that good. Director Guillermo del Toro, he of Hellboy fame, was clearly out to prove that given solid material, sufficient devotion, and a lack of Hollywood oversight, he could deliver a contender.

True, Pan does invite several divisive questions, such as why must contemporary filmed violence be so jarringly graphic? Del Toro loves jets of blood almost as much as that eternal child-man, Quentin Tarantino, and he indulges himself more than once along his tale’s labyrinthine path. But is it necessary?  Does the vivid bloodletting aid the narrative? Pan is a hybrid, true, a film about war and revolution, and such chronicles cannot easily avoid bloodshed. But as anyone who has ever seen Pan’s sewing and stitching scene can attest, this movie achieves prime “I can’t look!” status. It’s visceral; it hurts.

Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) also begs a second question, perhaps even more sinister: is it allowable to put a child (or child character) into such peril? Pan doesn’t pull its punches. Our heroine, young Ofelia (played with no affectation whatsoever by Ivana Baquero), is in mortal danger throughout this film, and unlike, say, Harry Potter or Buffy (Slayer of the Dentally Challenged Undead), there is no guarantee she will survive.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Stand at Dubun-Geb” by Ryan Harvey

Black Gate Online Fiction: “Stand at Dubun-Geb” by Ryan Harvey

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Ryan Harvey-smallRyan Harvey returns to Ahn-Tarqa, setting of “The Sorrowless Thief,” for another heroic fantasy packed with adventure, swordplay, and weird magic.

Jelmez, the lookout, waved to them from his perch over the ravine.

“What is it?” Guyuk yelled. “The Sorghul?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to see this for yourselves. Only an old tale-spinner could describe such a thing.”

A hundred feet along they reached a stretch of sheer limestone wall. Centuries of erosion from winter storms had caused a landslide that ripped a wound in the mountains’ roots.

Even the oppressive Dubun-Geb could not diminish the majesty of the forty-foot giant revealed inside that gash. It had the outlines of a man, but there was nothing of warmth or life to its gargantuan frame of bronze and steel. A flattened oval served as a head, and the rain washed over an obsidian visor that covered the place where eyes should be. Like any creation of the Art, it exuded the Sorrow. None of them had felt it so potently before; it crushed the breath from their lungs.

“A colossus,” Khasar exclaimed.

Ryan Harvey won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2011 for his story, “An Acolyte of Black Spires,” part of his science-fantasy series set on the continent of Ahn-Tarqa. His previous Ahn-Tarqa story for Black Gate, “The Sorrowless Thief,” appeared here on April 7th. Ahn-Tarqa is also the setting for Ryan’s e-book novelette, “Farewell to Tyrn,” and his upcoming novel, Turn over the Moon. His work has appeared in Every Day Fiction, Beyond Centauri, Aoife’s Kiss (upcoming), and the anthology Candle in the Attic Window. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and the shadowy realm between both, as well as a long stint writing a column at Black Gate.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Peadar Ó Guilín, Dave Gross, Mike Allen, Vaughn Heppner, Mark Rigney, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Stand at Dubun-Geb” is a complete 5,500-word short story of heroic fantasy. It is offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Vintage Treasures: The Best of John W. Campbell

Vintage Treasures: The Best of John W. Campbell

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The Best of John W Campbell-smallJohn W. Campbell is one of the most important figures in 20th Century science fiction and fantasy.

If Campbell’s name seems familiar, it’s no accident. He’s come up multiple times in this series so far. In my last article, The Best of Hal Clement, I noted that Clement’s heroes frequently quoted Campbell’s pulp heroes Morey and Wade, and that Clement had been discovered by Campbell in June 1942, when Campbell was editing Astounding Science-Fiction.

In my previous piece, on The Best of Jack Williamson, I also observed that Williamson had “survived the coming of Campbell,” by which I meant that he was one of the few authors talented enough to continue writing SF in the pulps after about 1939, when Campbell had re-made the entire field in his image.

I could go back through all the other articles in this series and see just how often Campbell comes up, but I think you get the point. In the first half of the 20th Century, science fiction existed almost solely in the magazines and Campbell dominated the field so thoroughly that the start of the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” is usually marked by the year he began editing Astounding — the year he discovered writers like Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Lester del Rey, and many others.

In his memoir, I, Asimov, Asimov called Campbell “the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely.”

But we’re not here to talk about Campbell the editor. We’re here to talk about Campbell the writer. And specifically, the eleven short stories he wrote between 1932 and 1939 collected in The Best of John W. Campbell.

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Musical Mayhem and The Black Fire Concerto

Musical Mayhem and The Black Fire Concerto

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Black Fire HarpMy first post about my novel, The Black Fire Concerto, discussed the monsters. (It’s only fitting, I think, that the first library filing I’ve seen for the book categorized it under “Monsters – fiction.”)

Yet obviously music’s important to the story too and Black Gate overlord John O’Neill has asked me to share my musical inspirations. Once again, I’m grateful to him for allowing me a platform.

If you asked me to hum the concerto that’s central to the book, I couldn’t do it; though I like to think I’d know it if I heard it.

My heroine Olyssa plays a magical pipe that doubles as a rifle that never misses (and if you’re wondering how that works, this excerpt at the Haunted Stars Publishing website will tell you everything you need to know.)

Her sidekick Erzelle plays a harp formed of magical energy that manifests as black fire. I can at least share an illustration my wife Anita and I created to approximate what the harp looks like.

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Haunt the House: The Music and Art of Will Houlihan

Haunt the House: The Music and Art of Will Houlihan

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BGTentacleBalloon
I covet this tentacle-zeppelin. Will says it’s not for sale, but I’m determined to get a print. Somehow. I mean, not only for myself. I can think of at least three people who ought to have a copy hanging up in their living rooms.

Sometimes on rainy days, Westerly, Rhode Island reminds me of Stephen King’s fictional town of Derry, Maine.

You get that eerie sensation that there might be balloons in the sewer, blood in the bathtub, voices down the drain. And it is oddly full of musicians.

(Not that Derry was full of musicians; Derry’s claim to fame seems to be precocious preteens.)

That was one of the first things I noticed when I moved here. You can’t walk a block but you stub your toe on a musician.

Sometimes they travel in clumps.

There are as many singer-songwriters here as there are policemen. And there are a lot of policemen. Possibly because of all the musicians.

Anyway, one of my favorite musicians, almost since I moved here, is Haunt the House.

Is it still a musician if it is both a person and a band? Singer-songwriter Will Houlihan is both, and a visual artist besides. He is Haunt the House. He and his guitar and his harmonica and his words. Not to mention his doodles.

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J.K. Rowling Green Lights New Films in Harry Potter Universe

J.K. Rowling Green Lights New Films in Harry Potter Universe

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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them-smallWord is bouncing around literary and media circles that the most popular franchise of the 21st Century — indeed, perhaps the most popular book series of all time — will be extended with new films.

Warner Bros. announced Thursday that the Harry Potter media franchise will expand with a series of spin-off films, inspired by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Written by (fictional) author Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts was the textbook  introduced by Hagrid in his Care of Magical Creatures class in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — and later written and published by Rowling in a slender 42-page edition in 2001, shortly after Prisoner of Azkaban was released.

CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment  Kevin Tsujihara elaborated in a statement:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be an original story. It is planned as the first picture in a new film series. Set in the wizarding world, the story will feature magical creatures and characters, some of which will be familiar to devoted Harry Potter fans.

I have to be honest and admit that I didn’t even know Rowling had written a real version of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and I had to look it up to make sure it was real (it is). It’s available in a combo-pack with Quidditch Through the Ages from Scholastic Books.

The movie is unusual in another respect — it will be the first one with a screenplay written by Rowling. The films will focus on the adventures of Newt Scamander and be set long before Harry’s birth. Here’s part of Rowling’s statement:

I already knew a lot about Newt. As hard-core Harry Potter fans will know, I liked him so much that I even married his grandson, Rolf, to one of my favourite characters from the Harry Potter series, Luna Lovegood… Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world… Newt’s story will start in New York, 70 years before Harry’s gets underway.

The release date for the first film has not been announced.

New Treasures: The Grim Company by Luke Scull

New Treasures: The Grim Company by Luke Scull

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The Grim Company-smallI admit I can be a little lazy when putting together these New Treasures articles. For one thing, my scanner gave up the ghost months ago and I can’t be bothered to walk aallll the way down the hall to use Alice’s. It’s usually easier to search for an image online. I’ll spend 20 minutes searching every nook and cranny of the web, trying to save the six minutes it takes to do a scan. Go figure.

Sometimes, though, the search is fruitless — as was the case with The Grim Company, the first novel from Bioware game designer Luke Scull. There were versions of the cover out there — lots of them. But most appeared to be early versions of the final cover I was holding in my hot little hands, courtesy of the publicity department of Roc Books.  Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Goodreads — all of them were showing the same cover. Sure, it’s very similar to the final cover, but there were subtle differences (the actual final cover is here — see if you can spot them all).

Well, I don’t have a whole lot of scruples as an entertainment blogger, but that’s one of them. At Black Gate, we try to show you the real cover. Hurray for us. So I had to troop all the way down to Alice’s office, interrupt her game of solitaire, and take six minutes to scan the cover. It’s shown at right, in all its glory (click for a bigger version). You’re welcome.

The Gods are dead. The Magelord Salazar and his magically enhanced troops, the Augmentors, crush any dissent they find in the minds of the populace. On the other side of the Broken Sea, the White Lady plots the liberation of Dorminia, with her spymistresses, the Pale Women. Demons and abominations plague the Highlands.

The world is desperately in need of heroes. But what they get instead are a ragtag band of old warriors, a crippled Halfmage, two orphans and an oddly capable manservant: the Grim Company.

The Grim Company (the opening volume in a series also titled The Grim Company) was released by Roc Books on September 3. It is 389 pages, priced at $26.95 for the hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.