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A Very Fine YA Novel: Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

A Very Fine YA Novel: Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

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Impossible Creatures (Knopf Books for Young Readers, September 10, 2024). Cover by Ashley Mackenzie

Katherine Rundell is a British writer who has been publishing YA novels for some time now, though I was unaware of her. Last year she published the first novel of a prospective series in the UK: Impossible Creatures. This became a big hit, and has now been published in the US. The book is quite good, fun to read, clever, also serious and quite moving, with real consequences to the characters.

There are two protagonists, Christopher Forester and Mal Arvorian. They are children of roughly the same age (early adolescence or just on the cusp of it, I think … somewhere between 10 and 13, I suppose.) Christopher lives in London, but has been sent to Scotland to stay with his grandfather, while his father is away on business. (His mother is dead.) Mal lives in an island in the Archipelago, with her great aunt. (Her parents are dead. Dead or absent parents, of course, being one of the most common situations in YA novels.) Both Christopher and Mal are special, of course. Animals of all sorts are attracted to Christopher, to an unusual degree. And Mal — Mal can fly (with the help of a magic cape.)

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A to Z Reviews: “Black Box,” by Peter J. Wacks

A to Z Reviews: “Black Box,” by Peter J. Wacks

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A to Z Reviews

Peter J. Wacks’ short story “Black Box” appeared in the 2023 anthology High Noon on Proxima B, edited by David Boop, a collection of stories that mix tropes of the Western with science fiction to varying results. Unfortunately, spaceships are horses, planets aren’t ranches, and treating them as interchangeable results in stories that feel as if they were written for the early to mid twentieth century pulps. “Black Box” falls into that category.

“Black Box” is set in a world where spacecraft are used to travel between planets, but once landed, horses are used to cover the terrain rather than motorized vehicles. The Crystal Colony, the solar system’s governing organization, has sent multiple ships to visit a planet (or planetoid, Wack’s terminology changes). After a ship from the planetoid opens fire on them they shoot it down a dn discover that the pilot is the sole survivor of the planetoid, which has apparently suffered an apocalyptic war amongst its inhabitants. The survivor doesn’t view himself as a member of the Crystal Colony and refused to help with their inquiries.

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Romancing the Planet: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen

Romancing the Planet: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen

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The 23rd Hero (Castle Bridge Media, August 13, 2024)

Hybrids are hardly unknown in the long history of fantasy and science fiction literature. It could easily be argued that the genre itself is a hybrid. In the case of Rebecca Anne Nguyen’s The 23rd Hero, this mixing of literary media is an essential element, baked in from the ground up.

The story begins by wearing its dystopian stripes firmly on its sleeve. The characters we meet in near-future Vancouver, including our hero, Sloane Burrows, live in a world of ecological collapse. Outdoors, everyone wears a filtration mask, and the last working farm in Canada closed just months before when the last of its livestock died from drinking tainted water. The handbaskets of hell, if I may mix a metaphor, have most definitely come home to roost.

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A to Z Review: “You Go Too Far,” by Ray Vukcevich

A to Z Review: “You Go Too Far,” by Ray Vukcevich

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A to Z Reviews

Ray Vukcevich’s “You Go Too Far “ is the sort of story that makes writing these reviews difficult. The story, which appeared in  issue 17 of the second incarnation of Pulphouse Magazine, is only about 250 words long.

At its most basic, “You Go Too Far” is the story of a man receiving oral sex. The set up is a portrayal of the couple’s relationship, with the woman trying to set a romantic mood for the two of them. Told from the man’s point of view, he praises himself for his witty repartee, even as she tries to let him know that his sense of humor is more a barrier in their relationship than an endearment.

Told to him in an intimate moment, he reflects that it isn’t the first time he’s heard this sort of criticism. In fact, he understands that it can be a problem, not just in this sort of situation, but in other aspects of his life and he has attempted to rectify his short-comings, by reading books and attending seminars, although that action doesn’t necessarily mean that he fully embracing the fact that his sense of humor might actually be a problem.

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Besting the Beast and Other Fantasy Tales: Scott Forbes Crawford’s Weirdly Accessible Adventure

Besting the Beast and Other Fantasy Tales: Scott Forbes Crawford’s Weirdly Accessible Adventure

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Besting the Beast by Scott Forbes Crawford
(2024, Kindle); Cover art by Ben Greaves

Besting the Beast is Grimm-like tales for Grimdark readers

Fantasy readers often seek escapism and encounters with the unknown, but those adventures can become too weird to be accessible. Shorter forms help. Incorporating some grounding in history or reality helps too. One of the most accessible styles is the fairy tale, and Scott Forbes Crawford delivers five remarkable fun, and easy-to-read, adventures bridging the short story and fairy tale form in Besting the Beast (Aug 2024). All are rooted in Asian history/myth and feature relatable human protagonists to lead the way.

The cover art by Ben Greaves is appropriately derived from “Recovering the Stolen Jewel from the Palace of the Dragon King” (1853) by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Don’t let the friendly style fool you. The beasts herein are pleasantly weird and gory. Excerpts from all the stories are below so you can get a flavor of the horrific creatures and antagonists you’ll experience. Sword & Sorcery and Grimdark fiction fans will enjoy these (indeed, Besting the Beast is Grimm-like fairy tales for Grimdark readers).

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A Land Two Stars to the Left of Middle-Earth: Breath Warmth & Dream by Zig Zag Claybourne

A Land Two Stars to the Left of Middle-Earth: Breath Warmth & Dream by Zig Zag Claybourne

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Breath, Warmth, and Dream (Obsidian Sky Books, May 17, 2024). Cover uncredited

In the land of Eurola, an ancient evil preyed on the people of Waterfall. Then along came Khumalo, Amnandi, and Bog – a mother daughter pair of witches and their warrior companion – to set things right. Plotwise, it’s damn near a western. If someone were to tell you that this was the whole story of Breath Warmth & Dream, that someone would be a thief. They tried to give you a penny while palming the mountain of gold.

It starts with the characters. Read Breath Warmth & Dream and your understanding of the word “witch” will be forever changed. Mother Khumalo and her daughter Amnandi are the kinds of people you want to grow up to be, even if growing up means becoming a child again. They aren’t perfect by any means because that would be boring and Zig Zag simply doesn’t do boring. It’s an imperfect and dangerous world and they make decisions without the foresight of plot armor.

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Enter the Prince of Darkness:Dracula by Bram Stoker

Enter the Prince of Darkness:Dracula by Bram Stoker

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“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

Dracula to Jonathan Harker

I’ve heard tell my generation had nightmares about nuclear war, worried someone was going to press the big red button and trigger the annihilation of the world.

Not me. I was scared of vampires.

Heck, some nights I didn’t even have nightmares because I was too scared to sleep, convinced they were hiding behind the mottled sycamore trees that lined my block. I’m not sure where it came from. Probably from watching The Night Stalker TV movie (1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxley) in which vampire Janos Skorzeny ravages sleazy seventies Las Vegas. It introduced the world to monster-hunter, Carl Kolchak and I saw it when I was seven or eight (thanks, Mom!). That fear disappeared quickly enough, but I was left with a taste for vampire stories.

I must have read some vampire stories in the various horror anthologies I bought regularly, though none spring to mind. I saw tons of movies and read stacks of horror comics featuring the bloodsucking fiends. It was two novels, though, that cemented my taste for the Central European monsters: Salem’s Lot (1975, Stephen King) and They Thirst (1981, Robert McCammon). They’re both big books, packed with characters and inventive takes on the idea of a master vampire trying to take over somewhere, a misbegotten Maine town in the first book and all of Los Angeles in the second.

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A to Z Review: “After the Sky Fell,” by Rob Vagle

A to Z Review: “After the Sky Fell,” by Rob Vagle

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A to Z ReviewsRob Vagle’s “After the Sky Fell” is set in a small bar in Carman, Minnesota run by Marv, who is in love with one of his waitresses, Rose. Rose works in the bar in between trips to explore the variety of places on earth: Alaska, South America, anywhere that isn’t the small town in which she and Marv live. Fortunately for Marv, Rose reciprocates his love, even if she has more of a sense of adventure than he has and can’t be contained in the world he knows.

Reflecting on their relationship, Marv realizes that he needs to move outside his comfort zone and considers selling the bar in order to travel with Rose to wherever she wants to go rather than trying to corral her in the familiar and safe confines of his bar. For Marv, the bar is a comfortable place, his home. He knows his regulars, he enjoys serving the college students who play pool, but he also realizes that he must change and push his own comfort levels if we wants to maintain and expand his relationship with Rose.

Things change when Tiffany, another one of Marv’s employees, informs Marv that there are blue rain drops falling outside.  Going outside, Marv, Rose, and the rest of his customers see a world in which the firmament has fallen to earth, appearing like a large skyblue lake stretching across the bar’s parking lot.  While the falling sky is incredible and eye catching, when they looked up, they could see the mechanism of the universe, clockwork gears, moving in their inexorable motion.

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A to Z Reviews: “Zip,” by Steven Utley

A to Z Reviews: “Zip,” by Steven Utley

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A to Z Reviews

“Zip” was one of the last short stories Steven Utley published during his lifetime, appearing in the July 2012 issue of Asimov’s. It is a story of three time travelers who find themselves in the Pleistocene Era and come upon a situation they had not planned for. As they emerge from their time machine, they see the expected megafauna and humans, but within moments, a blurring occurs on the horizon and the world seem to be torn asunder, those creatures in the distance ceasing to exist.

Surmising that their arrival in the time machine is causing the destruction, the men return to their machine and travel further into the past, arguing about whether they caused the destruction and how to stop it, if they can, or whether they can return to their own time, if it still exists.

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I Read a Year of Robert E. Howard Pastiche So You Don’t Have To (But you really might want to)

I Read a Year of Robert E. Howard Pastiche So You Don’t Have To (But you really might want to)

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Three installments in The Heroic Legends Series from Titan Books: Conan:
The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden (January 30, 2024), Solomon Kane:
The Hound of God by Jonathan Maberry (November 28, 2023), and Bran Mak
Morn: Red Waves of Slaughter by Steven L. Shrewsbury (March 26, 2024)

Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations or standalones, that the pastiche comes to outweigh the original work. BG’s Bob Byrne might tell me I’m wrong, and has the chops to do so, but I think Sherlock Homes probably outweighs every other character for stories written by hands other than the original author. But in the fantasy realm, that nod must go to Robert E. Howard, and of all his creations, to Conan of Cimmeria.

Starting with L. Sprauge de Camp and Lin Carter’s “posthumous collaborations,” of the mid-20th Century, wherein they finished unfinished manuscripts, rewrote non-Conan stories and added tales of their own to create a coherent timeline of his adventures, REH pastiche truckled along quite steadily through the 70s, with stories by diverse hands from Poul Anderson to Karl Edward Wagner, Dave Smith and Richard Tierney to Andrew Offut, and for not only Conan but for Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Black Vulmea and others.

Many of these works were forgettable, some pretty good and a few excellent (IMO, the Offut Cormac Mac Art stories co-written with Keith Taylor are decidedly better than Howard’s use of the character and stand on their own as great S&S). After a glut of Conan novels into the early 80s by TOR, again by many diverse hands such as Robert Jordan and John Maddox Robert, the wind went out of Sword & Sorcery’s sails and there was little-to-nothing in REH pastiche for decades. Conan lived on for a time in Marvel comics, then a Dark Horse’s excellent reboot, in a MMORG, and that was it.

Then, out of nowhere, Heroic Signatures proudly announced it had acquired the rights to Robert E. Howard’s properties in 2018 – and did nothing. Nothing until the last two years, when they suddenly launched a three-pronged approach – novel length works, a new Conan comic series partnered with Titan, and a series of monthly digital short stories penned by established fantasy and horror writers. It’s the latter we’ll talk about here.

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