Browsed by
Category: Reviews

Battles with Blades and Bows, and Creatures Charming and Terrifying: Journeys, edited by Teresa Edgerton

Battles with Blades and Bows, and Creatures Charming and Terrifying: Journeys, edited by Teresa Edgerton

Comments 2 comments

Journeys Teresa Edgerton-smallI admit it. As both a writer and a reader, I’m a sucker for a good themed anthology. The writer in me loves responding creatively to a prompt, finding inspiration in the unexpected. The reader in me is always fascinated to see the range of tales a collection of talented, thoughtful authors can tease from a shared basic notion.

Journeys, an epic fantasy anthology, edited by Teresa Edgerton and published by Nathan Hystad’s imprint, Woodbridge Press, hits the cybershelves on February 15th. For fans of sword and sorcery, of legend and myth, of quests and creatures and unforeseen narrative twists, it is a strong, at times compelling collection of short fiction from fourteen accomplished authors. The theme for the anthology is fairly simple and broad enough to allow every contributor as much freedom as possible. As Hystad put it, “Though I was asking for a common trope, the genre could be… really any fantasy style, with a journey, quest, or adventure as the central premise.”

Great anthologies often bring together a mix of established authors, and writers who are just at the start of their professional careers. On the one hand, we have well-known artists who can be counted on to build on a long personal history of excellent storytelling. We also encounter, though, the fresh voice, the writer whose name is not yet familiar, but whose talent shines through in the most surprising ways. With Journeys, Teresa Edgerton has managed to strike such a balance, bringing together authors from the UK. and the US, some with long resumés, some with only a story or two to their credit.

Among the more established names, we find John Gwynne, who draws inspiration from Celtic legend in “The Sundering,” a story of love, betrayal, and vengeance. Gail Z. Martin, who on her own and with her husband, Larry N. Martin, has penned several series ranging from epic fantasy to steampunk to urban fantasy, gives us a tale set in the universe explored by her Fallen Kings Cycle. Adrian Tchaikovsky and Juliet E. McKenna, who have enjoyed success in the U.K. as well as the U.S., give us a pair of powerful narratives. Tchaikovsky’s “The World Wound,” follows rivals who must work together to heal a rift in the fabric of the world that threatens the very existence of humanity. McKenna, in “The Road to Hadrumal,” has returned to one of her own previously explored worlds to craft a story of magic and hope.

…

Read More Read More

The Dark Fairy, a Magic Carpet, and Forbidden Lovebirds: Cornelia Funke’s The Golden Yarn

The Dark Fairy, a Magic Carpet, and Forbidden Lovebirds: Cornelia Funke’s The Golden Yarn

Comments 0 Comment
reckless-the-petrified-flesh-small reckless-living-shadows-small reckless-the-golden-yarn-small

In The Golden Yarn, the final (?) volume of the Reckless trilogy by Cornelia Funke, the unthinkable happens. Not in the way you would suppose, of course. After returning to the real world in search of a precious item, Jacob is accosted by Clara, his brother’s girlfriend. More’s the pity when she reveals her true identity; she’s actually an Alderelf who sees to Jacob’s incapacitation and traps the actual Clara in a sleep from which she can never awaken.

A devious Alderelf named Spieler has sent his young apprentice, along with her brother, to do his bidding. Having disguised himself as Jacob’s father, he knows Jacob and his brother, Will, all too well. He desires Jacob’s firstborn child. (Remind you of anyone?) That prevents Jacob and Fox, his beloved companion, from acting on their unbearable feelings for one another. Then there’s Will, who embarks on a quest to find the Dark Fairy, who cursed him all the way back in Book One. Of course, Jacob follows him on what ends up being the most devastating journey yet.

…

Read More Read More

Adventures in Earth’s Prehistory: Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part IV

Adventures in Earth’s Prehistory: Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part IV

Comments 4 comments

The City Jane Gaskell-Orbit-smallThe previous installments in this series are:

Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part I
Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part II
Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part III

Ostensibly the final book in Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga is The City. It is a slim volume, especially when compared to its predecessors, coming in at 190 pages.

Picking up where Atlan left off, we find our hapless heroine Cija, half-starved and sick with scurvy from a long sea voyage, deposited in the docks of a foreign land. The master of the vessel has found a loophole in his verbal contract with the bandit chief Ael – he who paid for Cija’s safe voyage away from Atlan. Unbound by any promise regarding Cija’s treatment once ashore, the master has determined to sell her into slavery.

The docks are a squalid affair, gripped by winter. Icy rime covers mounds of garbage — and worse. Even so some punters are about, and after a bit of bidding Cija is sold and led away, still dazed and begging one of the ships boys to rescue her baby, Seka.

The City is a fast paced book. One gets the feeling Ms Gaskell was in the final sprint in the series, and this book reflects it. While she does not scrimp on descriptions, there is no wastage in the narrative. In almost a different style, Cija heads off from adventure to adventure. Even portions where time passes by are quickly dealt with until the next adventure starts.

Shortly after Cjia is led away from the slave block, the ship’s boy, Eel, and some of his cronies assail her new owner and whisk her away to promised safety. Soon she is reunited with Seka at Eel’s mothers house, which Cija soon twigs is a brothel where she is due to become a new attraction. Sickened by the prospect but still weak and lost in the foreign city, all she can do is try to capitulate.

One thing about Cija, she is a survivor. Although she has seen many streaks of bad luck, she also has the occasional run of good. This is the beginning of such a run. Her first customer turns out to be a youngster with a romantic view of the world. He believes her sob story, and sets to rescuing her. Cija escapes and, along with the youngster, finds her way to the city’s suburban greens and into his home, as a servant.

…

Read More Read More

A Storm of Wings by M. John Harrison

A Storm of Wings by M. John Harrison

Comments 0 Comment

oie_701145jxuo14zKNine years, another novel, and ten short stories after the publication of The Pastel City (read last week’s piece on that here), M. John Harrison returned to the world of the city of Viriconium in A Storm of Wings (1980). Its title taken from a line in the previous book, A Storm of Wings largely recycles the plot of the that novel as well. Once again, alien forces are threatening the city of Virconium and only a ragtag band of heroes has a chance of staving off destruction. Other than setting and basic similarity of narratives, this second novel in the series exists on a whole different plane of storytelling, both in style and intent.

A new religion has risen up in and around the city of Viriconium, the Brotherhood of the Locust. Its origins are a mystery and its teachings appear to have arrived from beyond mortal thoughts.

Who knows exactly where it began, or how? For as much as a century (or as little as a decade: estimates vary) before it made its appearance on the streets, a small group or cabal somehwere in the city had propagated its fundamental tenet — that the appearance of “reality” is quite false, a counterfeit or artefact of the human senses.

This creed stands at the nucleus of A Storm of Wings, both the story on the page, and at what Harrison has to say about fiction. As the “world” of Viriconium comes under attack from a force that twists and alters its “reality,” we are, page by page, reminded any stability the “land” has comes from its creator and can be wiped away with a tap of the backspace key.

…

Read More Read More

Lock ‘n Load Tactical: Heroes of Normandy

Lock ‘n Load Tactical: Heroes of Normandy

Comments 5 comments

Heroes of Normandy-smallLock ‘n Load Tactical: Heroes of Normandy was one of my favorite purchases last year. I loved it so much that I made sure it was something I played on my birthday (my son enjoyed it too).

I’ve held off reviewing the game, though, because shortly after it arrived on my doorstep last year it went out of print. With a reprint due at the end of the first quarter of 2017, likely in March, and because those who place pre-orders receive a substantial discount, I thought it high time to alert Black Gate readers to the game, and the entire Lock ‘n Load Tactical series. (If this little intro is enough to convince you the game’s worth a look, feel free to skip all my prose and drop right down to the end where there’s a link to order a demo copy of the game.)

Overview

Lock ‘n Load Tactical is a revision and representation of Mark Walker’s excellent Lock ‘n Load system. The new publisher has clarified, re-organized, and revised the rules, printed them in full color with additional examples, and eliminated the need for purchases of unrelated games to play certain settings. For example, you might once have needed to own several modules before you could play some of the Lock ‘n Load World War II games. That’s no longer necessary — Lock n’ Load Tactical: Heroes of Normandy is complete unto itself.

…

Read More Read More

The Complete Carpenter: Halloween (1978)

The Complete Carpenter: Halloween (1978)

Comments 11 comments

halloween-1978-posterUhm, Happy Early Valentine’s Day?

In my analysis of John Carpenter’s career, I’ve now reached his third movie, the low-budget horror smash Halloween. It’s Carpenter’s most financially successful film. It’s his most influential film. And, starting with a famous November 1978 Village Voice article by Tom Allen that helped turn the director into a recognized auteur, his most critically analyzed film. So here I tread, timorously, to add to the massive cultural heap of Halloween.

At least tackling the movie outside of October provides a feeling of freshness. February can’t always be dedicated to marathons of Groundhog Day. (Not that I’m opposed to that either.)

The Story

Do I really need to bother with this part? Okay, here ya’ go:

A psychotic killer (referred to as “The Shape” in the credits) who knifed his sister to death when he was six years old breaks free from a mental institute the day before Halloween. He returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, IL, puts on a white distorted Captain Kirk mask, and stalks and kills babysitters. His psychiatrist (Donald Pleasence) pursues him. One babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) survives the night. Every low-budget horror film then repeats this process over and over again until the last syllable of recorded time. Tales, told by mediocre filmmakers, full of breasts and blood, signifying nothing — except how great the original is.

The Positives

Psst … can I talk to you behind the scenes for a moment?

So, about a year ago I achieved my goal of owning all of John Carpenter’s oeuvre on Blu-ray (or widescreen DVD if there wasn’t yet a Blu-ray, which at this point means only Memoirs of an Invisible Man). Looking at all of them spread out in a mandala on the carpet of my bedroom, with my cat sprawled across Christine, I knew I had to write a movie-by-movie series of articles covering Carpenter’s career. It didn’t seem too ambitious or much of a burden: “Oh no, I have to watch all the movies of one of my favorite directors!”

…

Read More Read More

A Shaper of Myths: The Best of Cordwainer Smith

A Shaper of Myths: The Best of Cordwainer Smith

Comments 3 comments
The Best of Cordwainer Smith-small The Best of Cordwainer Smith-back-small

He and I stared at each other. Was this what culture was? Were we now men? Did freedom always include the freedom to mistrust, to fear, to hate?
— Cordwainer Smith, “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard,” p. 300

Such are the questions set in the context of Cordwainer Smith’s utopian, futuristic society where people are seeking to go back to being “human” again. But this is only one small time slice and representation of Smith’s massive mythos in The Best of Cordwainer Smith (1975). This volume was the fifth installment in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series, and the first to be edited by someone other than Lester Del Rey (1915–1993). John J. Pierce (1941–) edits this volume and provides a very fine introduction. Pierce is a science fiction critic and was once a very outspoken pundit against the 1960s New Wave in science fiction.

Whereas the cover art of the first four volumes was done by the late Dean Ellis (1920–2009), the cover for this book was by the late Darrell Sweet (1934–2011). Sweet’s artwork here is very reminiscent of Ellis’ work on the Classic Science Fiction Series. This is interesting, seeing how Sweet’s later artwork is very different from Ellis. (See this Black Gate memorial post to Sweet for later examples of his work.) It seems Sweet was attempting to keep with the aesthetic feel that Ellis had already established.

…

Read More Read More

The Pastel City by M. John Harrison

The Pastel City by M. John Harrison

Comments 16 comments

The Pastel CityM. John Harrison, like Joan Vinge or J.G. Ballard, hails from my terra incognita of the universe of sci-fi/fantasy authors. Over the years I’ve read praises of his fiction but have never read a word of it. Searching my shelves for something to review this week, I saw a copy of the Bantam omnibus of his novels and stories of Viriconium, a city in the twilight days of Earth. I have no memory of how, when, or where it came into my possession, but there it was. So I figured it was about time to investigate its unknown literary landscapes.

Harrison came to my attention from a pair of essays he wrote on the creation of fantasy. The first, “What It Might Be Like to Live in Viriconium,” is an attack on the effort to codify and specifiy the nature of fantasy. It opens with this bold statement:

The great modern fantasies were written out of religious, philosophical and psychological landscapes. They were sermons. They were metaphors. They were rhetoric. They were books, which means that the one thing they actually weren’t was countries with people in them.

For him, any effort to delineate geographical boundaries and the like in a work of fantasy undermines what really lies at its heart. He describes his own tales like this:

“Viriconium” is a theory about the power-structures culture is designed to hide; an allegory of language, how it can only fail; the statement of a philosophical (not to say ethological) despair. At the same time it is an unashamed postmodern fiction of the heart, out of which all the values we yearn for most have been swept precisely so that we will try to put them back again (and, in that attempt, look at them afresh).

…

Read More Read More

Oz’s Bag of Holding: My Beef with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials

Oz’s Bag of Holding: My Beef with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials

Comments 5 comments

the magiciansI have here a Bag of Holding. I am now going to pull some things out of it…

Well, I did read Lev Grossman’s The Magicians back in 2011. Now that The Magicians Trilogy is generating so much buzz (consequent to the popular Syfy series now in its second season), I suppose I’ll have to say something about it. However, what I say won’t be very nice. [Here is another review by Chris Braak that appeared in Black Gate back in 2011.]

Since it had been awhile, I went back and skimmed through the final chapters of the first installment. It was enough to remind me why I did not enthusiastically delve into the second book (I did pick up The Magician King, got a chapter in and set it aside. I might go back to it, if anyone furnishes me with a compelling argument that the trilogy as a whole manages to ameliorate the criticism I am about to level against the first book.)

It is well written. The thinly-veiled pastiches of Narnia, Hogwarts, and other beloved fantastical realms are, on the whole, perceptively done. Grossman manages both to evoke the sense of wonder of those books and to convincingly portray characters sensitive to the special draw of Faerie — kindred spirits who, deep down, wish they could escape our world into those imaginary places. Grossman is clearly no stranger to the deep affinity such works can stir in the receptive reader. And he gets great mileage (meta-mileage?) out of having the characters allude to and reference J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien and all the other fantasy authors they grew up with.

But, like Philip Pullman with the His Dark Materials trilogy, Grossman seems to feel some obligation to poop on that to which he is ostensibly paying homage.

…

Read More Read More

In 500 Words or Less … Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

In 500 Words or Less … Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

Comments 0 Comment

Calamity Brandon Sanderson-smallCalamity
By Brandon Sanderson
Random House (432 pages, $18.99 hardcover/$10.99 paperback, February 2016)

To begin, let’s cue the music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD2DYKR0UYE

Finally, I made it to Calamity, which concludes Brandon Sanderson’s Reckoners trilogy. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while because it’s the only series of Sanderson’s that I’ve really taken to; The Stormlight Archive tired me out halfway through the second book, and I haven’t felt the urge to start Mistborn. But the Reckoners trilogy is just a blast. It’s superhero YA, pulpy and exciting and admittedly un-scientific (which is a sort of running meta-joke among the characters) but with the sort of excellent character work that I look for in fiction.

The final installment doesn’t disappoint with regard to the above. Narrator David Charleston is just as optimistic, determined and corny as before, though he’s grown out of his quest for vengeance against the super-powered Epics that destroyed the world. Now that he’s saved one (and started dating her) he’s out to save another, his friend and mentor Prof, to prove that the Epics can learn to fight their darker impulses, like Anakin turning from the dark side (except more successful, hopefully).

What seems like a pretty straightforward storyline – find Prof, save Prof, then destroy the source of the Epics’ powers – goes in some unexpected directions, eventually losing momentum. Realizing that the solution to the Epics is even more complicated and out of reach than it’s painted at the start of the novel added an extra layer of tension that kept me up one night finishing off the damn thing so I could get some sleep.

…

Read More Read More