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In 500 Words of Less: Early Review of Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson

In 500 Words of Less: Early Review of Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson

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Rejoice A Knife to the Heart US-smallRejoice: A Knife to the Heart
By Steven Erikson
Promontory Press (460 pages, $26 hardcover, October 2018)

I’ve been a Steven Erikson fan for a long time, ever since a friend handed me the first Malazan novel, Gardens of the Moon, when I was in university. You might have seen on here a few months ago that I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with Steven at Can*Con in Ottawa, where he was Author Guest of Honor. That whole experience was cool all on its own, but following that I got the privilege of reading an ARC of his forthcoming novel Rejoice: A Knife to the Heart, which Bennett R. Coles has already called “a stunning work of literature.”

Honestly, the literature side of Rejoice is what surprised me the most. In our interview, Steven and I talked about how his first publications before Malazan were literary, which struck me since it’s rare for authors in our industry to jump genres like that. But what’s particularly interesting with Rejoice is that he takes the large-scale worldbuilding, extensive cast of characters and air of mystery of his fantasy work and applies is to the present day – or a twist on the present day, involving Earth’s first contact with an alien race. The novel’s already been described as “a first contact story without contact”; since this isn’t Independence Day or Close Encounters, the focus is instead on us, and how we’d react if an alien intelligence showed up and gave us a chance to improve ourselves.

That might sound like this is a novel that preaches or proselytizes, but it really doesn’t. Instead what you see is snapshots of people’s lives around the planet, from politicians to scientists to media tycoons to refugees in developing countries, all facing situations beyond their control (and almost their comprehension) and needing to decide what they should do about it. If you’re hoping for flashy energy weapons or epic journeys like in the Malazan books, you won’t find it here – but the debates and conversations between the characters in Rejoice, and the steps they take in response to this alien influence, are often tense and always intriguing. At the end of the day, a lot of our way of life (regardless of political ideology or religious belief) is about having some measure of control over our lives, and when that’s taken away very interesting things can happen.

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Birthday Reviews: Richard Parks’s “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng”

Birthday Reviews: Richard Parks’s “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng”

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Black Gate Issue 1
Black Gate Issue 1

Richard Parks was born on June 15, 1955.

At the beginning of his writing career, Parks published a few works as B. Richard Parks. He has also used the pseudonym W.J. Everett. Parks received a World Fantasy Award nomination for his collection The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups. In 2012, his novel The Heavenly Fox was nominated for a Mythopoeic Award.

“Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng” is the first story to appear in the first issue of Black Gate magazine in the Spring 2001 issue, published by John O’Neill. The story was picked up by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer for inclusion in the inaugural volume of their Year’s Best Fantasy anthology series. Parks also used the story in his 2002 collection The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups.

In “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng,” Seven is a young man living in an ancient China. On a trip to the city, he sees a woman, Jia Jin, and falls immediately in love with her. When it is explained to him that she is a gift to the Marquis of Zeng, who is near to death, and will be entombed with the Marquis along with his other concubines, Seven determines that he must rescue her and marry her.

Seven’s quest takes him far from the capital city and along the way he learns more of Chinese burial customs and a spirit tells him to seek a woman named Golden Bell. Upon finding her, he learns that he must sacrifice his heart and his soul to her in order to gain the knowledge to save Jia Jin from her fate. Although Parks glosses over it, the idea that Seven can give his heart and soul to one woman but later give it to another is glossed over, although it is an interesting point not often included in stories.

Eventually, Seven finds himself confronting the Marquis of Zeng in an attempt to marry Jia Jin, whose desires are not particularly important to either the Marquis or Seven.

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Birthday Reviews: Harry Turtledove’s “Half the Battle”

Birthday Reviews: Harry Turtledove’s “Half the Battle”

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Cover by Tony Roberts
Cover by Tony Roberts

Harry Turtledove was born on June 14, 1949.

Turtledove began publishing using the pseudonym “Eric G. Iverson” and has also published under the names “Mark Gordion,” “H.N. Turteltaub,” and “Dan Chernenko.” Known for his alternate history novels and epics, he has also published numerous science fiction and fantasy works. In 1994 his novella “Down in the Bottomlands” received the Hugo Award. He won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History twice, for his novels How Few Remain and Ruled Britannia. Two of the novels in his Young Adult Crosstime series have won awards. Gunpowder Empire won the 2004 Golden Duck Hal Clement Award given by SuperConDuckTivity and The Gladiator received the 2008 Prometheus Award. His novel WorldWar: In the Balance received the Italia Award in 1996. Turtledove served as Toast Master at Chicon 2000, the Worldcon. In 1995 he received the Forry Award from LASFS.

“Half the Battle” was published by Jerry Pournelle in 1990, in volume 9 of his There Will Be War anthology series, After Armageddon. The story has not been reprinted.

The story opens sometime after an apocalyptic event has destroyed civilization in southern California. A new society has arisen around several small kingdoms, with Turtledove looking at the king of Canoga. When a book is found that describes a machine that the ancients had that can spit bullets, a machine gun, King Byron has his artificers try to replicate the lost device to replace the slow matchlocks his troops are using. The fact that King Byron and his people knew the gun could exist gave them the edge in re-creating it.

The story uses several time jumps to explore where this future will go. In each period, King Byron’s descendants have managed to extend and consolidate the kingdom’s power and in each period, they come across other devices of the ancients that they work to replicate, because knowing it can be done is “half the battle.”

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As Gritty As It Gets: The Ashes of Berlin by Luke McCallin

As Gritty As It Gets: The Ashes of Berlin by Luke McCallin

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The Ashes of Berlin-smallBerlin, 1947.

The city is in ruins and divided between American, British, French, and Russian sectors. German war veteran and police detective Gregor Reinhardt is trying to reassemble his life but, like his city, it’s been smashed into too many pieces.

Not only does he have to contend with the loss of his family and his home, but also guilt over the war and the politics of a police department in which everyone has a sponsor among one of the occupying powers and geopolitics gets played out in the office.

And now he has a serial murderer on his hands, one who shoves sand or water down his victim’s throats in order to suffocate or drown them. Throw in some unrepentant Nazis and a frighteningly efficient Soviet officer, and Reinhardt is up for a long case.

I found this book by accident while browsing through my local bookshop and it’s the best mystery novel I’ve read all year. McCallin is a master storyteller who evokes the grim, surreal landscape of postwar Berlin.

As he takes us along on Reinhardt’s case, we get to experience the sights, sounds, and even the smells and tastes of a once-proud city trying to dig itself out from disaster. The author has clearly done his homework and we learn all sorts of fascinating details about life for regular Germans after the war and the politics of the four “Allied” powers ruling Germany.

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Second Discussion

Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Second Discussion

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Downbelow Station UK-smallWelcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? The first discussion can be found here.

Chris Hocking gets the ball rolling this time around.

Chris Hocking

Hi people,

I had business travel to do and took Downbelow Station on the plane for some serious reading. I came away from it realizing that I had developed an unusual (for me at least) attitude toward the book.

This is an intense SF novel depicting otherworldly conflict in alien environments, but it’s tone is resolutely workaday and normalized. The exotic situations and scenes described are experienced by the characters, and presented to the reader, with matter-of-fact realism. We follow several characters whose histories and position are laid out and fitted into this fictional environment with great skill. This is a story of interplanetary war, of political maneuver and counter-maneuver, of individuals and policy makers struggling to deal with the critical issues and collateral adjustments that inevitably arise in wartime. It is executed by Cherryh with remarkable depth and solidity: the environment meshes completely with the story being told and the overall effect is very convincing. This is a powerful and deep imagination at work.

Yet having said all that, I find the book a half-step out of phase with my own reading tastes. The consistent desperation of most of the characters, the grueling effects of war and displacement are all well done and appropriate to the story being told, but for me the cumulative effect was kind of enervating. I’ve read enough bleak modern fiction and noir that this didn’t bother me much in itself, but it was coupled with the notable absence of an element I tend to seek in Science Fiction.

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Birthday Reviews: Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words”

Birthday Reviews: Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words”

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Cover by Kelly Faltermayer
Cover by Kelly Faltermayer

Yves Meynard was born on June 13, 1964.

Meynard’s novel The Book of Knights was nominated for the Mythopoeic Award and his anthology Tesseracts5, co-edited with Robert Runté, was nominated for the Aurora Award. He won the Aurora Award for his novellas “L’Enfant des mondes assoupis,” “La Marveiolleuse machine de Johann Havel,” “L’Envoyé,” “Équinoxe,” and “Une letter de ma mère.” He won the Aurora for best book for La Rose du desert. In 1994, he won the Quebec Grand Prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy. He served as the literary director for Solaris from 1994 until 2002. He has collaborated with Élisabeth Vonarburg and Jean-Louis Trudel, occasionally using the pseudonym Laurent McAllister for the latter collaborations.

“Tobacco Words” was originally published by Algis Budrys in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction #19 in February 1996.  David G. Hartwell selected the story for inclusion in Year’s Best SF 2 the following year and in 1998 the story was translated into Italian by Annarita Guernieri as “parole di fumo” when Hartwell’s anthology was published by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

Yves Meynard’s “Tobacco Words” is set on a space station with a strange culture.  The story focuses on Caspar, a twelve year old boy who can’t speak, and his sister, Flikka, who hears the sins of those who travel between the stars. In this world, their sins can have deadly affects if not confessed and absolved, although Meynard never offers any explanation for the phenomenon.

Meynard fills the story with details of three characters: the grandmother who is traveling through the universe at relativistic speeds, and whose life is broadcast to their home in slow motion; Aurinn, a first timer who doesn’t believe she has any sins, but when she confesses and is absolved winds up hospitalized; and an alien, whose sins are more human than those found in humans.

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Modular: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Looks to the Horizon

Modular: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes Looks to the Horizon

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Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes-smallThe newest supplement for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes (Amazon), continues to provide the high quality of content we’ve come to expect from this series, focusing on quality and story depth over serious escalation of power.

Tome of Foes expands on setting and background information for the main setting, with the bulk of the book being the 137-page Bestiary chapter, containing monsters from across the dimensions, including a variety of duergars and drow templates to a host of Demon Lords and Archdevils. And that’s all just in the D section of the Bestiary, not even account for the constructs, elder elementals, and ample quantities of undead!

While the monsters are great to have, the first half of the book has a lot to offer for the Dungeon Master in terms of depth, as well.

The first chapter gives a wealth of detail on the eternal Blood War between the armies of demons and devils for who gets claim on being more evil. It’s easy to treat demons and devils as villains just there to be killed, but after reading this chapter, you’ll be more inclined to treat them as unique creatures, with their own goals and motivations. I’m looking forward to using this information to build a storyline where my players are stuck between the goals of demonic cults and devil cults, who hate each other nearly as much as they hate the party of adventurers.

Subsequent chapters provide details on the cultures of elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes. Information on the Feywild and the Underdark is also provided where appropriate, for those who want to incorporate them more into their campaigns. In addition, a chapter focuses on the endless war between the two gith races, the githyanki and githzerai, who escaped their enslavement from the mind flayers (who are themselves not covered in detail Tome of Foes, but are well covered in the previous Volo’s Guide to Monsters) only to find themselves in a brutal clash against each other.

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An End to the End: The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

An End to the End: The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

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oie_11558360wYZzXP1And so we come to end of the line for several of the main characters of the Black Company trilogy. The end of the third book, The White Rose, saw the storied mercenary company whittled down to a handful of survivors. The group — five veterans, the empire’s erstwhile ruler the Lady, and Croaker in the lead — decided to travel south and find Khatovar, the fabled home city of the Black Company.

Darling, otherwise known as the rebel leader the White Rose, chose to remain in the North rather than accompany Croaker and the rest of her friends. The wizard Silent, in love with with Darling, chose to remain with her despite her not having reciprocal feelings. Raven, also in love with Darling, stayed behind too, but rejected, went off with Case, the young imperial soldier he’d befriended.

Published four years after The White Rose, The Silver Spike (1989) is a sort of odd book that attempts to tie up several loose ends. It covers a lot of ground, constantly bouncing between several narratives and the better part of two continents. Concerned as much with giving ends to a host of characters as he is with the aftermath of the rebellion, Cook doesn’t tell a totally cohesive story.

Over here, several characters are chasing down a revived enemy only to be suddenly yanked away to face a different threat. Another storyline follows a new set of characters as they commit an act of great stupidity that leads to many deaths and horrendous destruction. There’re lots of very cool bits of business, but The Silver Spike feels like several books jammed together rather inelegantly. Perhaps if Cook had written a giant, sprawling work, like one of today’s thousand-page tomes, he could have made it come together better. But at only 313 pages, there’s little space for the rambling the book is given to.

The Silver Spike begins with Philodendron Case introducing and explaining himself. A minor character in The White Rose who found himself attached to Raven, now he’s a primary character.

This here journal is Raven’s idea but I got me a feeling he won’t be so proud of it if he ever gets to reading it because most of the time I’m going to tell the truth. Even if he is my best buddy.

Talk about your feet of clay. He’s got them run all the way up to his noogies, and then some. But he’s a right guy even if he is a homicidal, suicidal maniac half the time. Raven decides he’s your friend you got a friend for life, with a knife in all three hands.

My name is Case. Philodendron Case. Thanks to my Ma. I’ve never even told Raven about that. That’s why I joined the army. To get away from the kind of potato diggers that would stick a name like that on a kid. I had seven sisters and four brothers last time I got a head count. Every one is named after some damned flower.

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Birthday Reviews: Mary A. Turzillo’s “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll”

Birthday Reviews: Mary A. Turzillo’s “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll”

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Cover by Randy Asplund
Cover by Randy Asplund

Mary A. Turzillo was born on June 12, 1940. She is married to fellow science fiction author Geoffrey A. Landis.

Turzillo won the Nebula Award for her novelette “Mars Is No Place for Children,” which also topped the readers poll for Science Fiction Age, the magazine in which it appeared. She won two Elgin Awards for poetry chapbooks for her collection Lovers & Killers and for the collection Sweet Poison, written in collaboration with Marge Simon, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, as was the poetry collection Satan’s Sweetheart, written by Turzillo and Simon. Turzillo’s poetry has also been nominated for both the Dwarf Star Award and the Rhysling Award. She has also been nominated for the British SF Association Award.

Turzillo sold “Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll” to Stanley Schmidt and the story was published in the October 2002 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It has not been reprinted.

“Thumbkin, Caesar, Princess, and Troll” has a title reminiscent of a fairy tale , and despite its setting in a future Ohio focusing on nanotechnology, it has the trappings of a fairy tale to go along with the title. Thumbkin is a genetically modified genius who was bred to be only twelve centimeters tall by parents who though it would improve his chances to become an astronaut before an anti-science wave swept the country and destroyed the space program.

At Thumbkin’s graduation, Harry P. Caesar promised his company and his daughter’s hand to anyone who could solve three seemingly impossible problems. Naturally Thumbkin, as the hero of the story, was able to come up with solutions. Of course, Princess Caesar didn’t necessarily want to marry a twelve centimeter tall genius, especially when she was already dating a drug lord, Dick Troll.

The idea of a father giving his daughter in marriage to the winner of a contest is pervasive in fairy tales and despite his offer, Caesar, Thumbkin, and Princess are all well aware of how misogynistic the arrangement is. When Thumbkin goes to Caesar to seek his prize, Caesar explains that the decision must be Princess’s, something Thumbkin acknowledges, even as he works to “win” her from Troll.

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Birthday Reviews: Basil Wells’s “The Laws of Juss”

Birthday Reviews: Basil Wells’s “The Laws of Juss”

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Cover by David A. Hardy
Cover by David A. Hardy

Basil Wells was born on June 11, 1912 and died on December 23, 2003. In addition to publishing under his own name, he occasionally published using the name Gene Ellerman. The majority of Wells’s stories appeared between 1940 and 1960, although throughout the 60s and 70s he occasionally had stories appearing in the magazines. After disappearing in the 1980s, he again began to publish in the 1990s. He published four collections of his work between 1949 and 1976.

“The Laws of Juss” appeared in the third and final issue of Expanse, a magazine published between 1993 and 1994 and edited by Steven E, Fick. The story has not been reprinted.

In just a few pages, Wells plays games with the reader’s expectations in “The Laws of Juss.” At first, it appears that Grayson Brand is a captive of Dudley Feeber. Wells quickly reveals that the two men have a long-standing friendship, which adds an element of betrayal to Brand’s captivity.

In a datadump, Feebler explains two important things to Brand. The first is that a wealthy woman, Lynne Holmes, has set her sights on making Brand her sixth husband. The second is a description of the legal system on Juss, which Brand is relatively unfamiliar with since he is not a native to the planet.

As the title of the story implies, it is the legal system of Juss that is of interest, and although Feeber spells it out for Brand in a way that telegraphs the story’s ending, it feels like Wells has created an interesting enough punishment that it could stand to be more fully explored than within the confines of the story. According to Feeber, murder is punishable by essentially taking the murderer’s body and reforming it to resemble the victim’s body. The victim’s memories are then downloaded into the re-formed body, supplanting the memories of the murderer.

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