Black Gate – Page 970 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Goth Chick News: The Kids Who Put You Off Kids – Where Are They Now?

Thursday, February 6, 2014 Sue Granquist Comments 1 comment

By this time, it’s no surprise to any of you that The Shining is one film I just can’t get enough of. I like the source material of course, but the movie version never gets old and I can say that with some authority, having seen it about a gazillion times (and written about it here a fair amount as well).

Back in 2010, inspired by a then-recent documentary on the Stanley Hotel (the real Overlook) I did some of my best ever cyber-stalking on a quest to find little Danny Torrance; or really the 38 year-old Danny Lloyd he is today.

Back then, I did manage to track down “Professor Lloyd” at the university in Kentucky where he now teaches, only to be entirely ignored. Not surprising, considering his students posted comments about the verbal smack down you’re likely to receive if you ever brought up the good professor’s past life.

But you know what? A little taste of fame, no matter how brief or how long ago, will inevitably leave you craving more at some point in the future. And apparently that future for Danny Lloyd was the publishing of King’s Shining sequel Doctor Sleep.

…

Read More Read More

Four History Books for Heroic Fantasy Readers (and Writers)

Thursday, February 6, 2014 Comments 5 comments

I can never be sure whether I like History because it’s Fantasy, but real, or whether I like Fantasy because it’s History in a different sandbox. Or maybe I like travel, adventure, battles, and sword fights…

Whatever the truth, in my reading, I pretty much alternate mostly-historical non-fiction with SF&F.

In no particular order, here’s some of my favorite History books, the ones that strike a fantasy chord.

1. The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced – Stephanie Dalley

Well-written, but probably for the enthusiastic amateur or somebody inoculated by academia, this book digs into the reality behind the Hanging Garden of Babylon, and in doing so plunges into the slow-motion brawl that is Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian history.

We glimpse the lost Indiana Jones era of Middle Eastern Archaeology, scrabble through the roots of Western Civilization, and get a sense of a world of ancient kings, their empires, and the massive structures they created.

It just needs Conan to wander in from the desert…

…

Read More Read More

The Series Series: Marshal Versus the Assassins by M. Harold Page

Thursday, February 6, 2014 Sarah Avery Comments 7 comments

Of the many excellences in Marshal Versus the Assassins, M. Harold Page’s story of a real historical crusader trying to avert a crusade, the most remarkable is Page’s rendering of physical combat. There are so many reasons this stand-alone adventure in the Foreworld Saga could be subtitled Don’t Try This at Home.

Since you’re here reading Black Gate, odds are you’re a fight scene connoisseur. You’ll have read some classic set-pieces, and some classic blunders. You may even have read this post, which discusses the biggest pitfall most writers face when they set out to learn how to write a fight scene: the counterintuitive way a blow-by-blow approach to even the most exciting events can turn tedious. Writers who overcome that problem generally do it by intertwining the physical blow-by-blow fight choreography with the things fiction can render and film can’t — most of them aspects of the viewpoint character’s inner life.

What Page does more and better than any other fantasy writer I know is intertwine the viewpoint character’s complete sensory experience during combat. As a practitioner and historian of Europe’s lost martial arts traditions, Page knows in muscle memory how each weapon his crusader characters use feels in the hand, in the heft, and in the mailed body it strikes. All of us who write fantasy that includes fight scenes try to convey this kind of sensory vividness and immediacy. The difference in results between a writer who’s relying on research or imagination and a writer who has dedicated years to mastering the things his characters have mastered is immediately apparent.

I was about to say the difference was apparent on the page, but for much of the time I spent reading the fight scenes, I wasn’t really paying attention to the existence of a page. It would be more accurate to say the difference is apparent in the reader’s mirror neurons.

I love reading a book that I couldn’t have written, one that displays writerly chops totally different from mine. Of course, the thing Page makes look easy that I struggle with as a writer is not the only virtue of this book.

For instance, there’s the delightful blank spot in history that Page imagines his way into.

…

Read More Read More

Take a Trip to Haven — The Free City

Thursday, February 6, 2014 John ONeill Comments 19 comments

In the early days of role playing, rule systems were plentiful. Really, you couldn’t set foot in a game shop without tripping over a new RPG system. Every game company on the planet was trying to grab a piece of the rapidly-exploding market with a new game focused on pirates, science fiction, the Bronze Age, the Wild West, King Arthur, horror movies, the fall of Moria, the Federation, Middle Earth, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One, the Marvel Universe… heck, there were even role playing games about high school, fer cryin’ out loud.

Supplements? They were a dime a dozen. Virtually every one of the systems above had at least half a dozen. Want the complete scoop on Midgard? Wolfgang Baur has you covered. Desperately need advice on how to survive in a dungeon? Check. Or how about a trip to the mysterious lost Empire of the Aztecs?

Adventures? Lordy, yes. Countless fabulously detailed adventures, from Gygax’s classic The Temple of Elemental Evil; to the home of King Kong, Monster Island; to the ruins of Parlainth, an ancient capital that vanished from the face of the Earth; to Call of Cthulhu scenarios based on actual tales by H.P. Lovecraft. You couldn’t throw a stick without bouncing off half a dozen epic adventures.

Was there anything an avid gamer couldn’t find, in the first heady decades of our hobby?

Yes, there was. If there was anything as scarce as hen’s teeth, it was a thriving, living city setting.

And no wonder. Ruined cities, they were a cinch. Pretty map and an encounter key. But an inhabited city? With a functioning economy, logically consistent government, sinister underworld, bustling marketplaces, and larger-than-life heroes, villains, and just plain folk going about their business? That took a level of imagination — and commitment to design — on a whole new scale.

There were a few attempts at city settings, some better than others. But for my money, the most successful, and easily one of the most ambitious, was Gamelord’s marvelous Haven — The Free City.

…

Read More Read More

Robin Hobb on What’s Wrong with Epic Fantasy

Wednesday, February 5, 2014 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Over at SF Signal, Andrea Johnson has put together one of the more interesting round-robin interviews I’ve read in a some time. As part of their Mind Meld series, she asked eight well known fantasy authors — including Martha Wells, Melanie Rawn, Sam Sykes, and Robin Hobb — to answer the question “What’s Wrong with Epic Fantasy?”

Many of the answers are both fascinating and insightful. Martha critiques the current trend towards multiple viewpoint characters (“A perfectly valid style, but… when it’s done wrong, it’s tedious”), Marc Alpin comments on the necessity to switch gears between books (“Some readers, especially those who wanted more of book one, freak out and think they’ve been cheated”), and Patrick Tomlinson discusses inevitable book bloat (“The longer an author writes inside a world, the longer the books tend to become.”) But it was Megan Lindholm, aka Robin Hobb, who I thought had the most salient comment, pointing out that the rise of independent publishers has also unleashed a host of amateur marketeers, whose newbie mistakes have left us with countless books that are misrepresenting themselves on the shelves:

I’m going to commit heresy here. I think that old time publishers are actually better at targeting the audience and showing readers the books they want than our current climate of ‘Everyone quick, promote a book you like’ is. Authors see their own books differently from how their publishers see them, and some of the author promotions I’ve seen led me to expect one sort of book and then [they] delivered another… I think that some (not all) of the people who are hired to create the book trailers don’t really know much about marketing… They make terrific trailers, and I get so excited to read the book, I buy it, and then think, ‘Well, this is a pretty good book, but it’s not at all what I thought it was going to be…’

To find a book that you really want to read, I recommend going to a bookstore (a big building sometimes made out of brick and mortar where they sell books made out of paper), and talk to the book seller (a person who knows all about what she or he is selling)… If you do not have a bookseller who can do this, then I am very sorry for you. Try your librarian.

Read the complete article here.

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

Wednesday, February 5, 2014 westkeith Comments 30 comments

The King of Elfland’s Daughter
Lord Dunsany
Ballantine Books (242 pages, June 1969, $0.95)
Cover art by Bob Pepper

The second volume Lin Carter chose for the Adult Fantasy line was Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. In my opinion, it is it far superior to Fletcher Pratt’s The Blue Star.

The “Lord” in the author’s byline isn’t an affectation. Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett was the 18th Baron Dunsany (1878-1957). He was a tall, lean man. His accomplishments could put most people to shame. Soldier, Member of Parliament, author, poet, playwright, chess champion, hunter, and sportsman.

Dunsany began his writing career with short fiction, set mostly in imaginary lands and much of it slight in terms of plot and character. These tales greatly influenced H. P. Lovecraft, who wrote in this vein until moving on to develop the Cthulhu mythos.

Dunsany’s later series about Jorkens concerns a man who tells tall tales in a bar for drinks. These stories were the precursors of and influences on Arthur C. Clarke’s White Hart, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Gavagan’s Bar, and Sterling E. Lanier’s Brigadier Ffellowes. A further discussion of Dunsany’s influence can be found here.

Dunsany turned to writing novels after publishing a number of short fiction collections. Among his novels, many consider The King of Elfland’s Daughter to be his finest. Lin Carter gives a brief introduction, not only discussing this particular work,but Dunsany’s work in general.

Set in the kingdom of Erl, the story opens with a parliament of craftsmen making an unusual request of the king. They want to be ruled over by a monarch who is “a magic lord.” He grants their request, but tells his son Alveric that it is not from wisdom that they make this request. And indeed, the parliament will come to deeply regret their request before the book’s final page is turned.

…

Read More Read More

An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat by Glen Cook

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 5 comments

Glen Cook is the author of some of my hands-down favorite books. I hold out his Black Company series as arguably the best military fantasy ever written. The early Garrett books set a standard for the blending of fantasy and hardboiled fiction. But what introduced me to Cook and made me a fan for life was his earlier work, the Dread Empire series, starting with the short story “Filed Teeth.”

The first time I ever saw the name Glen Cook was on the first three Dread Empire books, bound together with a rubber band on the bottom shelf in my local used book store. I didn’t like the cover illustrations (I still don’t) and I thought the whole “Dread Empire” thing seemed a little too dopey.

Then my dad tossed me Orson Scott Card’s Dragons of Darkness anthology. The first story in it, “Filed Teeth,” was set in the aftermath of a great war involving the Dread Empire and it blew me away! I had to have those books I had casually dismissed only a few weeks before.

The next day I took the bus to the book store and bought all three. I devoured them. They’re not as polished as many of his later books, but there are episodes of genius that range from vast fantastic battles to tender moments of pathos. The series introduces us to Cook’s likable trio of rogues, Bragi Ragnarson, Mocker and Haroun bin Yousif. The books begin with the trio scheming to make themselves wealthy beyond compare, and culminates in a war between huge armies and unbelievably powerful sorcery. If you like his other books, I highly recommend them.

Since then I’ve bought most of Cook’s books as soon as they hit the shelves. The six years I had to wait between the sixth and seventh Black Company books were among the worst I’ve encountered as a reader. The news that a new Black Company book is in the wings has me twitching.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Iron Night by M.L. Brennan

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m a sucker for a good review. You’d think that, with all the reviews I’ve written, edited, and published, I’d be immune to a little hyperbole by now. But I’m not. When I see a reviewer pull out all the stops for a new book — especially one from a writer I’ve had my eye on for a while — I’m intrigued. I can’t help it. I love this genre and, at the end of the day, we’re all on the lookout for that great read hidden amongst all the same-looking titles on the bookshelves.

It was the ever-trusty SF Signal that pointed me towards my latest discovery, M.L. Brennan’s Generation V series, with Nick Sharps’ review of the second volume, Iron Night:

Someone or something is killing humans in a particularly gruesome way and it just happened to pick the wrong target – the roommate of Fortitude Scott. Fort, now being brought up to speed on the family business, pursues the killer with vengeance in mind, but he might have stumbled onto something far more dangerous than a common murderer…

I haven’t been this excited about a series in a long time. This is urban fantasy at its best, with a strong focus on characters and relationships and an awesome take on established creatures… Brennan’s elves are on par with her vampires. The elves of Iron Night are seriously twisted – more the product of Guillermo del Toro’s worst nightmare than Tolkien’s friendly fair folk… The plot of Iron Night is much stronger than Generation V, complete with really awesome moments (I’m particularly fond of the undercover speed dating)…

Iron Night is freaking awesome. Brennan has made vampires cool again, elves creepy, and urban fantasy feel fresh. In an over saturated genre this is no small feat.

M.L. Brennan’s first novel, Generation V, featuring the young vampire Fortitude Scott, was published on May 7, 2013. The third installment, Tainted Blood, will appear in November.

Iron Night was published on January 7, 2014 by Roc Books. It is 320 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.

Revisiting the Monsters that Lurked in Gumball Vending Machines

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Nick Ozment Comments 3 comments

My children are old enough now that, the moment I take them into Kmart or the grocery store, they immediately hone in on the bank of vending machines strategically placed just by the Entrance/Exit.

“Daddy, can I have some quarters?” my daughter asks, exactly duplicating the words I so often pleaded here, in this very spot, thirty-odd years ago. “Pleeeease.” (Strategic parental answer, which I now understand intimately: “If you’re good in the store, you can get one on the way out.”)

Although the look and the operation of the machines have changed but little — dishing out a gewgaw in a clear plastic shell through the metal trapdoor after that final satisfying click of the knob — the “premium prizes” themselves have changed with the times, and they set you back two or three quarters now (300% inflation for flimsy gewgaws and cheap knickknacks!).

Popular for my children these days are grow-animals (made of absorbent rubber that grows up to 600% in water!), rubber ducks whose eyes bug out when you squeeze them, cute little alien creatures (made in China, but clearly inspired by Japan), laser-light rings, and – that perennial fave – temporary tattoos. (Okay, maybe things haven’t changed that much with either the content or the delivery.) But when I went for that little twisting crank of palm-sized bliss, I was usually drawn by the monsters…

…

Read More Read More

Announcing the Winner of M. Harold Page’s The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last month announced a contest to win both novels in M. Harold Page’s exciting Scholar Knight series: The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets, compliments of Paradox Interactive and M. Harold Page.

It’s too late to enter the contest now, but it’s not too late to discover Mr. Page’s unique brand of heroic fantasy. Visit his blog here or stop by Black Gate every Thursday to read his regular column.

His recent articles for us have included So What’s Wrong With (Some) Modern Fantasy?, Understanding Tolkien: Why His Landscapes Work, Why Evil Overlords Need to be Competent, and Why Medieval Fantasy is Not Inherently Conservative (or Inherently Anything Political).

We received so many entries for this contest, we had to abandon our usual tracking and selection process. We gave up on spreadsheets to track the entries — but at least our D&D dice didn’t fail us when it came time to determine a winner.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of both volumes in M. Harold Page’s Scholar Knight series is Jackie Stevens of Aylesbury. Congratulations, Jackie! We’ll be touch to let you know how you can claim your books.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and to M. Harold Page and Paradox Interactive for sponsoring the contest. The Sword is Mightier and Blood in the Streets were published on September 25 and December 12, 2013, respectively. They are available in digital format for $4.99 each.