Whetstone #5: A review

Where do new sword-and-sorcery authors go to test their mettle in the arena, seeking glory (or at least, companionship with fellow brothers and sisters-in-arms)? And where might you find the occasional veteran belly up to the bar, with a rousing tale to add to the cacophony of combat?

Why, in the pages of Whetstone, the amateur journal of sword-and-sorcery.

I just finished reading Whetstone #5 and wanted to share a few impressions.

First of all, look at the cover of this thing. This is as close to perfect as it gets. While you could say it leaves you with the wrong impression—Whetstone is not an OSR gaming publication—it conveys what the contents are all about—nostalgia for an old(er) subgenre of fantasy, given new life with new interpretations and new voices.

Editor Jason Ray Carney’s intro is worth reading. So many of us have spent much digital ink, arguably too much, trying to find some precise definition for sword-and-sorcery. At times it gets tedious--this coming from a guy who wrote a complete non-fiction treatment (as Arnold said in Conan the Destroyer, “Enough Talk!”)

Carney boils down S&S to a general feeling rather than specific tropes. This is as good as lens as any when analyzing the genre. Carney instead focuses on why we like S&S, which he identifies as its depiction of conflict, often against an amorphous threat that is simultaneously tangible and supernatural, and possibly representational or symbolic:

What do we feel when we imagine a brutalized sword and sorcery writer laughing at the stars? What do we feel when we read about a mere mortal--an ephemeral form--violently confronting eternity, the cosmos, the infinite in all its eternal strangeness? Why are sword and sorcery writers obsessively drawn to their primary theme: the unresolved antagonism between the natural and the supernatural? The profane and the sacred? The individual and the cosmos?

On to the contents.

Reviewing collections of short stories by multiple authors is tricky. Attempting to review 20 stories one-by-one is folly, not something I have the time to do, and the result would be brief unhelpful encapsulations. The stories are all very short, as the submission guidelines call for stories between 1500-2500 words, no more no less. So even if they are not to your taste, they pass quickly.

This is an amateur magazine so don’t go into it expecting to read peak Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, or even some of the better modern authors like Schuyler Hernstrom. A couple of the writers have recognized names and bodies of work, but most are cutting their teeth. As a whole, almost all the stories were entertaining (some were deliberate and welcomed tongue-in-cheek, for example the charming yet gory “The Riddle of Spice”). I detected some obvious Conan the Barbarian (film) influence, Howard, Smith, and Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock notes and influences in many of the stories. Gladiatorial pits feature prominently, as do stories of vengeance. Some stories feel like unfinished parts of a bigger story, interludes or chapters. There are some recurring heroes from previous issues of Whetstone, old champions making their returns to the ring.

Naturally I liked some more than others and wanted to call out a few highlights.

I enjoyed T.A. Markitan’s “Just Desserts,” specifically for the tone it strikes, and its inventiveness: A warrior accompanied by a playful ghost, and a village with dark secrets. It’s well-conceived, and well-executed, a cascade of weird elements in a tightly-plotted little gem of a story with a fun reveal at the end.

Gregory D. Mele’s “Salt Tears” deftly sketches an island culture and customs and tells a compelling little story of muted heroism and regret. He does a fine job making a foil, Bembe, both a bastard and somewhat sympathetic. It also comes to a satisfying, thoughtful conclusion. Well done stuff.

Chuck Clark’s “Doors” leaves you wanting more of his recurring character Turkael, who is a hero but with a mysterious past, one of a group of faceless men with crystal bones and uncanny swords. It feels like you’ve been dropped into a larger story, both for better and for worse, but more of this character is revealed in previous issues and I expect future installments of his story will be coming.

Nathaniel Webb’s “The Smoke Ship” has possibly the best depiction of battle in the issue (the last story in the collection might have it beat), a weird and ghostly sea battle that feels desperate and real, and a nice blend of the historical and mysterious.

I really enjoyed Cora Buhlert’s “Village of the Unavenged Dead.” It reads like Clark Ashton Smith but without the baroque language. There is a detached air to the writing, almost a fairytale feel, yet it's a fast-moving story of revenge with sympathetic protagonist and a satisfying resolution. The story could have gone ultra-dark but Buhlert reins it in nicely.

Whetstone #5 concludes with a tale by polished veteran of the craft, Scott Oden’s “At the Gate of Bone.” This story reminded me very much of David Gemmell or Steven Pressfield, a grizzled warrior relaying an old tale of a valiant but doomed last stand against an overwhelming horde. Orcs and badass horn-helmed warlords and spilled viscera. Really good stuff if you like that sort of thing.

What are you waiting for? Whetstone is free; test its steel and see if it’s to your liking.

Thune's Vision/Schuyler Hernstrom

I love this cover... weird and trippy, violence beneath, like the contents.

DMR Books/Dave Ritzlin has published my review of Thune's Vision, by Schuyler Hernstrom. Head over and give it a read; it's spoiler free but hopefully speaks to why I think so highly of it, and this author.

If you like sword-and-sorcery/sword-and-planet/weird fiction, and care as to whether it will survive in the current era, you should support good modern authors who practice it. Try this, or his The Eye of Sounnu. You won't be disappointed. In an age when Brandon Sanderson can net $41M on a kickstarter (seriously? what the fuck) we need to find a way to support sword-and-sorcery authors who can deliver great storytelling, and paint worlds, and make you think, in 1/4 of the real estate of most "fat fantasy."

Thune's Vision is now available for purchase on Amazon. I believe DMR will be reselling as well.

The fine sounds of a silver stringed bard

 

Ghouls, guitars, and gals... good stuff.

My latest essay/review is up on the blog of Tales from the Magician's Skull. Check out The Far-Flung Literary Webs of Manly Wade Wellman.

I have been a fan of Wellman for some time, but only casually, and only through his Kardios S&S stories and a handful of other tales. I had not read any of his Silver John stories.

That was a mistake I'm glad I rectified with the collection Who Fears the Devil?

These stories are set in mid-20th century America but have a sword-and-sorcery heartbeat and soul to them. A wandering outsider/bard, armed with a silver-stringed guitar instead of a sword, running afoul of monsters and magic and ne'er do well-ers in the deep woods of Appalachia. All told with a master story teller's skilled hand. 

If you haven't yet read of John, aka., John the Balladeer, aka. Silver John, you're in for a treat.

Reading Plato, some observations

Confession: I’ve got gaps in my philosophy, Horatio. I have a basic familiarity with the broad tenets of some of the major schools. I have read deeper in a few areas I have found interesting, including the major works of existentialism, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the foundations of stoicism. But when it comes to the classic works my cupboard is pretty lean.

Inspired by the Online Great Books podcast, I decided to pick up Plato’s Five Great Dialogues, a book that includes the classics The Republic and The Apology. I read portions of these in high school or thereabouts, as I remembered the allegory of the cave and a few other bits. Back then I lacked the life experiences to take much from it; today I have a whole different appreciation for what these books say, and mean, and still have to teach us, thousands of years after they were written.

I won’t even bother trying to summarize what thousands of scholars and historians have already done before me, and far better, but rather just offer up a few takeaways and observations that hit home for me, personally.

Reading Plato is a cold drink of water for the soul. His dialogues are a series of questions about what life is all about, including why we behave as we do, how to govern ourselves, and in general what makes for a meaningful existence. These are written in a dialectical style. Plato’s subject, Socrates, engages in dialogues with a series of interlocutors, probing deeper at common but unexplored understandings and surface assumptions until they eventually arrive at a deep level of truth, possibly the bottom. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates says. Amen.

Plato’s theory of forms makes the case that there are transcendent ideas—justice, temperance, etc.—that transcend the physical. These ideas cannot be explained by science and studied at some atomic/structural level. But they are no less real, and in fact are more important than material existence. Some might take this theory of forms for granted, but it’s a stunning revelation, the framework upon which the rest of the book hangs.

Socrates/Plato believe in the immortal soul. We can deduce the presence of a soul by its absence (i.e., by looking upon a dead body, and finding it inert). The soul is a therefore a form. Like an odd number, it is irreducible by the presence of an even number—an even number does not destroy an odd number; in the same manner, death cannot destroy the soul, it merely parts it from the physical body. I like this, for obvious reasons.

Wisdom and truth-seeking are the highest virtues of mankind. Not "happiness" or wealth-seeking or sensual luxury. Plato believes in the existence of absolute truth and absolute beauty. Subjectivity is a form of blindness when it comes to truth-seeking. This declaration flies in the face of identity politics, which posit that every culture is morally equivalent, and that everyone’s subjective internal monologue is “truth speaking” and sacrosanct. Yes, we all have opinions, and have the freedom to express them, but some are far more worthy than others. Those that seek out absolute truth and absolute beauty, and wisdom and temperance, and make them their north star, are fit to lead, according to Plato.

Plato believes that the best form of government is a ruling class of philosopher-kings. These are chosen not by birthright, but by innate ability, and forged and tempered with exceptional physical and mental education. Rulers must exhibit a soundness of mind and body, and a willingness to sacrifice, to not even own wealth, lest they fall prey to corruption and graft. This structure transcends oligarchy and monarchy, even democracy and other forms of governance subject to nepotism and corruption. This is not a caste system, however. Children of these rulers, if unfit, cannot serve; those from warrior or merchant classes can move up into this class if they demonstrate the same fitness. Many today recoil from this portion of Plato but it is a framework worth pondering (some in fact have made the case that Plato himself did not take this too seriously, but was using the opportunity to satirize the corruption of the Athenian city-state and take the piss out of it). Nevertheless, this declaration is FIRE: “Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils—no, nor the human race, as I believe—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.”

Finally, there is heroism of the highest sort to be found in Plato. Socrates could have fled his execution, and in fact had ample opportunity to do so, but refused. He faces his death with equanimity and perfect clarity, because he has been condemned by his beloved city of Athens. To run would be to deny orderly society in favor of individual selfishness, and thereby debase himself. It’s so damned noble, exhibiting a degree of principle most will never fully comprehend, let alone live out. Yet this is what Plato encourages us to do, and what makes him worth reading today.

First Blood, David Morrell

Don't push it, or I'll give you a war you can't believe.

Growing up in the 80s, surrounded by larger-than-life action heroes, one of my favorite films was First Blood. The first in what would become the “Rambo series” was my favorite, darker and more serious than its sequels. First Blood and John Rambo became a minor obsession among my friends, one of whom got hold of a “special forces” knife with the wicked serrated back edge and a hollowed-out handle where he stored a needle and thread—just in case we needed battlefield stitches. You never know.

As most know First Blood tells the story of a special forces soldier, John Rambo (played wonderfully by Sylvester Stallone), coping with post-traumatic stress syndrome from a brutal stint in Vietnam in which he was captured and tortured. Now stateside and adrift, a post-war vagrant, he just wants to be left alone, but quickly runs afoul of an overzealous small-town chief of police (Brian Dennehy), who ushers him unceremoniously out of town.

Pushed too far and humiliated, Rambo refuses to acquiesce, and turns back. That sets in motion the events of the rest of the film—a rousing jailbreak, a cat-and-mouse game in the mountains of Washington State with Rambo using his survival skills honed as a Green Beret to maim (but not kill) his pursuers. 

I loved the film, and still do. But all this time I had never read the book upon which it is based—David Morrell’s First Blood. Published in 1972, it was out a full 10 years before the film adaptation, which spent the better part of a decade in “production hell” before finally making it to the silver screen.

I recently got a hold of a copy of Morrell’s novel and rectified that, burning through a read in all of 2 nights. I enjoyed the heck out of it and was surprised by the differences from book to film. Chiefly, that Rambo turns on a blood spigot and kills at least 20 of his pursuers, maybe more. Holy hell there is a lot of killing, including a pack of dogs hard on his scent. There is also more characterization. Teasle, the police chief, is portrayed far more sympathetically and three-dimensionally in the book than the film. Morell places a heavy emphasis on his service in the Korean War, a sad separation from his wife, and his obsession and eventual identification with Rambo. I won’t spoil the ending but that is also quite different, and much grimmer, than we see in the film.

 Otherwise the movie follows most of the major beats of the book.

I have this edition... 
but not the knife.

Make no mistake, like the film the book is mainly pure action, unrelenting page-turning glory. There is a deeper and more serious undercurrent, commentary on the invisible scars soldiers often bear (made doubly hard on the veterans of the war in Vietnam, an unpopular and unfavorable conflict that most of the U.S. populace either wanted to sweep under the rug and forget, in some cases treating its returning Veterans with disdain). But principally it grabs you from the opening page with a compelling pace and refuses to let up with its action.

As a sword-and-sorcery fan headlong action and violence is part of what I enjoy in my reading. And First Blood scratches the same itch. In fact, outside of being set in modern times, there are several S&S parallels—an outsider protagonist, suffused with gray, wandering from place-to-place. Low stakes/survival plot. We even get a “dungeon crawl,” a hair-raising sequence in a cave where Rambo encounters filth and bats, rats, the skeleton of an unlucky miner. And a final showdown with Teasle and his men. The equally shared POV between Rambo and Teasle is not something we typically see in S&S but it could work.

Near the end of the book Colonel Trautmann, architect of Rambo’s Green Beret training (played in the film by Richard Crenna), offers up an interesting commentary on why the modern age is anathema to sword-and-sorcery heroes. With the manhunt in full swing, Trautmann—who is both helping Teasle capture Rambo, while also admiring his pupil’s incredible survival skills—laments the coming “machine” that will spell the end of heroism:

“In a few years a search like this won’t even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you need to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat… a man on the run won’t have a hope. And a man like me, he won’t be needed. This is the last of something. It’s too bad. As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.”

Morrell, now 78, has lived an interesting life. A former university professor, he gave up his tenure to pursue a career as writer. First Blood earned him a handsome payout from the movie rights and he went on to write novelizations of the ensuing films. He also wrote horror (winning an award from the Horror Writers Association), non-fiction, and for the comics (Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine). A pretty cool mid-list author success story, increasingly rare these days.

Robert E. Howard Changed My Life

A window into the soul.

I'm glad I’m not the only one. 

I knew I wasn’t, of course, but it was nice hearing the voices of so many other passionate souls for whom the Texas writer made an impact, either on their reading habits, their journeys as writers, or in some cases, a decision to press on in dire personal circumstances.

Robert E. Howard Changed My Life (Rogue Blades Foundation, 2021) collects 33 essays, with additional foreword/afterword/and a fun “Appendix REH” for further reading. It has been nominated for The Atlantean (best book about the life and works of Robert E. Howard) by the Robert E. Howard Foundation and is deserving of the honor. I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable.

An essay by Charles Saunders is particularly poignant as it is likely the last published piece he ever wrote, prior to his death in early 2020. Several other “name” writers have contributed pieces, including the likes of Michael Moorcock, Joe Lansdale, Keith Taylor, Steven Erikson, Howard Andrew Jones, and Mark Finn. Some heavy hitters here.

Many of the essays were excellent, but I think the most powerful may have been Scott Oden’s (author of Men of Bronze and Twilight of the Gods). Certainly it was the most personal, along with Bill Cavalier’s, from whose 2018 Howard Days address the project was launched. Oden lays out his early failures as a writer, his bouts with self-doubt, heavy personal blows including an eviction and a divorce, and finally, after decades of struggle, breaking through with the publication of Men of Bronze. Only to have his career halted as he became caretaker with a father with dementia and a mother with Parkinson’s disease. His insights on Caregiver Stress Syndrome offer a glimpse into Howard’s well-documented struggles caring for a terminally ill mother. Years later Oden’s imagination and pen were rekindled after drawing inspiration from the Howard hero Turlogh Dubh, in the story “The Grey God Passes.”

Robert E. Howard certainly changed my life as well. I’ve documented my discovery of Howard here on the blog and in the introduction to Flame and Crimson. I discovered Howard in the pages of The Savage Sword of Conan in the early 80s and that cemented my love of this weirder, wilder, more muscular brand of fantasy fiction that I would later come to know as sword-and-sorcery. That led me to branch out to other like writers such as Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Poul Anderson, write more about the subgenre here and in places like The Cimmerian, and finally decided to offer a full treatment in my book. Howard was a blessed refuge for me, who endured the usual maladies of a suburban kid (alienation, self-doubt, rejection, etc.)

It's a marvel, isn’t it? How did a pulp writer from rural Texas working largely in the pages of a defunct pulp magazine nearly a century ago alter the future courses of so many? The answer is the power of stirring writing, and the force of imagination of a writer who, as Patrice Louinet notes in his essay, is a true American original, “the definer of American fantasy.” I have not heard Howard’s case quite made like that, but, if you consider J.R.R. Tolkien the architect of British fantasy, Howard arguably deserves that moniker on this side of the Atlantic.

So too does Edgar Rice Burroughs. It struck me how many of the essay authors came to Burroughs first, pre-Howard, during the Burroughs Boom of the early 60s, before discovering REH in the purple-edged pages of the Lancer paperbacks. One essayist after the next—Cavalier, Jason Durall, Lansdale, Adrian Cole, on and on—all thrilled to the adventures of Burroughs first, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, before finding REH. I think we need a companion volume on ERB.

In short, this one is worth picking up.

Gordon Lightfoot recap

So the Judas Priest concert was cancelled after 70-year-old Rob Halford came down with a bad cold, but 83-year-old Gordon Lightfoot powered through on Sunday with a memorable concert at the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, NH.

Yeah, my musical heroes are aging--check that, are aged. Or, more charitably, well-seasoned. Gordon as you'd expect has changed quite a bit vocally, losing his resonance and richness, and doesn't move too fast on stage anymore. Not sure if he ever did. 

But, none of that mattered. With a good band behind him, a great venue, and my old man and brother by my side, it made for a memorable evening. It was quite cool to see this old legend still performing, after all these years.

Gordon played 90 minutes and we were out of there by 8:30--old men all around, early to bed :). But he got through (almost) every one of the classics I was hoping he would. "Sundown," "Early Morning Rain," 
"If You Could Read My Mind," "For Loving Me," "Carefree Highway," "Song for a Winter's Night," and of course the highlight and everyone's favorite, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The latter was the highlight, and maybe it was my imagination but Gordon seemed to channel some deep wellspring of strength for this one. It was powerful and sounded pretty darned good.

In an era where everything can be immediately captured on video and shared instantly with the world, it's interesting that this song, which became a no. 1 hit in Nov. 1976, almost a year to the day after the maritime disaster itself, outlives the ephemera, and the crisis of the day that really isn't. That's the power of art over instant gratification. We remember the doomed ship when we hear those sad opening bars, even now.

If anyone reading this is a resident of MA/NH or the broader New England region, the Tupelo is a good take. New, clean, small so the views are all great. Excellent bar with a good beer selection (I drank a couple local brews, a nice Battle-Axe IPA brewed by Kelsen). Reportedly good food too, if you want it. They open 90 minutes before showtime so you can get in and enjoy yourself, and have some cool art on the walls, acoustic guitars signed by a few of the greats, etc. 

Nice bar.

(L-R) my brother, old man, and me. The place did fill in to capacity.

Skallagrim: In the Vales of Pagarna

Grim, but not Grimdark

I have said I wanted to review more modern sword-and-sorcery written by contemporary authors, and so stepped up to that promise with Skallagrim: In the Vales of Pagarna. The author is Steve Babb, a name that you might recognize as one of the founders of the progressive rock band Glass Hammer. Steve is a sometime passer-through of my blog, someone I’ve mentioned here before. This is his debut fantasy novel, which published this month.

To cut to the chase:

Do read this if you are looking for something different, a book not easily categorized, that wears a handful of prominent influences on its sleeve. Some obvious ones are Michael Moorcock’s Elric, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. There are heavy echoes of both in here. I’m pretty sure I picked up on a few prog song references, too (Time Stands Still by Rush, Steve?).

Don’t read this if you are looking for traditional sword-and-sorcery. That this is book 1 should have already tipped things off. I would say it treads closer to mainstream fantasy, albeit with healthy doses of combat and weirdness that push it back toward S&S territory.

The book’s conceit is that the protagonist, a young rogue named Skallagrim, has lost his memory; he does not know who he is, and cannot remember his friends or his own history. He just knows the blue-eyed girl whom he loves has been abducted, and is due to be sacrificed on the altar of a sorcerer. This sets off a rescue mission through the Vales of Pagarna, a dangerous and weird valley. Skallagrim is also the beneficiary of a powerful but cursed sword with the portentous name of Terminus, a final point in time and space. It represents hope, with a bitter edge. Terminus is double-edged in every sense of the word.

The dialogue is pretty darned cracking. Babb has an ear for it, and that makes the book flow well, very easy to read. The quest is compelling and the encounters with the likes of flesh-eating ghouls memorable and fun.

I did have some minor issues with the novel. I’m an S&S guy through and through and prefer books where lots of things happen at a rapid clip. This book tends to take its time, although there is plenty of action, combat, and weirdness. To be fair there is no leisurely build up: Babb drops the reader into a swirling melee on page one.

The other issue is that I’m not entirely sold on the romance, at least through book one. As noted Skallagrim has lost his memories, but that makes his obsession with this girl not immediately apparent. His primary motivation is her rescue, and what is purer? But that doesn’t mean the reader understands why he’s so desperate and driven. I was deeply intrigued by Skallagrim’s encounter with a powerful and long-lived but fun and lusty water nymph, a memorable character who I hope returns for book two. And I suspect we’ll learn more about Skallagrim’s persona and motivations in the sequel.

A few other items I’m still chewing on… near the end of the book an aging sorcerer delivers a powerful soliloquy on aging. Although Skallagrim is young, the author of this book is not, nor is this reader. There is much in here about lost youth, and lost loves, and regret, and seizing the opportunity while you still can. The sorcerer’s words struck home, at least for this reader.

More ruminations… Skallagrim suffers a grim, face-altering wound at the outset of the novel and Babb expends lot of ink on the character’s disfigurement. Skallagrim is afflicted with bouts of self-loathing, guilt, and unworthiness, even contemplations of suicide. Some heavy stuff I was not expecting, and deeper characterization than you typically get in S&S protagonists.

Overall this is a solid first effort by Babb. Skallagrim: In the Vales of Pagarna can be read and enjoyed alone, as it ends with a satisfying final battle. Book 2 will presumably continue with Skallagrim’s pursuit of his lost love. 

For Your Eyes Only... just what I needed

An involuntary swim with sharks,
mollified by embrace of hot babe.

Last night I decided a mental break was in order and so I watched 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. It was just what I needed. I gave it my full attention, and it held it. I had forgotten how much action is packed into this film, scene after scene of hijacked helicopters, car chases through the Greek countryside, ski chases down mountainsides, death-defying climbs up sheer rock faces, underwater brushes with sharks and divers in murderous deep-water suits, on and on. Incredible fun, never a dull moment.

I watched this film many times as a kid, as it seemed to be on HBO every time I turned on the TV. But it had been ... 35 years since I saw it last in full? More? I think part of the reason I was so enamored with what I was watching was nostalgia. There is something about the 80s, the early 80s … it just made me extremely comfortable, the low-tech and no cell phones and Bond's turbo Lotus and Walther PPKs and flings with beautiful women. Set against the backdrop of the cold war. All exotic (for the time), but now intensely familiar, reminders of a time that has slipped into history. 

Yes, like all Bond films this one has its share of ridiculousness. I had forgotten one sequence where three dudes in full hockey gear attempt to kill Bond on an ice rink. They gear up in full uniforms, skates, sticks, masks... none bothered to bring a gun, and Bond disposes of them, one by Zamboni, and tosses them into a net, which tallies the 3-0 score on a scoreboard. WTF... but still awesome. 

Bond films are great for so many reasons, but one is the familiar flourishes and sequences. Every film seems to have Bond walking through a laboratory to view Q's latest contraptions and spy gear. This one had a spring-loaded arm cast capable of smashing a head, and an umbrella that, when exposed to water, snaps down with murderous steel hooks around the user's neck. I always love the opening action/title sequences, the dalliances with Moneypenny, the physical specimen goons, and of course Bond's roguishness and effortless charm, even in the most dire of circumstances.

The on-location film work was beautiful, the pre-CGI stunt work including high speed motorbike and ski chases through the snow of the Italian mountains, and mountain climbing, impressive. The theme song is one of the best in the series, earning a nomination for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in 1982. It sets the tone... it's got sex in it, but also mystery, just what a Bond film needs of course.

I started the new job on Monday and it was just what I needed after a firehose of a week. I need to do this again. One film, and the world, is not enough.

Are there any Bond aficionados out there that would recommend another? There are many I have not seen, and I'm itching to work backwards to keep the nostalgia train running... but also I have yet to see a single Daniel Craig entry in the series. I know, but I just don't watch much TV, at all. I'm torn between Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, and the 2006 version of Casino Royale, the latter of which I've heard so many good things about. I have seen Goldfinger, but so long ago that most of the details (save Oddjob, the laser sequence, and a gal dipped in gold) have escaped me. 

Probably hard to go wrong with any of them.

Bad ass car that we didn't get to see enough of ... thugs
should have heeded the warning.

War of the Gods!

I hadn't read War of the Gods for the better part of 20 years, and a recent re-read confirmed it's a pretty darned good book. My somewhat spoiler-ific review is up on the blog of DMR Books, here.

If you want the TL;DR version of the linked article, Poul Anderson is a damned good writer who channeled the Northern Thing in a way very few authors can. 

The Harp and the Blade, a review

At 10 cents you get your money's worth

Someone recently asked me, Can sword-and-sorcery be written successfully at novel length? My answer was, of course: See Karl Edward Wagner’s Bloodstone, or Fritz Leiber’s The Swords of Lankhmar.

But, after reading John Myers Myers’ The Harp and the Blade, I would now tell aspiring authors: Here’s a pretty solid template.

 

This book moves. The Harp and the Blade was originally published as a seven-part serial in the venerable magazine Argosy in 1940, and in paperback still bears some hallmarks of its pulp heritage. It needed to be swift, and grab readers from issue to issue. Each chapter is just 10 pages, and the entirety of the book is a mere 230 pages. No needless descriptions. No navel-gazing “world building” (it is set in 10^th century Dark Ages France, on the cusp of the feudal era, so not a whole lot of that is needed). More to the point: Something important happens each chapter to advance the plot. 

 

S&S beefcake... 1985 style.

Now, is The Harp and the Blade sword-and-sorcery? Maybe, but probably not. It’s best classified as historical fiction. Although you could be forgiven for thinking it was S&S, so closely does it skirt that territory. Certainly it’s packaged that way. I have the 1985 edition as published by Ace. Look at that cover! Two overmuscled dudes, one a hip bard with 80s surfer hair, the other a classic Boris Vallejo style barbarian. This was definitely marketed to the same audience that devoured the Lancer Conans in the 60s and the DAW Elrics in the 70s. Publishers of the era were going to great lengths to ride the sword-and-sorcery wave, although by the mid-80s the subgenre was about to disappear from the shelves, almost overnight, with few exceptions (Keith Taylor’s Bard novels, for example). Morgan Holmes calls this “The great sword-and-sorcery extinction event.” 

 

Oh, and the “barbarian’s” name happens to be… Conan! Not the Conan you’re thinking of, and in fact other than being a resourceful, charismatic leader with some skill with a blade, bears no resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s most famous creation. The name Conan has historical Gaelic/Celtic roots, although one might assume Myers Myers was at least familiar with Howard’s work.

 

Packaging alone is not enough, but what edges this book back into S&S territory is the geas our hero, the bard Finnian, is placed under. After callously watching a man get murdered in a tavern brawl when he may have intervened and saved a life, Finnian is shamed (and possibly, ensorcelled) by a druid in a wonderful scene atop a cromlech on a moonlit night. Thereafter his life is changed; he begins to accept responsibility, and act out of a sense of altruism. "From now on, as long as you stay in my land," here he swept an arm to include all directions," you will aid any man or woman in need of help," the old man declares. This is skillfully handled by Myers Myers, and it may just be shame, or the power of persuasion, that causes our hero to begin to take responsibility. But it may be magic.

 

This is the heart of the book, and the message that lies beneath the page-turning action. Finnian is, like many of the classic heroes of S&S, an outsider. He is literally that—an Irish bard in foreign lands, making his living with his songs and his poetry, never settling down but moving from modest payday to payday. Just living, untrammeled. Lacking any commitments, he has nothing to tie him down, but seemingly nothing to give his life meaning, either. He’s at a crossroads.

 

Make no mistake, this is THE struggle all men face. Do we drift through life, viewing others’ misfortunes as not our own (“not my circus, not my monkeys”—not a fan of that phrase), dreaming, noncommittal, childlike? Or, do we take a stand, find principles we can live by, put down roots, raise a family, and get to work on adulthood? Personally, I don’t think there is a choice, and if you fail to grow up it will bite you in the end, hard. Peter Pan is a cautionary tale, not an ideal, and the lost boys are just that. 

 

The book has an interesting, muted ending, where all does not turn out like we had thought, or hoped, or expected (and, which I had guessed due to some mild telegraphing from Myers Myers). I won’t spoil it here.

 

Despite what I’ve written above this is not a heavy book laden with psychoanalysis. It’s action-packed, with death defying rescues and escapes, violent combat, romance, wine, and song, set against a dangerous backdrop of lawless lands where outlaw bands carve out fiefdoms at the point of a sword, as Danes plunder from the North and Moslems threaten incursion from the South. There is drama, but it’s gritty, grounded, and the world does not hang in the balance. Just enough characterization to allow us to latch on to the main character. In short, good stuff. 

 

Sadly Myers Myers seems to have fallen into obscurity, but for a time had gained a level of popularity and critical respectability with Silverlock (1949), which I have not read. I can recommend The Harp and the Blade, however. Even if not S&S it follows the formula us fans want and appreciate.

Tolkien’s Modern Reading: A review

Tolkien: Not just for medieval scholars, anymore.

Given that Tolkien was not the first to write secondary-world fantasies for adult readers, nor the first to popularize traditional stories for modern audiences, we should ask what it was that made The Lord of the Rings so startling. Part of the answer, at least, is that Tolkien, like a scribe of the kingdom, brought out from his storehouse treasures both old and new.

 

--Holly Ordway, Tolkien’s Modern Reading

 

J.R.R Tolkien has been described as harder to influence than a Bandersnatch, and commonly believed to be utterly uninterested in any literature written after the Canterbury Tales. As it turns out, these claims are largely untrue. Tolkien was indeed an ardent medievalist, but the “leaf mould” of his imagination was far deeper, and richer, and broader, than just an amalgamation of ancient works. Despite what many commonly believe, Tolkien also read and enjoyed modern literature, too.

 

The person to blame for this inaccurate characterization? The late Humphrey Carpenter, author of the only authorized biography of Tolkien and the only outsider (still!) ever permitted complete access to Tolkien’s complete letters. We now have Holly Ordway to thank for setting the record straight with Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire, 2021). This is one of the better works of Tolkien criticism I have read. Nothing can (or likely ever will) compare to Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth, and I’ve also got a great respect and admiration for John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War, but Ordway’s book is both highly readable and illuminating, which is what I look for in literary criticism.

 

Ordway’s book studies fiction that Tolkien would have considered “modern” (published 1850 to his present day) and that had some influence, glancing or readily apparent, on his main legendarium (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion). Ordway restricted her work only to those authors whom Tolkien definitely interacted with, as can be traced to notations or references in his public writings, letters, interviews, from reports from other people, or in his work in academia. Ordway’s work lists a total of 148 authors and more than 200 titles. These include the likes of a few authors that should be familiar to readers of this blog: Poul Anderson, Algernon Blackwood, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, H. Rider Haggard, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Andrew Lang, Fritz Leiber, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, George MacDonald, C.L. Moore, William Morris, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, and T.H. White, among many others. Many of these seem to have had negligible influence (Tolkien read the likes of Howard and Smith for example in the L. Sprague de Camp collection Sword & Sorcery, and has little to say about it), but other authors made an impact, sometimes profound. 

 

Ordway does a fine job tracing these influences and matching them up, thematically or stylistically, with passages from Tolkien’s texts. For example, from MacDonald’s Lilith he may have drawn inspiration for his themes of death and deathlessness (MacDonald was father to 11 children, but was predeceased by six of them, including his eldest child Lilia). Both MacDonald and Tolkien were “men much acquainted with grief.” Tolkien also credits MacDonald’s goblins as a direct inspiration for his own underground dwellers in The Hobbit. MacDonald looms large enough to get his own chapter, as does, unsurprisingly, William Morris, whose Goths from The House of the Wolfings are stamped all over the Rohirrim. Interestingly, Ordway makes a good case that Morris’ imperialistic, militarized Romans may have inspired Tolkien’s orcs. 

 

Haggard might be a surprise to some: Tolkien read so voraciously of old HRH him that Ordway devoted a whole chapter to his influence (“Rider Haggard: Fresh Ore from Old Mines”). We know that the eponymous She of Haggard’s wildly popular novel was an influence on Galadriel, and that he loved King Solomon’s Mines, but Ordway also reveals that Tolkien read the likes of the lesser-known The Wanderer’s Necklace. As late as 1961 he was still reacting positively in interviews to the name of Haggard. Dunsany was like Tolkien a veteran and wrote the preface of Tales of Wonder while recovering from a war wound, just as Tolkien began writing of his legendarium while recovering from trench-fever. Ordway also includes some deep cuts, noting that Tolkien borrowed elements of a pitched wolf battle in the pines from S.R. Crockett’s The Black Douglas (1889) for Bilbo’s escape from the wargs in The Hobbit. The striking art from this book bears it out. Not all of Tolkien’s reading was fantastic: One of the books that apparently inspired him greatly was J.H. Shorthouse’s John Inglesant, widely read in Tolkien’s day though largely forgotten today.

 

There is much, much more to recommend from this book, including coverage of writers such as Matthew Arnold, Sinclair Lewis, even a handful of science-fiction authors like H.G. Wells (Tolkien read them, too). If you’re a Tolkien fan, seek it out and read it.

20 year anniversary of the Fellowship of the Ring/LOTR films

I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3,000--err 20--years ago.

20 years ago today New Line Cinema and director Peter Jackson delivered unto the world the first of the three Lord of the Rings films, The Fellowship of the Ring (release date Dec. 19, 2001). I was there on opening night.

There was huge anticipation for these films. I was hoping against hope that they would be good, but I feared and expected the worst. The odds of them sucking were high. I could count on one hand the number of truly good fantasy films prior (Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, Rankin Bass Hobbit, the original Star Wars trilogy should you count them as fantasy). And, my expectations were incredibly high. The Lord of the Rings is my favorite novel, across any genre. It is one of the greatest novels ever written, and stands alongside the best classic literature of the last two centuries, full stop. To put a work like this in the hands of a Hollywood studio was an invitation to butchery and disaster. Surely Jackson would not be able to meet the high standard I had set.

Nevertheless I had to see the films. They were getting a lot of hype and some advance praise from critics (which I largely avoided), and so made the trek to the theater on Dec. 19, 2001.

Opening night was pandemonium. There were people in line in elven cloaks and chain mail. Two dudes were swordfighting in front of the screen with boffer weapons. Most nerdy of all, a dude in the row in front of me watched the film with an LED headlamp on, following along with the book on his lap.

I kid you not. That's some hardcore nerdity right there. 

When the opening title sequence came on with Howard Shore's atmospheric score the audience broke into cheering and applause.

I will admit, I was rapidly swept away into the film. The Shire looked largely as it had in my imagination. The cast was spectacular. I was moved to tears with Boromir's death. Shockingly, against all my fears, it worked. I left the theater blown away, surprised by joy beyond anything I had hoped. Over the next two years, I repeated the pattern with The Two Towers and the Return of the King. I cried again, when Sam put Frodo on his back on Mount Doom, and Theoden led the ride of Rohirrim on the Pelennor Fields.

I was sad to see it all come to an end.

So, twenty years later, how do they hold up?

Pretty darned great, in my opinion. Great does not mean flawlessly. When I watch them now there are a few parts that I actively dislike (collapsing bridge sequence in Moria, shield-surfing at Helm's Deep, and the green ghost army at Minas Tirith). The Paths of the Dead sequence is not particularly well-done. I don't miss Tom Bombadil and believe that was a smart cut, but I do miss the scouring of the Shire, and believe that its excision makes it a lesser film. The action is over-emphasized and some of the slapstick humor is out of place. Jackson would amplify these flaws a hundred fold in the absolutely abysmal adaption of The Hobbit a decade later.

Are the movies as good as the book? No, they're not, and they could not be, not even with 12 films and an unlimited budget. The world we see on screen is not as deep or wide as the one we encounter in Tolkien's text. Some of the themes and much of the complexity was removed.

All that said, I'm full of gratitude that we have these films. I think 20 years from now they will still be beloved. They hold up, quite well. I'd still love to see a proper Hobbit but I'm happy with the LOTR films. It might be time for a rewatch over the Christmas break.

Review of KEW special edition Phantasmagoria

Khan!! I mean, Kane!!

I recently finished a special edition of Phantasmagoria dedicated entirely to the life and works of the late, great, Karl Edward Wagner. You can read the review here, at the blog of Tales from the Magician's Skull.

In short, it's excellent. If you love KEW you'll love this. Pick it up. Lots in here to love including many reminisces from friends and colleagues who knew him, KEW stories including the wonderful "In the Pines" and "Sing a Last Song of Valdese," a detailed interview with the makers of the recent documentary The Last Wolf, rare interviews with Wagner himself, scads of cool artwork, and much more.

The Wolfen, Whitley Strieber

I own this same edition...

Stephen King once said that the release people get from horror is "sort of narcotic," freeing us from our normal day-to-day tensions (Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King). I can identify. I recently after a span of probably 38 years re-read Whitley Streiber's The Wolfen, starting it while airborne, heading to a high-stress business trip to Dallas, TX. I can tell you, this fun novel took my mind off pandemics and presentations and uncertainty and swept me off to 1970s Brooklyn, where a pack of werewolves are terrorizing the city's ghettos.

I have some history with this book. My grandfather, a WWII veteran whose experiences in the Pacific I detailed here on the Silver Key, liked to read--specifically, he favored thrillers, horror, men's adventure, war novels, and other fun potboilers. He kept a few shelves of books in his basement, and a couple more shelves of paperbacks behind his leather easy chair. As a boy of probably 8-10 years of age I remember creeping behind his chair in his living room, reviewing the spines of books he had on his shelf, and selecting The Wolfen purely for its evocative title. The menacing eyes on the cover reflecting a woman in terror assured me I had made a good selection.

I still remember reading it, all those years ago, and being absolutely terrified, beset with nightmares in the days after. The book opens with a highly effective scene of two cops assigned to dump duty, marking up abandoned cars in need of crushing at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The place is typically no threat, with only a few homeless, rats, and stray dogs to contend with. But on this night the two policemen are surrounded, savaged, and eaten by a pack of werewolves in the most savage manner imaginable. These creatures are so fast that the cops aren't able to clear guns from their holsters.

Streiber's great conceit with The Wolfen is that werewolves have been living among us for thousands of years. Only scant, half-forgotten accounts remain. These are not classic Lon Chaney werewolves--men by day which transform into beasts by the light of the full moon--but an advanced series of semi-intelligent predators, wolf-ish but with fearsome paws that can grip like hands and end in razor claws, rudimentary intelligence, and faces that have something of humanity in them. Living stealthily on the edges of society, these incredibly efficient hunters and killers live off humanity, who exist side-by-side with the packs in blissful ignorance. The Wolfen plays on the theme of the threat of urban decay. Recall that New York in the 1970s was in deep crisis, a time when "wholesale disintegration of the largest city in the most powerful nation on earth seemed entirely possible." The wolfen are symbolic of the rot that accompanies urbanization.

I still have my grandfather's same paperback copy, and I loved it almost as much during this recent Halloween inspired re-read as I did as a kid nearly 40 years ago. I know that Streiber has gone off the deep end and is a bit of a pariah in horror circles, but he wrote The Wolfen (1978) very early in his career, and the book throws off sparks. If you like monsters and mayhem and hard-boiled police investigations and gunplay, you'll like The Wolfen. 

Men of Iron, Howard Pyle

Any Howard Pyle fans in the house? If so, or if you're looking for fun, old-school, historical fiction adventure, my review of Pyle's Men of Iron is now up on DMR Blog.  

Check it out here.

The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard studies, vol. 12.1

I took a (small, calculated, $8) risk on the latest volume of The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, purchasing it based on the table of contents and the fact that editors Jason Ray Carney and Nicole Emmelhainz-Carney are talented and invested in this venture.

I was not disappointed.

Some may not be happy with the direction taken by this semi-venerable journal, which has published 27 issues since its debut in 1990. Jason and Nicole have decided to branch out to the broader field of pulp studies, rather than a laser focus on Robert E. Howard. I think it was a great move. We need a journal that fosters discussion on other Howard-inspired or Howard-adjacent writers, such as Karl Edward Wagner. And we get that with the latest edition.

Vol. 12.1 includes seven pieces, ranging from editorial to interview, to scholarship to book review, and runs 113 pages.

First the news: I was thrilled to hear that Gary Hoppenstand, editor of the short-lived but highly regarded fanzine/semi-pro zine Midnight Sun, is under contract with McFarland to write a book analyzing Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane studies. McFarland is an independent publisher of academic nonfiction with a bent towards pop culture. I’ve got a couple of their books on my shelf, including J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and the Birth of Modern Fantasy (which I reviewed for Skelos #1) and Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy, and the World’s Pain, by Mark Scroggins. The latter was an invaluable help to me in the writing of Flame and Crimson. I am very much looking forward to this new book on Kane, for which the scholarship is lacking. The preface will be written by the great David Drake.

This news was revealed in an interview conducted with Hoppenstand by Luke Dodd, one of the co-hosts of the Cromcast podcast. Dodd for the same issue contributed a publication history of Midnight Sun, about as thorough a treatment of that long defunct ‘zine that we can hope to get. Dodd used available resources form the likes of the ISFDB with additional information from Hoppenstand to fill in some of the blanks. Hoppenstand launched Midnight Sun as a teenager to help place some of Wagner’s Kane stories. Hoppenstand had written to KEW enthusiastically after reading Death Angel’s Shadow, starting a correspondence that led to Hoppenstand placing the likes of “Lynortis Reprise,” “In the Lair of Yslsl,” and “The Dark Muse,” among other stories, poems, and artwork. Wagner had experienced difficulty placing some of his Kane stories and Hoppenstand and Midnight Sun filled the void, later branching out and publishing other genre authors including David Drake and H.H. Hollis. Midnight Sun published its fifth and final issue in 1979, a victim of Hoppenstand's lack of funding.

Given the scarcity of material published on Karl Edward Wagner I was particularly happy to read Dodd’s pieces, but there are some other entries in TDM vol. 12.1 worth talking about.

I approached “REH N-grams: A Study of Cultural Trends Related to Robert E. Howard” by Williard M. Oliver with some trepidation; even for an REH and S&S nerd this one seemed rather esoteric and data-geeky. I have read the related “Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry” in Conan Meets the Academy and that one, while having some points of merit, left me a bit cold, mainly because it dwells too long on explaining what stylometry is and too little on its application to REH; Oliver’s piece however was on point. The author used a tool called the Google Books N-gram Viewer to analyze the recurrence of terms related to Howard and his creations and popular phrases. While the Viewer only includes books published up through the year 2000, the tool helped Oliver demonstrate a Howard presence in the 1930s, a slight but minor rise in the 1940s and 50s, then a significant increase from the late 60s through the 1980s. Which tracks rather nicely with the Arkham/Gnome, Lancer/Ace, publications, and the oft-told stories of how these latter books brought many readers into the fold. In short, it adds statistical rigor to conjecture.

Quinn Forskitt’s “Building a Universe: An Analysis of the Works, Lives, and Influences of the Lovecraft Circle” is an invited essay, a boiled down version of Forskitt’s master’s thesis. While this information is likely well-known to the die-hards, it’s great to see new scholars and scholarship in the field. Very readable and engaging work. I found “Adapting Lovecraft to Video Games: What is Lost, What is Gained,” to be less interesting, only because I’m not a video gamer, but I have to say this is highly original, and probably a must-read for players of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Bloodborne. The author also has a strong grasp of what makes Lovecraft’s stories unique, and hard to adapt in a visual medium.

Rusty Burke has a review of the new REH biography by Todd Vick, Renegades and Rogues. While Burke invites the work, defends the need for further REH biography, and so welcomes it on his shelf, he does declare it only half successful in its stated purpose: It answers the question of who Robert E. Howard was, but not why he was important, Burke concludes. In full disclosure I have not read Renegades and Rogues.

All in all, I enjoyed the heck out of this issue of TDM. And I’m greatly looking forward to Hoppenstand’s book.

Technopoly, Neil Postman

Finished Neil Postman’s Technopoly the other day, and loved it, and was enlightened by it, challenged by it. It was very interesting to read a book published in 1992, pre commercial internet, with the premise that technology had (even by then) been so mindlessly and carelessly adopted wholesale, and given such primacy, that it quickly wiped away our norms and culture and destroyed its sanctity and symbols. It's hard to argue with this when we spend all our time with our heads down in our phones these days (self included). One wonders what Postman would have had to say about Tik-Tok.

There is great stuff in here about the insidiousness of "invisible technology," for example standardized testing and our harmful desire to assign IQ scores when intelligence cannot be measured with a single score. Basing our decisions on polling data when this data can change dramatically based on the subtle wording of a question and a given poll taker’s mood, and thus forfeiting our sovereignty or outsourcing it to the crowd. How ruthless efficiency and skill building has risen to prominence over liberal arts education in the drive to create skilled workers who can add to the GDP, warping the true purpose of education. The inevitable advance, today led by neuroscience, to reduce humans to 0s and 1s.

Postman asks some deeply penetrating questions on how we can fight back against Technopoly, which include establishing an academic curriculum rooted in history, across all subjects, that offers a narrative of the ascent of man and why decisions were made and from where our current beliefs/practices/scientific advances/theories have derived. In short, an education that makes us think, not conform, and embrace humanity and the human ideal, not machines. Education is not a means to an end; rather being educated, broadly and richly, is the end goal.

These issues and solutions may sound a bit like cranky conservatism or “old man shouting at cloud” but I happen to agree with many of them. There is something in these narratives that speaks to me, I think anyone who can take a step back and observe will realize that progress is not always for the good, but for the good and bad, simultaneous. More to the point, technology changes the landscape, forever, and while we make gains we inevitably lose something in the translation, including our individual sovereignty. J.R.R Tolkien was acutely aware of this, as was Robert E. Howard (see his letters to H.P. Lovecraft).

I am aware of my own hypocrisy, writing these words on a blog on the internet, with immediate distribution. I am a beneficiary of technology. But I also shake my head at our mindless adoption of the latest shiny that comes along. 

In summary I like this damned blog just fine, I don't need a Twitter following.

The problem with reviews

I get asked for book reviews, with some amount of frequency.

I don’t blame anyone for asking me, or asking others, to review their book. Now that I’m an author I empathize with that sentiment, quite deeply. All authors want and need readers, and reviewers. More than money, or at least on equal footing, writers crave readers who enjoy their work. They seek validation that their work is good, and connects with a reader on some emotional level. And most want others to write about their book.

But please know that when I get your email, it makes me wince, and hurt a little inside, as reviews present many problems to the reviewer. Here are a few:

They’re a huge time commitment. Reviewing a book requires you to read the book (you better read it; “reviewing” a book because you know the author is unethical), and read it closer than you might if you were reading for pure enjoyment. Then comes the writing. To write a review of any substance requires some degree of planning, and thought, and care. You can certainly go the route of a four-five sentence capsule of what you liked about a book, and there is a place for those, particularly on Amazon. But I think careful reviewing is an art form. An honest review should do more than breezily sketch the plot and end with “I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Robert E. Howard.” A good, earnest review should teach you something new about the book, or the genre, and place the author in a community of like authors. There should be some indication of the style and manner in which the story is told. In short, a good review is itself an art form, and takes time to craft properly.

Related to the above, reading something new must always close other doors, possibly to something better. Years ago I wrote a post for Black Gate on the problem of the glut of fantasy in the market. An intractable problem facing new writers is the weight of history, and the hundreds of thousands of authors that have gone before them. In my middle age is it apparent that I will NEVER be able to read all the books I want to. Right now I’m barely managing a book a week, which puts me at 52 books a year. At age 48, I might have another 40 years of life in me, if I’m lucky… that’s a little over 2,000 books, at best. A sobering thought. My time is finite and I want to spend it well. Should I read a new book by an unknown author, or should I read the Poul Anderson and Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock titles I haven’t gotten to yet? Or re-read a beloved old classic?

The moral quandary of reviewing bad books, or books you don’t enjoy. What if you don’t like a book, either one you’ve sought out, or one you’ve been asked to review? Do you write the review, or say nothing? Do you write a (semi) dishonest review, focusing perhaps on a few things you found OK, while leaving out your valid critiques? I still think of this brilliant review of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, a highly regarded book which I detested. Like a surgeon Adam Roberts dissects his problems with that book, comparing it unfavorably with The Children of Hurin, released at the same time by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. Roberts’ review is perhaps a little arch in places but it’s not mean-spirited. I find it illuminating, with much to teach us about the potent spell good fantasy can place on the reader, and the importance of being taken out of the modern world. Some might object to this line of criticism. If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all. I do believe there is a time and place for that sentiment, but I also believe that good critique serves a valuable function. The problem is that I don’t think most authors want to hear it. And I’m not sure I want to write it, as I don’t like hurting anyone’s feelings.

...

Now that I’ve spent some considerable digital ink expressing my deep reservations of the book review enterprise, believe it or not I do want to do more reviews of new works—as I am able. I want to support the sword-and-sorcery community, and there are many worthy publications and authors and titles that deserve the exposure and the commentary. I’ll mix them in as I can.

Confess, Rob Halford (2020), a review

The Metal God tells all...

I’m a raging Judas Priest fan, and chances are you are too, if you like metal. I frequently vacillate between Priest and Maiden as the greatest metal band ever. When I hear the opening notes of The Hellion/Electric Eye I’m tempted to just say, fuck it, Judas Priest.

So I was pleased to be able to buy and finally read lead singer Rob Halford’s “tell all” Confess. This highly anticipated autobiography came out in September 2020 and a couple of my friends were like “you’re just reading that now?” But hey, what can I say, my TBR pile is towering and ridiculous.

Straight off, if you’re a gay-hater, you’ll hate this book (and you may also wish to engage in some self-introspection, there is no choice in the matter for a man like Rob Halford, who simply knew he was gay from a very young age). In places Rob went a bit overboard on his descriptions of his various and often sordid sexual encounters. I couldn’t believe the lead singer of such a hugely popular band had to resort to trolling in truck stops, for example. So if you’re squeamish about these things or a prude you should probably skip the book. But, these passages serve to underscore the double life Halford was forced to lead, and the separate identities—bad ass metal god, sensitive closeted gay man—he had to maintain and (attempt) to balance.

Not always well as it turned out.