July Reviews

 We’re up to July now, and I found 18 stories across two magazine issues, three original anthologies (but see next paragraph), and one single-author collection. 

(Note: I’ve included the one s&s story I found in the Baen anthology Sword & Planet. That book is copyrighted 2021 but supply chain issues saw its release slip into 2022. I’m covering it and a book with an identical history, No Game for Knights, as back/fill catchup. I’ll look at stories from the latter book in my September entry.)

 

First up, the July issue (#12 • Paperback • Kindle • Kindle Unlimited) of Savage Realms Monthly. This magazine offered their usual three stories, but I only found one that I felt qualifies as sword and sorcery. According to the prefatory material, “Good for the Gander” by David Wesley Hill is part of a series, and a “what has gone before” paragraph tells us that the protagonist is an Old West gunslinger who has been transported to a fantasy world. There are lots of non-human characters and gunplay instead of swordplay, but if Jack Vance’s Dying Earth cycle can be considered sword and sorcery, so can this. It’s a stretch, but this is definitely closer than the other stories this issue. Much of the plot depends on an incredibly luck and unlikely shotgun misfire. The story itself is a bit of a misfire.

 

Unusually, the new issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine (#125) featured a story I didn’t think was sword and sorcery, so I’m just looking at two. I can recommend “For Mercy, For Death,” Matthew X. Gomez for fine characterization of two soldiers fighting in a war they don’t really understand. Like most soldiers, I suppose. As a person with a rural farming background, I especially appreciated this line: “Farming was for sterner folk than him.” Alas, the other story in this issue really fell short for me. “Lorelei” by Alex Sousa is not up to this magazine’s usual high standards in several areas, including dialogue, characterization, and even, I’m sorry to say, basic plotting. I know it’s a controversial opinion, but I really dislike “contemporary” dialogue in my s&s, and here I found “over-the-top” (1935) and “wow” (1890s in the sense it’s used here) and “suck it up” (1967). The profusion of names from a half dozen different real-world cultures (Russian, Latin, Romani, Greek, German etc) was also jarring, as were a couple of lines straight out of popular movies. I reluctantly advise readers to give this clumsy attempt at retelling a well-known legend of the Rhine a pass.

 

Now on to the anthology A Book of Blades (Paperback • Kindle • Kindle Unlimited • Audio), produced by the same team behind the popular Rogues in the House podcast. As ever, I’m only considering stories newly published, but there are quite a few reprints worth your time here—as either first or second (or subsequent!) reads. I highly recommend this book. Now, a brief aside. The small press is offering great sword and sorcery in the form of anthologies. But I really wish more editors and publishers would take a careful look at how anthologies are packaged by major publishers. What’s too often missing is apparatus, most particularly the provenance of stories. Copyrights for individual entries in an anthology should always be provided, along with where the reprints first appeared. Okay, onto the stories. “The Screaming Pillars” by Cora Buhlert is part of what I gather is a series of stories featuring Thurvok and his companions, the thief/assassin Meldom, the sorceress Sharenna, and a woman who, in this story at least, doesn’t have much more of a role to fulfill than being Meldom’s significant other. The story succeeds on its admirable deployment of humor, as the companions search for treasure in, well, a city of screaming pillars. Nice action sequence at the end. Chuck Clark’s “Ghost Song” is very exciting. It depicts a hunt for a magical panther called “the Hogato” and there’s a nice-bait-and-switch towards the end. Good piece! I got the sense that Kyembe of Sengezi, the protagonist of J.M. Clarke’s entry, “The Curse of Wine,” is a series character, though I can’t say for sure. This is another action-packed story leavened with humor. Vivid and vibrant, the only shortcoming I’d point out is that Kyembe is such an accomplished warrior and magician that he’s never really challenged, despite the fact that he wakes up from a bender as the story commences robbed of everything he owns. “The Gift of Gallah,” by Matthew John, is a nightmare punctuated by other nightmares. This story pushes the boundaries of form usually found in s&s and offers interesting insights on what makes a monster and what makes a father. Next up, S.E. Lindberg’s “Embracing Ember.” This is an entry in the author’s Dyscrasia series, and is, frankly, quite a challenging read. There are places where there’s what seem to be assumptions readers of this story have read the other pieces featuring this setting and these characters. The magic is interesting, with the personalities and abilities of a magician’s daughters being dealt out. However, I must offer one big caveat. I don’t really believe in “content warnings” as they’re often used in contemporary genre fiction, but if this story were to appear in some other venues, one for the repeated sex scenes featuring adolescents would certainly have been applied. Frankly, I found that aspect of this story very uncomfortable. Turning to something completely different, another piece with a welcome light and humorous tone is T.A. Markitan’s “Wanna Bet?” A pair of under-employed mercenaries throw in with a wizard who has a quite original map to a great treasure out in the wastelands. All, of course, is not as it seems. This is rollicking great fun and is worth the price of admission for a description of hornet goddess alone. L.D Whitney (what’s with all the two initial bylines?) offers “Last of the Swamp Tribe,” which depends on some stone age conceits and, drum roll, has mammoths! More megafauna, authors! Though it’s never really clarified who the villain is, this is strong stuff, featuring this great line: “The trees are an empire.” 

 

There are seventeen stories in We Who Are About to Die: A Heroic Anthology of Sacrifice (Paperback • Kindle • Kindle Unlimited), which is entry #6 in the Rogue Blades Presents series of anthologies published by RBE Books. Only four of them are sword and sorcery. I’ll start by looking at “For a Better World” by L.T. Adams. This is a story about the self-sacrifice of a band of orcs fighting against an imperial human power in an attempt to save their culture. There are some exciting action sequences, but the piece ultimately doesn’t quite overcome a clumsy beginning. Laura Garrity, on the other hand, offers a sustained (if depressing) tone and admirable characterization in “The Hammer of the Gods.” The story concerns the inevitability of state-sponsored violence and what it does to communities and families. Christopher Graham Hall’s “A World Without Monsters” is more military fantasy than sword and sorcery, but I’ll allow it on the merits of characterization. This is a good one, with some nice language (the sorcerer here is called a “dwimmerman”). It has horror and a historical(ish) setting going for, telling the story of a mercenary band entering a dark forest and being assaulted by nightmarish creatures. Finally, this anthology offers up “The Dragon Scale Agate” by Keith West. The characterization here is what makes this piece, featuring as it does a grandmother and a giantess attempting to save their homes and families from an environmental catastrophe caused by magic. I don’t usually care about spoilers of offer spoiler warnings (though I don’t go out of my way to include spoilers, either), but in this case I’m just going to say that this story includes something I’ve never seen in any other sword and sorcery story—maybe never even in any other fantasy story full stop—which is just harrowing.

 

The one story I’ll review in Baen’s Sword and Planet  (Paperback • Mass Market Paperback

 • Kindle) anthology is an excellent piece titled “Power & Prestige” by D.J. Butler that combines a mysterious disappearance with laugh out loud (and sometimes scatological) humor and some great worldbuilding. A pair of heroes reminiscent of Lieber are acting as a “jobber company,” which seems to be a combination of a mercenary company and, in this case, a detective agency. The various expression of humanity here reminds me strongly of Daniel Abraham’s epic fantasy series The Dagger and the Coin, and that’s high praise indeed as far as I’m concerned.

 

And finally, I turn to a single-author collection, Track of the Snow Leopard (Paperback • Kindle • Kindle Unlimited) by prolific sword and sorcery writer Dariel R.A. Quiogue. In doing so, I’ve definitely saved the best for last, because the three original stories in this collection are just terrific. The book mostly recounts the adventures of Quiogue’s recurring character Orhan Timur in a setting analogous to the Bronze Age steppes and their horse cultures, along with neighboring empires based on China and South Asia. There is a fully developed and worked out history here, with very deep time indeed on display. Quiogue is a master of action sequences and sharp dialogue, two skills that don’t always go hand-in-hand. The first Orhan story original to the book is “Palace of the Purple Lotus.” Orhan, as I gather he frequently is, is on the run and stumbles into the mysterious and idyllic palace of the title, which proves to be a luxurious and timeless trap. The mythologies explored here are underrepresented in contemporary s&s and are most welcome. The second, longer and more complex, Orhan story is my story of the month, “The Caves of Koro Shan.” This is full on Howardian action

combined with full on Burroughsian invention. The caves of the title are a vast underground realm populated by giant bats, an enormous turtle, and two warring civilizations of white apes. All if controlled by a sinister caste of sorcerer priests who will eventually threaten the world if they’re not stopped. That threat is alleviated, but something else even more dangerous arises. The last new story in the book is not, in fact, an Orhan story. “The Lions of Malakkaria” manages an epic, decades-spanning sweep in a comparatively short number of pages. The invention here is strong, as is the characterization. It’s also notable for its actual format, featuring a close third person focus on one of the “lions” of the title, an epistolary section in the middle of letters written by a person we learn will be the second lion, then a final, action-packed sequence that alternates points of view between the two of them. Betrayal, battle, the fall of nations, and a very personal tragedy make this another great one. Bravo for the whole book, highly recommended.

 

My stories of a very strong month are “For Mercy, For Death” by Matthew X. Gomez, “The Screaming Pillars” by Cora Buhlert, “The Gift of Gallah” by Matthew John, “The Dragon Scale Agate” by Keith West, “Power & Prestige” by D.J. Butler, and “The Caves of Koro Shan” by Dariel R.A. Quiogue.