Swords and Sorcery Magazine, May 2023 (#136)

Swords and Sorcery Magazine continues its astonishingly consistent publication schedule with this, the 136^th issue. Since launching over ten years ago, the magazine has only very rarely missed a month, usually offering up three stories, those usually being of excellent quality. Here are my thoughts on this month’s offerings.

 
Mike Adamson, a small press stalwart with over 75 published stories to his name, starts us off with “The Black Cult of Tarantium,” which is as sword and sorcery a title as you could possibly ask for. The story opens with several paragraphs of worldbuilding in the form of summary, making me wonder if this story, and its protagonist the warrior priest Zareft, are part of a series. It’s not an overly-elegant beginning, throwing a bunch of unfamiliar proper nouns at readers—a technique that can work splendidly (“Know, oh prince…”)—but here is a bit of a slog.
 
The reportage continues until the first line of dialogue, which doesn’t show up until well past the halfway point of the story. Descriptions of both the physical setting and of recent events are only very occasionally interspersed in the first half with a paragraph or two about actions being taken by Zareft, but even those are static.
 
Adamson writes here in consistently long paragraphs, usually of 150 to 200 words, only very rarely breaking the pattern with a welcome paragraph of one or two sentences. Even his dialogue is buried in such paragraphs, consisting mostly of long recitations of the villain about his plans and powers. The hero never speaks.
 
The story itself would be quite interesting but for the stylistic choices the author has made. Sword and sorcery characters who depend upon religious faith (upon even efficacious prayer, as is the case with Zareft) are few and far between. The world of the story is interesting and feels like it has a real history, but it is described rather than inhabited, just as Zareft remains something of a cypher despite the reader’s access to his inner thoughts. The piece has its merits but was ultimately a miss for me.
 
“In the Attic of the Mountain King” is by Dan Crawford, who has been writing material of genre interest for almost forty years—including a fantasy trilogy from Ace in the 1990s—most recently in Wyngraf. I love the allusion to Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite” in the title, but far from being an otherworldly “hall,” the “attic” of the title turns out to be an over-crowded curiosity shop.
 
The proprieter is one Olki, who has been in business for at least four and a half centuries. He is happy for an interruption to a task he loathes—tidying up—when he welcomes a customer, a would-be future queen of a dynasty that lost its throne seven hundred years in the past.
 
The secret of this delightful story is that it is anthropological in its methodology. Just as archeologists and anthropologists construct the past out of physical culture, here, the author constructs an entire fantasy world out of magical swords, self-thumping drums, and, of course, ancient tomes of wisdom, all haphazardly arrayed in Olki’s enormous shop, itself concealed somewhere deep in a swamp. 
 
But despite how dusty everything on the shelves is, there’s no dustiness to this prose and this worldbuilding. Crawford knows what he’s doing, and he plays tropes like the strings of one of his magical harps. Everything the proprietor and his customer seek or examine will be familiar to readers of fantasy in its generalities if not in its particularities, and those particularities are rendered with warmth and humor. Any fan of secondary world fantasy, not just sword and sorcery, will find much to admire in this piece.
 
At 8,000 words, “The Bog Witch of Dirk-au-fen” by Vincent Wolfram just nudges into novelette territory and is quite a bit longer than either of the other offerings in this month’s issue. Wolfram has trod light upon the internet indeed, but his biography here lists several previous publications and I assume he’s the same Vincent Wolfram who wrote Dread Sonnets, a horror poetry collection.
 
The language of this story certainly shows a poet’s hand. Here is one exemplary sentence from the very beginning of the tale: “The highland fields he had crossed were green, the mournful rains of autumn sustaining the grasses a little longer before frost turned them as white-haired as old men.” Lovely.
 
Our protagonist is a giant, “twenty hands tall,” named Bron of Sindrum. He and his long-horned bull mount, Vincarlo, are far from home and on an early winter’s day come to the village of Dirk-au-fen, which he finds being whipped into a paroxysm of witch finding.
 
The religious leader of the village recognizes Brom as the “Banesman of Chokefast,” a dragonslayer. Brom’s reaction to being so named, and his reaction to the villagers’ chattering about his legendary deed, bring to mind Barbara Hambly’s extraordinary novel Dragonsbane, with its reluctant foe of wyrms. For me, that’s high praise indeed.
 
Befriended by a villager, Brom accompanies the man into the swamp to fish for dinner. Brom is a vegetarian but agrees to haul in catfish for his host and his ailing wife. They are attacked by a monstrous agent of the witch of the title, but Brom handily deals with the matter, laughing all the while. The witch appears, “beautiful for a ghost-woman of the fen” with “moon-wan hands.” More poetry. (As an aside, I’m always delighted when I get to log on to the Oxford English Dictionary to look up a word new to me; here, one is “ingleside,” a chiefly Scots term for fireside. Even better, “treacher,” an obsolete word from Middle English describing a deceiver or a cheat.)
 
From there, the plot unfolds first at a leisurely, then at a quickened pace. Everything that is revealed is logical, and the secret behind the village’s woes is refreshingly original and topical at the same time. The relationships in the story are earned on the page with solid characterization and excellent dialogue.
 
A question raised at the outset is left unanswered at the ending, one having to do with a burden Brom carries, and his apparent quest to rid himself (and the world?) of it. This indicates that there may have been further tales of Brom, or at least, hopefully, that there will be more.
 
 
 
 

What I'm talking about when I talk about sword and sorcery...

In the field of literary theory, definitions are famously tricksome things. This may be most particularly true in genre fiction, specifically in the speculative genre fictions. 

The third edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia has an entry titled Definitions of SF. It runs to 3,000 words and concludes by pointing to another source for further discussion. Nothing is settled, though much is presented.

 

The great science fiction writer, editor, critic, and educator Damon Knight once seemingly threw his hands up over the matter, saying, “Science fiction is what we point at when we say it.” This borders on the tautological, of course, but points out the seeming futility of the quest for a definition in these matters. It may point, as well, to pointlessness. Why ask what?

 

But as things become more granular, as the discussion focuses in on, say, space opera or cyberpunk, cozy fantasy or planetary romance, definitions become more useful. Useful to whom? To marketers, certainly. But also, to publishers seeking to establish consistent lines, to editors seeking to provide needed discipline to writers, to writers seeking to establish both aesthetics and audiences, and, most importantly, to readers, who may be doing anything from exploring something new to seeking the joy to be found in encountering an old friend. It is in this view that definitions may be said to be useful.

 

In reading sword and sorcery, in studying its history and its contemporary expressions, in thinking about it as both a mode and a means, and yes, in writing it and writing about it, I have found it useful to not so much settle on a precise (or even vague) definition as to settle on a set of permeable and non-absolute parameters. Toward that end, I personally make use of what I will here call “the Seven, the Four, and the Alloy.”

 

I took these terms from three sources, which I will now describe.

 

“The Seven” is the seven-characteristic description of the genre provided in Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, a 2019 book by scholar Brian Murphy. Murphy’s listed characteristics, or “elements” as he calls them, are these (I believe them to be pithy enough to be self-explanatory):

 

·      Men (and Women) of Action

·      Dark and Dangerous Magic

·      Personal and/or Mercenary Motivations

·      Horror/Lovecraftian Influence

·      Short, Episodic Stories

·      Inspired by History

·      Outsider Heroes

 

“The Four” were not only proposed by Howard Andrew Jones but put into practice in his roles as a novelist and short story writer and as the editor of the category-leading sword and sorcery magazine, Tales From the Magician’s Skull. When he wrote about them in a blog post at the Goodman Games website, he postulated that “[sword and sorcery is] not just a generic term that can be used interchangeably with fantasy fiction, but [is] a descriptor of a specific sort of fantasy fiction…” [emphasis  mine]. Then, rather than being prescriptive, Jones went on to say that sword and sorcery has “at least these four characteristics,” those being:

 

·      The Environment: which, for Jones, covers setting, which should be “exotic,” as in a different world altogether, or “far corners of our own;” magic, which does not often work in the interests of the heroes; and level of technology, which should be relatively primitive, meaning characters will usually use martial means to face their problems.

 

·      The Protagonists: The descriptive words Jones uses for typical protagonists in a sword sorcery tale are hero, stranger, outcast, rebel, commoner, barbarian, discredited, and disinherited (the last two applicable if the hero is originally born of a higher caste). 

 

·      Obstacles: I’ll here just quote Jones verbatim. “Sword-and-sorcery’s protagonists must best fantastic dangers, monstrous horrors, and dark sorcery to earn riches, astonishing treasure, the love of dazzling romantic partners, or the right to live another day.”

 

·      Structure: Jones argues that by and large, sword and sorcery stories eschew such (relatively) modern prose fiction techniques as stream-of-consciousness or any other “experimental narrative effects,” and when they do appear, they must advance plot. Those plots are most often traditionally structured, with discernable beginnings, middles, and ends. Sword and sorcery, according to Jones, must move propulsively, at a head-long pace.

 

 

Finally, “the Alloy” comes from the mission statement of the newest (as of this writing) active periodical in the genre, New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine. The editors behind that magazine put a great deal of thought into not just the aesthetics and characteristics they want stories they publish to evince, but into a sort of mission statement, which I quote here in full:

 

New Edge sword & sorcery takes the genre’s virtues—outsider protagonists, thrilling energy, wonderous weirdness, and a large body of classic tales—then alloys inclusivity, mutual creator support, a positive fan community, and the enthusiastic promotion of new works into the mix.

 

Note that none of the above offer a single, concrete definition of sword and sorcery. Rather, reflecting the fluid nature of the borders of any artistic genre, they each offer tools and intentions, and even, particularly in the Alloy, ideals.

 

Must any story, whether a flash piece of a thousand words up to an epic novel (which for sword and sorcery probably tops out at about 70,000 words!) reflect all of these characteristics to be usefully—and enjoyably—understood as sword and sorcery? Of course not! While it will almost certainly be the case that any given work will evince many of these intentions (I’ve never encountered a work that evinced all of them), taken together, I believe the Seven, the Four, and the Alloy indicate sword and sorcery’s mode and mood.

The three sets of indicators described above constitute an argument. I do not use the word in the sense of an idea or statement designed to influence the mind. Instead, I’m using a sense largely considered obsolete, that being a subject of contention or debate. It was this latter usage that Shakespeare’s Henry V was employing in the first scene of the third act of his titular play, when he says of certain men that they have “sheathed their swords for lack of argument.”

 

Which is to say, it is not my intent to convince anyone of a particular definition of sword and sorcery, not even myself! It is my intention to demonstrate that sword and sorcery is strong enough, established enough, and supple enough to support contention and debate (but hopefully not contentious debate). 

 

I am posting this brief essay on the blog I use to review contemporary works of sword and sorcery in the hopes that readers will understand what I believe to be generous, but helpful, parameters in deciding what to review and how to review it. My intention is to guard against pointing at something and saying it’s sword and sorcery. I will not always—I will not often—spend time explaining why I do or do not review a particular piece.

 

Instead, I will let this stand as my current thinking on the matter.

 

Tales From the Magician's Skull #10

Tales From the Magician’s Skull produced its tenth issue in March, offering a great mix of stories that all meet editor Howard Andrew Jones’ definition of sword and sorcery, which manages to be both rigorous and generous at the same time.

 

Fully ten stories are included in the magazine’s 80 pages, with the many illustrations fitting the “old school gaming” aesthetic prevalent in all of publisher Goodman Games’ products. As usual, there’s little in the way of apparatus, with just a brief editorial by Jones and the now-mandatory humorous message from the supposed publisher of the magazine, the titular Skull.

 

But let’s get to the stories.

 

C.L. Werner returns with another entry in his “Tales of Shintaro Oba.” At 9,000 words, “The Demon Rats” rates as a novelette and is the longest story in the issue. Werner has settled into a comfortable style with this character, a samurai in a Japan-analogue setting who has had several adventures seeking to save his late clan daimyo’s soul (all while being on the lookout for assassins or other agents of the Shogun). Shintaro Oba is a demon-hunter, effectively armed for the fight with a magical blade, “Koumakiri, the famed Demon-Killer of Sekigahara.”

 

The samurai’s quest is continuing as the story opens and he is immediately met with a mysterious woman who calls herself Mika-Myobu. She tells him that he needs to stay where he is because a person who needs his help is approaching. This is true, and it turns out that an old friend of Oba’s, the monk Junchiro, is seeking aid ridding his monastery of an infestation of demon rats. The mysterious Mika is revealed to be a kitsune, one of the legendary foxfolk of East Asian myth, who is interested in the situation for what one might call puckish reasons.

 

Event piles on event as the trio returns to the monastery and immediately engages in combat in its great library, where the demon rats are pouring in through gnaw holes and snacking on invaluable texts while the monks ineffectively attempt to stop them. There’s more than one fight in the library, and eventually Oba concocts a plan that depends on the kitsune’s deceitful qualities to find the secret mastermind behind the attacks. 

 

There is some very effective writing in this piece, especially in the closing sequence where a genuinely disturbing transformation is described in great detail. My only complaint is that Werner takes a scene or two too long to get there. Some of the fighting gets a little

repetitious, and the story would have benefitted from being a thousand words shorter. Still, a good start to the issue.

 

“The Eye of Kaleet,” by Jeffery Sergent, is up next. Here we find the traveler Jade, far from her adopted home in the Middle Kingdoms, come to the desert city of Quarmess and quickly involved with a bit of skullduggery. She’s offered a fabulous gemstone—the “eye” of the title—at a suspiciously low price, but lets greed get the better of her and makes the purchase. The seller seems more relieved than anything and makes a hasty exit, just before a visit by the city guards.

 

As a foreigner—and as a foreign woman, at that—Jade is in no position to bargain with the authorities but manages to secret the gemstone from the officer of the guard who questions her. Jade is already very clear in the reader’s mind even on the first fast-paced page, and it’s a credit to Sergent that he makes the (for now) nameless guardsman as vivid and interesting as his protagonist.

 

At least for the moment, Jade is left to go free. After undergoing the unpleasant process of retrieving the Eye of Kaleet from its hiding place, she has another encounter with the officer, who gives her some crucial information about the nature of the gem and the folkways and religious practices of the city. Using this newfound knowledge, Jade follows her instincts and winds up encountering something a lot more magical and profound that the city guard.

 

I don’t think I’ve read anything of Sergent’s before. I found the prose clean and professional and the ideation top-notch. Editor Jones makes a point in his editorial of saying that many of the stories in this issue came from an open call rather than being the usual solicited pieces he presents. I wonder if Sergent’s story is from that call—there are no publication credits listed in his biography. If this is a debut, it’s an excellent one. If it’s not, it’s still excellent.

 

Marc Desantis is another name new to me, but he’s apparently an experienced writer of both non-fiction (an intriguing sounding history of Roman naval power) and of fiction (a series of far-future science fiction novels). In “Green Face, Purple Haze,” he’s working in a tradition that pulp readers will be familiar with from various texts, perhaps most famously A Princess of Mars, to wit; here we have a protagonist from “our world” transported to a other-worldly fantasy setting and taking up the sword.

 

The wheres and whens of the hero’s situation at the beginning are unique, though. The soldier in question doesn’t give us his “Earth name,” but as the story begins, he’s walking through the Laotian jungles attempting to make his way back across the border to Vietnam after a disastrous mission to stop supplies from coming along the Ho Chi Minh trail sometime shortly after the Tet Offensive. There’s some wonderfully evocative scene-setting here, as with this line: “The rain is like hot glue in Southeast Asia.”

 

Finding himself magically shifted to a temperate forest inhabited by people who are definitely neither Laotian or Vietnamese, he quickly determines that his 20^th-century weapons and equipment will not work. Not even gunpowder poured from one of his shells will set light, leaving him with only his relatively primitive Army-issued Ka-Bar and tomahawk.

 

Desantis doesn’t take much time in getting the action going, using summary to give his protagonist a role as a leader in the fight against invading green-skinned “urks” (the inspiration is obvious). This is quite a brief story, told more in reportage than in the building of scenes, but it has some strong merits, most of all the “origin story” of the protagonist.

 

I’ve recently written about Jason Ray Carney’s series hero, the Rogue, and “The Sorcerer’s Mask” is just the latest account of that mysterious figures wanderings. You can read my essay on the series for plot elements, but I’ll repeat here that this is something of a departure in style for tales of the Rogue, and a very effective departure indeed. This story is a strong candidate for best of the issue to my mind.

 

At the magazine’s halfway point, we find a Skull debut by the very experienced and widely published Cynthia Ward. The setting of “The Black Pearl of the Sunken Lands” is suggested by the title, and indeed, the hero is a “nerei” and his redoubtable companion, Wanders Far From His Pod, is a dolphin, their two aquatic peoples being old allies. The hero, the impetuous warrior Bruko, is wooing the beautiful Ria, who puts him off saying, more or less, that he’s a fine friend-with-benefits but not husband material. 

 

An incensed Bruko vows to swim to a place from which no nerei, dolphin, human, or mer (never on the page) has ever returned, the Sunken Lands. A clear Atlantis analog, Attala is the resting place of a drowned civilization and its artifacts, including the Black Pearl of the title, which Bruko has vowed to take to Ria as a bridesgift. With Wanderer at his side, Bruko undertakes the dangerous journey.

 

Ward, as has been mentioned, is an old hand at genre fiction, and is clearly well-versed in the tropes she’s working with. The “rage” that comes over Bruko when he’s in combat is as old as western narrative, of course, but she’s just as familiar with Ray Harryhausen. Once the heroes have found the requisite sunken temple, the action is non-stop. If things don’t work out quite the way the impetuous young warrior wants, well, that’s to be expected in these kinds of stories, isn’t it? I don’t know Ward’s intentions with the character, but this definitely has a “first in a series” feel.

 

Next up is fan-favorite Matthew John with “A Simple Errand.” We open with Lachmannon, a warrior from a people known as the Kael, imprisoned under a death sentence after, well, partying hard enough that some people got maimed or killed in the city where he’s come to celebrate some recent successful adventures. Things are looking grim for Lachmannon when he’s offered a bargain by a sorcerer—apparently the Kael call such “meddlers”—that being freedom in exchange for undertaking the task of the title.

 

Is it simple? Can it properly be called by the diminutive word “errand,” even? Of course not.

 

The practical magic in this piece is particularly entertaining, with the meddler using pipe-smoking to transport the pair of them to another world. I’ve already mentioned the Barsoom stories once in this review; here, the tie-in is that the other world has lighter gravity so Lachmannon is able to be a Burroughsian “leaper.” This is very much required because the bizarre aliens who inhabit and build the green towers of this world fly, or rather, float high in the air. 

 

The errand, as it develops, is to slay a god. I’ll leave it to you to learn the outcome, but I must say that John writes a vivid and fast-paced action scene with original settings and strongly-drawn characters. Excellent work.

 

Another of the shorter works in the issue is “Nzara” by D.J. Tyrer. Tyrer’s is another name I believe to be new to me, but his heroes in this story, the warrior Ini-ndoga and his tracker companion Mbeva certainly feel like series characters. This story is set in an African savannah-analog and involves a hunt for lions who are more than they seem. Tyrer doesn’t allow themself enough time to provide much more than theme and special effects, with the special effects being particularly well-limned. I think the story would benefit from a greater wordcount.

 

My other candidate for best of the issue is “The Silent Mound” by Charles D. Shell. This story is set in the early 17^thcentury, in what modern Americans call Virginia. If that time and place makes you think of the Jamestown Colony, then your thinking is correct. The protagonist, though, is not a colonizer, but an Indigenous warrior of one of the many Tidewater peoples who inhabited the area at that time. As with the John piece discussed above, we open with the hero bound by enemies (and this isn’t even the last time in this issue we’ll see that), in this case, some gold-seeking Englishmen who are surprised to learn that their captive, Nthokna, speaks their language.

 

There’s a bit of scene-setting and background—two of the three treasure-seekers are very firmly established as right bastards—and once things get started, we are in, to coin a phrase, Lovecraft country. I’m not familiar enough with the cultures Shell is portraying to know just how far from the real he’s roamed in telling his story of an ancient “Talking Folk,” who terrorized the peoples of the area long before the arrival of the colonizers. Whether based on an actual Indigenous legendarium or spun up whole cloth, though, the past and present of the Talking Folk—and their fate—is very effectively written.

 

The story follows time-honored Lovecraftian beats and the horror element is right out of a 1920s issue of Weird Tales. I liked this one a lot.

 

Closing out the issue is W.J. Lewis’ “Dakagna and the Blood Scourge.” As the story opens, we find our hero…in chains. This time, though, instead of jumping straight to her escape, the story flashes back to the series of incidents that found the powerful warrior bound to a stake and scheduled for a visit to a pyre. To go by the lack of previous credits given in the author’s provided biography, Lewis may very well be another new writer. If that’s the case, it seems clear to me that he’s spent a lot of time working out his worldbuilding and, even more so, the biography of his character, Dakagna, “the Blade, the Sea Viper, the Queen of Swords.”

 

This story strongly reminded me of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold with the appearance of enemies from the past and with things not quite going as the heroine would wish. She’s under a curse to forever wander, and her considerable prowess hasn’t been enough to take care of that problem. The way she takes care of the problem(s) lain out here is vivid and exciting, hampered only by the writer’s tic of using incomplete sentences and broken clauses to (ineffectively) suggest movement and action.

 

Tales From the Magician’s Skull continues to go from strength to strength as the category-leader in the vibrant small press/semipro world of contemporary sword and sorcery. Color me impressed. (Also color me wanting more Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories by Nathan Long, but I’ll be patient.)

 

 

 

 

Sword and Sorcery Roundup for May 2023

Here's all the sword and sorcery I found published in May 2023. If you notice that I've missed a story, magazine, collection, anthology, or novel, please put it in the comments and I'll update this listing. Here we go.

Cora Buhlert’s First Monday Free Fiction

This month’s entry is “The Tear of Chronos.”

Die By the Sword edited by D.M. Ritzlin

The following stories are included in this anthology.

“Ardax in Antillia” by Dariel R.A. Quiogue
“The Tears of Blood” by M. Stern
“Rites of the Black Goddess” by Paul D. Batteiger
“The Sorcerer’s Scion” by Chase A. Folmar
“The Hound of the Cherusci” by Glenn Rahman
“The Heart of Vengeance” by Gregory D. Mele
“Secrets Only Dragons Know” by Howie K. Bentley
“The Key to the Blood Pyramid” by Matthew Knight
“Snow Fox and Ice Witch” by Rose Strickman
“The Abartachs’ Hostage” by Ethan Sabatella
“The Sacrifice” by Elias Varsity

Fragments of a Greater Darkness by Michael T. Burke

This collection contains six entries in “The Adventures of Ahanu Foxcloud.”

Half-Human Heroes: A Fantasy Anthology edited by Jeremy Fee

This anthology contains the sword & sorcery story “Amaranthine Amphitheater” by Liam Q.D. Hall.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #56

Features the short stories “Red-Autumn Seeks His Father’s Bones” by Jonathan Olfert, “Pagan Fires” by Rev. Joe Kelly, and “The Blade’s Bargain” by Robert Luke Wilkins. There are also two poems in this issue—“The Unbitten Fruit” by Oliver Smith and “The Gobbler Raid” by Aidan Redwing—and a comics adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Spear and Fang” by Gary McClusky. 

Hexagon #13

This issue contains a sword and sorcery tale, “The Final Whisper,” by Jonathan Olfert.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May/June 2023

This issue contains two stories of at least associational interest: “The Dire Delusion” by Matthew Hughes” and “A Truth So Loyal and Vicious” by Fatima Taqvi.

Old Moon Quarterly #4

This issue contains the following s&s stories.

“Pain Wins” by Sasha Brown
“Scourge of Gods” by e rathke
“The Call of the Void” by Kyle Miller
“Death to Your King, and All His Loyal Subjects”

Savage Realms Monthly #20

Contains the usual editorial, plus “Crypt of the Night Queen” by Remy Morgeson, “The Spirit of the Steppe” by Carl Brown, and “Hag of Bones” by W.E. Wertenberger, plus interviews with all the authors.

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6

This anthology contains the following twelve stories.

“Land of the Dead” by Dev Agarwal
“The House of Bones” by Carson Ray
“Threnody of Ghosts” by Phil Emery
“Wardark and the Siren Queen” by Craig Herbertson
“Otrim” by Lyndon Perry
“Gods, Men, and Nephilim” by David Dubrow
“Golden Witch of Adzelgar” by Scott McCloskey
“Raiding the Graveyard of Lost Ships” by Tais Teng
“A Place of Ghosts” by Andrew Darlington
“Those Who Wear their White Hair Proudly” by Lauren C. Teffeau
“Trials for Treasure” by Harry Elliott
“Gods of the Dreaming Isles” by Adrian Cole

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #136

This month you’ll find the following stories: “The Black Cult of Tarantism” by Mike Adamson, “The Attic of the Mountain King” by Dan Crawford, and “The Bog Witch of Dirk-au-fen” by Vincent Wolfram.

Tales of the Wild: Sword & Sorcery Anthology by Yazar Quint

Despite the subtitle, this book of sixteen stories is not an anthology, but a single-author collection.

Thongor Conquers the Underground World by as by Robert M. Price and Lin Carter

Posthumous collaboration. At 112 pages this is a novella.

Savage Realms #20, May 2023

The May 2023 issue of Savage Realms Monthly, the magazine’s 20^th, contains their usual three stories accompanied by author interviews.

First up is “Crypt of the Night Queen” by Remy Morgesen. This is the second May issue of SRM in a row to feature a tale of Morgesen’s thief character, Fex. Here, Fex has been hired to steal a signet ring. The story plays out over an evening full of “wenches,” with one “vixen” (who is not, of course, what she appears to be), and finishes off with a “trollop.” There is little of merit here, and the first part of the story shares more than just a passing structural similarity to Howard’s “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,” having many of the problematic features of that tale as well. 

 

“Adrik’s blows left his hand tingling in painful harmony with the ringing steel.” That’s a lovely line from Carl Brown’s “The Spirit of the Steppe.” This is a coming of age/initiation story where the initiation involves hunting aurochs, but the three heroes encounter much worse than angry cattle. I’m not saying a series of zestful fight scenes can’t make a gripping story, and I appreciate the efforts at world-building based on real-world steppe cultures, but the characterization is beyond slight.

 

Thankfully, “Hag of Bones” by W.E. Wertenberger is an excellent story and makes this issue worth the price. It’s basically Vikings versus Indigenous North Americans, though there’s a lot of interest added because the band of the hero is very diverse and draws on populations across the Mediterranean. The necromantic magic the witch of the title uses is rendered in frighteningly granular detail, and the characters are vivid, even the nameless Indigenous warrior who comes closest to felling the hero, Kol. I hope to see more of Wertenberger’s fiction in general and will seek out the other published adventures of Kol and his companions.

“What have I done to merit death?”: Questions Asked and Answers Elided in Jason Ray Carney’s Stories of the Rogue

From its beginnings, the sword and sorcery genre’s most popular stories—and frequently the most artistically successful—have featured recurring characters. The most famous of these are, of course, the heroes or anti-heroes created by Robert E. Howard (Conan the Cimmerian), Fritz Lieber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), and Michael Moorcock (Elric of Melniboné).

 

In today’s hothouse ecosystem of sword and sorcery, thriving mostly in a very active small press scene, things are no different. Series characters abound, jumping from magazine to anthology to collection. There seems to be something irresistible to the writers of this subgenre about chronicling the “career” (or careers in the case of heroic pairs or, very rarely, groups) of their characters.

 

I will set aside for today the question of reading order. While I feel strongly that stories of such characters should be read in their order of publication that is a subject for another day.

 

The reason I’m thinking about series characters is because I have just read the five publicly available stories featuring Jason Ray Carney’s character, the Rogue. (Note that Carney has stated that he’s published a half dozen shorter stories about the character in the pages of a private amateur press association publication available only to contributing members.)

 

The Rogue is a mysterious figure and is never given any name other than his (judgmental?) sobriquet. The physical descriptions provided of him are scant; we know that he is tall, that he has “ageless features,” and that he has “depthless black eyes,” but not much beyond that. He is a skilled fighter and occasionally works magics—including what may be the most potent magic there is, a magic often reserved to gods in fantasy fiction. We know that he is ageless.

 

Where is he from? We do not know. Where is he going? Even he doesn’t seem to know.

 

The Rogue’s first appearance was in “Two Silvers For a Song of Blood,” which appeared in Carney’s 2020 Pulp Hero Press collection, Rakefire and Other Stories. In what will prove to be a recurring motif, the opening passages offer a lyrical description of a strange setting, in this case a city beholden to “Atok-the-Million-Eyed,” a god whose tenets forbid any and all sorcery. Among the examples of things that would warrant a death sentence are “a mathematical map to another world,” a delightful phrase, and one typical of Carney’s lush style.

 

In this introductory adventure, the Rogue is working anonymously (he is always anonymous) as a stevedore at the docks. The entire story is a masterclass in Aristotelian unity, taking place over an hour or two in a single room (excepting Carney’s introductory material and his “zooming out” at the end, another device that will be returned to in the series). In this brief tale, we find hints that the Rogue is something altogether more than, or even other than, human. His life touches those of some “normal” people, there is a spectacular clash of magic and violence, and then he is gone. 

 

The second story in the sequence to appear was “The Rogue and the Ragling,” which was published in the Winter 2021 number of the annual Cromcast Chronicle. As with the first piece, we open with a description of a strange city, though this one is a stronghold of sorcery instead of being a place where it is held anathema. It is “Litra: an ornamental bauble, a god’s fragile curio,” and in the space of a page or two it is “swept crashing to the floor of the universe.” 

 

The hand that did the sweeping is that of the “Covenant Emperor” and the means he used was a vast working called “The Sword of Peace.” The city is in ruins, both the defenders and the attackers decimated, as we learn that the Rogue had been serving as a mercenary in the Covenant Emperor’s forces.

 

As an aside, another fantastic feature of these stories is the way Carney suggests rather than outlines his secondary world setting. We never learn much more about the Covenant Emperor than the fact that he exists and that it was by his will that gleaming Litra was destroyed. This author is an absolute master of the proper noun phrase, leaning on evocative, colorful, and creative diction to do in a word or two what other writers do in a chapter.

 

But, back to our “ragling,” who is a child who has survived the devastation of the city and who seeks vengeance. He stumbles across the Rogue, who is meditatively wandering the ruins, and announces his intent to kill one of the invaders or die trying. As it happens, neither of those things happen, and we learn more about the Rogue’s nature in the temporal telescoping that closes the tale.

 

In the second issue of Old Moon Quarterly, dated Autumn 2022, Carney offered “The Silence of the Rogue.” This time our context is provided by opening with the information that a group of merchants who have enslaved the Rogue. How this happened, or how they even managed it, is never revealed. The merchants are fleeing cultists called “the Pureborn Keyholders of Blore.” Positively Vancian. 

 

The Keyholders, whoever they are, are religious foes of the merchants, who profess to be pious followers of an unnamed faith that sees them stopping for prayers three times each day. This continues even as after they are saved by the Rogue from a sandstorm that sees them take shelter in some ancient caverns. 

 

The theme here is religion. The notion that gods (or at least spirits) are created and sustained by the worship of their followers is not a new one, but here Carney rings enough changes to make his an original take. There’s some wonderful Lovecraftian body horror here, as well.

 

This time, the ending is circular, with the Rogue’s circumstances little changed despite the fantastic occurrences of the tale, and his heroism in it.

 

In his fourth appearance, the Rogue returned to the pages of The Cromcast Chronicle for their Winter 2022 issue. “The Form of the Rogue” may be the strongest entry in the series so far, as it not only features more hints about the character’s outer nature but also does a fascinating job of exploring his inner nature. Carney manages this from an external point of view (all of the Rogue stories are told in the omniscient). 

 

Here we find the Rogue fleeing from a sorcerous enemy, having been badly injured in combat. He is rescued by a young woman and her reluctant grandfather, who attempt to nurse him back to health over a period of months, seemingly to no avail. The action scenes in this one are brief and effective, but the great strength of the piece is its characterization. It’s a rare story in which the supposed protagonist is unconscious for much of its length, but it works here because all the other characters are so deftly drawn.

 

For the first time, there’s an indication that Carney’s world is more built out—at least in his imagination—than the series has given evidence of so far. The grandfather makes mention of the god Cajuls, elsewhere called “The Tearfather” in the sequence. This is the first, and I believe only time so far that one of those proper nouns has recurred.

 

The most recent tale of the Rogue appeared in the tenth issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull (March 2023). “The Sorcerer’s Mask” is the longest of the stories to appear so far and is a departure in form in other ways as well, ways both subtle and pronounced. Once again, we find the Rogue arriving in a fantasy city, Chel (“that onyx crucible”), one not-so-secretly ruled by a subterranean-dwelling wizard named Lech (a name suggestive of “lich”). 

 

After completing an undescribed mission, the Rogue is set upon by agents of the paranoid Lech. Unusually, he chooses to spare the lives of his attackers and is imprisoned in a dungeon with various other people who have aroused the wizard’s ire. Or have they aroused his fear?

 

The Rogue learns from one of his fellow inmates that Lech recently came to believe that his doom is shortly forthcoming, having received this information from a seeress. After the inevitable jailbreak and some nasty business with some nasty creatures dwelling in the depths, the Rogue finally confronts the masked sorcerer of the title. The ending is completely unexpected and casts both more light and more shadows on the nature and origin of our hero.

 

As alluded to above, Carney’s creation is part of a tradition established from the beginnings of sword and sorcery, a protagonist designed to be tested against a strange world of fantastic settings and horrific, usually magical, enemies. The Rogue is not unique in being an (apparently) immortal wanderer—stories by Karl Edward Wagner and David C. Smith come to mind—but he is unique in the leavening of compassion evident in both his character and in the writing qua writing of his adventures. Will readers ever come to know the source of that compassion, the reasons for it? Perhaps not. But sometimes, the elided answer is more compelling than the clear one.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #56

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #56 offers up three stories, two poems, a comic (!), and a couple of bits of interesting news.

“Red-Autumn Seeks His Father,” by the increasingly prolific Jonathan Olfert, sees the titular protagonist seeking some sort of communion with his long-dead father, a craftsman murdered by the king whose barrow he’d helped build. Red-Autumn is an elderly and infirm man at forty, a clue that this is a more primitive world, but he has trained himself for the rigors of the adventure he undertakes. A unique set of “monsters” and the through-line of questions about inheritance and familial duty make this an interesting story.

 

Robert Luke Wilkins offers “The Blade’s Bargain” (also appearing in audio as narrated by someone called “The Bard”). This story is a mostly satisfying exploration of desire for power and jealousy of those who possess it. Savander is a fine soldier and commander, and a minor magician, who desires to join the ranks of his (deftly limned) Empire’s powerful wizards. An interesting magic system and some fine characterizations are present, but the writer’s nerve failed him in the ending. Still worth a read for the world-building at the very least.

 

The third story in this issue is a longer one, coming in at over 10,000 words. It’s written by the Rev. Joe Kelly, who is fairly active on the sword and sorcery scene. “Pagan Fires,” is another adventure of Conor Dubh O’Brien, an itinerant, pistol-wielding combatant of dark and demonic things native to Ireland but here continuing his travels in 17th century England. This time, he faces a dandy who becomes something altogether different when his magical ally possesses him. There’s plenty of action and dark magic in this one, moving it propulsively forward to a somewhat predictable end.

 

I must admit I’ve forgotten most of what I learned about poetic forms as an undergraduate, so I cannot supply technical information about the seven eight-line stanzas of Oliver Smith’s poem, “The Unbitten Fruit” (which the author also reads in an audio presentation). The lines are mostly nine or ten syllables (there are odd exceptions) though I did not discern a pattern. I was really pleased with the rhythms (readily apparent even before one listens to the reading) and the imagery is particularly fine. A worthwhile effort.

 

The particulars of form may escape me, but I certainly recognize onomatopoeia when I see it. The eight stanzas of Aidan Redwing’s “The Gobbler Raid” are built on it, from the “pit-pat” of falling rain in the very first line, through “crashing” gates, flashing “clash-smash” weapons, through the closing “tee-hee” laughter of the titular goblins. Like the other poem, this one tells a recognizable sword and sorcery (or at least fantasy) story. Disturbing, but delightful.

 

Finally, in a new experiment for the magazine, the first two pages of Gary McClusky’s black-and-white comics adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Spear and Fang,” a prehistoric story that first appeared in Weird Tales in 1925, mark a very welcome addition and are promised to continue in serialized form. McClusky has a clean line and doesn’t over-ink the way many current b&w comics artists seem to. The writing is a fairly straight-forward adaptation, summarizing the opening pages of Howard’s tale.

 

In an editorial, the HQ team announces both an upcoming Kickstarter aimed at funding a couple of best-of anthologies drawing content from their archives and, intriguingly, a sword and sorcery specific writing workshop that will be conducted this Fall by some well-known editors. Details of the latter are here.

 

This was a good issue of an always dependable magazine.