Saturday, May 11, 2019

Helen's Daimones - Audible Codes

The audible version of Helen's Daimones is free with the below codes. 

ACX Promo Codes can only be redeemed at audible.com/acx-promo and audible.co.uk/acx-promo
First Come first serve! If one doesn't work, try the next. Or ping me via Facebook for one.

  • AYUKCYQ76KU73
  • AZ8FYARU7KL9R
  • BGG7Q39GB96AS
  • CWL76GQY9J6LX
  • 2PQUTT8QUXZHF
  • 4X6S27PCXYYPM
  • 58PSTCA4S55WM
  • 6UWZWUEW7Y9FJ
"Helen is one of the stranger heroes to feature in swords & sorcery. Is she delusional, mad, gifted? I was never quite sure — she is only a little girl — but I was never able to take my eyes off her" - Fletcher Vredenburgh from Blackgate
The Dyscrasia novels by S.E. Lindberg are deep, intricate reads that harken back to the pulp days of Lovecraft, Howard, and others... Helen's Daimones is weird fantasy, weirdly told, for weird readers."- Bob Milne Beauty in Ruins - Speculative and Imaginative Fiction

Helen's Daimones its the gateway novella for Dyscrasia Fiction. Helen and Sharon are orphans haunted by supernatural diseases, insects, and storms. They are your tour guides in this entry-way novella into Dyscrasia Fiction which explores the choices humans and their gods make as a disease corrupts their souls, shared blood and creative energies. In Helen’s Daimones, guardian angels are among the demons chasing the girls. When all appear grotesquely inhuman, which ones should they trust to save them?

Kathy Bell Denton's voice is hauntingly beautiful:

Conan the Barbarian #6 - review by SE

Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #6 by Jason Aaron
SE rating: 3 of 5 stars

Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #6 repeats a formula to deliver a forgettable tale.

The sixth installment of Jason Aaron could be worthy of four stars it wasn't part of a series, but it's preceding episodes have already exhausted this approach. Here Conan is in Turan, near Stygia (the series has Conan hopping around Hyboria). It tracks the fast rise of Conan from mercenary to commander.

The interior art by Mahmud Asrar continues to be great, especially a blood-drenched Conan panel. The cover hints at more Crimson Witch and the spooky children (yes, it's about time), but we are treated with the same formula as the last four (Conan goes on random missions in new territories, doing random things to random people, while the real antagonists appear on the last panel in some shallow cliffhanger--blatantly reminding us of what is shown in the first comic).

Otherwise, the story is not special. There was an opportunity to show the rise & deterioration of Conan's relationship with King Yezdigerd--who is apparently the one responsible to help Conan become a "great" army commander. Yet we are only shown the start of that pairing and told [literally, in a script box] that it ironically falls apart. So, I'll be sure to forget the King's name as surely as the other great commander's in this story. I just didn't feel the conflict here. It felt like it was just checking boxes.

Would have loved to see more Sorcery too. This issue is all Swords.

Unfortunately, John C Hocking's "Black Starlight" novelette deviated from a developing story and seemed to reboot with a new, meandering & unclear side-mission. Conan and Zelandra really seem to float around. I wasn't even sure I knew their mission before, but there was a hint that it had to do with something with the Emerald Lotus. There are only 6 parts left of this 12-chapter story.

As noted in my other reviews of Conan the Barbarian, I really liked the premise and story of the first issue (Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #1). But I'm expecting something a little more by issue #6. I'd be happier if the crimson antagonists subtly haunted Conan throughout the panels leading up their explicit appearance at the end. Without that, or something similar, the promises of issue one are deflated again.

Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #1 by Jason Aaron Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #2 by Jason Aaron Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #3 by Jason Aaron Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #4 by Jason Aaron Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #5 by Jason Aaron Conan The Barbarian (2019-) #6 by Jason Aaron

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Conan The Barbarian #5



Saturday, April 20, 2019

The Court of Broken Knives - Review by SE

The Court of Broken Knives by Anna Smith Spark
SE rating: 5 of 5 stars

Anna Smith Spark's The Court of Broken Knives is epic, grim, and filled with amoral characters; and its delivered with an unconventional writing style. It worked for me, since I value and enjoy books that deviate from the norm; the oddly poetic style became familiar as if I was listening to the author narrate. This kicks off a trilogy, the last of which is due out this Fall:

Empires of Dust
(1) The Court of Broken Knives
(2) The Tower of Living and Dying
(3) The House of Sacrifice (August 2019)

A polarizing writing style supported by themes of death and rebirth: Anna Smith Spark opens with a disorienting dream-like chapter that proves to be a mix of flashback and drug induced hallucination. Then the sequence continues with fragmented sentences, one word sentences, and sentences lacking subjects. Excerpts capture this well (below).

Chapters switch across multiple perspectives, shifting in tense, and person (first and third). It had the potential to be entirely incoherent, but there is consistency across all this, and a uniting story that keeps it glued together.

Expect some jarring prose that is actually well organized. The beginning offers a lot of conflict (person vs. person, person vs family, person vs self, other-person vs a different group, etc.), but these all converge. The glue holding all together is the replaying of history; readers are watching a grand struggle replay itself: Amrath's bloodline (death embodied) fighting the city of Sorlost (the city where life & death are balanced). What resonated with me was the "Beauty in Death" theme which becomes real via Marith.

Grim & nontraditional content: If the style doesn't throw you, the grim content might. However, the author is "the Queen of Grimdark" and is targeting dark fantasy readers. The Court of Broken Knives is full of characters who you'll find broken, despicable, but you may end up cheering for them anyway because you'll want to see their potential realized. Several gay and bisexual pairings are becoming the norm now, and Smith dishes up several couples that read very accessible (this is not a romance book).

Four characters become most prominent:
Marith Altrersyr : He's a "hatha" (drug) addict with demonic inner potential. He inspires death on a huge scale, has a penchant for murdering and killing his loved ones. He is haunted by some of these experiences, and inspired by others.

Tobias: He's a sub-leader of a crew of mercenaries with a love-hate relationship with Marith.

Thalia: She's a high priestess and an empathetic woman, who is also accustomed to killing innocents to maintain the living/dying balance expressed via the customs of the God Tanis and City of Sorlost.

Orhan: He's a politician whose calm demeanor belies his desire to take over the city.


Excerpts
1) Regarding the titular Court of Broken Knives (within Sorlost):
“They strolled down the wide sweep of Sunfall and crossed the Court of the Broken Knife. A single pale light flickered beneath the great statue in the centre of the square, too small in the dark. A woman sat beside it, weeping quietly. It was a place where someone was always weeping. The statue was so old the man it depicted had no name or face, the stone worn by wind and rain to a leprous froth tracing out the ghost of a figure in breastplate and cloak. A king. A soldier. A mage lord. An enemy. Even in the old poems, it had no face and no story and no name. Eyeless, it stared up and outward, seeing things that no man living had ever seen. In its right hand the broken knife pointed downwards, stabbing at empty air. In its left hand it raised something aloft, in triumph or anger or despair. A woman’s head. A helmet. A bunch of flowers. It was impossible to tell.”


2) Example writing style:
"A dead dragon is a very large thing. Tobias stared at it for a long time. Felt regret, almost. It was beautiful in its way. Wild. Utterly bloody wild. No wisdom in those eyes. Wild freedom and the delight in killing. An immovable force, like a mountain or a storm cloud. A death thing. A beautiful death, though. Imagine saying that to [character]’s family: he was killed fighting dragon. He was killed fighting a dragon. A dragon killed him. A dragon. Like saying he died fighting a god."


3) Beauty and Death
"Marith swerved his horse toward her. His face was rapturous. Ecstatic. So beautiful her heart leaped. He raised his sword and for a moment she thought he would kill her, and for a moment she thought she would welcome it if he did. So beautiful and perfect his face. So joyous and radiant his smile."


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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Belit 2019 #2 - review by SE

Age Of Conan: Belit, Queen Of The Black Coast (2019) #2 by Tini Howard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Catapults, really? Age of Conan: Belit, Queen of the Black Coast launched the third of Marvel's near-simultaneous Conan comics. Belit-issue one was marred with a nonsensical mercy killing. Issue 2 did little to steer the wreckage.

Some pieces of appealing design were thrown in, but the execution was lacking. Belit demonstrates a love of her father's ships, and a desire to be a pirate queen. The details are missing. We are not shown her attachment to the ship, nor are we really given any hint of how she plans to become a queen of the seas. Also, there are hints of her having a connection to sea-creatures, perhaps even summoning them, which would have been welcome, but was squashed.

The best part of this issue is Stackpole's 3-page, novelette serial: "Bone Whispers." It's a great extension from the introduction and is a great companion piece regarding Belit.

But the comic is main draw, and we are treated to another meandering story of teen-aged brat and a "WTF moment" during a key conflict: catapults on pirate ship. Yep. You might be thinking "hey, aren't catapults siege engines used on land?" and you would be correct. Some historians might say "they were on used ships, but usually war barges, since sails would interfere with the ammunition."

Here, Belit has catapults attack her friend?/nemesis sea-creature, a leviathan (a kraken with tentacles). You would hope that the artist or writer would realize how dumb this is. Would have rather seen Belit dive in the sea and wrestle the giant squid. Instead, I gazed a panel that literally has a catapult shooting rocks through a sail. For a series that strives to make connections with pirate-loving, seafaring adventurers, you'd hope they would have applied a ballista, or a Greek-fire spewing canon.

Then we have a glint of hope: Belit and her pirate buddies decide to use the carcass to exploit a random port, to convince them that protection is needed and they require money for that. Turns out the port (one of many) happens to be the one that can controls/summon more of the sea creatures. WTH. There is no foreshadowing of the importance of this port, or that a sorceress may be controlling the sea creatures... in fact, this shift takes away from Belit having a special connection to the rare creatures. It would have made more sense if Belit had summoned more (even accidentally).

This is pitched as a 5 part series, and there is no clear conflict/story-arc guiding episode #3 (in the comic anyway, the "Bone Whispers" story on the other hand is building tension and hope just fine). What can we expect? Well, at least one absurd panel.




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