Showing posts with label Reviews - by S.E.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews - by S.E.. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2019

The Robots of Gotham - Review by S.E.


Wearing aluminum hats won't help us anymore. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's assistant likely conspire against humanity, and no doubt will copulate and have gendered, machine children.  It's one vision of the future. 



The Robots of Gotham novel will at least make our journey toward machine domination more fun. Todd McAulty's first-person style is profoundly easy to consume. Highly recommended for everyone who has a smartphone! 

Todd McAulty's The Robots of Gotham has already received great praise from Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, the Toronto Star, Kirkus Reviews, and numerous authors. Here is another. 

What is the best way to deal with being constantly surveilled by devices? Being controlled by them? Wearing aluminum hats won't help us (put that smartphone down!), but reading well-crafted fiction allows the journey toward robot domination to be more fun... less scary.

Artificial Intelligence: I am by no means an expert in artificial intelligence, which makes my perspective even more alarming (exciting?); many readers likely share this history, and it is why you'll enjoy Todd McAulty's The Robots of Gotham.

As a teenager (1980's), I had the experience of interacting with Apple IIe and TI94 computers (when data was never stored on disk or was saved to tape) which had users game with a computer that served as a dungeon master. Digitized, text-based adventures like Zork from Infocom/Activision provided a surreal version of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. As a chemist for decades who chills with engineers, I've witnessed computers grow from being calculators to devices that measure, store, analyze and report data with limited human intervention.

Currently (2019) there are powerful, open-sourced codes for Deep Learning and Neural Network tasks & decision making--the accessibility and power of enabling AI is skyrocketing. Couple that with the proliferation of smartphones & the-internet-of-things and the once "speculative" concept of Batman using phones to echolocate & virtually surveil a city is near reality (from the 2008 movie The Dark Knight). I confess that in 2008 I thought echolocation was a silly concept, but not anymore.   
Batman’s machine that operated on Fox’s concept of SONAR. (Photo Credit: The Dark Knight (film) / Warner Bros. Pictures (scienceabc.com)

Can you imagine life with machines in 2083?

Fast forward another six decades, and there is a strong likelihood we humans will be dialoguing with robots as if they are independent, sentient things (cheers to any offspring of Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assitant). Robots will serve many functions beyond soldier or policeman (Terminator or Robocop) including politics.

Todd McAulty, himself an expert in machine learning whose roots came from managing at the start-up that created Internet Explorer, provides us with a compelling vision. For over a decade he created this wonderful thriller, employing protagonist Barry Simcoe to narrate his exploits as a businessman wrapped up in a dystopic war between humans & robots (and robots vs. robots, and humans vs. humans, etc.). Robots have evolved into many classes, many are very "human." Listen in now to Barry as he summarizes his lunch date with the robot Black Winter:
"I really enjoyed our lunch. Yeah, it was a bit awkward at first. Machines don't actually eat lunch, for one thing. But before long we were chatting like old friends. 
It's tough to explain why I find Black Winter so fascinating. It's not just the novelty of talking casually to a high-end machine. I've met plenty of machines, although admittedly few of them socially. Black Winter is different. He jokes that it's because he was trained in human diplomancy, but it goes deeper than that. There is something about him. There's a sincerity to him that makes him profoundly easy to talk to."
Profoundly easy to read: Actually, McAulty's writing style is similar to talking to Black Winter. McAulty's first-person chapters are blog posts that are profoundly easy to consume.  This 670page novel was easier to read than most 200page, third-person narratives. Each chapter/post is sponsored by hilarious entrepreneurs too, but these details are easy to overlook since you will jump right into the text. 
"CanadaNET1 Encrypted, Sponsored by Hot Pupil.
Are they checking you out?  Hot Pupil monitors nearby skin temperature and pupil contraction for signs of lust. Don't be the last to know.... 100% Accurate" - The Robots of Gotham, chapter XXVI 
The first chapter starts with a literal blast and each successive post propels the thrill ride. Why are Venezuelan military forces occupying Chicago? Is Barry being followed? What the hell happened to America? Well, no spoilers here, but we can quote from the one other blog poster beside Barry, a machine journalist called Paul the Pirate, who puts all the madness into context: 
"Will any of these three [various sentient entities] -- or their shadowy allies around the world -- be brought to justice for what they've done? 
Don't hold your breath. Ain't nothing changed, my friend. Civilization on this planet has been one continuous 30,000-year saga of the rich shitting on the poor, and the new era of the Machine Gods is no different. It's not personal. It's simply about power. You got it, they'll take it from you. Period."
Title and cover: At first glance, the cover and title offer some dissonance. Gotham refers to New  York, where most robots are manufactured. However, the illustration features the Chicago skyline; this is presentative of the story's primary setting. So why are robots from the East Coast invading the Midwest? You'll have to read the book to figure that out.   

Is Bary Simcoe a virtual avatar of Todd McAulty? Barry Simcoe is Canadian, works in Chicago, works in the machine learning field, and is an expert blogger. So is Todd McAulty. But who is he really? Well, it is a fun mystery to unravel, one which author Howard Andrew Jones tackles (check out his blog).

More McAulty: The Robots of Gotham is a debut novel and is entirely self-contained. However, the history and characters presented are so fleshed out, that it screams for more. Thankfully there is. According to an interview on The Qwillery (June 20th, 2018), a sequel is in the works called: The Ghosts of Navy Pier.


Mark Robinson - cover art

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Tales from the Magician's Skull #2 - Review by SE

S.E. rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Heed me, mortal dogs!" (so sayeth the Skull) Tales from the Magician's Skull is a must-read, must subscribe, periodical aimed at fantasy adventure and role-playing fans.

Tales from the Magician's Skull #1 and Tales From the Magician's Skull #2 emerged out of a 2017 Kickstarter. Tales #1 exceeded expectations with high-quality printing, stories, and scope (the Appendix seals the deal!). A successful 2019 Kickstarter indicates subscriptions are planned up to #6.

Editor (author and Sword & Sorcery fanatic) Howard Andrew Jones teamed up with Goodman Games to bring us another eight tales with an Appendix that draws items, spells, and creatures to life (i.e., RPG descriptions to enable readers to role-play with story elements).

Cover Illustration: artist Diesel LaForce created a cartoony Lovecraftian scene that resonates with a nostalgic vibe of Margaret Brundage (Weird Tales cover illustrator ~1930’s). Inside, we are promised high-quality pulp fiction.

Interior Illustrations: monochrome decorations from many artists line the pages: Samuel Dillon, Jennell Jaquays, Cliff Kurowski, William McAusland, Brad McDevitt, Russ Nicholson, Stefan Poag, and Chuck Whelon

Contents of Tales #2: These are all excellent. I star the ones that resonated with my preferences for horror. For me, I was not familiar with Setsu Uzume or Dave Gross, and now want to seek out their work. That is one true pleasure of reading anthologies: reading authors you adore and finding new ones.

1) John C. Hocking's "Trial by Scarab": Showcases the rapid rise of Benhus from being the King’s Hand dexterous student of the military arts … into something better. That is if he can overcome betrayal, a challenge to deliver a message to shady frienemies, and a battle with an eldritch creature! John C. Hocking is on a hot streak here, with his Conan and the Emerald Lotus due to be reprinted soon along with his Conan and the Living Plague pastiche (and his novella serialized within Marvel's Conan comics).

2) James Stoddard's "Day of the Shark": A refreshing tale of adventure of mermen (and women) battling the Dread One in the depths of the ocean. This breathtaking underwater rescue has the heroes fighting a hostile tribe and a Lovecraftian leviathan.

* 3) James Enge's "Stolen Witness": This is a Morlock Ambrosius tale, a sorcerer investigator who must always overcome his father's legacy. I've read other Morlock tales that emanate noir comedy and have always enjoyed them. I recall reading my first in Rogue Blade Entertainment's Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure ("Red Worm's Way"). Here the investigator has a compelling (pun intended) mystery on his hands with a stone--a device of sorts that reminded me of Robert E Howards's "The Black Stone" (1931).

4) Nathan Long "Blood of the Forest": Whereas the above had male protagonists, this one shifted gears with a female duo. Lanci and Anla are lower class thieves, and they crash a party of the elite. The first few pages are a slow burn, then the action ramps up, and then it ramps up more (almost too fast for me).

* 5) Setsu Uzume "Break them on the Drowning Stones": Wow, this was intense. Gatja, a female sorceress aligned with water, confronts her magic-linked, elemental brother Riad (stone) in an epic, dark battle. This leans heavily on Sorcery (no Swords) and is remarkably deep. Beautiful stuff. There are a few lines that really impacted me, in particular:
"They’ll chain you and call it compassion." 

6) Violette Malan' "A Soul’s Second Skin": A duo of mercenaries with telepathic skills unravel a mystery, and accidentally cage themselves in another plane with an antagonist magician.

* 7) Dave Gross "Shuhalla’s Sword": Wow, this was a blast. Another mystery is presented, this time the katana-wielding Imperial Investigator Shullala with her sword Sindel. She finds the boy Denkar surviving in a corrupted outpost. Was he responsible for the demise of the village?

* 8) Stefan Poag illustrated a version of Abraham Grace Merritt's 1918 "The People of the Pit": This was fun to devour. The drawings and selected snippets allow us to re-experience a classic horror adventure.

Appendix: Terry Olsen again takes one key feature from each story and fleshes out descriptions to enable readers to role-play with magic items, spells, and monsters. I love this. It explicitly ties the stories together and encourages readers to enjoy the stories more fully. The statistics are geared toward the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game.


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Saturday, July 27, 2019

Savage Sword of Conan #5 and #6


Savage Sword of Conan #5 - 2019
Savage Sword of Conan #6 - 2019

4 stars for each; reviews by SE

Well #5 was satisfying. Was just getting into Koga Thun as a villain... and that may be unwise. Trying to avoid spoilers, but even from the cover blurbs (below), it is clear that Koga Thun's story arc runs dry. Cripes, there was enough material there to stretch it out, but Marvel seems to insist on a lack of focus.

As before, Scott Oden's "Sword of Vengeance" continues at a nice pace throughout. Octavia is in a real pinch now.

I am confused about where #7 will go, since #6 is pitched as a stand alone tale.  I'll be disappointed if #7 ignores the trajectory of prior #6 issue: As per my other reviews of this series, Marvel already has three separate and simultaneously released Conan comics in 2019... and each of those have separate stories/novellas. The last thing any of these is reboot of a story after 5 episodes. 


Official Blurbs
#5: SHOWDOWN WITH KOGA THUN! The mystery of the magical treasure finally revealed! It’s now or never, and CONAN must make a choice that will determine the fate of Stygia! Either way, KOGA THUN will not let the Barbarian go without a fight! Plus: The next chapter in the all-new CONAN novella, “The Shadow of Vengeance”!

#6 :THORFEL’S REVENGE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Brought to you by the creative team of Meredith Finch and Luke Ross, this all-new self-contained story springs from classic Conan mythology as Conan is led to death by the son of a man he had wronged in the past. But stripped of his weapons, his strength, and even his wits, Conan will have to dig deep if he wants to live to see the dawn! Plus: Continuing the all-new Conan novella “THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE”

Savage Sword of Conan #4

Savage Sword #3 - Review by SE

SE Review of #2
SE Review of #1 

Sunday, July 21, 2019

The Reign of Wizardry - review by SE

Frazetta's Reign of Wizardry cover
The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson
S.E.: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to the Sword and Sorcery Group on Goodreads continuing to sponsor group-reads, I re-discovered Jack Williamson who wrote fantasy from ~1930-2001. I tracked down The Reign of Wizardry (with the Frank Frazetta cover) and Golden Blood to read. This review covers the first.

This ~142 page novel, first published in 1940, reads as a solid pulpy adventure. It could easily have been a Howard Conan novella. Jack Williamson presents the classic Theseus (i.e., Minotaur slayer of Greek mythology, and founder of Athens) as a heroic avenger out to remove the evil, Minoan sorcerers of Crete.

In fact, Theseus conceals his identity, going as "Captain Firebrand." There is an over abundance of going undercover; Firebrands even assumes the role of "Gothrung the wandering Northman" (a third identity, and very Conan like). It reads real fast, and in a few hours you join Firebrand on a dozen daunting missions. Betrayals and disguised impostor-ing abound. It fits most requirements of Sword & Sorcery:

  1. Magic abounds, and it is usually evil black-robed wizards dishing it out
  2. Our hero has a magic sword with special powers, called "Falling Star"
  3. Melee - lots of battles
  4. Fast pacing, focus on action more than character (though the characters had just the right amount of depth
  5. Lots of early pulp adventure were steeped in historical fiction; Robert E Howard's fascination with pioneer-like adventure and the history-infused Hyborian Age, this one retells classic Greek mythology with pulpy flare
  6. Predicaments - Theseus is constantly challenged by overwhelming odds, and manages to survive somehow.

Highly recommended for fans of pulp adventure and Sword & Sorcery

The Reign of WizardryCover Blurb:
Before the Glory of Greece, Crete ruled the known world - and kept it enslaved by black magic! The evil of Minos held sway, protected by three unconquerable walls. First is the fleet that they call the wooden wall. Then there is a giant of living brass - he is the second wall. Then there is another barrier about the power of Minos, the Wall of Wizardry. Theseus, the tall Achean, the man they called Captain Firebrand, vowed to scale and destroy all three, and to rid the world of the evil yoke of Crete.

But Minos had other defences besides the walls, and many ways to attack as well...









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Monday, July 8, 2019

Hell Gate by Andrew P. Weston review by SE

Hell Gate by Andrew P. Weston
S..E rating: 5 of 5 stars

Who “was” the Grim Reaper before becoming Satan’s strongest champion? This series chronicles the exploits of Satan’s right-hand warrior, Daemon Grim (the reaper). It began with Hell Bound and Hell Hounds … and continues with Hell Gate. In addition to my reviews of those, I capture some key
takeaways:

  • The series is all about Daemon Grim
  • Hell Gate is all about revealing the mystery Daemon Grim’s past, which we’ve been teased about for two books, and here it is!
  • The crazy milieu of Hell persists, so start with Hell Bound to get grounded; more on WTH is Hell below.
  • The cat and mouse hunt after Frederic Chopin and Nikola Tesla reaches a climatic milestone; the duo’s evil plotting that began in book #1 is finally revealed too.
  • Grim takes readers in realms of the Quran (Jahannam)
  • The inclusion of mystics (namely from ~1500, Saint Teresa of Ávila and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim) was a pleasant addition


Hell Noir Style: The milieu and conflict are so epic in scope, and weird in substance, that the story lends itself more for narrative storytelling over dramatic showing. As before, Mr. Weston doles out exposition-through-dialogue; as I read this, I just envisioned a Noir film in which the protagonist provided a snarky voiceover. I felt like I was called into Grim's police office and sat in a room full of smoke as he coached me through a mysterious case.

What is Hell’s Milieu? Grim was introduced to the Heroes in Hell series in the anthology Doctors in Hell. Heroes in Hell is a fantastical place built from myths and religions—so do not expect Tolkienesque elves or dwarves. The primary realm explored is called Juxtapose, which is a satirical mirror of our earth’s cityscapes (the Seine river featured as “Inseine”, Paris called Perish, the Eiffel Tower represented as the Awful Tower, Facebook is called Hatebook). Since time has little meaning in Hell, beings from past and present meet and scheme (i.e., Tesla and Chopin). There are other realms beyond Juxtapose connected with ethereal gateways. All are populated by beings being tormented and try to outwit Satan or their comrades. Even Erra, the Akkadian plague god, has visited Hell to torment Satan. No one is safe! It is a splendid, wacky place that works well.

Where to Start on your trip to Hell: Hell Gate is wacky and fun, but is not the beginning. The Heroes in Hell is primarily a series of anthologies; this novel focuses on Grim but has story arcs connected to HIH. Given the breadth of abstract interactions, I recommend initial readers begin with either:

  1. Doctors in Hell (HIH #18): Daemon Grim is introduced in this collection, and even though it is #18 in the series, it is a perfect entryway for HIH newcomers.
  2. Or…. Hell Bound (Grim novel #1): Daemon Grim’s first novel, occurring chronologically after Doctors, but before Hell Hounds.
  3. Or for those who’ve done that, note Grim also appears in Pirates in Hell and Lovers in Hell



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Monday, June 17, 2019

The Eternal Champion - Erekose - Review By SE

The Eternal Champion: Book 1 of Erekosë Trilogy by Michael Moorcock
S.E. rating: 3 of 5 stars

Michael Moorcock has been dishing out pulpy fantasy since the 1960's. Perhaps his most famous brand is his skein of adventures from "The" Eternal Champion--which actually refers to many heroes (Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, Erekose, etc.) not just this book; the anti-Conan hero called Elric is arguably the most recognizable. The champion mashup is huge, although many are short stories or collections of them, the bibliography has >100 entries. Despite the huge popularity of these, there is a dearth of film/movie adaptions (however the BBC is taking on a TV version of the Runestaff/Hawkmoon stories this yr (2019).

Moorcock's books read at the same blistering pace he writes. He blends metaphysical ideas (time travel, coexisting multiverses...) with epic adventure. In just ~180pages, you'll be whisked across continents and decades of history. This can be fun, but there always seems to be a loss of realized potential and strings of inconsistency.

Cover: My paperback of The Eternal Champion from 1970 has a splendid Frank Frazetta depiction of a heavily armored knight on horse wielding an ax...under the title "Eternal Champion." The art is awesome, but Erekose has a sword (and occasionally a lance).

The Eternal Champion (Eternal Champion, #1) by Michael Moorcock

Sword Kanajana: Speaking of that sword, it is magical and can only be wielded by Erekose; however, it doesn't play a huge role in the book beyond that; and, late in the book when awesome weaponry of ancient days are needed, this sword is not used.... but an unnecessary/genre bending sci-fi element is introduced from out of nowhere. The climax of the book would have been awesome if Moorcock stuck to his sword (rather than his figurative "guns).

Multiverse weirdness: This serves as John Daker's initial awakening as "the Eternal Champion." Our protagonist doesn't seem to care that he is/was married. His mental struggles to come to terms with his predicament do not resonate since we get near zero information of his real life.

Love?: Several romantic relations are introduced, but are seeping with shallow masculine perspectives. I was reminded of Moorcock's stunningly misogynistic entry into the Ghor, Kin Slayer: The Saga Of Genseric's Fifth Born Son (which soured the whole collection for me).

Pacing and consistency: The first 60 out of 180 pages are a drag; for a warrior called from another world to do battle, there is surprisingly no action for the initial third. This is a strange setup for an ambitious take on war... and that theme I found enjoyable to explore (depressing to read).

Supposedly, the Humans are threatened so much that their king calls upon Erekose via sorcery to help them against the evil (sorcerer) Eldren. However, we are not shown any instance of threat or attack. This approach reinforces the idea that the threatened Humans may actually be the aggressors in the war; that's okay, but we are not shown any indication that the Eldren are even in contact with the Humans. Why would the king stoop so low to use sorcery (which he loathed)?

In short, the first third of the book really needed to show some Eldren vs Human conflict, even it was to be misinterpreted by readers, the Humans, and Erekose.

Not Cliche: Despite the execution, I do admire the idea of an Eternal Champion and the approach to blurring the lines of good-vs-evil, especially in war. Trope fantasy usually has evil wraiths/orcs vs. good human knights. I suppose the current Grimdark genre would like this tone.

In summary, fans of the Eternal Champion will think this is ok. New to the Eternal Champion? I would not start here. Starting with Corum, Elric, or Hawkmoon may be better.

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Saturday, June 8, 2019

Transformation - Review by SE


Transformation by Carol Berg
S.E. rating: 5 of 5 stars

Transformation has been on my to-read list for almost two decades, and I'm glad to have finally focused on it. It is one of Carol Berg first novels, and she is still cooking up new fantasy (pen name Cate Glass, An Illusion of Thieves).

Transformation is epic, but feels fresh, and is very engrossing. It is highly recommended for fantasy readers. Here's why:

- Perspective: It is written in first-person perspective, and at 450 pages it's a decent size. Yet it reads fast. Most fantasy epics are omniscient third person. Inherently, first-person indicates the narrator will always survive, but Seyonne and his friends, family, etc. are always in peril.

- Complex, fun story: There are tons of plot twists, betrayals... so it is tough to share a summary without spoiling (the official Book Blurb is a good overview). Somehow every story arc is concluded in a satisfying way, but that doesn't mean you'll stop at this first installment.

- Atypical, angelic warfare: The overriding conflict is essentially "~angels/humans vs. ~demons" but none of those categories match religious cliches or fantasy tropes. There are several humanoid cultures, but not the trope elves, dwarves etc.. The sorcerers are the "angelic" ones, but are far from perfect.

- Exorcism/magic: A key magic system has several types of sorcerers/sorceresses that need to work together as team: i.e., one can find possessed victims, another can open doors into mental-battlegrounds, and another can enter and fight/exorcise demons. Other fantasy may have different flavors of mages (druids, illusionists, etc.) but they aren't dependent on each other--here we have Searchers, Aifes, Wardens that truly rely on one another.

- The Books of the Rai-kirah trilogy: Transformation starts the series, then Revelation, then Restoration


- The Author's website has excerpts, reviews, glossaries, maps, and more.

- Official Book Blurb:
"Seyonne is a man waiting to die. He has been a slave for sixteen years, almost half his life, and has lost everything of meaning to him: his dignity, the people and homeland he loves, and the Warden's power he used to defend an unsuspecting world from the ravages of demons. Seyonne has made peace with his fate. With strict self-discipline he forces himself to exist only in the present moment and to avoid the pain of hope or caring about anyone. But from the moment he is sold to the arrogant, careless Prince Aleksander, the heir to the Derzhi Empire, Seyonne's uneasy peace begins to crumble. And when he discovers a demon lurking in the Derzhi court, he must find hope and strength in a most unlikely place..."


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Saturday, May 18, 2019

Disgust and Desire: Anna Smith Spark interview by SE


 Gencon attendees going to the Writer’s Workshop, you’ll get a live version of this at Aug 2nd; Fri 5pm, Q&A with Anna Smith Spark! See you then in Indianapolis. 




It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven my strange muses.  This interview series engages contemporary authors & artists on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.”  Previously we cornered weird fantasy authors like John FultzJaneen WebbAliya WhiteleyRichard Lee ByersSebastian JonesCharles Gramlich, and Darrell Schweitzer. This one features the “Queen of Grimdark,” Anna Smith Spark.

Anna Smith Spark is the author of the critically acclaimed Queen of Grimdark. The David Gemmell Awards shortlisted The Court of Broken Knives and The Tower of Living and Dying continued the Empires of Dust trilogy (Harper Voyager US/ Orbit US/Can). The finale, The House of Sacrificewill be published August 2019. Anna lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a Ph.D. in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website greatworks.org. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model. Anna’s favorite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault. She spent several years as an obsessive D&D player. She can often be spotted at sff conventions wearing very unusual shoes.


This interview will focus on her take on Beauty in Weird Fiction, but you’ll be interested in previous engagements. During the Feb 22, 2019: Fantasy Focus Podcast she discussed challenging the stereotypes of heroes and the role of good & evil in literature. She tackled politics in the real world in her Sept 17, 2018 Interview with Three Crows Magazine (long live Brexit!). In August 2017, she spoke with Rob Matheny and Philip Overby on the Grimm Tidings Podcast (part 1) and (part 2) covering the pressures of being a new author, her thoughts on the ever-evolving Grimdark sub-genre, about her struggle with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and Asperger’s Syndrome.

A)   You dedicated The Court of Broken Knives to your father. Tell us more about your father’s influences. Did he read to you? Did he write?
My father is a poet. He writes, and also publishes poetry on his website greatworks.org.uk. His poetry is in the high modernist and post-modernist tradition: complex, literary, intensely personal, intensely political deconstructing language and meaning. Many of my parents’ friends are also poets, playwrights, artists, teachers: I grew up in a household saturated with language. Many of my earliest memories involve listening to my father and his friends discuss literature and art.

My father had, and continues to have, a huge impact on my writing. He shaped my love of fantasy and history as a child – he read me Tolkien, Alan Garner, Kevin Crossly-Holland, Roger Lancelyn-Green; later, he introduced me to The WastelandLear, Blake, TH White, Hope Hodgson, Gene Wolfe, M John Harrison. We went on holiday in the English countryside every year and talked about the landscape and the mythologies rooted in, we went to the British Museum together and looked at the statues of ancient gods.

We’re very close still, my father is the only person who sometimes sees my writing before it goes to my editor.

B)   You have Ph.D. in English Literature: what was the thesis about, and did it inspire Empires of Dust at all?
My thesis was about a Victorian occult group called the Theosophical Society, which was the forerunner of a lot of New Age belief. My key text was Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, which took elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Hermeticism and the Kabbala, ‘rationalized’ them as Platonic allegories and rewrote them in light of (a misunderstanding of) Darwinian evolutionary theory. Kind of like The Da Vinci Code, ‘revealing the truth about human history encoded in random weird religious shit’, only a) deeply politically problematic, orientalist, structurally racist; and b) at its height tens of thousands of people believed in it. The Secret Doctrine tells the true history of mankind (sic) from the creation of the universe to our eventually future evolution into gods – imagine evolutionary theory and reincarnation mashed up together into a sort of spiritual self-improvement conveyor-belt. With totally head-f**k Lovecraftian bits like humanity’s stage as a race of sentient root vegetables. Quite a few of the leading suffragettes were members of the TS, which feminist history tends to try to ignore (can’t imagine why). My thesis was a close reading of the text trying to unpick all this and make sense of why so many people, including leading suffragettes, were attracted to it.

Madam Blavatsky herself was an amazing, terrifying figure. She presented herself in overtly orientalist terms, created an image herself as an ancient being, a grotesque high priestess. Like every misogynistic horror of female power: the witch, the hag of the ford, the crone. She was clearly a charismatic. Those around her seem to have truly believed she was in contact with other beings. She certainly abandoned her husband and children to live as an independent woman, she <may> genuinely have spent several years travelling alone in Nepal and Tibet.

My thesis didn’t directly inspire my books. But there are obvious overlaps of interest. I’ve always been fascinated by ancient history and mythology, I’ve studied western occult and magical traditions, and these things obviously come out in both my academic studies and my fiction. Blavatsky herself is there, I suspect, in elements of the novels: the way I depict the gestmet owes a lot to descriptions of the revulsion and fascination Blavatsky evoked.

C)   Empires of Dust features a very poetic, almost experimental, writing style. Is this your natural voice? How deliberate was the design of the text’s structure?
"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."

There was no conscious thought behind the first book at all. After many years of not writing, I started writing one day and a year later The Court of Broken Knives was there finished.

I write what I see in my mind. As I said above, I grew up with poetry and mythology, that poetic way of writing is a deep part of the way I see the world. And it’s what matters to me above everything. The way the words sound read aloud, how they look on the page…  Sometimes I have no idea where these words are coming from, it astonishes me to see what I’ve written. But equally I’ll agonize for weeks about the precise placing of a comma or a line break.

I also suspect I’m mildly synesthesic. It’s fairly common among people who are neuraotypical. I have words that I experience as a taste when I read them, also words that trigger a sensory pleasure feeling in me. ‘Shell’. ‘Liquid’. Very weirdly, I think technical military terms like ‘a troop of horse’ and ‘advancing in echelons’ trigger a synesthesic response in me. It’s possible that the way I write is influenced by this.

D)   The Court of Broken Knives replays epic, tragic history: Amrath’s bloodline (death embodied) fights the city of Sorlost (the city where life & death are balanced). What is the alluring part of Death, so much that it forms the premise of the book’s conflict?
The eroticism of war and death is something that has always fascinated me. That absolute terror of annihilation. The compulsion throughout human history to prove oneself by killing. To quote myself in The Tower of Living and Dying: ‘All men long to see dragons. Dream of wonders. Hope deep down in the depths of their souls to see wonders blaze and burn and die’. All through human history, vast armies have marched off to kill and die and gloried in it. The central paradox of The Iliad, the Tain, the Eddas: the rapturous beauty of the ruin of all things. There’s repeated reference in The Iliad to the ‘killing bronze’, ‘the black ships’, a hero as ‘manslaying.’ It’s so painfully, erotically beautiful language even as it’s utterly chilling, the language of the death cult. Go and read Male Fantasties. Then feel horror and shame.

To be more cheerful, as a good Romantic, I’m continually, morbidly sensually aware of the fierce beauty of mortality in the face of annihilation, the futility of life yet how precious it is.
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Empires, kings, lovers, poets… just dust in the wind, dude, as the great philosopher Ted Theodore Logan once said. But, as Le Guin put it in the single greatest line ever written in fantasy, to which everything else is a mere footnote: ‘I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.’

E)   What resonated with me was the “Beauty in Death” theme which becomes real via Marith. Strangely most covers hide his beauty… showing only his back. Can you supply images/media-links you used to inspire your vision of Marith Altrersyr? Or is he as a monstrous, Lovecraftian beauty (i.e., too abstract to capture)? Have you ever painted or drawn him? Are there depictions of Marith Altrersyr?
"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."

The language describing Marith is heavily influenced by the descriptions of Achilles in The Iliad, and by the romance that Alexander the Great then created around himself based on that.
[…] blazing like the star
that rears at harvest, flaming up in its brilliance,—
far outshining the countless stars in the night sky,
that star they call Orion’s Dog—brightest of all
but a fatal sign emblazoned on the heavens,
it brings such killing fever down on wretched men.
That’s Marith.

All-consuming beauty can never be embodied visually. What see that to me is perfect, mesmeric beauty, the apotheosis of desire … no one else will ever quite be able to see that. Like looking at someone else’s children: the mother sees perfection, total love, all their life’s meaning, dreams of hope and fears of sorrow, you see … a kid. That kind of beauty is so much a projection of the lover’s own psyche, it can’t be communicated. That’s why we fall so deeply in love with characters in books but not films, I think. We can feel desire for a beautiful character in a film, but not love them, identify with them, be haunted by own illusion of them. Marith might be plain, even ugly, to everyone else apart from Thalia. Like attempts to depict Helen of Troy. Or indeed the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall – they can cast a beautiful woman as Anne Boleyn, give her witty lines and beautiful dresses, but what it is her that leads Henry VIII to act as he does, they can’t ever quite show that, because it’s not about her face or her body, it’s about his projection of himself onto her.
There are, however, some pictures of Marith that get alarmingly close to what I see when I write Marith. My friend Quint VonCanon drew them. They take my breath away.



F)    Thalia is similar captivating. In fact, she epitomizes the “Desire and disgust” of a beautiful death dealer. Is there something you find repellent and beautiful that others may not appreciate?
"She brought the knife down. Again. Again. Again. Hands not stabbing but sawing, cutting at bone and sinew, almost beyond her strength. [Her friend] screamed until she stopped screaming. Thalia stood beside her and raised her left arm. She cut herself from wrist to elbow, a shallow jagged cut over the course of her scars. The blood ran down … 
In a corridor she met Tolneurn. He had been waiting perhaps. He looked at her, covered in [her friend]’s blood, her dress clinging to her body. His eye flickered. Disgust and desire. Desire and disgust."

Good and very difficult question. I have a very strong sense of disgust. I am of course massively trypophobic, feel ill just typing the word. I have a horror of insects, worms, crawling things. I also have a very good memory for things that have disgusted me, can be haunted a triggering image or the taste of something bad for weeks. I’ve got vast issues around body horror and a disgust at my physical self, had various eating disorders and all that, probably resulting from my complex feelings about my body stemming from my neuroatypicality.

The scene in Tales From Moominvalley where Little My tells the smallest whomper but one about her granny covered by fungus, and then the granny’s voice calls out from behind a door. The idea of someone alive, covered in mould, grown all over with fungus and still cheerfully talking. A thing I read once about Chernobyl, about workers sent into the reactor core covering themselves in sellotape to block the radiation. The scene in La-Bas when Giles de Rei embraces the rotting bodies of the children he’s killed, knowing what he’s done is the most terrible thing a human being can do, and the pity we feel for him. I felt so much pity for him.

G)    Do you identify more with Thalia or Marith?
Probably Marith, really. He’s my animus. The absolute dark heart of me.  A lot of the darkest, most self-destructive scenes in The Court of Broken Knives are drawn from my life. His parents’ response to him comes from my life too. I’ve been through some very dark periods, and that exhausted, terrified, angry response to mental illness, that desperate frustration, wanting just to scream ‘Why? Why can’t you be happy? Why do you have to do this to us?’ … I can understand, now, exactly why my parents felt that, and it seemed important to write it.

H)   Do you see beauty in your own dark art?
Oh, yes. I can’t write something unless I feel it is beautiful. That’s the center of why I write. The feeling that comes when I know I’ve created something worthy of beauty. The great fantasy novelists I idolize, Bakker, M John Harrison, Le Guin, T H White, Eddison, they have that, that absolute beauty and grief.

I)     Empires of Dust comes to an end this August (when House of Sacrifice releases) … can you reveal your next steps? Does the story end with this trilogy?
The story ends with The House of Sacrifice. I always had the end written. I think of Empires of Dust almost as a biography (or the hero’s journey [insert heavy irony and little speech-mark hand signals while I say that like I’m giving myself rabbit ears]). The Court of Broken Knives is the strivings of youth. Who am I am? What do I want to do with my life? The Tower of Living and Dying is full adulthood. We’ve got where we want to be so… now what? The House of Sacrifice is … the end. The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last … as some bloke who also wrote fantasy books once said.

I have various things in my head about what I want to do next, but I can’t talk about them at the moment.

I’ve written several short stories set in Irlast, for the Knaves anthology from Outland Publishing, Unfettered III from Grimoak Press, and for Grimdark magazine and Three Crows magazine; I’ve got stories coming out later this year in Legends III: Stories in Honour of David Gemmell from Newcon Press and Lost Gods from Grimbold Press. And, not in Irlast, Michael R Fletcher and I are writing a special series for Grimdark magazine. It’s called In the Shadow of Their Dying, and it’s been so much fun to write. Fletcher is good friend of mine and a brilliant writer, we’re challenging each other to see just how far we can go. Filth and disgust and total OTT gross-out.

J)    You have Asperger’s, dyslexia, dyspraxia and perhaps some other mental health issues, and you have learned to leverage those to create art. Can you discuss some milestones of that inspirational journey?
I was always aware that I felt ‘different’, as a child I found it very hard to relate to other children and spent a lot of time on my own telling myself stories. (Looking back, I must have come across somewhere between Wednesday Addams and one of those Oxford dons who’s never heard of the Beatles, so it’s possibly not surprising I had some problems socializing with others my own age). Then when I was a teenager I fell apart completely. At one point it looked as though I wouldn’t be mentally well enough to take my GCSEs. I’m ashamed, now, at what I put my family through. I went through some utter hell, abusive boyfriends, all that crap. Spiraling circles of my pain and others’ pain. Marith. I stopped telling myself stories, the idea that I could write something without the gods raining down laughter on me seemed impossible. I got my life back together enough to get my PhD, get a job that paid enough to get a mortgage, fortunately. But I felt dead.

I got the dyslexia and dyspraxia (‘clumsy child syndrome,’ that kid at school who flapped when they got excited, dropped their books all the time, was picked last every week in gym) diagnosis just after I’d finished my PhD, and that explained some things. But the Asperger’s diagnosis didn’t come until my thirties, after I’d had another total mental collapse after having children. I had post-natal psychosis, in my head the best thing I could do for my baby was kill myself and have her brought up by social services.

The Asperger’s diagnosis changed everything.

I understand myself now in ways I never did. Rather than ‘why do I think I’m different? Why do I have such low esteem?’, when things get bad I can tell myself that I have Asperger’s, that the world is maybe different, maybe harder for me, and that’s just who I am, and that’s okay.

I don’t think Asperger’s is a ‘gift’, I don’t think it’s a ‘superpower’, it certainly doesn’t make me ‘better’ or ‘more interesting’. It’s a rope round my neck, often, I’m pretty useless at managing in an office, I’m not likely ever to get promoted beyond office junior, I quarrel with my family all the time about insanely stupid things, I can’t drive, I’m still always falling over my shoelaces and dropping everything. But it’s who I am, it probably does have some relationship to my writing, I am not ‘proud’ of being Asperger’s but I’m certainly not ashamed. I would never wish it away.

Depression, however, is a disease that poisoned my life and the lives of all those around me. There’s a romantic attraction to the fucked-up doomed creative. But depression wreaks creativity.  More importantly, depression wreaks friendships and marriages and all this other boring normal life things. Depression is not beautiful.

K)   Grimdark challenges history tropes of good and evil (black and white), and you challenge readers to empathize with antagonists/villains and despise protagonist/heroes. Any tips on how to create characters that are very gray but still interesting?
Write real people. Write about complicated, infuriating, messed-up, muddled-up, multi-layered, blind to themselves people.

To be honest, the biggest tip I can give is the very old ‘read a lot’. Get into the head of other people in all their complexity, leading lives very different to your own, thinking in different ways. I read a lot of history and historical biography, which certainly shows people in their myriad shades of grey. War diaries and eyewitness accounts are especially important. It’s so easy to see historical events in terms of good and bad, or not to think about the feelings of the people actually involved. Reading accounts of soldiers’ lives from both sides of a conflict gives such a deep sense of shared humanity. Accounts of life as a German soldier in WWII, for example. Accounts written by people fighting for something that cannot be seen as anything other than abhorrent. But people, trying to stay alive, with families and friends they love. Not the ranting vomit of sociopaths. Normal people, no different to any of us. Aware or somehow keeping themselves unaware that they are involved in terrible things. Then think about yourself, your own motives for the things you do. The bad things and the good things.

The trope of good versus evil is incredibly dangerous because it stops us needing to think about how other people might feel, what their motivations for behavior we dislike might be. Breaking down those tropes and thinking about people as basically just people is a radically important political thing.

L)    More broadly, any tips on how to create art that is “dark” yet “attractive” enough to read?
Oh, goodness. I mean… some people hate my books. Completely hate them. Too dark, too bleak, unreadably violent, too horrible. That’s fine. Different books are for different people. It’s impossible to write a book that pleases everyone.

Literary quality is important, obviously. A beautifully written, complex ‘dark’ book will stand, a badly written one won’t. Das Boot is in places virtually unwatchable. Huysman’s La-Bas is disgusting. Zola’s L’Assommoir almost broke me mentally. But they stay in the mind, compulsive, gripping, impossible to look away from, because they are all in their own way so very good, so beautiful.  King Lear and The Trojan Women are both chilling, horrible, bleak beyond bleak, and also probably the two greatest things every written in any language, towering, unmatchable masterpieces of language.

Complexity, also – all of the above are far more than just good versus bad. They make you think deeply about what you’re engaging with, question yourself.  All those shades of grey, again.
And humor, moments of light, moments of joy. Not just to sharpen the pathos (although that, too – ‘horrible ugly people do horrible ugly things in a horrible ugly place’ isn’t a great sales pitch), but because life is too complex just to be ‘dark.’ The worst moments of my life, the most terrible moments of pain – there were still moments of happiness, of seeing something beautiful. A single flower in bloom, the smell of the earth after rainfall. The taste of a good cup of coffee, a stupid joke, a minging but curiously morish cheese feast pizza, for gods’ sake.  Even in war, in suffering, in the shadow of the valley of death, there are moments of good things.

One of the things that makes Shakespeare unarguably the greatest dramatist in western literature is his delight in a good knob joke even when the night is at its darkest.



M)   My favorite grimdark author Clark Ashton Smith (alive before the genre awoke) was a poet, illustrator, and sculptor; many others interviewed by S.E. have other artistic talents beyond writing.  If so can we share them (i.e., images of fine or graphic art) or mp3s (of music). If not, which artists/pieces inspire you to write?
I can neither draw nor make music. I sing like a cat being strangled. Beauty and repulsion without the beauty.

A huge jumble of art and music has influenced me over the years.

Art: Brugel’s The Triumph of Death; Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar; Goya’s Black Paintings; Schiele; Turner.

Music: Industrial folk, folk folk, goth, Leonard Cohen, The Three Penny Opera, Philip Glass, In The Nursery’s musical setting of Flecker’s Samarkand.

You can find playlists that inspired/evoke the novels on my Court of Broken Knives blog.



N)   You seem to have a shoe fetish — which convention goers may witness. Any images of your feet we can share, and explanations?
The shoes thing! I love my shoes, yes. Shoes make me very happy. It’s become a bit of an albatross, now, though, because people expect to see more and more outrageous shoes when I’m at cons.
I have literally no idea how I’m going to top [the dragon shoes].



O)   The world of Irast: Sophie E Tallis prepared the map for Empires of Dust. Can you describe how you partnered to create this?
When I wrote The Court of Broken Knives I didn’t have any physical map of Irlast. I didn’t world-build at all, the world just sort of unfolded itself to me, like I was really travelling through it, as I wrote. I could see the world in my head, I knew where places were, slowly I began to learn more about the history of different places in the world. The world of Irlast is a part of my subconscious, it’s formed from my deepest interests and loves. Discovering more about this world I was creating, just wallowing in exploring it, was a huge part of the writing for me. It doesn’t make coherent sense as a ‘real’ world, because of the way it emerged it’s not placed in any one period, in the same way that a lot of folklore or pre-modern historical writing is. Timelessly mythic / a hodgepodge of all my favourite historical periods flung together with no attempt to paper over the cracks.

At the end, when I decided I needed a map because all the best books have maps, I was lucky enough to know Sophie. She’s incredibly talented. I drew up a hilarious ‘cubist’ map of Irlast based on the mental map in my head, squares shaded in green for forest, yellow for desert, blue for lakes, and wrote up descriptions of the different cities. Sophie took that and created the map. (As it’s got sea all round it, she asked me if I wanted sea beasts round the edge and I was hardly going to say no.)
For The Tower of Living and Dying and The House of Sacrifice, I was then following the action on the map as it unfolded, like tracing Alexander’s route on a map of Asia. So IP could see the terrain different people were inhabiting, the difficulties they might encounter, the landscapes they would see. One of my favorite television programs is Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Alexander, and I was doing what Wood did there, tracing Marith’s footsteps on my map.


Saturday, May 11, 2019

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

View all my reviews

Conan The Barbarian #5