Adrian Collins's Blog, page 160
August 9, 2021
REVIEW: For Lord and Land by Matthew Harffy
Book eight of The Bernicia Chronicles continues author Matthew Harffy’s thrilling historical fiction tale set in Anglo-Saxon Britain. For Lord and Land has Beobrand travelling south to help a friend and ending up adding to the seemingly endless tension in the north as greed and ambition threaten to tear the place apart.
For Lord and Land may be the eighth book in the excellent series, but it is one that Harffy has written in a way that allows new readers to pick it up without any prior knowledge of the characters and not get lost. Beobrand, a Northumbrian warrior, is strong, brave, and battle-hardened. For Lord and Land finds him at an interesting point in his journey. He is not the brash, arrogant young man who would throw himself headfirst in battle without a second thought any more. He is more reflective and displays the wisdom gained through years of battle. Caught in his oath to his lord and regretting the fractured relationship with his kin, he seems weary and tired of the constant fighting. Nevertheless, he still fights with skill and passion though he watches the younger warriors around him and thinks on how much he has changed since he was in their position and whether he has gained anything from all the blood he has spilled. Harffy uses the young, eager warrior Cuthbert to show the change in Beobrand. Cuthbert longs for battle and a chance to prove himself but Beobrand urges caution and his experienced Black Shields agree that only a fool rushes into battle.
As Beobrand is caught up in the battle in the north between greedy, ambitious kings, his trusted warrior, Cynan, makes a bold decision to help a woman from his past. Risking his own life along with a handful of allies, Cynan rides towards danger and away from his responsibilities, knowing that he is risking the wrath of his lord, Beobrand. The two main plotlines deal with the theme of doing what is right. Though oaths have been given, is it right to follow men blindly when doing so will bring about pain and suffering for others? For Lord and Land follows characters burdened by such questions and shows the often harsh and brutal fallout of the decisions they make.
For Lord and Land is yet another fast-paced and bloody historical epic from Matthew Harffy. Readers both old and new will enjoy the brutal battles and interesting characters dealing with the difficult choices faced when leading others whilst listening to their own lords. For those who enjoyed Harffy’s similarly excellent A Time for Swords or Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom, this book is a must-have. Friend becomes foe. Kin fights kin. Northumbria is torn apart. Soaked in blood and with betrayal around the turn of every page, For Lord and Land is Matthew Harffy at his best.
Read For Lord and Land by Matthew Harffy
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August 8, 2021
REVIEW: Dreadnoughts by Michael Carroll, John Higgins and Jake Lynch
Dreadnoughts written by Michael Carroll and illustrated by John Higgins and Jake Lynch, is a comic strip initially published in 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Magazine, now collected into a paperback. As the name doesn’t quite suggest, it is a spin-off from Judge Dredd – but is distinct from the other dozen series set in Dredd’s universe by nature of being several decades before the birth of Joseph Dredd, in the infancy of the authoritarian Judge system. This is an expansion of material found in the now-classic 2006 Judge Dredd series Origins, by John Wagner and the late Carlos Ezquerra, and is accompanied by a series of prose novellas simply titled Judges.
Carroll in Dreadnoughts is not writing, therefore, of Mega-City One in the year 2099, but of Boulder, Colorado in the year 2035. The difference is not simply a matter of toning down the classic judge uniform and removing the golden eagle shoulder pads – though Higgins does a good job following the early Judge designs from Origins, placing them in a restrained and relatively realistic palate – no mega-blocks or neon for Boulder.
The newly-minted Judges we follow in Dreadnoughts, therefore, are struggling with a police force and a population unused to (resistant, even) the Judge system. It might be the law, but there’s plenty that don’t much care for it or its consequences. That our protagonist, Judge Glover enters Boulder by breaking up a protest with lethal force will tell you quite how popular she is likely to become. Glover is an prototypical Dredd – harsh and unlikeable, tempered by competence and an utterly unwavering willingness to enforce the law, no matter the criminal. This said, she’s less faceless than Dredd, and has a slowly unfurling backstory that makes the idea of Judges more interesting than a first glance might reveal.
This isn’t to say Dreadnoughts is utterly unlike Judge Dredd. While Dreadnoughts is less of a straightforward procedural as some Dredd storylines can be, the core of the plot involves the pursuit of a kidnapper in politically fraught circumstances. Other details, such as the unusually articulate protesters being thrown into the van post state-sponsored tutelary dentistry are right out of early Judge Dredd. There’s a few elements to the plot that reference contemporary events to some degree – but this is by no means new (compare the portrayals of President Booth in 2006’s Origins and 2017’s The Fall of Deadworld, for instance).
Dreadnoughts suffers a little from being a prequel. Its proximity to the present day makes the reader ask himself how the dickens the United States goes from what we read in the broadsheets to managing to pass such sweeping constitutional changes with bipartisan support. The sketches in Origins don’t quite suffice. But, as Carroll rightly observes in the introduction, Dreadnoughts may be best regarded as a horror story, and asking what chemicals Dr Jekyll has in his dispensary or how many hitpoints Cthulhu has are pointless endeavours.
Patches of thinness aside, Dreadnoughts is an intriguing and harrowing read, and merits three stars at the very least.
Read Dreadnoughts by Michael Carroll, John Higgins and Jake Lynch
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August 7, 2021
REVIEW: Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint by Matthew Farrer
Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint by Matthew Farrer is a new breed of novel for the Black Library. An explanation: Dan Abnett’s highly popular Gaunt’s Ghosts series is set in a part of the galaxy known as the Sabbat Worlds and at the time of a campaign to reclaim them – the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. This was Abnett’s personal fief for many years, the setting for the Ghosts and a few spin-off books (Double Eagle, Titanicus). Then there were a few compilations of short stories – Sabbat Worlds (2010) and Sabbat Crusade (2014). Farrer featured in each, with the marvellous paired stories The Headstone and the Hammerstone Kings and The Inheritor King (a third and unconnected story appears in the latest anthology, Sabbat War). Now Farrer is writing about the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, using some of Abnett’s own creations – the reincarnated Saint Sabbat, her companions (including Ghosts veteran Brin Milo) and the space marines of the Iron Snakes Chapter. These last date to another of Abnett’s books – Brothers of the Snake – and have made appearances in Ghosts stories and other background material.
All this is to say that Farrer (perhaps best known for his Enforcer series, including the wonderful Crossfire) isn’t just in the same business but actively working alongside Abnett. Working on books in the same series isn’t unknown for the Black Library (see: The Horus Heresy, The Beast Arises), but this is a new way of doing business. Urdesh has apparently been in the works since 2014 (according to a blog of Farrer’s) and ties very directly into the latter half of Abnett’s The Victory arc – both The Warmaster and Anarch are set on the war-torn Forge World of Urdesh.
Enough background. Into an oceanic planet of volcanic island chains, factory complexes and refugee camps. Urdesh centres on those units of the Iron Snakes that are set to guard the reincarnated Saint Sabbat, but draws in perspectives from the common soldiery, titan maniples and refugees. It’s not quite at the scale of the wider Tom Clancy books (e.g., Red Storm Rising) and the transhuman Space Marines dominate both the limelight and the battlefield, but this is the story of the battle for a planet: the scope is wider than a single regiment, even when that regiment is the Tanith First and Only. (Of course, the motives and inner thoughts of the Warsaw Pact are given slightly more sympathy by Clancy than Farrer ever shows to the Blood Pact and Sons of Sek!)
That core of kinetic, smart action aside, there is a wider story to Urdesh in the clash of personalities and systems – between the spiritual business of escorting an admittedly martial Living Saint and the immediate practical needs of warfare. Of course, given the nature of the 41st Millennium, the one very directly overlaps the other; the mix of commando action and shamanic rites that form one strand of the plot is characteristic.
All that said, however, whilst I enjoyed Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint I’m unwilling to give it any kind of score yet. It doesn’t quite conclude properly, and is destined to be continued in Urdesh: The Magister and the Martyr. The action on Urdesh has a set endpoint (as we know, thanks to the conclusion of Anarch) and these are two volumes of a novel, not two parts of a series, largely standing alone. Although I will say that I am certainly looking forward to seeing how Farrer concludes Urdesh.
Read Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint by Matthew Farrer
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August 6, 2021
Best SFF books of 2021 so far: picked by the GdM team
2021, so far, has provided a fair amount of time for our team to read. We’ve been locked indoors whistfully thinking of Cons and catching up with mates, or celebrating a little freedom by getting our face out in the sun (with a book, of course!). Sometimes it’s been a struggle to summon the brainpower to get into a book, but the choices we’ve had for reading in 2021 so far have been nothing short of epic. The authors and publishers of the world (in all their forms) have stepped up to the plate to keep us entertained, and so I give you the Grimdark Magazine team’s picks for the best SFF books of 2021 so far.
May your TBR pile growl with hunger and your credit cards cry with remorse. Get in!
Sistersong by Lucy HollandPicked by Fabienne Schwizer
“If you like poetic reimaginings of mythology, such as Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles, you need to make sure to pick up Sistersong as soon as it’s available.”
Read the rest of our review.
535 AD. In the ancient kingdom of Dumnonia, King Cador’s children inherit a fragmented land abandoned by the Romans.
Riva, scarred in a terrible fire, fears she will never heal.
Keyne battles to be seen as the king’s son, when born a daughter.
And Sinne, the spoiled youngest girl, yearns for romance.
All three fear a life of confinement within the walls of the hold – a last bastion of strength against the invading Saxons. But change comes on the day ash falls from the sky, bringing Myrddhin, meddler and magician, and Tristan, a warrior whose secrets will tear the siblings apart. Riva, Keyne and Sinne must take fate into their own hands, or risk being tangled in a story they could never have imagined; one of treachery, love and ultimately, murder. It’s a story that will shape the destiny of Britain.
Read Sistersong by Lucy Holland
“The perfect blend of classical fiction and grimdark. Matthews has crafted a fast-paced novel full of so many shocking moments my jaw began to ache from dropping so often.”
Read the rest of our review.
The Emperor is dead. Long live the Empire.
General Bordan has a lifetime of duty and sacrifice behind him in the service of the Empire. But with rebellion brewing in the countryside, and assassins, thieves and politicians vying for power in the city, it is all Bordan can do to protect the heir to the throne.
Apprentice Magician Kyron is assigned to the late Emperor’s honour guard escorting his body on the long road back to the capital. Mistrusted and feared by his own people, even a magician’s power may fail when enemies emerge from the forests, for whoever is in control of the Emperor’s body, controls the succession.
Seven lives and seven deaths to seal the fate of the Empire.
Read Seven Deaths of an Empire by G.R. Matthews
Feared pirate and scoundrel ‘Lucky’ Chang has a dirty secret: he loves his crew, and would die to protect them. As he’s dragged from prison to face the dark sea and a dangerous new world, he just might have to.
Zaya, warrior and skald from the land of ash, knows she has a destiny. Having left her homeland with only a knife and a dream of adventure, she finds herself captured by pirates. To discover her fate, and become a hero from the book of legends, she must first survive the sea.
With a monstrous pilot as guide, and an ex-assassin as captain, Chang, Zaya, and the crew of the mighty Prince sail into uncharted waters. There they may find new lands and wealth, as well as glory beyond their dreams, or nothing but their doom.
Set in the same epic world as the award winning Kings of Paradise…this new series from author Richard Nell can be read on its own, or as a continuation of the Ash and Sand trilogy.
Read Dark Sea’s End by Richard Nell
“The kind of book you can enjoy as an exciting action movie for a couple of weeks.”
Read the rest of our review
Aram Raythe has the power to challenge the gods. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Aram thinks he’s nothing but a misfit from a small fishing village in a dark corner of the world. As far as Aram knows, he has nothing, with hardly a possession to his name other than a desire to make friends and be accepted by those around him, which is something he’s never known.
But Aram is more. Much, much more.
Unknown to him, Aram bears within him a gift so old and rare that many people would kill him for it, and there are others who would twist him to use for their own sinister purposes. These magics are so potent that Aram earns a place at an academy for warrior mages training to earn for themselves the greatest place of honor among the armies of men: dragon riders.
Aram will have to fight for respect by becoming not just a dragon rider, but a Champion, the caliber of mage that hasn’t existed in the world for hundreds of years. And the land needs a Champion. Because when a dark god out of ancient myth arises to threaten the world of magic, it is Aram the world will turn to in its hour of need.
Read Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer
“Greathouse should be proud of what he has accomplished here. The Hand of the Sun King is an excellent mix of classic and modern fantasy with a grimdark undertone of despair.”
Read our review
My name is Wen Alder. My name is Foolish Cur.
All my life, I have been torn between two legacies: that of my father, whose roots trace back to the right hand of the Emperor. That of my mother’s family, who reject the oppressive Empire and embrace the resistance.
I can choose between them – between protecting my family, or protecting my people – or I can search out a better path . . . a magical path, filled with secrets, unbound by Empire or resistance, which could shake my world to its very foundation.
But my search for freedom will entangle me in a war between the gods themselves . . .
Read The Hand of the Sun King by J.T. Greathouse
“Sharp characterization, clever dialogue, and intricate politics. The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng is a strong, striking conclusion to a wonderful trilogy.”
Read the rest of our review
Queen Talyien is finally home, but dangers she never imagined await her in the shadowed halls of her father’s castle.
War is on the horizon. Her son has been stolen from her, her warlords despise her, and across the sea, a cursed prince threatens her nation with invasion in order to win her hand.
Worse yet, her father’s ancient secrets are dangerous enough to bring Jin Sayeng to ruin. Dark magic tears rifts in the sky, preparing to rain down madness, chaos, and the possibility of setting her nation aflame.
Bearing the brunt of the past and uncertain about her future, Talyien will need to decide between fleeing her shadows or embracing them before the whole world becomes an inferno.
Read The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng by K.S. Villoso
“A beautiful fever-dream of a novel that is bound to impress. Redick has outdone himself with this second installment, and no doubt the third novel will continue to surpass and subvert expectations.”
Read our review
Read Julia’s interview with Robert V.S. Redick here
The worst of rivals, the closest of friends, the two most wanted men in a war-torn world: Kandri and Mektu Hinjuman have cheated death so often it’s begun to feel like a way of life. But nothing has prepared them for the danger and enchantment of the Ravenous Lands. This sprawling, lethal desert is the brothers’ last hope, for they have killed the favorite son of Her Radiance the Prophet, and her death-priests and magical servants are hunting them day and night.
But there are dangers even within their caravan. Some of their fellow travelers worship the Prophet in secret. Others, including Mektu, have become obsessed with a bejeweled dagger that seems to afflict its owners with madness or death.
At stake is far more than the lives of two runaway soldiers. Kandri is carrying an encoded cure for the World Plague, a disease that has raged for centuries—while far from the desert, certain criminals have learned just how lucrative a plague can be. Are they using the Prophet, or being used by her? Who, in this game of shadows, can Kandri trust?
He knows one thing, however: they must reach Kasralys, great and beautiful fortress-city of the east. Only there can the precious cure be deciphered. Only there can Kandri seek word of the lover who vanished one night without a trace.
But Kasralys, never conquered in 3,000 years, is about to face its greatest siege in history.
Read Sidewinders by Robert V.S. Redick
“Master Artificer has taken the fantasy rulebook, beat it with a bat, and then set it on fire. The tonal shift from the first book to the second is staggering, yet Call makes it work. He drags you along with Annev into the muck and mire, and you want to be there.”
Read our review
Annev has avoided one fate. But a darker path may still claim him . . .
After surviving the destruction of Chaenbalu, new mysteries and greater threats await Annev and his friends in the capital city of Luqura. As they navigate the city’s perilous streets, Annev searches for a way to control his nascent magic and remove the cursed artifact now fused to his body.
But what might removing it cost him?
As Annev grapples with his magic, Fyn joins forces with old enemies and new allies, waging a secret war against Luqura’s corrupt guilds in the hopes of forging his own criminal empire. Deep in the Brakewood, Myjun is learning new skills of her own as apprentice to Oyru, the shadow assassin who attacked the village of Chaenbalu – but the power of revenge comes at a daunting price. And back in Chaenbalu itself, left for dead in the Academy’s ruins, Kenton seeks salvation in the only place he can: the power hoarded in the Vault of Damnation . . .
Read Master Artificer by Justin Call
Agnes Manteo now bears her father’s sentient Djao sword, along with a terrible revelation—the gods are charlatans, ancient sorcerers who draw their strength from the suffering of humanity. She and her Syraeic companions have but one duty: to track down those pretenders and end their reign of cruelty and lies, no matter the cost. To that end, the magical blade—mighty, single-minded Szaa’da’shaela—won’t allow any wavering of their commitment.
But the empire is in turmoil with the sudden passing of its undying queen. Noble houses clash and threaten civil war, murderous barbarians mass on the frontier in preparation for a bloody invasion, and all feel the aching void left by the clergy, whose temples were devastated by a great fire. Can the kingdom survive should Agnes succeed in tearing away its very foundations?
And if she fails? What might sorcerers with nearly godlike powers do to exact their revenge?
Read Idols Fall by Mike Shel
“A bonafide instant classic and I sure as hell can’t wait to see what Buehlman comes up with next.”
Read our review
Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path.
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.
Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva’s. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.
Read The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman
“Full of heart, heartbreaking, revealing, and has one of the most enjoyable and brutal last page twists I’ve read in a long time.”
Read our review
“She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.”
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa–a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.
Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks–alone, except for her fox companion–searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers.
But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?
Read Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
“Pure adventure and heart.”
Read our review
Merciless gods, vengeful spirits, immortal assassins, and empires at war collide.
Five years ago, Yuu made a mistake that cost her everything. Once a renowned strategist and general, now she is on the run, royal bounty hunters snapping at her heels. But what if there was a way to get back what she lost, a way to bring back a murdered prince?
Once a century, the gods hold a contest to choose who will rule from the Jade Throne. Each god chooses a mortal champion, and the fate of heaven and earth hangs in the balance.
On a battlefield full of heroes, warriors, assassins, and thieves can Yuu survive long enough to learn the rules of the game, let alone master it?
Read Pawn’s Gambit by Rob J. Hayes
“Combines likeable rogue characters, interesting scientific speculation, and some subtly great, unpretentious writing into a very entertaining space opera.”
Read our review
The Divide.
It’s the edge of the universe.
Now it’s collapsing—and taking everyone and everything with it.
The only ones who can stop it are the Sentinels—the recruits, exiles, and court-martialed dregs of the military.
At the Divide, Adequin Rake, commanding the Argus, has no resources, no comms—nothing, except for the soldiers that no one wanted.
They’re humanity’s only chance.
Read The Last Watch by J.S Dewes
Watch the Brothers Gwynne interview with Miles Cameron here
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume – and value – of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
It has always been Marca Nbaro’s dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.
All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she’s made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life – and scandals – behind isn’t so easy.
She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .
Read Artifact Space by Miles Cameron
And that’s it so far! There’s plenty more good books coming out this year, and you can catch our list of most anticipated books for 2021 here.
The post Best SFF books of 2021 so far: picked by the GdM team appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
August 5, 2021
REVIEW: Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox
Slaying the Dark Lord did not bring peace. Without a common enemy to unite them, the sworn fealty among men fractures. Powerful beings, considered myths in living memory, have awoken. Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox begins as a traditional fantasy story and twists until there are no definitive heroes left.
Dark Oak starts where many fantasy series end. The Dark Lord is defeated. Mankind has a promising opportunity to rebuild and bring order to their realm. This victorious outcome is negated as we learn the period after war is more treacherous. No longer is the world divided by transparent enemies and allies. Dark Oak tests the waning loyalty of war heroes and whether redemption is possible for traitors.
In Dark Oak, we follow the accounts of those with various degrees of power including a former enemy soldier, a wife, and a Queen. By having such a varied cast, we are privy to all betrayals and schemes. While some tension is lost by knowing everyone’s perspective, it’s clear how each lord impacts the realm. We are also given the perspective of the King of Dryads, a race of spirits who live in and protect the forests. While mankind squabbles in cutthroat politics, the Dryads are waiting.
This book is highly driven by environmentalism as it is by politics. As mankind aims to unify and expand their borders, the natural world is being destroyed in the process. This forces the Dryads to awaken lest they go extinct themselves. While other books have approached the loss of nature with lament, Dark Oath brings vengeance. Can mankind survive what they have so greedily destroyed?
Barring some truly grim scenes, Dark Oak is nostalgic. Its prose felt inspired by classic fantasy such as Lord of the Rings. In reading this novel, the ability to fully immerse into the setting was equally as important as discovering what happens next. Jacob Sannox took particular care in detailing his world. I loved the nonhuman races. Their presence dominated the page, invoking reverence and awe.
Dark Oak can be remembered as a semifinalist in the 2018 SPFBO competition. Its unique concept made this book a strong competitor despite some occurrences of head flopping and word overuse. While presented as strong individuals, the women needed more development. One specific scene made it clear some characters are incapable of self-governing without inviting harm upon themselves. I couldn’t understand their rational or the scene’s relevance to the overall story.
Dark Oak examines the devastating aftermath of war. By removing the ultimate evil, the ambiguous morality of all these characters shine. In his novel, Jacob Sannox questions whether mankind will ever know peace.
Read Dark Oak by Jacob Sannox
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REVIEW: Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team
Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team is a ninety-six page trade paperback made up of the four issues of the same-titled series released by Dark Horse Books. It is written by Cullen Bunn and illustrated by Miguel Valderrama. As indicated by said title, it is set in the universe of the video game Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red and itself adapted from Mike Pondsmith’s classic tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020.
In the not-so-distant-future, health care has become even more dominated by the super-rich. If you can afford a Platnium Package, Trauma Team will send armed soldiers to your position and rescue you from whatever horrors you’re currently facing. They’ll patch you up and give you all the care you could ever want. It doesn’t matter how big of a scumbag you are, rescuing the client is the top priority of Trauma Team’s personnel.
Nadia is a member of Trauma Team suffering PTSD after her entire team is killed by a cyberpsycho named Apex. This included her lover and boss who had issues trying to reconcile the stated aims of Trauma Team with his romance. Nadia didn’t much care for this and they didn’t get to resolve this before he was horribly killed.
The premise of the four issues is that Nadia finds herself returned to the field, only to find out that Apex is now a Trauma Team customer. He’s managed to find himself trapped at the top of a skyscraper where he’s murdered the leader of a gang. The gang leader was apparently quite popular and his followers are willing to do anything to avenge him.
Nadia is thus forced into the position of having to defend the man that she hates most in the world. She also struggles with the fact Trauma Team won’t help any of the poor and dying that are spread throughout the megacomplex that they are fighting through. The Hippocratic Oath and principles of being a medic have been forgotten.
Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team takes heavy influences from The Raid and Dredd with the idea of a fight through a dystopian apartment building. It is action heavy and entertaining but suffers from the central premise having some unbelievable elements. Even in a dystopian corporate-run future, I tend to think that killing previous employees of the Trauma Team company would invalidate your platnium package.
Indeed, it’s kind of weird but the biggest issue I have with the comic is that I don’t necessarily disagree that money talks in Night City. It’s that I don’t believe that Apex could afford the amount of money it would take for the Trauma Team corporation to overlook he murdered an entire team of their operatives. Those soldiers are expensive after all. It’s not like he was a drug lord or corporate executive that might have paid off fines or whatever else would get to nullify his policy. It’s just never addressed and everyone acts like “he’s the client” justifies all.
In short, the plot holes of this comic series undermine the central premise. I don’t buy that the Trauma Team corporation wouldn’t invalidate Apex’s policy and leave him to die. The samurai devotion of the operatives is impressive but unbelievable without something more to back it up. Unfortunately, without that ethical issue, Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team is just a lot of shooting.
Read Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team
The post REVIEW: Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
August 3, 2021
An Interview with Graham Masterton
Graham Masterton, known to be one of the lions of the horror genre and one of its most celebrated novels, is also one of its most prolific writers, with over 40 novels spanning multiple genres. He received the lifetime achievement award from the Horror Writers’ Association in 2019 for his work in the genre.
I had the immense honor of having a chat with the horror legend about his writing, sex-help novels, what he is working on now, and the horror genre in general.
[GdM] Before becoming a novelist, you were a journalist for a few years. Journalism requires a different type of approach to presenting the reader with an idea or situation. There is also a lot of overlap between the two. Could you tell me a bit about what you learned as a reporter and how that has affected your writing later in your career?
[GM] Most of my education was at Whitgift School in Croydon which was an all-boys school. My parents moved and I was supposed to complete my sixth-form education at a mixed grammar school in Crawley. Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turned out in terms of my career) I lost all interest in Shakespeare and Byron and Wordsworth and concentrated all my studies on Jane and Jill and Charmienne. After two terms I was asked to leave. After a short spell as a greengrocer I was offered a job as a junior reporter on the Crawley Observer newspaper. I was lucky that in those days local papers were staffed by semi-retired Fleet Street reporters who really knew their stuff, and so I was taught all the rudiments of writing a good news story, as well as layout and typography. The most important lesson I learned as a news reporter, though, I learned on my very first day. I was sent to interview a woman about her husband’s cycling trophies (not exactly front-page news) but after she had told me all about them and I was about to leave, she said, ‘He beats me.’ I went back into her living-room with her and for an hour she poured out the whole story of her husband’s abuse… how he hit her if she argued with him, how he threw his dinner onto the kitchen floor if it wasn’t what he wanted to eat, how he would rape her in the middle of the night when she was asleep. She had told her mother and her sisters, but they had simply told her that it was her fault for marrying him. There was little that I could do for her except to suggest that she go to her doctor and social services. But as I cycled away that day, I felt like Saul on the way to Damascus. I had learned in that one morning that everybody is bursting to tell you their story, especially if they are caught in a distressing situation from which they feel they can’t escape, and if you listen sympathetically they will tell you everything… right down to the most intimate details. Obviously my horror novels are based on fantasy and mythology, but I still base my characters on real people in ordinary situations… characters who have their own mundane problems like abusive marriages or debt or stress in their careers, apart from having to face up to demons and obnoxious spirits and other mythological perils. I believe that helps to make my novels more realistic and more frightening. The other important thing I learned as a reporter was how to join two contrasting or even conflicting ideas together to come up with an interesting story. As a reporter, if you witness a car crash, you don’t just describe the crash and any injuries that might result, you ask how and why did it happen, and who were the people involved.
[GdM] You are a sex instruction manual writer, 29 so far. I read that you got into that through writing a column for Mayfair, then through Penthouse magazine. I would love to know how you got from Mayfair to Penthouse and then on to writing the instruction manuals. And what continued to draw you to write on different topics in the genre?
[GM] After four years training on the Crawley Observer I wrote a very arrogant letter to the newly-launched Mayfair magazine, and they were so impressed by my arrogance that they gave me the job of deputy editor. The staff included the publisher, the editor, me, the secretary, and the publisher’s dog. Our office was the size of a wardrobe. But I was given free rein to write features and to organize fashion shoots and I also had the arduous job of going to the photographers’ studios and interviewing the girls who appeared in the centre-spread every month. Most men who casually visited the studios would simply gawp at the girls, but I always got to talk to them in the same way that I had talked to that woman whose husband had abused her. They told me just as much: about their boyfriends, about their ambitions, about why they had decided to pose nude, about their sex lives. I just listened and nodded and took it all in. At that time Penthouse was outselling Mayfair by a considerable number of copies and one of its most attractive features was the famous Penthouse readers’ letters, which were all very frank accounts of sexual encounters. I suggested that we start a regular column of verbatim interviews with girls about their sex lives… what they wanted and how they went about getting it. I called it ‘Quest.’ Of course I wrote all the girls’ responses myself, but they were based very closely on the personal stories that had been given to me by our models, so they were realistic and not misleading, and hopefully quite informative too. After three years at Mayfair I had an argument with the editor and simply walked out. I phoned the editor of Penthouse, and he gave me a job as deputy editor the following week, for twice the pay. At that time, Penthouse had just started publishing an American edition, and so I was sent to New York fairly regularly to help out. While I was there I met Howard Kaminsky from Warner Paperback Library (who happened to be the cousin of Mel Brooks, whose real name is Mel Kaminsky). He suggested I write an anecdotal sex instruction book and so he commissioned me to write How A Woman Loves To Be Loved. I wrote it under the nom-de-plume ‘Angel Smith’ and there was a photograph of Angel on the cover in a wet T-shirt. It was hugely successful, since most sex books those days were very medical. The only trouble was that Angel received a lot of fan mail. One letter included a condom which the sender said he had rolled on and off himself as a tribute to Angel. After that I insisted on writing sex books under my own name. The first was How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed, published by Signet, and it sold half a million copies in six months. For various personal reasons I eventually resigned from Penthouse but my sex books were easily making enough money for me to live on. Sex is a varied and interesting subject, and I got to know many of its most famous (or notorious) practitioners. I became friends with Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker, and with the late Monique von Cleef, the dominatrix, and I learned a lot from them about what men wanted and how women could give it to them, and vice versa. Eventually, though, the market became flooded with similar books, and it was time to move on.
[GdM] You have had a hand in writing many types of novels. You have an extensive repertoire of horror stories. But you are also a prolific crime novelist and an author of non-fiction sex instruction manuals. Is the creative process different for each of these types of books?
[GM] Obviously the research is very different for each type of book. I try to make the characters and the background as believable as possible, which is why I usually set my stories in real locations, rather than invented ones. You can visit almost all of the locations that you read about in my books, including pubs and restaurants. I don’t have a ‘Castle Rock’ for example, although I have no criticism of Stephen King. My horror novel The Children God Forgot is set in Peckham, East London, which I know well; and my crime series featuring Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire of the Cork Gardai was based closely on my experience of living in Cork for a few years. In the same way my horror novels set in various American cities are all based on personal observation—like The Manitou in New York and Walkers in Milwaukee and a new horror novel I have just finished, The Soul Stealer, set in Hollywood. Essentially, though, the creative process is much the same. The story has to grab the reader from the very first line, the writing has to be tight and clear, and the dialogue has to be believable. It is important for the characters to sound as if they know what they’re talking about, and in the case of the Katie Maguire novels I used a certain amount of Cork slang, although not as much as the real Corkonians use, or nobody would have understood a word of it. ‘That langer would break your melt’ (that dick would test your patience to breaking point); or ‘That’s the berries’ (that’s excellent.)
[GdM] As a reader, which type of horror resonates the most with you? Has there ever been a horror novel that you have had to put down for a bit because it was just too intense? And if so, why?
[GM] I don’t read horror fiction. In fact I read almost no fiction at all. I regret it, because I used to enjoy it a great deal, and I learned a lot about developing a direct and involving style from American writers like Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny, for example) and Nelson Algren (The Man With The Golden Arm). One of the reasons I don’t read fiction is because I am severely critical of my own writing, and I am too quick to pick holes in other authors’ fiction. I think the day I stopped reading fiction was when I was reading a Len Deighton novel and realized that I knew he was hungry and was rushing to finish the chapter so that he could go for his lunch.
[GdM] When you create a horror scene, how do you know where the tipping point is when a scene’s horror is too much? Or does such a place exist?
[GM] I thought long and hard before writing The Children God Forgot because of its controversial subject matter, and to be honest I wasn’t sure that any publisher would touch it. In the end, though, I knew I had to write it even if it never saw the light of day. But times have changed, and my publishers Head of Zeus are open-minded and advanced in their thinking and they got behind it regardless. When you consider the atrocities that are committed in real life, there is nothing that you could possibly write in fiction that could come close. I regularly visit towns in Poland where, during the war, scores of innocent children were taken away and gassed. You can’t write anything worse than that. I know that some people prefer ‘cosy crime’ like Agatha Christie stories in which the most dreadful thing that happens is that the bishop gets beaten to death with a badger in the bathroom. But in reality people get raped and tortured and chopped into bits, and left in builders’ bags in a forest somewhere. These killings affect detectives, too, deeply. They don’t sit calmly puffing a pipe in Baker Street or putting on a hairnet when they go to bed like Hercule Poirot. They suffer terrible PTSD. Obviously I try to write entertaining stories, but I believe in representing the horrors of this world as they really are.
[GdM] How has the release pacing of horror novels changed since the introduction of ebooks?
[GM] Ebooks have changed my whole career as a horror writer. They have made it possible for almost my entire backlist to be made available, whereas it is very doubtful that so many of them would have been re-issued if it had been necessary to reprint them on paper and store them in warehouses. I seem to be writing horror novels at a fair lick now. I sometimes think that readers don’t appreciate that a book that takes them three days to read can take three months or more to write. Their appetites are voracious!
[GdM] Can you tell me a bit about the Graham Masterton Written In Prison Award (Nagroda Grahama Mastertona W Wiezieniu Pisane). How did that come about, and how did you end up working with Polish writer Joanna Opiat-Bojarska?
[GM] I first had the idea for the Graham Masterton Written In Prison Award five years ago when I was taken to Wołow maximum security prison near Wrocław to talk to the inmates. They were plainly so interested in writing and reading that when I was having lunch with the prison director, Robert Kuchera, afterwards I suggested that it might be therapeutic for them to write short stories for a small prize. Robert is very enthusiastic about rehabilitation and he got behind the idea immediately. In the first year we received more than 120 entries and even last year with Covid we received nearly 100. It is open to the inmates of every penal institution in Poland and the prizes (DVD players) are now financed by the Polish Prison Service although I used to pay for them myself. Some of the stories are crime thrillers, some are fantasies, but at their core almost all of them have some element of personal experience… pain, and regret, and sadness. I was unable to go to Poland last year to present the prizes in person but I am hoping to go back in October. Joanna Opiat-Bojarska I have yet to meet, because of Covid. She volunteered to help by selecting the best 20 stories, which are then translated and sent to me to pick the 10 winners. The best story receives a brass plaque, and the runners-up receive certificates, as well as prizes. I write a personal letter to every entrant and every entrant receives a souvenir pen.
[GdM] Your first horror novel, The Manitou, came out in 1976, and most recently, The Children God Forgot in 2021. How have things changed in the horror industry?
[GM] Things have changed enormously, especially in the horror writing business. When I published The Manitou there were very few horror novels on offer on the mass market, but these days there is a regular flood. It is partly because the internet has made communication so much simpler, and partly because social attitudes towards horror have become much more relaxed.
[GdM] Can you tell me a bit about your newest novel, The Children God Forgot? For me, it was a book that is difficult to categorize in any subset of the horror genre. It has a bit of everything in it.
[GM] The Children God Forgot is a novel that examines different attitudes towards abortion. On one hand there are people who believe that every life is sacred, from the moment of conception. On the other hand there are people who believe that a woman is entitled to seek a termination if she has become pregnant through rape or incest, or whose foetus has such defects that it is non-viable. It is a book about the conflict between religion and superstition and progressive feminism. I think you can understand why I ummed and aahhed a bit before I wrote it. Not to mention the fact that it describes blocked-up sewers.
[GdM] The Children God Forgot, is a follow-up to Ghost Virus, which follows DC Jerry Pardoe and DS Jamila Patel on a case and combines crime and horror. What important aspects do you think a book needs to straddle the line between the two genres? There seem to be aspects of each genre that compliment each other.
[GM] To me, horror and crime go pretty much hand-in-gory-hand. If somebody gets horribly killed, the police are naturally going to get involved. Apart from which, I enjoy writing about the reaction of ordinary, run-of-the-mill coppers to the appearance of some ghastly demonic apparition. When I started writing horror novels, I had no idea that there was such a thing as a ‘genre.’ To me, a story is a story, and what makes it come to life is the contrast between fantasy and reality. On more than one occasion I have started writing a book that was going to be a straightforward thriller and then found out that it worked better as a horror novel. Blind Panic was one of those… it was going to be a disaster novel about a pandemic of blindness in the United States, but then I found out that it was being caused by vengeful Native American spirits. A similar thing has happened with the novel that I have just completed, The Soul Stealer.
[GdM] Do you tend to model aspects of characters after real-life people? I am especially interested in Jamila Patel. She seems like a powerful and capable character, one that bucks the many female character tropes of the horror genre. Can you tell me a bit about her creation?
[GM] All of my closest friends all my life have been women. When I was 17 I became friends with a young woman reporter on the rival newspaper in Crawley, and we still meet and talk for hours. I had a Burmese girlfriend, too, and she had the kind of inner strength that Jamila Patel has. In fact so many women are strong and clever and capable but do not allow themselves (or are not allowed) to challenge men. I have a woman friend now who is highly qualified but finds it desperately hard to have her abilities recognized. And I am close friends with the brilliant writer Dawn G Harris. We have co-authored two horror stories together and published them in five different countries and we are writing more. Jamila is a combination of several of those women.
[GdM] I think the first thing I googled when I started The Children God Forgot was “What is a Fatberg?” From there, I went down a terrifying rabbit hole. Yes, they are very much real things. How did you come across that this was a thing?
[GM] Fatbergs were shown on the TV news, and it occurred to me that they would make a fairly stomach-churning feature in a horror novel. This is another example of mixing two contrasting stories together (sewers and abortions) to make the whole novel take on an extra sense of reality. Not to mention making editors of horror magazines throw up.
[GdM] Now that The Children God Forgot has released, what do you have in the hopper?
[GM] A new horror novel featuring Det Sgt Jamila Patel and Det Con Jerry Pardoe will be coming out in December—The Shadow People. Following that, The Soul Stealer. I have been writing some new short stories, too, and I hope to have a new collection out sometime next year. Thank you for your interest.
Read Children God Forgot by Graham Masterton
This Interview was originally published in GdM#27
The post An Interview with Graham Masterton appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
An Interview with Peter V. Brett
For me as a reader, there are books and authors such as Peter V. Brett that have made a lasting impression on me. Ones that I consider to be gateway drugs for lack of a better term. When I first discovered the joy of dark fantasy, Peter’s series, The Warded Man, was one of the first that I plowed through. At the time I had only read series like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. The Warded Man is a sweeping world of fantasy with a land full of heroics, gray characters, and demons that would make any of the most jaded and stolid of horror readers sit up and take notice.
Peter has come back to this world with a new novel called The Desert Prince debuting in August. This novel takes place 15 years after the last book, which means that we will have throwbacks and echoes of the first series, but with a new cast of characters to get to know and cheer on.
Peter was kind enough to interview with me and talk a bit about writing, his influences growing up, and the new book, The Desert Prince.
November 20, 2014 – New York, NY : Portrait of author Peter V. Brett. CREDIT: Photo by Karsten Moran for Peter V. Brett
GdM: Who influenced you as a young reader growing up?
I get this question a lot, and the practiced answer is usually something like: Tolkien, 1980s Marvel Comics, Terry Brooks, RA Salvatore, CS Friedman, James Clavell, Robert Jordan, and George RR Martin.
But that answer doesn’t cover the literally hundreds of other SF & Horror novels I devoured, plus the 10,000+ comics & graphic novels in my collection. King, Herbert, Moorcock, Norton, Eddings, Farland, Hobb, Feist, all the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels, most every comic book published 1984-1990, the list goes on and on.
One thing that did not influence me as a young reader was my school English curriculum. I am glad to see none of my children will ever be subjected to the torment that is Ethan Frome.
GdM: You have a degree in English Literature and Art History from the University at Buffalo. How has your education affected your writing?
Not a lot, if I am honest. I left high school knowing I wanted to be a novelist, but UB didn’t have a creative writing program, so I just took a lot of literature classes and figured the writing part would take care of itself. It was a terrible plan, but looking back I guess it worked so maybe not that terrible? Definitely a harder road, though. I graduated in 1995, and didn’t have a novel I thought was worth submitting for another ten years.
Even then, my agent rejected my first two manuscripts as the work of “someone who taught themself to write quite well, but was still making a lot of amateur mistakes”. He suggested I read Writing to Sell, by Scott Meredith, which was an enormous help in rewriting one of my trunk novels into what would become The Warded Man.
The minor in Art History has come in pretty handy over the years, though! I get to work with some incredibly talented artists, and it helps to be able to talk the talk. One of my favorite things to do on book tour is to steal an hour or two to visit museums in tour cities, experiencing in real life pieces of art I only read about in books.
GdM: What do you like in a fantasy story? What thrills you, what repels you? Have you read any books lately that really affected you?
I like a protagonist I can relate to emotionally, and stakes I actually care about. Someone who has to earn their power, and sweat a bit to get the job done. I don’t have a lot of patience for convenient “Chosen One” plot structure, which is something I poke a bit of fun at in Demon Cycle.
My other literary turn-off is what the Turkey City Lexicon refers to as “I Suffered for My Art, So You Should, Too”. Basically, it’s when an author does a TON of research for their book, and feels the need to fill pages with endless extraneous details to show off how much they learned. I don’t need to know that much about the rigging of medieval sailing vessels, thanks.
Reading time is at a premium these days with two young kids home-learning and a partner working from the dining table during a pandemic. I switched the majority of my reading to audiobooks while I hike around the park or fold laundry or whatever. Recently I’ve really enjoyed Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Books, as well as SA Chakraborty’s Daevabad books and RF Kuang’s brutal and amazing Poppy War trilogy. I loved Andy Weir’s Project: Hail Mary.
One book that I did manage to power through in print was Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter (the sequel to Rage of Dragons, which blew me away). I managed to call in a favor and score an advance read copy, and the magic holds in the second book. I’m pretty biased these days, but those books made me feel like a kid reading R.A. Salvatore again.
GdM: I know you are an avid fan of RPG’s and Comics. What are some of your favorites and why?
Not counting computer RPGs, I was always a bit of a D&D purist. I felt the rules and setting were so wide and varied that it let you tell a virtually limitless set of stories, so why keep learning the rules to new games? I invested quite heavily in the hardcover rule books (edition 2.5 was my heyday) and plotted out ridiculously epic stories for my players.
Regarding comics, I read most everything in the 80’s and 90’s. Superheroes were always where my heart was, but I also loved noir comics like Criminal and Sin City, indies like Cerebus, Thieves & Kings, and Stray Bullets, as well as Euro comics (mostly via Heavy Metal magazine, or when I could find translations), and more.
GdM: Has your creative outlet always been writing?
Between the ages of 12-16 I wanted to be a comic book artist, but I was never very good at it. I started writing seriously around then, and finished my first (godawful) novel at 17. It was close to two decades before I wrote a good one. I still draw sometimes, though. It’s relaxing.
GdM: How do you structure your daily writing schedule?
Not sure which is more LOL, “structure” or “schedule”. I used to strive for 1000 words a day, and I still think that’s a good benchmark for writers. It’s little enough that there isn’t really a good excuse for not being able to reach it, but big enough that is scales quickly if you do it consistently. But since having kids (and especially in these last 18 months when the whole family has invaded my home office) having a structured schedule became impossible. I write during the day when I find a quiet window, and work late at night when I can’t.
GdM: You have written five books and four novellas, with a new novel, The Desert Prince coming out soon. Some have been more polarizing in reviews than others. From a seasoned author like yourself, how does an author take criticism, positive or negative, and use it to keep moving forward?
It’s different for everyone, so I don’t want to speak for others, but for myself, I genuinely like my own work. There are lots of times when I think reviewers are being biased or downright unfair (being mean always gets you more clicks), but I’ve never once read a review that made me doubt my artistic choices, or wish I’d done something differently. Some will try to paint me as a bad person because a I made a make-believe person in a make-believe world think or feel or experience something they feel is problematic, but I know why I made those choices, so those criticisms mostly roll off. The thing I am most criticized for is two characters saying they love each other too much (six whole times in one 800 page book!) which kinda says it all.
GdM: You are a lifelong New Yorker and saw September 11th first hand. How had that experience affected you firstly as a New Yorker and secondly as an author?
It was a rough day. My father-in-law was in the Towers, and it was hours before we learned he evacuated in time. So many others weren’t so lucky. Worse was how the trauma brought out some of the worst instincts in Americans and government, leading to horrific foreign policy blunders that continue to ruin lives to this day.
Artistically, though, it gave me insight that I think made my early books resonate. Everyone in New York, myself included, was terrified on September 11, but each of us reacted to that fear in our own unique way, across a broad spectrum. I tried to reflect that in the fear that permeates The Warded Man, as people check their wards and wait for the demons to rise.
GdM: Tell me about your beginnings writing The Painted Man. I read you wrote it on a iPAQ 6515 while riding the subway.
True story. After reading Writing to Sell, I threw away about 60% of the original Painted Man manuscript, including the entire third act. I had an agent interested in the rewrite, but I also had a full time job, friends, a relationship, and other things filling my time. Writing was important to me, so I knew I needed to find the time somewhere.
I had a commute from Brooklyn to Times Square every day, and I mostly spent that time reading. I decided instead to try writing during that commute. I bought a Windows smartphone that had a pared down version of MS Word called Docs to Go, broke my manuscript into chapters that would fit on the phone, and wrote about 300-400 words on the way to work and the same on the way home. At night I would sync it to my desktop, fix all my thumb typos, and add enough to get up to 1000 words for the day. I did that for a year, resulting in the book that’s in stores now. Technically, there were hurdles, but it also taught me that I could be creative anywhere, on command, and that’s a powerful thing.
GdM: The first book of The Demon Cycle series is The Painted Man or The Warded Man, depending on where you live. Why two titles? Which title was the preferred title?
The Painted Man was my original title. Random House US decided they wanted to change it, but took a while to settle on a variant. In that time, HarperCollins UK, who were fine with the title as it was, decided to move ahead and go to press. The book published there in the fall of 2008 as The Painted Man to great success, and then in February of 2009 it published in the US as The Warded Man, losing a bit of momentum because of the change.
That said, The Warded Man has grown on me over the years, and is now my preferred title. I just wish it could have been consistent.
GdM: Labels are thrown around a lot that try to classify and pigeonhole fantasy books into different genres, but they rarely get it right. I have heard The Demon Cycle books described as grimdark, although I didn’t find that description wholly accurate as a reader. How would you describe The Demon Cycle books?
I tend to agree with you. I don’t think my books are grimdark. Sure, I deal with a lot of heavy themes in a scary world, but my books also have a lot of hope, and in the opposite of grimdark tradition, a lot of the characters that seem awful at first turn out to be trying to do the right thing in their own way once you see it from their perspective.
Subgenre labels are useful to booksellers and marketers who don’t have time to read every book, but I think authors do themselves a disservice when they try to write in a subgenre and follow its “rules”.
GdM: The Demon Cycle series is combat-heavy, employing detailed fight scenes. What kind of research do you do for fight scene creation, or do you write what feels natural and flows best in the scene?
Fight choreography is a mini-passion of mine, and I gravitated toward books that did it well. My favorite part when I read The Princess Bride was the long fight between the Man in Black and Inigo atop the Cliffs of Insanity, or Drizzt Do’Urden vs Artemis Entreri in The Halfling’s Gem. I practiced Kendo in college, and follow movie fight choreographers the way others follow lead actors. I’ve been kickboxing for the last 7 years or so, and I consider it a business expense, because the practice dramatically helps my writing. That excitement is probably why fight scenes have always been the one part of writing that flows quickly and easily for me.
GdM: The Krasians have certain similarities with Sparta and spartan culture. What attracted you to the war training aspect of Sparta as a model for The Krasians.
I pulled bits from various cultures when first forming Krasian society because I wanted them to feel real, and plausible, but Krasia and its people very quickly grew into something unique to my world.
The Krasian religion is centered around Sharak Ka, the war on demonkind. In the beginning of The Demon Cycle, before the return of combat warding, that meant fighting demons—immortal, armored creatures that can heal almost any wound in minutes—with plain weapons of wood and steel. The more I thought about it, the more staggering it was that they might survive at all, much less find any kind of victory.
What would it take to forge a warrior with that level of courage and skill? What kind of indoctrination would it take to make an otherwise sane man stand before a charging horde of demons, night after night? How would you best go about it? You wouldn’t use a sword. No one wants to get in close with demon teeth and claws. You’d want long spears, and a shield wall.
So it was sort of natural to pull very general themes from Ancient Sparta. The myth—the perfect warrior, forged in the fires of the agoge and legendary for their suicidal stand against a vastly superior force. But also what I imagine was the reality—flawed, damaged and emotionally stunted men, abused through childhood, traumatized by seeing friends killed and the horror of their nightly war.
GdM: You have very detailed dialects utilized throughout your stories. How did you develop the specific dialects and world-building for the different free cities?
It was a subtle way to convey a sense of isolation. The Free Cities are walled bastions against the demon corelings, each the last remain of some once great duchy of Thesa. They share a common culture and language, but over the many years since demons returned and cut them off from each others, they’ve each developed their own unique character. One of the ways to show that was to have words, usage and phrasing that was unique to each city, and even their vassal hamlets. Not too different from how every town in the UK has it’s own dialect, or even the boroughs of New York, once upon a time.
GdM: I know that The Demon Cycle series has been critiqued for its female characters and the presence of sexual assault. While readers form their own opinions based on their experiences, I found it wonderful to read the series as a woman who loves fantasy. It was hard to find my fantasy heroes growing up, where female characters have agency and are more than pretty faces, and your stories feature women warriors and in a position of power. Did having daughters impact how you wrote your cast and their story arcs?
The Warded Man and most of The Desert Spear were already written when my first daughter was born, so I don’t think that had a lot of impact on those early stories. It came more from my own experiences, and the frustrated sense that fiction as a whole was failing not just women, but everyone by excising women from stories. Women are more than half the population. You mean to tell me intrepid world explorer Indiana Jones only encounters one per movie?
So I made it a point to not just have a female lead in my stories, but to make women half the people you meet, from regular supporting cast members down to the local butcher who gets one dry joke, or the young stable hand who doesn’t even get a line. Varied women, not there for the male gaze, but because they belong. It made the stories feel more real to me.
Like most people, I have loved ones that are survivors of sexual assault. Excluding that aspect of women’s lives and experience, even as I did my best to support friends and family during their healing process, seemed dishonest to me. I wanted those people to feel seen in stories, too. Not just the trauma, but also the triumphs still to come in a life lived. I have never used assault as a shortcut, or in gratuity. But as you say, every reader brings their own experiences and opinions to a story, reading with a unique perspective. It’s what makes books so magical. So while I regret that some readers are put off by that aspect of my books, there are also many many readers who see it closer to my intention, and love the stories all the more for it. I don’t think it’s possible for an artist to make everyone happy, so all we can do is tell the story that feels true to us.
GdM: You are extremely popular in Germany and have referred to yourself as the “David Hasslehoff of fantasy.” How did that come about?
For some reason, my books are very popular in Germany. Vastly more popular per capita than they are in the United States. I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I made a joke one time during some interview that it made me the David Hasselhoff of fantasy, since in the US he’s only TV famous, whereas in Germany he was performing to packed stadiums. The joke got a laugh, so I kept it aspart of my regular routine at events and on podcasts and the like. You never throw away a laugh.
GdM: You have a new book coming out, The Desert Prince that takes place fifteen years after The Core, and it stars Olive Paper and Darin Bales. Can you tell us a bit about The Desert Prince and what to expect and about its main stars, Olive and Darin?
Olive and Darin have grown up in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Olive has never even seen a demon, and Darin, living on the outskirts of the purge zone, avoids them as much as possible. But both have spent their whole lives in the outsize shadows of their hero parents. Most of us know what it’s like to have our parents not approve of our college major or life choices, but what if your parents literally saved humanity from extinction? How does any kid not get lost in that?
In The Desert Prince, their parents aren’t always there to save them, forcing Olive and Darin to find out who they really are.
GdM: What was it like coming back to this world again?
In some ways it was like coming home. I designed the Demon Cycle world to let me tell all sorts of stories, and I had (and still have) a lot of plans for it. But it was difficult, as well, keeping canon with the old series and providing cameos to let longtime readers see what’s become of some fan-favorite characters, while also telling a story that welcomed new readers without burdening them with the baggage of the original series. Anyone can pick up The Desert Prince and dive right in with everything they need to get lost in the adventure.
Read The Desert Prince by Peter V. Brett
The post An Interview with Peter V. Brett appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
August 2, 2021
REVIEW: Wonderland by Zoje Stage
Wonderland is a chilling and captivating horror tale that follows the point of view perspective of Orla, a former formidable ballet dancer who never quite reached the lofty heights of stardom. After her retirement, Orla and her family choose to move away from their city home, relocating to a lovely new rural dwelling right in the middle of the woods. Orla has been the breadwinner for the family over many years, and now it’s her husband Shaw’s time to shine, with the move to the wilderness hopefully inspiring his artistic talents. He paints “surreal versions of things he’s photographed” and is smitten with their new farmhouse and their steps into nature, almost like something has been drawing him here. Making up the family unit with Orla and Shaw is their inquisitive and insightful nine-year-old daughter Eleanor Queen, and her younger brother Tycho who has a stuffed toy moose that he adores.
“As much as she’d tried to fully embrace the move – for her children’s sake, and because Shaw wanted it so very badly – a fear shadowed her that her urban family wasn’t suited to the wilds of nowhere.”
The four members of the Bennett family are the only characters in this novel. Interestingly, two of the characters are sensitive and in tune with nature, somehow able to link with the elements, spirits, or whatever otherworldly entity they soon realise surrounds their new property. The younger Tycho is heartwarmingly innocent and is always into something. I couldn’t stop myself smiling when he wanted to create a snow dragon. Then there is our narrator, who is often the only one who seems to be making logical and rational choices even when getting distressed and upset with the uncertainties and the “what on earth is going on”-ness of their situation. As readers, at certain times in Wonderland, we’re uncertain of Orla’s reliability and if events are only going on in her mind.
The novel features dark and magical surroundings. The house, the woods, the weather, peculiar animals, and the trees (which I pictured as extremely skeletal) share a lot of page time with the family and they’re all bizarre and intriguing in their own ways. Stage has an excellent and perhaps twisted imagination and this novel features supurb imagery throughout. There is one element in horror stories that is always a winner for me and that is featuring trees that seem to move, or have their own agenda, so that’s a plus for Wonderland’s final score.
I will be honest, some segments of Wonderland dragged and it was sometimes repetitive. Although this did add a sense of foreboding and trepidation, Orla searching for a family member in the house or the surrounding woods seemed to happen quite frequently and became a bit grating.
To summarise, Wonderland is a beautifully written, suspenseful, and often surprising novel that whisked me away from reality with its engrossing, magical qualities. Although I may be rating harshly, only scoring this a 7/10, I have a lot of respect for its uniqueness and wonderful imagery. It all wraps up neatly and in a rewarding fashion for readers who’ve been on this often uncomfortable journey of dread and desperation with Orla.
Read Wonderland by Zoje Stage
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August 1, 2021
REVIEW: The Past is Red by Catherynne Valente
The Past is Red is Catherynne Valente’s novella-length sequel to her short story, The Future Is Blue (also included with this book.) It follows Tetley Abednego, the most hated girl in Garbagetown.
The Future is Blue started for a climate change anthology by Jonathan Strahan, called Drowned Worlds. One of the questions that anthology asked was, “What kind of stories would we tell in the new world created by the climate crisis?”
Valente’s response: Well, we’ll tell exactly the same kinds of stories we do now. Exactly the same kind of story we always have, through every apocalypse: the fall of Rome, the Black Death, Gilgamesh’s flood, the Warring States, all of it, the many times and ways in which the world has ended. We’ll tell stories about being born and falling in love and fighting with their families and hoping for something better and dying, because that’s what humans do and it won’t even take very long before that drowned world is just the world, the absolutely normal and even beautiful landscape of everyday life that, for the children and grandchildren of the end of civilization, will never have been any different.
The Past is Red is a slice of life in this post-apocalyptic scenario. The only safe place for humanity to live any longer is Garbagetown, which is just the real-world Great Pacific Garbage Patch made significantly larger. This massive pile of garbage drifts through the ocean, with humans claiming different pieces of it for their own territories—Candle Hole, Electric City, Pill Hill, Winditch, Matchstick Forest. The small parts of how people live on Garbagetown were fascinating—how wedding customs would change, how they ate, how they used what we would throw away.
There’s a place in Toyside where you can pull one big tangled ratking of a string and a mountain of dolls scream at you with a sound like the death of joy while saltwater pours out of their mouths. I’ve done it twice. It’s the best.
The Past is Red is a book with voice. Tetley Abednego is funny, cynical, insightful, emotional, and it all coalesces perfectly. She is both an optimist and a realist, and it never conflicts. She’s fiercely protective of Garbagetown, even though it’s never treated her well. She was largely neglected as a child, but her decision at the end of the short story The Future is Blue means that she wakes up every day to new slurs painted on her door. Anyone in Garbagetown is legally allowed to abuse her, though not kill her, and her response is “Thank you for your instruction.” Mostly she just waits for them to tire of it so she can go back to doing what she likes.
But she hates us, and what we did to our future.
They’re all dead, so none of their rules kissed them goodnight with a story or whatever you were going on about just then. Seems like someone should have thought of a rule that goes Do Not Fuck Your Only Planet To Death Under Any Circumstances. Seems like that should have been rule number one.
The dual plots of the book include her marriage to King Xanax, a man who uncovered what the various pharmaceutical pills in all their washed-up bottles do, and her discovery of a piece of our technology that can talk to her, with a limited artificial intelligence. Both of these stories collide, but the meeting of these as plot points feels perfunctory, while the thematic points raised by both those plot-lines is far more fascinating.
The Past Is Red ends, much like The Future is Blue, with Tetley making a decision that she believes will help her people without letting anyone else in on her secret.
The Past is Red is brilliant, both furious and delighted, bursting with life and voice and setting, and my favorite book I’ve read this year.
Read The Past is Red by Catherynne Valente
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