Adrian Collins's Blog, page 176

Five amazing fan films grimdark fans will love

It’s no secret that I love fan films. The absence of the big dollars a studio wields are offset by just being able to make the fan film that contributors thing is fucking cool. No execs, no big investors, just people who love the universe or world and want to add something quality to it. Sure, you’ll likely sacrifice a hundred thousand soldiers ranked fifty deep upon the field facing off against an ocean of orks, but you’ll often get that more character-driven and close-in story than you’ll see the franchises produce for cinema.

Much like the giant leaps self-publishing has taken over the last couple of decades, as fan film creators become more innovative, have access to affordable tools that enable them to edit, animate, and create, the quality of these films is going up at a steep incline. Add to that better and better props and kit becoming readily available for the films with live action (eg. just check out the kit on the soldiers of Gondor in The Horn of Gondor!) and fan film actors and narrators really hitting their chops, and you have hours of quality content worth watching for almost any SFF interest you may have.

For me, one of the easiest ways to show fan film value is the studio-produced Ultramarines versus the fan-produced Astartes. Admittedly, there are a few years in technology progressions sitting between the two productions, but from a baseline story and I suppose visual-capability-at-the-time perspective, one team absolutely nailed space marines while the other produced an okay animation and a fairly corny story. Ultramarines was met with an almost collective meh, while Astartes pretty much hasn’t failed to blow anybody’s socks off.

Without further ado, I give you you your next few hours of visual entertainment.

Astartes

A five part animated series showing the legendary space marines in a void boarding action to take out the heretics. Easily the best animated piece of 40k fiction ever made. Creator Syama Pedersen took the time to talk us through some of his inspirations and approach, in this interview.

Excitingly on the 10th of March, 2020, Syama has been picked up by Games Workshop to create official animated content for them! Check out the announcement here. The full video is embedded below, but it doesn’t look like the community page has their sizing down pat, yet, so either click below and full-screen it, or head over to the Warhammer community video here.

The Horn of Gondor

After the invasion of the fierce hordes of Balchoth, Gondor is on a brink of destruction. The Ruling steward Cirion places his hope to the North, to the half-forgotten nation of the Horselords. Will the knight Borondir succeed and convey Cirion’s message?

Judge Minty

Judge William Minty has spent his entire adult life policing the violent streets of Mega-City One – and now he’s slowing down.

When a lapse of judgement almost ends his life, he knows that it’s time to quit.

He can choose to teach in the Academy, or he can leave the city and walk alone out into the anarchy of the Cursed Earth, taking law to the lawless.

Helsreach

On war-torn Armageddon, Black Templars Chaplain Grimaldus is charged with the defence of Hive Helsreach. In the face of countless greenskins and their cunning war machines, can Grimaldus hold the line?

Rebel Scum

A Rebellion pilot is hounded by death from the merciless Empire and a frozen grave, after being abandoned during the retreat of the Rebel Alliance from Hoth.

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REVIEW: Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade by Ryan North (adaptor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Albert Monteys (Illustrations)

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the American masters. Wry, tragicomic, simple yet constantly evocative. There are reasons for his enduring popularity, and reasons to be worried when posthumous adaptations such as Slaughterhouse Five are announced.

Yet the writer of the adaptation, Ryan North, has been one of my favorite writers for a long time. I’ve enjoyed his work since Dinosaur Comics was still in its infancy, and I’ve seen him get more mainstream success with Chooseable Path Shakespeare books, a mainstream Marvel comic with The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and his ‘How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler.’

Adapting a famous piece of prose can be done simply, but North and Albert Monteys, the artist, wanted to make sure this graphic novel version of Slaughterhouse Five used the medium of comics to its fullest potential.

If you’re a newcomer to Slaughterhouse Five, it’s a masterpiece, and the best anti-war novel of all time. Too often, anti-war novels either get elaborate with gruesome depictions of war to turn the stomach or make overly simple platitudes. Slaughterhouse Five does neither.

It follows Billy Pilgrim, an inept soldier, captured by the Germans, who is sent to POW camp in Dresden prior to the city’ firebombing. Billy survives when most of the city has died. But he becomes unstuck in time, leaping about through parts of his life without control. When he gets abducted by aliens, it’s really a relief.

To be clear, they didn’t cause him to be unstuck in time. The Tramalfadorians explain to him that they’re always unstuck in time the same way too. They see someone at all points in their life simultaneously.

In many ways, Slaughterhouse-Five is the perfect book to adapt into a graphic novel, because in a graphic novel you can also see all the panels simultaneously. There are numerous fantastic touches through the adaptation that are things that can only work in a graphic novel.

The tone of the book is perfect. This had been a concern—I like North’s writing, but he’s much more upbeat and positive than Vonnegut. Clearly, North took extensive notes and used as much of Vonnegut’s actual voice as he could. When he couldn’t—such as in Derby’s speech, which was never explicated in Vonnegut’s text—the effect is almost seamless.

Montey’s art is phenomenal throughout. It has a very animated style to it that fits the story. When things are subdued—in particular the Dresden sections—the colours are significantly more muted. When things are more excited—in particular the Tramalfadorian sections—the colours are brighter and more lively, with the Tramalfadorian book being a particular highlight.

There are also some smaller, very clever things with the art. Whenever Billy goes through time, there are different colour lines suggesting which timeline he’s heading towards. When Billy gets a bit of tasty nutrition in the Dresden section, he suddenly turns bright orange, suggesting vibrancy and health.

Slaughterhouse-Five is an excellent adaptation of some exemplary source material. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Read Slaughterhouse-Five

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6 Historical Fiction Books for Grimdark Fans

As 2020 and all of its dystopic qualities slowly turn into a distant memory, it’s probably time to counterbalance the increasing promise of a vaccine-enabled, normal life by recommending a few historical fiction books which can be savoured by grimdark fans throughout 2021. I’m not sure you’ll find ‘grimdark historical’ listed as a book category on Amazon, but it is my favourite genre and each of the following six titles left a lasting impression.

As always, the required grimdark ingredients of ‘violent or bleak subject matter and a dystopian setting’ are included in each of these stories, along with what I deem to be the other crucial elements of a fine read: a formidable protagonist, a nemesis (or nemeses) from hell, impossible odds and, where possible, a historical clusterf**k setting of epic proportions.

Sharpe’s Tiger by Bernard Cornwell

It’s hard not to root for an underdog, and I’m not sure you’ll get many better underdogs than Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe. The illegitimate spawn of a whore, Sharpey is forced into a guttersnipe childhood and a life of thieving and murder before he enlists. This prequel finds him a young conscript  in India, the victim of his hateful sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. Hakeswill lands Sharpey in a bit of trouble so that he is court martialled and served with punishment consisting of a fatal flogging of 2000 lashes. After a hair-curling 200 lashes and well on his way to a miserable death, Sharpey is miraculously saved by the intervention of (none other than) the Duke of Wellington, who needs an expendable soldier for an impossible mission which may topple Britain’s unassailable Indian enemy: the Tipoo of Seringapatam.

If you think that things are already looking bleak for Sharpey, he’s yet to take on countless other dangers which include the Tippoo himself, a ruler who delights in watching his pet elephants publicly mash his captured enemies into a pulp. Although this number is the first read in the lengthy Sharpe series, it was written after Cornwell penned the popular Peninsular war instalments that mainly take place in Portugal. The writing is inch perfect and not a word is wasted in this stirring romp filled with impossible odds. I cannot think of a better structured novel, this is tight, neat work by a master craftsman who needs no introduction.

Read Sharpe’s Tiger by Bernard Cornwell

Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

I’m not sure that any protagonist has ever held such a legendary and mythical stature as Diego Alatriste y Tenorio. In truth the veteran Spanish soldier Alatriste is no captain because he cannot afford an officer commission: it’s his fellow soldiers who nicknamed him ‘the captain’ when he was once forced to fill in for a slain officer of that rank in the middle of a raging battle. Despite his lack of titles, Alatriste projects an aura of quiet authority amongst the Spanish tercios, for none of the words he utters are ever idle and he’s also deadly with a sword.

Yet beneath his menacing exterior lies a deep loyalty to his comrades, especially when he promises his dying friend Lope Balboa that he’ll raise Lope’s son back in Madrid. Alatriste is as good as his word, practically becoming foster father to a young Íñigo Balboa, through whose eyes the story of Alatriste is told. Pérez-Reverte’s never-ending sentences are highly evocative in the way they describe the grit and decadence of early 17th century Madrid, capital of an Empire which is on the downward slide. When not fighting in the hell of Flanders, Spain’s soldiers are forced to hire out their blades for a few coppers on the street corners of Madrid where they eke out a miserable existence. This is the setting of Alatriste’s first adventure when he falls afoul of the highly perilous and sinister Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, when he refuses to kill two English travellers. This book’s an awesome thriller which popularised the long-dead swashbuckler genre and imbued it with a gritty reality. It’s also got a few equally excellent sequels which have been translated into English.

Read Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

The Religion by Tim Willocks

This author is certainly the best writer listed so far, whose prose is both sensuous and savage. His protagonist is Matthias Tannhauser, a Saxon that was raised as a child by Ottoman Turks, who developed him into an outstanding Janissary (which is essentially the equivalent of a sixteenth century killing machine with a few other dazzling skills – like cooking – also thrown in). In this outing, Tannhauser has long left the (Janissary) ‘brotherhood of the spoon’ behind, having taken up the lucrative career of an arms dealer instead.

Desperate for his skills is the lady Carla, a disgraced Maltese countess residing in Sicily, whose bastard son is lost on the island of Malta. Tannhauser accepts the unenviable task of finding the boy, a decision which is more than a little crazy when you consider that the whole might of the Ottoman empire is sailing towards the little island to destroy the Knights who live there. The Great Siege of Malta is but a day away from kicking off, which will swiftly render the island the bloody mosh pit of a titanic, clash of Super Bowl proportions between Islam and Christendom.

I think this novel contains the best descriptions of the awful siege ever written in both fiction and non-fiction, since Willocks surgically describes the carnage and the lesser-known horrific consequences of the clash which probably eclipse most Grimdark writings (except that these events actually happened). It’s also a marvel to read how the freethinking (i.e. atheist), peerless killer Matthias is forced to survive both zealot knights and perilous Ottomans long enough to find the boy, during one of the worst sieges of all time which will have life-altering consequences for all those involved in it.

PS the sequel to this novel ‘The Twelve Children Of Paris’ will melt your face off, Willocks’ writing is from another planet.

Read The Religion by Tim Willocks

Q by Luther Blissett

Gert from the Well is a man on the run in this intelligent, sprawling romp by the anonymous quintet of academics from Bologna. Subversive undertones are prevalent throughout the novel which takes place following the Protestant reformation and the German peasant revolts. Gert was formerly a member of the irreverent Anabaptists (who hate other Protestants almost as badly as Catholics), formerly led by the slain, radical theologian Thomas Müntzer – he of the cry ‘ommnia sunt communia’ (everything is common).

Hot on Gert’s heels is Qoèlet (Q for short), a spy of the recently restored Catholic power, who is bent on seeking out all of Muntzer’s followers to have them all executed. Along the way Gert is forced to change his name countless times, also finding himself caught up in the siege of Münster as the story unfolds for thirty years across Germany and Italy. A cat and mouse game recounted in the first person, it’s a pioneering novel which expands the traditional bounds of historical fiction and transports the reader to places less known in the usual Anglo-Saxon historical accounts. The sequel ‘Altai’ (written by Wu Ming) is also highly recommended.

Read Q by Luther Blissett

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E Howard

No doubt everyone’s heard of Conan the Barbarian, yet few know of Robert E Howard’s other creation, the dour, wandering Puritan vigilante Solomon Kane, on an endless mission to set the Elizabethan world he inhabits to rights. Kane is as ascetic as he is lethal, armed with a brace of flintlock pistols and a blade as he fights Arab slave traders, Barbary pirates, gangs of brigands, vampires, shadowy ghost riders, magical severed hands and any other illicit force of evil he finds in his path. The movie with James Purefoy playing Kane met with mixed reviews, however the stories remain high on pulp fiction fun and originality, as well as some long-forgotten Grimdark inspiration.

Read The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E Howard

The Whale Road by Robert Low

Low burst onto the scene with this dazzling debut in which a young Viking, Orm the Bear-Slayer, must grow up in a hostile and fast-shifting world. The tang of sea salt can be tasted on every evocative word as Orm and his band take up a quest on both sea and land to find the hidden treasure hoard of Attila the Hun. As expected, there’s gallows humour aplenty to go with the coarse swagger of Orm’s band. Their life aboard their Viking ship is also grittily and convincingly realised, to the point that you may at times feel seasick.

Which is not to mention the unexpected twists and fantastical ending which will leave you stunned. Low’s Achilles’ heel remains the infinite number of names that he throws at the reader with little introduction (he’s not one to spoon-feed anyone) but in this first outing the constant travels of Orm’s party means that you quickly get across who’s who in the band, especially since a fair few are lost along the way…

Read our review of The Whale Road.

Read The Whale Road by Robert Low

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REVIEW: Odin’s Game by Tim Hodkinson

I received a review copy of Odin’s Game in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Tim Hodkinson, Aria Fiction, and Head of Zeus.

Odin’s Game begins the tale of Einar, a young lad from Iceland who spends his time helping his mother on their farm, hoping to win the affections of one of the local ladies, and practicing at Knattleikr in preparation for the yearly showdown with the neighbouring village. Events take an unfortunate turn for our protagonist quite early on in the novel and he finds himself outlawed from his estate and Iceland as a whole. Following the prompting of his mother he leaves the only home he’s known and travels to the Orkney Islands where his uncle Thorfinn ‘Skull Cleaver’ resides as Jarl. How he will be received and what will happen to him during his two years of exile is uncertain. Einar goes to seek his fate and hopes along the way he can unravel the mystery of who his father is.

Set in the 10th century, Odin’s Game is a quick fun read, full of excellent action passages, great supporting characters and exciting twists. The chapters can be devoured in 5-10 minutes and being as riveting as they were, “just one more chapter” easily turned into reading 100+ pages in one session. Einar is a fine protagonist and it was enjoyable to see how he handles himself, and the thoughts that go through his mind, during some of the awkward and worrying scenarios he finds himself in throughout his adventure to the Orkneys and then to Ireland.

“‘Don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘To jarls and kings, the lives of men like us are just pieces in a game of tafl. But the nobles in turn are just pawns in Odin’s greater game.'”

Hodkinson’s Dark Ages Europe was presented really well, being just descriptive enough to paint a clear image in my mind’s eye without detracting from the intense, well-worked set pieces and thrilling pace. I have no idea how historically accurate any of what is presented throughout The Whale Road Chronicles is, but I knew after about 40-pages that I was absolutely all-in, just going with the novel’s flow as if it was a fantasy read set in a world I’m more familiar with. The old gods like Odin and Thor are revered by many but the messages of the Christ God are circulating throughout Europe too.

I’ve had a bit of a reading drought recently and could not decide what to read next. I decided to pick up Odin’s Game because I had no expectations and knew nothing about it other than that it was supposed to be fast-paced historical fiction. I’m glad I made that choice. Odin’s Game is a very solid historical fiction story that is gritty and violent, yet is still a joy to read. My only, very minor issue is that there were a few errors that I believe an editor should have picked up but that didn’t distract me from my extremely positive reading experience and I’ll be moving on to the next book shortly. Recommended.

“When he was a boy the thought of travelling at night had evoked terror at the idea of what monsters lurked in the dark. Trolls, witches, dark elves and, the most fearsome of all, the dreadful walking dead, the draugr, who rose from their burial mounds at night and haunted the darkness, waiting to pounce and kill. This night, however, Einar was in the company of the monsters.”

Read Odin’s Game by Tim Hodkinson

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REVIEW: Master Artificer by Justin Travis Call

Following his epic masterpiece Master of Sorrows, Justin Call once again shows his readers how fantasy classics are born with the next installment in the series, Master Artificer. 

Firstly, let me describe the world that Master of Sorrows and Master Artificer takes place in. It is a world of old gods and new, great vengeance and power, and a Master of Sorrows, Anneviog de Breth also known as Annev. Throughout the first novel, we discover what it means to be a Master of Sorrows and what that means for Anneviog’s future. Initially, Annev worked as a deacon at a school that trained thieves to go out into the world and steal magical items. The school then hoarded and hid away those magical items from the world. In Annev’s world, anyone being caught having or using magic is flayed and stoned, and it is the greatest of sins to have the magical gift. Annev lives with and serves a man named Sodar; Sodar is a father figure to Annev and helps hide Annev’s magical gifts from the world with his own magic. 

Annev’s school is challenging. Only the best will pass the tests and become someone called an avatar. But, as one can imagine, it is not easy balancing the public half, avatar trainee and rule-follower with the secret half, magic-user, and possibly as a destined hero. That is the crux of the first book. 

The second book starts up right at the close of the first. We have Annev and company looking upon the wrecked ruins of their home school and, in many ways, their lives. Annev has many choices ahead of him to make. Immediately there is a tonal shift in the setting and writing of the second book—the first book has a lightness to the prose and worldbuilding. Annev has an innocence that permeates the first half of the first book. But that innocence was destroyed in the destruction of his school and life. Annev was innocent until circumstances dictated that he start making tough choices. The second book is after Annev has made choices that he cannot come back from. He is no longer naive, and as the story progresses and the book gets darker and more complex, you will see just how far Annev will go. 

I come from a deep and abiding love for the world of Grimdark books. So, I am familiar with morally grey characters making repugnant choices for the right or wrong reasons. Grimdark has profoundly flawed and complex characters but a slightly different tone than Rothfuss, Sanderson, or Jordan’s classic type fantasy. Master of Sorrows read much more like the stories from the contemporaries mentioned above. However, Master Artificer laughs in villain at this. 

We are well and truly into grimdark territory here. Master Artificer is about Annev’s future and what it will hold. Everyone seems to want to either kill him or control him. Annev is not having any of it. At the same time, the people who Annev cares about are all forging paths themselves. Each one plays a part in Annev’s future in some way. 

The question becomes, is Annev a good guy or a villain? Because every story needs a villain. But on what side does Annev fall? Or are we at the point that there are no sides, just grayness and a series of choices done for seemingly right reasons? It is getting harder and harder to tell, especially after the final third of the Master Artificer, where things get tremendously dark. I am talking torture with hooks, flaying, and exsanguination. The lightness of book one is now and truly dead, blood-splattered and decaying, and Annev stands upon a proverbial knife’s edge covered in blood. You know that scene in Star Wars where Anakin Skywalker kills the children because he is well and truly dark; you know that feeling you got as a viewer, yeah? That is the feeling I had for the last third of the novel. 

As of the Eye of the World Series, The Silent Gods series thus far is not only about Annev as the main protagonist, but of those who play supporting roles in his life. Whether they friend or foes. So in that, it is many books rolled into one. Any of the stories featured could be their own series themselves. Fin’s arc is especially fantastic and should be a series in its own right. Fin’s plotting to take down the crooked guilds that by waging a secret war against Luqura’s corrupt guilds in the hopes of forging his own criminal empire is phenomenal. 

I enjoyed the detailed characters and plotting revolving around all of the characters, but it does make for one chonker of a book. Master Artificer is just shy of 900 pages, and it makes good use of the time and covers a lot of ground. Call is continually moving us through the various stories, you can tell as a reader how detailed a world he has created, and he has concrete goals and pathways for all his characters. Although, I have to admit to getting lost a time or two. A lot is going on with these characters. And, much like the Wheel of Time, I am going to need to start plotting out character arcs to keep track. 

Also, in a very Call like fashion, we are left with some serious cliffhangers. Many fantasy novels have mini-arcs that sit within the primary story arc. Master Artificer has a few of those; a large section behaves as a detective mystery of a sort. But even with the little bits of resolution we get as readers, none of it is satisfying, and it is evident that these arcs are but small morsels to tide over the reader. Most if not all of the plotting of this book is in service to the Major multi-book character arc of Annev in one way or another. So, after 900 pages and the immensity of this story, I wanted more. I was not satisfied, but in the best possible way, and that says a lot. 

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. You want to know what will happen with the characters, and when Call dispenses a tidbit to us readers, we cheer heartily or are appalled to the marrow of our bones. Justin Call is quickly establishing himself to be the new force in the fantasy world and a contemporary to some of our best living fantasy writers. His books will find a home amongst the great fantasy series of our time and be poured over for years to come. It is an exciting thing to see as a reader. A new classic is unfolding before our eyes.  

Read Master Artificer by Justin Travis Call

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REVIEW: The Wicked by Douglas Nicholas

The Wicked is the second instalment in the late Douglas Nicholas’ Something Red series. I picked up this novel since I greatly enjoyed the language and originality of the first instalment in the series named Something Red, in which the reader is introduced to what Nicholas himself referred to as ‘Molly & Co.’

At first sight, Molly & Co. appear to be an innocent troupe of travelling musicians, consisting of old crone Molly, her granddaughter the redheaded Nemain, the silent soldier Jack Brown and an adopted orphan named ‘Hob’ – that was the diminutive of ‘Robert’ in Medieval England, which is the setting of both Something Red and The Wicked.

Yet looks can be deceiving, for there is a lot more to this quartet of wandering musicians than meets the eye (even though Hob himself is not yet fully aware of it). Nicholas himself was a poet and a keen medieval scholar, so that his mastery of words radiates through the pages of his fiction, which is sprinkled with delightful little historical anecdotes that instantly immerse the reader in the period. Finding this book on the shelves of a Sydney bookstore was like unexpectedly coming across a beautiful oasis while travelling through a desert of fabricated mediocrity. It combines genuine literary quality with genre fiction, a mix that’s so hard to find these days.

The author also injects a high degree of mystery into Molly & Co.’s travels, since on their journey they often come across terrible murders carried out by a malevolent force which wanders through the wilds ahead of them. This whodunnit element stirs up enough suspense to keep the reader glued to the wanderings of the four musicians who encounter people of various walks of life along the road, which further brings to life the thirteenth-century English setting.

So I was very curious to read its sequel The Wicked, to find out if an author of Nicholas’ abilities was able to replicate the qualities I so enjoyed in his debut Something Red. Creating a great sequel is something notoriously difficult to pull off, and upon reading the first few pages of The Wicked I first thought that the author was sticking to the tried and tested template of Something Red. Yet as with most things Douglas Nicholas, nothing is what it first seems, so that Molly & Co. reluctantly find themselves facing greater danger than that encountered in the first instalment. Once more a great evil plagues the lands they travel to, caused a more fearsome and formidable enemy than Molly has ever faced before. It is easy for me to sit here and type ‘fearsome and formidable’, yet to convey those qualities convincingly takes writing of consistent and truly evocative quality.

There is a great fantastical denouement at the end, and it is interesting to read how the younger characters in the quartet grow in stature throughout the tale. It is with a tinge of sadness that I recommend this book and accord it a five-star rating, since Nicholas passed away suddenly and unexpectedly five years ago. Yet I very much look forward to reading the other three books in the series, which consist of two sequels and one short story spin off.

Read The Wicked by Douglas Nicholas

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REVIEW: A Time for Swords by Matthew Harffy

A Time for Swords is a fresh story from Matthew Harffy, author of The Bernicia Chronicles. Stepping away from the popular character of Beobrand, Harffy delivers more gripping historical fiction following Hunlaf, a monk forced to stand and fight when caught up in the infamous raid on Lindisfarne in 793.

A Time for Swords is told from the first-person perspective of Hunlaf.  It is through this young, God-fearing monk’s eyes that we first witness the destruction and devastation caused by the raiding Norsemen as they slaughter the people of Lindisfarne, raping and pillaging before fleeing with the stolen goods taken from the monastery. Distraught at the mayhem forced upon the peaceful land, Hunlaf becomes enraged and fights to protect his people. Knowing that the Vikings will return to raid the coast again, Hunlaf enters an uneasy alliance with one of the assailants, Runolf, who had been abandoned after fighting against his own people when defending innocent children caught up in the battle.

This is where the story really steps things up. The suspense of not knowing when the Norsemen will attack keeps the characters and the reader on edge as Hunlaf and Runolf find others to aid in their cause. Harffy acknowledges the influence of Kurosawa in this novel – a motley band of warriors with different skills standing together to defend the helpless has been done with varying degrees of success since Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven and thankfully, Harffy is a talented writer with the skills to pull it off here. The story is well-paced with a mix of suspense and brutal, intense fighting, full of engaging characters.

A Time for Swords is a must-read for fans of brutal, well-researched historical fiction. If you have enjoyed Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories and don’t know where to look for your next fix – well, you’ve found it and you will not be disappointed! For those who are yet to dip their toe in the genre, I’d recommend this as a starting point. Excellent prose, interesting characters, visceral battles and a cracking twist or two prove that Matthew Harffy is an author on the rise. An excellent first tale in what I hope will be an eventful and thrilling series.

Read A Time for Swords by Matthew Harffy

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REVIEW: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix is a nostalgic trip to hell and back with best friends, Walkmans, and New Coke. It is as fun as the title suggests. 

“She could decide how she was going to be. She had a choice. Life could be an endless series of joyless chores, or she could get totally pumped and make it fun. There were bad things, and there were good things, but she got to choose which things to focus on. Her mom focused only on the bad things. Abby didn’t have to.”

I remember the 1980s. I remember E.T., legwarmers, tall gravity-defying hair, and the mall. I have a picture from 5th grade that is spectacular. All that feels very far away now, as it is 2021. But, just for a moment, Grady Hendrix transported me back to my childhood for a wild ride.

My Best Friends Exorcism follows two best friends Abigail and Gretchen, from the inception of their friendship, during the 4th grade when Gretchen gave Abigail a bible for her birthday at an E.T. themed roller rink party, through High School when their friendship gets much hazier and is tested by literal demonic influence. Abigail, the book’s protagonist, sees life as a before and after. Before Gretchen, and after. The two of them are inseparable. But, after a wild night in a forest with tabs of LSD, Gretchen comes back… different. At first, Abigail can’t figure it out and blames benign things. But there is something dark in the heart of her best friend, and she is the only one who can save her. 

“Corn dogs,” the exorcist said, “are all the proof I need that there is a God.”

I have an almost identical set of friendships with a couple of girls I grew up with. We did many of the things that Abigail and Gretchen did. I remember one of my best friends doing the entire dance from Thriller in a parking lot, seriously. She is amazingly talented. But, I know that people who go through school have friends like this. At any era. The details might be different, but at heart, the feelings are the same. Some people come into your life and help shape you. They help make you into the person you are going to be. Sometimes they stay for a while, and sometimes they last for a lifetime. But they remain in your heart. These connections are the strings that Grady Hendrix plucks when you read this novel. 

What I am saying here is that although this book spoke to me on a very, very specific level. It will resonate with just about anyone who reads it. Because, while the era is different, the relationship is the same. Abigail and Gretchen love each other, a particular kind of love made of pinky swears and lifetime promise. Promises that will probably fall away as age and responsibilities change the nature of their lives. But, promises and intention none-the-less. And Abigail is going to save Gretchen, even when she doubts her sanity and even if she dies trying. 

Also, this is a horror novel. It has exorcism in the title, so very graphic and horrifying things happen. But it is told in a Grady Hendrix-type way that balances the narrative and horrific elements with fun and comedic things. He balances light and dark moments, so much so that, at times, you let your guard down as a reader. Then kaboom, something scary that reminds you that there is something seriously wrong with Gretchen. 

The characters are very well developed. I enjoyed learning about all of them, even the supporting characters. If this were an 80s horror movie, many of them would have probably been sliced and diced by Jason Voorhees by now. Instead, Grady gives them a different sort of treatment. We get to know them and watch how Grady twists the proverbial knife in their lives. It is very well done. 

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a stand-out book with dark and twisted moments of humor that will appeal to almost any reader. Think Stranger Things mixed with The Exorcism all to the soundtrack of 1980s Madonna. It is entertaining as hell, especially if you enjoy a sprinkling of pop-culture references. I am finding Hendrix’s entire catalog entertaining thus far. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is the third Hendrix book I have read, the first being Horrostor followed by We Sold Our Souls. I have plans to read two more in 2021. You really can’t go wrong with his books.

Read My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

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An Interview With Ryan North

GdM – Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

Hi, I’m Ryan!  If I were to drop in a bio about myself here, it’d PROBABLY say something like “Ryan North is the New York Times-bestselling and Eisner-winning writer whose recent work includes the non-fiction How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller, the semi-fictional graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and the so-far-fictional Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series for Marvel. He’s also twice collaborated with William Shakespeare on choose-your-own-path versions of his plays. He lives in Toronto, where he writes for video games, television, and his long-running webcomic Dinosaur Comics, and he once messed up walking his dog so badly it made the news.” Probably that’s what it’d say.

GdM – Your most recent work is a graphic novel adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five. What was your reaction to being asked to adapt Vonnegut, of all people?

Fear, mainly!  I’m a huge fan of him and absolutely did not want to mess it up.  You don’t want to be the guy who ruined Vonnegut.  But once I got into the project the fear went away and was replaced with “okay, what’s the best way to make this work and solve all the little story problems that crop up when moving from one medium to another.”  I basically imagined that I was an editor and I’d hired Vonnegut to write a comic called “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE” and he’d turned in the prose novel instead!  So clearly it’s a great book, but it’s entirely unsuitable for comics, and my job was now to fix it and cover for him. What surprised me is how well that worked. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE slid so well into the new medium, and there’s lots of what Kurt does in the prose that works even better in comics.  The way he describes the Tralfamadorian book, for example – paragraphs each describing a single urgent image, which, when taken together, form an image of life that is beautiful and deep – hey, that’s comics right there.

GdM – Vonnegut has a very tragicomic sensibility. Your own work tends to be more upbeat. What was it like adapting something with such a different tone to it?

It wasn’t that hard at all!  I wouldn’t be the first writer to confess that, after reading Vonnegut, having to be careful what I write, because his style is so great and so infectious that you start sounding like him, start ripping him off.  And normally you have to guard against that, but when doing an adaptation you can lean into it!  There were places in the comic where I had to write things that weren’t in the book, places where the prose novel describes a conversation but doesn’t tell you what’s actually said.  This works great in prose but less well in comics, so it was like a little prank Vonnegut was playing on me – and as much as you have to condense things to work in comics, I had to flesh these out some.   I’m pleased when people tell me they can’t pick those segments out.  I passed as Vonnegut!

GdM – What was it like working with Albert Monteys? What were some of his suggestions for the book that you felt worked well?

He’s been great, and the book is great because of him.  He’s so insanely talented.  Just off the top of my head, one of the things he did with colour was have the characters change to orange once they tasted the orange syrup that they’d stolen.  It’s such a simple, beautiful, instantly-intuitive way of showing what was going on in the narrative, how this syrup was affecting them – and he told that story entirely with colour.  Gorgeous.

GdM – The Tramalfadorian notion of time feels like it was perfectly meant for comics, and it was pulled off brilliantly. Were there other elements of Slaugherhouse-Five that fit perfectly into comics? What did you and Albert Monteys do to use the medium to its fullest in this adaptation?

One of the biggest changes we made was to turn Kilgore Trout from a failed scifi novelist into a failed cartoonist.  I liked it for the meta-joke: comics used to be seen as a juvenile, degenerate medium – especially at the time(s) the story takes place – so it let us humiliate this poor guy even more.  But it also let us illustrate his stories as if they were these classic comic adventures (which Albert knocked out of the park, incidentally: even his colouring there matches the style at the time).  And it works so well that it’s like they were meant to be seen that way.  It was a little change – an easy one that I think anyone would make, given the circumstances – and it felt so natural and intentional.  It was a very pleasant surprise!

But you’re right – the Tralfamadorian notion of time is really comics adjacent.  There’s a scene where Billy reads one of their books, and Vonnegut describes it as a paragraphs, each urgently describing a single scene, which when taken together add up to something beautiful.  Change “paragraph” to “image” and you’ve got a pretty great description of how comics works right there, so it was another easy change to show the Tralfamadorian book as a double-page spread of fascinating, inscrutable, wondrous comics.

GdM – Given the opportunity, are there other Vonnegut novels you would want to adapt?

Honestly, given the opportunity, I’d love to work with Albert and go through all of them in chronological order.  I’m not sure we’ll ever get that opportunity – even adapting one of Vonnegut’s work was a huge honour and clearly a career highlight – but that’d be my dream job right there.

GdM – You collaborate on your comics and clearly enjoy it. What do you like about collaboration? Are there any artists you’ve been looking forward to collaborating with?

Comics can be such a collaborative medium, and what I love about it is we all want the same thing – an amazing book – but all have different skills that still have lots of overlap.  So Albert will notice things in the script that could be done better and do them, for example.  It’s a team effort and it’s so gratifying and satisfying when it comes together as seamlessly as this book did.    Albert’s such an accomplished writer himself that I was humbled he wanted to work with my script!

GdM – To change pace here, you’ve written 3700 Dinosaur Comics and your comic is old enough to vote. How do you keep the joy in something that’s lasted that long?

The joy of Dinosaur Comics is the freedom – it’s still the same six panels I started with in 2003 and still the same (almost) blank slate, but it’s so flexible that you can go anywhere with it.  For a few years I thought part of the joy was showing how flexible comics can be, but now, eighteen years in, I think I’ve proven that?  So now the fun is the same thing it’s always been, at its core: exploring an idea, a relationship, a thought, and making it as fun and as entertaining as possible.

GdM – Dinosaur Comics also seemed like a test ground for a few larger ideas—specifically your comic The Midas Flesh and the anthology Machine of Death. In a parallel universe what other Dinosaur Comics are being turned into other media?

Hah, you’re not wrong!  Midas came out from it, the Machine of Death books, and if we want to follow a chain of causality, my book How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller is at its core a fleshed-out version of the idea that first appeared on my Time Traveller’s Cheat Sheet t-shirt I sold as part of the Dinosaur Comics merchandise.  (I believe that makes How to Invent Everything the world’s first book based on a t-shirt, but I’m not sure how to get Guinness to give me an award for that).

T-Rex did once have an idea for a calendar that had a single page for every day you were alive (statistically, of course) so that you’d carry this huge unwieldy mass of paper with you throughout your live, grumbling every time you moved houses, until the stack got smaller and smaller and less and less inconvenient to move.  I never made that product for obvious reasons… but I’d still really like to own it.

GdM – You’ve riffed off Shakespeare three times with Chooseable-Path books. Now you’ve written Vonnegut. What other books would you like to springboard off of?

I like to refer to To Be or Not To Be and Romeo and/or Juliet as my collaborations with my buddy Bill.   And you’re right, it’s now two hugely influential writers in English that I’ve been lucky enough to adapt into other mediums!  It’s not something I sought out, but if I was looking to do more – I’d suppose a comic version of Hitchhiker’s Guide, maybe?  But it’s not like I’m walking through bookstores like a hunter, looking for my next target.

Yet.

GdM – What are you reading right now?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading for my next nonfiction book, which hasn’t been announced yet so I can’t say much about it except it’s going to be super great and everyone should read it!!  But for pleasure I’ve recently read and enjoyed an arc of Charlie Jane Anders’ Victories Greater than Death and I’ve been loving Al Ewing’s work on Immortal Hulk.  I also really liked Morgan Murray’s Dirty Birds, which is very fun, very Canadian literature.  Also it’s got Vonnegut-style illustrations throughout, so definitely this-interview-adjacent.

GdM – And finally, what projects are you currently working on?

Right now there’s a Power Pack miniseries coming out from Marvel with amazing art by Nico Leon and wonderful, book-defining colours by Rachelle Rosenberg.  There’s that secret nonfiction book that I’m very excited about, and a OGN that also hasn’t been announced but is perhaps… even more exciting?  So all I can do here is tantalize!

GdM – Thanks so much for doing this!

My pleasure!

The post An Interview With Ryan North appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: Vultures by Luke Tarzian

Vultures is a stark fantasy, stunning in its ability to draw the reader in. Dark and brooding, it is definitely not a happy story, but it is fascinating. To me, if felt like most of what happened was really a device used to explore or explain inner torment, as opposed to the inner torment being just a byproduct of the situation, if that makes sense. Speaking with me, Luke Tarzian described Vultures as being, “very much a story about love, loss, grief, and mental illness through the eyes of reluctant heroes”. There is no way I could possibly describe the atmosphere of the book better than that. I very much love seeing real issues like mental illness or grief explored in a fantasy setting, and I was impressed with the rawness of this book.

The plot itself seems simple enough: in order to end a scourge of death and destruction caused by the slain demon Te Mirkvahil, one man looks to reforge a sword with the power to end things once and for all. However, add in multiple characters, pulled strings, and twists in events, and suddenly what seems like a point A to B storyline becomes something much more complex.

The story was told through several points of view and it was interesting to see how (or if) the characters’ storylines crossed, or what the connections were. My favorite character was Theailys An. He would have blackouts and he would remember nothing of what happened during them (although violence was generally involved). It made for fascinating character development.

The world itself was incredibly well developed. There is a ton to this world, and this is a book that very much needs the reader’s full attention. The writing was evocative and made my imagination work overtime. At times, it felt like I was reading someone’s nightmare. It was an uncomfortable but engrossing feeling.

You won’t find rainbows or happily-ever-afters in Vultures. Instead, you’ll find an incredibly well-crafted tale, one that will stay with you long after the last page is read. If you like harsher fantasy-and I mean really harsh-give this book a read. Luke Tarzian is a writer with vision and a great deal of skill.

Read Vultures by Luke Tarzian

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