Adrian Collins's Blog, page 233

REVIEW: The Knight with Two Swords by Edward M. Erdelac

Ever since reading Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, I was instantly mesmerised by the tales of King Arthur, his legendary knights of the round table, and the wisdom of Merlin and Avalon. There is a magic in the legends, a magic that flows from the antiquated script into the hearts and souls of the many thousands of readers and viewers of such texts. Though ancient, the legend of King Arthur endures, and Edward M. Erdelac’s novel, The Knight with Two Swords, is indicative of why such myths persist, especially in the technological age we reside in.

Erdelac’s novel is centred around twin brothers, Balin and Brulen, boys who have grown up revering their fallen father, a celebrated knight. They are kept from following their father’s steps, that is until their mother is killed for worshipping the old ways. With Balin submitting to the will of the Christian god and Brulen, a staunch follower of the ways of his mother, declares war on the priesthood, the twins take divergent paths onto becoming knights.

What is most apparent to the reader when they first delve into Erdelac’s novel is his careful attention to detail. The language that is employed is nothing short of remarkable as it feels extremely reminiscent of elder Arthurian texts. There were times that I felt as if I was reading a page from Le Morte, Mists of Avalon, and even The Once and Future King. I was immersed into a storied world that felt genuine and authentic. It may sound basic, but to write in an authentic Arthurian manner throughout the course of an entire novel is nothing short of astounding. There were no times I felt that Erdelac faulted in writing in this manner.

The attention to detail did not stop there. Names and naming conventions were elegant and well-conceived. The world itself was wonderfully and artistically depicted akin to a stroke of ink from an artisan calligrapher. There is magic in the pages of Erdelac’s novel, and I would be remiss if I did not recommend the novel for the mere fact that it feels real and feels special to lose oneself in.

The theme of duality is strong in Erdelac’s novel and was something I felt worked well. Christianity and Paganism, righteous and corrupt, good and evil, though black in white in visage, Erdelac carefully analyses such concepts and does so subtly with his characters. Balin is the exemplar of the pious knight in the beginning but is made to question not only himself, but the foundation of his faith throughout the course of the novel. Brulen is the opposite to his brother, but like Balin, the reader is made to question and ponder the nature of his variant of chivalry.

Though there are many things to praise Erdelac for, there are some niggling qualms that hindered my enjoyment of the novel. It was a little difficult to start and at times felt borderline documentarian. This is typical of most academically accepted Arthurian texts but it does so at the cost of some investment. I found myself glossing over many of the paragraphs, the melodramatic dialogue, and even had to reread some chapters again. This is not to the fault of Erdelac but the writing style itself. It does add to the authenticity of the work itself, but it is antiquated and also quite difficult to parse at times.

The novel, being split into three distinct parts, also felt disjointed. The first part, The Adventurous Sword, is the most compact and deals with Balin, his treachery, and the siege of Carhaix. It is a mix of melodrama, politicking, and action-packed fantasy, all of which kept me intrigued and yearning for more. But as the story progressed throughout the second and third parts, I found my interest waning until the final few chapters. This is perhaps due to the fact that the plot pried Balin and his brother away from King Arthur and his knights for the majority of these sections, and I wanted more insight into Arthur through action, not just third-hand knowledge.

But these are, as mentioned, quibbles and the fault of the style itself, not the writer. It may be a little difficult to start and read at times, but the writing is eloquent and at times, majestic. When the action hits its stride, blood and magic roil through the Arthurian landscape with the arc of the reaper’s scythe. It is brutal, it is savage, and it feels real. Authenticity is the key word of this review and is more than enough reason to snag and read The Knight with the Two Swords. A must read for any Arthurian fan, especially in the academic sphere.

The post REVIEW: The Knight with Two Swords by Edward M. Erdelac appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

EXCLUSIVE: The House of Sacrifice UK cover reveal and excerpt

Hot damn I’ve been itching to get my hands on Anna Smith-Spark’s third book The House of Sacrifice since I fell in love with Marith and Thalia in The Court of Broken Knives and The Tower of Living and Dying. This swirling epic of broken characters and bloodshed, of healing and ruin, of dragons and conquest and battle told in Smith Spark’s truly unique voice just grabs you by the throat and drags you in.

The House of Sacrifice will drop in the US on the 13th of August 2019 and the 25th of July 2019 in the UK, Australia, rest of world. Use these links to get your pre-order lined up:

Kindle: US | UK | AU
Hardcover: US | UK | AU

If you’re out at the arse-end of the world (Australia) like I am, and you’re a fan oh mushing up a good-ol paperback, then make sure you get your hands on the Aussie release of The Tower of Living and Dying which drops in bendy-cover on the 7th of March. Grab your copy here.

Competition

To help support Anna’s release, we’re running a big ol’ giveaway. Get on board and get involved and help us kick this book off into space.

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UK cover reveal

A powerhouse grimdark fantasy of bloodshed, ambition, and fate, The House of Sacrifice is the thunderous conclusion to Anna Smith Spark’s Empires of Dust trilogy, which began with The Court of Broken Knives.

Marith’s power is growing. His empire stretches across half the world, and allies are flocking to his banner to share the spoils of war. With Thalia ruling at his side they are unstoppable.

But Marith is become increasingly mentally unstable and their victories cannot continue forever.

I love the red and grey against each other on this cover–reminds me a lot of the colour palette for Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire covers.

Now, let’s get to the meat of this post. The really fun bit.

Excerpt: The House of Sacrifice by Anna Smith Spark

Marith rode along the front of his army, Osen at his side. He drew his sword. Raised it, shining, the morning sun flashing on the blade. White metal, engraved with rune signs. The rune letters burned in the sunlight. The ruby in the sword’s hilt glowed scarlet. Blue fire flickered down the length of the blade.

Henket. Mai. Eth. Ri.

Death. Grief. Ruin. Hate.

He shouted to the men, his voice loud as the sword’s light. ‘Soldiers of Amrath! My soldiers! Twice now, this city has resisted us! Resisted us and betrayed us! Now, today, it will fall!’

An explosion shattering against the black walls of the city. White fire, silent as maggots. White fire, silent, and then screams. The wind caught his cloak and sent it billowing out behind him. Dark red, scab-coloured, tattered into a thousand shreds like fine lace. Dried blood flaked off it. Fresh blood oozed off it. It stank of blood and shit and rot and smoke. He wore his silver crown but was otherwise bareheaded, the morning sun bright on his black-red hair. His skin like new-spun silk, smooth and perfect, gleaming. His grey eyes, soft like a child’s eyes, soft pale grey like moths.

‘Destroy it!’ Marith shouted to his army. ‘Destroy it! Tear it down! Let nothing be left alive!’

‘Amrath!’ the army screamed back at him. ‘Amrath and the Altrersyr! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!’

Columns of soldiers began to move forwards. Siege engines hurled rocks running with banefire. Mage fire, white and silent. Dragon fire, glowing red. The beat of war drums. Clamour of trumpets. Voices chanting out the death song. Slowly slowly moving forwards. Slow and steady, the drums beating, fire washing over them, rocks and banefire loosed from war engines on the city’s walls. Falling dying, trampled by those behind them. Slowly steadily marching on. Slow long ranks marching towards the city. Destroy it! Destroy it! The only thought in all the world in all their minds. The dead zone between the city and the encircling army. Broken bones and ruin and dead men. Banefire. Mage fire. Dragon fire. War drums and war trumpets. And now, loud and urgent, the thump of battering rams against the city’s gates. Warships in the harbour, grappling. A storm rising. Towering huge dark waves.

‘Amrath! Amrath! Death!’

Waves of men breaking against the city. Waves of water. Waves of fire. Waves of death and pain.

Snow began to fall.

White flakes caught in Marith’s shining hair.

 * * *

‘Break it! Break it! Down! Down!’

The ram smashed into the Tereen Gateway. Again. Again. Again. A tree trunk thicker than a man’s armspan, carved at its end into a dragon head snarl. Covered with bloody ox-hides, to keep it from catching fire. Obscene. Comic. Pumping away in out, in out, in out, steaming dripping bloody battering pounding raping iron wood meat. Three huge siege engines hurling rocks and banefire. Machines on the walls hurling rocks and banefire back at them.

Marith in Illyr by Quint Von Canon

Marith circled his horse, making it rear up. Gilded hooves sharp like knives.

‘Break it down! Now!’

A shower of boiling sand poured down from the battlements. Soldiers collapsed screaming, clawing at their skin. Inside their armour, burning. In their hair. In their mouths and eyes. The bloody hides on the ram hissed. Cheers from the Arunmenese defenders above.

The ram swung again. Off to the left, a blinding white flash and a dragon’s roar. The gate groaned. Splintering. Shadowbeasts gathered, a clot in the air. Shapes twisting, forming, dissolving, huge shapeless dark beating shrieking wings. They dived together, claws and wingbeats, jaws opening faceless, clawed limbs tearing down the stones of the wall.

‘Now! Now! Break it down!’ Marith’s horse reared, trampling snow. Red-hot sand showered down around him. His horse screamed in pain. Fire arrows thudding into the battering ram. His soldiers’ bodies piling on the ground.

The sky roared at him. A thousand screaming raging mouths. Another flash. The dragon howled. The men fell back shrieking in fear. White light rising up before him. Spear-shape. Cloud-shape. Shining. Grass-green eyes opening, staring; hands reaching for him, numberless beyond counting, and in every hand a sword with a blade of silver light.

God thing. Life thing. A demon conjured up to protect the city. The great high holy god of Arunmen whose temple was gold and green bronze.

Bastard thing. Twice now, it had beaten him off.

‘Get the gate open! Now! Now! The ram!’

His sword was shrieking in his hand. Red jewel at the hilt winking at him. Glittering. Red light like the red light of the Fire Star. The King’s Star. His star. There’s your star, Marith, and there’s mine. Look! A red jewel, the sword forged for him in the Tower of the Eagle, back before he was truly king, forged in bronze and ashes and blood, forged to look like the sword the first Amrath had once owned. He’d had a sword before, once, with a red jewel in its hilt, he had named it Sorrow, and this sword he had named Joy.

Marith charged his enemy. So tiny, a man shape on horseback, throwing himself headlong towards this towering raging maelstrom of light. Behind him the ram started. Drumming on the gateway. Break it down! Break it down!  His siege engines loosed all together. The machines on the walls showering sand and rocks and banefire back at his men. Mage fire. Dragon fire. Dying.

Marith King Ruin met the light god with a crash.

All his vision was silver.

Slurred. Like being underwater. All the movements just a moment too slow. Cool and soft around him. It felt like Thalia’s skin. A hundred sword blades meeting his sword stroke. A hundred sword blades cutting at him. Grass-green eyes closed and opened. All staring. Sad sad eyes: they looked like the eyes of an old man. Marith fought it. Cut at it. A sword and a hand fell away and another grew up in their place. He cut it again, again a hand falling, again another hand growing up. Swords struck back at him. Glanced off him. Warded them off, didn’t feel them, and then a blade got down into the meat of his shoulder, and a wound opened up dry and ashy, and he hurt. He lunged deep into its body. The centre of it, white silver light swallowing him. His horse was screaming. His horse was dead. It reared and kicked at the light surrounding it. Gilded hooves coming down. The grass-green eyes closed and opened. Countless silver swords stabbed at him.

Bastard stupid thing. Twice now, it had beaten him.

The battering ram thudded against the Tereen Gateway. Trumpets rang for an assault on the walls. Voices shouting: ‘Ladders! Ladders! Up there! Get moving!’ Soldiers rushing up them. Fast with knives clutched in their teeth. A ladder falling backwards, soldiers falling from it dying. Spiralling down off the ladders screaming in a cloud of red-hot sand.

Snow, falling over everything. White snow, black ash, silver fire, red blood. Snowflakes silent and soft as feathers. Muting the sound.

Memory of snow falling, the day he killed his father. White blossom, falling like snowflakes, as they cheered him entering the cities of half the world.

Thalia would like the snow, he thought.

The light god wounded him. Hard, raw pain in his arm, making him almost drop his sword Joy. He cut off hands and swords and they grew up stronger, swords stabbing. Grass-green eyes staring at him. Twice, this damned thing had defeated him. Twice, his soldiers had been forced back. Fire hissed on the bloody ox-hides. The ram beginning to burn. Men dying. Men rushing up to replace them pounding it hard at the gate. The ladders trembling, swaying like bird-legs, another going over, soldiers falling, one soldier falling was burning, fell like a star. Soldiers stumbling blinded by red-hot sand.

Osen’s voice shouting furiously, ‘Break it! Break it! Destroy it! Now!’

‘Amrath! Amrath!’

‘Death! Death! Death and all demons! Death!’

White fire washing over the battering ram. The ox-hides smoking, burning, men dying, men rushing up wounded and bloody to take their place. The dead horse reared and kicked at the light god. Knife-sharp gilded hooves. Marith cut and hacked at the light god. Swords falling. Swords cutting him. Grass-green eyes opened and closed.

The gate shattered open beneath the beating of the ram. The Army of Amrath surged forward. Trampling their dead and dying. Fighting each other to be first through the gate. A trumpet rang out triumphant. Cheering. Screaming.

‘Breech! Breech!’

‘Amrath!’

‘Death!’

‘Breech! Breech!’

The light god roared in fury. Swords and hands ripping at Marith. Marith smashed back at it.

Shouts and cheering turning to screams as the machine on the walls showered down burning sand. The shadows rose up to destroy it. A bright white flash of magefire sent them burning back. The machine loosed more sand, shimmering as it came down.

‘Breach! Breach!’

‘In! Now!’

‘In! In!’

The Army of Amrath surging in through the gateway. Through the shower of sand falling. Through blasts of white and silver magefire. Through shuddering falling walls. Soldiers rushing up the ladders. Up onto the battlements. Trying to get to the war engines. Magefire crashed over them. Burning. More and more rushing up behind.

Voices shouting the war song: ‘Death! Death! Death!’

Marith hacked at the light god. Grass-green eyes staring at him. Numberless hands and sword blades. Swirling silver all around him, washing him, cool and soft. He hacked like hacking at a tree trunk. Ignored the swords cutting him. Nothing could harm him. Remember that! They cut him and they hurt him but there was nothing. Dry ash wounds, blood like rust, nothing to bleed, nothing to die. Like a dried-up river. Dry dead dust. A famine. He slashed at the thing’s shining light, cut it into pieces, over and over, all the hands and the swords cutting him. Grass-green eyes staring at him. He cut them. Destroying them. Hammering down his sword blade. Over and over and over and over. The dead horse reared and kicked at it. Bit at it with yellow teeth. Cut and cut and cut.

A burst of light. White and silver. Brighter than sunlight. The snow shining with every colour of the rainbow. Light reflected in every soldier’s eyes.

Scream like glass and bells ringing. A thousand rushing shooting stars.

White light. Burning. White shining blazing sparks of fire. Cut and cut and cut and cut.

Screamed.

Screamed.

Gone.

Twice, it had defeated him.

Third time lucky, indeed.

Marith drew his breath. Patted his horse to thank it.

Charged after his soldiers through the ruins of the gate.

King Ruin. King Death. Such joy and such wonder. The one true perfect thing.

Grab yourself a copy immediately

 

The post EXCLUSIVE: The House of Sacrifice UK cover reveal and excerpt appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

Review: Grim Solace by Ben Galley

Just like me, you should be very excited to be back in Araxes, where death is not the end, but just a new form of half-life. In book two of Ben Galley’s Chasing Graves trilogy, Caltro is still very dead and pissed at this fate, the dead gods, and Boran Temsa (who levelled his game up quite considerably since Chasing Graves) just to name a few. As Caltro fights for justice and his freedom, he constantly finds himself being tossed around like a leaf on the wind since everyone wants to put their hands on him. Tor Busk, the Widow Horix, and Boran Temsa are all playing a game of their own in which they all wish to use Caltro’s locksmith skills. Little do they know who is the real puppeteer behind the scenes. Caltro only learns about it while plotting his own escape. And boy, this is going to make you sit on the edge of your seat, waiting for the conclusion. Sadly this happens toward the end, and we’ll have to wait until the third and final book of the trilogy to find out how this information will shake things up plot-wise. Grim Solace has everyhing I liked in Chasing Graves and some more.

“Every reason is a little story we tell ourselves to dress up our desires. We offer reasons to explain or excuse ourselves, to fit in.”

While trying to get his life back—as much as remained of it anyway—Caltro learns a few new tricks and makes a new friend. Pointy is a centuries old-deadbound sword, which is a bit in love with its own voice as well as poetry, and driving Caltro crazy. But Pointy comes in handy when Caltro needs knowledge and a weapon which is, well, pointy. Fortunately, amidst all the chaos and visits from supposedly dead gods, Caltro never loses his dark humour and sarcasm.

“They say there is a beauty in hindsight, but I say it is an ugly creature. Almost as ugly as its daughter, regret. Life is made of many paths. The cruel joke is you can only choose one, and move only forwards along it. Regret is the bitch that follows behind you and paves the paths you didn’t take with gold and glitter.”

Besides Caltro’s ever so complicated plotline, we still have Nilith’s. Personally, for me that plotline was the weak point of Chasing Graves until the end where some truths are revealed, and her identity and importance are made clear in the grand scheme of things. This time around she grew on me because of her fierceness, no-nonsense attitude, the way she put Farazar in his place, and most importantly her bantering with Bezel, the strangebound falcon—the same bird which was supposed to spy on her.

“Nilith slumped back to the sand, chin on arms. She stared up at the falcon. ‘I don’t feel very royal.’

‘Royally fucked is what you are. Now you know why these nomad types call their wine daemonjuice, don’t you?'”

I’m usually no fan of the traveling trope, and sometimes I felt these bits dragging, even though there was plenty of actions—for example, we get to see Kal Duat, a place where stones are produced for the price of lives. This is where it really sinks in for Nilith how things go outside of Araxes, where the King has no real authority. All the while, they are still chased by the Ghouls, whom they pissed off in Chasing Graves. However, all the tension and hard truths are balanced by comical scenes such as where a donkey gets loose thanks to its wings. I’m actually sorry we don’t read more about the nomads Nilith and her companions come across in the desert just outside of Araxes. Just before reaching her destination she finds herself in very tight situation. If nothing else, that really makes me look forward to read the final book.

Besides all the old “friends” we made in Chasing Graves, Galley introduces some new ones. One of them is Scrutiniser Heles, working for the Chamber of the Code. Her task is to find the one responsible for the increasing attacks on the nobles of Araxes. I instantly took a liking to her, thanks to her being fierce, loyal and that she is not afraid to take on a confrontation when she feels an injustice was done. She is also quite cynical after all the years spent in service and the fact she has seen more death she would have liked.

“Fortunately for Scrutiniser Heles, it had been five years, maybe more, since her mood could remotely be classed as “good.” The best she hoped for these days was “mildly disgruntled””

Even though she only played a minor part in Grim Solace, I have a feeling we’ll see more of her in A Darker Shade. She had grown to be one of my favorite characters this trilogy had offered so far.

In Grim Solace Ben Galley turns up the grim-o-meter to eleven and is not afraid to soak the pages in blood and gore. It’s a good step up from Chasing Graves and sets a good foundation for the grand finale. Political intricacies, massacres, dead gods, and a pending doom waits for those who are brave enough to step on the soil of Araxes. Or a big pile of copper coins and title if they are smart and ruthless enough. What fate awaits you?

The post Review: Grim Solace by Ben Galley appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

Review of GODLESS by Ben Peek

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A Review of Ben Peek's The Godless

Review by Durand Welsh

The grimdark fantasy market is spoiled for multi-book epics. Abercrombie, Martin, and Bakker all have well-established series battling it out on the shelves. Fighting for a space between them would be a daunting prospect for anyone. So how does Ben Peek’s entry into the fray, the Godless, stack up against its well-girded opposition?

Although Peek’s world sprawls across multiple continents, in this novel he confines the action to the small city of Mireea and the adjoining nation of Leera. Mireea is located behind the Spine of Ger, a mountain range that sits atop the dead God of the same name. Given the title of Peek’s novel, the Godless, it is perhaps no surprise that in this world the gods themselves are dead. Fragments of godhood, however, still manifest in mortals, marking them with strange powers and deformities. These people, feared and often reviled, are the “cursed”.

The novel focuses on three characters who find themselves in Mireea as it teeters on the brink of war with Leera: Ayae, a cursed apprentice cartographer; Bueralan, a mercenary; and the immortal Zaifyr, who can see and control the “haunts” of the dead. Near the novel’s outset, an assassin attacks Ayae in her master’s cartography shop. Her cursed abilities spontaneously protect her, and the resulting conflagration engulfs the shop and exposes her secret. In a time when she most needs someone to guide her, she instead finds herself ostracized by her peers.

Meanwhile, Bueralan and his saboteur group Dark, have been retained by Lady Wagan, ruler of Mireea, to enter Leera and find out more about the mysterious army that is being mustered against their city. Through Lady Wagan, Bueralan meets Zaifyr, who has been hired to track Ayae’s attacker, an undead creature thought to be have been summoned in Leera using blood magic. Although Zaifyr now lives a solitary life and wishes only to forget the horrors of the War of the Gods, he was once responsible for terrible atrocities that resulted in his fellow cursed imprisoning him. The same ability to manipulate the souls of the dead that resulted in Zaifyr’s imprisonment now uniquely qualifies him to track the undead assassin.

In addition to hiring Bueralan and Zaifyr, Lady Wagan has petitioned the Enclave for assistance against Leera. The Enclave is the ruling caste in the floating city of Yeflam, and one of Mireea’s strongest allies. The Enclave is also ruled by the cursed known as the ‘Keepers of the Divine’, who view themselves as descendants of the gods themselves.

In response to Lady Wagan’s petition, the Enclave has dispatched the Keepers Fo and Bau to Mireea. Fo is a man with the power to wield disease and plague, while Bau is his antithesis in cursed talent, a healer able to cure injuries with preternatural speed. But Fo and Bau have offered little assistance. Instead, they have sequestered themselves away in their tower lodgings, dabbling away at the arcane, as Keepers are wont to do. However, their infrequent forays into the city include a cryptic visit to Ayae as she recovers in hospital from her injuries. What is no secret is that they have a long-standing animosity towards Zaifyr. You can’t destroy a continent without some animosity resulting, and Aelyn Meah, the head of the Enclave, was one of those responsible for imprisoning Zaifyr for his crimes.

The visiting Keepers certainly are an odd couple: Bau the white robed healer with the requisite garb of sandals and pithy moral philosophy; and Fo the disease spreading psychopath, conducting his weird experiments like some hulking Dr Frankenstein. Fo pins mice to tables, feeds them alive to snakes, while Bau the healer talks civilly of the good they do in curing disease. Despite Ayae’s reservations she is drawn to them. The only other person she has to turn to for help with her powers is Zaifyr, but Bau warns her not to trust Zaifyr. It seems her tutelage in her cursed abilities can take one of two paths, and she is divided about what to do.

Through characters such as Ayae and the Keepers, Peek injects regular doses of magic into the narrative. This magic is usually the grimmer, earthier variety – dead ghosts, magic plagues, blood sacrifice, or control of the raw elements such as Ayae displays. After all, the gods are dead. Magic went and broke this world. Folks aren’t conjuring up fireworks and bedding their maidens down with unicorns.

In the Godless, much of the magic is confined to the powers of cursed characters. The powers of the cursed function almost as superpower abilities rather than magic in the traditional sense of casting spells. Ayae’s character is almost an origin story of sorts. She has her superpower thrust upon her in what amounts to divine will, is ostracized, and then comes to accept her powers and use them to try and save the city she loves.

I did get the sense that the later novels will push the magic angle much harder. Compared to neighbouring cities such as Yeflam, Mireea is very much a mundane, salt-of-the-earth city. Yeflam, by comparison, is directly overseen by the cursed and is referred to as the floating city. The political and magical divide between it and Mireea is fairly obvious.

Such political divides do serve to drive some political intrigue in the plot, but the machinations of the different factions do feel a little distant from the action and a little opaque. Perhaps this is because the major power brokers have yet to fully play their hands and are largely acting through proxies. The powerful cursed known as Jae’le literally instructs Zaifyr through a crow familiar. One downside of this “hidden factions” element is that there are points where the obviously villainous powers that oppose the protagonists don’t seem to possess the requisite punch. I would have preferred Leera’s army to have had a bit more personality and bite, a bit more of a visceral threat factor about it.

While the book occasionally suffers from a lack of strong antagonists, the final third of the book concludes the story in rousing fashion, with an energetic battle and an apocalyptic confrontation between several of the more high-powered characters. In this final third, the pieces of the plot fall into place, Ayae’s powers gain traction, hidden antagonists come to the fore, and the action ramps up.

When it comes to grimdark, the Godless toes the shallower waters but never swims out into the black depths. Although two of the main characters, Zaifyr and Bueralan, have checkered pasts, these play out more as backstory than as character traits at the point in time when we meet them. Admittedly, they’ve both committed questionable sins in the past, but when we meet them their moral compasses seem to point fairly straight.  

While the Godless doesn’t do anything ground breaking, it lays all its cards on the table right at the outset. It never sideswipes you by pretending to be anything but what it is, which is a helping of the hero’s journey, a taste of the grizzled veteran with a troubled past, a smattering of the fallen god trying to redeem himself amongst mortals, and a bit of the bad ole evil bubbling up to destroy all yee decent smallfolk. While the Godless doesn’t have the Byzantine politics or the sputum-drenched grittiness of some of its competitors, anyone searching for a good, solid story would be well-served in taking a look.

I for one am certainly looking forward to tackling future instalments. Book Two, Leviathan’s Blood, is already on my shelf. 

Grab a copy of Ben Peek's The Godless using the links below:

 

Interview with Phil Tucker

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An interview with Phil Tucker

By Matthew Cropley

[MC] The Path of Flames harkens back to traditional fantasy. What books inspired it?

[PT] In many ways I’ve gone back to my childhood favourites, namely David Gemmell’s Drenai books, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, and Raymond E. Feist’s Magician. While I didn’t deliberately set out to emulate any one aspect of them, those works are part of my fantasy DNA.

[MC] Why did you choose to write a fantasy book in the traditional style, rather than joining the grimdark trend?

[PT] Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a choice. I set about world building first, then created the characters and used them to explore the world, to examine how our religions and cultures shape our realities – and from where these institutions derive their weight and authority. The high fantasy tone was set by the nature of the tale, though I think there’s some dark edges to it as well: the Bythian people’s systematic oppression, the cruel politics that engulfs Lady Kyferin, and the sacrifices and choices they’re forced to take.

[MC] What’s your opinion of grimdark fantasy and sci-fi?

[PT] I love them both! I’m planning to write a grimdark series in the near future.

[MC] The book features a lot of fantasy tropes, such as magical swords, innate magical ability, and knightly honour. How did you incorporate these tropes without becoming derivative?

[PT] I’ve tried to employ them in a way that serves my interrogation of the world in which the characters live. Take knightly honour, for example: I spent a lot of time reading about how real world knights justified their use of violence with their Christian piety, how they saw their own suffering on the field of battle as a mirror to Christ’s suffering, and through their privations they believed their killing was not only exonerated but glorified.

In my world, only one caste, the Ennoians, are allowed to wield weapons, and it is from their ranks that my knights emerge. They are supposed to defend the Empire, yet in truth they are often brutal and self-serving. The Black Wolves, amongst whose number our hero Asho begins the novel, are infamous for their misdeeds, and their leader Lord Enderl is both the paragon of knightly accomplishments and a monster. What does this say about knighthood? Can a military order that is given such lethal authority ever remain pure to their purpose? Are the very grounds upon which their chivalry is based capable of resisting corruption?

I try to explore all my tropes along the same lines, setting them up to further my world building but then mining the ramifications they have on society and religion. I hope that by using them toward an end rather than having them be the end, I manage to avoid being derivative and find something new to say about them.

[MC] What inspired the setting of the Ascendant Empire?

[PT] A phone interview with Google. They’d emailed me out of the blue and asked if I was interested in a random gig in the Googleplex. I said sure, so I went through a gruelling interview process, during which at the end of one call they asked me to brainstorm out loud on how the invention of teleportation machines would change our world.

Well, I rambled on for a fair bit, and a lot of my ideas stuck with me. I never got the job, but the ideas for a non-contiguous empire stitched together by teleportation portals resurfaced when I sat down to write my series, and from there it all developed as I began to ask ever more detailed questions about its effect on the economy, culture, religion, and so on.

[MC] How much work was it to create such an interesting setting and history, and how did you go about revealing it to the reader in such a mysterious, engaging way?

[PT] Is it fair to call such a fun process work? I spent a lot of time looking at fantasy concept art online, brainstorming, piecing together elements and seeing whether they fit. For example, say you’ve decided your empire is connected by teleportation portals. Do they go both ways? Say they do. Is there one portal per city, or as many portals in each city as there are total cities in the empire? What if nobody has ever returned after passing through one of the portals? What if that portal was black and underground, and another was white and in the clouds? What might people infer? How would that affect the world?

You start asking those questions and almost at a whim answer them as you see best – but then ask another set of questions, and another, until your world has unfurled before you like one of those dragon tea balls.

As for how to reveal, well. That was hard. I bought an old paperback of Game of Thrones and went through the first ten chapters with a highlighter, picking out where and how often GRRM revealed his world building. How much in dialog, how much in exposition? I didn’t want to rebuff readers with too much terminology, so I decided to kick things off with a big battle, and then go introducing elements and characters gradually. A minimum of exposition, with Audsley (my librarian character) having a fun scene early on where he’s studying maps and thinking out loud to his pet cindercat.

[MC] Where do your characters come from?

[PT] A mixture of necessity and inspiration. I wanted to tell my story from a variety of points of view: a character at the bottom of the social caste, and one at the very top; an intellectual who could plumb the mysteries of my world and a brutal knight who could challenge and cut through the old ways of living. They literally were points of view into my world, and once I had a sense of whom I needed to tell my tale, I set to fleshing them out.

I’m a big fan of seeking inspiration on Pinterest. I’ll browse fantasy character portraits for hours, marking those that catch my eye, and then try to figure out what about that particular portrait intrigued me. For this series I did just that, collecting images that resonated with each role, and slowly allowing them to coalesce in my mind like a soup left to simmer for several weeks.

[MC] How many books will the series be comprised of, and how epic will the story become?

[PT] I’m planning for this to be a five book series, with Book 3 nearly finished and the broad strokes already outlined for Books 4 and 5. I’m hoping to make it pretty epic – I’m going to push my world as far as I can without breaking it, and don’t yet know what it’s going to look like when the dust settles. That’s part of the fun in writing the series – seeing how everybody recovers (and who survives) after all the horrible things that are set to happen.

[MC] What do you draw from your real life?

[PT] I’ve travelled a fair bit, and lived in a variety of different countries, so perhaps my outsider’s point of view may have influenced not only Asho’s being a pariah but also my fondness for comparing and contrasting cultures. I’m fascinated by how people’s languages and upbringing shape their world view, and can’t help but wonder how many of our core beliefs are objective and how many of them are dependent on our circumstances. Hence my fun in playing with them in the Chronicles.

[MC] Your self-publishing career started out with The Grind Show, an urban fantasy, back in 2014—what challenges have you met in self-publishing since then to get to this point where your latest book is kicking arse in the Self Published Fantasy Book Blog-Off?

[PT] I’ve made so many mistakes over the years. Abandoning series after a successful Book 1, designing awful covers myself, failing to hire top notch editors, picking lousy titles – all such basic and elementary aspects of self-publishing. Everything changed for me when I discovered the Writer’s Café on KBoards, and started plumbing its archives for wisdom and asking questions of the local success stories.

I think the most fundamental things I’ve learned is to pay for the very best cover you can afford, make sure your title resonates with your readers, and publish as frequently as you can in the same genre to build momentum with Amazon’s algorithms.

Luck has also played a large role in all this, especially with my success so far with SPFBO. I have absolutely no illusions about being any better than anybody else in my cohort, but am instead simply very grateful that the judge of our group enjoyed reading my book as much as he did.

[MC] From your perspective, what is the general reality of self-publishing vs. chasing the tradition dream?

[PT] I think that anybody with discipline, drive, and thick skin has a chance to make it now as a self-published author. The resources are out there. If you’re willing to invest under $1,000 on cover, editor, layout and any other services that you need, you can launch your book in grand style and compete with the very best that traditional publishers have to offer.

This isn’t for everyone though. Many authors simply don’t want to function as small business owners. They don’t want to do marketing and design and oversee freelancers and wear all the hats that go with being an indie. For them, sending a book off to a trad publisher might be the way to go, though it’s apparently becoming increasingly hard to get noticed and compensated for your work.

I’d encourage anybody who is serious about making a career out of being an author to do their research first and ask themselves if they can’t take on these duties in order to increase their chances of success. Check out authorearnings.com, buy Chris Fox’s how-to books on Amazon, browse Writer’s Café on KBoards, and jump right in. The odds have never been better.

[MC] Did your time spent living and working in Australia help develop your writing and themes?

[PT] It did! It was while I was in Australia that I wrote my first serious piece of fiction. I entered into NaNoWriMo while there, and managed to cough out an atrocious 50,000 words that, while pretty objectively terrible, showed me I could actually write something approximating a novel. I never looked back thereafter. 

[MC] What can we expect to see from you next?

[PT] Book 3 of the Chronicles, The Siege of Abythos, is slated to come out in late October. I’ll be publishing Books 4 and 5 right after, and hopefully have the whole series wrapped up by early next year. Then? I’m not sure. I’ve got plenty of ideas. One thing’s for sure, though: I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Check out our review of book 1 of The Chronicles of the Black Gate, Path of Flames on the GdM blog!

Review of The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

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A review of The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

Review by malrubius

The Stars are Legion is the new space opera from critically acclaimed, two-time Hugo Award winner, author Kameron Hurley. It is the story of two enemy lovers, Zan and Jayd—the story’s two narrators—and their attempt to rebirth a world-ship, the Mokshi, that is capable of leaving their dying, deep-space Legion of world-ships at the Outer Rim of the galaxy. Although the first thing that comes to mind while reading The Stars are Legion might be the complete absence of male characters of any kind, the story quickly takes off on a fast pace with plenty of action, conflict, fighting, gore, tension, deceit, revenge, political intrigue, monsters, moral ambiguity, and brilliantly vivid and original world-building that will excite even the most diehard grimdark sci-fi fan. Meanwhile, the choice of an all-female cast sets a fascinating stage for the exploration of themes that include birth and rebirth, love, atonement, forgiveness, revenge, loss, hope, memory, and too many more to mention, all of which give The Stars are Legion the type of resonance that is supposed to be reserved for so-called ‘literary’ novels. And even though I generally find myself reading grimdark fantasy in the Lawrence, Polansky, Lynch, Abercrombie mold, I loved The Stars are Legion and couldn’t stop turning the pages and enjoying Hurley’s crisp, concise prose.

The world-building in The Stars are Legion is what really pulled me into the story in the beginning. Unlike most sci-fi that I have read, the world of The Stars are Legion is almost entirely organic. The world-ships, of which there are primarily three in the story, are gigantic floating, tentacled living worlds with a seemingly unknown number of levels from the bottom, where people are recycled by terrifying monsters, all the way to the top, where the elite and powerful live and conspire. The entire world-ship is organic, made of some kind of fleshy substance that can be cut through to form new passageways, and eaten, if entirely necessary. It is alive with tubes like umbilici, and growths, and blood, and on the outside, a blackening cancerous rot, evidence that the worlds are dying and will continue to do so. Beneath it all, or at least in parts, are some mysterious metal beams and scaffolding that may have been part of the original structure or used to sure up the dying organic structure. When Zan, who has lost most of her memory, is recycled by the Lord of the Katazyrna world-ship, she and a small team of feisty misfits must climb back up from the bottom of the ship on a frightening journey to reunite with Jayd at the controls. This part of the narrative reminded me of some of my favorite story worlds like Jeff Vandermeer’s living organic New Weird settings in his Ambergris and Southern Reach novels and the climb through various vivid and scary places that Senlin must make in Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel series. Each new scene is stunning and surprising.

While Zan is climbing out of the bowels of the Katazyrna, Jayd the daughter of its Lord, has made a deal with her enemy on the world-ship Bhavaja. This part of the narrative propels the political intrigue conflict at breakneck speed. The Katazyrna and Bhavaja are long-time enemies but both realize that they are doomed unless they can combine powers to bring ‘the world and the arm’ together on the Mokshi to rebirth that world-ship and leave the Legion. However, neither the rulers of the Katazyrna nor the Bhavaja can be trusted. Both are brutal, self-seeking militant peoples who want to subjugate their enemies through intrigue, deception, and brute force, which is part of what we love about grimdark in any setting. The two world-ships are constantly at war for dominance, and something must change or they will both die out. When the best of plans goes awry, all hell breaks loose between these fierce, competing powers, and Zan must reunite with Jayd to settle their age-long war. All along, however, we become aware that Jayd has done something very wrong to Zan.

The intertwining first-person narratives of Zan and Jayd make for an extremely compelling and entertaining story, and Hurley’s use of present tense adds an extra level of suspense to the tale’s unfolding of a variety of interwoven plot types: quest, revelation, voyage-and-return, etcetera, all of which are thrilling by turns. Nevertheless, the complete absence of men or male characters in The Stars are Legion is kind of like an elephant in the room. As a male reviewer, I cannot decide whether it would be more sexist of me to ignore that casting decision in this review or to attempt to understand it and utterly fail. It seems like a lose-lose proposition to this humble reviewer, but since I consider myself a bit of a feminist and I enjoyed this book so much, I choose to take the latter risk. The lack of male characters in The Stars are Legion is never actually mentioned in the story itself—even awareness of their absence is absent. The only reason I can think of for this choice is that the story and its themes are more compelling without them. One main theme of The Stars of Legion deals with birth and rebirth—at what cost. There are so many things that need rebirth in this story—from Zan’s memory to her climb up the umbilical of the Katazyrna to the love between Zan and Jayd to the world-ship Mokshi itself—that the idea of rebirth takes center stage in terms of thematic relevance. There are wombs to be swapped and stolen, pregnancies to deal with, and even the world-ships themselves impregnate their passengers to birth their needed parts and peoples. Not only are men (male characters) unnecessary to this story world, but in the humble opinion of this reviewer, their inclusion would obfuscate or at least dilute the plangency of this theme. Even if men were just subservient to women in the story, their presence would add all kinds of complications and battle-of-sexes themes that the story does not require. The Stars are Legion is a fantastic read just as it is, and the choice of an all-woman cast is part of its charm and its grit.

Although The Stars are Legion seems, on its surface, to be sci-fi for women, I think any fan of gritty, violent, tense SFF will enjoy it; even fans of military sci-fi should find this story tense and forceful. Specifically for our purposes here at Grimdark Magazine, I think our readers will enjoy the relationships between these fiercely competing, brutal yet loving women. Jayd’s love for Zan provides perhaps the grimmest morally grey punch to the story as Jayd continues to deceive and betray Zan for the good of the Katazyrna even though Jayd truly seems to love her, and Zan’s faulty memory prevents her from fully understanding their relationship. Also, all the characters here, with only a couple of refreshing exceptions, are violent, conniving, deceitful, and cruel in their self-serving quests, and rarely do questions of morality enter the minds of its characters. So . . . as a fan of grimdark as well as a fan of superb writing and grand storytelling, I highly recommend Kameron Hurley’s new novel The Stars are Legion.

The Stars are Legion is due out on 7 February 2017 on Saga Press in the US.

Re-watching the Watchmen: Making the case for Zack Snyder’s Adaptation

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By David Stevens

Alan Moore’s Watchmen is inarguably one of the greatest achievements in comic-book history. It’s a tale of murder, grand conspiracies, paranoia, hope, and betrayal at the height of the Cold War in an alternate-timeline America. It is where superheroes are real, McCarthyism never ended, and Nixon is serving his third term. It is both a love letter to and a parody of the superhero concept as well as the arrogant and overbearing aspects of American Exceptionalism. It has won praise and awards for its engrossing story and for Dave Gibbons’ exceptional artwork.

Over the years, several of Moore’s works have been adapted to film with varying degrees of success – The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Constantine, and V for Vendetta – but Watchmen was always considered unfilmable.

Aside from the fact that Moore characteristically hates any films based on his work (regardless of whether he even sees them), Watchmen is flushed with multiple interweaving plotlines, a myriad of secondary and tertiary characters, and many historical references. It was believed by many to be impossible to condense all that material into a coherent feature-length film. Even Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits) had proposed a film treatment and was declined.

Along Came a Snyder

Zack Snyder was riding high on a wave of two consecutive hit films, his better-than-pretty-good remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and his excellent adaptation of Frank Miller’s epic sword-and-sandals graphic novel, 300, as Watchmen went into pre-production. Somehow, Snyder had done the unthinkable by securing not only the film rights to Watchmen but also Gibbons’ blessing. All eyes were on this young director. Expectations – and concerns – were running high.

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King of the Fanboys

When the film was released, it was met with equal parts adoration and scorn. As was to be expected, storylines were cut, side characters were relegated to blink-and-you’ll-miss-it walk-bys, and costumes were modernised. But nothing is more controversial with purists than the ending, which is a shame, as Snyder’s ending is actually much less convoluted and more logical than Moore’s original ending in the graphic novel.

I can hear you hissing as you read these words but please hear me out. I swear it’ll all make sense soon. Oh, by the way, spoilers incoming!

The World’s Smartest Man, The World’s Dumbest Plan

So, let’s start with the biggest issue I have with Moore’s original ending: the ridiculous, gobsmackingly impractical rubber alien.

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Cthulhu’s mom’s floppy vagina

In the graphic novel, there is a large subplot in which several artists, writers, and special effects artists go missing, including the artist responsible for the Tales of the Black Freighter story that intercuts with the main narrative. In the third act, it's revealed that they’ve been sequestered on an island by an anonymous wealthy client to work collaboratively on a secret project: a giant rubber hentai sex toy. Rorschach’s investigation reveals that Adrian Veidt (a.k.a. the retired superhero Ozymandias) is behind the whole thing. Ozy tells Rorschach and Nite Owl that his plan is already in motion when suddenly, a giant sentient rubber alien teleports into Times Square and, in a fit of panic, erupts a psychic shockwave that kills itself and millions of people simultaneously.

In the film, Veidt takes a different tack. He duplicates Doctor Manhattan’s energy signature and creates an explosion in Times Square that would frame Manhattan for the crime.

In both versions, the end goal is to unite hostile nations against a common enemy, united in a cynical peace motivated by fear.

Doctor Manhattan’s Glowing Blue Penis is Chekhov’s Gun

"Chekhov’s Gun" is a dramatic principle stating that every memorable element in a fictional story must be necessary and irreplaceable, and any that are not should be removed.

Doctor Manhattan, a former mortal but now a godlike quantum being who exists in nonlinear space-time, is such a plot device in and of himself. He is the only character who is beyond mortal limitations. This is significant for several reasons. The most notable is that he could destroy the Earth on a whim if he wished and is just detached enough from humanity due to his advanced sense of space-time that the consequences would have no real emotional impact. In his words: "A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally there’s no discernible difference."

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Dayglo quantum nihilist

Early in both the graphic novel and film, we learn that Doctor Manhattan and Veidt are collaborating on a free energy project. Their intention is to harness Doctor Manhattan’s energy signature in order to generate free, infinite energy to benefit mankind. This seems like a throwaway plot point, which is indeed the case in Moore’s novel, as it serves no purpose other than to illustrate the genius of both men and cast Veidt as a benevolent character. Snyder, however, used this as a means to take Veidt in a different direction by giving him access to Manhattan's energy signature. This refocused plot point pays off much later in the film, turning a small piece of backstory into a driving component of the narrative.

During Rorschach’s investigation into the death of the Comedian in the opening act, he discovers that the Comedian had been recently in contact with Edgar Jacobi, a former super-villian also known as Moloch the Mystic, who most of the other characters had gone up against during their glory days years ago. Before his demise, the Comedian mentions that he saw Jacobi's name on a list, along with a woman named Janie Slater who had been the girlfriend of Manhattan years ago, both before and after the accident which gave him his powers.

Later, Manhattan goes on a live chat show on television where a reporter in the audience ambushes him by bringing Slater out to confront Manhattan with news that she has terminal cancer and that his radioactive energy signature is the cause. His friend Wally Weaver had died of a similar type of cancer and Jacobi is also afflicted. Manhattan is bombarded with aggressive questions and, unable to deal with the ambush and crushing demand for answers by the press, teleports to Mars in a fit of rage. And this is the moment where Checkhov’s Gun is fired.

The End is the Beginning of the (Better) End

For the most part, the rest of the film follows a similar trajectory to the graphic novel from that point on. On Mars, Doctor Manhattan waxes poetic about the nonlinear way he perceives time and his overall inability to remain involved in the affairs of a species he’s too far removed from to feel any kinship toward. Rorschach and Nite Owl snoop on Pyramid Transnational and discover that Veidt is the guy bankrolling it. Veidt congratulates his team and poisons them with the ceremonial toast, stroking his genetically-altered Lynx, Baubastis, like a Bond villain in a purple bodysock.

But this is where things change; The film completely ignores the original ending and takes a sharper turn, one that should be obvious from the moment you see Pat Buchanan in the opening scene verbally fellating Manhattan. The attack goes off as planned but, instead of a giant rubber alien, it’s Manhattan’s signature disintegration blast, wiping out everyone within miles of the Ground Zero. It essentially turns most of the organic life in the five boroughs into subatomic vapor. It’s disturbing to watch but is much more plausible than the convoluted ending of the original novel.

After all, when you have a being who is capable of turning the entire planet into little more than a bad memory, why go to all the extra trouble of creating such an elaborate hoax? You have the perfect patsy at your fingertips. And that’s what happens here. All the plot elements in Moore’s work which are meant to distract Manhattan so he couldn’t interfere are, in Snyder’s adaptation, a means to make Manhattan appear as though he is unhinged and attacks Earth in a vengeful rage. It is a master stroke, both for Snyder and for the film’s version of Veidt.

The remainder of the film rejoins the novel’s story arc. Everyone confronts Veidt and he talks them down and convinces them that his way is the only way. Rorschach martyrs himself to preserve Veidt’s secret but Rorschach's journal is found at the New Frontirersman office, which ensures that Veidt’s plan, in all likelihood, will be for naught. Manhattan decides to roam the galaxy. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl go into hiding to start a life together. Veidt is left to bear the weight of his actions and try to convince himself that he did the wrong thing for the right reasons. It is chilling in both forms but I find the film’s ending so much more satisfying and, from a storytelling standpoint, structurally well-built. It takes all of the cues and builds them to a logical climax that does not feel like Snyder is trying to get one over on us by throwing a curveball like Moore’s ending.

Even if you still hate the ending, one has to at least appreciate Snyder's attempt to adapt and condense the original work for the screen without changing or deleting the majority of important story beats. Given these considerations, I think it's worth taking a closer look to compare and contrast Snyder's film with the original work.

EXCLUSIVE: Cover reveal for The Court of Broken Knives

The Court of Broken Knives is hands down one of the most anticipated books and debuts of 2017 for the grimdark community. Anna Smith-Spark convinced Harper-Voyager to drop the cover on the GdM blog exclusively--and it. Is. Gorgeous.

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If you've been hiding under a rock over the festive season and haven't heard about Smith-Spark's new grimark fantasy whirlwind of a book, here's a bit more about The Court of Broken Knives.

Synopsis

They’ve finally looked at the graveyard of our Empire with open eyes. They’re fools and madmen and like the art of war. And their children go hungry while we piss gold and jewels into the dust.

In the richest empire the world has ever known, the city of Sorlost has always stood, eternal and unconquered. But in a city of dreams governed by an imposturous Emperor, decadence has become the true ruler, and has blinded its inhabitants to their vulnerability. The empire is on the verge of invasion – and only one man can see it.

Haunted by dreams of the empire’s demise, Orhan Emmereth has decided to act. On his orders, a company of soldiers cross the desert to reach the city. Once they enter the Palace, they have one mission: kill the Emperor, then all those who remain. Only from ashes can a new empire be built.

The company is a group of good, ordinary soldiers, for whom this is a mission like any other. But the strange boy Marith who walks among them is no ordinary soldier. Marching on Sorlost, Marith thinks he is running away from the past which haunts him. But in the Golden City, his destiny awaits him – beautiful, bloody, and more terrible than anyone could have foreseen.

The Court of Broken Knives is the first book in the major new grimdark epic fantasy series Empires of Dust. It will be published by Harper Voyager in June 2017, available in the UK and worldwide in hardback and e-book format.

About the Author

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Anna Smith Spark lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model.

Anna's favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault.  She spent several years as an obsessive D&D player. She can often be spotted at sff conventions wearing very unusual shoes.

www.courtofbrokenknives.org

Interview with Snakewood author Adrian Selby

[DW] Hi Adrian, thank you for joining us on the GdM blog!

[AS] Hi there, I could say it’s a pleasure, but you’ve got me hanging by these manacles in this painfully well-appointed torture chamber. Still, I suppose I should be grateful to you for not feeding me the last two days, I needed to lose a bit off my waist anyway…

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[DW] Snakewood comes out in paperback on January 17th; what do you think fans of grimdark fiction will most like about your book?

[AS] Well, I hope they’ll enjoy the fact the protagonists are stone cold killers, while the antagonists are revenge-obsessed killers. The challenge I gave myself in writing this book was to see if I could get readers to care about all of them, to understand why they are as they are, but still root for the former. A few reviews have pointed out that it wasn’t obvious who they should root for, so hopefully that ambiguity is appealing.

[DW] Much of the action in Snakewood features characters powering themselves up with alchemical brews. The concept has a very comic book superpower feel to it. Were comic books and superheroes an inspiration for the brews?

[AS] The only comics based inspiration was Sláine, in the old 2000AD I used to get every week, him and magic mushrooms, er, according to what friends have told me. Sláine would go into battle and undergo a ‘warp spasm’ which physically and radically transformed him into a huge and strange misshapen abomination of a man that could flatten hordes of soldiers. Quite separately, the revelation that a handful of small mushrooms could alter my, sorry, my friends’ consciousness so much, kind of married with that.

[DW] The narrative in Snakewood is non-linear in that it has large backwards and forwards time jumps in successive chapters. What was your reason for this stylistic choice?

[AS] So the initial version of Snakewood that I submitted had many fewer of these viewpoints, but when my agent and editors got hold of it, they were clamouring to know more about what made the Twenty so great, what made Kailen so clever and why had I only vaguely alluded to it all? This is the great value of passionate editors invested in the detail of your work. I could see where they were coming from and realised that, you know what, I was missing a fantastic opportunity to paint a better picture of the Twenty in their prime, which would also hopefully help the reader to get more invested with the characters in the present day, where they’re old and worn out. It provided a useful juxtaposition with their former ‘band of brothers’ mentality that is now fractured and almost gone, throwing the surviving threads of that mentality into a sharper relief.

Snakewood has a ‘found footage’ structure, where I could put together interviews, reports and journals to piece the Twenty’s demise and its causes together. It was the best way to make sense of the importance of distant past, recent past and present day events, not to mention it was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge to try and write in different voices.

On top of all that, another advantage of this structure was that it lent itself better to maintaining the mystery of who was chasing our protagonists to kill them!

[DW] Many of the point-of-view characters are morally ambiguous, including the character (who for now I shall leave unnamed) who features as the villain of the piece. How did you go about trying to keep readers sympathetic to these morally ambiguous characters?

[AS] I alluded to ‘save the cat’ above (which is taken from the screenwriter’s guide of the same name) where you find moments that show you the protagonists are coming ‘from the right place’. Gant and Shale, in the course of the story, demonstrate repeatedly that they are seeking to resolve their challenges without violence. On numerous occasions they’re looking to threaten and cajole or otherwise buy their way out of situations that they could otherwise murder their way through easily. OK, so there is one scene of mass destruction later on that could feel rather unnecessarily destructive, but to them it was merely the most efficient solution to getting the job done, which was busting a friend out of a jail. The choices that our antagonists make are often gratuitously violent. However, part of the ‘jumping around’ is to present their back stories, which I hope illustrate how they came to this, and why they are capable of and do the things they do.

Thus, as I said previously, there’s enough about Gant and Shale to make them the guys to root for, but there’s also enough about our villains that you realise the only difference between them all is how they choose to respond to the cards they’re dealt. They’re all very capable killers willing to kill.

[DW] I’ve heard that Snakewood took a long time to reach its present form. When did you first begin writing Snakewood and why did it take so long to hit the right spot?

[AS] Snakewood’s original title was ‘Korky’s Twenty’, sometime back in about 1989 up to my signing the deal with Orbit. Kailen was, therefore, originally called Korky (and for me and my agent Jamie, he still is, mainly because our initial preparation of the manuscript had ‘Korky’ in it and we’ve kept calling him that by mistake ever since). I did a couple of chapters back in ’89 for my Writing degree, the first one of which had Gant and Shale killing a ‘magist’ (the closest thing to wizards I have). Then through the 90s I never did much about becoming a writer, though these characters were in my head, reminding me they had a story to tell while I grew up and settled down a bit. I was that guy in the anecdote ‘I’m writing a novel’, ‘How wonderful, neither am I.’ Then, around 2005-6 I had a moment where I just thought ‘You’re either a writer or you’re not Adrian. Write this book, or don’t.’ It was an iron conviction I’d discovered. Great, but I knew also that to do this I was going to give it my best shot, leave everything on the field as they say, so for the next few years I did the groundwork, mostly all the research I’d never bothered to do, and the plot, characters, back stories etc. It took years while holding down the day job and raising a young family of course. I finished the first draft in 2013, having started it properly about 2010. Hopefully Gant and Shale are resting easy now their story’s told, and hopefully they’re happy with it.

[DW] Did you do much historical research during your world-building? If so, were there any things in particular that really helped you in developing the world?

[AS] I’ve got a few articles in the ‘Writing’ section on my blog that fill out some of the detail, and of course the research was and is ongoing. I did do historical research and the errors that remain no doubt richly evidence the gaps!! Books that had a profound influence were ‘Pathfinders’ by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Medieval Cities by Henri Pirenne, The Honourable Company by John Keay, books on medieval archery, organisation of armies and of course Wikipedia, Youtube and various wonderful websites including herbcraft.org for all the crazy plant. Lord knows how much harder it would have been to discover all that stuff before the internet.

To answer specifically the question about how they helped develop the world, I think the key book was Pathfinders, because it showed how the prevailing winds of the Indian Ocean and the relative lack of them in the Atlantic determined the course of world history, i.e. that our environment shapes us (I can bore you with my ten minute presentation of the history of the world using only a badly drawn globe and a handful of arrows whenever you like). So when I then came to look at a plant-based ‘magic system’ and all the various species that make the fightbrews, poisons and cures, I realised that because they were so amped up they were entirely determining factors in battles for supremacy among states. It followed therefore that recipe books for these concoctions would be more valuable than gold and diamonds, that states would effectively be drug cartels when it came to international trade etc. (which is where the history of the East India company comes in). I followed the environmentally determining factors to their conclusions for the societies of the world of Sarun, and the ramifications felt re-assuringly solid.

[DW] The brews in Snakewood do everything from making a person superhumanly strong to improving eyesight. Do you ever plan on releasing a glossary detailing the different brews and their effects?

[AS] Not as such. I have a list I work from and mess about with from my above research, but I’m not that interested in creating something like an ‘RPG’ ruleset or table of the ingredients used in the mixes and their effects unless it drives the story forward in some way. I do ensure that plant used in brews where I reference real world herbs corresponds in terms of climate and look and feel, because I think those things are useful and simple ‘anchors’ that help the reader jump from our world to the new and not get entirely lost and disorientated. Delicate and diminutive anchors of course, but these are the threads that make the worldbuilding easier to absorb.

If enough Snakewood fans ever get cranky enough about it I daresay I wouldn’t want to disappoint them, but I can’t help thinking I’d only end up exposing a fat wodge of continuity errors!

[DW] What can we expect to see next from you?

[AS] Well, I’ve recently signed a two book deal with Orbit for more stories from Sarun, the world in which Snakewood is set (YESSS!!). I would be jumping for joy at this point but these manacles you’ve got me suspended from are making my wrists bleed. Anyway, anyone who’s read Snakewood will understand what The Post is, a kind of global trading guild that’s a bit like the Mafia and the Catholic Church combined. The more history I gave The Post when planning Snakewood, the more fascinated I was with its origins. Orbit agreed! So the next book goes back about 250 years to tell the story of a remarkable woman who would change the world. I can’t wait for you to meet her, but it won’t be until 2018 I’m sorry to say.

[DW] Thank you for joining us, Adrian. Readers, if you’d like to check out Snakewood by Adrian Selby, use the links below to head on over to Amazon, or read my review if you’re not convinced yet!

[AS] Umm, you’re not leaving me down here, are you? Not even a cup of water after all that?

Is THE LAST SACRIFICE Grimdark? by James A. Moore

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Is THE LAST SACRIFICE Grimdark?

James A. Moore

So, a quote to start this off: “James A. Moore is the new prince of grimdark fantasy. His work is full of dark philosophy and savage violence, desperate warriors and capricious gods. This is fantasy for people who like to wander nighttime forests and scream at the moon. Exhilarating as hell."
—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind and Ararat

Damned flattering words, and I am very flattered. I recently had someone ask me if I thought The Last Sacrifice qualified as Grimdark. I also had similar questions about the entire Seven Forges series as it stands so far.

Well, let’s look at that for a moment, shall we?

From Wikipedia; grimdark

Grimdark is a subgenre or a way to describe the tone, style or setting of speculative fiction (especially fantasy) that is, depending on the definition used, markedly dystopian or amoral, or particularly violent or realistic. The word was inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war."

Seven Forges deals with a very long and savage war between a vast empire and a smaller but far more savage gathering of kingdoms. Is it dystopian? Yes. Is it violent? Absolutely. Is it amoral? Possibly as I never once declare one side of the war or the other as the moral north on the compass.

How about The Last Sacrifice?

The story starts off with our hero (If there is technically a hero of the story it is most decidedly Brogan McTyre who is wronged and decides to take the battle to a new level.) trying to save his family from being used as the sacrifices offered to the gods of the Grakhul. He fails. His actions literally trigger the end of the world as the gods decide that the human race must be punished for this last act of disobedience. Brogan and company are on the run, hunted by, well, everyone, and commit several rather heinous acts of their own and that’s just in the first few chapters.

Looking back at the definition offered by Wikipedia, I’m going to go with a resounding “Yes.”  There are dark forces afoot. There are slavers roaming the lands, there is mass destruction and the ruination of at least one kingdom. The gods at play cannot possibly be called benevolent by any sane person, and their previous actions on the planet have scarred the landscape and led to corruption on a scale that will only be properly revealed through the course of the trilogy.

Though there is humor, most of it is best suited for the gallows, and though there are a few heroes in the story I wouldn’t go so far as to call them knights in shining armor. Brogan McTyre is a damaged man. He’s had his family slaughtered to appease the gods. He has been forced by the laws of his country to accept a payment, as if his family is little more than cattle. He is not forgiving and he is wanted for his crimes against the Five Kingdoms and the very gods themselves. The gods refuse to accept that he was hurt by their actions and instead demand that he be found and brought to them to face their brand of justice if the world is to be spared.

I’ve looked to some of my idols in the fantasy field for inspiration here. Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Glen Cook, whose amazing Black Company books should be required reading, Robert E. Howard and David Gemmell, these are a few of the names. There are more. I think it’s fair to say that each and every one of them managed to write their fair share of Grimdark before that phrase even existed in the common parlance. Sword & Sorcery, Dark Fantasy, Grimdark, by any name it is the prevalent in the flavor of The Last Sacrifice. As to me being the new prince in that field, I’m beyond flattered by the praise. Time will tell if I can live up to that title.

About James A Moore

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JAMES A MOORE is the award-winning, bestselling, author of over forty novels, thrillers, dark fantasy and horror alike, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under The Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy (featuring his recurring anti-hero, Jonathan Crowley) and his most recent novels, The Blasted Lands and City of Wonders both part of the Seven Forges series. In addition to writing multiple short stories, he has also edited, with Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, The British Invasion anthology for Cemetery Dance Publications.

Moore’s first short story collection, Slices, sold out before ever seeing print. He is currently at work on several additional projects, including the forthcoming The Last Sacrifice, book one in the Tides of War, series. Along with Jonathan Maberry and Christopher Golden, he hosts the Three Guys With Beards podcast and currently he lives in Massachusetts.

Meet him on his blog and @jamesamoore on Twitter.

The Last Sacrifice synopsis

Since time began the Grakhul, immortal servants of the gods who choose who lives and who dies when it comes time to make sacrifices to their deities, have been seeking to keep the world in balance and the gods appeased. When they take the family of Brogan McTyre to offer as sacrifice, everything changes.

Brogan heads off on a quest to save his family from the Grakhul. The decision this time is costlier than they expected, leading to Brogan and his kin being hunted as criminals and the gods seeking to punish those who’ve defied them.

To purchase The Last Sacrifice use the Amazon link below.