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REVIEW: The Liar’s Knot by M.A. Carrick

If the defining term for The Masks of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick is ‘subterfuge’, then its sequel, The Liar’s Knot can summarily be defined by ‘found family’—specifically, the main characters and their bond between each other.

Readers of the first book will by now, be more than aware of the gorgeous, swashbuckling style that the Rook & Rose trilogy promises; the deftness with which subterfuge and plots are overlaid on top of each other, along with its keen attention to fashion make a triumphant return. Perhaps more notably, the plot continues to intrigue even as the events of the first book find a firm conclusion, with Ondrakja and her zlyzen, and Mettore Indestor out of the picture.

But as in any epic fantasy, there’s always another threat, another thread to unravel, and this becomes the main premise of The Liar’s Knot. Who placed a cursed upon House Traementis? Is Vargo, whose actions betrayed Renata previously a foe, or an ally?

“Nothing about Nadežra is clean, from Lower Bank to Upper. But this is and always has been a city of masks.”

This is where The Liar’s Knot shines—where the previous book excels at the interplay of secrets building up upon each other and being juggled in a gradually dizzying loop, here the narrative is at its best unravelling those secrets and letting them tumble into a glorious, messy pile.

M.A. Carrick have discovered the perfect balance to strike with revealing a character’s secrets, and it’s a refreshing moment of realism; sometimes people confide in each other, especially after undergoing life-or-death situations, and they find comfort in that! Neither does the plot’s tension go away, because it simply shifts perspective, from between characters to the adversities at hand.

Indeed, that very confrontation of lies, of revealing the truth makes The Liar’s Knot a fitting name. In the setting, a knot can also refer to a gang of thieves, and so the title becomes something of a wordplay, for Renata, Grey and Vargo are all liars in and of themselves, and it’s only through showing their faces—and thus, creating that knot—can they face the threats that loom over them.

And of course, there’s more than just character moments to look forward to in The Liar’s Knot. The Rook continues their fantastical crusade behind the inscrutable hood, Vargo continues to be intriguing in the ways only those bearing a villain’s edge often do, there’s more detailed descriptions of clothing and the city the characters inhabit, and even the arcane mysteries of a cult to delve into.

To reiterate, on top of the riot of color and style that the first book brought, The Liar’s Knot provides much, much more character drama and development; it’s very much a book that focuses on making you root tenfold for characters you’ve come to like in the first, and asks you to love them, even as they come to love each other. If you’re one for excellent character writing, I cannot recommend this more, for I certainly enjoyed it a great deal more than the first.

Read The Liar’s Knot by M.A. Carrick

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Liveplay Review: Bookshops of Arkham

Critical Role created an entirely new sort of entertainment on the internet when it realized that people would pay decent money, at least in terms of Twitch stream revenue, as well as devote hours of their lives in order to watch other people play Dungeons and Dragons. It has since become something of a cottage industry to have talented actors and actresses roleplay online. Indeed, the ascension of Vox Machina from online game to animated series shows just how far this can go.

But as Doctor Krieger on Archer says, “Now I’m into something… darker.” First, I enjoyed the World of Darkness channel produced LA By Night that did multiple seasons of my second favorite tabletop RPG AKA Vampire: The Masquerade. However, my secret hope was that they would apply the Critical Role production values to Call of Cthulhu. Which, as you might guess, is my all-time favorite tabletop game.

Mark Meer AKA Commander Shepard the Male Edition has decided to kick off a campaign hosted by Chaosium. This is not their first live play of Chaosium but is the highest production values and devotion to the costume as well as acting element for the game. Each of the actors/players are very keen on their roles from the very moment they come on screen with all four players for a tale of horror set in Arkham, Massachusetts.

The premise for Call of Cthulhu, if you’re unfamiliar, is it is a tabletop game based on the writings of HP Lovecraft. The game somewhat zig-zags between genuine cosmic horror where everyone dies or goes insane as versus Pulpy adventure where you can Indiana Jones your way to stopping the cultists from destroying the world for another week.

This particular campaign, which is not an adaptation of any of Chaosium’s many modules but a wholly original work, is about how a charity auction is being conducted for a local orphanage. Three bookshops are donating expensive and rare manuscripts to be bid on at auction. The bidders that evening include parapsychologist Hazel Berkovitch (Saige Ryan), bibliophile teenager Neil Black (Carlos Luna), quirky spiritualist Judith Van Horne (Lucia Versprille), and gangster Mickey Sykes (Patrick Logan).

Things go horribly wrong very quickly and the four find themselves attempting to recover three magical books dating back to the Salem Witch Trials. The protagonists start off pretty goofy and somewhat silly, like in a Critical Role game, but turn into a serious horror story as the books warp their sense of reality as well as morality. The protagonists do a lot of morally questionable things and it’s fascinating to see how they compromise their beliefs in hopes of survival or defeat the enemies.

It’s not quite a horror game, more dark fantasy, but I really enjoyed the four and a half episodes of Bookshops of Arkham. I say four and a half because due to technical episodes, one of the episodes was lost and the producers decided to instead do a summary told as a dark and creepy story. The ending was quite powerful and I strongly enjoyed it from beginning to end. Sadly, I don’t think they’re going to have a sequel.

Lovecraft fans will find this a bit too fantastical in places with the use of extra-dimensional sites and perhaps a bit too much melodrama as well as joking but that’s only if you think all adaptations should be True Detective. I came to bond with all of the protagonists and really wanted them to continue the campaign onward to do the kind of international long-running campaign you saw in Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.

My favorite of the characters was definitely Hazel but all of them made a strong impressions on me. I regret we didn’t more “down time” to get to know the characters but the Call of Cthulhu premise always seems to imply that the protagonists will go insane or be killed before that happened. Like Seth Skorkowsky, I don’t believe this should be the case and think that’s a bad playstyle. Mind you, this is more, “investigate the anomoly” than “get eaten by tentacles.”

Liveplays of roleplaying games aren’t going to be for everyone but like improv theater, they are enjoyable for quite a few of the audience. If you’re willing to invest enough time for basically a miniseries, I think there’s a lot to appreciate from this. I hope they do more of these and I would love to see an adaptation of Chasoium’s more famous work. Mark Meer is a fantastic Keeper and really brings the setting to life.

It is available on Chasosium’ Youtube channel.

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Review: Return of the Griffin by JCM Berne

JCM Berne brings his superhero space opera down to Earth in Return of the Griffin, the second installment in his Hybrid Helix trilogy.

As the hybrid son of a human mother and alien il’Drach father, Rohan is born with a range of extraordinary abilities including super strength, toughness, and the power to fly, making him one of the most formidable forces in the known universe. However, Rohan would rather live a peaceful life as a Tow Chief Second Class on the sentient space station, Wistful.

Rohan reconsiders his retirement from superhero duties as a crisis on Earth threatens the extinction of humankind. Rohan returns to his home planet after a ten-year hiatus, reassuming his superhero persona as the Griffin. He joins forces with a ragtag group of heroes devoted to saving Earth from an unlikely lineup of villains including ten-kiloton land sharks and anthropomorphized cephalopods.

Beyond these over-the-top animal antagonists, Return of the Griffin also features a cutting parody of ultra-right wing political extremists, a group of “pale men with long beards [who] wore shirts printed with Humans First and red hats that read Make Earth Great Again.” These self-described Proud Guys believe that the land sharks are not an existential threat to humanity, but rather a conspiracy invented by liberal corporations. The spot-on satire of Trumpian politics is the most hilarious part of this genuinely funny book, making me laugh out loud several times.

Unfortunately, most of the supporting cast from the first book, Wistful Ascending, are jettisoned in Return of the Griffin, which introduces a new set of side characters who are not as well developed. I found myself missing many of the friends I had made in the first book.

On the positive side, JCM Berne improves the pacing and flow of his story in Return of the Griffin, delivering more consistently fast-paced action throughout the novel. Berne wisely chooses to forgo the coffee breaks which interrupted the flow of his previous book.

Return of the Griffin is a lot of fun, and it also does a commendable job depicting Rohan’s internal struggles as he faces family and friends from his past life. After running away for ten years, he continues to make questionable decisions upon his return to Earth and must deal with the inevitable consequences. Nevertheless, the downside of the book’s overtly humorous tone is that it doesn’t plumb the same level of dark emotional depth as in the latter part of Wistful Ascending.

As a whole, Return of the Griffin works most effectively as a satire, delivering on its promise of a witty, action-packed story with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

3/5

Read Return of the Griffin by JCM Berne

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REVIEW: The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick

The closest parallel of M.A. Carrick’s (who are also known as the duo of Alyc Helms and Marie Brennan) debut novel, The Mask of Mirrors is probably The Lies of Locke Lamora. Both deal with thieves sporting a heart of gold and both have massive, shake-up events that happen midway through their narratives. But one notable different the former sports is perhaps, the sheer color and vibrancy of its setting.

If you had to describe the The Mask of Mirrors in a word, it’d be ‘subterfuge’, to the extent that an oft-repeated saying within the setting of the novel is ‘may you see the Face, not the Mask’. In the city of Nadežra—a fantastical Venice, which again is reminiscent of TLoLL—which was taken from its native Vraszenian occupants by the ruling Liganti elite, we witness events from the perspectives of three different characters, their Masks and eventually their Faces.

There’s Renata, a thief attempting to con down-on-their-luck House Treamentis, Grey is a police officer reluctantly upholding the law against his fellow Vraszenians, and lastly, Vargo the aspiring crime lord and germaphobe with a keen eye for fashion.

And of course, there’s the Rook—a mysterious, hooded sword-wielding crimefighter who sets himself against the elite. And make no mistake, he certainly delights in embarrassing them:

Sibiliat hadn’t moved to help Mezzan. He took a step toward the Rook, hands curled into fists. “That rapier was imbued by the swordsmith Vicadrius herself. There isn’t another like it in Nadežra!”

The Rook sheathed his blade. “Then by all means, go after it.”

Renata saw the move coming. So did the Rook; she suspected he’d invited it. When Mezzan charged, the Rook faded out of the way and applied boot to ass. The kick provided the extra momentum needed to send Mezzan flying over the rail and into the canal.

“Though I believe it landed on the other side of the bridge. You might want to check there,” the Rook called down over the laughter and cheers from the onlookers. He hopped onto the rail and bowed.

These characters underpin the story of The Mask of Mirrors, and each of them are compelling in their own right. Renata and Grey are incredibly likeable, and have I mentioned Vargo? Our third protagonist possesses a truly compelling aura. He’s ruthless, eccentric, and brimming with confident sexuality—but it’s the secrets and plots they keep withheld from each other that prove most compelling. The Mask of Mirrors delights in its sleight of hand, its constant card tricks of piling up secrets upon secrets that build tension in the most delicious of ways, and its story is all the stronger for it.

Atop this well of intrigue sits a vibrant exterior. M.A. Carrick know their fashion keenly and deeply, and it’s displayed with a good amount of the narrative dedicated to usually what Renata or Vargo wears, but it’s not just clothing that’s vibrant—Nadežra is a queernormative city, and it doesn’t shy away from reminding you that the most intriguing stories don’t always need to be dour and bleak when it comes to setting.

Even with the fluff and pomp of The Mask of Mirrors, it hasn’t shied away from alluding to real-world issues, however. Whether it’s in Grey’s conflicting stance as a police officer, or a subplot involving Vargo’s play for a prestigious water purifying charter. Details like those contribute to make Nadežra feel more substantial and real, more Face than Mask.

Overall, The Mask of Mirrors is a fantastic novel—it’s certainly launched itself into my list of favorites overnight. The characters are fun, the setting accents them wonderfully, and the writing is gripping, with barely a dull moment, whether it’s a duel, a discourse on outfits, or politicking. If you’re looking for fantasy with élan and a certain swashbuckling groove, look no further.

Read The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick

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REVIEW: Cyber Mage by Saad Z. Hossain

The first words from Saad Z. Hossain to his readers in Cyber Mage isn’t, as you’d expect, an opening line designed to hook your attention, or a description of the South Asian-flavored cyberpunk setting that’s a breath of fresh air in an occasionally-stale genre. Instead, it begins with a simple dedication, one sentence long, explaining just what Cyber Mage is about.

“This one is for my gamers.”

And make no mistake—Cyber Mage is very much ‘one for the gamers’, not only with its blatant reference to popular MMORPGs in the form of Final Fantasy 9000 and various RPG-related jargon, but also through shining a light on how people can form the strongest of bonds, even within virtual spaces… even if you’re an elite hacker with ties to Russian crime organizations.

Enter Murzak, the titular Cyber Mage and first of two protagonists, who lives in post-apocalyptic Bangladesh. Despite the moniker and his online reputation, he’s really your average teenager, featuring traits such as struggling to adjust in new social groups, an inability to connect with his parents and last but not least, the dreaded unrequited crush for someone—things that are perhaps, all too familiar for the introverted gamer.

Through him, we get a glimpse into not just how everyday life in a futuristic Bangladesh might look like—it involves lots of 3D printers, infused nanotech into every citizen to create livable climes and stable population centers, and even genetically-modified pets—and how the future hasn’t changed that human need to connect, offline or online.

The second is Djibrel, who can broadly be described as ‘mercenary of magical origin who goes around chopping off heads’. It’s while performing those acts of head-loosening that one begins seeing Hossain’s quippy black comedy surface in Cyber Mage:

“Later, walking down the hawkers’ bazaar that was the main Mirpur thoroughfare, he tied the long beard into a knot and used it to carry the head in his left hand, swinging it gently back and forth as if it were a football in a net. This was the kind of antisocial behavior that gave him a bad name.”

Another thing that fascinated me about Cyber Mage was, as mentioned before, the reimagining of staple cyberpunk tropes as viewed under a South Asian lens. Dijbrel is a street samurai in all but name; here, he is a street sipahi. Instead of a katana, he wields a talwar. Instead of orcs and elves, we have djinn and golems, or when it comes to cuisine, morag polao instead of noodles. It’s a good touch in that it never distracts from the classic cyberpunk feel, and subtly helps distance Cyber Mage from the issues the genre has had with East Asian orientalism, while the plot itself remains comfortingly familiar: There’s corporate plots afoot, both on the mundane and magical end, which Marzuk and Djibrel are inevitably drawn into.

If I have any real issues to point out with the book, it’d mainly be with how it concluded; at one point, a life-or-death situation is concluded, and shortly after, the final few chapters of the book are dedicated towards the gaming aspects of the plot. This isn’t entirely bad, but it felt jarring for the stakes to deflate in that way.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely—I think that Cyber Mage well worth reading, for Hossain’s quippy and dark humor told through his characters, for its fascinating backdrop, and while the gaming aspect is somewhat more debatable, I think this book has enough intrigue that even if you’re not much of a gamer, it’ll still make a fine read.

Read Cyber Mage by Saad Z. Hossain

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REVIEW: Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West is a sequel to the fantastic 2017 game, Horizon Zero Dawn. Just like its predecessor, it is a wonderful blend of genres that I can best describe as post-apocalyptic tribal fantasy/science fiction. That may be a mouthful of a description, but it is nothing compared to the breadth of content that Guerilla Game’s newest entry holds for players. From a gorgeous open world packed with quality side content to the range of options when it comes to exploration and combat, Horizon Forbidden West is bursting at the seams with things to do. This being said, this is very much a sequel to Zero Dawn, so one will need to play the first game to truly understand the plot.

The story of Horizon Forbidden West picks up 6 months after Zero Dawn, with Aloy searching for a backup of the GAIA system, an artificial intelligence used to help terraform the earth. Aloy learns that HADES, the malevolent AI that she had defeated in the first game, may have survived the battle. What’s more, the ‘red blight’ is spreading across the land, destroying plants and animals. Unfortunately, with options of finding a backup of GAIA exhausted, Aloy travels to the lands called the Forbidden West at the behest of an old ‘friend’. Thankfully for Aloy, the Carja tribe is holding an embassy with the tribes of the Forbidden West, which she plans on attending. From there, she hopes to be granted passage so she can continue her search.

Gameplay is similar to the first game, with an open world filled with side quests to do and robot dinosaurs to fight. Side quests are often well-done, self-contained stories that have depth and help you learn more about the world and the struggles of its people. Combat, much like the first game, has Aloy using a bow, spear, and various other traps and contraptions to take down the rather robust variety of enemies. When fighting the mechanized enemies of Horizon Forbidden West, you can also target certain parts (such as a fuel tank) to make combat easier and harvest the broken parts for crafting better equipment.

Horizon Forbidden West is a great time, with one of the best open worlds ever crafted. It builds on its predecessor in virtually every appreciable way, granting greater mobility and immersion. This being said, this entry is not standalone and is very much a sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn. I strongly recommend Horizon Forbidden West and look forward to further iterations in this unique and wonderful universe.

Play Horizon Forbidden West

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Grimdark Magazine Issue #34 is here!

Grimdark Magazine Issue #34 has just hit the stands. This quarter, we’re focussing the darker end of science fiction, and Beth and Sarah have brought you yet another stunning lineup of authors featuring Miles Cameron, Christopher Ruocchio, Samit Basu, Guy Haley, and Ken Scholes. As always, they’ve pulled together a tall stack of extra non-fiction goodies for you to support all that awesome fiction and you’ll find plenty of articles, reviews, and interviews to get your teeth in to.

Cover for Grimdark Magazine Issue #34

In Grimdark Magazine Issue #34 our cover artist Carlos Diaz has brought to life The Royal Game by Christopher Ruocchio. I love the use of purple and blue throughout, and it’s a nice tip of the glass to the neon soaked cyberpunk genre that is one of the foundations of the dark sci-fi that we love.

Lineup for Grimdark Magazine Issue #34

Grimdark Magazine presents the darker, grittier side of fantasy and science fiction. Each quarterly issue features established and new authors to take you through their hard-bitten worlds alongside articles, reviews and interviews. Our stories are grim, our worlds are dark and our morally grey protagonists and anti-heroes light the way with bloody stories of war, betrayal and action.

FICTION

The Royal Game by Christopher RuocchioThe Night Sung out My Name by Ken ScholesThe Cure by Guy HaleyDead Reckoning: An Arcana Imperii Story by Miles CameronElectric Sonalika by Samit Basu

NON-FICTION

An Interview with Alexander Darwin by Beth TablerReview: The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya LakshminarayanReview: Infinity Gate by M.R. CareyAn Interview with Jeff VanderMeer by Beth Tabler and John MauroVideo Game Adaptations: Is the Curse Broken? by Aaron S. JonesReview: Veniss Underground: A Novel by Jeff Vandermeer, Foreward by Charles YuReview: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark LawrenceThe Future is So Bright, I have to Wear Shades (Because We Burned off the Atmosphere and Now We Are Screwed) by Deborah WolfAn Interview with Richard Swan by Adrian CollinReview: Life Beyond Us by the European Astrobiology InstituteRead GdM#34 now

Head over to our catalogue, or grab it straight from Amazon below.

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EXCLUSIVE: Clay Harmon’s brilliant Flames of Mira gets a new cover release

Before the 2024 release of Into the Rift, book two in Clay Harmon’s The Riftwalker series published by Solaris, a brand spanking new cover for Flames of Mira will come out on the 4th of July, 2023. If you haven’t already gotten your hands on this absolutely cracking read, then make sure you get that pre-order in, because that paperback is going to look gorgeous on your bookshelf.

Flames of Mira is dark, tense, and full of action. It is perfect for readers who like their fantasy full of morally grey characters battling with moral dilemmas in a unique world that just seems to bring pain to both the powerful and the weak.

Tickled your fancy? Read our full review by Aaron Jones, here.

Check out that new cover!

The change from the dark of the first cover to the blue effect of the updated cover is just excellent, and I imagine will really help the cover pop off the physical and digital bookshelves. Honestly, I was a big fan of the digital art on the first cover, but this just dials it up to 11 (tip of the glass to the Solaris Books staffer or freelancer who made this beauty somehow even better). It’s going to look brilliant on your bookshelf.

About Flames of Mira

Magic and redemption in a world of fire and ice.

Among boiling volcanoes under Mira’s frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira’s most powerful elementals, Ig serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.

When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can’t escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to kill friend and foe alike to stop his master reclaiming the throne, or sacrifice himself trying.

Read Flames of Mira before Into the Rift releases in 2024

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REVIEW: Empire of the Fallen by Richard Swan

We arrive at the end of things in Richard Swan’s Empire of the Fallen, the concluding volume in The Art of War trilogy (Reclamation and The Ascendancy War). The die have been cast. Foes have turned to friends and the downtrodden are in the ascendancy. There is nothing for it but to gather the fleet, load your soldiers into drop pods and mass landers, light the afterburners, and charge. The sweeping space battles are just as good as the personal ones in this excellent ending to a wonderful space opera trilogy that will satisfy fans of The Expanse like few other books.

In Empire of the Fallen, we return to a range of familiar of points of view. Lyra is out of her head and back into the espionage meatgrinder—this time further undercover and in far more danger than she ever thought possible. Vondur has been returned to the seat of his goliath war machine, and while the scars to his body are readily and easily healed, those caused to his mind are much harder to shift. Yano has been put up in one of the most expensive apartments in the galaxy, whiling away his days in ultimate luxury–but he’s smart enough to know he’s being buttered up. The president is about to ask him for something, and he is highly unlikely to like it.

Meanwhile, Gia is struggling with her celebrity status. The hero everyone wants to interview at the moment, and the rich privileged kid with nothing to do and nobody to talk to but the VR addicts of the virtual world in her new IHD. She’s rudderless and needs help. An old friend comes to her rescue. Kind of.

At the head of the UN, Andrea’s presidency has turned into a dictatorship. She can see what needs to be done, and dealing with the incredibly frustrating gears of democracy has been put to the side as emergency powers allow her to save the galaxy. The pressure builds as her alliances crumble alongside her forces in the face of the invading Kaygryn Empire, the guerilla warfare tactics of the emboldened Kaygyrn Federation, and mounting multi-species political anger at her approach to saving everyone.

The Empire of the Fallen is essentially one long meat grinder battle as the main dish, served with a large side of espionage and counter-terrorism, and followed with the slow decay of the characters we love as the UN’s fascade of moral superiority rots away in the face of annihilation. The allegory for the West’s behaviour in modern politics and conflicts can be seen most strongly in this book of all three in The Art of War, as the worst parts of our society are put on display and extrapolated out. And I love it.

One of the aspects in Empire of the Fallen that I enjoyed the most was the impact of the IHD on Gia and Vondur. This was a really interesting look into our potential future of information saturation, and probably a natural next step to things like Elon Musk’s Neuralink product. The use of Gia’s perspective to really flesh out the impact of online and social media addiction on people who have not previously had access to IHDs, and also what human society has become due to that addiction was a dark and dirty look into the future. Vondur’s deprivation impacts as he is cut off from both the online and medical impacts of the IHD (which can both provide online access, and alter brain chemistry to change moods, cut off pain, provide extended hyperfocus, slow time perception, etc) is a fascinating look at the other side of the coin. While cyberpunk books like Altered Carbon and Neon Leviathan probably delve a lot further into the topic, I found Swan’s viewpoint on future implanted connectivity engaging and not overpowering of the space opera aspect. Because, let’s be honest, there is a big part of us here, in book three, for the space opera battles and big political betrayals.

Once again, Swan showcases his ability to write excellently paced and choreographed action scenes in Empire of the Fallen. As there is so much action in the book–it’s a breathless race of heightening stakes from cover to cover–this is an important note. While I read this book back-to-back with books one and two, and may have suffered a little bit of universe-weariness at times, there was never a point where I felt bogged down in his writing.

My one concern about the book (and I’ll do my best to voice this without giving it away) was one of the character arcs had a development that felt too convenient. It was the one moment in three entire books where I sat back and just moaned in disappointment. This, however, turned out to be an enjoyable, if somewhat heavy-handed feint by the author that actually helps keep the world open to more books beyond the end of this trilogy. However, if I was five starring the first two books and nearly threw the toys out of the pram at that moment, then I wonder if somebody less invested would put the book down at that point and miss out on what is an absolutely cracking ending that grimdark fans are going to really enjoy.

Empire of the Fallen is an excellent end to a wonderful trilogy. Its explosive release of the building pressure through sweeping space and planetary battles matched with the moral downfall of the UN and the characters we’ve engaged in so much over the last two books make this a brilliant read for space opera fans. It is the end cap on a series that showcases the kind of multi-layered book and series story arcs that Swan is capable of, and why his debut fantasy series (The Justice of Kings, and The Tyranny of Faith) has been raved about.

4/5

Read Empire of the Fallen by Richard Swan

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REVIEW: Old Moon Quarterly: Issue 3, Winter 2023

An intriguing newcomer to the small press dark fantasy fiction scene, Old Moon Quarterly has recently released its third volume. The magazine bills itself as a showcase for weird fantasy fiction and sword & sorcery, citing the works of Clark Ashton Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, and Tanith Lee as touchstones. The first volume debuted in July 2022, followed up by the second in November of the same year. While each issue to date has featured four stories, the page count has grown slightly with each installment. Volume 3 of Old Moon Quarterly boasts striking sepia-toned cover artwork by Daniel Vega, showing an (Elric of Melnibone-inspired?) armored warrior confronted by a twisted, multi-headed monster. There are no interior illustrations or advertisements, and the text is presented in a single column layout.

After a brief Introduction comparing Arthurian romances to modern day fantasy adventures, the fiction section of Old Moon Quarterly Volume 3 opens strongly with “Evil Honey” by James Enge. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2010 for his debut novel Blood of Ambrose, James Enge is likely the most widely recognizable author printed in Old Moon Quarterly to date. Like Blood of Ambrose and several short stories from the pages of Black Gate Magazine, Tales From The Magician’s Skull, and elsewhere, “Evil Honey” features Enge’s wandering wizard Morlock Ambrosius, also known as Morlock the Maker. In “Evil Honey” Morlock finds himself magically compelled by the god of bees to come up with a non-lethal way of dealing with an aggressive hive tainted through the consumption of toxic pollen. Shrunk down to bee size by the god, Morlock infiltrates the hive. While the premise seems like something out of a children’s story, Enge plays it mostly straight. Touches of whimsy are overshadowed by the viciousness of the warped bee society, consumed by fear and the desperate need for a common enemy. While “Evil Honey” works fine as a piece of fantasy fiction, one could also view it through a more allegorical lens as a critique of modern nations and their self-destructive, eternal War on Terror. One hopes that there’s a happier solution for the issues dominating post-9/11 America than what Morlock comes up with for the corrupted hive. Setting potential symbolism aside, “Evil Honey” is a fascinating adventure tale and Enge’s moody, sardonic Morlock is always a treat.

The second story is by German writer T. R. Siebert and entitled “Knife, Lace, Prayer.” Where “Evil Honey” was intensely local—even miniature—in scope, this tale is epic to the extreme. It involves a “girl who used to be a beast” journeying across the devastated landscapes of the Ashlands on a mission to slay god. Her world is literally coming apart at the seams, with the god in the process of remaking it into something new. Enraged by the destruction of all she knew and loved, the nameless beast/girl vows revenge. But to find her divine target she must first enlist a guide: a disillusioned paladin named Edmund. While initially I was put off by the vagueness of some of the prose and frequent flashbacks to the girl’s former life as a holy guardian beast, by the end of the story I found myself completely won over. Not only is the story ambitious despite its brief page count, its conclusion is immensely satisfying.

“Singing the Long Retreat,” by R. K. Duncan, is told through the eyes of Fatima, a warrior woman of the Prepared, a cavalry unit tasked with holding off an invading army while the rest of Fatima’s people make their escape. The odds are overwhelming and, as the name suggests, the Prepared are resigned to their own deaths. Songs and poems are evidently important to Fatima’s people, and she sings throughout the battle that ensues, improvising lyrics to raise the morale of her comrades and intimidate their foes. Nearly the entire story is one extended battle scene. The general ebb and flow of combat is narrated as well as individual acts of self-sacrificing heroism, all punctuated by Fatima’s verses. While it reminded this reviewer of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the lack of any conclusive resolution robs the story of much of its inspirational power. “Singing the Long Retreat” seems more an exercise in creating a mood than relating a plot. While I did not enjoy it as much as the other contributions in this Old Moon Quarterly volume, the overall quality of the prose remained high.

The final story is “The Feast of Saint Ottmer,” by Graham Thomas Wilcox, an assistant editor of Old Moon Quarterly. The Arthurian romance touched upon in this volume’s Introduction returns here, in this tale of knighthood and honor. Told in the first person, this novella centers on the youthful knight Hieronymous and his role in the siege of a keep at Kienhorst. The graf of Kienhorst was responsible for the death of Hieronymous’s father, and honor demands retribution. The situation is complicated by the participation in the siege of a contingent of knights called the Order of the Dragon. Fearsome in aspect and more battle-tested by far than Hieronymous, he finds himself longing to be counted among their number. But the darkly alluring nun that commands the Order demands Hieronymous murder the enemy graf, rather than ransom him alive as chivalric convention requires. Throughout the bloody conflict to follow Hieronymous finds himself torn between the obligations of familial duty and the pursuit of martial prowess, the opposing teachings of his father and his grandfather. Drenched in gory, gothic, grimdark flavor, “The Feast of Saint Ottmer” is operatic, even bombastic. One could fairly describe this story as overwritten (some dialogue is in Latin, with accompanying footnotes!), but the ornate prose effectively conjures a darkly vibrant atmosphere. It overshoots Arthurian romance, ending up closer to the opening scenes of Vlad Dracula as armored warrior in the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Over-the-top fun, “The Feast of Saint Ottmer” even edged out James Enge’s “Evil Honey” as the highlight of the issue for me.

Finally, Old Moon Quarterly volume 3 concludes with a book review for Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, a movie-themed horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow. Assistant editor Graham Thomas Wilcox returns to examine stories by Gemma Files, Laird Barron, and John Langan in detail. The cinematic horror of the anthology under review contrasts with the fantasy fiction included in this volume, but given the dark tenor of most of the stories here it’s easy to imagine a considerable overlap in readership.

Old Moon Quarterly may be new to the marketplace, but the high quality fiction and affordable cover price make it well worth checking out. Many ambitious fiction magazines struggle with the demands of monthly or bimonthly schedules, but the measured release pace and competitive author rates of Old Moon Quarterly will hopefully allow a steady stream of polished dark fantasy tales for years to come.

Read Old Moon Quarterly – Vol. 3 edited by Julian Barona, Graham Thomas Wilcox, and Caitlyn Emily Wilcox

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