Karate Masters vs the Invaders From Outer Space

Windrose Chronicles #4.7

by Barbara Hambly

A novelette of 13,000 words in the Antryg Windrose series. Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his computer tech partner Joanna Sheraton lend a hand in making a low-budget martial-arts movie. But while filming in the Mojave Desert, it becomes obvious that someone or something from another dimension is out to kill off everybody in the project. Antryg must use all his powers to figure out what's behind this and who is really the target of the attack - BEFORE his own dojo-mates panic and decide he's to blame.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories

40 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

aka Barbara Hamilton

Ranging from fantasy to historical fiction, Barbara Hambly has a masterful way of spinning a story. Her twisty plots involve memorable characters, lavish descriptions, scads of novel words, and interesting devices. Her work spans the Star Wars universe, antebellum New Orleans, and various fantasy worlds, sometimes linked with our own.


"I always wanted to be a writer but everyone kept telling me it was impossible to break into the field or make money. I've proven them wrong on both counts."
-Barbara Hambly

Reviews

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novelette. For fans of Hambly's Windrose Chronicles series. I was recently rereading Dog Wizard and there's a brief mention of Joanna having a ticket to Karate Masters vs the Invaders from Outer Space in her pocket so I had to get this! Well-written with fun B movie stuff as well as monsters from the Void. I love how Antryg openly tells everyone that he's a wizard from another world--not that anyone believes him.

[Erin (PT) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories Hambly self-publishes as “Further Adventures” are continuations of her fantasy novels that I grew up reading, and as such, have a very tender and special place in my heart. Especially when she’s writing in the universe of The Windrose Chronicles, which still stands as my favorite series, though I love them all.

This particular novelette feels like a kind of fusion with Bride of the Rat God (one of her few standalones, but incredibly good) in that it also involves the ridiculous yet also direly serious world of movie making. Though, in this case, it’s the schlocky world of 80s action movies.

Short stories are difficult for a lot of authors, especially those who are habitually novelists; often they feel incomplete or like too big a story jammed into too brief a word count. Though it’s arguably NOT complete, as Joanna and Antryg will go on to (hopefully) have many adventures after this, the fragment of their lives it’s taken from feels like a whole event, even as it teases at new worlds and other stories we’ll never know the whole of.

[Mai · Rating 4 out of 5]

More fun with Antryg!

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable too brief visit to old friends.

[Alyce Caswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novelette managed to be both fun and gory - a thoroughly entertaining combination. It might've been one of the shorter ones, but it sure didn't feel like it.