One of the top publications for adventure fantasy is Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  I’d gotten behind in my reading of it, so I spent last weekend getting caught up.  If you’ve not read the last two issues, here’s what you’ve missed.

Issue 34, the final issue of 2017, contained three stories and three poems. Eric Atkisson led off with the latest installment is his series about the wandering Comanche Crazy Snake, in “Crazy Snake and the Demons of Ometepe“. This was a solid installment in the series, one that had a Lovecraftian feel to it and wrapped up some loose ends.

“Hunger’s End” by Scott Shank is a dark tale of two soldiers, one a career officer and the other a conscript, trapped in a forest. The forest took over everything a generation or two ago, and the soldiers had been stationed at an outpost hoping to turn back the forest. Instead they had to abandon it when their relief didn’t arrive. They stumble upon a lost monastery and lone surviving monk. Unfortunately the enlightenment he provides is not hopeful.

Patrice Sarath gives us a more hopeful story, told from a dragon’s point of view, in “Dragon in Amber“. This is the tale of a dragon who has been imprisoned for years and is given an opportunity to earn his freedom. An opportunity that has its own risks. This was my favorite story in this issue.

Issue 34 also contains poems by Adam Vine, Meg Moseman, and Ariel Boltman (one of the best poems I’ve read in a long time).

Moving right along to issue 35, the current one as I write this, there are more treasures in store.

Rapahel Ordonez returns with another story of his wandering conquistador Francisco Carvajal y Lopez in “White Rainbow and Brown Devil“. Here Francisco helps a tribe defeat a monster that is preying on them and that stands in the way of where he’s wanting to go.

“That Sleep of Death” by Mary-Jean Harris provides a different flavor of heroic fantasy than what most people think of when they hear the term. Here the action takes place on the astral plane during Victorian times. Not what I usually expect from HFQ, but enjoyable.

In “Things of Shreds and Patches” by Norman Doege, a foppish messenger summons a barbarian working security in a whorehouse to come to the aid of his childhood friend, who is heir to the throne. Only the uncle has killed the father, married the mother, assumed the throne, and declared the heir to be mad. If the setup reminds you of Hamlet, well, there are plenty of similarities. But there are also plenty of differences. For instance, rather than a ghost, there’s a succubus…

Poetry is by James Matthew Byers, Mary Soon Lee, and Karen Bovenmyer. The Bovenmyer poem included an audio file of the author reading the poem.  I thought this was an interesting touch, and I hope HFQ will do that again.

So there you have them, two issues of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. The definition of heroic fantasy editor Adrian Simmons is using is pretty broad. That’s okay, because he’s been publishing some fine stories.