Addendum to Review of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

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I was reading the review of the current issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly on the Swords and Sorcery blog and realized I hadn’t scrolled down the contents page far enough when I read HFQ this past week.  I missed the final poem altogether.  That poem was “Legend” by Colleen Anderson.  I found the poem to be somewhat depressing.  That’s a good thing in this context.  The poem was a moving look at a legend’s passing, and I Ms. Anderson did a good job of capturing the feeling of loss that would accompany such a thing.

My apologies to Ms. Anderson, the editorial team at HFQ, and my readers for the oversight.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Scores a Homerun

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I thought a baseball metaphor was appropriate since this is the spring 2012 issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  I’ve been so inundated with novels that I haven’t had a chance to check this one out in a while.  It’s well worth a look.

The current issue contains three stories and two poems.  Here’s what I thought of them.

First up is “Crown of Sorrws” by Seamus Bayne.  It’s the tale of the mercenary Ordwin who is chosen by the summoner-king Theisius to retrieve an item of value in a deadly game the sorcerer is playing with King Archese, Ordwin’s former employer.  The item is a crown, which Archese has given to the beast people.  To retrieve it, Ordwin must assume the form of a beast and pass three tests.  Naturally, Ordwin doesn’t have much choice.  There is deception aplenty here.  I found the setup intriguing, the challenges clever, and the characters fascinating.  This one was dark, brutal, and engrossing.  I thoroughly loved it and would like to see more of this world.

Second is Russell Miller’s tongue-in-cheek “Rhindor’s Remission”.  Rhindor is an aging warrior wizard who has a final confrontation with his greatest foe.  They both discover that old age isn’t for sissies.  And one of them discovers that evil artifacts can change as they age.  I found the humor in this story to be good a counterpoint to “Crown of Sorrows”.

The final story, “Blade and Branch and Stone” by Spencer Ellsworth, is the longest of the three.  It’s set in what feels like colonial America, but if that’s the case, it’s an alternate America which has a sentient race that’s part tree.  While the concepts of a race that is part tree and trees that store generational memories aren’t new, and aren’t my favorite tropes if I’m being honest, Ellsworth uses multiple viewpoints to present a moving picture of how two races at enmity with each other can bridge a gap.  This was a multi-layered tale worth the reading.

There were two poems.  The second one, “Sidhe Song” by Phil Emory had a haunting quality to it.  But it was the first poem, Bethany Powell’s “Burying the Plowshare”, that really stood out to me.  It’s about a farmer who goes to war because there’s nothing left to do.  I don’t read a lot of contemporary poetry these days, but then most contemporary poetry doesn’t have this kind of power.  Powell captures the tone of bitterness and loss perfectly. 

I wasn’t familiar with any of the writers whose works is in this issue.  I found all of the stories to be excellent.  Heroic Fantasy Quarterly may not have pay rates that meet SFWA’s criteria for a professional market, but there’s nothing unprofessional about the quality of the work you’ll find there.  All five pieces, whether fiction or poetry, were polished, professional work.  If you aren’t reading this electronic magazine, you’re missing out.

The Adventures Fantastic Interview: Martha Wells

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Martha Wells is the author of nine original novels, two media tie-ins (Stargate Atlantis), and various short stories and essays.  Her latest novels are the first two Books of the Raksura, The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea (reviewed here and here).  You can find her online at www.marthawells.com.  She recently took a few minutes to sit down and answer a few questions. 
AF:  Why do you write?
MW:  I think it’s a need for communication because when I was a kid there was that feeling that no on listens to you.  I felt very isolated.  There was organized fandom, but it was very difficult to find.  The internet didn’t exist then, so it was very hard to find people who also liked science fiction and fantasy.  I found science fiction and fantasy sections in bookstores and libraries but I never seemed to find any other people who read it.  I think it comes from a need to communicate and express yourself. 
AF:  Why science fiction and fantasy as opposed to some other genre?
MW:  I don’t really know.  I always was attracted to it.  One of the first books I tried to read as a kid was The Time Machine because it had our name on it.  My parents had an old paperback copy with a pulp cover and it had our name on it.  And also the library I grew up in had a children’s section and you were supposed to make a turn into the shelves for the rest of the children’s section.  The science fiction and fantasy section was there along the rest of the wall, and I just went along it instead of taking the turn.  So I ended up reading a lot of even though I was too young for it.  Even so I think there were a lot of children’s books back then that were fantasy.
AF:  Are you willing to say when “back then” was?
MW:  I was born in 1964.
AF:  Then we’re about the same age.  I was born in 1966, so we probably read a lot of the same stuff.
MW:  The one thing back then, I remember there being very few female characters.  They were either the baby sitter type person or the person who had to be rescued or the person preventing the protagonist from going on the adventure kind of thing.  So I think one thing in science fiction and fantasy, especially in Andre Norton’s books, there’s a lot more female protagonists.  Even if there’s a male protagonist, there’s usually a woman or women to go along on the adventure, so I was probably looking for something like that.  I like the boys’ adventure books, too, but I was feeling like this is not something you’re part of, this is something you’re looking at the outside of. 
AF:  So other than Norton, what writers have influenced you?
MW:  Judith Tarr.  F. M. Busby, who is a science fiction writer.  Robert Heinlein.  I read all the Heinlein juveniles.  I read a little bit of Anne McCaffery, but not as much.  I think she was coming in later for that period.  There was a lot of children’s authors that I read that I’ve never seen anything by, I found them in the library, science fiction and fantasy authors that I never saw much of later.  A whole bunch of those.  I run into one of those, you see them in the used bookstore, and say “I loved that as a kid.”  And Lord of the Rings, and Dune, too.  I read those when I was way too young.  A lot of the languages in my work comes from reading Lord of the Rings and getting the idea early on that yeah, there should be different languages here.
AF:  That’s not the first time I’ve heard you say “I read that when I was too young.”  How does going back and rereading some of those later as an adult, what’s that experience like?
MW:  Sometimes you don’t really know why you liked the book, and sometimes you    went right over your head.  Like Malevil by Robert Merle, He wrote The Day of the Dolphin, I think that’s his most famous book.  It’s a post apocalyptic novel set in France about a man who owns a small medieval castle.  A few people are living there, and a nuclear bomb hits Paris.  It’s about them ttrying to survive and recreate civilization   It’s not one of the easy post apocalyptic novels, either.  When they come out of the castle, everything is just burnt.  They’ve got to try to get crops, and they’ve got just a few animals that have survived.  At first they think they’re the only people, and later they find there’s another walled medieval they’re eventually able to get to.  People survived in there.  It was one of my parents’ books, and all I had was the Reader’s Digest condensed version, which they bowdlerized.  I knew they were shorter, but I didn’t realize how much they bowdlerized.  When you go back read the real book, you go, “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff in here.”  It’s like 200 pages longer.  They’ve taken out all the sex and a lot of other stuff.  There’s a large section at the end.  The book is told from the point of view of the man who owned the castle, Emmanuel, and there’s a guy who becomes a really good friend of his, who after Emmanuel dies, he’s got Emmanuel’s diary.  He goes back through Emmanuel’s diary and puts in all the stuff that Emmanuel left out.  That’s an interesting storytelling technique I’ve not see before.  That was left out of the condensed version for sure.  The other shoe hasn’t dropped on the rest of the story.  That’s almost an illustration; you read the book and so much goes over your head.  All the parts that would have gone over my head had been taken out.  I didn’t see them until I got a copy years later. 
AF:  Congratulations on selling the third Raksura book.
MW:  Thank you.
AF:  I’m looking forward to it.    Like I said a minute ago before we started recording, it’s going to be a long year because I really enjoyed those.  I know you’re going to have edits and stuff to do.  Are you working on anything now? Are you planning another book, or are you going to take a break?  What can we look for from you or with your name on in the next few years?
MW:  I can’t really afford to take much of a break.  I have a young adult novel that’s been going the rounds for about a couple of years now.  It’s on a new round of submissions, so I’ve got my fingers crossed for that.  I’m trying to decide what book I want to write next.  I’ve got a short story I’ve been asked to writer for an anthology, so I need to write that.  At this point I’m kinda trying to figure out what I want to do next, if I want to do another Raksura book or if I want to do something different.  Right now my head is in that world, so I’m kinda interested in doing something there, but I have another set of characters that I came up with for a short story I could work with.  I’m afraid people will be really disappointed.  It’s like when you go back to a series set in a world but with different people.  So I’m debating what I want to do. 
AF:  In a post on, I think it was The Night Bazaar, you talked about trying to get several novels started.  And you talked a little bit about almost quitting, and I’m glad you didn’t.  Thank you for not quitting.  What were some of the other novels, and do you think you would ever go back to some of those, or previous series, or previous works, not necessarily series, but other novels.
MW:  Parts of them went into The Cloud Roads.  Not really parts, but actual elements.  And elements of some of them went into Emillie and the Hollow World, which is the young adult novel I haven’t sold yet.  There’s one part, it’s about 25,000 words, I’d really like to do something with it, but so much of it is now part of other books, it had to be thrown out.  Some of them never developed very far.  There were only three that did, and they ended up in different books.
AF:  Shifting gears just a little bit, Adventures Fantastic tends to focus on heroic fantasy, historical adventure, and barbarians tend to be central characters in a lot of those stories.  What qualities do you look for in a barbarian?
MW:  In a barbarian?  I don’t know.  I dislike characters that are too unlikable.  I mean the character can be snarky and obnoxious to a certain extent, but if they’re actually a bad person, I don’t tend to like that.  I respect people’s right to write it, but it’s not something I care for too much.  That’s why I like the Imaro books by Charles Saunders.  I like that feel.  Imaro is one of the few barbarian quote unquote characters who is actually a nice person.  That’s what I like about those books.  I guess I look for someone who is more like a Robin Hood type character who is sort of outside the law but whose actions I can read about and support and  like.  The gritty fantasy and stuff doesn’t grab me.  It’s too much like reality.
AF:  Last question:  If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask that I haven’t?
MW:  That’s a hard one. 
AF:  Some people think it’s hard; some people think it’s easy.
MW:  I’m not terribly good at self-promotion.  That’s why when I write a blog post, I often have people ask me question.  I don’t know what to write about.  Give me a topic, and I’ll write.
AF:  Okay, let me ask you this, and we’ll make this the last question.  Who are the up and coming fantasy writers do you think people should be reading?
MW:  Oh, Ben Aaronovitch wrote, it’s called Midnight Ride in the US, but the British title is  Rivers of London.  Moon Over Soho is the second one, and there’s a third one.  I think it’s Whispers Underground that’s coming out in a few months.  I really enjoyed his books.  They’re kind of labeled as urban fantasy, but they’re more like fantasy and British procedurals like Frost and Morse.  It’s a great combination.  I really enjoyed them.  I thought his take on mythology and the supernatural elements in London was really neat, and I had not seen that before.  Saladin Ahmed.  His book has just come out,   Throne of the Crescent Moon.  N. K. Jemisin.
AF:  I was expecting you to say that because I knew you really liked her stuff.   
MW:  Yeah, the first trilogy has come out, and a duology is about to come out.
AF:  Is it set in the same world, because I’ve not read her work.
MW:  No, it’s a completely different world.  I really liked Courtney Schafer’s book.  I gave her a blurb for her fist novel called The Whitefire Crossing. 
AF:  I loved that one.  It was one of the best I read last year
MW:  It was really different.  I’m really interested to see what she does later.  And there’s a bunch of people I have on my stack that I haven’t read yet.
AF:  Thank you very much.
MW:  You’re welcome. 

Across the Straits of Galahesh

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The Straits of Galahesh
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Nightshade Books
Trade Paperback $14.99 – 570 pages
various electonic editions $6.00

If you read my review of Beaulieu’s first novel, The Winds of Khalakovo, you know it was one of my favorites last year.  Now the second volume in the series has hit shelves.  Beaulieu was kind enough to send me a review copy of The Straits of Galahesh.  I had wanted to have the book finished and this review posted about the time the books hit the shelves, which was a week ago.  Unfortunately life has been happening at my house, and I’m a bit behind on several commitments.

However, you can still snag a copy.  And you should.  What follows are several reasons why, along with some spoilers for The Winds of Khalakovo.  If you haven’t read it, skip the next few paragraphs.

Before I give those reasons, though, let me set the stage.  Five years have passed since the end of the previous novel.   Nasim is now a young man, seeking to understand his past and stop the Al-Aqim from ushering in the end of the world.  Khalakovo is still occupied by Vostromo.  Nikandr is traveling the Grand Duchy of Anuskaya, trying to stop the spread of the Rift.  And Ataina, now a powerful Matra, has offered herself as a wife to one of the high ranking noblemen in the Empire of Yrstanla.

Yes, she still loves Nikandr, and he, her.  This is a political marriage.  Not that this sits well with Nikandr.  Remember the things I said in the review of Winds about the course of true love not running smooth.  Well this is a longer book, and straits often contain rapids.  I’m just saying.

The wedding is going to take place on the island of Galahesh, a quasi-independent state, which is cut in half by deep straits.  The ley lines through the aether twist along the straights to such an extent that the airships can’t cross the straits.  All personnel and material have to be lowered in elevators, transported across the straits by ferry, and raised by elevators.  The straits act as an effective barrier between the Empire and the Grand Duchy.  This becomes a major point in the plot, in part because the Matra can’t cross the straits either when they take the dark.

Nikandr still has his bond with Nasim.  Nasim can no longer sense the spirit world. Soroush (at the beginning of the novel) is still being held by the Maharat.  Atiana is one of the more powerful Matra.  Nikandr’s father is now one of the Grand Duke’s most trusted advisers in spite Vostromo’s occupation of Khalakovo.  And Grigory still needs to be taken out and hanged.

None of them will be the same after the events of this book.  Provided they survive.

End of spoilers for Winds.

Sometimes a first novel hits the shelves that is above average, promising great things to come in future works, only to have the second novel disappoint.  This can be because the author only had one good book in him/her, because there was more time to polish the first novel than the second due to publication schedules, or any number of other reasons.

That is not the case here.  Straits is a more mature work than Winds.  There is a great deal of action, and all of the action scenes are quite well done, but it seems to me the focus here is more on character.  Don’t get me wrong; there was strong character development in Winds.

It’s just that Beaulieu has taken his character development to a new level.  And not just with the three viewpoint characters:  Nikandr, Atiana, and Nasim.  The supporting cast of siblings, servants, soldiers, and others come alive as individuals.  I found this to be particularly true of Soroush, the terrorist leader who was one of the central villains in the first book.  Here he grows into one of the more heroic figures.  In short Beaulieu has created a cast of characters who live, breath, and about whom the reader cares.  He populates the book with them.

Then he kills them.

Not all of them, of course.  A number survive.  But no one’s survival is guaranteed.  At no time does Beaulieu kill off a character gratuitously.  Each death is logical and comes naturally from the events in the story.  None of these characters die for cheap emotional manipulation.  And once it sinks in that any one of these people may not make it to the last page, it heightens the suspense.

And there’s plenty of suspense.  The book is structured so that each viewpoint character gets two or three chapters before another character gets their turn on stage.  Each of these sections ends in such a way that you want to keep reading.  The term “page-turner” is sometimes used derisively by the literati for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me.   It would seem to me that a writer who can make the reader want to keep turning the pages because he/she is engrossed in the story is a success, regardless of sales numbers.

This is not a predicatble novel.  Several times the story went in a direction I wasn’t expecting.  Not everything is as it seems.  Straits is a dark novel, however.  At times, very dark.  There are scenes of human sacrifice, including children.  If you like your fantasy full of rainbow colored unicorns, you might have problems with parts of this one.

There is not as much emphasis on politics as there was in Winds, although based on how this one ends, I suspect that won’t be the case with the third book.  The story, although at a natural break, is far from over.

If you read The Winds of Khalakovo, then you will want to read The Straits of Galahesh.  If you haven’t, then buy and read them both.  This one is full of excitement, suspense, and betrayal.  Lots of betrayal, some intentional, some not.  I’ve read a great deal of fantasy in the last year, and almost all of it was good to great.  The Straits of Galahesh was one of the best.

David Gemmell Awards Shortlist Announced

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The shortlist for the David Gemmell Awards was announced over the weekend.  There were some other award announcements in the last few days, so if you missed this one, that’s understandable.  This is the one I’m most interested in, since this is the type of fantasy we try to focus on here at Adventures Fantastic.  More information and a list of previous winners can be found on the David Gemmell Award site.  Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all authors and artists who were nominated and especially the shortlisted nominees.  Voting on the shortlist opens in a few days and will remain open until sometime in June, so if you want to vote and aren’t a member, there’s a link on the Award site where you can join.

Legend Award
The Heroes – Joe Abercrombie
The Wise Mans Fear – Patrick Rothfuss
Blood of Aenarion – Willian King
Alloy of Law – Brandon Sanderson
Black Veil – Kristen Britain

Morningstar Award
Prince of Thorns – Mark Lawrence
Among Thieves – Douglas Hulick
The Unremembered – Peter ORulloan
The Heir of Night – Helen Lowe
Songs of the Earth – Elspeth Cooper

Ravenheart Award
Blood of Aenarion – Raymond Swanland
The Heroes – Didier Graffet and Dave Senior
Oracles Fire – Frank Victoria
Among Thieves – Larry Rostant
Journey By Night – Aaron Briggs

Award Announcements and a Few Initial Thoughts

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The shortlist for the Hugo Awards was announced yesterday along with the Campbell Awards.  Locus Online (among others) has posted the list.  I’ve included the fiction and some fiction related categories below for easy reference (stolen cut and pasted from Locus Online). 

Congratulations to all the nominees.

Here are a few initial thoughts on some changes I see and potential changes down the road.

First, of the nominees, only two of them have been publishing since I started reading f/sf in my teens.  (It wasn’t that long ago, wiseass.)  Those would be George R. R. Martin and Mike Resnick.  Ryman has been publishing since the early to mid-90s.  Walton, Mie’ville, and Scalzi have been publishing for around a decade, give or take a few years.  The others are either relatively new or have been around for (I think) less than a decade, with the possible exception of one or two I’m not that familiar with.

What does this mean?  I don’t know that it means anything.  A lot of the stalwarts from the 70s, 80s, and 90s who got their start in those decades (as opposed to stalwarts who started in earlier decades) are still publishing, in some cases quite prolifically.  Alan Dean Foster and Orson Scott Card come to mind off the top of my head, although I don’t know if Card published anything during the period of eligibility.  Some of the big names from previous decades have either moved on to other genres, slowed their rates of production, or quit writing entirely.

In short the field is changing.  Whether for good, bad, or neutral will remain to be seen and depend on what your tastes are.  Except for the novels, I’m going to try to read the nominated fiction by Worldcon.  Not that I can afford to attend or anything, but so that I can cheer (or rant) from a position of knowledge after the awards are announced.  I intend to read Leviathan Wakes and A Dance with Dragons, just not sure I’ll have them read by the time the awards are given out.

I have to admit I haven’t read any of the nominees this year.  That’s unusual.  Usually, I’ve read a few, at least.  I don’t know if that means that I’m out of step with the rest of the field or that the rest of the field hasn’t caught up with me yet.  

The thing that got me thinking about the awards was this post about writers making a living by publishing online rather than through traditional venues.  More and more authors seem to be sidestepping New York or at least publishing some stuff on the side.  As far as I know, and you can correct me if I’m wrong on this point, none of the major awards recognize indie published works.  I’m wondering how long that position is sustainable if the awards are to be taken seriously.  If some of the top selling titles in the field aren’t considered for the major awards (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, etc.) , how meaningful are the awards?  At that point, I think the awards become an elitist exercise of self-congratulation within a small group.  I’m not saying we’re at that point yet, but we seem be moving there fairly quickly, as these numbers and these numbers indicate.

Print still dominates overall sales, but that’s changing. Perhaps it’s time for the field to change how it recognizes quality.  I’ll have more to say on this topic at a later date.  This has just been a snapshot of the direction my thoughts have been going in the last few hours.

BEST NOVEL

BEST NOVELLA

  • ‘‘The Ice Owl’’, Carolyn Ives Gilman (F&SF 10-11/11)
  • ‘‘Countdown’’, Mira Grant (Orbit Short Fiction)
  • ‘‘The Man Who Bridged the Mist’’, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 10-11/11)
  • ‘‘Kiss Me Twice’’, Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s 6/11)
  • ‘‘The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary’’, Ken Liu (Panverse Three)
  • Silently and Very Fast, Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA)

BEST NOVELETTE

  • ‘‘Six Months, Three Days’’, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com 6/8/11)
  • ‘‘The Copenhagen Interpretation’’, Paul Cornell (Asimov’s 7/11)
  • ‘‘What We Found’’, Geoff Ryman (F&SF 9-10/11)
  • ‘‘Fields of Gold’’, Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)
  • ‘‘Ray of Light’’, Brad R. Torgersen (Analog 12/11)
BEST SHORT STORY
  • ‘‘Movement’’, Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s 3/11)
  • ‘‘The Paper Menagerie’’, Ken Liu (F&SF 3-4/11)
  • ‘‘The Homecoming’’, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s 4-5/11)
  • ‘‘Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (Prologue)’’, John Scalzi (Tor.com 4/1/11)
  • ‘‘The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees’’, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld 4/11)
JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER [NOT A HUGO AWARD]
  • Mur Lafferty
  • Stina Leicht
  • *Karen Lord
  • *Brad R. Torgersen
  • E. Lily Yu
BEST SEMIPROZINE
  • Apex Magazine
  • Interzone
  • Lightspeed
  • Locus
  • The New York Review of Science Fiction 

Long Looks at Short Fiction: Blackskull’s Captive by Tom Doolan

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Blackskull’s Captive
Tom Doolan
Kindle ebook format, 0.99

If this short story, the first publication by Tom Doolan, is any indication of what we can expect from him, then he’s someone you will want to add to your list of must-read authors.

“Blackskull’s Captive” is a delightful and thoroughly entertaining blend of fantasy, space opera, and old fashioned pirate adventure.  Written in part as an homage to Treasure Island, it’s the story of Jack Munro, an orphan who is captured by Orcs and forced into being the cabin boy of the dreaded Captain Blackskull. 

Now Orcs in space (or Orccss innn Spaaacce! – sorry, I couldn’t resist) may sound at first glance like it won’t work, but I assure you it does.  Part of the reason is the voice.  The story has the tone of a novel or journal from the 1700s or 1800s.  The only difference is that this one is readable, quite readable.  I’m sure being a history major helped as far as the style is concerned, but Doolan has crafted a character who is both courageous and resourceful, yet not without flaws, which makes him all the more engaging.  Young Jack Munro learns from his mistakes and grows, turning from frightened victim to hero.  Doolan manages to stuff more character development into a few pages than some epic fantasies do in five times the number of pages.

The thing I found intriguing, and my geek is showing here, is that the universe is a blend of the 17th century and the 21st.  The costuming, for lack of a better word, is out of Treasure Island, while the science (with the exception of one mention of the aether) is out of Stephen Hawking.  Artificial gravity and plasma guns alongside cutlasses and sailing ships in outer space.  I want to know more about how this universe works.  Aether and super science?  Definitely cool.

Fortunately I’ll get the chance.  Doolan said on his blog when he announced the story that he’s completed one sequel and is working on a second.  I had a blast reading this story.  Doolan’s prose pulled me into the story, and the unique setting and well realized characters made me want to stay.

As is my custom when reviewing indie published works, a few words on the production values.  The cover art is a perfect fit for the story.  There were no typos or formatting problems.  This was what an ebook should be like.  Why can’t New York figure that out?

This little ebook is a great buy.  Check it out.

Long Looks at Short Fiction: Harvest of War by Charles Allen Gramlich

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“Harvest of War”
Charles Allen Gramlich
Razored Zen Press, 0.99

In the afterward to this story, the author mentions that it was written for an anthology about orcs Scott Oden was putting together which unfortunately didn’t work out.   That’s a shame, because if the other stories were as good as this one, we’ve missed out on some fine reading.

The point of the anthology was to present orcs as more three dimensional than what we see in Tolkien.  Gramlich succeeds.  This is a moving and intelligent tale.  Because it’s a short story, I’m not going to discuss the plot much, but I will tell you why I liked it. 

Khales is the sole survivor of a battle between orcs and humans.  Wounded and taken captive, he’s imprisoned in a cage.  It’s been said that there are only a small number of plots but an infinite number of ways to execute them.  Parts of what happens after Khales is taken captive are not hard to guess.  It’s how Gramlich handles the events that propel the story.  That, and the ecological role the orcs play.  This was something I’ve not seen other writers deal with, and as I read the story, I wondered why someone hadn’t thought of this before.  It was what made the story for me and lifted it above being just another fantasy story.

The character development was believable, and much of it arose naturally from the situation.  Nothing felt forced, either in the plot or the characters.  The action was well balanced with the character development.  The story is told in present tense, which added to the sense of urgency in the battle scenes.

The production values are professional.  There were no typos.  The cover art fit the piece well.  Overall, a quality product that was professionally done.

I’ve decided to try something new.  With the price of gas continuing to rise, I’m not going to be going home or out for lunch.  Instead I’m going to brown-bag it, and read some short fiction while I eat.  I’ll blog about what I read either during lunch or when I need a break for a couple of minutes.  This way the blog won’t be so dormant while I’m reading long novels.  My goal is to have at least one post a week result from this practice.  “Harvest of War” was the first of these posts.  The ones that follow will have a high standard to meet.