A Review of Stones by Gerald So, Yet Another Well-Done Ebook

Stones
Gerald So
various ebook formats, $0.99

Long ago, when the world was young, the Moon was new, dinosaurs ruled the land, and I was in high school, two of the three television networks decided to do what networks have always done. (Yes, children, at one time there were only three television networks instead of half a million; if you didn’t like what was on, you read a book. There was no internet. I told you, the world was young.) They decided to cash in on the popularity a little movie entitled Raiders of the Lost Ark by airing shows in a similar vein, namely adventures set in the Pacific in the 1930s.

I don’t remember which networks they were, and I’m too lazy to look it up. One show was entitled Bring ‘Em Back Alive, the fictitious adventures of real life big game hunter Frank Buck, author of a book of the same title, and starring Bruce Boxleitner. The other was Tales of the Gold Monkey. It starred Stephen Collins and several of the characters were spies.

It’s Tales of the Gold Monkey that Stones most closely resembles.

This is not accidental. So dedicated the book to Donald P. Bellisario, creator of the show.

How do the stories stack up? They were a delight to read. The central character, C. J. Stone, is a pilot in the Caribbean in the 1930s, and So does an excellent job of capturing the tone of the era. The stories are short, almost vignettes in some cases. But they work. They were a lot of fun, and I’ll be tracking down the other stories about Stone that are mentioned in the author bio.

I also want to say a word about the formatting of the book. This is another of several ebooks I’ve looked at lately (see here, here, and here), only this one has no print version. I have to say I’m impressed. There’s an interactive table of contents. While not flashy, the cover art gives you an excellent idea of what you’re getting with the book. The black and white illustration does more to match the tone of the time in which the book is set than a color cover would.

This is one worth picking up. Hopefully, Mr. So will continue to write about this character. I’d love to read more of his adventures.

RBE Challenge Continues

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Jason M. Waltz posted a little while ago on the Rogue Blades Entertainment website that he is extending the Challenge! Stealth competition. Due to issues related to a virus infecting the site, which have now been resolved, the 2011 Challenge will continue until 30 submissions have been accepted.

For more details, go here and here. The artwork for this year’s competition can be found here.

Heroes Dark and Dangerous

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Dark Heroes
Jessy Marie Roberts, ed.
Pill Hill Press
Paper $15.99, ebook $0.99

This anthology has an interesting premise. The creatures we think of as monsters play the role of hero.

Most of the authors in this anthology were not familiar to me, although a couple of them were. I’ve always found anthologies in which I don’t know the work or at least the reputation of the contributors to be something of a crap-shoot. Fortunately, the dice roll came up predominantly in my favor.

Here’s what the book contains:

J. Leigh Bailey draws on Mesopotamian mythology in “The Twelfth Monster of Chaos” in one of the more original takes on a dark hero. The vampire Phil Wolters describes is “Just Waiting for the Sun to Set” but what comes out in the dark is something even he has trouble defeating. Samhain fights for right in “Cat Got Your Tongue?” by Gary Buettner. Scott M. Sandridge has the first of several werewolf/shafeshifter stories, but it’s “Nothing Personal”, in which a madame hunts down the murderer of one of her girls. Jennifer L. Barnes continues werewolf theme in “It’s Medicine; Not Magic”. Mel Obedoza turns the tables on convention with her “Monster Hunter.” In “The Ease of Evil”, Aaron Renfroe gives us a tale from the point of view of a monster who doesn’t realize he’s a monster.

Anita Siraki doesn’t deal with a werewolf per se, but in the bleakest tale in the book, “La Bete”, her heroine experiences life as a wolf and discovers that revenge has a high price. Those who deal with the undead, even those who hunt them down, take on their characteristics, something Christopher Heath demonstrates quite effectively in “Azieran: The Crypt of Shaddis’zzam”. His Azieran is always a fun place to visit. Gorgon sisters battle in “Their Last Escape” by Alexis A. Hunter. Revenge comes from beyond the grave in Chloe Stowe’s “The Widow and the Scythes”. On the “Solstice”, Darin Kennedy’s heroine April Sullivan makes a return appearance to try to prevent another necromancer from raising Arlington National Cemetery. J. M. Martin turns in the best were-animal story, and certainly the most emotionally complex one, in “Eaters of Meat and Hunters”. Kat Hekenbach shows us that werewolves are just “Ordinary Folk”. A half demon aids his former lover, now a nun, in protecting a young girl from “The Dream Easter”.

This isn’t the strongest anthology I’ve read from a small press this year, but then it’s been an exceptionally strong year for small press anthologies, as I’ve stated elsewhere. This is still a better anthology than most of those published by a certain New York imprint known for its anthologies. I suspect many of these people will be well known in the field if they keep writing. The stories are at a professional level, although some are stronger than others. I guess that reaction on my part is to be expected with so many dealing with were-creatures. That’s probably the one gripe I have about the stories as a whole. I was expecting more variety; in fact, I’m somewhat surprised there weren’t more vampires, since they seem to be everywhere these days. At least the vampire herein didn’t glitter but was properly loathsome (Thank you, Mr. Wolters).

If it seems I’m damning with faint praise, I don’t intend to. I quite enjoyed the anthology. It’s just that I enjoyed some stories more than others. With the exception of J. M. Martin’s werewolf story (set in the same world as Tisarian’s Treasure, reviewed here), the stories I found the most interesting were the ones that stayed away from the tried and true and focused on monsters/creatures/beings that haven’t gotten as much exposure. I also found that the stories in which the narrator had a distinguishable voice tended to stand out. Overall, the contents were worth the investment.

What did annoy me, and I mean really annoy me, was the ebook version, at least the one for the Nook. There was no table of contents, not even a listing, never mind anything interactive, and when I tried to use the Go To function, nothing came up on the Chapter option. I had to put bookmarks in as I came to new stories. As I’m not in the habit of having to to that, it was a little bit of a hassle. I would have preferred to keep reading without having to stop and place a bookmark. (I know it only took a couple of seconds; it was still a nuisance.) Pill Hill Press has an extensive list of anthologies on their website, and not all of them are available in electronic formats, so my complaints may just be a function of where they are on the epublishing learning curve.

Regardless which version you prefer, print or electronic, check this one out. There’s some good writing here, and I’d like to see some of these characters again.

Attack of the Haboob

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Some of you may have seen this on the national news the other day, but I’m sure some of you, especially my friends in other countries, didn’t. I didn’t, and I was here for it. And have the pictures to prove it.

Lubbock got hit by a haboob on Monday. For those of you who don’t know what a haboob is, and until Monday, I was one of them, a haboob is a meteorological term. It derives from Arabic and basically means “dust cloud.” Those of you who live in the desert have probably seen something like this before.

This was one of the worst in decades. It was brought about by winds from a strong cold front in an area with extreme drought conditions. Winds speeds were at least 74 miles per hour.

My son and I had gone to eat because my wife was still recovering from her bout with the stomach plague. I’d noticed dust off to the northwest, but the wind had been blowing strong all day and mild dust storms aren’t uncommon here. I think the sky was brown in June almost as much as it was blue. Anyway, I was more concerned with paying attention to traffic rather than the sky at that hour of the day.

When we got to the place we were going to eat, I got out of the car, looked to the northeast, and here’s what I saw:

The view to the west a minute or so after I took that picture looked like this:

By this time, the wind was picking up (that’s a relative term, it was already blowing hard.) When I turned back to the northeast, this is what it looked like:

Those are the same houses whose tops are visible at the bottom of the first picture.

Needless to say, we hurried inside. Within a minute, it was dark. I mean, streetlights are on, visibilities is on the order of meters, not tens of meters, meters.

Here’s the last photo I took:

The shrubs are on the far side of a six lane street. When visibility was at its worst, I couldn’t see shrubs. The only lights visible on the far side of the street were the street lights along the road, and they were just dim glows.

This isn’t typical weather. If these photos remind you of the Dust Bowl, they should. Similar conditions existed then.

To see more of the attack of the haboob, here’s a YouTube video:

Scott Oden Writes a Story on his Blog

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Scott Oden started writing a historical short story on his blog this week. He’s outlining the process he uses when he writes fiction, letting us in on his methods. Plus it’s shaping up to be a really good story.

He’s four days into it. Here are the links: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

Scott Oden is the author of The Lion of Cairo. It’s in the queue, and I hope to have a review of it posted by Christmas.

A Journal of the Plague Week

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Things have been a little chaotic here, which has upset my blogging schedule. I came down some sort of nasty stomach virus late last week. A day after I got over it, my wife came caught it. She’s recovered, so as long as my son can avoid it, everything should be getting back to normal in the next day or so. I managed to get two posts up Saturday evening that I’d been working on, then had to play catch up with other commitments.

What I’ve been working on: Doing some reading so that I can review Weird Heroes as the next book, which will be about a week later than I anticipated. I’ve got a review of a small collection and another Conan post that should go up in the couple of days. Then another anthology. By that point, I’ll have posted reviews from everything I committed myself to review. Which means I’m going to read and blog about whatever the heck I feel like for a while.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Celebrates Three Years

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies has been publishing some of the best fantasy to be found on the web or anywhere else for three years now. Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate BCS for three great years and wish them many more.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies marked its three year anniversary with its current issue, a double issue. If you’re wondering what a double issue for an electronic magazine is, you get twice the amount of fiction. And it’s good fiction, which is what you expect from this publication. That’s one of the reasons I decided to start the Seven Days of Online Fiction with Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

It’s been a while since we looked at BCS, so here’s a quick overview of the contents.

Leading off is “The Tiger’s Turn” by Richard Parks. This is the latest installment in his series about Lord Yamada in feudal Japan. I looked at an earlier installment in this series, “The Ghost of Shinoda Forest”, back in February. I’ve always liked Parks work since was introduced to it after meeting him at a Conestoga around the turn of the millennium. He’s primarily a short story writer, but he’s worth the trouble of seeking out. The latest installment in this series didn’t disappoint me.

Second was Kat Howard‘s “The Calendar of Saints“, an alternate history fantasy, where among other things different, the Church embraced Galileo’s teachings. This one concerns a swordswoman who is not a believer who finds herself defending the Church. The ending was original and unexpected.

Nicole M. Taylor tells the story about a woman whose sailor husband doesn’t come home from the sea but something resembling him does and the “A Spoonful of Salt” that results from their union. This one was quiet and disturbing.

The final story is one of judgment and mercy. J. S. Bangs‘ “The Judge’s Right Hand” was dark and compelling, and again, the ending was original and unexpected.

Finally, Garth Upshaw’s “Butterfly” from the September 22, 2011 issue is available in MP3 format.

There’s not a bad story in the bunch. Check ’em out.

Age of Giants – Awakening: Another Well Done Indie Ebook

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Age of Giants – Awakening
Rob Reaser
$2.99 various ebook formats
Reaser Brand Communications

The Nephilim were on the earh in those days – and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6: 4

Back in August I received an email from a Rob Reaser asking if I would be willing review the novel that’s the subject of this post. I had never heard of Mr. Reaser, but the synopsis sounded interesting, not something I’d seen much of before. I replied that I would, but I had about half a dozen other books I had committed to review that were in the queue ahead of his novel. He replied that was fine, he would appreciate the review when I could get to it.

Well, it took a little longer than I had anticipated (my apologies, Rob), but I finished the book yesterday while sick in bed. (No, the book didn’t make me sick; being sick allowed me to finish the novel sooner than I thought I would.) I wondered when I agreed to review the book if I was making a mistake, reviewing a first and self-published novel. I’m glad to say I made no mistake.

While very different in style and content from Tisarian’s Treasure, this is another example of a well-done ebook independently published by the author.

The situation is this: the Nephilim are back. And they’re not nice. Through a genetically engineered plague, they’ve wiped out most of the human race. The few survivors left are either kept as slaves and breeding stock, or they try their best to survive in small tribes. Some occasionally mount a weak resistance; these are known as raiders.

I found this to be an interesting premise and not one that’s been used much. Reaser does a good job of making the scenario believable and realistic, at places later in the story delving into possible scientific explanations for the existence of the Nephilim and mechanisms to defeat them. It was hard to decide whether this was fantasy or science fiction. I was tempted to review this over on Futures Past and Present, but I decided to review it here because this site gets more traffic, and thus the book would get greater exposure.

The central character is a young woman named Nora, who is leading two of her companions on a raid when the story opens a couple of generations after the Nephilim have taken over. Things don’t go well, her two companions are killed, and Nora and a freed slave, Stu, manage to escape. When they return to Nora’s home, they discover that most of her tribe have been taken captive in a Nephilim raid.

Nora, Stu, and a young woman named Gayle set off in pursuit to rescue the captured raiders. Of course, it isn’t going to be that simple.

The plot is fairly straight forward, but there are a couple of surprises. I’ll not spoil them for you. I’ll only say that not everyone who has the same goal will agree on the best way to achieve that goal. Some people forget who they’re fighting for in their efforts to accomplish great good.

Mr. Reaser has twenty years experience as a journalist and magazine editor, and it shows in his writing style, which is sparse and lean without a lot of flowery prose. I found his style suited the story he was telling, adding to the tension.

This was a fairly short novel by today’s standards, just over 200 pages. I’m fairly certain Mr. Reaser intended it to be for an adult audience, but there’s nothing inappropriate for younger readers, especially teenagers. The protagonist is barely into her twenties, and the book shares many of the themes of classic YA science fiction and fantasy. (I don’t know about contemporary YA because it seems to be mostly marketed to girls.) With the new Kindles hitting the market, the predictions for ebook sales this holiday season are high. If you’re considering giving a younger (or older) reader an electronic reading device, this book would be a nice thing to include with it. The book is well formatted, it has an interactive table of contents so you can go directly to the chapter you want if you didn’t set a bookmark, and it tells a good story.

I’m looking forward to the next volume.

Interview with Mark Finn, Revisited

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Back in late February, I interviewed several people at ConDFW and posted those interviews over the next few months. Links to those interviews can be found in the sidebar. The longest interview was with Mark Finn, and it was so long that I broke it into two parts, which I posted a week apart. The second part was shorter than the first because I chose to make the break at a point where the topic of our conversation shifted rather than at the halfway point.

Both parts of the interview were well received and quickly found a place in the top ten most popular posts, which was fine with me. For some reason, the second half of the interview had about 10% more page views than the first, maybe because more people linked to the second half. I wasn’t really concerned, since both parts of the interview got a lot of traffic, Mark was happy with the interview, and Adventures Fantastic was linked to on other blogs and websites.

Then about six or eight weeks ago, something unusual happened.

The first part of the interview began to pick up more traffic. At first I didn’t think much of it, because both halves of the interview have gotten a small but steady flow of traffic since the initial interest died down, as have several other posts I’ve done since I started this blog. Blogger shows the ten most popular posts, and there’s always some relative movement in the middle of that list.

But I noticed something. While the first part of the interview saw an upswing in the number of page views, the second half didn’t. There would be the occasional bump in traffic, but nothing like what the first half of the interview was getting. In fact, the first half of the interview has surged to be the number one spot by a noticeable margin. As I write this, it was the second most viewed post in the last day, and the third most viewed post in both the last week and the last month. In other words, it’s gotten more traffic than most of the posts I’ve done in the last month.

First, let me say “Thank you” to everyone who has looked at that interview. It’s extremely gratifying to me to know that an interview I conducted months ago is still of interest to people and still speaks to them on some level. It encourages me to do more interviews, and I will.

But I’m also curious. Why has the first part of the interview seen such an increase in interest but not the second? It’s the scientist in me. I’m trained to notice trends in data and question what causes them. Please understand, I’m not unhappy that this one post is still generating traffic and interest. Just the opposite. I’m thrilled. I’m just puzzled that the other half isn’t seeing the same response. The only thing I can figure out is that “Tom Sharkey” is part of what the attraction is. That’s one of the most common search terms, and Mark discussed Tom Sharkey in the first part of the interview. The numbers aren’t a good match, meaning that the number of page views is much higher than the number of times “Tom Sharkey” shows up in the search terms, so I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it.

If anyone has any idea what’s caused this sudden interest in the first part of the Mark Finn interview, I’d be interested in hearing it. My curiosity is driving me up the wall.

Tisarian’s Treasure: An Example of an Indie Published Ebook Done Right

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Tisarian’s Treasure
J. M. Martin
Cover by Peter Ortiz, interior illustrations by Julie Dillon
ebook 0.99, paperback $5.99

There’s been a lot of discussion online over the last year about the quality of what are called indie published books by their proponents and disparagingly called self-published books by the publishing, agenting, and critical establishment. You can probably tell from the title of this post as well as how I worded the previous sentence which side of the issue I come down on.

So, rather than simply discuss the merits of the story and the writing itself in this novella, which I will do, I’d like, begging the indulgence of the author and artists, to go beyond that and discuss the qualities of the publishing as well.

Most opponents of indie publishing will try to scare you with Chicken Little-esque cries of “You won’t be able to find any quality; you’ll be buried in a sea of crap!”

Like we aren’t now. Sturgeon’s Law has never been repealed and never will be. For those of you who don’t know, Sturgeon’s Law, after the science fiction and fantasy author Theodore Sturgeon, simply says that 90% of everything is crap. I submit for your consideration what’s on most bookstore shelves.

Fortunately, Tisarian’s Treasure is in the 10%. We’ll start with the story and the writing since those are what will ultimately make or break an ebook. (I’m going to confine my comments to the ebook since that’s what I have.) Problems of formatting can be fixed much more quickly and easily than problems of story and writing.

The writing is fluid and smooth, in the style of an old fashioned pirate novel, which is what this essentially is, with fantasy elements thrown in for fun. Mr. Martin paints in both broad swathes and in detail, and his prose is lyrical and highly readable.

It’s the story of Dr. Alexandre Mallory, who finds himself marooned on an island with a handful of other survivors of an attack by the pirate Thadieus Drake. Dr. Mallory has recently been in the service of said Captain Drake, although unwillingly. Also with them is Oberon Teag, a pirate who has a tattoo on his back showing the location of the famed Tisarian’s Treasure. It’s on the island they on which they’ve taken refuge.

Also in the group is the woman Katalin, who has mild prophetic powers. She’s brave, beautiful, strong-willed, and one of the most interesting characters in the novella.

The plot, the characters, and the dialogue are all first rate. The characters exhibit courage, treachery, ambition, and sacrifice. They grow and change. The ending is satisfying, and there’s room for more installments. (That’s a hint, J. M.)

This story is set in the author’s world of Khaladune. I’d like to sail these seas and visit this world again. Fortunately, I will. There’s a Khaladune story in the anthology Dark Heroes, which I hope to finish and review sometime next week.

Now, let’s look at the production values. The cover art is gorgeous, of a professional level I’d expect from New York on a major fantasy novel. The b&w interior illustrations are a nice added bonus, and while Ms. Dillon’s views of the characters don’t exactly match mine, they are well done and add a level of value to the book.

The formatting on the epub (Nook) version is better than what I’ve read in ebooks by major publishers. There were no missing line breaks between paragraphs because there were no line breaks between paragraphs. Instead, the paragraphs were indented, just like in a print book. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that touch. I hate line breaks between paragraphs when I’m reading fiction. None of the lines extended off the page like those of a certain publisher I’ll not name sometimes do. In fact, the only odd thing about the formatting was that occasionally a page number would skip. That’s a page number, not a page. And it wasn’t a big deal.

In short, Tisarian’s Treasure had everything I’m looking for in an ebook. Captivating story, highly readable prose, professional art, and well-done formatting.

Tisarian’s Treasure is available for both Kindle and Nook, with a paper edition available for those you haven’t gotten an ereader. This is one you will want to check out.