The first eSsassins cover is up over at the Rogue Blades website. Check it out. Very cool. I can't wait for the series to start being released.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Happy Birthday, Bob
There are a number of tributes on the web today, and if you're in the vicinity of Cross Plains (I wish), there's a party. If you happen to be among the Howard impaired, and only know him by reputation or through Conan, let me recommend you check out the posts by Howard Andrew Jones and Barbara Barrett over on the Black Gate website. Jones's is a more general tribute discussing the breadth of Howard's fiction, while Barbara examines the poetry. Both are good
Friday, January 21, 2011
New Rogue Blades Entertainment E-Anthologies Announced
To promote the forthcoming Clash of Steel anthology Assassins, Rogue Blades is publishing four e-anthologies consisting of four stories each. These stories are different than those included in the print anthology, the cover of which is shown on the right. Each e-anthology will sell for $3 and will contain between 15,000 and 18,000 words of sword and sorcery fiction. Since the going price for a single short story in electronic format is 99 cents, that makes these collections a steal. Or would that be steel? Anyway, there will be one released a month for four months, starting in February.
You can get all the details here.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Employment Issues Resolved
Well my wife has found new employment. It looks like I will have time to do more blogging rather than helping her with her job search and looking for more ways to increase my income to make up for the shortfall. I intend to try to post at least two new posts per week. The next one will be within the next 48 if everything goes according to plan.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Monarcharies of God: Hawkwood's Voyage
in the Hawkwood and the Kings
Paul Kearney
Solaris, 702 p., $9.99
Over the last few days, I've been at a conference. You can always tell when you're at a conference of physicists. There's just something about them. The long hair. The no hair. The facial hair. The leg hair (on the women). We just sort of know how to recognize each other. While it wasn't the best conference I've attended, it was far from the worst. And the best part of it, at least in the short term, was the plane ride.
No, not 'cause I got frisked by a good looking TSA agent. Security was a breeze, surprisingly enough. The best part was I read Hawkwood's Voyage and made a dent in The Heretic Kings, the second book in The Monarchies of God pentology by Paul Kearney. I must admit I'd never heard of the man until recently, when I came across a copy of one of his other books.
Side note. I managed to find a couple more of his books while I was at the conference in a nearby used book store. If they're as good as this one, I'll be reading everything he wrote.
Hawkwood and the Kings collects the first two novels in the series. There are a number of plot threads, and I'll try to summarize the main ones here. There was once a large empire which stretched over most of the continent, a continent that bears some resemblance to Europe on the map provided. Then the empire fell apart as the different provinces rebelled. The heart of the old empire is still an independent country (so to speak), but at the time of the book's opening, it doesn't really interact much with the rest of the continent.
The church is dominated by the Inceptine order, an order that bears a strong resemblance in many ways to the Jesuits. There are other orders, but they're kept in their place by the Inceptines. One particular Inceptine, the Prelate of the kingdom of Hebrion, has started purges of any foreigner or Dweomer in the kingdom. The Dweomer are those who have some innate magical ability. Captain Richard Hawkwood, himself a foreigner, has agreed to take two ships loaded with Dweomer across the great Western Ocean in search of a mythical continent in which to found a colony. The king of Hebrion, Abeleyn, is trying to curb the growing control of the Church of the Saint in his kingdom. In the east, the Holy City of Aekir, home to the Pontiff of the Church, has fallen to the Merduks, invaders from the east who bear more than a pasing resemblance to Mongols. The sole surviving soldier of the siege of Aekir, Ensign Corfe mourns the loss of his wife and everything else he loved at the hands of the Merduks. The Pontiff is missing and presumed dead. And the Prelate of Hebrion seeks the position of Pontiff for himself...
There's a lot more than that or course. I realized as I was reading why the suspense was so strong at times. It was because the characters seemed like real people to me, and as a result I cared what happened to them. There's plenty of action and intrigue here to satisfy any fan of epic or heroic fantasy. Kearney doesn't shy away from the gritty details of combat or court life. The battle scenes throb with passion, bloodlust, and fear. I've not read much nautical fiction, something I intend to rectify, but the chapters that take place on Hawkwood's vessel brought life on board a ship alive for me. And showed how terrifying it can be to be at sea when something on board begins to hunt and there's no place to go.
Hawkwood's Voyage was first published in 1995, and if it had an edition here in the states, I missed it. I won't miss any of Kearney's other fiction. This one held my attention all the way through. Usually when I finish a book, even one I've enjoyed immensely, I'm ready to move on and read something else, and by that I mean something different. In this case I went straight into The Heretic Kings. If you haven't read Kearney, give him a try. You'll be glad you did.
Friday, January 7, 2011
New Year's Resolution, Redux
I've been busy preparing for a presentation I'm giving at a conference next week, so the previous post on Kull took me longer to get up than I had anticipated. It was less than a week ago I posted a list of New Year's resolutions relating to this blog, One was to post here at least twice a week. I have a couple of things to write about, and thought I could get at least one of them posted before I leave for the conference on Sunday. Then my wife experienced a little unexpected employment ... hiccup this afternoon. Depending on how long it takes to find her other employment, I may have to spend less time on this blog and devote myself to finding other sources of income. I'm not going away. Adventures Fantastic is here for the long haul, but it's possible that for a (hopefully) brief season, I may only post once a week or so, and shorter posts more often than longer posts.
Blogging Kull: The Shadow Kingdom
Robert E. Howard
Illustrations by Justin Sweet
Del Rey
Trade Paperback, 319 p., $15.95
Just so you know, this post will contain spoilers.
"The Shadow Kingdom" was the first of the Kull stories to see print, and it appeared in the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales. In this story Kull has, with the help of some dissatisfied nobles, seized the throne of Valusia from the tyrant who's sat on it for a while. Apparently he's been on the throne long enough for the luster to have faded, for Kull makes it very clear he prefers the straightforward manner of his barbarian kinsmen. You know, the ones who've exiled him.
After a parade in his honor, Kull is holding court when an emissary from the Pictish ambassador requests a private council with him. Kull grants it and takes advantage of the opportunity to bait the man, the Picts being ancient enemies of the Atlanteans. The emissary, a warrior, requests that Kull come alone that night to a banquet with the Pictish ambassador, Ka'nu.
Kull's suspicious, but goes. Ka'nu informs Kull that only Kull can usher in an era of "peace and goowill", of "man loving his fellow man", to Valusia and the Seven Kingdoms. This is somewhat ironic seeing as how Kull is a warrior king who carries deep hatreds. It's also not what you would normally expect in a Robert E. Howard story. In order to do this, Kull has to live. The next in line to the throne is a figurehead controlled by a race of serpent men, if not actually a serpent man himself. Ka-nu will send proof of this through Brule the Spearslayer. Kull will recognize Brule by the armlet he'll be wearing. To show he can be trusted, Ka-nu reveals to Kull that he has a jewel stolen from the Temple of the Serpent. If the priests of the Serpent knew its location, Ka-nu would have a very short life expectancy.
The next night, Brule appears. He's the Pictish warrior who brought the message from Kan-nu in the first place. He reveals to Kull a secret society of serpent people who have the bodies of men but the heads of snakes. Through some type of sorcery they are able to assume the faces of any person they wish. When they die (read are killed by Kull or Brule), their heads revert to their natural forms.
You can probably figure out that there will be a lot of people who turn out to be other than who they appeared. It turns out the serpent men are an ancient, mongrel race who have a long history in Valusia, although it's a history that most of Valusia's citizens are ignorant of.
Naturally, Kull triumphs, but not easily. Brule and Ka-nu are afraid he dies from his wounds, although he only loses consciousness. The intriguing part of the story, for me at least, is the depth at which Howard shows us Kull's thoughts. Kull wonders which is the real Kull, the monarch "who sat on the throne or was it the real Kull who had scaled the hills of Atlantis, harried the far isles of the sunset, and laughed upon the green roaring tides of the Atlentean sea." This brooding is provoked of course by Kull's discovery of the Serpent Men and the masks they don to deceive people for evil means, something he had already encountered in his courtiers, albeit in a less literal sense.
Evidence indicates "The Shadow Kingdom" was written, or at least begun, in 1926, the year Howard turned 20. It's a common occurrence to many men and women around that time in life to discover that people aren't always what they seem, but don masks to further their own ends. I think it's safe to speculate that perhaps some of that discovery of the realities of life was making it's way into Howard's fiction. Many a child and teenager is dismayed to discover that becoming an adult isn't all the fun and privilege it seems when you're young. I know my eight year old certainly has the illusion that being an adult is more fun than being a child because it means getting to stay up late and eat and drink close to bedtime. Would that it were that simple.
Another thing common to young adults and teens is the fear that they can't cut it as an adult. This is a fear that can return later in life when a person experiences a major upset, often but not always the loss of a job or business. Affirmation that a person can function as an accepted member of adult society is one of the purposes of a rite of passage. Entire books have been written on this topic. I have to wonder if Howard was feeling some of that uncertainty about this time in his life. I know he made a deal with his father to give writing a try for one year and if at the end of that year he wasn't making a living, he would find a regular job. Kull has thoughts along these lines more than once in the story.
The first incident occurs during the brooding quoted in the paragraph above when Kull thinks of himself as "the futile king who sat upon the throne - himself a shadow." The second occurs at the climax of the story when Kull and Brule have escaped a trap in which the serpent men have disguised themselves as his council in order to assassinate him. Hurrying back to the council chamber, they find the real council in session with a serpent man disguised as Kull himself. For a moment Kull wonders "Do I stand here or is that Kull yonder in very truth and am I but a shadow, a figment of thought?" Maybe I'm reading too much into the text, but it sounds to me as though Kull is experiencing a little insecurity. Not something you would expect from a Howard hero.
After all the serpent men in the palace have been dispatched, Kull swears an oath to destroy all the remaining ones. He swears this oath on his own identity as Kull, king of Valusia. While I may be stretching things a bit to interpret this ending as a metaphor for Howard striving to make his way in the world as a writer, I don't think I'm too far off the mark.
"The Shadow Kingdom" has been called the first true sword and sorcery story, a statement that is not without some controversy. I'm willing to go along with that premise, at least for the sake of this post, because it points out something that I think can't be understated. Sword and sorcery has been dismissed by its critics as shallow and cliched, without depth, power fantasies of social misfits and closet homosexuals, and mind candy or softcore porn for adolescent boys. What "The Shadow Kingdom" is, at least as I read the story, is a reflection on identity. While this is certainly an issue of adolescence, it's also an issue that concerns everyone at most stages of life, to a lesser or greater degree. Furthermore, I see it as a meditation on the meaning of life, especially the role one will play in that life. Until he sets out to eradicate the serpent men, Kull is lost, searching for meaning after achieving his goal of becoming king and finding it unfulfilling. I'm fairly sure Howard didn't consciously set out to create a new form of literature when he wrote "The Shadow Kingdom", but on some level was dealing with the issues in his life in the best way he knew how: by fictionalizing them. Creating sword and sorcery was to some degree incidental. That's a pretty impressive legacy, to create a new genre with those themes at its core. Not bad for "escapism", huh? So the next time you hear someone dissing sword and sorcery as not being real literature or worthy of serious consideration, give them a copy of "The Shadow Kingdom."
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