![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Knives Out
Nov. 13th, 2024 09:44 amFlashing Swords 9 , Winter 2008, serves up a generous helping of sword and sorcery fiction and verse (http://flashingswords.sfreader.com/titlepage.asp). This issue, 136 pages long, contains illustrations by a variety of artists and 19 written pieces. Alas, the table of contents does not distinguish between stories, essays, and poems, although interviews are always titled using this form "interview with...". In this review I cover all of the fiction, none of the nonfiction, and some of the poetry. I also give my opinion on the artwork although I freely admit to vast quantities of ignorance in this area.
Editor Crystalwizard and her team have done a good job of editing, proofreading and so on, although I think editorial choice of fiction was more sophisticated than that of either poetry or art.
The first story, "The shores of limbo" by S. C. Bryce, is Part 4 of "Rise of a Necromancer." Because this is not the conclusion of the serial I will not review it here, except to say that an accompanying illustration by Michael "Miko" Mikolajczyk seems to have a slight problem with human anatomical proportions.
The second piece is a poem; "The reluctant viking" by Wesley Lambert. It is accompanied by a very charming drawing by Miguel Santos. I particularly like the detailed ink representation of carving on the Viking warship. The poem is straightforward, and I am afraid I learned little about vikings, or anything else. The poem is rhymed and metered, with four-line stanzas, but has some problems with scansion. The second of six stanzas represents it well enough.
"Foul tales reached us, from northern climes,
of pillage out of season;
of selling longboat building-plans–
for this we charge treason!"
Other poems are printed here and there among the stories, but they too are not to my taste. I find it very difficult to translate sword and sorcery successfully into the poetic medium, and I think the poets whose work appears in Flashing Swords 9 had the same trouble.
"Mightier than the sword" by Bill Ward begins with a pocket picking. The target is anything but oblivious, and the story quickly moves on to burglary, flight from authorities, and magic. The story is straightforward, but I like its ambiguity. Are we meant to identify with the protagonist (he isn't an especially nice fellow)? Is the magic real? How does it work? Without these unanswered questions, "Mightier than the sword" would be run-of-the-mill sword and sorcery. Instead, I found the read enjoyable, and I cared enough about the main character to want to know how he fared. The illustration by Mikolajczyk isn't as awkward as the first, but the characters portrayed are contortionists! The tale moves quickly and reads easily. It does not stretch the limits of the field. Here is a small sample:
"As I said, the kid was good, but so was I in my days as a street sharp. I snatched his wrist and spun, saw the fear and surprise and anger and all of that writhing for dominance in his face. I just frowned, smacked him lightly on the back of his head, and released my grip on his arm. I flashed the Guild
handsign ‘brother’ and he gave a quick, embarrassed nod and vanished into the crowd. "
"The plague ship" by Liane Whittier is a good story, but the illustration by M. D. Jackson has some startling perspective issues. It sure looks like one pirate's head is bigger than another's thigh! And his nickname doesn't have anything to do with the size of his head. This is a classic story of supernatural evil (think Cthulhu mythos, and you have the idea), in which something horrid and inexplicable wrecks havoc on the minds and bodies of hapless humans. This sort of narrative contrasts with, and in my mind is infinitely superior to, the tired horror-movie plot of the unkillable human imbued with strength from the devil. Why do I prefer that unstoppable horror have an alien source rather originate from Christian mythology? Perhaps because it seems a little unfair for our own supreme being to give his entirely dependent adversary the capability to unleash unlimited and unending devastation on His own progeny. Whereas, if alien gods from beyond time and space are responsible, well, what do we expect? "The plague ship" breaks no new ground, not even with Whittier's choice of a woman as the pirate captain. Still, the story is well written and I enjoyed it.
"And the wind sang" by Bradley H. Sinor is not illustrated. It's a shame, because the choices are so varied. Arthurian high fantasy, Norse mythology, vampires, mind control, wanton murder, mistaken and assumed identities, and so on. Evil has returned to Arthurian Britain, in the form of alien technology that had been locked away so it could not continue to be misused. Well guess what, someone is misusing it again and it takes a knight of the round table to straighten things out. Heck, it takes two of them. This tour de force somehow hangs together for me because it moves quickly, and even though the disparate elements come from vastly different sources, they are fit together so smoothly one almost forgets they don't belong under the same roof. I suppose one must place this story within the subgenre of Arthurian fantasy, although extraneous elements are so plentiful and so central to the story that it can't possibly fit with canon. Sinor makes no real attempt to explain why all these things go together. I can only hope that this story is one of a series and that the back story has been adequately covered. If there is a genre called "everything but the kitchen sink," then the story definitely belongs, and for all I know it contributes new insights in the field.
"Zeerembuk" by Steve Goble is an amusing tale of demon summoning gone awry, told from the demon's point of view. I should say, that although I found the story quite funny, I think it was meant to be taken seriously. The demon for whom the story is named is summoned to earth, as he has been many times before, but this time he appears in a forest. There has been some mistake, and until he can find the sorcerer who called him, and perform the required task, he can't get back home. However, both people and his own hotheaded nature conspire against him. Will anyone get what he or she wants out of this mess? This plot premise is a bit of a stretch. If the spell was wrong, so wrong that he didn't even end up in sight of the spellcaster, then why was he even successfully summoned, and definitely why is he compelled? It seems far more likely to me that if the spell was spoken incorrectly he would arrive under no compulsion to fulfill the wizard's desires. But suppose we let that slide.
This is not the first story I've read that was told from the point of view of the demon. I am thinking of a novel whose title and author I forget that began in a similar way. Except in that book the demon was cultured, even refined, and earthly existence was a trial to him. "Zeerembuk" is heroic fantasy. Er, antiheroic fantasy. The demon struggles with his own nature as well as his surroundings, and what he ultimately decides to do is less interesting (and less believable) than the struggle itself.
A drawing by Santos adds a creepy representation of Zeerembuk's face to what the reader can glean from the written description. Curiously, Santos draws the female sacrifice as nude, where as Goble had her wearing a "frock." I don't think the term frock fits the medieval setting (think cocktail parties). Just as importantly, why waste valuable fabric on somebody you're going to exenterate? I like the interpretation in the drawing better even though it's rather tasteful.
"The Porvov switch" by Seth Skorkowski, illustrated by Mikolajczyk, is obviously one of a series of stories about a cat burglar named Ahren. In this story, he has moved to a new city to escape justice and has joined a new gang, where he has yet to prove himself. Ahren's gang has lost a valuable artifact to another gang that is attempting to muscle in on their territory. The other gang is reputedly led by a demon. In the attempt to retrieve the artifact and sabotage the other gang's position in the city, Ahren has ample opportunity to prove his worth. All he has to do is survive.
This story is classic sword and sorcery. The "new guy on the block" hook for the protagonist also is a standard way to bring the reader into the created world, because the reader is always the new guy on the block. Nothing wrong with that. As entertainment, I can't fault "the Porvov switch." Skorkowski hasn't broken any new ground here, but he's gone over the familiar territory competently.
"Death's Head" by Joseph A. McCullough V uses a premise I have not seen often. The protagonist, Bowis, previously was a participant in a battle in which God's hand was unequivocally revealed. The reader knows none of the details, but none of the characters doubt this fact. In this story, Bowis encounters a very odd person who is probably either an angel or a demon, but which? He's obligated to protect the former from those who might mistake it for the latter. McCullough manages to cover this situation without church politics, which is refreshing. I've seen plenty of medieval church hierarchies in fantasy settings. Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to see good and evil handled "in the field" so to speak.
"Tyler's bed & breakfast" by Lyn Perry, illustrated by Richard H. Fay, is a ghost story, set in the present-day northeastern US. Setting and subject matter are completely different from everything else in this issue. I feel a ghost story is out of place here, but some might enjoy the variety. The story itself is worth reading but not gripping.
The next story is "Cold fire" by Brian Dolton, illustrated by T. A. Markitan, who has a welcome skill with the human form. This is a story of feudal Norsemen, location imaginary as far as I know. In brief, a few years past, a group of vampiric (but human) and cannibalistic highwaymen were defeated and exterminated by some of their neighbors. But it turns out that at least one member of each group has survived. This leads to a confrontation one cold winter night, with onlookers unsure about who they should root for. The story is not bad. I like the potential role switching and uncertainty, but the evidence on which the protagonist decides who is telling the truth is weak. No court in the world would have touched it with a 10 foot pole.
"Like ink in rain" by Elizabeth Barrette is a flash story about an encounter between a mixed party of humans and a golem (and perhaps other races not mentioned) and a troop of orcs led by an ogre. I think it's kind of funny to use the term orcs in a story that involves the ethical treatment of ogres, because the ogres in Tolkien's writing were so unredeemably bad that the question of whether to kill one or enslave it just would not come up. However, using the more standard fantasy conception of ogre it's a valid question. I can say no more without giving away the game, except that I like what Barrette did with it.
"The night of the meld" by Bruce Durham features that monster fabled in story and song that consists of numerous bodies of human beings that have somehow thaumaturgically been squished together into one hideous giant. How the thing can even function is beyond imagining, but this is sword and sorcery, not science fiction, so believability is much less of an issue than it might be. It's eerie; within the last year I read another story by a different author using just about the same monster, and it ends in more or less the same way. But that's okay, Durham has done an entertaining job of tale telling, and the accompanying illustration by Mikolajczyk is very good.
Flashing Swords 9 isn't perfect, but it contains some very good sword and sorcery and I enjoyed reading it.
Editor Crystalwizard and her team have done a good job of editing, proofreading and so on, although I think editorial choice of fiction was more sophisticated than that of either poetry or art.
The first story, "The shores of limbo" by S. C. Bryce, is Part 4 of "Rise of a Necromancer." Because this is not the conclusion of the serial I will not review it here, except to say that an accompanying illustration by Michael "Miko" Mikolajczyk seems to have a slight problem with human anatomical proportions.
The second piece is a poem; "The reluctant viking" by Wesley Lambert. It is accompanied by a very charming drawing by Miguel Santos. I particularly like the detailed ink representation of carving on the Viking warship. The poem is straightforward, and I am afraid I learned little about vikings, or anything else. The poem is rhymed and metered, with four-line stanzas, but has some problems with scansion. The second of six stanzas represents it well enough.
"Foul tales reached us, from northern climes,
of pillage out of season;
of selling longboat building-plans–
for this we charge treason!"
Other poems are printed here and there among the stories, but they too are not to my taste. I find it very difficult to translate sword and sorcery successfully into the poetic medium, and I think the poets whose work appears in Flashing Swords 9 had the same trouble.
"Mightier than the sword" by Bill Ward begins with a pocket picking. The target is anything but oblivious, and the story quickly moves on to burglary, flight from authorities, and magic. The story is straightforward, but I like its ambiguity. Are we meant to identify with the protagonist (he isn't an especially nice fellow)? Is the magic real? How does it work? Without these unanswered questions, "Mightier than the sword" would be run-of-the-mill sword and sorcery. Instead, I found the read enjoyable, and I cared enough about the main character to want to know how he fared. The illustration by Mikolajczyk isn't as awkward as the first, but the characters portrayed are contortionists! The tale moves quickly and reads easily. It does not stretch the limits of the field. Here is a small sample:
"As I said, the kid was good, but so was I in my days as a street sharp. I snatched his wrist and spun, saw the fear and surprise and anger and all of that writhing for dominance in his face. I just frowned, smacked him lightly on the back of his head, and released my grip on his arm. I flashed the Guild
handsign ‘brother’ and he gave a quick, embarrassed nod and vanished into the crowd. "
"The plague ship" by Liane Whittier is a good story, but the illustration by M. D. Jackson has some startling perspective issues. It sure looks like one pirate's head is bigger than another's thigh! And his nickname doesn't have anything to do with the size of his head. This is a classic story of supernatural evil (think Cthulhu mythos, and you have the idea), in which something horrid and inexplicable wrecks havoc on the minds and bodies of hapless humans. This sort of narrative contrasts with, and in my mind is infinitely superior to, the tired horror-movie plot of the unkillable human imbued with strength from the devil. Why do I prefer that unstoppable horror have an alien source rather originate from Christian mythology? Perhaps because it seems a little unfair for our own supreme being to give his entirely dependent adversary the capability to unleash unlimited and unending devastation on His own progeny. Whereas, if alien gods from beyond time and space are responsible, well, what do we expect? "The plague ship" breaks no new ground, not even with Whittier's choice of a woman as the pirate captain. Still, the story is well written and I enjoyed it.
"And the wind sang" by Bradley H. Sinor is not illustrated. It's a shame, because the choices are so varied. Arthurian high fantasy, Norse mythology, vampires, mind control, wanton murder, mistaken and assumed identities, and so on. Evil has returned to Arthurian Britain, in the form of alien technology that had been locked away so it could not continue to be misused. Well guess what, someone is misusing it again and it takes a knight of the round table to straighten things out. Heck, it takes two of them. This tour de force somehow hangs together for me because it moves quickly, and even though the disparate elements come from vastly different sources, they are fit together so smoothly one almost forgets they don't belong under the same roof. I suppose one must place this story within the subgenre of Arthurian fantasy, although extraneous elements are so plentiful and so central to the story that it can't possibly fit with canon. Sinor makes no real attempt to explain why all these things go together. I can only hope that this story is one of a series and that the back story has been adequately covered. If there is a genre called "everything but the kitchen sink," then the story definitely belongs, and for all I know it contributes new insights in the field.
"Zeerembuk" by Steve Goble is an amusing tale of demon summoning gone awry, told from the demon's point of view. I should say, that although I found the story quite funny, I think it was meant to be taken seriously. The demon for whom the story is named is summoned to earth, as he has been many times before, but this time he appears in a forest. There has been some mistake, and until he can find the sorcerer who called him, and perform the required task, he can't get back home. However, both people and his own hotheaded nature conspire against him. Will anyone get what he or she wants out of this mess? This plot premise is a bit of a stretch. If the spell was wrong, so wrong that he didn't even end up in sight of the spellcaster, then why was he even successfully summoned, and definitely why is he compelled? It seems far more likely to me that if the spell was spoken incorrectly he would arrive under no compulsion to fulfill the wizard's desires. But suppose we let that slide.
This is not the first story I've read that was told from the point of view of the demon. I am thinking of a novel whose title and author I forget that began in a similar way. Except in that book the demon was cultured, even refined, and earthly existence was a trial to him. "Zeerembuk" is heroic fantasy. Er, antiheroic fantasy. The demon struggles with his own nature as well as his surroundings, and what he ultimately decides to do is less interesting (and less believable) than the struggle itself.
A drawing by Santos adds a creepy representation of Zeerembuk's face to what the reader can glean from the written description. Curiously, Santos draws the female sacrifice as nude, where as Goble had her wearing a "frock." I don't think the term frock fits the medieval setting (think cocktail parties). Just as importantly, why waste valuable fabric on somebody you're going to exenterate? I like the interpretation in the drawing better even though it's rather tasteful.
"The Porvov switch" by Seth Skorkowski, illustrated by Mikolajczyk, is obviously one of a series of stories about a cat burglar named Ahren. In this story, he has moved to a new city to escape justice and has joined a new gang, where he has yet to prove himself. Ahren's gang has lost a valuable artifact to another gang that is attempting to muscle in on their territory. The other gang is reputedly led by a demon. In the attempt to retrieve the artifact and sabotage the other gang's position in the city, Ahren has ample opportunity to prove his worth. All he has to do is survive.
This story is classic sword and sorcery. The "new guy on the block" hook for the protagonist also is a standard way to bring the reader into the created world, because the reader is always the new guy on the block. Nothing wrong with that. As entertainment, I can't fault "the Porvov switch." Skorkowski hasn't broken any new ground here, but he's gone over the familiar territory competently.
"Death's Head" by Joseph A. McCullough V uses a premise I have not seen often. The protagonist, Bowis, previously was a participant in a battle in which God's hand was unequivocally revealed. The reader knows none of the details, but none of the characters doubt this fact. In this story, Bowis encounters a very odd person who is probably either an angel or a demon, but which? He's obligated to protect the former from those who might mistake it for the latter. McCullough manages to cover this situation without church politics, which is refreshing. I've seen plenty of medieval church hierarchies in fantasy settings. Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to see good and evil handled "in the field" so to speak.
"Tyler's bed & breakfast" by Lyn Perry, illustrated by Richard H. Fay, is a ghost story, set in the present-day northeastern US. Setting and subject matter are completely different from everything else in this issue. I feel a ghost story is out of place here, but some might enjoy the variety. The story itself is worth reading but not gripping.
The next story is "Cold fire" by Brian Dolton, illustrated by T. A. Markitan, who has a welcome skill with the human form. This is a story of feudal Norsemen, location imaginary as far as I know. In brief, a few years past, a group of vampiric (but human) and cannibalistic highwaymen were defeated and exterminated by some of their neighbors. But it turns out that at least one member of each group has survived. This leads to a confrontation one cold winter night, with onlookers unsure about who they should root for. The story is not bad. I like the potential role switching and uncertainty, but the evidence on which the protagonist decides who is telling the truth is weak. No court in the world would have touched it with a 10 foot pole.
"Like ink in rain" by Elizabeth Barrette is a flash story about an encounter between a mixed party of humans and a golem (and perhaps other races not mentioned) and a troop of orcs led by an ogre. I think it's kind of funny to use the term orcs in a story that involves the ethical treatment of ogres, because the ogres in Tolkien's writing were so unredeemably bad that the question of whether to kill one or enslave it just would not come up. However, using the more standard fantasy conception of ogre it's a valid question. I can say no more without giving away the game, except that I like what Barrette did with it.
"The night of the meld" by Bruce Durham features that monster fabled in story and song that consists of numerous bodies of human beings that have somehow thaumaturgically been squished together into one hideous giant. How the thing can even function is beyond imagining, but this is sword and sorcery, not science fiction, so believability is much less of an issue than it might be. It's eerie; within the last year I read another story by a different author using just about the same monster, and it ends in more or less the same way. But that's okay, Durham has done an entertaining job of tale telling, and the accompanying illustration by Mikolajczyk is very good.
Flashing Swords 9 isn't perfect, but it contains some very good sword and sorcery and I enjoyed reading it.
