Don't Avoid the Voidal - The Long Reach of Night by Adrian Cole

My review of the second volume of Adrian Cole's Voidal trilogy went live at Black Gate last week. It's a wonderfully psychedelic trip across the Omniverse by the Voidal and his batrachian sidekick, Elfloq.  I can't believe how snide I was about these stories when I first dipped into them only a few years ago.

When I started writing about swords & sorcery, I wasn't as ready to just appreciate stories just for fun. I was reading some of the new, "serious" fantasy. I read R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy. I heard tell of George RRRR Martin's Game of Thrones and how it was revolutionizing fantasy by making it more realistic. They and other writers were getting away from simplistic ideas of black and white morality. They saw the world in shades of gray. Grim, bloody gray, but still gray. Together, fantasy was being made more realistic and more relevant.

Now, none of those things are bad. Fantasy, as it has become a more widely read and accepted genre, has changed. Lots of genre writing, whichever one it is, stinks, and it always has. Fantasy had gotten pretty stale in the eighties. If Terry Brooks' Shannara books were knock offs of JRRT, then there were lots of books that weren't more than xeroxes of Brooks.

Writing for a genre tends to follow certain rules. A mystery has to have a mystery. Fantasy has to be, well, fantastic. It's the nature of things. What it's meant over the years is that a lot of stories just tick off boxes to qualify for inclusion in a certain genre.

Also, when there's evidence that something sells, people are going to replicate it. Hence, the endless series of series with secret heirs, dark lords, orc stand ins, and all manner of same old same old.

So efforts by certain authors to revive fantasy came as good news to me. Why shouldn't the genre be more realistic or relevant?

So I dove into some of this new fantasy and found lots of it good. I also found that lots of it took itself way too seriously. In their effort to be better, a lot of these books were less than fun.

There's a lot I like about the Prince of Nothing series; the worldbuilding, the history, the even some of the characters. But what it isn't is fun. It's a bleak slog at times, filled with torture, cynicism of the darkest sort. If there's any lightness of tone let alone any humor in it I sure as heck don't recall it.

When I first started reading books like Bakker's, I was pretty excited. This was surely the future of fantasy. It was what needed to be done to make the genre "better." A sad side effect was that I became a little too dismissive of any fantasy that I deemed too frivolous or pulpy.

That's where my early review of the first couple of Adrian Cole's Voidal stories came from. It just wasn't serious enough. Fortunately, I got out of that phase quickly.

I came to the conclusion that I read fantasy for fun. REH may have wanted to make some sort of point about barbarism and civilization, but what makes his stories work are the killer action, the heroes, and worlds filled with demon-haunted jungles, and cyclopean ruins.

Michael Moorcock might have been taking the piss out of S&S in his Elric books but the reason they're great is because of Stormbringer and crazy-ass monsters. Giant, golden, pyramidal battle barges are much cooler and more memorable than any sort of Freudian mumbo-jumbo supposedly underlying the stories.

And it's the same thing with the Voidal stories. There's a magnificently crazy degree of inventiveness in all dozen or so stories I've read. I've included a lot of excerpts in my two reviews over at Black Gate to give you a taste of what you're in for if you open the covers of these books.

And you should open them. Once I dropped my internal barriers (composed of 100% self-important-bullshitium, I should note), I was able to let Cole's mad creation wash over me. It's a rewarding trip any S&S fan should treat himself or herself to. Trust me, your reward will be great.

Don't get me wrong. There's a place for deeper element in heroic fantasy. But Imaro isn't great just because it brings up issues of race, but because Charles Saunders can write one helluva an adventure and knows how to craft horrifying villains and monsters.

I remember reading about some panel discussion in the UK decades ago about why the participants read HPL. Karl Edward Wagner gave a long, artistic reason. Then an artist, three sheets to the wind, roused himself, and said he loved HPL "for the effing monsters." Now I haven't been able to find where I read that, and if forced to testify I'll admit I might have all the facts wrong. Still, it's how I feel about S&S. I read it for fun, and that tends to involve swordplay, rousing adventure, scary monsters, and exciting characters.


NOTE: I haven't abandoned the Chaosium Project, just delayed it. A few folks have mentioned how difficult it is to read the small print in the books. Well, they're right and my cataracts have only made it worse.

I'm getting my first eye operated on tomorrow and that should make finishing Mysteries of the Worm much easier. With luck I'll polish it off next week.

Musings on a Witch World and What Survives

A few years ago I discovered Andre Norton's Witch World series and it's pretty good stuff.  She wrote seventeen books so I still have a lot to read, but I'm really looking forward to them.  Fortunately, they're all pretty short by today's standards, so they got that going for them. 
   They really deserve to be better read than I think they are these days.  I was surprised to see so few comments on Matthew David Surridge's review of the first novel at Black Gate the other day.  With my review today of Three Against the Witch World and the Appendix N stuff about her books over at Tor.com maybe she'll get a little more reader love.

   I think the biggest problem they have is their name - Witch World.  It's all a little twee.  If "witch" only brings to mind Margaret Hamilton or Margaret Murray, you might not think Norton's books will be the exciting, slightly pulpy heroic fantasy (yeah, they start off sort of sword & planet, but that kind of fades away) that they are.  
   And they really are a blast.  C. J. Cherryh's introduction to the excellent Lore of the Witch World describes how every valley has something new, behind which lies something else which is linked to the deep history of the Witch World.  That only hints at the depth of creation Norton brought to the series.

  As with so much of what I've read in S&S, I have to thank the late Lin Carter my entree to Witch World. He managed to get a new Witch World story for Flashing Swords #2, "Toads of Grimmerdale", and it's great.  I don't think if I had read that first story I would be writing about her now.  Dead twenty-five years and Carter's still garnering new readers for writers he loved.

   I wonder if there's still a place for the Witch World books in this day and age.  For all its success, I don't think the series ever developed quite the critical cachet of Moorcock's Eternal Champion cycle and definitely never achieved the cultural critical mass of Tolkien.

   In fact what's the fate of all these mid-level fantasy series of the past forty years?  Will anyone hunt down Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books in twenty years?  How about Raymond Feist?  What about all the blatant Tolkien, and let's call them homages to be nice, books that sold well, like Terry Brook's Sword of Shannara or anything by Dennis L. McKiernan?

  Every year there's a new series started and of course that's what gets the attention.  Let's admit to ourselves, most genre fiction, good as it is, is disposable.  It's like pop music, rising up and reflective of its times, and then fading away from the larger public awareness.  Most of the times it's like Foghat, fun but nothing special.  The good stuff is like Deep Purple, and it's awesome.  But if no one ever hears it again, things will go on.
   It's the same thing with fantasy fiction.  We all find books that catch us in certain ways or at certain times.  They might even become our favorites even though no one else has even heard of them.
   And for anyone keeping track, I did make a Yes playlist for this week's Black Gate post.  It leaned heavily on Relayer and Going for the One.  I'm writing about the month's short stories next so I think I'll just put the Zune on shuffle.

Again With the Atlantis - Kardios

   Manly Wade Wellman was a master of many genres, from horror to science fiction to regional.  The stories of John the Balladeer and his fight against folk monsters in Appalachia are as fresh and wondrous today as when the first story, "O Ugly Bird" was published in 1951 (like I've said with other stories; if you haven't read these you owe it to yourself to do so).  What I doubt most people know is he also provided two additions to the field of swords & sorcery.
   The first is the fighting caveman Hok (recently collected by the magnificent Paizo for the first time).  The second is Kardios, accidental destroyer and sole survivor of sunken Atlantis.
   These latter stories were produced mostly for Andrew Offutt's "Swords Against Darkness" anthologies in the seventies.  The second to last was included in Gerald Page's "Heroic Fantasy" collection in 1979.   Written in the heyday of the genre, these stories, are playful and wry commentaries on mankind's willingness to enslave itself to self proclaimed gods and the acquisition of wealth and power.

   Kardios is a harpist with long black hair, a strong, bronzed muscled physique and little fear. Post destruction of Atlantis he wanders the world simply seeking out what's new and unknown to him.  Seeking to better himself he left the forests and woods of his back hills home and set off to the "gold and jasper palace" of the seemingly ageless Queen Theona.  Overhearing his singing to her advisers she invited him in and asks him to sing for her.  The song he sings for Theona is about her and a prophecy that says when she "grants to a lover the boon of a kiss, Atlantis, Theona, will drown in the sea."  Theona simply laughs off the warning and asks Kardios for a kiss.  He gives her the kiss and the earth quakes and the seas spew up and Atlantis sinks beneath the waves.
   There are but five stories telling us of Kardios' life and adventures.  The first, "Straggler from Atlantis" introduces us to our hero and tells of how he washes ashore on a coast populated by friendly giants and an inimicable traveler from the stars.  Here Kardios gains his sword of iron.  This comes to serve him well in his following adventures letting him get around creatures unable to be hurt by mortal weapons.
   The rest of the tales, "The Dweller in the Temple", "The Guest of Dzinganji" "The Seeker in the Fortress", and "The Edge of the World", follow similar arcs to one another.  Kardios comes across something strange and hazardous to his health.  Through his wits, charm, a dash of luck, and nigh magical sword defeats it, be it old god, old sorcerer or old social customs.  For all the inventiveness and action there's never any real sense of danger.  Kardios never really seems to be at risk of getting hurt let alone dying.
   Nonetheless, the stories are fun.  Time and again, Kardios is drawn in to situations where people, be they lotus-eating urbanites or gold seeking travelers, have allowed themselves to become snared by greed and fear.  They have made accommodations to dire circumstances or beings in order to hold on to wealth or simply their lives.  Kardios is able to detect these things, and, also, with sword and courage, pare away the black deals and devilish compromises to some sort of freedom.  Which I think was a large part of what Wellman was doing with these stories.  The stories aren't deeply philosophical tracts or anything.  They're still about a sword swinging harpist fighting monsters and what have you, but, there is a little something else going on.
   The stories are also much earthier than anything else I've written about before.  Queens, princesses, mechanical women, amazons and chamber maids all fall at Kardios' feet and are willing to (and in some cases do) fall into his bed.  And it's all fairly believable.  His charm and dash are as real as they can be on a the printed page.
   Unfortunately, it's tough to come by all these stories at this time.  They've never been collected and I can only hope the good people at Paizo are listening.  Right now you have to track down the Swords Against Darkness books (which you should have anyway, people) and Heroic Fantasy.  Three stories, "Straggler of Atlantis", "The Dweller in the Temple" and "The Seeker in the Fortress" can be found in three of Isaac Asimov's Magical World of Fantasy collections.  Still, you're looking at about fifty bucks on Amazon.  Unless you feel a need to get the Swords Against Darkness anthologies (+ Heroic Fantasy) you're probably best waiting till some nice publisher binds them together for you.

Beginnings

   In the past I've written and talked about developing some sort of site dedicated to Swords & Sorcery and Heroic Fantasy. It's the stuff I grew up reading in my dad's beat up "Flashing Swords" anthologies and Lancer's illegal "Elric" volumes. I have stacks of beat up Lin Carter pastiches alongside my hard sought Charles R. Saunders' originals and love them both. It fills me with nostalgia but it also gets the adrenalin pumping as I'm reading it.

   My vision of S & S is pretty expansive and not limited to (though totally including) the adventures of neckless barbarians with double bladed axes in chainmail loincloths. I consider (and I know I'm not being particularly original here) the stories of Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" as important to the development of the genre as heavy lifting done by Robert E. Howard in the beginning and later by the likes of Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock.

   I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do on this site but if men with thick necks and swords, kidnapped princesses, goateed sorcerers with pointed cowls and lost temples have any appeal, stick around.