Archives: Reviews

Watching Spartacus

Finally got around to watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

It’s just as bloody and sexual as I’d been told… but what very few have mentioned to me is how fine the writing is. Great, revealing dialogue. These are very, very fine character arcs. Reversals, double-crosses, surprises, slow burns… it’s just really impressive stuff. The acting is likewise top-notch, sometimes amazing.

I tried watching a little bit of it with my wife at my side and, alas, she couldn’t see past the stylized violence — or all the swearing. There’s a lot of both. But just as I learned to look past some of the conventions of anime that struck me as peculiar, I just tune out some of the other stuff. Your mileage may vary. It’s pretty manly.

Highly recommended, with appropriate caveats.

Parker Graphic Novels

File under “cool things to read.”

While at the library yesterday I chanced upon three graphic novel adaptions of the Richard Stark Parker books, all done by Darwyn Cook in all the stylish ’60s glory that talented artist/storyteller can manage.

What’s interesting to me is how much these adaptions showcase Stark’s work in a different way — highlighting phrases, for instance, that I hadn’t even noticed were pretty awesome until they were pulled out of the text and highlighted. The panel on the left, from Cook’s adaption of The Score, is a perfect example. Starks’ style is so understated I didn’t catch all that those simple lines implied until Cook’s illustration called it out.

Fantastic stuff. Go read it. Heck, here’s a link to a preview. Go read that.

New Treasures

Between the gift exchange with my in-laws and another with some old friends, I ended up with a grab-bag of books I’ve been wanting to read. You can see them pictured to the left.

Along the bottom row are the last four Parker novels in the matched set now available through the University of Chicago Press. There are actually three more novels about the master thief, but they aren’t yet in print through U. of Chicago. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read all these Parker books, but I enjoyed them so much I actually wanted a matched set, something I don’t usually bother with. My older set is getting sent off to some writer friends who I’m sure will find them as inspiring as I have.

Vampire Earth

At GenCon Lou Anders rightly called me out on one of my bad habits. You see, I have a tendency, when discussing favorite writers, to only discuss those who are dead or near forgotten. Part of that comes from me having spent so much time unearthing the pulp fiction of Harold Lamb and exploring the work of his contemporaries (I wrote my master’s thesis on Lamb) and partly that stems from me having decided, about 16 years ago, that if I was serious about becoming a good fantasy writer I had to better understand its roots.

Thus I immersed myself in the grandfathers and grandmothers of the genre… and sort of lost touch with what was going on in modern fantasy. I’ve just started to catch up. Anyway, with a nod to Lou, I think it’s long past time in this column to mention one of my favorite modern writers, E.E. Knight.

Vance, Robert E. Howard, and the Role of Women

I’m  having trouble sleeping again, but this morning at least I’m putting it to use and am up early writing. I’ve got a lot of work to do on two projects I’m really excited about, so I’ll keep the entry short.

First, in my continuing effort to be everywhere on the Internet, I had a Q and A over on the Paizo boards about my upcoming novel, Stalking the Beast (which reminds me — I’ve got to create a “cover slide” for the new book so it can join the other four rotating at the top of my main page — hope I remember how!) You can find it here.

Second, on a long trip yesterday I started and finished Jack Vance’s Big Planet, courtesy of John O’Neill giving me one of his four extra copies (thanks, John!). I started to take Charles Saunders’ The Naama War — the fourth Imaro book — but was afraid it would get dinged up on the journey.

Big Planet was typical Vance and a great read, but it was also a product of its time. Lengthwise I can’t imagine it was much longer than 65 thousand words, which left barely any room for characterization. Vance can frequently be pretty light on characterization in some ways, although he will add details to even minor characters to bring a culture to life. But I don’t usually read Vance for his characters (unless said character is Cugel the Clever) I read him for the wild inventiveness about culture and events and amazing scenery, which he again, even in this early work, tosses off with careless ease that few others can even approach. Over the course of Big Planet the main characters travel through a vast landscape and encounter all manner of environments and societies, each different from the other and well described and fairly plausible even in their weirdness. And, as is almost always the case in his work, the pace never flagged. The man was a master and there’s still a lot to learn from him even while you’re enjoying his lighter fare.

Having been written in the early 1950s, it has some artifacts of its time that it can’t really be blamed for. It’s assumed and never, ever questioned, that adventuring and important duties are for men — sexual equality isn’t even on the radar. It makes me wonder how I’d ever share this book with, say, my daughter. Most authors can’t be expected to look beyond their time, and I’m sure in 50 years, assuming anyone’s still reading my books, someone will find something that I’m not doing that makes me dated. Still, in contemplation of this sexism I can’t help thinking about Robert E. Howard’s Valeria, from “Red Nails.”

Conan and The Fan Fic Writers of Doom

If I didn’t love the writing of Robert E. Howard I would probably never have bothered with any Conan pastiche. As a matter of fact, those Conan novels on store shelves in the ’70s and ’80s made me so skeptical of Conan that I didn’t try Robert E. Howard’s fiction until years later. I wrongly assumed that because the series looked cheap and mass produced that Howard’s writing would sound that way. (Robert E. Howard, of course, had NOTHING to do with the mass marketing of his character, having been dead for decades before that marketing was carried out by other hands.)

You can fit the sum total of all the Conan that Howard wrote (including some fragments and rejected stories) into one large hardback. That’s not a lot of fiction about such a great character, and so for decades people have been trying to create new tales of adventure starring Conan, mostly because they wanted MORE!

What makes those stories pastiche instead of fan fic, I suppose, is that many of these writers were paid to write it and the result was distributed widely. You would assume that meant that the work was well-edited and had some kind of consistency, but a lot of people, me among them, would tell you you’re wrong.

Conan and the Emerald Lotus

THIS is one of my favorite Conan books. You’ll note that it is not by Robert E. Howard. Howard himself actually wrote only one full-length Conan novel, as Conan was aimed at Weird Tales, a short story market. (If you’re THAT curious, you can go read up on REH at various sites.) I will add that it is my favorite pastiche Conan, ever, much as I greatly enjoy some of the John Maddox Roberts Conan novels. And it’s better than Karl Edward Wagner’s Conan novel The Road of Kings (often the default “best pastiche” answerand ANY Conan novel by Robert Jordan.

Conan and the Emerald Lotus was written by John Chris Hocking about twenty years ago. A big fan of Robert E. Howard, noir, and Weird Tales, Hocking wrote Emerald Lotus and sent it in, unagented… and because it was so danged good the publisher snapped it up and printed it. (In case you’re wondering, that NEVER happens.) The second Conan novel by Hocking, as it turns out, is even better, and L. Sprague de Camp relayed to Hocking that de Camp and his wife were so eager to see how it unfolded that they sat together on the floor of their study turning the pages. Conan and the Living Plague, unfortunately, never saw the light of day even though it was intended to re-launch the Conan line, because the purchasers of the line seemed uninterested in anything that had come before.

Against the Fall of Night

Usually, if I have a favorite book I can count on someone else having heard of it. If I mention The Chronicles of Amber, or Swords Against Death (failing that, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), Robert E. Howard, or even Harold Lamb, most of my reader friends will have heard of the book, author, or series. Most of us fantasy and science fiction readers of a certain age have been exposed to these works.

But no one ever seems to have heard of Michael Arnold’s Against the Fall of Night. I looked it up on Goodreads this morning and found one lone reviewer had given it five stars. Everyone else (but me, now) had only checked it off as something they wanted to read.

Published in 1975, Against the Fall of Night is (mostly) set during the time of the last gasp of the Byzantine Empire, during the reign of the Comnenus dynasty. And its main figure is Andronikus, the one man who might have saved the empire from the horrible mismanagement of his cousin Manuel if he’d had just a little more time and a little better luck. Manuel inherits the throne when he and Andronikus are both young men and then gradually, choice after disastrous choice, fritters away resources and opportunities.

Andronikus is a complex figure — charismatic, rash, daring, and brilliant. He’s torn by loyalty to his cousin and his sense that he could do far better, and eventually rebels. He’s the closest  literary figure I’ve ever seen to Zelazny’s Corwin of Amber. Minus the ability to ride through shadow, I mean.

The novel opens with the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks during the 4th Crusade, after which Constantinople and the empire endured only as a shadow of its former glory. Arnold postulates that if Andronikus had succeeded, the sacking would never have happened, and once you get to know Andronikus over the course of the novel you’re pretty certain he’s right.

The Emerald Forest

The Jones family summer movie viewing continues. My wife and I have been introducing our children, both teenagers, to features we remembered enjoying when we were about their same age.

Some of the movies I enjoyed in the ’80s don’t stand up well. Alright, a lot of them don’t. I remember thinking that Sixteen Candles was hilarious, and when I sat down with the wife and kids to re-watch it there were plenty of moments of humor… until I was suddenly aware how unconscious I’d been about all the sexism. That the love interest, Jake Ryan, passes over his girlfriend to the geeky character played by Anthony Michael Hall to do whatever he likes with is awful. I vaguely recall being uncomfortable with the moment before, but not so much so that I’d remembered it in detail. Now it struck me as incredibly icky. THIS same guy is the one we’re supposed to be pleased Samantha ends up with? I could no longer shrug the moment off and say, “oh, it’s just a comedy, Howard. It’s supposed to be light.” How could any father, brother, or son have written those scenes? Blech.

The Emerald Forest is a very different animal from Sixteen Candles. But it was an ’80s flick, and I’m a lot older, and I wondered if the messages about deforestation I thought subtle would now be like hammers on a gong.

Still Reading Vance

In the past I’ve usually read Jack Vance in short spurts, but this time I’ve been on a huge binge and am still enjoying the prose. The whole exploration (and re-discovery in the case of Planet of Adventure) was unfortunately sparked by the author’s death.

I’ve just closed the last page on The Planet of Adventure omnibus and I found it just as difficult to set down as I had the first time, which really says something. It has  all the usual Vancian touches: fascinating cultures, religions, and philosophies, not to mention truly alien aliens. Protagonist Adam Reith isn’t that different from Vance’s other non-satirical protagonists (like Kirth Gersen, say) but his straightforward outlook and intelligence remain refreshing, not to mention his sense of decency, his bravery, and his loyalty to friends. And speaking of friends, one of the things I like about this sequence is that there is a cast of loyal companions. Vance’s protagonists are usually lone wanderers. There’s plenty of wandering on the planet Tschai, but Reith is usually with at least one of his friends.

Interestingly, I can’t believe I never noticed this before, but it is becoming more and more clear to me that Vance had a huge impact on the first big science fiction game, Traveller. Reith is a planetary Scout, and is a jack-of-all-trades and survival expert, just like the characters in Traveller‘s Imperial Scout service. There are Traveller’s aid hostels in the Alastor books, not to mention air rafts and, perhaps more importantly there’s the general feel of independent planets in a sector but a unified sector government. In Vance, as with Traveller, every planet is a potential adventure setting. Vance, then, was a huge influence not just on D&D (the fire and forget spells, the hand and eye of Vecna) but upon Traveller‘s default setting.