This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on November 24, 2023.

Old Moon Quarterly: Issue 5, Summer 2023

By Old Moon Publishing – August 29, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Old Moon Quarterly has returned with its third installment of the year. Like previous issues, OMQ serves up an intriguing mix of grimdark and weird sword & sorcery fiction. Vol. 5 cover artist Derek Moore delivers the magazine’s most striking cover artwork to date: a skeleton in full plate harness equipped with a bec de corbin polearm. There are no interior illustrations or advertisements in this 89-page issue, and the text is presented in a single column layout.

After a brief Introduction expressing a desire to see more cerebral sword & sorcery tales in the vein of Robert E. Howard’s King Kull of Atlantis (as opposed to the more direct action yarns featuring Conan and his ilk), the issue opens with “Together Under the Wing,” by Jonathan Olfert. A Stone Age revenge tale with a twist, this story involves a young warrior driven to avenge the murder of his mother, the matriarch of their people. The wrinkle is that the protagonist, Walks-like-a-Rockslide, is a sentient mammoth with bladed tusks and his foe is the king of the giants. Appropriately, given the stature of these clashing titans, the struggle that follows is imbued with a palpable sense of momentum and inevitability. Mammoth and Giant King circle, close, and deal grievous wounds to each other. While the events of the narrative are straightforward, the unusual hero and heavy atmosphere of finality make this story stand out.

K.H. Vaughan’s “Champions Against the Maggot King” is another story that focuses on conjuring a very specific mood. The narrator, Grath, is a grunt in an imperial army locked in a desperate war against the monstrous hordes of the titular Maggot King. The story is presented as a series of vignettes showcasing both the formidable odds the soldiers are facing and the handful of elite heroes who may just be able to turn the tide. Sorrow Mai is a warrior woman with a massive axe and a “leather cuirass boiled in blood.” Ilhar, also called “The Raven,” is an untouchable elven duelist with a darkly poetic heart. Ko-Mon the Heartless is a scarred dwarf who wields an enchanted war chain that is powered by his pain. All these characters are anime levels of over-the-top and portrayed in a worshipful tone by Grath. Their enemies are likewise epic, especially the decomposing dragon that drips clumps of rotting flesh as it strafes the beleaguered troops below. There’s much in this story that’s excessive and even perhaps silly, but Vaughan absolutely sells it with a straight face. “Champions Against the Maggot King” is a grimdark treat that should appeal to fans of the Berserk and Bastard!! -Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy- anime series as well as enthusiasts of The Black Company and The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

In a first for Old Moon Quarterly, issue 5 includes two poems: “The King’s Two Bodies” by Joe Koch, and Zachary Bos’ “A Warning Agaynste Woldes.” “The King’s Two Bodies” is vividly lyrical, if perhaps a bit opaque. “A Warning Agaynste Woldes,” however, was peppered with Old English and tedious to decipher. The poetry didn’t add much to this issue, in this reviewer’s opinion, but I would not be opposed to seeing more verse in the future.

“The Origin of Boghounds,” by Amelia Gorman, is another grimdark entry. Boghounds are dog-like creatures of unknown pedigree. When a bounty hunter named Samphire discovers Hum, the boghound companion of her mountebank target, she decides to use the boghound to track down its master. The pair face stiff opposition in the form of two competing bounty hunters, however, and the situation becomes even more lethal when together they all discover the monstrous and delightfully gross progenitor of the boghounds. This story is packed to the brim with entertaining weirdness. The characters are all quirky and strange, like NPCs from the Dark Souls video games, and the world is evocatively rendered despite the story’s brevity.

David K. Henrickson’s “Well Met at the Gates of Hell” is one of the more sword & sorcery-oriented tales in this issue. A nameless man awakens on a barren plain, under a starless sky. Three figures await him: a massive paladin with a glowing sword, a small dagger-wielding man with a hateful smile, and a 12-foot-tall praying mantis. The trio wish to kill the new arrival for his past offenses and have agreed among themselves to engage him in single combat, one at a time. The story that follows is a triptych of duels shot through with witty repartee reminiscent of The Princess Bride. The protagonist—I hesitate to call him the hero, his enemies seem justified in their hatred of him—and his opponents are all vague sketches, but Henrickson makes the minimalism work. The result is a completely fat-free story that gives the reader just enough to satiate them and not an ounce further. This was the highlight of the issue for me.

“The Skulls of Ghosts,” by Charles Gramlich, is another sword & sorcery adventure. The muscular warrior Krieg journeys into a plague-ridden kingdom trying to locate the malady’s sorcerous origin. While there is a lot to like about this story, it suffered by following “Well Met at the Gates of Hell.” There’s some nicely hallucinatory prose here—the story shares many characteristics with the King Kull tales celebrated in this issue’s Introduction—but “The Skulls of Ghosts” felt long and overstuffed compared to the other stories in issue #5. There were more named characters and backstory than seemed truly necessary, and the evil sorcerer’s habit of assuming other characters’ identities was confusing. The components of a good story are present, but it would have benefited from some trimming and tightening.

“Today, I met a man I had killed before,” opens “The Headsman’s Melancholy” by Joseph Andre Thomas. Set in 14th century England, the final story of the issue is related by Jack Marvell, an executioner in the employ of King Henry IV. While he professes job satisfaction, Marvell keeps a diary to help cope with his depression, and this story consists of a series of journal entries describing his encounters with a strange knave he has beheaded on multiple occasions. Bizarre and gleefully gory, with a cryptic ending, “The Headsman’s Melancholy” is oddly compelling. A fitting conclusion to a strong issue of Old Moon Quarterly.

Unlike some more generalist fantasy fiction magazines, Old Moon Quarterly gives the sense of a very specific editorial vision. A desired vibe. Their submission guidelines call for “dark and weird sword & sorcery,” and while that’s not inaccurate, it feels like it insufficiently articulates what makes a given story Old Moon Quarterly material. With the launch of their first Kickstarter campaign, however, it seems like the editors have zeroed in on a pithy way to describe the type of fiction they showcase: “Soulsborne-inspired.” In short, if you enjoy the brutal, gothic, grimdark aesthetic of From Software’s Dark Souls and Bloodborne video games, Old Moon Quarterly curates fiction with a similar feel. Old Moon Quarterly is recommended for dark fantasy fans of all stripes, but for those yearning for that elusive Soulsborne atmosphere in particular, this is the place.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on March 30, 2023.

Old Moon Quarterly: Issue 3, Winter 2023

By Old Moon Publishing – March 13, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

An intriguing newcomer to the small press dark fantasy fiction scene, Old Moon Quarterly has recently released its third volume. The magazine bills itself as a showcase for weird fantasy fiction and sword & sorcery, citing the works of Clark Ashton Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, and Tanith Lee as touchstones. The first volume debuted in July 2022, followed up by the second in November of the same year. While each issue to date has featured four stories, the page count has grown slightly with each installment. Volume 3 of Old Moon Quarterly boasts striking sepia-toned cover artwork by Daniel Vega, showing an (Elric of Melnibone-inspired?) armored warrior confronted by a twisted, multi-headed monster. There are no interior illustrations or advertisements, and the text is presented in a single column layout.

After a brief Introduction comparing Arthurian romances to modern day fantasy adventures, the fiction section of Old Moon Quarterly Volume 3 opens strongly with “Evil Honey” by James Enge. Nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2010 for his debut novel Blood of Ambrose, James Enge is likely the most widely recognizable author printed in Old Moon Quarterly to date. Like Blood of Ambrose and several short stories from the pages of Black Gate Magazine, Tales From The Magician’s Skull, and elsewhere, “Evil Honey” features Enge’s wandering wizard Morlock Ambrosius, also known as Morlock the Maker. In “Evil Honey” Morlock finds himself magically compelled by the god of bees to come up with a non-lethal way of dealing with an aggressive hive tainted through the consumption of toxic pollen. Shrunk down to bee size by the god, Morlock infiltrates the hive. While the premise seems like something out of a children’s story, Enge plays it mostly straight. Touches of whimsy are overshadowed by the viciousness of the warped bee society, consumed by fear and the desperate need for a common enemy. While “Evil Honey” works fine as a piece of fantasy fiction, one could also view it through a more allegorical lens as a critique of modern nations and their self-destructive, eternal War on Terror. One hopes that there’s a happier solution for the issues dominating post-9/11 America than what Morlock comes up with for the corrupted hive. Setting potential symbolism aside, “Evil Honey” is a fascinating adventure tale and Enge’s moody, sardonic Morlock is always a treat.

The second story is by German writer T. R. Siebert and entitled “Knife, Lace, Prayer.” Where “Evil Honey” was intensely local—even miniature—in scope, this tale is epic to the extreme. It involves a “girl who used to be a beast” journeying across the devastated landscapes of the Ashlands on a mission to slay god. Her world is literally coming apart at the seams, with the god in the process of remaking it into something new. Enraged by the destruction of all she knew and loved, the nameless beast/girl vows revenge. But to find her divine target she must first enlist a guide: a disillusioned paladin named Edmund. While initially I was put off by the vagueness of some of the prose and frequent flashbacks to the girl’s former life as a holy guardian beast, by the end of the story I found myself completely won over. Not only is the story ambitious despite its brief page count, its conclusion is immensely satisfying.

“Singing the Long Retreat,” by R. K. Duncan, is told through the eyes of Fatima, a warrior woman of the Prepared, a cavalry unit tasked with holding off an invading army while the rest of Fatima’s people make their escape. The odds are overwhelming and, as the name suggests, the Prepared are resigned to their own deaths. Songs and poems are evidently important to Fatima’s people, and she sings throughout the battle that ensues, improvising lyrics to raise the morale of her comrades and intimidate their foes. Nearly the entire story is one extended battle scene. The general ebb and flow of combat is narrated as well as individual acts of self-sacrificing heroism, all punctuated by Fatima’s verses. While it reminded this reviewer of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the lack of any conclusive resolution robs the story of much of its inspirational power. “Singing the Long Retreat” seems more an exercise in creating a mood than relating a plot. While I did not enjoy it as much as the other contributions in this Old Moon Quarterly volume, the overall quality of the prose remained high.

The final story is “The Feast of Saint Ottmer,” by Graham Thomas Wilcox, an assistant editor of Old Moon Quarterly. The Arthurian romance touched upon in this volume’s Introduction returns here, in this tale of knighthood and honor. Told in the first person, this novella centers on the youthful knight Hieronymous and his role in the siege of a keep at Kienhorst. The graf of Kienhorst was responsible for the death of Hieronymous’s father, and honor demands retribution. The situation is complicated by the participation in the siege of a contingent of knights called the Order of the Dragon. Fearsome in aspect and more battle-tested by far than Hieronymous, he finds himself longing to be counted among their number. But the darkly alluring nun that commands the Order demands Hieronymous murder the enemy graf, rather than ransom him alive as chivalric convention requires. Throughout the bloody conflict to follow Hieronymous finds himself torn between the obligations of familial duty and the pursuit of martial prowess, the opposing teachings of his father and his grandfather. Drenched in gory, gothic, grimdark flavor, “The Feast of Saint Ottmer” is operatic, even bombastic. One could fairly describe this story as overwritten (some dialogue is in Latin, with accompanying footnotes!), but the ornate prose effectively conjures a darkly vibrant atmosphere. It overshoots Arthurian romance, ending up closer to the opening scenes of Vlad Dracula as armored warrior in the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Over-the-top fun, “The Feast of Saint Ottmer” even edged out James Enge’s “Evil Honey” as the highlight of the issue for me.

Finally, Old Moon Quarterly volume 3 concludes with a book review for Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, a movie-themed horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow. Assistant editor Graham Thomas Wilcox returns to examine stories by Gemma Files, Laird Barron, and John Langan in detail. The cinematic horror of the anthology under review contrasts with the fantasy fiction included in this volume, but given the dark tenor of most of the stories here it’s easy to imagine a considerable overlap in readership.

Old Moon Quarterly may be new to the marketplace, but the high quality fiction and affordable cover price make it well worth checking out. Many ambitious fiction magazines struggle with the demands of monthly or bimonthly schedules, but the measured release pace and competitive author rates of Old Moon Quarterly will hopefully allow a steady stream of polished dark fantasy tales for years to come.

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