This review originally appeared in Old Moon Quarterly Vol. 6, released on January 16, 2024.

Tales From The Magician’s Skull – No. 11

Edited by Howard Andrew Jones – Goodman Publications – August 18, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

Tales From The Magician’s Skull No. 11 collects eight new Sword & Sorcery stories curated by Howard Andrew Jones. It features cover artwork by fantasy paperback master Sanjulian, and each story is illustrated by artists including Jason Edwards, Tom Galambos, and Stefan Poag.

“Test of the Runeweavers,” by H. T. Grossen, receives the cover treatment for this issue. Young Frode, a member of the Viking-inspired Aegirvarg people, embarks on his first ocean voyage as an apprentice runerikr, or wielder of spoken rune-based magic. Investigating mysterious coastal raids, Frode and his fellows encounter strangers from a far-off land with their own potent ideograph-based magic. This brisk story covers a great deal of territory despite its slim page count, and the rune magic feels flashy and novel.

“Lady of the Frost” is the latest Shintaro Oba tale by C. L. Werner, a name that should be familiar to fans of Warhammer and Games Workshop’s Black Library imprint. As with previous installments, wandering samurai Oba comes into conflict with a supernatural threat from Japanese folklore. “Lady of the Frost” is a solid example of sword & sorcery adventure in an underrepresented setting.

Trespassing in temples devoted to bizarre and malign gods is a common (and exciting!) trope in sword & sorcery, but if this issue has a flaw, it’s the inclusion of three such stories in a single installment. Bill Pearce’s “The Eyes of Rath Kanon” is the first of this issue’s unadvertised evil temple trilogy. The twisty plot and shifting loyalties intrigued, but despite a strong start and conclusion it felt like the middle portion of this contribution lacked the propulsive momentum found in the other stories.

“Ghostwise” by Caias Ward was the highlight of the issue, and a story I suspect Old Moon Quarterly readers are especially predisposed to enjoy. Dark-skinned but with chalk-white hands, gun-slinging mystic Obba Babatunde is summoned to a king’s court to attend to a haunted princess with identical markings. Like Obba himself, Princess Jansynth exists simultaneously in both the realms of the living and the dead, making her vulnerable to constant ghostly attacks unless she can build up her own defenses. As she struggles to keep her soul intact, Jansynth learns a devastating truth about her spectral tormentor and her own heritage. Cleverly plotted, “Ghostwise” reminds me of the early Witcher short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, where the true monster isn’t always obvious at first glance. Ward’s hero and his talents are worthy of further elaboration, and I hope to see more Obba stories in the future.

Set in Earth in ancient times rather than a secondary world, Mark Mellon’s “Melkart and the Whore of Babylon” masterfully transforms antiquity into a lush and decadent sword & sorcery setting. Envious of her influence on Babylon’s populace, King Belshazzar plots to use a religious ceremony as cover and assassinate Inanna, the priestess of Ishtar, replacing both her and the goddess she serves with a more amenable sect. Unwilling to participate in such a dastardly scheme, Belshazzar’s hired sword Melkart immediately reveals the conspiracy to Inanna, offering himself as her protector at great personal risk. Just as the odds seem insurmountable, “Melkart and the Whore of Babylon” concludes with a truly epic finale.

Dawn Vogel’s “Kick in the Door and Improvise” distinguishes itself from the other stories by virtue of its humor. Unable to infiltrate a castle due to the bright moon overhead, two thieves hired to steal a king’s crown seek magical assistance. A sorcerer offers to dim the moon to hide their approach, provided they can collect all the ingredients required for the spell on a tight schedule. The final heist itself ends up almost an afterthought; most of the story concerns itself with the hunt for an elusive black pearl. The wry, freewheeling tone and focus on spell components pleasantly reminded me of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves film, and the story offered a refreshing change of pace from the uniformly serious tales composing the rest of the issue.

In “The Lens of Being,” by Daniel Amatiello, a pirate queen stumbles across a menacing cult lurking in a cliff-side temple complex on the coast of India. While the heretical Buddhist sect featured in the story had great potential, its aims and methods felt underdeveloped and the climactic monster too familiar. Not a bad story, but it suffers by appearing alongside two other temple raid stories.

The issue ends on a particularly strong note with “Bound in Brass and Iron,” by Matthew X. Gomez. When partially devoured bodies start turning up at the scene of a newly constructed temple, Liam the Black is hired to investigate. The trail leads him into a deeper temple, where a forgotten demon strains against its binding. This is the best of the issue’s unofficial evil temple trilogy, with a resourceful hero, fascinating spellcraft, and tense action.

Each issue of Tales From The Magician’s Skull concludes with a brief appendix called “The Monster Pit,” featuring game statistics of the monsters appearing in the various stories for use with publisher Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game. It’s a gimmick, but a fun one that hopefully encourages tabletop gamers to engage more with the literary roots of their hobby.

Since launching in 2018, Tales From The Magician’s Skull quickly established itself as a quality venue for fantasy tales written in the pulp adventure tradition, and both the fiction and the artwork in this issue maintains that high level of excellence. Tales From The Magician’s Skull benefits from a tight focus on sword & sorcery, making it a one-stop venue for fast-paced fantasy action.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on May 10, 2023.

Tales From The Magician’s Skull – No. 10

By Goodman Publications – April 12, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

First debuting in 2018, Goodman Publications’ Tales From The Magician’s Skull has reached its landmark tenth issue. While the arrival of new magazines dedicated to short fantasy fiction is not uncommon, Tales From The Magician’s Skull distinguishes itself from its fellows via its specific editorial focus and high production values. Directed by editor Howard Andrew Jones, the magazine is dedicated to never-before-published stories written in the classic pulp Sword & Sorcery tradition.

In addition to digital formats, the magazine is available in high-quality physical volumes manufactured via traditional offset printing (rather than print-on-demand). This tenth issue boasts a vibrant cover painting by veteran paperback cover and comic book artist Sanjulian, and each of the nine stories contained within have been given their own accompanying black and white illustration. Interior artists include Jennell Jaquays, Brad McDevitt, and Stefan Poag.

In an essay titled “Defining Sword-and-Sorcery” (collected in special issue No. 0 of Tales From The Magician’s Skull), Jones describes his vision of the S&S sub-genre and what distinguishes it from other varieties of fantasy. He highlights the outsider hero as one of the hallmarks of S&S: the protagonists often exist on the margins of society as wandering barbarians or thieves, rather than comfortably ensconced nobles and townsfolk. S&S heroes tend to live by their wits and martial ability, with magic either unreliable as a tool or outright malignant. And rather than lofty ideals or nation-level politics, these heroes tend to be motivated by earthier, more immediate concerns: the acquisition of wealth, romantic desire or lust, or the simple will to survive another day. Jones also emphasizes the breakneck pacing of S&S stories and their focus on violent action. All of the stories contained in this tenth issue demonstrate these qualities, making Tales From The Magician’s Skull an easy recommendation to readers who enjoy an abundance of action and peril in their fantasy.

The magazine’s cover art is dedicated to “The Demon Rats,” by C. L. Werner, a prolific author of licensed fiction set in the various WARHAMMER settings. The story involves Shintaro Oba, a disgraced samurai who finds himself tasked with exterminating a suspiciously coordinated horde of iron-fanged rodents intent on destroying a temple’s library of scriptures. He receives some assistance from an alluring shape-shifter with her own agenda. While Shintaro Oba has appeared in previous stories, no prior knowledge of the character is required to enjoy this adventure. Both the premise and characters are colorful, but some of the names feel awkwardly constructed in Japanese.

Perhaps the simplest story in the issue is also one of the most effective. “Green Face, Purple Haze” by Marc DeSantis is about an American soldier in the Vietnam War who finds himself magically transported to a fantasy realm with its own battles raging. Gunpowder fails to work, robbing him of the technological advantage of his assault rifle, but his modern military training and indomitable fighting spirit serve him well in the conflict between humans and the bestial urks. Although the specific words of the modern US Marine mantra “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” do not appear in the text, this story entertainingly celebrates that ethos. With its focus on the unchanging nature of war and visceral combat descriptions, this story in particular has a lot to love for grimdark enthusiasts.

Many of the stories collected in this issue are grounded and gritty, but others venture into much stranger territory. “The Sorcerer’s Mask” by Jason Ray Carney, managing editor of Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery, involves an unnamed thief unjustly cast into a vast dungeon by a paranoid immortal wizard. The Rogue must rely on his wits and the aid of an enigmatic soothsayer to effect his escape, and there is a sense of grim inevitability leading up to the final confrontation. The story moves quickly despite its vivid detail, covering a surprising amount of ground in a mere six pages. “A Simple Errand” by Grimdark Magazine contributor Matthew John also involves a prison break, but one where a sorcerer (or “meddler” in the story’s parlance) frees a barbarian warrior awaiting execution in order to put him to work on a dark mission: killing an alien god on another world. This adventure is packed with hallucinatory imagery worthy of Roger Dean’s cosmic prog rock album artwork.

A surprise highlight of the issue was “The Black Pearl of the Sunken Lands,” by Cynthia Ward. In this story, a headstrong youth named Bruko vows to reclaim a legendary lost treasure to prove himself worthy of the affections of a beautiful maiden. This familiar premise is freshened by the fact that the protagonist is a nereus (aquatic humanoid) and his sidekick in the endeavor is an intelligent dolphin with blades strapped to his fins. It’s a simple thing, but the underwater setting makes a significant difference in the feel of the story. Ward’s sly humor further enhances the piece; the object of Bruko’s affections makes it pretty obvious to the reader that she’s not especially interested in marrying Bruko, and the dolphin companion proves to be more intelligent than the hero he’s accompanying.

The stories in this issue all share brisk pacing and an emphasis on swordplay, but their heroes are diverse in nature. In addition to Werner’s samurai hero, African-inspired and Native American warriors (in “Nzara” by D. J. Tyrer and “The Silent Mound” by Charles D. Shell, respectively) also have opportunities to shine. One of the toughest and most physically imposing characters herein is a woman: Dakagna, heroine of the grimdark-inflected “Dakagna and the Blood Scourge” by W. J. Lewis. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Jade, the heroine of Jeffery Sergent’s “The Eye of Kaleet,” who uses guile to survive situations where she is clearly outmatched martially.

The issue concludes with a brief appendix entitled “The Monster Pit,” giving various monsters appearing in the fiction game statistics for use with the publisher’s Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. This is a fun addendum for players of DCC RPG or other games with systems largely compatible with early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, but the page count it occupies is minimal, meaning that non-gamer readers are unlikely to feel alienated or slighted by the non-prose content.

Ten issues and nearly five years in, Tales From The Magician’s Skull continues to deliver fantastic action-adventure tales in an appealing and polished package. Previous issues included a number of established names familiar to fans of contemporary Sword & Sorcery—Adrian Cole, James Enge, John C. Hocking, Violette Malan—but the most recent installments have also begun incorporating exciting newer voices as well. The magazine enjoys near universal acclaim among Sword & Sorcery readers and has become a sort of Holy Grail venue for S&S writers looking to showcase their work, but—like the sub-genre itself—one still gets the feeling that Tales From The Magician’s Skull isn’t quite getting the sort of wider recognition its quality deserves. Whether this is due to difficulties in promoting short fantasy fiction in today’s increasingly entertainment-saturated market is unclear. Perhaps the magazine’s association with a role-playing game publisher and each issue’s appendix of game statistics lead some fantasy readers to assume that Tales From The Magician’s Skull is an RPG magazine, rather than an original fiction magazine with some bonus RPG content. Sword & Sorcery tales are full of scrappy underdogs doing whatever it takes to survive, but like those heroes it’s nice to see the underdogs rewarded in the end with glory and gold. Other Grimdark Magazine contributors (cf. Matthew John’s Robert E. Howard: Godfather of Grimdark? and John R. Fultz’s The Mud, The Blood, and the Years: Why “Grimdark” is the New “Sword and Sorcery”) have remarked upon the considerable amount of shared DNA between Sword & Sorcery and grimdark fantasy fiction. Grimdark readers are encouraged to give Tales From The Magician’s Skull a look, perhaps it will become a new favorite discovery.

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