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

The Graveyard Shift

By Maria Lewis – Datura Books – September 12, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Tinsel Munroe is the host of “The Graveyard Shift,” an overnight horror-themed radio show on 102.8 HitsFM, Melbourne’s hottest station. Despite her best efforts she finds herself mostly treading water in her career, trapped in a dead-end time slot playing for a devoted but small following. Her life is upended on Halloween, however, when an audience member is viciously murdered during a broadcast phone call. New listeners flock to the show with ghoulish hopes for another on-air killing, and ominous messages reveal to Tinsel that she herself is a target. As the police investigation founders and the body count rises, Tinsel realizes that her continued survival depends on her ability—with assistance from her true crime blogger sister Pandora and the handsome detective Vic James—to uncover the hidden connection between herself and the unseen assailant.

The Graveyard Shift is billed as an “homage” to the slasher movies of the 1990s, and elements of the Scream series are certainly present and accounted for. While Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play and various other slasher franchises are name-checked throughout the book, potential readers should be aware that The Graveyard Shift is more of a thriller with light mystery and romance elements than a horror novel. The supernatural is not a factor, and Maria Lewis does not devote much effort to building and sustaining an unsettling or frightening atmosphere. That being said, the murder scenes are tense and exciting and deliver the sort of gore one would expect from I Know What You Did Last Summer or similar slashers.

The Graveyard Shift’s greatest strength is its characters. Tinsel is a likable, smart, and resourceful heroine. True crime blogger Pandora and police detective Vic James are likewise appealing, and even the minor supporting characters come across as distinctive, well-rendered individuals. While it feels a little convenient that Tinsel’s sister happens to be a serial killer expert with police connections and a ready supply of murder factoids, Pandora is given enough fleshing-out to make her more than just a convenient plot device. Dreamy, stubbled protector Detective James also seems more like a Hollywood cop than somebody one would encounter on a real world police force, but he is given enough depth to transcend his primary function as hunky daydream fodder for readers. The characters are fun, and it’s enjoyable spending time with them.

In The Graveyard Shift, Lewis writes in a breezy, thoroughly modern voice. The book is fast-paced and engaging, but I struggled a bit with the tone. At no point in this book does someone narrowly escape from a knife-wielding maniac and then brush it off with a quippy “Well, that happened,” but if a scene like that HAD been present it would not have been out of place with the rest of the book. Plucky bravery is one thing, but Tinsel comes off as remarkably unflappable for someone being actively stalked by a serial killer. She shows occasional moments of fright or doubt, but is otherwise largely able to go about her life in good spirits, mostly covering her regular shift at work and putting in appearances at social functions. The constantly shifting tone threw me off, but it feels significant that a main character is a true crime enthusiast. True crime podcasts and blogs are often accused of trivializing real world brutality and murder for the sake of salacious thrills, and similarly the fictional crimes depicted here aren’t always handled with the utmost gravity. Tinsel is appropriately devastated when people she knows are attacked, but at times it feels like the deaths of unacquainted victims are treated more like a fun puzzle to be solved by Tinsel and Pandora: Taskforce Laurie Strode.

The Graveyard Shift is an energetic and stimulating thriller. Readers hoping for grit and angst are better off looking elsewhere, but this book serves well as a refreshing palate cleanser after finishing weightier fare.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on September 8, 2023.

A Book of Blades: Volume II

Rogues in the House Presents – June 28, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Sequel to 2022’s A Book of Blades, A Book of Blades: Volume II is the second anthology of fiction curated by the crew of Rogues in the House: The Ultimate Sword & Sorcery Podcast. It includes 14 Sword & Sorcery-themed short stories by as many authors, with striking cover artwork by Jesus Garcia and internal illustrations by Gilead. Writers featured here have appeared in the pages of short fiction venues like Tales From The Magician’s Skull, Old Moon Quarterly, and Savage Realms Monthly, so this anthology also serves as a broad survey of more than a dozen authors active in the indie S&S scene.

As a Sword & Sorcery anthology, most of the stories deal with either lone heroes or small bands (here frequently drifters, tomb raiders, or mercenaries between jobs) thrust into deadly situations, relying on their wits and weaponry to defeat supernatural threats. The protagonists generally aren’t embarking on epic quests, they’re seeking riches, revenge, or simply attempting to survive. The tone is almost universally gritty and violent across the collected stories, with several selections comfortably grimdark in everything but name. This review focuses on A Book of Blades: Volume II’s darker entries.

“Breaching Earth’s Womb” by S.E. Lindberg is one of the most grimdark and all-around weirdest stories included in A Book of Blades: Volume II. When tainted pregnancies result in several expectant mothers being eviscerated and consumed by insectoid parasites, golem midwife Nurse Leech must leave the relative safety of home to ward off a larger disaster. Her desperate journey takes her across a blasted land ravaged by an ongoing struggle between immense, godlike beings. Lindberg is fascinated by the concept of the ancient Greek bodily humors and the maladies thought to result from imbalances between them, and this story shows the same bizarrely compelling gooey, squidgy body horror of the other tales in his Dyscrasia Fiction line.

“Beasts of Waste & Desolation” features the Viking-era orc hero of Scott Oden’s grimdark Grimnir trilogy (A Gathering of Ravens, Twilight of the Gods, and the forthcoming The Doom of Odin). Back in Jutland after slaughtering “whiteskin” humans abroad, Grimnir encounters a crone doing her laundry in a shallow pool. Recognizing her as a deadly water spirit in disguise, he helps himself to her banquet while participating in a high-stakes game of riddles. The story that follows is an entertainingly predatory tête-à-tête in which two lethal killers circle each other, simultaneously probing for weaknesses and coiling to strike.

“Cries from a Sleeping City,” by Grimdark Magazine contributor and Rogues in the House podcaster Matt John, is another adventure featuring barbarian mercenary Lachmannon (previously seen in issue 10 of Tales From The Magician’s Skull). The wealthy ruler of Zanzara hires a tavern full of sell-swords to scour the tunnels beneath the city, searching for the mythical Queen Vashka, thought to be an imprisoned immortal sorceress. Initially skeptical of the task, Lachmannon quickly learns that the tales of Vashka are true. To survive, he must fight to escape a nightmarish subterranean hellscape filled with cannibalistic “eaters” and unseen lurkers that use body-invading tentacles to drive their victims insane with bloodlust. The story is fast paced, with a fun menagerie of monsters and a dark streak a mile wide.

John R. Fultz’s “Return of the Quill” is another moody standout in A Book of Blades: Volume II. The necromancer Grimsort, one of eight Sorcerer Kings ruling a conquered city policed by revived corpses, is persuaded to allow a traveling acting troupe to stage a play in his domain. His fellow tyrants plan to sacrifice the massive audience as fuel for a demonic summoning, but Grimsort finds himself unexpectedly swayed by the actors’ bravura performance. While not particularly lengthy, this story is rich with gothic imagery and fascinating characters. Its celebration of the power storytelling can have even over the most hardened heart also appealed.

A Book of Blades: Volume II concludes with “The Horror from the Stars,” by Steve Dilks. Like Charles Clark’s “The White Tower” at the very beginning of the anthology and “The Geomancer’s Son” by J. Thomas Howard, this story involves a close encounter with a threat from outer space. (The Sword & Sorcery subgenre predates the firmer separation of fantasy from science fiction to which modern readers have grown accustomed, and I have a particular soft spot for warrior vs. alien stories.) “The Horror from the Stars” begins with Bohun arriving in the city of Ibn-Shahk, determined to reclaim his abducted wife from the sultan’s harem or die trying. He’s warned of a string of mysterious disappearances since the sultan’s retrieval of a “fallen star” from the desert, and soon comes face-to-face with the sadistic otherworldly intelligence behind the throne. While Bohun’s final triumph felt a little too easily attained given what we’re shown of the alien’s capabilities, both the action and horrific elements are exciting and cinematically presented.

While some contributions are reprints from other venues and I was slightly disappointed that the artwork didn’t directly tie to the included stories, A Book of Blades: Volume II feels like an enthusiastic labor of love. Brisk action is the hallmark of these stories, and there’s more than enough here to justify the purchase for fans of grimdark fantasy.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on August 31, 2023.

Lord of a Shattered Land

By Howard Andrew Jones – Baen Books – August 1, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Lord of a Shattered Land opens immediately after the decisive conclusion of a brutal, genocidal war. After two previous conflicts were fought to stalemate, the expansionist Dervan Empire has finally succeeded in crushing Volanus. Not just content to dominate the rival city-state militarily, the Dervans exterminated nearly all the populace, razed Volanus’ iconic silver towers, and salted its fields. The handful of survivors were shipped back to the Empire in chains. Leading troops in the field, Hanuvar—Volanus’ greatest general—was absent for the obliteration of his homeland. Having witnessed him plummet into the ocean from a great height, the Dervan legions rejoiced at the death of their hated foe. But reports of Hanuvar’s demise have proved premature. After washing up on an island, Hanuvar immediately pits his formidable military mind against the Dervans anew. He vows not to rest until every Volani survivor has been freed from slavery.

First volume in a planned five-book saga entitled The Chronicles of Hanuvar, Lord of a Shattered Land has an unusual structure. Rather than a conventional novel, it’s a cycle of 14 linked short stories. Each chapter is a self-contained story but taken together they tell a greater narrative. Unlike the fix-up novels of classic science fiction and fantasy, where disparate short stories are tied together post facto, the individual component stories that make up The Chronicles of Hanuvar were intended from conception to contribute to a planned, overarching plot. This structure feels a bit like a market-driven compromise between the typical short story format of Sword & Sorcery fiction (Jones is a vocal proponent of Sword & Sorcery and also serves as editor of the subgenre’s premiere magazine, Tales From The Magician’s Skull) and major publishers’ preference for multi-volume epic fare, but in the end it works surprisingly well. Each chapter satisfies as a bite-sized piece of entertainment while still providing a sense of overall progression and forward momentum.

While many of the stories collected in Lord of a Shattered Land involve Hanuvar traveling to a new locale, encountering Volani survivors, and attempting to free them from the yoke of Dervan slavery, there is significant variation in tone throughout the book. Straightforward man vs. monster Sword & Sorcery tales are included alongside heist and espionage stories. There’s even a fairytale: “Shroud of Feathers.” While Hanuvar himself displays too much integrity to be considered a grimdark hero, his mission and the setting are decidedly grim, with the oppressive cruelty of the Dervan Empire on constant display. Depictions of violence are generally brief—Hanuvar tends to eliminate threats with cold efficiency—but graphic, and chapters like “The Eyes of the Reaper,” “The Missing Man,” and “The Light of the Lovely Ones” emphasize horrific elements, venturing deep into dark territory.

Given the nature of the book, whether Lord of a Shattered Land will be successful for a given reader or not depends greatly on how they react to Hanuvar as a character. Jones makes no secret that his hero is inspired by the great general Hannibal of Carthage, known for his strategic genius in the Punic Wars against Rome. While historically the destruction of Carthage took place decades after Hannibal’s death, Jones has Hanuvar survive the razing of his Carthage analogue, rising again as a sort of avenging angel for his people. Fiftyish and hindered by chronic war injuries, Hanuvar relies on clever tactics, decades of hard-earned experience, and steely determination. Despite all the historical flavoring, however, Hanuvar’s preternatural competence and tendency to be several steps ahead of the opposition reminded me of cinematic spy heroes like James Bond, or Ethan Hunt from the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series. Some of the quieter moments in the book reveal that Hanuvar carries a great deal of survivor’s guilt for not being present at the destruction of Volanus, but he never allows himself to wallow in self-pity or indulge himself in “extracurricular” revenge. The mission to free his enslaved countrymen is always first and foremost in his mind, and deep within enemy territory he frequently finds himself left with no choice but to work alongside citizens of the very Empire that destroyed his homeland.

While readers who prefer significantly flawed or morally ambiguous protagonists may be left cold by Hanuvar’s righteous certitude, Lord of a Shattered Land is ideal for fans of intensely driven, hyper-competent heroes. The episodic nature of the storytelling makes it an ideal book for brief reading sessions, and the individual chapters span a wide range of story types. The pseudo-Mediterranean setting and Roman trappings are also a nice change of pace from Northern European-inspired fantasy.

Readers who enjoy Lord of a Shattered Land will not have long to wait for a sequel. The City of Marble and Blood is set to arrive this October, with two further volumes in The Chronicles of Hanuvar scheduled for release in 2024.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on July 4, 2023.

Boys in the Valley

By Philip Fracassi – Tor Nightfire – July 11, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Boys in the Valley immerses the reader in the harsh, prison-like environs of St. Vincent’s Orphanage, deep in the hills of rural Pennsylvania, 1905. Here Peter Barlow and 31 other boys spend monotonous days working the fields and participating in church services under the watchful gaze of a handful of Catholic priests. Any perceived infraction or impiety is met with withheld meals, corporal punishment, or a trip to the dreaded “hole”: a subterranean cell dug into the grounds outside the dormitory. The boys’ already grueling situation goes from bad to worse with the midnight arrival of the local sheriff and his deputies with a grievously wounded suspect in tow. The injured man is combative and raving, with the sheriff evasive about the circumstances of his arrest. Former military medic Father Poole attempts to provide treatment, but what begins as first aid soon devolves into a harrowing exorcism that the wounded man does not survive. After the man’s death and interment in the orphanage grounds Peter notices an unsettling change come over a number of his fellows, beginning with one just returning from an overnight stay in the hole. Formerly cheerful boys have become inexplicably malicious and conspiratorial. They huddle together, darkly plotting and recruiting others, while the priests refuse to acknowledge that anything unusual is occurring. Violence seems imminent, and as the oldest boy with a strong sense of responsibility it’s up to Peter to protect his comrades. Assuming, that is, he can distinguish friend from demonic foe.

Like Fracassi’s previous novel, Gothic, Boys in the Valley involves devil-worship and demonic possession. The publisher’s pithy tagline describes Boys in the Valley as “The Exorcist meets Lord of the Flies, by way of Midnight Mass.” Similarities to The Exorcist are obvious, and both the absence of effective adult supervision and the pervasive child-on-child brutality certainly bring to mind Lord of the Flies. But despite being—at its heart—a religious horror novel, I would also recommend it to fans of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Isolated and snow-bound, the orphanage may as well be as remote as an Antarctic research station, and its immediately clear that no outside help is forthcoming. Unlike many horror stories, where a singular devil flits from one host to the next in serial fashion, possession is treated here almost like an infection. Some demonic hosts are more insidiously subtle than others, engendering a heavy atmosphere of paranoia as alliances shift and former friends become lethal enemies.

Despite the claustrophobic setting of Boys in the Valley, Fracassi effectively manages a large cast of characters. The various boys are all named and given evocative quirks. The lion’s share of characterization is given to the oldest two boys, the noble aspiring priest Peter and his cynical counterpart David, but through brief passages and conversations Fracassi manages to communicate each boy’s essential nature with surprising economy of words. With the end goal, of course, of making the reader really feel the blow whenever a particular boy meets a savage end at the hands of his fellows.

The pacing is another highlight of Boys in the Valley. Many authors would be tempted to prolong the first third of the novel, after the first boys start to change. Those authors would drip-feed the reader a series of unsettling events over several more chapters before the first murder takes place. Fracassi’s demons are impatient and ready to get to the carnage, however, with the whole sequence of events escalating very quickly. I appreciated the apparent confidence Fracassi had in the strength of his basic premise and his scene-setting ability. Rather than dragging things out unnecessarily, all hell breaks loose within the orphanage soon after Peter uncovers the demonic threat.

Previously published in 2001 as a 500 copy limited edition by Earthling Publications, Boys in the Valley is now being released by Tor Nightfire. Hopefully this mass market edition from a major publisher will introduce Fracassi to a wider audience of readers. After reading both Gothic and Boys in the Valley I am firmly convinced that Philip Fracassi is a name worthy of being included alongside other contemporary horror greats like Paul Tremblay, Nick Cutter, and Stephen Graham Jones. Boys in the Valley is a tense page-turner, absolutely gripping.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on June 21, 2023.

The Vessel

By Adam Nevill – Ritual Limited – October 31, 2022

Review by Robin Marx

The Vessel opens with protagonist Jess McMachen in a desperate situation. Having separated from her violent husband, she supports herself on meager wages earned weekly as a caregiver for the elderly. Her primary school-aged daughter Izzy is mercilessly bullied by her classmates, but Jess’ irregular work schedule prevents her from being as available for her daughter as she would like. Her ex-husband is also constantly lurking around the periphery, paying surprise visits to their daughter that violate the terms of their divorce agreement. A new job opportunity offers a chance to escape this tenuous situation, however. If Jess can stick with it, avoiding a repeat of the vaguely hinted-at disaster that spoiled her previous posting, she could earn enough to move into a new house in the countryside, far from her ex-husband, where her daughter can play outside and get a fresh start at a new school.

Upon accepting the new job, however, the situation quickly goes from bad to worse. Her client, Flo Gardner, is in the late stages of dementia. She lives in Nerthus House, a once beautiful mansion that (mirroring its owner) has deteriorated over the decades, dimmed by unreplaced burnt-out light bulbs and crammed with a lifetime of clutter. Jess soon discovers that—during those fleeting moments when Flo isn’t completely catatonic—she’s verbally abusive without provocation and unpredictably violent. Flo also proves surprisingly mobile for a supposedly frail wheelchair user, appearing in unexpected places in the dead of night. Jess keeps discovering strange shrines in neglected corners of the house. Birds act strangely in the surrounding woods, and ominous shapes move in the overgrown garden at night. There is a sense that both Nerthus House and its resident are awaiting something. The eerie events Jess experiences escalate even further when, after her babysitting arrangements fall through, she finds herself with no choice but to bring her daughter into Nerthus House and into contact with Flo.

Much like Nevill’s The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive, The Vessel deals with an isolated protagonist trapped in a simultaneously miserable and threatening predicament. “Why don’t they just leave?” is a question that horror writers and filmmakers frequently have to grapple with, and Nevill always has a ready and convincing response. He combines empathetic character portrayals with a singularly claustrophobic atmosphere, effectively immersing the reader in his beleaguered protagonists’ shoes.

Apart from its sudden and intense finale, The Vessel is more about inevitability than surprises. Rather than blindside the reader with twists and unexpected reveals, the events of the story seem to follow an inexorable, perhaps even preordained sequence. The reader is kept one step ahead of Jess throughout the story, enhancing the feel of dread.

Only slightly longer than a novella, The Vessel is a short novel intended by the author to be read in one or two sittings. While I appreciated that it wasted no time getting to the exciting supernatural bits, it also felt like the novel would have been perhaps even more effective with some more meat on its bones, so to speak. In the book’s enlightening back matter, Nevill reveals that the narrative’s leanness and almost stage-like presentation were an intentional experiment on his part. Ultimately, whether that experiment was successful will depend on the perspective of each individual reader, and I will refrain from spoiling Nevill’s stated goal for the book.

The Vessel is a taut little exercise in folk horror. Reader’s familiar with Nevill’s other work will find his strengths on display, and newcomers with a taste for folk horror in the tradition of Arthur Machen (slyly referenced in Nevill’s heroine’s surname: McMachen) and The Wicker Man are sure to enjoy this tale. The old gods of Britain may have faded from sight, but that doesn’t mean they have disappeared.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on June 9, 2023.

Maeve Fly

By CJ Leede – Tor Nightfire – June 6, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

With Maeve Fly, debut novelist CJ Leede wants to introduce readers to a new breed of serial killer.

Maeve Fly, the eponymous protagonist (not to be confused with “heroine”), is living her best life. She resides rent-free in a palatial mansion owned by her grandmother Tallulah, a former actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood. She has a job that she loves, working as a costumed princess at the Happiest Place on Earth. She has a best friend, Kate, who is literally the Anna to her Elsa. She amuses herself watching VHS pornography and inciting online hate mobs. Oh, and she indulges in a little murder sometimes, as a treat.

But, as she is intensely aware, cracks are beginning to appear in Maeve’s cushy lifestyle. The grandmother that Maeve idolizes has been comatose for some time, and is receiving in-home hospice care. Her aspiring actress friend, Kate, is one successful audition away from stardom and an inevitable separation from Maeve. And despite their popularity with amusement park visitors, both Maeve and Kate are being subjected to increasing scrutiny by their employer. If all that weren’t enough, an unpredictable new element has arrived on the scene: Kate’s handsome and cocksure brother. A professional hockey player, Gideon both attracts and repels Maeve in equal measure. At any moment her house of cards could collapse, leaving Maeve rootless and adrift. And when Maeve Fly feels threatened, people die.

Written in the first person predatory perspective and peppered with pop culture references, American Psycho is the most obvious point of comparison for Maeve Fly, but there’s a fair amount tonally of Fight Club in here, too. Both Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk are directly referenced within the narrative, name-dropped alongside a number of outre authors, perhaps a self-aware bit of judo intended to disarm critics. Maeve herself has read the books her story is likely to be compared to, and she even glances at a copy of American Psycho before embarking on her final killing spree. But there’s more of interest to be found within this slick serial killer story than a simple gender swap. While habitual murderers are commonly portrayed as aloof, Maeve is anything but detached. She needs the grounding and stability that her grandmother and best friend provide. While she constantly strives to hide her murderous compulsion, at the same time she has a powerful desire to be understood and accepted. Ironically, to be seen. The way that ambivalence is handled is what distinguishes Maeve Fly from other serial killer stories.

With its uncompromising tone and unsettling main character, Maeve Fly is destined to be a divisive book. The violence is graphic, and Leede does not shy away from depictions of sexual assault or animal abuse. Maeve is a forceful and liberated woman, but she’s simultaneously a black hole of need and dependence. She’s a fascinating character, but also an unrepentant monster. There’s no inciting incident from her past that turned Maeve into a killer, she’s a monster with no origin story. The people she kills and mutilates generally aren’t deserving of their fates. They don’t “have it coming.” There’s some sparse and under-cooked commentary about misogyny and gendered violence, but it’s undermined by the fact that Maeve acts more savagely towards women than any of the male characters in the book, and her brutality has a relentlessly sexual component. Maeve is not the subversive feminist icon some prospective readers may be looking for.

Maeve Fly is a pitch black character study. Leede promises a monstrous woman and she delivers with gusto. While full-on splatterpunk horror fans might be let down (Maeve tends to describe in detail the torments she’s about to unleash on her victims, with the actual execution taking place between chapters), the level of gore still feels a few notches above the mainstream horror novel average. With its strong characterization and compelling exploration of dark themes, Maeve Fly is an uncommonly aggressive and confident debut novel, and CJ Leede is an author to watch.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on May 26, 2023.

Die By the Sword

Edited by D.M. Ritzlin – DMR Books – April 28, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

DMR Books has quickly established itself as one of the premiere sources for new and reprinted fiction written in the pulp sword & sorcery and science fantasy traditions. They’ve released a number of anthologies in recent years, including the Swords of Steel series of dark fantasy stories written by heavy metal musicians and the horror-themed Samhain Sorceries. Rather than reprints or specially solicited authors, Die By the Sword is intended to be the first in a series of anthologies featuring all-new sword & sorcery tales gathered via open calls for submissions. This initial volume includes eleven stories by both previous DMR contributors (Howie K. Bentley, Matthew Knight, etc.) and newcomers. The gorgeous cover artwork is provided by underground comix and paperback veteran John Pound, who may be most well known among readers of a certain age for his work on Topps’ Garbage Pail Kids line of trading cards. Alas, the cover is a reissue of a painting from 1980 and no lion-headed warriors appear in this book.

Die By the Sword starts off strong with “Ardax in Antillia” by Dariel R.A. Quiogue. Hailing from the Philippines, the prolific Quiogue has been popping up frequently in fantasy and adventure-fiction venues, including the first installment of Rakehell magazine and issue zero of New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine. As with those outings, Quiogue blends historically-inspired settings with swordplay and monsters, creating stories that bring to mind the classic Ray Harryhausen fantasy adventure movies. “Ardax in Antillia” involves a pair of gladiators who, after their escape from a Roman arena in Iberia, encounter a beautiful maiden condemned to be sacrificed to the cruel Atlantean gods. The fast-paced tale that follows is packed with visceral combat and fun aquatic monsters.

“Rites of the Black Goddess” by Paul D. Batteiger is another outstanding story. Fresh from the Crusades and Jerusalem, war-weary lord Morcar returns home to find his domain usurped by an arrogant Norman count. Through the aid of steel and decidedly unchristian magic, Morcar immediately sets about regaining his birthright. While most of the stories in Die By the Sword pair gritty combat with a dark outlook, this violent and moody piece is especially likely to appeal to grimdark fans.

Sharing a setting with the author’s 2022 novel Frolic on the Amaranthyn, Chase A. Folmar’s “The Sorcerer’s Scion” is another tale that emphasizes shadowy atmospherics. The bulk of this short chronicles the final hours of sell-sword Kulvrak—found killed under mysterious circumstances at the story’s outset—hired to rescue the daughter of a deranged herbalist from a nightmarish garden in squalid Old Iskalruun. Folmar cites classic Weird Tales scribe Clark Ashton Smith as an influence, and this story similarly delivers both lush prose and tense strangeness.

Inevitably with anthologies, some stories are less successful than others. Neither Howie K. Bentley’s “Secrets Only Dragons Know” nor “The Key to the Blood Pyramid” by Matthew Knight quite worked for me. The former involves Eldol, a warrior Briton who joins forces with a tribal witch in a quest for revenge against treacherous Saxons. The witch is demonstrated to have an agenda of her own, but muddy storytelling and an overly cryptic ending ensured that the titular dragons kept their secrets to themselves. “The Key to the Blood Pyramid” holds together better as a narrative, but the over-the-top vampyre-slaying magical armor-clad dimension-crossing protagonist (previously seen in 2019’s Karnov: Phantom-Clad Rider of the Cosmic Ice, by Knight, Bentley, and Byron A. Roberts) reminded this reviewer of a well-meaning but over-exuberant guy at a game store telling everyone within earshot all about his “cool” high-level Dungeons & Dragons character.

Among many strong stories, the highlight of Die By the Sword for me was Gregory D. Mele’s “The Heart of Vengeance.” Like Mele’s previous contributions to Tales From the Magician’s Skull No. 6 and Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery issue 5, “The Heart of Vengeance” takes place in the Aztec-inspired setting of Azatlan. After warrior lord Helomon Twelve-Vulture loses his kingdom to a treacherous cousin, he embarks on an epic quest of retribution. He gains the mystical assistance of the skull-faced priesthood of Xokolatl, Lord Death, but is left with a troubling prophecy: all other victories will be Helomon’s, but should he seek the life of his usurper cousin he will not live to see the completion of his revenge. This central tension—is revenge worth one’s own death?—plus the intriguing setting combine for a very compelling dark fantasy tale.

Also worthy of note is the final story in Die By the Sword, “The Sacrifice” by Elias Varsity. Deceived by an alluring woman of the night, arrogant Greek wanderer Cleofas finds himself pinioned by a marble statue in an isolated ruin. His arm trapped in an unyielding stone fist, the harsh Mediterranean sun threatens to drive him delirious before an ignominious death of thirst. His only possible salvation lies with a cloaked, misshapen lurker that speaks in riddles. The shrouded figure offers him escape, but at a terrible price. A nasty little grimdark fable that deals quite directly with hubris and the punishment thereof, “The Sacrifice” lingers in the brain.

Die By the Sword is a strong collection of stories from fascinating newer voices. While not every story hit the mark with me, it is important to emphasize that NONE of the stories in Die By the Sword are boring. Violent action and fast-paced storytelling are ubiquitous, there is a generous serving of horror, and the stories are peppered with crowd-pleasing operatic themes like self-destructive revenge, desperate rescue missions, and rulers in exile. In addition to its reprints, DMR Books has devoted a great deal of effort to showcasing newer pulp sword & sorcery and dark fantasy authors. It’s exciting to see DMR casting its net even wider with open calls for submissions, and it is this reviewer’s hope that the proposed series continues.

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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on May 13, 2023.

Killer

By Peter Tonkin – Valancourt Books – February 7, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

After Peter Benchley’s Jaws was published in 1974, its massive success and that of the 1975 film adaptation inspired a wave of authors and filmmakers hoping to hit the commercial jackpot with their own lurid tales of aquatic creatures terrorizing those poor fools who thought it was safe to go back into the water. Books and films about piranhas and giant octopi followed, and Guy N. Smith even memorably wrote a series of novels about killer crustaceans, beginning with Night of the Crabs in 1976. Larger and more intelligent than Jaws’ iconic great white shark, killer whales also enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starring Richard Harris and Charlotte Rampling, Orca: The Killer Whale was released to theaters in 1977, to poor reviews and middling box office results. Peter Tonkin’s 1979 novel Killer, however, fared much better. Lean and tightly plotted, Killer emphasized the orca’s formidable physicality and intelligence in prose in a way that Orca: The Killer Whale failed to accomplish on the silver screen. While successful in both the United Kingdom—the author’s home country—and in the United States, Tonkin struggled to produce subsequent novels. The aquatic horror boom faded with time, and Killer inevitably fell out of print.

Now, more than four decades since the book’s debut, Killer is back. It received glowing coverage in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (2017) retrospective, and now the novel itself is a part of Valancourt Books’ companion PAPERBACKS FROM HELL line of cult classic horror novels curated by Hendrix and Too Much Horror Fiction blogger Will Errickson. The Valancourt Books release is available in both digital and nostalgia-inspiring mass market paperback format, with Ken Barr’s vintage cover artwork and a new introduction by Hendrix.

The titular Killer is a massive orca raised in captivity as a part of a US Navy experiment. Trained dolphins were used during the Vietnam War to detect enemy divers attempting to sabotage moored ships, and the novel envisions an evolved version of the real-life Marine Mammal Program, one in which an orca—more powerful and more intelligent than a dolphin—is conditioned not just to find suspicious swimmers, but to terminate them as well. The killer whale takes to its training all too well and, inevitably for this type of horror story, a moment of human error leads to disaster. The orca kills one of its captors and escapes its enclosure, fleeing to the deep sea with a taste for human flesh.

Some time later, promising young scientist Kate Warren sets out for an Arctic research camp, hoping to form a closer relationship with her brilliant but (both physically and emotionally) distant marine botanist father. Their brief reunion is cruelly interrupted when their plane crashes en route to the research facility, leaving father and daughter trapped on an aimlessly drifting ice floe with four other survivors. Resources are meagre and tempers quickly grow strained, as the group of survivors includes both arrogant camp director Simon Quick and Colin Ross, the taciturn scarred man Simon holds responsible for the death of his loved ones after a disastrous Antarctic expedition. The situation deteriorates even further when the stranded party comes to the attention of the escaped killer whale, now dominating an entire pod of two dozen wild orcas. The killer’s training kicks in and he becomes fixated on the humans, intent on both devouring them and teaching the pleasures of human meat to his fellow cetaceans.

Killer is a taut story of survival. Where Benchley’s Jaws filled pages with meandering subplots involving the Mafia and Police Chief Brody’s wife’s infidelity (wisely excised from the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg), Tonkin wastes no time getting to the good stuff. The six stranded individuals are rarely given time to catch their breath, and neither is the reader. Killer is also clearly a horror novel, rather than a simple wilderness adventure. Whenever the killer whales fall upon their prey (be it human, whale, polar bear, or walrus), the violence is almost triumphantly graphic. Where the shark in Jaws is a solitary, almost machine-like predator, Tonkin uses the orcas’ pack tactics and malicious cunning to great effect. The survivors are always on the defensive, struggling to deal with the killer whales’ organized ambush attacks while supplies dwindle and their ice floe gradually, inexorably disintegrates around them.

While tension—punctuated with bursts of gory violence—dominates Killer, Tonkin also deftly captures the emotional dimension of the story. Even before the killer whales arrive on the scene, the gripping plane crash sequence effectively reveals each character’s inner world, sliding from perspective to perspective as each of them confronts their own mortality. Some react with grim resignation, others turn to religious faith (fascinating supporting character Job wavers between Methodist Christianity and the Arctic gods of his Inuit heritage), while others reveal cowardice and contempt for their fellow man. The tendencies and weaknesses displayed during the crash scene become more and more pronounced on the ice floe as the survivors’ situation grows more desperate.

Does Tonkin succeed in his original goal of outdoing Benchley’s Jaws? Killer perhaps holds together better as a novel; Jaws is a rare example of the movie adaptation being better than the original book. On the other hand, the orca’s superior size and intelligence aside, on a primal level there’s something deeply terrifying about great white sharks that orcas can’t quite match. Killer is an easy recommendation for enthusiasts of “animal attack” horror novels, but the vastly uneven odds and interpersonal conflict among the survivors is likely to appeal to fans of zombie novels as well. With Peter Tonkin’s Killer, the PAPERBACKS FROM HELL reprint line has resurfaced another winner.

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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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This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on April 17, 2023.

Wraithbound

By Tim Akers – Baen Books – April 4, 2023

Review by Robin Marx

Wraithbound presents a world that is literally coming apart at the seams. Reality-warping elemental Chaos is only barely restrained by monumental, magically-infused barricades. The fortunate and affluent live deep within the Ordered Lands, while those less privileged are relegated to the outer borders, suffering the corrosive influence of the roiling Chaos just outside the walls. As the creators and maintainers of the so-called “orderwalls,” the mages of the Iron College have become a prominent pillar of society. Known as spiritbinders, these mages interweave a portion of their souls with an elemental spirit, gaining power over that spirit’s domain. Each spiritbinder dedicates themselves to a single element. Air, water, fire, and stone are some common choices, while others form pacts with more abstract entities, such as manifestations of law or life. Rumors also exist of renegade spiritbinders who entangle themselves with darker entities, such as demons or the souls of the deceased. With the continued survival of civilization at stake, the Iron College has established the justicars, a ruthless security force tasked with both policing the ranks of the spiritbinders and also hunting down unsanctioned “feral” mages operating outside the strictures of the College.

Young Rae Kelthannis finds his comfortable lifestyle turned upside down when his father, a minor weather-controlling stormbinder in the employ of Baron Hadroy, becomes entangled in a justicar-led purge of heretical magic. The Kelthannis family flee to the edge of civilization, eking out a meager life in the shadow of an orderwall. Despite the risk of justicar scrutiny, after a miserable decade of self-exile Rae gives in to the temptation to follow in his father’s footsteps. He attempts a spiritbinding of his own, using his father’s fractured sword as a focus for the magic. Instead of joining with a minor air elemental as intended, he finds his spirit entwined with something much more treacherous: a wrathful soul from the realm of the dead. This disastrous summoning has lethal consequences for Rae’s loved ones, and he immediately finds himself pursued by both justicars and an even more implacable foe: a brutal mage encased in a mechanical suit. To survive, Rae will have to come to grips with both his father’s hidden past and his dangerous new spiritbound partner.

Wraithbound is an epic fantasy where magic takes center stage. The various types of spiritbinding and their myriad manifestations are examined in intriguing detail, providing fun daydream fodder to readers and making this book an easy recommendation to fans of Brandon Sanderson’s intricate magic systems. Command of elements like fire and water are common enough in fantasy stories, but Rae’s tumultuous alliance with the wraith is both fresh and compelling. Rae is reckless and untrained, while the wraith bristles at being compelled into servitude. With the wraith seeking ever more control over his earthly host’s body, the reader is given the sense that Rae has caught a tiger by the tail. He requires his deathly companion’s dark assistance if he is to live to see another day, but the wraith’s agenda and Rae’s own are often at odds.

Wraithbound is also rich with layered mystery. Although it’s given away in the title, Rae doesn’t discover the true nature of his bound spirit until the halfway point of the book. The actual identity of the wraith isn’t revealed until much later. The role of Rae’s father in the magical catastrophe that has come to be known as the Hadroy Heresy and the ultimate goal of Rae’s pursuers are also crucial parts of the puzzle he must solve. I felt clever whenever one of my suppositions turned out to be correct, and absorbed even further into the narrative with every unexpected twist. Akers keeps the reader guessing.

Promoted as the first book in The Spiritbinder Saga, Wraithbound concludes with some tantalizing hints about the future direction of the series. However, prospective readers can rest assured that Wraithbound provides a self-contained tale with a proper ending, rather than merely a fraction of the story with an arbitrary or abrupt conclusion.

Much like Rae himself, the reader is whisked from one danger to the next, with very few pauses to rest. Rae’s perilous journey takes him far beyond the Ordered Lands and into the Chaos-infested wilderness, the skies, and even the shadowy land of the dead. Fast-paced and packed with cinematic magical duels, Wraithbound is an exhilarating ride from start to finish.

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