This review originally appeared in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Issue #1, released on November 30, 2023.

Woman of the Woods

By Milton J. Davis – MVmedia, LLC – June 13, 2013

Review by Robin Marx

While Charles R. Saunders may have founded the “Sword and Soul” sub-genre of fantasy, Milton Davis has quickly become one of the field's most indefatigable contributors and promoters. Through his publishing house MVmedia and via collaborations with other creators (including Saunders himself, prior to his 2020 passing), Davis continuously works to create and lend a platform to African- and African diaspora-inspired fantasy and science fiction literature.

Set in the world of Uhuru, which previously appeared in Milton's Meji series, Woman of the Woods follows the adventures of Sadatina. Born to a member of the Shosa, an elite corp of spiritually-imbued fighting women who are forbidden from possessing families of their own, Sadatina is bequeathed to a warm but humble farming family. Even separated from her birth mother, Sadatina distinguishes herself from her adopted family with her superior athletic and hunting ability.

Tragedy strikes, however, when at the tender age of 13 she finds herself drawn into an inter-generational conflict between her people—the Adamu—and the Mosele. Driven from their lands by the encroachment of the Adamu, the Mosele have submitted to the dark god Karan. While the Mosele's counter-invasion was barely fended off long ago, ever since the Adamu have been plagued by sporadic attacks from Karan's servitors: demonic creatures called nyoka (“serpent” in Swahili). One such raid claims the lives of Sadatina's family. She vows revenge, making a home in the wilderness and hunting the nyoka with the assistance of her inborn martial ability and her loyal “sisters”: a pair of orphaned lionesses Sadatina has raised since they were cubs. Viewed with both awe and fear by the people of surrounding settlements, she becomes known as the “Woman of the Woods.”

Her solitary battle does not last long, however. Word of her nyoka-slaying prowess spreads as attacks intensify, and she is sought out by the Shosa as a potential recruit. Sadatina is suspicious of urban society and hierarchy, but the threat of Karan's nyoka grows by the day. Her own quest for vengeance and the needs of her people inevitably push her into assuming a central role in the conflict. Over time she gains new skills and weapons, but also heavy responsibilities and nagging doubts.

Gender is handled in a nuanced fashion in Woman of the Woods. The Shosa warrior women are an accepted and valued part of society, but they are also a breed apart. One must be chosen by the god Cha to join their ranks, and—while Sadatina is allowed an uncommon degree of autonomy—refusing to join is generally not an option for the average villager. They are the symbolic wives of the Adamu people's leader and, while celibacy is not required, bearing children is forbidden and harshly punished. Non-Shosa girls and women appear expected to adhere to traditional gender roles. As presented in Woman of the Woods, Uhuru is neither an egalitarian utopia nor a setting where only the heroine is allowed to occupy a place outside marriage and childbearing.

Religion also plays a central role in Woman of the Woods. The Adamu follow Cha, who is framed as a benevolent but demanding and occasionally distant god. The Mosele worship Karan, a malicious being of stone and magma. The Adamu deride Karan as a demon with delusions of grandeur, but where Cha is content to guide his people through ambiguous visions the divine aid Karan grants his supplicants is frighteningly concrete. His baboon-like ginanga nyoka act as terrifying shock troopers, while the cunning jackal-headed washaka strike under the cover of stealth. Karan’s most devoted human servants gradually gain physical aspects of their god, becoming the stone-skinned mjibwe.

While the story delivers exciting Sword and Soul combat in abundance, at times the war between the Adamu and Mosele is portrayed in an unusual light for such an action-oriented story. Milton makes it clear early in the book that the Mosele were already present in the river valley to which Cha is said to have led the Adamu. The two peoples coexisted for a time, until friction developed between the agrarian Adamu and the cattle-herding Mosele, as burgeoning farms absorbed grazing lands formerly used by the Mosele. While it is left unclear who sparked the original conflict, the Adamu certainly finished it, driving the Mosele out of their ancestral home and across a parched desert and into the mountains, ironically pushing them into the arms of the dark god Karan. As the Mosele return to the Adamu-occupied valley, bringing nyoka with them, the Shosa remain vigilant for Karan’s corruption.

The uneasy moral ambiguity at the heart of the conflict is highlighted by a point in the book where Sadatina herself leads a war band to an Adamu settlement showing signs of Mosele influence. She says “You will kill anyone or anything that approaches you. This is not a rescue. This is a cleansing.” This chilling passage and the massacre that follows seem to make the subtext text: this war is ethnic cleansing and the “heroes” are enthusiastic participants. While it appeared Davis was about to boldly grapple with ethnic cleansing in an Africa-inspired setting, this daring element of the plot is quickly and frustratingly dropped and the story returns to the fantasy genre’s more conventional human versus supernatural struggle.

While the story is exciting and the cover artwork by Chase Conley (director and storyboard artist at Marvel Studios) stunning, the book itself could have used some tighter editing. Words are occasionally omitted, and the early chapters of the Kindle edition include footnotes that appear to be editorial comments addressed to the author.

Editing issues and Davis’ apparent change of heart regarding the ethnic cleansing theme aside, Woman of the Woods is a worthy contribution to the Sword and Soul movement. I also appreciated his dedication to Saunders (“Dossouye has a sister now”), an acknowledgment of his mentor’s own groundbreaking woman warrior. Strong Black women remain a lamentable rarity in Sword & Sorcery fiction decades after Dossouye’s 1979 arrival, but Sadatina makes for a compelling African-inspired warrior, boasting courage, faith, and an indomitable spirit.

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on December 29, 2020.

Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology

Edited by Milton J. Davis & Charles R. Saunders – Mvmedia, LLC – August 7, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

Griots is an anthology of African-inspired sword & sorcery, or “Sword & Soul” as dubbed by the sub-genre’s first proponent, Charles Saunders. The anthology sets out to provide fantasy stories in a neglected milieu (nearly all the stories take place in Africa or an Africa-like fantasy setting), with Black heroes and heroines in a genre that has long had a tendency to put dark-skinned characters in the roles of supporting characters or antagonists.

The anthology gets off to a strong start with “Mrembo Aliyenaswa,” an adventure by active sword & soul promoter Milton Davis. Much like many Robert E. Howard stories, it’s set in a historical African setting with a light touch of magic. I’d never read any of Davis’ other stories featuring his hero Changa, but this story encourages me to check them out.

“Awakening” by Valjeanne Jeffers is less testosterone-drenched than the bulk of the stories in this anthology, but it serves up an interesting blend of action and mythology.

“The Demon in the Wall” is a fun adventure involving a young warrior and his spry, alluring grandmother(!) fending off a supernatural invasion. The characters in this story are particularly fun, including one antagonist who isn’t fully committed to evil.

Other standout stories included “The General’s Daughter” (by Anthony Nana Kwamu), “The Queen, the Demon, and the Mercenary” (by Ronald T. Jones), and “Icewitch” (by Rebecca McFarland Kyle). The latter is notable for being the only story NOT taking place in an African setting, involving a Black character among a tribe of white people in the frozen north.

The best story by far is “The Three-Faced One,” an Imaro tale by Charles Saunders. I imagine it must have been intimidating for the newer writers appearing in the same anthology as the genre’s founder, and Saunders really delivers. Imaro remains an appealing hero, and the supernatural threat he faces is an intriguing one.

While it’s nice that this anthology collects and spotlights African fantasy and Black heroes, nearly any of these stories would just as easily be at home in any sword & sorcery anthology. So if you enjoy sword & sorcery but aren’t familiar with sword & soul, give it a try!

★★★★☆

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My first published book review, this originally appeared in New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Issue #0, released on October 1, 2022. The digital edition of the complete issue is a free download.

The Obanaax: And Other Tales of Heroes and Horrors

By Kirk A. Johnson – Far Afield Press LLC – April 28, 2022

Review by Robin Marx

When Kirk A. Johnson encountered fantasy, it was love at first sight. The introduction to The Obanaax: And Other Tales of Heroes and Horrors, Johnson’s self-published debut collection, describes how as a child he was instantly transfixed by the Rankin/Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit. Subsequent exposure to the 1950s Hercules movies and the stop-motion classics by Ray Harryhausen deepened his enthusiasm for the genre. He devoured comics like Conan the Barbarian and Warlord before moving on to more foundational works of fantasy, such as those by Robert E. Howard and the Dreamlands tales of H. P. Lovecraft.

The love affair soured as Johnson matured, however. The author reveals how, during his university years, he became increasingly disenchanted with fantasy and a great deal of entertainment media in general. Black characters tended to be stereotypical and treated unfairly if they were included at all. “The Vale of the Lost Women” (a notorious Conan story that remained unpublished during Howard’s lifetime) and the African adventures of Solomon Kane are cited as being particularly troubling.

Despite a sense of exclusion from fantasy, his interest lingered. Casual online research into Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser eventually led him to discover the late Charles R. Saunders’ groundbreaking Maasai-themed hero Imaro, marketed as a “Black Tarzan.”

This introduction to the sub-genre Saunders labeled Sword & Soul enthralled Johnson, inspiring him to create his own characters and world informed by the Africa of yore. Interactions with other active Sword & Soul creators like Milton Davis and P. Djeli Clark further challenged Johnson and influenced his work. His first published short story, “In the Wake of Mist,” appeared in 2011’s Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, edited by Davis. Published by Johnson’s own freshly-established Far Afield Press in April of 2022, The Obanaax collects four further energetic Sword & Soul adventures.

While the protagonists differ for each story, the tales all share a common setting: the continents of Mbor and Gaabar, in the remains of the fallen island empire of Xanjarnou. Given the coastal focus of the included map and the author’s own Trinidadian heritage, one might expect the stories to draw upon the culture of the Black diaspora in the Caribbean. Instead, Johnson sticks with a West African-inspired milieu. Whereas Johnson’s contemporary Davis adopts a mythologized version of Earth for his Changa tales, Johnson’s is a secondary world in which two moons rule the night sky and the spirits of the ancestral dead remain close to their descendants.

While the tribes of the savannahs are derided as unsophisticated yokels by pampered cityfolk, it is these so-called barbarians and similarly rugged mercenaries who act as the prime movers in the stories collected here.

The novella-length title story “The Obanaax” has as its heroine Wurri, a hardened nomad of the Asuah. She deals with treacherous grave robbers, a cursed bond-slave, and otherworldly threats in her quest to reclaim her people’s sacred artifact.

“The Oculus of Kii” focuses on barbarian warrior Sangara (who interestingly shares a name with the protagonist of “In the Wake of Mist,” from Griots). When a wrestling bout gone awry leaves him deeply indebted to his master, he’s dispatched on a deadly treasure hunt. Sangara is forced to contend with the spirits of the dead, masked cultists trespassing on their burial grounds, and the cult’s unholy patron.

“Cock and Bull,” the pinnacle of the book for this reviewer, features tribesman N’Gara, nicknamed “Clean” for his good looks. New to city life, N’Gara finds work as an enforcer for an avaricious merchant. He soon discovers that allegiances can be fluid in the “civilized” world. N’Gara is less of a bumpkin than he appears, however, and possesses an agenda of his own.

The book concludes with “For Wine and Roast,” a rousing tale of disparate mercenaries tasked with retrieving their merchant employer’s stolen pendant, a trinket of considerable magical might.

The evocative presentation of the setting was the highlight of this book. Johnson conjures a world in which nguimb-clad sell-swords rub shoulders with rich merchants in silken mbubb gowns, drinking sorghum beer from calabash bowls in daakaa drinking houses lit by gourd lanterns. Like Michael Moorcock, Johnson is able to give the reader just enough scaffolding to set a scene without overburdening them with excess exposition. The text is also generously spiced with terms from a variety of West African languages like Wolof, Malinke, and Songhay. A glossary is tucked away in the back matter, but usually context clues make the non-English terms’ meanings obvious.

The author also excels when his heroes are thrown into armed conflict, particularly with supernatural opponents. The action scenes are frenetic and viscerally described, and Johnson’s monsters run the gamut from oozing, tentacled horrors to all-too-solid masses of bulging muscle.

In the introduction Johnson acknowledges that he is still polishing his craft, and he runs into trouble when his plots become less straightforward. Some of the stories introduce twists late in the game; a seemingly implacable enemy may have a change of heart, or an ally might prove less steadfast than originally thought. At times these sudden developments are not as handled as elegantly as they could have been, and some additional foreshadowing or telegraphing could have helped these moments land with more dramatic impact.

For a self-published volume, the prose is largely typo-free, but it would have benefited from another editing pass. Commas occasionally appear in mystifying locations, or are conspicuous by their absence.

While this book is a promising debut, one gets the sense that Johnson’s best tales lie ahead, as his raw talent is honed by experience. That being said, Sword & Sorcery fans are fortunate that representation in the form of Saunders’ Imaro managed to coax this fresh talent back into the fantasy fold. Johnson is an author to watch.

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