Tag: fantasy

Dark Angel: The Ascent

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★★½
“The devil in the details.”

darkangelThis is actually a really interesting idea. We generally think of devils as “bad” – but what if they don’t see themselves the same way, and feel they are doing an important part of the Lord’s work, by punishing sinners? That’s the concept here, which sees the demonic Veronica (Featherstone) clamber out of hell through a conveniently unguarded exit, to see what the world above is like – let’s face it, since all she gets are the wrongdoers sent to damnation, her opinion is a little skewed. Apparently unaware of such everyday issues as traffic (and likely more importantly for most male viewers, clothes), she rapidly gets nailed by a truck. In hospital, she is treated by Dr. Max Barris (Markel), who is perplexed by the odd behaviour of his new patient, but she pulls a Satanic version of the Jedi mind trick, and convinces him that she should move into his apartment. There, she watches television, discovers that there are plenty of perfectly-good wrongdoers here on Earth who need to be punished, and begins a vigilante campaign to take them out. This draws the attention of both the local cops investigating the trail of corpses, and corrupt local official, Mayor Wharton (James), who becomes Veronica’s #1 target.

I love films with a different take on the traditional heaven/hell division – Don’t Tempt Me is a personal fave – and this movie also raises some interesting questions, about whether it’s acceptable to do bad things for good reason. An example: generally, ripping someone’s spine out of there back is frowned up in most cultures. But what if they have been caught in the act of trying to rape a young woman? Where is your morality now? This isn’t pulled out thin air, and is actually what happens here; Veronica appears faintly perplexed that the victim doesn’t want the dripping spine as a souvenir of the incident. Of course, her ability to do that Jedi thing certainly makes life easier, even when her actions draw increasing attention – “covering her tracks” should be added to her long list: “Things of which I’m entirely oblivious.” It’s a shame that there isn’t more investigation into the spiritual aspects, like the scene where she meets a pair of nuns, and gets down on her knees for them. The poor sisters are even more confused when the cross they give Veronica  bursts into flames…

Instead, the film limps off into something that’s partly a love-story, and partly Veronica stalking the Mayor, neither of which are anywhere near as interesting. It feels as if they came up with the brilliant idea, started filming a movie based on the concept… and only then figured out they didn’t know what to do with it. Things peter out in a disappointing matter, and I suspect the makers (it’s a Charles Band production) were looking to start another of their franchises, alongside Trancers, Demonic Toys, etc. Perhaps future installments could have done a better job of exploring the potential in a universe, which is only hinted at here.

Dir: Linda Hassani
Star: Angela Featherstone, Daniel Markel, Milton James, Michael C. Mahon

The Angry River

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★★½
“A bridge too far.”

angry riverNot just Angela Mao’s feature debut, it was also the first film produced by then-fledgling studio Golden Harvest, who would go on to become arguably the premier name in Hong Kong Film production, up until the colony’s handover back to China in 1999. Even discounting their work with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Tsui Hark, Stephen Chow, Donnie Yen, etc. and sticking purely to the action heroine field, Golden Harvest were the company behind She Shoots Straight, the Inspector Wears Skirts series and Naked Killer. Their commitment to our field is apparent right from this inaugural movie, where Mao plays dutiful daughter Lan Feng, whose father becomes one of the victims of ‘Poison Dart’, whose name pretty much explains what he does. Cursed to a long lingering death, the only cure is a rare herb.

Lan sets off to find it, crossing the fiery Angry River, going through the Merciless Pass, and encountering another couple of dangers without names, but we might as well call them the Cave of Really Bad Optical Effects, and the Giant Gecko That Knows Kung-Fu. The latter actually defeats our heroine (though she does save 15% on her car insurance), but impressed by her filial piety, she is given the herb, albeit at the cost of losing her kung-fu skills. She then has to make her way back home, which is even more perilous now she can’t fight, and has to rely on the kindness of strangers to protect her, because there are a lot of other people who are also very keen to get their hands on the mystical plant, whose powers extend beyond being merely an antidote to poison. And when she finally returns to her home, a nastier shock awaits.

Maybe it is just me: I kept being reminded of Homer’s Odyssey, with Mao playing the hero, whose objective, simply to get back home is endlessly diverted and derailed by external forces. I suspect any such similarity is, as they say, purely coincidental, and they just share the same basic plot of the hero’s journey, as introduced by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. But there are elements where you can tell it was a debut film, such as the rubber-suited lizard which, it’s charitable to say, presumably worked better on the page than the screen. It’s also a mis-step to rob the heroine of her powers for almost the entire second-half, leaving her a spectator to her own story – even Odysseus only spent a bit of time tied to the mast. Particularly early on, Mao’s fights feel stilted – punch-pause-block-pause-kick – though there actually is a storyline reason for why she has to be reined in to start with, in order that Mao can go full-throttle at the end [like I said, the herb has other uses…] You can see where they were aiming – slightly to the side of the then-dominant Shaw Brothers studio – yet overall, there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement here. As a first effort, I guess it’s okay.

Dir: Feng Huang
Star: Angela Mao, Kao Yuan, Pai Ying, Han Ying Chieh

Magic Bites, by Ilona Andrews

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

magicbites“Ilona Andrews” is the pen name of a husband-and-wife author team; her first name really is Ilona. (There’s some confusion about his; “About the Authors” in the edition I read gives it as Andrew, but a comment in the extra material uses Gordon, as does the author page on Goodreads. Possibly Andrew Gordon?) They’ve attained considerable success with their urban fantasy Kate Daniels series. Since I’m a fan of both supernatural fiction and strong, kick-butt heroines, it isn’t surprising that the series had been on my radar for a long time before I read this opening volume, as a buddy read with a friend. It didn’t disappoint!

Our female co-author here is Russian-born, a fact reflected in our fictional heroine’s upbringing. An orphan, Kate was raised by a now-deceased Russian foster father, who named her (Kate is short for Ekaterina, and he made up “Daniels”). Ilona probably provides the authorial pair’s knowledge of Russian folklore, which figures prominently in both this novel and the bonus story. (That’s a plus for me, as it’s an area of folklore I know little about, and enjoy learning more; the authors also draw on a wide range of mythologies in developing the series.) Our setting here is Atlanta, and though the writers currently live in Austin, TX, their handling of Atlanta geography seems assured enough to suggest first-hand knowledge or very good research. (Though I might be easy to fool on that score, since I’ve never been to Atlanta myself!)

To be sure, this isn’t the early 21st-century Atlanta we know. The 24-year-old Kate lives in the mid-21st-century, and grew up in a world that for decades has been transformed by a phenomenon called the Shift. Unpredictable, periodic surges of magic flare through the world, temporarily knocking high technology out of service and bringing to life spells, wards, ley lines, and other assorted magical phenomena. A weakness of this book is that it doesn’t do much to explore the obvious intellectual, social and cultural changes this upheaval would have caused; they’re only hinted at. Another weakness is that the premise itself, although it’s certainly one of the most original in literature, isn’t entirely convincing (Kate’s suggested explanation isn’t plausible, IMO, but she only says it’s the prevailing theory, not that it’s a fact). But neither of these areas are central to the authors’ purpose. They simply want to set up a highly novel, ultra-dangerous and somewhat Balkanized world in which there’s plenty of scope for adventure for a mercenary like Kate. In that respect, they succeed admirably.

Kate’s something of a mystery woman; she’s close-mouthed about her heritage, but it includes some significant inborn magical ability. It’s not, however, anything that gives her invincible superhuman powers; she’s mortal, hurts and bleeds, and has to rely on her wits and physical conditioning in a fight, the same as any other human would. (She also has a magic sword, Slayer; but while it will do more damage to magic-imbued flesh than an ordinary sword would, it doesn’t wield itself –her actual sword skills are her own.) In a series, the key ingredient is a character(s) the reader likes enough to want to spend continuing time with. For me, Kate fits that bill. To be sure, she’s a rough-edged woman, something of a loner with authority issues and a tendency to be smart-mouthed; and while she’s not coarse, her vocabulary includes some pretty bad language at times. But for all that, she’s an intensely ethical person with a rock solid code of honor; if she needed to lay down her life to save a friend, or innocent people she doesn’t even know, she’d do it in a heartbeat, without whining or batting an eye (and she demonstrates that willingness here more than once). Though she doesn’t wear it on her sleeve, she also has a very real spirituality that might surprise some readers, and she’s not into casual sex. Like all of us, she’s a work under construction (and she grows some here).

Kate’s not the only well-drawn character here; the supporting cast, including a radically evil villain, are also vividly realized, with both virtues and foibles. (Were-lion Curran, Atlanta’s Beast Lord of the shapeshifters, for instance, is unquestionably a brave man and one with a deep sense of duty and responsibility to his Pack –but he’s also arrogant, and misguidedly convinced that he’s Nature’s gift to women.) The authors’ originality doesn’t end with the Shift; the factional landscape of their richly-drawn world includes a number of unique and intriguing features, like an unusual take on vampires –here, they’re mindless automatons, mentally dominated by a faction of mysterious and sinister necromancers.

In some ways, the plot is reminiscent of the old pulp noir detective novels, with magic instead of tommy guns and supernatural creatures instead of rival Mafia mobs, and a protagonist who could give Sam Spade as good as she got in wisecracks (but who’s got better morals and a kinder heart than he did) and has about the same philosophy of investigation: “Annoy the people involved until the guilty party tries to make you go away.” But it’s an exciting plot, with developments I genuinely didn’t expect. (One or two points don’t stand examination in hindsight very well, but the narrative flow is strong enough to mask that.) There’s also a very strong, well-done conflict of good vs. evil theme here.

In places, this book can have a deeply dark tone, in that no punches are pulled in describing the horrible cruelty that evil minds can inflict on their fellow beings; some of this can be graphic. It’s also a very violent tale, and some of the violence can be gory (one character, for instance, dies with her torso split open and her heart crushed in her opponent’s fist) but it’s not gratuitous and the authors don’t wallow in it. In its darker elements, the novel reflects the real world. But it also takes seriously the light that really exists in the darkness.

More than one male character is sexually interested in Kate; and precisely because she’s not free with her favors, those who see their masculinity as depending on sexual conquests clearly view her as a challenge in that area. But that’s just a realistically-depicted aspect of gender relations in a toxic culture; there isn’t any development of a relationship here (let alone a focus on it) that would put this tale in the area of ” paranormal romance.” (Though I understand that in the later books, Kate will find a love interest.) Readers should be aware that there’s a significant amount of bad language in the book, including a number of uses of the f-word. But although there are some occasional off-color wisecracks, there’s no sex here.

Finally, the edition I read has some special added features: FAQs, character profiles of Kate and a few others, and a description of the various “factions” in her Atlanta, all of which I read; a couple of scenes written from Curran’s viewpoint, which I skimmed, and which would be of most interest to die-hard series junkies; a “Factions Quiz” that I skipped, and an excellent prequel story, “A Questionable Client.” (One of the more unique characters in the novel is Saiman, and we’re told that Kate met him some time before when she took a gig as his bodyguard, and saved him from a murder attempt; here, we get to experience that particular episode.)

Author: Ilona Andrews
Publisher: Penguin Group, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Sword and Sorceress XIX, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: Variable

swordandsorceress19Although the late Bradley (d. 1999) is credited as “editor” of this volume of the series, it’s really the second of three that were made from the pile of manuscripts submitted before her death, and actually edited by her sister-in-law, Elisabeth Waters. It continues a trend I noticed in Sword and Sorceress XVII,: much more emphasis on the sorcery half of the sword-and-sorcery equation. Out of 25 tales here, 20 have heroines who are magic users; only six feature swordswomen (one protagonist is both), and two of the latter don’t do any actual fighting in their stories. (Of course, magic-wielding heroines may be fighters too, in their own way!) Other trends that I noticed here were a number of stories treating real-world or imagined pagan pantheons as real, frequent use of various historic world cultures (ancient Egypt, the Hellenistic world, 10th-century Britain, etc.) as settings or models for invented settings, and several coming-of-age stories. While I enjoyed the vast majority of the selections here, I felt that this volume didn’t have as high a number of really outstanding stories as previous series volumes that I’ve read, so it’s the first of the latter not to get five stars from me. (But four is still a high rating!) Five of the writers represented are males, about the average proportion for this series.

Bradley had instituted a by-invitation-only policy for submissions before she died, but had invited everyone who’d previously contributed to the series. So all of the contributors here have been represented in previous volumes, though some are new to me (I haven’t read all of the previous numbers) and some who aren’t are writers whose names I’ve forgotten. Those whose work I’ve definitely read before include Diana Paxson, Esther Friesner, Bunnie Bessel, and Dorothy Heydt (whose daughter also has a story here).

When I encountered Heydt’s ancient Greek sorceress, Cynthia, in Sword and Sorceress XVII, I made the comment in my review that she might be a series character. That’s confirmed here in “Lord of the Earth;” but that story has so much allusion to back-story that it loses a lot for readers who haven’t followed the character through the whole story cycle. Paxson’s “The Sign of the Boar” is a sequel to “Lady of Flame” from the same earlier volume; but here, her considerable talent is disappointingly wasted on a story mainly intended to disparage Christians. “A Simple Spell” by Marilyn A. Racette is a very slight story, which (at least for this reader) failed to make much impression. In her brief intro to A. Hall’s “Sylvia,” Waters notes that she wanted to close the volume with something “short and funny.” It’s quite short, and has a mordant black humor in its conclusion; but it’s really more tragic than funny if you think about it (and definitely makes the point that, when you try to gain your ends by sneaky and manipulative means instead of honesty, the results may not be what you bargained for).

Those are the weaker stories, but I’d rate all of the rest with at least three stars, and often more. Set in a land ruled by queens chosen by a magic-endued sword, Bessel’s “Sword of Queens” is the one five-star work here; it has the emotional and psychological complexity and power of the series’ best tales. Laura J. Underwood’s Scottish-flavored “The Curse of Ardal Glen” is a standout among the serious stories, and Aimee Kratts “One in Ten Thousand” has both an unusual setting (ancient Egypt) and a very original magic system.

Humorous fantasy is represented here fairly often. “Pride, Prejudice and Paranoia’ by Michael Spence is perhaps the best of these; it’s a sequel to “Salt and Sorcery,” which he co-wrote with Waters for an earlier volume, and is set in a magic school (despite the title, it’s set in the present, not Regency England). It would be most appreciated by those who’ve read the first story (which I haven’t, but want to!), but can delight even those that haven’t. The evocation of a graduate school environment is spot-on (Spence was a seminary student when he wrote it), the family dynamics are precious, and there’s a good, subtle message. “A Little Magic” by P. E. (Patricia Elizabeth) Cunningham and “Eloma’s Second Career” by Lorie Calkins are also fine examples of fantasy in a humorous vein; the latter will be especially appealing to ladies of a certain age whose family is raised and who are ready to take on new challenges instead of sitting around and vegetating. (Though their new challenges probably won’t include training to be a sorceress.)

Not a humorous tale, Deborah Burros dark “Artistic License” also deserves mention; it’s a tale of murder and deadly sorcery (but not all murders evoke quite the same moral indignation). This doesn’t mention all of the stories, but at least it should provide prospective readers with something of the flavor of the collection!

Editors: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Elisabeth Waters
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

RWBY

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rwby★★★★
“Harriet Potter and the F-sized Weapon”

There are occasionally times where our book reviewer Werner’s “split scale” of grades for both artistic merit and action, would come in handy. This is one of those times. For the action scenes here are as glorious as you would expect from the man behind Dead Fantasy, virtuoso symphonies of exquisite hyper-violence, meted out and absorbed by characters and monsters without fear or bias, in ways limited only – and not very much, at that – by the creator’s imagination. Probably inevitably, this overshadows a fairly perfunctory plot, and characters whose characterization is largely defined by the shade they wear. On a split scale, this would merit five stars for both the quantity and quality of action, but likely three or three and a half for artistic merit.

It takes place in the world of Remnant, in a three-cornered struggle between humanity, the monstrous Creatures of Grimm, and the Faunus, who are part-animal, part-human, and largely perceived as second-class citizens, despite their own talents. There’s a substance called “Dust” which has magical powers, and an academy where young men and women train as Hunters and Huntresses, to do battle with the Grimm. The focus is on four teenage girls who are part of this year’s new intake, and who end up forming team RWBY [pronounced “Ruby”]: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long: the last is yellow-themed, you should be able to figure out the others. The main nemesis is Roman Torchwick, a terrorist who is working with a group fighting for Faunus’ rights, yet who had entirely his own agenda – as well as some high-powered minions and skills of his own.

Originally a web series, the first and second seasons have now been collected into feature-length collections, and while their episodic nature is occasionally apparent, they probably work better that way. The opening takes a little while to hit its stride, as it has to create the world, introduce the characters and establish the situations. The animation style takes some getting used to: it’s done in CGI, but trying to look like traditional cel animation; some of the resulting movement is almost too smooth, and I find the lack of noses on some of the characters, a bit unsettling. However, the script is well-written, sometimes sharp and witty, occupying a good place between self-awareness and parody. Even the characters that are largely superfluous – and some of the hunters in training could be so described – are less irritating than they might be.

It is, however, all about the action, and it’s clear that all of the other aspects – the plot, the participants and the world they inhabit – exist merely to facilitate the fight scenes, which is where all the work, imagination and energy become truly apparent.  The highlight, for me, in volume one, was a battle at a temple against a series of Grimm, while the second part climaxes with a running fight in, on and around, a train as it hurtles toward the capital city. You forget they are animated, while simultaneously wishing someone would throw $200 million at the studio behind it, Rooster Teeth, and let them make a live-action version. Sadly, creator Oum died of a severe allergic reaction in February this year, although it has been announced that Volume Three of the series will continue. Hopefully, the quality will not suffer, and will be a fitting monument to Oum’s sadly-missed talents.

Dir: Monty Oum
Star (voice): Lindsay Jones, Kara Eberle, Arryn Zech, Barbara Dunkelman

Sword and Sorceress XVII, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: Variable

sword17This is another volume of editor Bradley’s long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Published in 2000, it collects 21 tales by, as usual, a mix of both newcomers to the series and veteran contributors. I’ve encountered stories by at least four of the writers here –Vera Nazarian, Deborah Wheeler, Diana L. Paxson, and Patricia Duffy Novak- in earlier volumes.

Of the stories here, Nazarian’s “Caelqua’s Spring” was far and away the weakest. It has some beautiful passages, but ultimately the world-building is lacking, I couldn’t relate to the main characters, and the plot never gelled enough for me to be able to really have a handle on the premise. The whole thing struck me as very much an exercise in vaguely New Age-style mysticism, without a lot of content. (This author’s “The Stone Face, the Giant, and the Paradox” also exhibited tendencies that way in some passages; but there, the story was well-told enough to compensate for this. That’s not the case here, IMO. All in all, it’s a very inferior work to her earlier “Beauty and His Beast.”)

To various degrees, though, I liked all of the other stories. Jenn Reese’s “Valkyrie” draws nicely on Scandinavian mythology (which I can appreciate, being of Viking stock myself) in a story that assumes that the myths are real. Novak’s “Luz” and Cynthia Ward’s poignant “The Tears of the Moon” are set in fantasy worlds where pagan goddesses really exist; the former is a particularly thought-provoking tale. “Free Passage” by Mary Catelli features Amazons (but not all Amazons are nice or honest people!) and an herbalist’s quest for an herb that will save her people. We have a coming-of-age story of sorts, with a sorceress’ apprentice as protagonist, in ElizaBeth (no, that’s not a typo!) Gilligan’s “Demon Calling.” In “Hell Hath No Fury….” Lee Martindale suggests that even demons are entitled to be treated fairly and honestly. (This is one of the few stories in the series with a humorous tone.) Dave Coleman-Reese (Jenn Reese’s husband, and one of three male writers represented in this volume) contributes perhaps the deepest story in this book, the outstanding “Memories of the Sea.”

Another favorite was “My Sister’s Song” by T. Borregaard, a graduate student in archaeology whose writing is flavored by that interest. This is one story that actually has no magical or fantasy element at all, though the setting is exotic, the narrator’s cultural environment unfamiliar to most readers, and the denouement really unique and unusual; it’s straight historical fiction, a fictionalized re-telling (with invented characters –though there really were warrior women among tribes like the Heptakometes) of a real incident in the resistance of the indigenous tribes around the Black Sea to Rome’s attempt to conquer them.

Charles Laing’s “Weapons at War” is short and light, a humorous gag involving sentient weapons bickering with each other; but it’s meant to be short and light, and that’s fine. And Carrie Vaughn’s “The Haunting of Princess Elizabeth” is neither fantasy (it’s set in Tudor England) nor endowed with a heroine who’s either warrior or sorceress, although she’s certainly a strong-willed, tough-minded young woman; but it’s a good story, probably best calculated to appeal to British history buffs. To be sure, history doesn’t record that the ghost of her mother Anne Boleyn (later joined by the shade of Katherine Howard, and eventually of Jane Grey) watched over and counseled the young Elizabeth until her accession to the throne –but the Elizabeth depicted here didn’t tell anybody, and nobody but she could see them.

Some of the other ten stories, from the amount of back-story or the complexity of the world-building, read like they could be parts of a story cycle. For instance, sorceress Cynthia in Dorothy J. Heydt’s “An Exchange of Favors” (set in an ancient Greek milieu where the Olympian deities are real, and intervene in mortal affairs as selfishly and capriciously as in the legends) could easily be, and maybe is, a series character. A number of these ten are emotionally complex, powerful and evocative stories, on a par with the gems in the previous anthologies I’ve read in the series; the prevalence of that caliber of story in these volumes is a tribute to Bradley’s skill as an editor. Often it’s difficult to make comments on these without spoilers. But I can say that after you read Cynthia McQuillen’s “Deep as Rivers,” you won’t view trolls with the race prejudice you did before.

Diana L. Paxson characteristically sets her “Lady of Flame” in Dark Ages Scandinavia (where the demi-deities of mythology are real) and uses her knowledge of actual early northern European cultures to create a rich cross-cultural narrative. Almost all our protagonists in these selections are magically gifted –healers, conjurors, scholars, etc.– but Blaze in Bunnie Bessell’s “The Summons” is a fighter, called upon to make a significant moral choice in the deepest tradition of serious fiction. Probably the most poignant story here is “The Price of the Sword” by Kim Fryer –which, in our world of post-traumatic stress disorder and addictive violence, speaks to us symbolically of the psychic costs of warfare, even if it’s waged with guns and bombs instead of swords. Lisa Silverthorn’s “Soul Dance” also deserves mention here as another standout and favorite. But all of them are good, and none deserve to be slighted, though considerations of space and time force me to.

If you’re a fan of swords and sorcery, strong heroines, fantasy in general, or just well-written traditional short fiction with a plot, you won’t go wrong with this series, IMO!

Editor: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Legend of the Red Reaper

  By

★★
“Putting the ‘myth’ in myth-takes.”

E9_DB9_A2_F463_F4_E83974065_EB26_B06842This received a certain level of notoriety before even being made, after Legendary Pictures rejected the script, citing a whole raft of (entirely legitimate) reasons, yet also saying, “While I am personally drawn to the presence of a female action hero, it is currently a tough sell with the less than stellar way Sucker Punch was received.” Creator Cardinal went public with the rejection email’s content: seems like a good way to ensure no-one will work with you in Hollywood again, but that’s her decision. However, the film did eventually get made, albeit (or so the story goes) only after a production company embezzled 40% of the money, she worked as a pro wrestler to raise funds, a post-production company lost her footage, and Uwe Boll bailed her out. You can only admire her dogged determination to complete the project she wrote, produced, directed, starred in and edited. Unfortunately, when I say “you can only admire”, the emphasis is on “only”, because the end result isn’t very good.

Interesting Boll became involved, since there’s more than a hint of Bloodrayne, another film series of his. Except, rather than an immortal half-vampire redhead heroine, hacking and slashing those who created her, this is about an immortal half-demon redhead heroine, hacking and slashing those who created her. In this case, it’s Aella (Cardinal), the offspring of a human mother (Swenson) and the demon Ganesh (Eddy), who was sold as a slave to the latter by Mom, only to escape later and become a Reaper, part of a clan who protect humanity from these demons. She has fallen in love with a human prince, Eris (Mackey), who is betrothed to another, and also has to handle getting porcupined with arrows by hunters who want her blood, which has magical properties. Though not nearly as magical as Ganesh’s, and it turns out it’s the only thing keeping her mother alive. She’s running out fast, especially after donating some of her precious stockpile to Aella – albeit with some nasty side-effects, triggering an internal struggle between the two halves of her ancestry. Still, the solution is pretty simple: head for the best source of the blood. That would be Ganesh himself.

It’s all over complex, not very interesting, and plagued by just about every faux pas you have ever seen in low-budget cinema. Excessive voice-over? Check. Gratuitous use of slo-mo and strobe effects? Double check. Thoroughly unconvincing day-for-night photography? In copious quantities. I suspect Cardinal’s “Jill of all trades” approach worked against the film: when you’re wearing all the hats, who’s left to take a step back and apply a coolly critical eye to proceedings? That’s really what the film needed, and at 101 minutes, trimming would have helped as well. It strikes me that, if you combined the production values of this and the action choreography from Warrioress, you’d have a good crack at something impressive. Although both demonstrate that passion isn’t enough by itself, Warrioress was at least outstanding in the combat department. Here, there’s much banging of swords together, and little else, leaving the end result all but forgettable.

Dir: Tara Cardinal
Star: Tara Cardinal, Ray Eddy, David Mackey, Eliza Swenson

Sword and Sorceress XII, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: Variable

sword12Another reliable winner from Bradley’s long-running anthology series, with a good mix of genre stalwarts and talented newcomers. For once, I read this volume without interspersing it between other books, and read the stories almost entirely in order. In this case, the really outstanding stories tend to be clustered closer to the back; but most of the earlier ones are also solid, competently-told tales of their type.

The one worthless clunker in the collection, IMO, is Carolyn J. Bahr’s “Does the Shoe Fit You Now?” a cynical and predictable re-imagining of the supposed situation some time after the part of the story of Cinderella that we know, from an anti-male, anti-marriage standpoint. It preaches to the choir of women who’ve married self-centered drunks and given up on the male gender as a result; but like most tracts in the form of “fiction,” it doesn’t succeed well as either, unless the aim was solely to resonate with that audience. (And news flash: physical work is going to a part of ANY lifestyle, married or single, that involves earning one’s keep and contributing to the world.) Nor does it really fit the collection theme: it has no fantasy element apart from the nominal “fairy-tale” connection, Cinderella is neither warrior woman nor sorceress, and stealthily running away from a bad situation without trying to change it (especially when that involves reneging on a commitment) is not a strong or “empowering” action.

However, the other selections more than make up for that one. 17-year-old (at the time this was published, in 1995) Karen Luk and L. S. Silverthorne contribute good exercises in humorous fantasy with “A Lynx and a Bastard” and “Dragonskin Boots,” respectively. Luk’s title characters would make series protagonists that I’d enjoy seeing more of. (I can say the same thing for Kaitlyn and Alvyn in Patricia Duffy Novak’s “The Lost Path” –and Novak was, at publication time, working on a novel featuring them!) “Though the World Is Darkness” by Lisa Deason pits her protagonist against a challenge more intimidating than fire-breathing dragons or pillaging hordes, and one far more obviously relevant to the real world –loss of eyesight. Heather Rose Jones’ “Skins” is a new twist on the shape-shifter theme, and very well done. One of two male authors represented here, John P. Buentello, makes use of the craft of glassblowing in “Demon in Glass” to tell a satisfying tale, though exactly how the magic system works there was a bit murky to me. Mercedes Lackey collaborates with Elisabeth Waters here to produce, in “Dragon in Distress,” another well-crafted yarn featuring Tarma and Kethry, whom I first encountered in an earlier volume of this series. (That’s also a story with a humorous touch.)

As usual in these volumes, a number of the stories struck me as truly outstanding, with a seriousness of tone and an evocative power that went straight to my heart. Several of these were by other veteran writers whose work I’ve also enjoyed in one or both of the earlier volumes in this series that I’ve read: Diana Paxson, Jennifer Roberson, Deborah Wheeler, Vera Nazarian. Like her earlier “Beauty and His Beast,” Nazarian’s “The Stone Face, the Giant, and the Paradox” explores the difference between physical appearance and moral worth. (The story here also pushes the limits of language to try to convey mystical experience that doesn’t translate well to language, but manages to do it without alienating the reader.) Paxon sets her “Stone Spirit” in a still-pagan Dark Ages Norway, where things like trolls and draugs are real, and people think their lives are ruled by Wyrd (Fate); being of Scandinavian descent myself, that background strikes a chord with me. (Patricia Sayre McCoy, on the other hand, draws as successfully on ancient Chinese culture to create the world of her “Winter Roses.”)

Wheeler’s “Silverblade,” besides being a gripping story on its face, makes particularly striking use of symbol and metaphor to say things about challenges, obsessions, and parent-child relationships. One of my favorite stories here, “Garden of Glories” by Roberson, has very little fantasy element at all. The cultural-historical background is one we can’t identify in the real world, and one of the two sisters depicted here has a talent for mending things that’s more than figuratively magical, as one minor incident shows; but basically this is “just” a story about human relationships (sisterly, filial, romantic, marital), about choices, about being true to our nature, about growing and changing; above all, about caring and love. It could easily have been written as descriptive fiction –very, very good descriptive fiction!

Two of our protagonists here (the title characters of “Chance” and “Amber”, by Tom Gallier and Syne Mitchell, respectively), are assassins by trade, trained to be good at a morally dark and lethal profession, and whose lives haven’t offered them much in the way of other options; but that doesn’t mean that either of them are sadistic, nor lacking in a sense of honor or capacity for love. Chance in particular is one lady you won’t soon forget, and her story is another of my very favorite ones here –but be warned, it’s not a sweet and warm-fuzzy tale, and her path in life isn’t an easy one.

My comments haven’t touched on all the 22 stories, but hopefully I’ve touched on enough to convey the flavor of the collection. In many of these selections, the quality of the world-building and character development cries out for expansion into a novel or story cycle. If swords-and-sorcery, or just good storytelling in the short format, is to your taste, then this is a collection well worth your time!

Editor: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Publisher: DAW, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Lost Continent, by Percival Constantine

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

lostcontinentBeing a little-known author myself, I have a lively appreciation of how difficult it is to get one’s work noticed in a glutted book market without a major advertising budget; and I have a soft spot for New Pulp. So, when I stumbled on Percival Constantine’s free e-book versions of the first novels of his two action-adventure series, I thought there was a good enough chance I’d like them to risk investing a bit of time, and hopefully be able to give him a good review. His other series opener, Love and Bullets, proved to be disappointing, and I didn’t finish it. But while this novel is nowhere near four or five star territory, it kept my interest and earned its three.

Our protagonist here is a female archaeologist. Constantine’s idea of archaeology, though, is definitely of the Indiana Jones variety, and Elisa Hill proved to be an action heroine type, very much a literary equivalent of Lady Lara Croft or TV’s Sydney Fox in that respect. (Given that I own both Tomb Raider movies on VHS and never missed an episode of Relic Hunter if I could help it, it’s not hard to guess that I found her an appealing character type!) This is the series opener for the author’s Myth Hunter series, the titular hunters being involved in tracking down both archaeological and supernatural mysteries. (While I didn’t classify this as supernatural fiction, it does have a significant supernatural element, in the person of one character.)

In this particular book, though, what’s being investigated isn’t really ancient myth, but 19th and early 20th-century occultist myth: the idea of an ancient continent (known as Lemuria, or Mu) in the area of what is now the Pacific Ocean. In particular, it draws on the claims of Col. James Churchward (1851-1936), who asserted that as a British officer in India, he was shown secret tablets in an (unidentified) temple, written in the “Naga-Mayan” language –which, as far as philologists know, doesn’t actually exist; he claimed that only three people in India could read it, but one of them taught him. These, he claimed, showed that 50,000 years ago, Mu had a civilization more highly advanced than that of his own day, and that all the world’s later civilizations developed from their scattered colonies after the motherland continent sank beneath the Pacific in a great cataclysm. (As a kid, I read some of Churchward’s books; even then, I could tell that they were off the wall, but reading this book brought back memories.)

Constantine takes off on this premise to build his plot here. Since the whole Mu-Lemuria theory is pretty well discredited by both geology and serious archaeology, philology, etc,, this requires some suspension of disbelief. But if you can muster this, Constantine has done his homework in the Churchward canon, and also brings in another real-world tie-in, Japan’s “Yonaguni Monument,” massive offshore stone formations under the Pacific which some maintain are man-made (though that isn’t clearly evident nor widely accepted by archaeologists). A resident of Japan, he’s also has done some research into the Japanese folklore of the kitsune, Japanese for fox. Older foxes were believed to have power to take human form, and were messengers for the spirit world. (Constantine has reinterpreted this mythos somewhat, but his treatment is clearly based on it.)

This is not a deep or highly textured read; it’s straight pulp action-adventure, with a simple, direct prose style and a full-throttle narrative drive that makes for a quick read. None of the characters are very deeply developed, including Elisa, and while the author takes us to some exotic locales, he doesn’t really evoke much sense of place in any of them. (We also aren’t even given any clue where “Burroughs University,” where Elisa teaches, is located, except that it’s in the U.S.) Archaeological finds here tend to be too easy for believability; no physical digging or excavation nor much textual or other research to identify sites is required. Where action scenes are concerned, Elisa’s no slouch in the kick-butt department; she’s an ethically sensitive person who doesn’t fight unless she’s attacked, but if she is, she fights to kill without batting an eye.

However, her aversion to guns and preference for edged weapons, in a modern-day context, isn’t explained credibly enough to seem realistic. We can say the same for the tendency, on the part of the minions of the “Order” (think, the Illuminati on steroids), which will probably be the series’ staple evil entity, to use swords rather than guns. Also, some of the jumps characters make in the action scenes, with no running start, are implausible, as is the idea that a character could stop a bullet by slicing it with a sword. And I’m not sure a fox could inflict all the physical mayhem Asami does here (granted, we’re told she’s a very large fox, but how large isn’t specified). It’s also clear that Constantine doesn’t know much about how academic sabbaticals are scheduled.

For all that, this is a page-turner with “brain-candy” appeal, and the good characters are engaging. I was hooked enough to read it all the way through just to see how it would turn out; and while it’s more plot-driven than character-driven, Elisa’s relationship to Lucas, and to Asami, have enough complexity and ambiguity to be interesting. There’s no sex here; there’s some bad and coarse language, including f-words, but it’s not pervasive and mostly comes from characters you’d fairly expect to be potty-mouthed. The violent episodes can be lethal and gory, but they’re over quickly and not dwelt on. Bottom line: this won’t be epochal and groundbreaking even in the world of pulp adventure fiction; but it’s workmanlike entertainment (and pretty well proof-read, too, despite one mangled sentence that slipped through). I’d be up for reading the sequel sometime.

Author: Percival Constantine
Publisher: Createspace, available through Amazon, both for Kindle (for free) and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Gooodreads.

Sword and Sorceress VIII, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: Variable

swordandsorceress8This anthology of 22 original stories is one installment of editor Bradley’s long-running series of Sword and Sorceress collections, the first of which appeared in 1984. This was the second book of the series that I read (they stand alone, and can be enjoyed in any order). Virtually all of the general comments in my review of the first book apply here as well, and two of the contributors to that volume, Diana L. Paxson and Jennifer Roberson, are also represented here. Like John W. Campbell in the heyday of Astounding Stories, the late Bradley had her “stable” of writers who contributed frequently to her Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and to this and other long-running and one-time anthologies she edited, and whose careers she in many cases launched; several of them authored stories for this book. There’s a good mix here of established writers like Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman (and some who would go on –this was published in 1991– to be much bigger names, such as Laurell K. Hamilton), and less known writers, some like Margaret Howes making their first sale of a story here. Three of the contributors are males.

Besides the fact that they’re all swords-and-sorcery tales with female protagonists (warriors, sorceresses, a thief, etc.), the other common denominator of the collection is quality. Most of the stories are serious, often evoking very strong and complex emotional reactions and making you think; a few are rife with situational humor. But there isn’t a one of them that’s weak or poorly written; the craftsmanship here is uniformly high, though some selections are more substantial than others. All the stories have the trappings of fantasy; magic works in their worlds, for instance, and dragons may be included in the fauna. Edged weapon action, and/or lethal magical duels, may be a key part of the plot. But at bottom, most of these stories are really about people, and human concerns that are the same in any world: good and evil, right and wrong, personal growth and identity, coming of age, family and marital love, growing older, questions of what really matters in life. Several of the heroines could be called rough-edged; you might not approve of everything they do, or have done, and you aren’t necessarily expected to. But none of them are bad human beings; they’re all women I could understand and respect, and whose choices and safety I came to care about. (As in life, not all of these tales have unambiguously happy endings.)

A few of the protagonists are series characters, like Lackey’s Kethry and Tarma from her Valdemar series, or Paxson’s lesbian warrior-woman Shanna. Their stories here have a basic level of completeness in themselves; but you’d probably appreciate “Wings of Fire” better if (unlike me) you’ve read previously in the Valdemar books to have more understanding of the world and the magic system, and “Ytarra’s Mirror” definitely feels like a bead on the necklace of Shanna’s story arc. I’d also say that Paula Helm Murray’s “Kayli Kidnapped” has enough complex back story, and leaves enough unresolved issues, that it could work very well as a chapter in a novel. (But I still liked all of these!) Some of the most wrenchingly evocative stories here include Rima Saret’s “Marayd’s Escape,” Cynthia Ward’s “The Opal Skull,” Jere Dunham’s “East of the Dawn,” and Sherman’s “The Price of the Wind.” Hamilton’s “Geese” is a fine story that doesn’t descend into the porn that the author later became known for (it has some sensuality, but not in a bad way.) Picking favorites here is really hard to do, but (besides any already mentioned) some I could designate as such are Roberson’s “Fair Play,” Howes’ “Retirement Plan,” Dave Smed’s “Trading Swords,” Vera Nazarian’s “Beauty and His Beast,” and Linda Gordon’s “Stained Glass.”

Editor: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Publisher: DAW books, available through Amazon, currently only as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.