Cover Art by Todd Lockwood
When Elizabeth Moon’s Sheepfarmer’s Daughter hit bookshelves in 1988, it boldly announced the arrival of a new voice in the genre. At the time, much of fantasy on the shelves, and specifically military fantasy, was written by men. What Moon brought to her tale was a deep and authentic military experience; she served in the Marines. The title alone could be seen as a play on expectations as many fantasies which leaned toward the Epic variety published in the 1980s involved farmboys and prophecies. This is definitely not the case with this trilogy. The Deed of Paksenarrion was written as one story over three novels, and many people (myself included) have encountered this series through the big blue omnibus Baen published in 1992.
Elizabeth Moon introduces readers to Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir, Paks for short; a young girl who wants nothing to do with the arranged marriage into which her father is forcing her. Despite her father having procured a dowry for her, Paks runs off to join a mercenary group. Much of the novel relays her experience becoming indoctrinated as a soldier through a measured, and very plausible build. While Paks seems to be all-too-perfect and dutiful, she does go through hardships this is the of three acts of the full story. An effective aspect of the narrative was how Moon glossed over months/weeks at a time then focused on the more important scenes, although there seemed to be a lot marching happening. The way in which Paks’s superiors seem more than aware of her growing importance and connection to Gird (a heroic savior from the past) came across quite well.
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Strange landscapes, thinking about and manipulating the world in inventive ways, creatures not of this world … these are just some elements which can be hallmarks of the fantasy genre. Jeffrey Ford has built a reputation on imagining stories on the border of reality and fantasy, real and surreal. One of my favorite trilogies published in the past fifteen years is his Well Built City trilogy, consisting of The Physiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond, which has the gravitas of fable and hints of parable and surface which covers a world of deep imagination. The series was initially published by Harper Collins’s then SF imprint, EOS books every two years, 1997, 1999, and 2001.
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Much of fantasy, especially Epic Fantasy, has some basis or inspiration in real world events and history. In Greg Keyes’s Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, he uses the lost colony of Roanoke as the launch point for this four book series. This isn’t Keyes’s first foray into the genre, but it is perhaps his most ambitions. Under the name J. Gregory Keyes, he published the two-book Chosen of the Changeling saga and the alternate history/fantasy quartet The Age of Unreason.
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The third installment of The Completist looks at a military fantasy trilogy a little over a decade after the saga’s completion. The year was 1999, a new Century was on the horizon. In the Science Fiction and Fantasy publishing world, there were some very interesting books being written/published and read. We were in the middle of the Harry Potter saga, George R.R. Martin wasn’t yet the Epic Fantasy giant in the he is now, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time was still in what many consider its prime, Tad Williams took a break from Epic Fantasy with his massive Otherland SF saga, and Terry Brooks would soon return to his popular Shannara saga. Into this state of affairs enter John Marco with The Jackal of Nar, which launched both his writing career and his Tyrants and Kings trilogy. I immediately took to the series and was very pleased that a colleague where I worked at the time had also read and enjoyed The Jackal of Nar.
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Time for the second installment of The Completist, wherein I take a look at those SFF series which have concluded publication. In this installment, I take a look at a series which is over twenty years old and has remained in print an on the shelves since. Let’s have a look at C.S. Friedman’s dark fantastic saga, The Coldfire Trilogy.
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SFF readers can be cautious when it comes to reading series novels. While a fair amount of us like to read the series books as they publish, a corresponding percentage of readers wish to wait until a series is published in full before diving head into what they hope to be an immersive experience. That and the wait between volumes can lead to reader frustration and/or forgetting some of the events of the previous novel.
I’ve read a lot of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror over the years and my aim with this feature is to examine those SFFH series which have concluded. In short, all books of the series are available to be read in some format, electronic or print, but ideally both.
In 2005, Prometheus launched Pyr, their imprint dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy. Editorial Director Lou Anders brought genre savvy, industry experience and passion to the imprint. The imprint was built through a combination of fresh original voices and import titles – titles initially published overseas from the US and making their first US appearance with the Pyr fiery label on the spine. One of the early new voices Lou Anders published was David Louis Edelman, a computer programmer and marketing guy who worked for several dot-coms with a great passion for the genre. In 2006, Infoquake, the first volume of The Jump 225 Trilogy published. In it, Edelman spins technology advancement through the lens of a marketing executive, providing a new and fresh view on a SF-nal element familiar to many – virtual reality and cybernetic enhancements. In Edelman’s realistic and plausible future, this technology goes by the name of bio/logics. According to one of the many appendices in the book, bio/logics is “The science of using programming code to extend the capabilities of the human body and mind.”
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