REVIEW SUMMARY: A second Sword and Sorcery from Howard Andrew Jones that improves and deepens his characters and world.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Dabir and Asim return, and face an ancient sorcery that threatens to unleash a new Ice Age upon the world.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Strong characters, excellent sword and sorcery action. Always entertaining. Characters grow and develop.
CONS A couple of sequences are a bit unclear.
BOTTOM LINE: A marriage of strong characters and stronger action and adventure that rarely flags or goes below 50 miles per hour.

In The Desert of Souls, Howard Andrew Jones introduced us to an 8th Century Baghdad of Arabian Days and Nights. In the personages of Dabir, a scholar not unfamiliar with a blade, and Asim, a guard captain who is much more than muscle, we were given a glimpse into a mostly historical Middle East. Mostly, if you don’t count animated monkeys, dark sorcerers and strange magical cities in an alternate world desert realm. The successful defeat of the forces of evil left Dabir and Asim high in the esteem of the Caliph, with the blessing to go on to the scholarly city of Mosul in the north.

Read the rest of this entry

[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

This week, in time for the change of season, we asked about Winter:

The first novel that leaps to mind is Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness. It’s a wonderfully bizarre tour de force about a girl, Sym, who is obsessed with all things Antarctic, including her imaginary boyfriend, the deceased Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates. Her mad “uncle” takes her on a once in a lifetime trip there, which turns out to be a nightmare. He believes in the hollow Earth theory and that they will prove it’s true. Along the way, McCaughrean masterfully reveals more and more about Sym’s own past and her phony uncle. Sym’s voice is arresting despite how very in her own head she is—and it’s perhaps because of how that works with a backdrop that is spectacularly isolated and physically challenging. Some people may argue this isn’t a true fantasy, but I would debate them (citing spoilers), and regardless of which of us won I maintain it’d still be of interest to many genre readers because of the hollow Earth fringe science driving the plot.

Read the rest of this entry

REVIEW SUMMARY: The Bones of the Old Ones is a damn good tale that not only pays homage to the masters, but sets its own print on the genre.

MY RATING: 

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Dabir and Asim find themselves battling dark sorcery again, but this time, the stakes are much bigger than one city.

MY REVIEW
PROS: A fast-paced, intriguing tale with engaging characters.
CONS: While it is a stand-alone novel, it is much more enjoyable if the first has been read.
BOTTOM LINE: I only hope we’ll see many more like this, and that Sword and Sorcery’s new face is here to stay.
Read the rest of this entry

In episode 152 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester gathers authors James Enge and Howard Andrew Jones along with Blackgate Magazine’s Publisher and Editor John O’Neill for a very special Live Panel at WorldCon / Chicon 7. Together, we discuss: Middle Eastern culture and fantasy, Tolkien, European-centric fantasy, Sinbad, Disney movies (specifically, Jafar), the history of Black Gate Magazine, sword and sorcery, being a short story editor, critiquing, Worldcon and much, much more.

Read the rest of this entry

[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

Every reader holds out for a hero, but be it movies or novels, its the antagonists, the villains, that often bring the heat, spice and power to a piece of work and make it sing.

So we asked this week’s panelists…

Here’s what they said…

.I’ve always had a great admiration for the Lady, from Glen Cook’s Black Company series, with an honorable mention for all of the Ten Who Were Taken that serve her. She’s ruthless but multifaceted, a romantic and tragic figure as well as a provisioner of all the dark arts and fell deeds a reader could desire. As for the Ten, they’re just so fun and iconic, sort of more extroverted Nazgul.

If you’ll allow historical fiction as a cousin to fantasy, I’d also vote for Livia, from Robert Graves’ I, Claudius. Subtle, pitiless, and patient, the deadliest woman (hell, the deadliest person) in a deadly milieu.

Last but not least I’d bring up O’Brien, from George Orwell’s 1984, the chillingly contented ordinary man who patiently explains to Winston what it’s all about… that all the chanting and ideology is a fog, that the politics of Oceania are meaningless, the nature of its wars completely unimportant. The whole point of the crushing pyramid of human misery is to keep a tiny elite with their boots on the throats of the rest of humanity, forever and ever, amen. To conceive that sort of thing, to accept it, to rise and sleep as a happy part of such a brutal mechanism… now that’s villainy.

Read the rest of this entry

SYNOPSIS: Arabian days and Arabian nights in 8th Century Baghdad, as the duo of a guard captain and scholar, servants of the Caliph of Baghdad, struggle against dark doings and darker magic.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS: Great dynamic between the two main characters; strong evocation of time, place, style and mood.
CONS: A somewhat muddled ending; some problems with plotting with respect to the female lead.
VERDICT: Page-turning Sword & Sorcery adventure in the 8th Century Middle East.

Imagine 8th Century Baghdad. Feel the winds blowing into the market, the souk. Storytellers plying their wares. Merchants selling fruits from near and far. Desert stars at night twinkling above. Sword, sorcery action and adventure not only around every corner, but beyond, to the south, where the two rivers meet the Persian Gulf, and beyond, to the desert where a lost city waits buried.

Welcome to The Desert of Souls…

Read the rest of this entry