Review: The Daughter of Genghis Khan - John York Cabot (David Wright O'Brien)

The narrator/protagonist of David Wright O’Brien’s novella “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is Dr. Cliff Saunders, an American physician who is part of a humanitarian mission aiding the Nationalist Chinese during their war against the Japanese. Since the January 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, the pulp in which this yarn originally appeared as the subject of H.W. MacCauley's dramatic cover, was actually on the newsstands during December 1941, that means the story was written well before the attack on Pearl Harbor during the period in which the United States was technically a neutral nation.

But neutrality doesn’t mean much during the chaos of war, so when Japanese forces overrun the field hospital in which Saunders and beautiful redheaded nurse Linda Barret are working, they’re both taken prisoner. At least they’re not executed outright. In fact, the Japanese officer in charges wants to deliver them to a neutral area where they’ll be safe. However, before that can happen, a group of Mongol bandits counterattack, and Saunders and Linda find themselves taken to an isolated village in the mountains that’s ruled by a beautiful young woman who claims to be the daughter of Genghis Khan. Not a descendant, mind you, but the actual daughter of the great Mongol conqueror.

That claim is part of the slight fantasy element in this story. It had to have some sort of off-trail bent to the plot, since this was FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, after all, but for the most part, “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is a pretty straightforward World War II yarn, as Saunders and Linda are forced to choose a side in the bloody conflict between the Japanese and the Mongol bandits. It’s pretty easy to figure out which side they’ll wind up on, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the breakneck action and the colorful characters and setting. This story reminded me a little of Milton Caniff’s immortal TERRY AND THE PIRATES comic strip, and that’s a good thing.

David Wright O’Brien’s writing career was a short one. His first story was published early in 1940, and he was killed while serving in the Army Air Force in 1944 when the bomber he was in was shot down over Berlin. But he published dozens of stories during that handful of years, most of them in the Ziff-Davis pulps AMAZING STORIES and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. I think it’s safe to say he was a rising star in the science fiction and fantasy fields. “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” was published under his pseudonym John York Cabot because there were two more stories by him in that issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, one under his real name and one under his other pseudonym Duncan Farnsworth. (O’Brien was the nephew of Farnsworth Wright, the legendary editor of WEIRD TALES.) I’ve read several of his stories and really enjoyed all of them so far. His prose is clean and fast-moving with a very nice touch for action.

You can find the issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES containing this story here, and it’s available in other places on the Internet, as well. I need to read more by O’Brien, and I hope I manage to do so soon.

Review: Goddess of the Fifth Plane - William P. McGivern

I really enjoyed that William P. McGivern science fiction novella I read a while back, so I tried another novella of his from the pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. This one falls more into the fantasy category, or at least science-fantasy, since it does have a sort of science fictional element to it.

“Goddess of the Fifth Plane” appeared in the September 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES and earned the cover painting by Harold W. Macauley. It’s a good cover, too. Not exactly how I pictured the title character but relatively close. And Macauley did a great job on her sidekick.

The protagonist of this yarn is Vance Cameron, a wealthy American explorer and adventurer who is in London as the story opens because he’s volunteered to use his aviator skills as a fighter pilot for the R.A.F. He doesn’t stay in London long, though, because a mysterious painting shows up in his flat, depicting a beautiful young woman and a fierce creature resembling a horned lion. Wouldn’t you know it? The painting is actually an interdimensional gateway, and Vance finds himself in another realm, up to his neck in a civil war between a deposed queen and the bad guy who has seized his throne. There’s a little political intrigue, but mostly two-fisted, swashbuckling adventure ensues as Vance fights to help the beautiful queen reclaim her kingdom. He finds a novel but very effective way to do it, too, as the plot takes a twist or two that are at least slightly surprising.

I really enjoyed this colorful, well-written yarn. It reminded me of some of the science-fantasy stories by Henry Kuttner that I’ve read. The action barrels along in a very pleasing fashion that would have had me enthralled if I’d read it when I was a kid sitting on my parents’ front porch. Reading it now as an old geezer, I was still very much entertained. If there’s still a ten-or-twelve-year-old in you who loves this stuff as much as I do, I highly recommend “Goddess of the Fifth Plane”. It’s been reprinted in the e-book THE WILLIAM P. McGIVERN FANTASY MEGAPACK. I plan to delve into that collection again soon.

Review: The Hanuvar Chronicles, Book 2: The City of Marble and Blood - Howard Andrew Jones

Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. A while back, I read Howard Andrew Jones’ novel LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND, the first book in his Hanuvar Chronicles, and thought it was one of the best novels I’d read in years. I bought the sequel, THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD, as soon as it came out. And there it sat, unread, for some reason that I can’t fathom.

But no longer. I’ve read it now, and there’s no second-book-in-a-series slump in this one. Not hardly. THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD is absolutely fantastic.

For those of you unfamiliar with Hanuvar, he’s the former military commander of the nation of Volanus, which has fought a series of disastrous wars against the Dervan Empire. This conflict finally ends with the destruction of Volanus and the dispersion of the surviving Volani, most of them as slaves, across the empire. Hanuvar is thought to be dead—but he’s not. He’s still alive, and he has a plan. He’s going to find all of his countrymen who still live, free them one way or another, and take them to the colony he’s established called New Volanus. This campaign of freedom, waged mostly by stealth and subterfuge, gets underway in LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND and continues in THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD.

That name refers to Derva itself, the center of the empire, and Hanuvar will be in more danger there than ever as he tries to carry out his epic plan.

As you may have figured out, this is all based very loosely on the wars between Rome and Carthage, and Hanuvar is inspired by (you can’t even say based on because they’re too different) Hannibal. And the scope of the story Jones is telling is so vast that he employs a brilliant strategy: each “chapter” in these books is actually a novella, telling a separate story with a beginning, middle, and end, but they all fit together to form a continuing narrative that builds momentum as it goes along. This also allows Jones to tell different kinds of stories as the overall tale progresses. One of the chapters in the first book, for example, was a pure heist story—Donald E. Westlake or Lionel White in a sword-and-sorcery milieu—and in one point in THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD, Hanuvar is called upon to function as a detective and solve a murder. In another chapter, Hanuvar and some of his friends and allies pull a very neat con job. Jones doesn’t neglect the sorcery, though, as there are plenty of ghosts and demons and zombies and assorted otherworldly threats for Hanuvar to deal with.

All this is told in clean, compelling, fast-moving prose. Hanuvar is a great character, as is his part-time sidekick, a young actor and writer named Antires. The world-building of this alternate Mediterranean world is extensive but handled so skillfully that the storytelling never gets bogged down in it.

If you’re a fan of sword and sorcery, alternate history, epic fantasy, or anything like that, you just can’t do any better than this series by Howard Andrew Jones. This one is available on Amazon in e-book, hardcover, paperback, and audio editions. I've already bought the third book, SHADOW OF THE SMOKING MOUNTAIN, and I promise it won’t take me as long to get around to reading it.

Now, on a personal note, most if not all of you know that Howard Andrew Jones passed away earlier this year, another one taken much too young by cancer. Howard and I weren’t close and never met in person, but I considered us friends. We interacted on Facebook and traded occasional emails, brought together by our shared fondness for Ki-Gor pulp novels and John Benteen Westerns. I can only echo what everyone else who knew him has said: he was a great guy. It’s selfish of me, but I’m glad I have quite a few of his books left to read, including the third Hanuvar novel. I only wish there were going to be a lot more.

Review: The Bride of Osiris - Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline didn’t always look to Edgar Rice Burroughs for his inspiration, although his short novel THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS (serialized in the August, September, and October 1927 issues of WEIRD TALES) does have a subterranean civilization in it. SPOILERS AHEAD. That civilization, modeled after ancient Egypt, is located under Chicago, as young man-about-town Alan Buell discovers when his beautiful fiancée Doris Lee is kidnapped from a nightclub by some shady characters. The local head of detectives in the police department appoints Buell as a special agent and partners him with another detective, two-fisted Dan Rafferty. Buell and Rafferty track the kidnappers but wind up captured themselves and taken underground, where they encounter the usual evil high priests, sacrificial rites, and daring rescues, escapes, and recaptures. Once again, Kline mixes some A. Merritt with his Burroughs and throws in a little Sax Rohmer as well.

If you can buy the premise—and it’s a real stretch—this is a mildly entertaining yarn. There’s nothing you haven’t read before, but there’s plenty of action, a colorful setting, and some despicable villains. However, I was never able to work up a lot of enthusiasm about it. For one thing, Dan Rafferty’s grotesque Irish brogue is so thick and overdone that he’s really annoying, even though he does some admirable things and seems to be a good guy. For another, the plot seems to be building up to a climax that it never delivers. I know, you’re supposed to review the book as it is, not the way you wish it was, but I really felt like we were going to have a squad of hardboiled Chicago cops with tommy guns bust in at the end to do epic battle with a horde of crazed Egyptian cultists. Instead, although there’s some action at the end and the prospect of apocalypse, the story sort of just peters out.

There was a chapbook reprint of THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS published in the Seventies by Robert Weinberg, with a cover by Frank Hamilton, and there are e-book and trade paperback editions available on Amazon now, but it never received any sort of mass market reprint. The length probably had something to do with that, but the fact that it’s just not very good probably did, too. There are some nice scenes and concepts in THE BRIDE OF OSIRIS, but to me, overall, it’s a misfire.

Review: Tam, Son of the Tiger - Otis Adelbert Kline

Many, many years ago I read one or two novels by Otis Adelbert Kline and remember enjoying them, but I couldn’t tell you exactly which books I read. I do know, however, that TAM, SON OF THE TIGER wasn’t one of them, because I just read it and I'm certain I’d never read it before.

This adventure yarn was serialized in the June/July through December 1931 issues of WEIRD TALES, all with covers by C.C. Senf, by the way. It was reprinted in hardback by Avalon Books in 1962, probably in an abridged edition because most of Avalon’s editions were abridged. The pulp version was reprinted in 2010 by Pulpville Press in trade paperback and hardcover editions that are still available from the publisher. The pulp version can also be found on-line.

Kline is remembered primarily as a literary agent for some of the best-known authors of science fiction and fantasy from the pulp era, but he wrote several novels himself. They were heavily influenced by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely shows that ERB influence as Tam Evans, the two-year-old son of an American soldier and adventurer in Burma, is carried off by a rare white tigress. She raises Tam to be a tiger (just like the apes raised Tarzan to be an ape), but eventually he meets an aged lama who befriended the tigress many years earlier, and this man educates Tam and teaches him how to use various weapons. Combined with his own strength and agility, these attributes make 20-year-old Tam a deadly and intelligent fighting man. So naturally, he soon runs into a beautiful princess wearing golden armor who is fighting some four-armed warriors. All of them come from a vast underground world populated by various races that gave rise to the legends of the Hindu gods, and when Tam ventures into this subterranean world to help the princess, he’s drawn into a war between those semi-deities just as you’d expect. Oh, and his father, who is still an adventurer and has believed for many years that Tam is dead, shows up, too, along with a scientist friend of his.

As you can tell from that description, TAM, SON OF THE TIGER is a real kitchen sink book. Kline keeps throwing in complication after complication, peril after peril, and in true Burroughs fashion splits his characters up and lets them have separate but interweaving storylines. Coincidences abound. While ERB is the most obvious influence in this novel (both Tarzan and Mars series), I also detected echoes of A. Merritt and Ray Cummings. Some of the vivid, bizarre descriptions of the underground world really reminded me of Merritt’s work, and I couldn’t help but think of Cummings’ THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM, too.

If I had read this when I was twelve years old, sitting on my parents’ front porch on a lazy summer day, I would have thought it was one of the best books I’d ever read. No doubt about that. Reading it now when I’m much older, I still had a pretty darned good time racing through it. Derivative or not, Kline was a good storyteller and knew how to keep the reader turning the pages. I think I’m going to have to read more by him. These days, pure entertainment is what I want most of the time, and TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely provided that.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: King of the World's Edge - H. Warner Munn

Originally serialized in the September through December 1939 issues of WEIRD TALES, H. Warner Munn’s KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE was a prime candidate for reprinting in the Sixties paperback fantasy boom sparked by Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It features swordplay, magic, and lost civilizations. What else do you need?

Well, an Arthurian angle doesn’t hurt. There’s also a nice framing sequence in which a mysterious bronze cylinder is discovered in Key West following a hurricane, and inside the cylinder there’s an ancient document purportedly written by one Ventidius Varro, a Roman legionnaire posted in Britain at the time of Arthur’s rise to power. Like Jack Whyte’s Camulod novels and the movies THE LAST LEGION and KING ARTHUR, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is set during the last days of Roman occupation in Britain, when most of the Roman soldiers are actually second- or third-generation Britons. Ventidius Varro is one of them. Cut off from Rome, these hold-out legionnaires align themselves with Arthur and the enigmatic mage Myrdhinn in order to oppose the invading Saxons and unite the various British tribes. After Arthur’s efforts are crushed and he himself is mortally wounded in battle, Myrdhinn places him in what amounts to suspended animation, hides his body, and then sets sail with a band of legionnaires commanded by Varro in search of a place where they can regroup and figure out a way to retake Britain.

Things don’t work out that way, however. Instead, Myrdhinn and the rest of these British adventurers wind up in a new world far to the west, across the ocean, where they are captured by, escape from, and wind up doing battle with various groups of native tribes. Along the way Varro becomes the staunch ally of a native leader named Hayonwatha, founds his own empire in the new world, and battles to overthrow the evil Mia, who have extended their grasp over the entire continent.

Part of the fun of a book like this is seeing the way Munn comes up with new explanations for all the history and legends of early North America, from Florida up to the Great Lakes, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains and down to Texas. Varro, Myrdhinn, and their friends wander all over and have numerous adventures. The pace is a little slow at times and the writing style is old-fashioned, but after all, the story is being told by Ventidius Varro in a letter intended to be carried back to whatever emperor is currently in power in Rome.

Though it lacks the storytelling power of a yarn by Howard or Burroughs, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is an entertaining, inventive novel with quite a bit of action. Getting the book back in print from Ace was enough to prompt the never prolific Munn to write a sequel, THE SHIP FROM ATLANTIS, almost thirty years after the original. I have that one, too, and hope to read it soon. (I believe both novels were also issued in a combined volume called MERLIN’S GODSON, from Del Rey in the Eighties, but I have the Ace editions.)

Update: Don Herron informs me that there's a third book in the series, MERLIN'S RING, and refers to it as Munn's masterpiece. He also recommends Munn's historical novel THE LOST LEGION. There's two more books for me to look for!

(I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of you that despite what it says above, I haven't read another word by H. Warner Munn since this post first appeared almost exactly fifteen years ago on November 6, 2009. Will I read more by him in the future? No way of knowing for sure, but at this late date, I wouldn't bet a hat on it.) 

Witchery Plus: A Weird Tales Trilogy - Keith Chapman

Several years ago my friend Keith Chapman published a pair of stories--a fantasy in the mold of Clark Ashton Smith and a sword and sorcery yarn--in a double volume. He's redone that book, added a third story, this time a modern-day horror yarn set in Australia, and published it as WITCHERY PLUS: A WEIRD TALES TRILOGY, which is available in both e-book and print editions on Amazon.

"Night Howl" is the new story in this volume. Chapman sold a number of comic book scripts to Charlton for their horror titles, and the original version of this story was one of them, but it went unpublished when Charlton switched over to mostly reprints. Converted to prose, it appeared first on the BEAT TO A PULP website and now is in print for the first time. It's about a pair of lovers on the run from a murder charge, and in that respect, it works very well as a noir crime yarn. But there's also a possibly supernatural element involving an old Gothic paperback featuring a heroine with the same name as one of the characters in this story. Are the bizarre events of that old paperback replaying themselves in real life? Chapman uses that question as the springboard for a very well-written tale that generates suspense all the way to the end.

Now here's what I had to say (slightly edited) about the other two stories when I reviewed them back in 2013:

"After an interesting introduction that addresses the genesis of these tales, Chapman produces a fine Clark Ashton Smith pastiche set in Smith's evil-haunted French province Averoigne, "Black Art in Yvones". A young protagonist, a beautiful blonde, and a sinister femme fetale even give this tale a slight noirish feel. In the second novelette in this collection, Chapman ventures into sword-and-sorcery territory with "Wildblood and the Witch Wife", featuring a very likable pair of adventurers reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It's set in historical England rather than a fantasy world, but there's still plenty of sorcery and action."

Although probably best known for his Westerns, Keith Chapman is one of those authors who can write just about anything and do a good job of it. He's a fine storyteller, as these stories amply demonstrate. If you've never sampled his work before, WITCHERY PLUS would be a very good place to start. 

Elak of Atlantis - Henry Kuttner

I’ve been meaning to read Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis stories for a long time now, and I’m getting to the age where I’m feeling a bit more urgency about getting around to the things I want to do. Also, there are collections of new Elak stories by Adrian Cole coming out, and I want to give them a try, but I thought I ought to read the originals first. Also, I’m a sucker for Atlantis stories, and Kuttner appears to have done a pretty good job of world-building in this four story series, originally published in the iconic pulp WEIRD TALES.

The saga gets underway with the novella “Thunder in the Dawn”, the longest of Kuttner’s Elak stories that was serialized in the May and June 1938 issues of WEIRD TALES. It introduces us to Elak, a lean adventurer who favors a rapier rather than a broadsword, and his rotund sidekick/comedy relief Lycon. Elak is actually the stepson of the former rule of one of Atlantis’s northern kingdoms who killed his stepfather in a duel and fled, leaving his stepbrother to take over the throne. Elak and Lycon encounter a druid priest named Dalan, who brings the news that Elak’s stepbrother has been imprisoned by an evil wizard and Vikings are besieging his homeland. Who better to travel north, unite the feuding tribes, battle the Vikings, and rescue the imprisoned king than Elak?

Nobody, of course. With a little reluctance, Elak takes up the quest. Along the way wait adventures and beautiful women and epic battles against enemies both human and sorcerous. Kuttner really packs a lot of plot and incident into this yarn, a novel’s worth despite its novella length, and it’s all very fast-paced and well-written. This is an exciting and very satisfying debut for the series.

The short story “Spawn of Dagon” appears the very next month in the July 1938 issue of WEIRD TALES and even makes the cover. There’s very little reference to the preceding story and Dalan the Druid doesn’t appear. Elak and Lycon are back to being drifting adventurers. They get involved in some political intrigue and are hired to kill a wizard and destroy the source of his power. Of course, the situation doesn’t turn out to be exactly what our two heroes believe it is. Even though I’m not the biggest fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, I recognized the name Dagon right away, and sure enough, the boys encounter some of HPL’s fish-people and there’s talk of the Elder Gods. This story has a good deal of well-written action, but after the epic scale and grand, colorful concepts of the debut novella, I found it a little disappointing. Not bad, mind you, but a very standard sword and sorcery adventure yarn enlivened a bit by the presence of the fish-people.

“Beyond the Phoenix”, from the October 1938 issue of WEIRD TALES, once again finds Elak and Lycon involved in political intrigue, but this time they’re trying to protect a king from a deadly rival, and when they fail in that, the dying monarch charges them with the job of saving his daughter and delivering his body to the god he worships. This involves a trip on an underground river reminiscent of the second novel in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series, THE GODS OF MARS. I have to wonder if Kuttner read Burroughs. It certainly seems possible. I also wonder if C.L. Moore had a hand in this story, as well as the previous one. By 1938, Kuttner and Moore knew each other and had even collaborated on one story, “Quest of the Starstone” in the November 1937 issue of WEIRD TALES. If the Elak stories had come out after they were married and collaborating on a regular basis, I would have been confident that Moore wrote all the colorful, vividly descriptive passages. But since I’ve never seen any speculation about her involvement, at least as far as I recall, I’ll just assume that being a fan of her work had an influence on Kuttner as he was writing these yarns. At any rate, “Beyond the Phoenix” is a good story with plenty of action.

The fourth and final Elak story by Kuttner is the novelette “Dragon Moon” from the January 1941 issue of WEIRD TALES. This one is very reminiscent of “Thunder in the Dawn”, the tale that launched the series. Once again Elak and Lycon are summoned northward to Cyrena, Elak’s homeland, by Dalan the Druid, who tells them that Elak’s stepbrother the king was possessed by some sort of evil entity and killed himself rather than give in to it. That mystical being has now possessed the king of a neighboring country and plans to conquer Cyrena by force. Being without a king, the realm has no chance of defeating its enemies. Elak is the only one who can save the day, and he can only do that by reclaiming the birthright he doesn’t want. This is another epic yarn with several adventures along the way before the final showdown, which is a huge, very well-written battle. I’ve seen comparisons between this story and Robert E. Howard’s THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON, and maybe Kuttner was inspired by Howard’s only novel-length adventure of Conan, but they’re very different stories because Conan and Elak are very different characters. “Dragon Moon” isn’t the equal of THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON, but I enjoyed it very much anyway. It’s my favorite story of the four about Elak written by Kuttner.

Overall, I really like this collection. The writing is excellent, it’s full of colorful settings and intriguing concepts, and the action is great. If you’re a sword and sorcery fan, I give ELAK OF ATLANTIS a very high recommendation. And the world Kuttner creates in these stories is interesting enough that I’m looking forward to seeing what Adrian Cole does with the series.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, August 1950

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES was a reprint pulp, but it reprinted some great science fiction and fantasy, sometimes obscure, sometimes well-known classics. And it had new, often great covers by some fine artists. This issue contains only two stories, both of them in the classic category: THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells and DONOVAN'S BRAIN by Curt Siodmak. I've read them both, although not in this pulp. The dramatic cover illustrating a scene from THE TIME MACHINE is by one of my favorite cover artists, Norman Saunders.

Now Available: Doom of the Dark Delta - James Reasoner

Washed ashore on a jungle-choked island in the delta at the mouth of the great Jehannamun River, Jorras Trevayle has survived an attack by pirates only to find himself in a desperate race to rescue a beautiful young woman from the sinister plans of an evil sorcerer and save himself from becoming the prey of a Nloka Maccumba—one of the giant serpents raised by the inhabitants of this bizarre, perilous land.

DOOM OF THE DARK DELTA is the first novella in the Snakehaven series from bestselling author James Reasoner. Part sword and sorcery, part alternate history, and all action and adventure, it’s a thrilling tale that begins a saga of epic scope. And it all begins here in DOOM OF THE DARK DELTA!

(As I've mentioned before, I'm excited about this one. It was great fun to write, and I'll be starting the second novella in the Snakehaven series, THE FEVER COAST, any day now. You can get the e-book edition of this one on Amazon for less than a buck, and if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free.)

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, Volume 1 - David A. Riley, ed.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of sword and sorcery fiction in recent months, and I’m still in the mood for it. So after finishing the new anthology NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, I moved on to SWORDS & SORCERIES: TALES OF HEROIC FANTASY, VOLUME 1, which came out several years ago. Edited by David A. Riley and published by Parallel Universe Publications, it features eight stories, some by authors I’m familiar with and some by authors I’m encountering for the first time. The cover and interior illustrations are by Jim Pitts.

The book leads off with “The Mirror of Torjan Súl” by Steve Lines, a British writer and musician whose work I haven’t read before. It’s the story of an apprentice wizard sent by his necromancer master to an abandoned city in the desert to recover a mystical artifact of great power. Naturally, that abandoned city isn’t really abandoned at all. It’s full of dangerous creatures out for the protagonist’s blood, and he has to battle through them only to come face to face with an even worse menace as he tries to carry out his mission. To me, this story reads as if it were influenced quite a bit by the work of Clark Ashton Smith. I’ve read and enjoyed a few of Smith’s stories, but I’m far from being any sort of expert on his work. “The Mirror of Torjan Súl” reminds me of it, anyway. And I found it to be a pretty enjoyable yarn, too, with plenty of action and a satisfying ending.

I’ve read several stories by Steve Dilks and enjoyed every one of them. His novella “The Horror From the Stars” is another tale of Bohun, the black warrior from Damzullah I first encountered in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD. This story takes place before that one in Bohun’s adventurous life, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment of it. Bohun’s search for his missing wife takes him to a sinister city in the desert, after he survives a deadly sandstorm, and what he finds there is even worse. Lots of bloody, eldritch action with an indomitable protagonist, told in a colorful style that races along. This is sword and sorcery in the classic mode and very well done.

I was aware of Susan Murrie Macdonald’s Western stories but didn’t know she also writes fantasy. Her short story in this volume, “Trolls Are Different”, is a very well-written, entertaining yarn about how a hearthwitch and a troll shaman deal with a threat to the land where they live. It’s light on the world-building but has plenty for the reader to understand what’s going on, and the characters are all likable. This is only borderline sword and sorcery—there’s a little sorcery (on-screen, so to speak) and a battle (off-screen)—but it’s a very enjoyable story no matter what you call it.

At first glance, “Chain of Command” by Geoff Hart is a gender-swapped Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser yarn, as female warriors Freya (big, good with a sword) and Mouse (little, quick, also good with a sword) are hired to accompany a couple of sorcerers to a lost city in a dangerous desert created by wizardry, on a quest to recover a mystical artifact. Geoff Hart, another writer new to me, readily acknowledges the Fritz Leiber influence in this yarn and spins his tale with such enthusiasm and skill that I had no trouble accepting Freya and Mouse as good characters and protagonists in their own right. This is another one in the classic sword and sorcery style, and a very good one, too.

Like “Trolls Are Different”, Gerri Leen’s story “Disruption of Destiny” doesn’t appear to be traditional sword and sorcery at first glance. It’s about a woman who’s a seer and sorcerer and her ability to take someone’s destiny and give it to someone else through a magical rite. In this story, that’s a soldier who’s fated to die in battle. So it technically fits the definition, although there’s no real action in the story. It is, however, superbly written, poignant, and very moving and satisfying. I know I’m burying the lede here, as they say, but this is a wonderful story. I’d never heard of Gerri Leen, but I’ll be on the lookout for her work.

Eric Ian Steele is another writer new to me. His story “The City of Silence” is about a former king who renounced his throne due to a terrible tragedy and now roams the land in silence as an adventurer. His only companion is the wizard who was his chief councilor. The two of them come to what seems at first to be an abandoned city. There are people living there, but they soon discover the population is under the heel of a supernatural menace. This is another terrific story with a couple of great protagonists, and I hope to find more by Steele.

This volume wraps up with two stories that didn’t really connect with me. “Red” by Chadwick Ginther is about a female warrior searching for her brother, who has been kidnapped for nefarious purposes by a sinister cult. “The Reconstructed God” by Adrian Cole (whose story in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD I liked a lot) is about a magical familiar that has lost its master. Both are well-written with interesting characters, and I can’t tell you why they just didn’t resonate with me. It’s always possible that I just wasn’t in the right mood for them.

Overall, I found this volume to be really good, and if you’re a sword and sorcery fan, I think there’s a good chance you’d enjoy it quite a bit, too. I’m definitely planning to read others in the series. This one is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

A Rough Edges Rerun: Dwellers in the Mirage - A. Merritt

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on January 9, 2009. I've been pretty swamped lately and haven't had much time to work on the blog, but I figure some of you won't have read a review from 15 years ago. There'll be new posts coming soon, but probably more reruns, too.)

A. Merritt was one of the big names in fantasy fiction from the Twenties and Thirties, when his novels and stories were first published in the pulps, through the Seventies, when his books were still readily available in paperback reprints, mostly from Avon. However, while I’ve been aware of his work for years, I’ve actually read very little of it. I recall reading his novel THE SHIP OF ISHTAR many years ago, and I think I liked it, although at this late date I’m not sure anymore. A few years ago I read the original pulp version of the novelette “The Moon Pool” (Merritt had a habit of revising his stuff as it went through later editions) and liked it as well.

Now I’ve read his novel DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE, and I can see why his books were popular for so long. There’s a lot to like here: a modern hero who’s the unknowing reincarnation of an ancient warrior-king; a lost civilization located in an isolated mountain valley in Alaska, which due to volcanic heating is actually tropical; a couple of beautiful women, one good, one evil, who have a habit of running around in few, if any, clothes (I told you the weather was tropical); a couple of evil high priests; a tentacled, otherworldly horror from a different dimension; castles, strongholds, and epic battles. Just my kind of book, in other words.

What sets Merritt apart from most other heroic fantasy authors, especially the ones from the pulp era, is his leisurely, highly descriptive style. It takes a little getting used to, but I found myself being drawn into the prose. Merritt comes up with some really striking images in this novel. The drawback to this is that despite all the conflict going on, there’s really not much action. The few battle scenes are very well-done, though, and the big showdown at the end between the hero and one of the villains is a great, bloody, hand-to-hand fight.

I enjoyed DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE quite a bit. Merritt’s no Robert E. Howard, mind you – Howard would have compressed the plot of this novel into a novella, probably to great effect – but I definitely plan to read more of Merritt’s work. I’ve already picked up a copy of his novel THE METAL MONSTER, and I also have a reprint of the pulp versions of “The Moon Pool” and “Conquest of the Moon Pool”, which were combined into the novel THE MOON POOL. With any luck, I’ll get to them soon.

(As you probably guessed, I did not get to those other books by Merritt that I mentioned. I did read his novel SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN a few years ago. Maybe I'll read more by him one of these days . . . !)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1943

It's hard to go wrong with a brawny, bare-chested hero and a good-looking girl in a skimpy leopard-skin outfit. Throw in an angry panther and you've got something, pal. Although if I had been the art director at Popular Publications, I might've told Lawrence Sterne Stevens (the artist) to make the girl's outfit a little skimpier. Got to catch the attention of those potential buyers at the newsstand, you know. Anyway, FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES was mostly a reprint pulp, and this issue features classic stories from William Hope Hodgson, Robert W. Chambers, and J. Leslie Mitchell. I'll admit, I'm not familiar with Mitchell's work, but this story sounds fairly intriguing. FFM published a few original stories, as well, and there's one in this issue by a young Ray Bradbury. A bunch of issues, including this one, are available online if you want to check them out. 

The City of the Black Flame - Steve Dilks

It’s back to sword and sorcery I go with “The City of the Black Flame”, the second novella in Steve Dilks’ GUNTHAR—WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD. In this one, Gunthar and two companions—a pirate who has a grudge against him and a female warrior—are hired to cross a desert and an inland sea and then penetrate an untamed jungle to a lost city where the secret of eternal life can be found. Along the way they pick up an ally, a mutant “reptiloid”, evidently part man and part snake and a further indication that these Gunthar stories are set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, long after some sort of nuclear war or disaster.

But as in the previous story, “Priestess of the Fire-Gods”, Dilks never allows his world-building and back-story to interfere with the headlong pace of the action. Gunthar and his companions face all sorts of dangers in the ruined city, which is a little reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Opar, and everything builds up to a pretty explosive climax. (The lost city is built next to a volcano, if that gives you any ideas.)

Gunthar is just a really likable protagonist, young and a little inexperienced but plenty tough. Dilks gives us a little more of his background in this story. The supporting cast is excellent all around, the villain is suitably despicable, and there are even a few poignant moments to go along with the slam-bang action. Dilks’ writing style is a blend of Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Gardner Fox, and John Jakes (the Brak stories). Reading these first two Gunthar stories has given me a real sense of nostalgia. This is sword and sorcery in the classic mold and done very well. It's available on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, October 1942

I don't think J. Allen St. John's cover on this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES is one of his best, but it's still pretty darned good and is intriguing enough to make me want to read the story it illustrates, so I guess it did its job. The whole issue is on-line here, along with lots of other issues of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Will I ever get around to reading it? Who knows? But there's a good group of writers inside including Robert Bloch, Nelson S. Bond, Don Wilcox, Ross Rocklynne, Leroy Yerxa, Dwight V. Swain (writing as Clark South), James Norman, and Robert Moore Williams (writing as Russell Storm). The lead novel is by house-name E.K. Jarvis, so there's really no telling who actually wrote that one.  

The Chronicles of Hanuvar #1: Lord of a Shattered Land - Howard Andrew Jones

I’ve been online friends with Howard Andrew Jones for a number of years now and have enjoyed his essays on various pulp-related subjects on his own blog and in various other places. He was one of the first people I came across who was also a fan of the Ki-Gor series from JUNGLE STORIES, for example. But I’d never read any of his fiction until now. I picked up LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND, the first book in his new series THE CHRONICLES OF HANUVAR, and tackled it, although it’s considerably longer than the books I normally read.

This series is loosely based on the wars between Rome and Carthage, with Derva being Rome, Volanus being Carthage, and Hanuvar being Hannibal. But that’s just a starting point as Jones creates a very different world from our own, one with dragons and sorcerers and monsters and spirits, and the events in Hanuvar’s life don’t play out the same way Hannibal’s did. Hanuvar is both the political and military leader of Volanus, but as the book opens he’s believed to be dead following the conclusion of the third war between Derva and Volanus. But Hanuvar actually survived the death of the dragon he was riding and a plunge into the sea, and now, alone and friendless, he sets out to rescue the survivors of his people and take them to the colony of New Volanus, which he started across the ocean several years earlier.

LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND is a fix-up novel comprised of fourteen novelettes and novellas, some of which were published previously in magazines and anthologies, and this episodic nature really works in its favor, allowing Jones to keep the story moving at a good pace as we follow Hanuvar on his quest. So many books like this are full of padding, but LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND really isn’t. Each section builds on the previous tales as Hanuvar gathers information, makes friends, battles both new threats and old, travels with a circus, and finally, at the end of the book, positions himself to launch the next step of his plan to free his people. This novel has an epic feel to it that works very well.

As for the stories—the characters, the writing, the action—I felt like I was reading Robert E. Howard in the Lancer editions, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories in the Ace editions, John Jake’s original Brak the Barbarian stories in the Avon paperback, and even good old Thongor in the first Ace edition of Lin Carter’s THE WIZARD OF LEMURIA. In other words, I was right back there in the Sixties, sitting on my parents’ front porch, having a spectacularly good time reading rousing sword and sorcery yarns. LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND is that good. Better than Jakes and Carter, for my money, and if it doesn’t quite rise to the level of Howard and Leiber . . . well, those guys have nostalgia going for them, too, while Jones’ novel is brand new. In time, as I continue reading the Hanuvar books (the second one will be out next month, and I already have it pre-ordered), he may give those giants a run for their money. I can’t wait to find out. If you’re a fan of sword and sorcery fiction, this one has my highest recommendation. It's available in ebook and hardcover editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, January 1952

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. FANTASTIC ADVENTURES was an odd mix of different kinds of fantasy stories with a science fiction yarn sneaking in occasionally. At this point in its run, it was edited by Howard Browne, a good editor and an excellent author in his own right. The cover of this issue is by an artist I associate more with science fiction, Ed Valigursky. He did a lot of covers for the Ace Double science fiction line, I believe.

One thing the Ziff-Davis pulps did that was different from other pulp publishers was to put the word count of each story on the Table of Contents. Those counts probably weren’t completely accurate, but they still give a good approximation of each story’s length. The lead novel in this issue, “Rest In Agony”, comes in at 32,000 words. That’s long enough to call it a novel, as far as I’m concerned. The author, Ivar Jorgensen, was actually Paul W. Fairman in this case. Fairman was a regular in the Ziff-Davis stable, both as a writer and an editor. He doesn’t have a very high reputation in either role, but I’ve always found his work to be enjoyable for the most part. The narrator of “Rest In Agony” is clean-cut young college student Hal Brent. Hal’s Uncle Ambrose dies, but then, after the funeral, Hal gets a phone call from him, begging for help. It seems that Ambrose was involved with a Satanic cult and wrote a book about their activities, and now the members of the cult will do anything to get their hands on that volume, including menacing the lives of Hal and his beautiful teenage sister.

This is an odd story, at times leisurely paced and poetic, almost dream-like, reminding me a little of A. Merritt. Then at other times it’s lurid and over the top like a Weird Menace yarn. There’s some very good writing in it in places, and in other places the prose is rather clumsy. I’ll say this for it, though: it kept me turning the pages. This story is available in an e-book edition as a stand-alone novel under Fairman’s real name, if you’re interested in checking it out yourself and don’t have a copy of this pulp. I enjoyed it while still being aware that it’s hardly a great story. Kind of like most of Fairman’s work that I’ve read.

Geoff St. Reynard was really Robert W. Krepps, best remembered today, aside from his science fiction, as the author of numerous movie novelizations and several well-regarded novels about Africa. His story in this issue, under the St. Reynard pseudonym, is a novelette called “Wrestlers Are Revolting!” Since it was written and published in the Fifties, this story comes from a time when most science fiction writers and readers still considered a centralized, heavy-handed, oppressive government to be a bad thing, so the villains are the political rulers of the Federated Americas. They’ve banned all professional sports except wrestling, since that’s the one where it’s easiest to control the outcome of the matches, and the government-sponsored wrestler known as The Chimera is unbeatable, not only defeating every challenger with his signature move, the Siberian Death Lock, but also killing them in the ring, which is permitted in this era. As always happens in cases of political oppression, an underground has developed, dedicated to overthrowing the Federated Americas, and the movement’s leaders are all wrestlers, including the story’s protagonist Johnny Bell, who wants to be a writer but is forced into wrestling by the government.

Clearly, this is a pretty goofy concept for a story. But it’s so well-written that Krepps makes it easy for the reader to suspend disbelief and just roll with it. It’s very funny in places, too, especially if you’re a wrestling fan. The names, the gimmicks, the way the matches are staged, all that stuff is very familiar to anybody who ever watched much professional wrestling. The Chimera is a classic heel, and Johnny Bell, who competes under the name Bellerophon the Great, is pure babyface. In an accidental prediction, there’s even a wrestler-turned-referee named Paul Bearer! The wrestling part is amusing, the political background is prophetic (especially since the story is set in the early 2020s), and Krepps’ talent elevates what should have been silliness into a very entertaining yarn.

Paul W. Fairman returns under his own name with a short story called “The Secret of Gallows Hill”, which features some nice illustrations by Virgil Finlay. This is a ghost story—or is it?—with its roots stretching back to the Revolutionary War. Fairman springs a pretty nice twist ending in this one, making it one of the better things I’ve read by him.

I don’t know anything about Francis G. Rayer except that he was a fairly prolific but almost completely forgotten British science fiction author. His story in this issue, “When Greed Steps In”, is about a couple of miners competing for a rare, valuable metal on a newly discovered planet. It’s a pretty mild story and also has a twist ending which gives it a little more punch than it might have had otherwise. But it’s hardly memorable.

The issue wraps up with the novelette “Satellite of Destruction” by Ziff-Davis regular Berkely Livingston writing under the pseudonym Burt B. Liston. This is an alien invasion yarn, but rather than the attackers coming to Earth in rocket ships, they arrive in a mobile asteroid that they put into the planet’s orbit as a second moon. This is a fairly intriguing idea, but Livingston doesn’t do much with it, delivering instead a World War II commando yarn with SF trappings. I made it to the end of this story, but just barely. It just didn’t resonate with me.

FANTASTIC ADVENTURES doesn’t have a great reputation as a science fiction/fantasy pulp, and this issue is a good example of why not. One really good (but not great) story by Krepps, two pretty good stories by Fairman, and the other two are readable but not much more. Still, I’ve found something to like in every issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES I’ve read, so I’m sure I’ll be picking up another one sometime in the future.

The Paperback Fantastic, Volume Two: Fantasy

Following up on the success of THE PAPERBACK FANTASTIC, VOLUME ONE: SCIENCE FICTION, editor and publisher Justin Marriott switches his emphasis to fantasy in the second volume. THE PAPERBACK FANTASTIC, VOLUME TWO: FANTASY also features dozens of reviews of various novels and comic books, with great cover art from those books and top-notch production by Marriott and Bill Cunningham. The reviewers in this volume are Steve Carroll, S. Clayton Rhodes, Andreas Decker, James Doig, Ian Millsted, Roy Nugen, John Peel, Scott Ranalli, Penny Tesarek, Tom Tesarek, and Benjamin Thomas.

Most of the reviews are of heroic fantasy/sword-and-sorcery novels and story collections, with a few side ventures into sword-and-planet and more literary fantasy. Given that, it’s not surprising that books by Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Michael Moorcock, and Fritz Leiber dominate the table of contents. Howard is one of my all-time favorite authors, of course, so that’s fine with me, and I read all of Leiber’s stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser back in the day, as well. I’m less familiar with Moorcock and Wager, although I’ve read and enjoyed both. There are also reviews of books by John Jakes and Lin Carter that I recall reading with great fondness, and a couple of reviews of books by an author I want to read, C.L. Werner, although I haven’t gotten around his work yet. Two of Kenneth Bulmer’s heroic fantasy novels are reviewed, including the first book in his long-running Dray Prescot series, and although I’ve read and enjoyed several of Bulmer’s historical novels, I’ve never read his fantasy. I need to get around to those books, as well.

I enjoyed Volume Two of this series every bit as much as I did Volume One, and for the same reason: it’s well-done, very informative, and highly entertaining. If you’re a long-time reader of heroic fantasy like I am, you really should pick it up, because I think you’ll have a fine time reading it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, May 1942

I hate snakes in real life, but for some reason, put one on the cover of a pulp or a book and it always catches my attention. Throw in a scantily clad young woman with a spear, and I'm definitely going to notice a cover like this one by Malcolm Smith. Several of the Ziff-Davis regulars show up in this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, including David Wright O'Brien (once as himself and once as John York Cabot in a collaboration with another Z-D stalwart, William P. McGivern), Don Wilcox, Robert Moore Williams, and David V. Reed. Also on hand some pretty famous names: Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Nelson S. Bond, Stanton Coblentz, Ralph Milne Farley, and future comic book scripting legend John Broome. FANTASTIC ADVENTURES always had good covers and pretty good writers. I'm not sure why I haven't read more of them. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Unknown, March 1939

A great H.W. Scott cover on the first issue of a great pulp. UNKNOWN didn't last all that long, but while it was around it published a lot of stories that have become classics. This issue leads off with one of them, "Sinister Barrier" by Eric Frank Russell, and also includes stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Frank Belknap Long, H.L. Gold, Robert Moore Williams, and a couple of lesser-known authors, Mona Farnsworth (real name Muriel Newhall, who wrote a lot under several different pseudonyms for the romance and Western romance pulps) and A.B.L. Macfayden Jr., who wrote a handful of stories for ASTOUNDING and one for UNKNOWN (both magazines being edited by John W. Campbell, of course).