Interview with K.V. Johansen

K. V. Johansen was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where she developed her lifelong fascination with fantasy literature after reading The Lord of the Rings at the age of eight. Her interest in the history and languages of the Middle Ages led her to take a Master’s Degree in Medieval Studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and a second M.A. in English Literature at McMaster University, where she wrote her thesis on Layamon’s Brut, an Early Middle English epic poem. While spending most of her time writing, she retains her interest in medieval history and languages and is a member of the SFWA and the Writers’ Union of Canada. In 2014, she was an instructor at the Science Fiction Foundation’s Masterclass in Literary Criticism held in London. She is also the author of two works on the history of children’s fantasy literature, two short story collections, and a number of books for children and teens. Various of her books have been translated into French, Macedonian, and Danish.

Today she talks to Paul about her forthcoming sword and sorcery book, Breath and Bone.

NoaF: For readers unfamiliar with you, can you briefly tell us about yourself and your work?

KVJ: I’m Canadian, living in New Brunswick on the east coast. I have Master’s degrees in English and in Medieval Studies. My first book, long ago in 1997, was a children’s secondary-world fantasy, very sword and sorcery, a quest to slay a dragon. Since then I’ve written something like 26 books for children, teens, and adults, including two non-fiction works on the history of children’s fantasy and, under the name Kris Jamison, a contemporary novel, Love/Rock/Compost, which no one has heard of but of which I’m very proud. Prior to Breath and Bone, my fantasy for adults has been the five-book epic fantasy series Gods of the Caravan Road, beginning with Blackdog and ending with The Last Road, and the high fantasy duology that begins with The Wolf and the Wild King and will be concluded in The Raven and the Harper.

NoaF: Can you give us a brief précis on Breath and Bone?

KVJ: The very short version is: two women (Hedge the swordswoman and Pony, a shapeshifting godling), who’ve been partners through long, long years and figure they’ve served their time in the suffering and heroing and changing the world department (what with leading a civil war, destroying the empire, and cutting off the emperor’s head), are pulled out of peaceful retirement when a girl recruits them to help rescue her twin brother, who’s gotten himself ensnared by a life-draining witch, an old enemy of theirs. And there’s a ghost.

NoaF: You've tackled epic fantasy, and fantasy similar to sword and sorcery, but what drew you to make this a sword and sorcery novel?

KVJ: I’d had the character of Hedge—the wandering warrior with a sort of trickster partner—kicking around for a while; she’s someone who was cut from an earlier and rather different version of The Wolf and the Wild King, actually. Her partner then was male, and a fox—he became quite a lot younger, and a child, and turned into the fox-girl Sage, so there was Hedge, all ready to wander into adventures, with no partner and no story. I was working on part two of The Wolf and the Wild King when a discussion about sword and sorcery gave me this sudden hunger for an old-fashioned adventure, lighter on politics and gods and dark grim torments of the soul.

“What I feel like reading,” I said to myself, “is something like Torrie, but for grown-ups.” Torrie is the oldest of the Old Things of the Wild Forest and the narrator of my several Torrie books, which are old-fashioned fantasy adventures for younger readers. (A lot of adults like them too!) Pony, the narrator of Breath and Bone, sprang more or less fully formed from that desire, and the plot of Breath and Bone just flowed out once Pony started talking, becoming a fresh adventure rooted in things she and Hedge thought long in the past. She’s old and wise and sometimes snarky, a bit of a trickster, not entirely reliable, a musician, a storyteller, a shapeshifter, and has a dark, damaged streak through her heart that breaks out from time to time. She and Hedge are both carrying a lot of scars, emotionally and psychologically, from the days of the empire. Their past, if you like, was epic fantasy—wars and politics, gods and horrors, victory achieved at great cost. Sword and sorcery is their retirement. They’re figures of legend in their world. People don’t expect to find them living in a cottage keeping ducks, with a sword buried under the floor.

NoaF: Geography and landscape are important in your books, and Breath and Bone is no exception. What inspired you for the landscapes we see in the book, from the lake all the way to the Under-Ice?

KVJ: I was thinking mostly of western Europe as the inspiration for this one, with Hedge and Pony living off in the northwestern corner of that, on the shores of a small lake, so I had in mind a sort of impressionistic sketch of a landscape that was inspired by Swallows and Amazons combined with Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain (about the Cairngorms in Scotland) along with various of Rosemary Sutcliff’s books set in the Lake District of England after Rome left Britain. Hedge and Pony’s travels take them down through lowlands and forests, along the valley of a great north-flowing river, to a suspiciously Alps-like mountain range and the ruins of Under-Ice, so you can picture that landscape as journeying south and east across something not utterly unlike a much more sparsely populated western Europe with more woodland, where primeval forest and megafauna can still be found. The marshes, Arrany’s homeland, came from the idea of Doggerland being above water, and part of that being a vast low-lying area at the mouth of a great river. It’s a place I’d like to explore and develop further.

NoaF: Rosemary Sutcliff—now there's a name drop. I read The Eagle of the Ninth after the movie came out. How did Sutcliff influence your development of this world?

KVJ: Rosemary Sutcliff was an author I read repeatedly as a child, someone who had a big influence on my style and on my fascination with history. Some of her books set in Britain after the withdrawal of Rome are among my favourites, The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind in particular. It’s natural that, with Breath and Bone being set in a world after the fall of a great empire, I found a Sutcliff sort of flavour creeping into how I thought about it. Dawn Wind, especially, contributed a mood to the world; it’s a book about two orphaned young people after the Anglo-Saxon invasions have begun and their communities have been destroyed. Searching for a place they can be safe, they wander through the ruins of Roman towns long abandoned and come across small isolated farms still surviving. Pony’s world took on that sort of colour, though hers is a more peaceful time with no Germanic invasions. In Pony’s world, there are old imperial ruins that have been taken over and given new purpose; the imperial highways still exist, though no one is maintaining them and they are slowly being overgrown by moss and engulfed in forest; and there are a variety of small, mostly human tribal territories and kingdoms, towns run by hereditary chieftains or councils of clan elders, a few surviving cities or towns that have become new centres of trade and are growing into independent cities run by councils or guildmasters or powerful families, and in a couple of cases, by universities that survived. Pony’s is a world that has lost a lot of its population, too, which is the feeling you get in Dawn Wind (though that’s not necessarily the actual historical situation), that the whole of the characters’ known world is in ruins.

I wanted, with Hedge’s and Pony’s travels, to show that their world was recovering, that something new for both humans and vhalgods was growing out of the ruins of the old—a ruin caused in part by their own actions, though the tyranny of the vhalgod emperor was itself a cause of ruin and misery and needed to be ended. Hedge and her brother were among the great captains in the civil war. There’s a background of places run by warlords or terrorized by bandits, of towns and villages that were destroyed in the civil war or have fallen into ruin after in all the chaos—there’s been a long period of lawlessness, banditry, disease, famine, the changing of trade routes. Set against that, however, are places like their own Smithsford, a village that’s grown up around them, because of them; there are also places run by universities that have survived the fall, settlements and single farms where people are making new lives and new communities for themselves, tribes and kingdoms and village councils weaving new networks of trade and mutual support.

Sutcliff created a post-Roman world that hits with a great emotional impact, and that emotion—it’s captured in the Old English poem The Ruin, actually, which is ironic as of course that was written by the people who were the invaders in Dawn Wind—is what coloured my thinking about Pony’s world: a landscape holding the bones of the past, something new growing out of that while the faint memories of the old still wrap around you. Ghedhaynor isn’t meant to be Rome, and Pony’s world isn’t meant to be post-Roman Britain, but if you want to put it in wine-tasting terms, there are underlying hints of Sutcliff’s interpretation of that world in its flavour.

NoaF: Information control and what the characters tell us, or each other, is unusually prominent in this book. What prompted you to make the characters, especially Arrany, so… twisty in that regard?

KVJ: Blame Pony—she’s the twisty one!

Writing a story told in the first person is always a challenge, and for one where it’s being told after the fact and not as a stream of consciousness unfolding as it happens (which can feel a bit artificial because how are you the reader then privy to this flow of thought?), the writer always has to choose what to have the narrator tell and when to have them tell it, and there has to be some justification within the story for what’s revealed and what’s for a time withheld or outright concealed. In Breath and Bone, there’s a framing narrative, an implied audience within the book, the “you” whom Pony is addressing.

You have to remember that everything you learn about Arrany, twisty though she may be, or even Hedge, is coming through Pony. She’s a minstrel, an entertainer. This is very much a story told by a storyteller, so even though she’s casting it into the first person, it’s not some window into her mind; it’s a very carefully controlled narrative shaped to keep her audience listening (and throwing a few coins into that awful squashy hat or buying her another mug of heather beer). She’s creating herself as a character within her own story, which every first-person narrator does, but she’s being very deliberate and open about it, as when she tells you about a very terrible and traumatic thing in her past, “Oh, I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want to talk about it, but now you need to know so you can understand why I reacted to such-and-such the way I did.” She tells you what she wants you to know when she wants you to know it, and, when telling other people’s parts of the story, she could be telling you what she believed she knew at that time, or what that person wanted at that point to present to the world as their own story, rather than what she may have found out later—unless she has decided it’s important to do otherwise, to give you a forewarning of something because that’s the more dramatic choice. You’re being made a part of the story, a participating part of the audience at that fireside, by her way of telling it; you-that-audience are startled or shocked at an action of hers, so she reveals more about herself than maybe she meant to, in trying to explain it; your anticipation delights her, shapes what she withholds or reveals next. Pony loves a good tale and she loves to tell one. She’s going to keep utter control of her narrative to set you up for the best journey she can give you.

NoaF: The vhalgods and vhalbairns (such wonderful use of language in this book) promise a whole possible host of stories in this landscape. And this novel really does feel thorny in the sense that there are others stories seemingly lurking everywhere in the landscape. Have any other stories niggled at you as you wrote this one?

KVJ: There are definitely more stories in this world. Just thinking of one seems to make others grow out of it, like branches from a vine, climbing and wandering over the map. Of course there are stories in the past, darker stories from the days of Pony’s captivity and the civil war, which she might allude to, but in this time, generations later, just this one story of Pony and Hedge and Jinn travelling south to the mountains with Arrany spun off at least two more in my mind. My Torrie books for children were like that: each was a standalone, but writing each one gave me an idea for another. Pony is very like Torrie in that regard: she goes wandering and tells stories; every story reminds her of another. It’s a format for a series that I think works really well for adult sword and sorcery. There’s so much past in this world and a big map to explore, so many things left mysterious, or broken and only roughly healed, or completely unfinished, after the fall of the empire, that Hedge and Pony can go on wandering through it and tangling themselves up in adventures for some time to come. And of course, as a vhalgod and a wild godling, they have a more than human lifespan to do that in. Breath and Bone is a standalone, but at the end, they're not heading home despite having finished the story off nicely and dealt with all the problems they set out to deal with; they've decided there's something they need to look into south of the mountains. Goodbrother Bessamy back home in Smithsford will have to go on looking after Hedge's flock of laying-ducks for another season.

NoaF: Thank you so much for answering these questions. Where can readers find you and find out more about you? (might as well get this question out of the way now)

KVJ: My website is at https://www.kvj.ca and I’m on Bluesky as @kvjohansen.bsky.social.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

TV Review: The Witcher Season 4

A big casting change and a return to linear storytelling redefines the tone in season 4

Netflix’s popular fantasy adventure series, The Witcher, has returned for its fourth season with a significant change. The title character is no longer being played by the formidable Henry Cavill but has instead been replaced by Liam Hemsworth. After three seasons, the change is undeniably disorienting and results in a significant change in the overall aura of the show. 

The Witcher is the story of Geralt of Rivia, a magically enhanced, but emotionally repressed, professional monster killer whose destiny changes when he becomes a spiritual father to Ciri (Freya Allan), a hunted, deposed princess with supernatural powers. As evil forces attack both of them, they are aided by Yennifer (Anya Chalota), a powerful, morally gray (but ultimately good hearted) mage, and Jaskier (Joey Batey), a cheerful bard who provides cynical comic relief and helps nudge the stoic Geralt towards appreciating human emotions and connections. 

Season 1 gave us the satisfying adventures of the journeys of Yennifer, Geralt, and Ciri converging on each other as the intimidating Geralt and the fugitive child Ciri, fight to find each other. Season 2 focuses on Ciri, with Geralt as her new father, training to fight while sinister forces (and some allies) plot to take Ciri’s power for themselves. Season 3 offered a highly complicated plot where multiple villains, antagonists, and traitors from multiple kingdoms and cultures all fight and betray each other in an attempt to capture or duplicate Ciri. Season 4 opens with a more cynical Ciri abandoning her family of Geralt and Yennifer, changing her name to Falka, and joining up with a ragtag band of thieves called the Rats. In the meantime, Yennifer reassembles a team of mages to fight the current central villain Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), the evil mage who is helping the other central villain, Emhyr (Bart Edwards) in a plot to capture and marry Ciri (who is his daughter) to create an ultimate power that will give him world domination. 

While many of the characters remain the same, the biggest issue of season 4 is obviously the replacement of Henry Cavill with Liam Hemsworth, which is a major and distracting cast change. For better or for worse, re-cast characters happen in series periodically and it’s always odd. The issue is not the quality of the acting, which is fine in season 4, nor is it the physical difference which is, admittedly, very significant. The strangeness also comes from the distinct onscreen change of personality, aura, and chemistry. The new version of Geralt is delivered in a way that is much more passive and quiet. He periodically smiles in a way that is out of character with the brooding, grumpy, always vaguely irritated hero of the earlier seasons. The intrigue of The Witcher often lay in the contrast between Geralt’s monstrous strength, lethal focus, and stoicism being unexpectedly juxtaposed against surprising moments of compassion and empathy. But, in season 4, we no longer have that contrast. The new Geralt is more quietly sad rather than being a smoldering, fierce killer. From a plot perspective, this could arguably be due to the many losses he has suffered over the seasons. But, probably the best way to enjoy season 4 is to calibrate your expectations and perhaps treat the new Geralt as if he were a new version of the Doctor on Doctor Who. Same memory and relationships, different body and personality. 

On the bright side, season 4 gives us much more linear storytelling which is a relief from the overly complicated and confusing machinations of season 3. While season 3 gave us a dizzying amount of villains and antagonists, season 4 distills them down to just the evil mage Vilgefortz and the evil ruler Emhyr, and a brief appearance by a local villain Leo Bonhart (Sharlto Copley). The remaining antagonists are either killed off or redeemed into helpful anti-heroes and allies. In a return to the format of season 1, we have three separate stories of Yennifer, Geralt, and Ciri. 

Plot one involves Yennifer gathering her mages, including her former enemies, to kill Vilgefortz. This is the most cliched but also the most enjoyable part of the three part storytelling. The story of the team up of the mages is filled with lots of girl power, diversity, plenty of enemies to allies energy, and a good amount of entertaining action. It’s also filled with lots of melodrama and some great stand out moments from former antagonists Fringilla (Mimi Khayisa) and Phillipa (Cassie Clare). 

Plot two involves Geralt and his new loyal traveling crew, including Milva (Meng’er Zhang), Zoltan (Danny Woodburn), and Regis (Laurence Fishburne), along with Geralt’s longtime ally Jaskier. They are all on a misdirected journey to find Ciri because, unfortunately, the Ciri he’s chasing is a decoy. In this adventure, Geralt repeatedly finds himself vulnerable due to a leg injury and is repeatedly being saved by others. Obviously there’s lots of good messaging about reliance on others and the need for community but this is not the intense Geralt of season one. The addition of the legendary Laurence Fishburne as Regis, an observant and seemingly helpful vampire, creates some much needed gravitas to the tone of the story. However, the introductory plot connecting him to Geralt and crew is one of the most unbelievable moments in the story and is another indicator of how different and passive the new Geralt is from the old one.

Plot three involves Ciri inexplicably hanging out with a morally gray band of tropey ragtag thieves. The group includes one member whose attempt to assault her is just brushed off and then she moves on to intimacy with another member. The acting is solid and the anti-establishment heist plot is predictable. But the characters are all so shallowly presented and unlikeable that when they finally get their comeuppance it’s hard to feel sorry for them. This storyline also includes violent bad guy Leo Bonhart as the local over the top villain. Considering Ciri’s immense power, her interaction with him is ultimately a little disappointing.

In season 4 major many issues are raised and then completely discarded so it’s hard to know who or what to become emotionally invested in. This is fine as long as you calibrate your expectations. The only true surprise is that the story continues to end on a cliffhanger. The tale is no longer must see television, but it is still entertaining as a standard fantasy. Especially, if you want a bit of escapism without having to think too hard about it.

--

The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Highlights:

• Major casting change shifts the energy of the series
• Cliched but more streamlined storytelling
• Lots of appealing girl power and diverse characters

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Interview with Sean CW Korsgaard

Sean CW Korsgaard is a U.S. Army veteran, award-winning freelance journalist, author, editor, and publicist who has worked with Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Baen Books, and Writers of the Future, and recently became the editor of Anvil and Battleborn magazines. His first anthology, Worlds Long Lost, was released in December 2022, as was his debut short story, “Black Box.” He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and child, along with, depending on who you ask, either far too many or far too few books.

PW: Tell us about your new venture.

SK: So, the new venture!

Howard Andrew Jones and I conceived Battleborn shortly after Tales of the Magician's Skull was sold to new ownership, in part wondering how to improve upon the concept, in part wondering how to get a magazine under more stable footing. Though launch was delayed because of his death, what you see now with Battleborn is that same concept brought to life. The magazine 70k words an issue of cutting-edge sword-and-sorcery and heroic fantasy, with a focus on character-driven storytelling and hard knuckle action. Each issue will have some classic genre reprints, and our first two include a Michael Shea and David Drake story that have both been out of print for decades. We will also have around 10k words of non-fiction, ranging from genre history to book reviews, and even a comic that pays homage to Jack Vance and 2000AD. Through our crowdfunder, we hope to launch with three issues in 2026, and be able to pay if not pro-rates, close to it. We're also planning on rolling out audiobooks, merchandise, comics and even a line of reprints as resources allow, to keep the magazine more sustainable, and do so under a profit sharing agreement with the authors.

Our first issue is fully funded as of last week, our second is about halfway there, and we have well over a month to raise all we can to see Battleborn take to the frontlines of fantasy next year in bold fashion.

Another final touch you may appreciate: from first issue to final, Howard's name will be on our masthead as Editor Emeritus, a standard and role model for all who seek to submit to the magazine that, I hope, shall help carry on his spirit and love of this genre.

PW: So tell me a bit about the new authors you are looking to write pieces for, and how their work matches up with the genre reprints you are doing at the same time.

SK: We started with the authors who are well known in sword-and-sorcery - guys like John C. Hocking, James Enge, CL Werner, ones who have the well-earned reputations within the genre and are known by sword-and-sorcery buffs. Anyone familiar with Howard's tenure at Tales of the Magician's Skull should see a lot of old favorites among the ranks at Battleborn. Likewise, a lot of familiar heroes to genre fans - Werner's Shintaro Oba, Robert Rhodes' Gabriela de Quetar, Steven L. Shrewsbury's Rogan to name a few.

Then I went gunning for a few big names, with some outside draw - Michael Stackpole has a story in a setting very much inspired by Roger Zelazny, and Christopher Ruocchio will prove as adept at sword-and-sorcery as he has space opera. Speaking with a few others about the future, too - one author who might not make it in the first three issues (they're under deadline for their next novel with Tor) came to me with a wild idea for a setting I can't wait to showcase in a future issue.

The indies will prove to be the big wildcards for a lot of readers. Schyler Hernstrom has been a mainstay of small press sword-and-sorcery, and he's pulling double duty with a comic strip in the magazine, and a perfect introduction to his work, a novella that I feel is sword-and-sorcery's answer to Le Guin's Omelas quandary. Alyssa Hazel may be our biggest surprise - she's an expecting mother who handsells her self-published books at conventions, primarily horror and science fiction. I saw her reading Clarke Ashton Smith and asked if she had ever taken a stab at sword-and-sorcery, and her story Battleborn is her first - and given she turned in a gripping tale of a warrior with a Mongolian death worm on her heels that blew me away, no doubt the first of many more.

As for those reprints, I started with one key metric: A list of classic authors and stories, and compared them to how long they've been out of print. Our first two, Pearls of the Vampire Queen by Michael Shea and The Mantichore by David Drake, have both been out of print for decades, and Battleborn will be the first time either will appear in digital or audio form!

If all goes well and we fund to the level we need to, all remaining space will be going to an open submission period in October - we're looking at 50-60k words up for grabs split across three issues, and as excited as I am to showcase the authors and fiction we have already, THAT is something I'm looking even more forward to, knock on wood.

PW: I see on the crowdfunding page that additional artwork is part of the stretch goals, should the campaign succeed. Tell me about the importance for you of including artwork in sword and sorcery stories.

SK: Artwork is fundamental to the sword-and-sorcery subgenre - how many people were first turned into reading Conan and Elric by Frank Frazetta and Michael Whelan long before they knew the names of Robert E. Howard or Michael Moorcock?

It's also by far the most expensive part of the production process, I don't mind telling you. In spite of that, every story in Battleborn with have a black-and-white interior illustration. Two, if we hit that stretch goals.

I also wish to emphasize something here: AI Art will NEVER appear in Battleborn.

PW: That's great to hear about AI art being verboten. So what is it like to edit sword and sorcery, be it a reprint or new, in this day and age where sword and sorcery has a lot of competition from other fantasy sub-genres?

SK: Truthfully, I find it wonderfully refreshing. I've edited a LOT of fiction, from military science fiction to cozy fantasy, but getting to work in my favorite genre, sword-and-sorcery, is incredibly rewarding.

Even within sword-and-sorcery fandom, the approach we are taking with Battleborn involves a specific focus that maybe our contemporaries might not. For example, given the action-oriented focus of our fiction, I am giving special care to editing all the combat, that it feels tactile, authentic and exhilarating.

And that competition from other fantasy subgenres is part of why its so exciting - romantasy and LitRPG are having thier moment, but there's undeniably also an appetite and a market for more traditional heroic fantasy.

PW: So what feeds your brain lately in the heroic fantasy space, besides the fine works you plan on bringing to the public with Battleborn?

SK: So I read a lot of things at any given time, but lately? Scott Oden's new collection is wonderful, and I'm reading Elizabeth Bear's novel The Folded Sky for a review in Analog. Analog has been especially wonderful because it means I'm still reading science fiction, as opposed to fantasy entirely.

The big thing has been re-reading a ton of the sword-and-sorcery classics. There is another project I was working on with Howard - do remind me to read you in on that sometime - which means I have had to read if not the entire body of work of close to two dozen authors, close to it. I'm making my way through David Gemmell at the moment, he really was a master at staging his action scenes.

That has been one of the best parts of doing a deep dive like this - project or not, it has been highly educational, each of those authors has a unique touch or lesson to take away from their work.

PW: What else do you want readers to know about Battleborn, and where can they support it?

SK: For writers and artists? I want to be a fair dealer, cut you in where I can, and create the kind of magazine you will puff up with pride to have your work featured in.

For the industry types? I am sure there will some stumbles and some growing pains along the way, but I hope to do my best to create the kind of magazine worthy of being included in the company of such worthy outlets, from Analog to Clarkesworld.

For sword-and-sorcery fans? I hope in time that you trust our logo to strand for everything that you love in our subgenre, two-fisted action, and hardfighting heroes facing fearful odds, and with each issue, you feel that same rush you did the first time you picked up your first Conan or Elric paperback.

PW: Excellent. Where can readers find out more, and support the campaign?

SK: Our crowdfund is right here - we are a few hundred shy of guaranteeing digital releases of three issues next year, and at 10k and 15k, physical releases for two and three as well!

Longterm? battlebornmagazine.com, as well as everywhere fine books and magazines are sold.


Thank you, Sean!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Book Review: Idolfire by Grace Curtis

An engaging and entertaining novel that does most, but not quite everything, that it says on the tin

In a world of fallen empires, lost gods and the power to channel divinity, Kirby, a young woman from a dying village, sets off on a quest to find the stolen icon of goddess Iona. Kirby is convinced, with some solid evidence, that Iona’s absence is the reason why the community suffers under a curse that is slowly and steadily strangling it. Meantime, Aleya, the overachieving daughter of the current ruler of the powerful city of Ash, is finally given a quest (a Calling) to prove her worth, which sets her off on the road as well, to the same destination as Kirby: to a city that once ruled the vast and now fallen empire of Nivela.

This is the story of Grace Curtis’s Idolfire, a resolutely standalone fantasy novel.

I do want to lead off with that. In a world of trilogies, duologies (which appear to be especially popular these days) and other extended series, this is a story that wraps up everything in one volume. You will get a complete story here of the two (and then a third) main characters, complete and whole. Kudos to the author for managing that feat.

Idolfire is advertised and marketed as “A character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slow-burn romance. An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome.” We do get most of that in this book.

First up, the characters. Our two main protagonists, Kirby and Aleya, do take their time to meet, and their sapphic romance is definitely a slow burn in the squabbling-squabbling-acceptance-sparks sort of affair. It should be said that this fantasy world is resolutely queernorm; their relationship is just an accepted part of human relations in this ’verse. And while Kirby may have been shy and barely kissed anyone before, Aleya definitely has had prior lovers (and we meet one while on the road). So the bones of all that are good, and a lot of the novel works on the engines of its characters, both when they are apart and then when they unite.

Their relationship and their natures are an excellent engine for drama and events that unfold during the course of the novel. While Kirby can’t fight her way out of a paper bag at the beginning (despite having what might be a magic sword she can barely swing), she has practical skills for living off of the land that Aleya does not. Aleya has trained as a fighter all her life (see the above mention of sword fights),  but also has diplomatic and administrative skills (after all, she does want to rule Ash, or thinks she does). Aleya is also the one that can use the titular Idolfire, using the belief and power of gods stored in relics and other items in which it resides. The power unleashed by this does degrade and use up the relic, and it is tied to the nature of the god/dess herself. If you use a statue consecrated to the God of War, you are going to get war and martial-based effects, not healing.

Let’s continue. It is definitely a road trip book of the first water, as they both are not only traversing the landscape; they are in many cases following the old straight-line implacable roads of the fallen prior civilization, the Nivelans. This is where the “Fall of Rome” inspiration comes in, as the Nivelans have built their roads in what many readers would recognize as a “Roman” mode: straight lines, and damn the geography that is in its way. Roads that most definitely do not harmonize and work with the landscape, but rather seek to dominate it. There are a couple of names and other things that also tag as Roman, but in the main, though, while the author was inspired by the fall of Rome (as she says in the acknowledgements/afterword), I saw a different model and inspiration that she does call out in the aforementioned back matter, but I think is a fairly more dominant influence overall in the book. You might have guessed it already with a city-state named Ur.

Yes, this book and its world very much run on lines inspired by Ancient Mesopotamia. We have a world that is mostly city-states (with a fallen empire for good measure). We have a world where there are a ton of local deities, and those deities and their worship are tied directly to the land, and can be, in fact, stolen. Curtis relays an incident in the back matter where this actually happened in real-life Ancient Mesopotamia, and that incident shapes Kirby’s life and story profoundly as a result. And Mesopotamia, with its palimpsest of prior civilizations, fallen cities, ruins, and more, is very much the model for the landscape of the road trips that Kirby and Aleya go on, separately and together. Even the realm that the city of Ash sits in is called Ur, after a famous Mesopotamian city state.

Mesopotamia, the Land Between the Rivers, is an inspiration and a model for fantasy that gets a lot less play than Greece or Rome or Egypt. The author is not unique here: Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers is very much in the mold of this book. That book uses a godly point of view, but the whole idea of this fractured Mesopotamian landscape of rising and falling civilizations, tons of deities, and a city-state-based mentality with the occasional and irresistible eruption (and then decline) of empires resonates between Curtis’s work and Turtledove’s. I can also find resonances in L Sprague De Camp’s Novaria novels and stories, and the Godserfs series by N. S. Dolkart. Also, Kirby’s home village of Wall’s End, at the edge of the huge ruined city of Balt, reminded me strongly of Pavis, a massive ruined city in the RPG world of Glorantha, which itself as a setting takes a lot of its notes from ancient Mesopotamia.

But in the main, Ancient Mesopotamia is a rich (and underused) setting for all this, and one that more authors could definitely take ideas from and claim as their own. Thus, Curtis takes advantage of that and uses it effectively and deeply to give a real richness to the road trip. A road trip across the fallen Roman Empire? Tired. A road trip across Ancient Mesopotamia? Wired.

Where the novel doesn’t do what it says on the tin, then, is the phrase “science fantasy.” For me, and I think, as is commonly accepted in the fields of genre, science fantasy is a fusion of the ideas, concepts, trappings and motifs of fantasy with science fiction. It is the original “peanut butter in my chocolate / chocolate in my peanut butter” subgenre, and discussing it in full detail might be beyond the remit of this review.. But while Idolfire has some excellent fantasy elements, as outlined above, there is no science fiction in this work whatsoever. There is, unusually, a moment of *science* that recalls a real-life remarkable event in ancient history, and it delighted me that Curtis slotted it in there. But that doesn’t make it science fantasy either.

Instead, a different subgenre of SFF fits this novel better. It’s a well-made and cromulent sword-and-sorcery novel, not a science fantasy novel. Sword and Sorcery fits as a much better label for this book. Swordswoman (and her companion), fighting, adventure, road trip, strange gods, weird magic, and the like. Could I see Kirby and Aleya and Nylophon (I’ll get to him in a moment) wandering around Hyperborea, or Lankhmar, or Ranke or, even more recently, and really on the mark, the sword-and-sorcery world of Howard Andrew Jones’s Hanuvar? Absolutely. I think the label “science fantasy” does this book a disservice, and “sword and sorcery” reflects more accurately what this world and its characters are like, and what the reader can expect as they navigate the book. Is Sword and Sorcery a limiting label? Possibly that is a subject beyond the remit of this review.

But enough of that. Let’s dig back into this book and what it does. So, aside from our two protagonists, we are given two additional characters and points of view. The first is a mysterious one, where Curtis uses a second-person point of view to inject mystery into this character, whose identity and nature is only slowly revealed in the course of the novel. That character provides some parallax to the events and backstory of the novel, and to reveal more would be spoilery.

The other character is Nylophon. Nylophon is a mercenary soldier from the mercantile realm of Carthe. It’s not quite Carthage, although that is clearly meant to be a bit of an inspiration; the Carthe hire themselves out as mercenary soldiers and make bank on it. Nylophon has clawed his way to a small command by luck and perseverance and making the right friend (lover, implied; Nylophon is queer as Kirby and Aleya) to basically save his life. After a disastrous encounter with our two main protagonists, he takes on a Javert-like role, and also his is a story of redeeming himself and coming to terms with who he is. Even if he is rather a prat for a lot of the novel, he does in the end get better.

Finally, a word about the writing, and especially the dialogue. The novel crackles when the characters engage with each other, and the descriptions of the world, their adventures and the landscapes come out well written and engaging. Combat and swordfighting, although present and a highlight in the book, isn’t as lingered over in the text as other things; the writing here is economical and to the point, much like Aleya’s own fighting style. Where the novel comes off the best of all is in the whole road trip, from sea voyages to the Nivelan road, to some of the truly strange things our protagonists encounter along the way. There is a great sense of atmosphere here.

Like I said at the start, the story is completed in one volume, with some fillips and twists as our two protagonists (and yes, Nylophon) make their way to the culmination of their quests, and find that the city of Nivela, their destination, is not quite what they expected at all. There are real moments of heroism and completion here, especially for Nylophon, who gets a “payoff scene” in the climax of the book that he clearly has been working toward ever since he was introduced in the narrative. The novel satisfies, in the end. The author promises more fantasy novels in the future, and I am quite reasonably happy to give them a go.

You can also read Roseanna's review of Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel here at the NOAF blog.

Highlights:

• Interesting pair of primary characters on a road trip adventure

• Strongly imagined Mesopotamian-flavored fantasy setting

• Not a science fantasy after all, but very much worth reading

Reference: Curtis, Grace. Idolfire [DAW, 2025].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Anime Review: Hell’s Paradise

Fascinating characters and deep philosophical explorations balance the intense violence of this unusual tale 

After hearing much acclaim for this gruesome anime, I finally decided to try out Hell’s Paradise although I’m not normally a fan of very gory or intensely nihilistic fiction. However, Hell’s Paradise lives up to the hype and delivers fascinating characters, meaningful emotions, and intriguing backstories in its very violent first season. 

Hell’s Paradise is set in a fictional historical time period and is primarily the story of Gabimaru, an emotionless assassin taken from his murdered parents as an infant and trained from childhood by a cruel ninja leader to be a high level killer with no emotional attachments. Gabimaru’s efficient and ruthless killing, along with his lack of emotion lead to his nickname, “Gabimaru the Hollow.” As a reward for his overwhelming successes at killing, Gabimaru is given his leader’s daughter as a wife. Gabimaru initially treats her with emotionless indifference, however his wife is unexpectedly emotionally strong, intellectually thoughtful, and intentionally kind in a way that slowly brings Gabimaru back to his humanity. Of course, this kind of happiness can’t last. Gabimaru is sentenced to death for trying to leave the assassin group so he can stop killing and live quietly in his marriage. He is jailed and separated from his wife (whose fate is unclear throughout the story). However, despite his death sentence, he remains alive because repeated violent and horrific executions fail to kill or even injure him and he becomes bored to the point of despondence. This leads some to believe he is a demon. After multiple attempts at killing him fail, Gabimaru and several other condemned prisoners are given a chance for a pardon, but the cost is high. They must journey, each with an assigned asaemon (guard/executioner), to a fabled paradise island and bring back a substance known as the Elixir of Life. The prisoner who successfully brings back the elixir will get a pardon but everyone else will be executed. Gabimaru is suddenly motivated to live, and accepts the offer in the hopes of earning a pardon so he can be reunited with his wife. 

All of these detail are just the premise. The main plot of Hell’s Paradise is composed of the experiences of the prisoners and their guards as they navigate the unimaginable terrors of the island along with their own internal demons. Gabimaru is assigned a young woman named Sagiri as his guard. She is lethal, quiet, and introspective, but also periodically insecure—not because of her skills but because of the constant sexism and gaslighting she faces. Her internal journey to balance, rather than suppress, her emotions becomes entangled with Gabimaru’s unsteady journey to and from emotional deadness. Over time, the two build a strange connection. The initial exploration of the island is portrayed through the experiences of Gabimaru and Sagiri, but the story soon shifts to the intriguing backstories of the other prisoners, some wrongfully condemned, and the asaemon guards, many with complex motivations or unexpected viewpoints. These include loud and powerful Chobei and gentle but lethal Toma, the criminal and guard pair who are secretly brothers. The anime also follows the poignant friendship between the reformed criminal guard Tenza and innocent child prisoner Nurugai. 

The overall vibe of the story feels like a combination of shows like Lost, Jujustsu Kaisen, and Squid Game. It has the mysterious island setting of Lost along with the intriguing character backstories that lured Lost viewers in the first two seasons. It has the intensely artistic animation style of Jujustsu Kaisen (MAPPA is the same animation house that does both series) and it has the fantastical, supernatural creature element, in which unexpected, strange, or grotesque creatures create an ongoing atmosphere of uncertainty for characters who are constantly surprised by new antagonists with randomly unknown levels of strength. And, if that isn’t stressful enough, there is the Squid Game-style lethal competitiveness where the prisoners are pitted against each other in a race for both the elixir and survival. But, what makes all of this stress worth it are the primary characters. Each one is intriguing, tragic, likeable, and complicated, making the show more than just a bloodbath or an adrenaline rush of adventure. Each individual’s race for survival is an extension of the character’s struggles that began long before they arrived on the mysterious island. 

Hell’s Paradise is also a dizzying philosophical exploration of conflicting concepts. The fabled paradise of the island is actually a hellscape of terrors hidden in serenely beautiful plants and flowers. The titans of the island, the Tensen, continuously shift genders, sometimes mid-conversation or mid-conflict. The trees are human beings. The only child on the island is hundreds of years old. Throughout the story, characters ponder a range of conflicting philosophies in an ongoing struggle to understand their unbelievable experiences. In fact, each episode has a title and theme which reflects the ongoing inherent or interwoven dichotomy (“Heart and Reason,” “Gods and People,” “Dreams and Reality”). 

Be warned that Hell’s Paradise is not a teen shonen anime. The show has adult content in terms of both violence and sexuality. Those less familiar with the discussed philosophical theories, may want to research some of the referenced concepts, although it is not essential to do so. Gabimaru and Sagiri start as the primary protagonists but gradually merge into the ever-changing ensemble, and, as the story progresses, it turns out many of the core elements of the journey may not be what they seem. The effect is, at times, intense, heartbreaking, and profound. However, the next season of Hell’s Paradise is still a year away. So, there is still plenty of time to become immersed in this violent but uniquely addictive adventure.

--

The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Fascinating characters with intriguing backstories
• Extremely bloody
• Thoughtful philosophical explorations amid fast-paced fight scenes.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Interview: Oliver Brackenbury and New Edge Magazine

Today at Nerds of a Feather, we talk to editor Oliver Brackenbury of New Edge Magazine about two Mongol themed Sword and Sorcery novellas at the center of a crowdfunding campaign.

1. For those not familiar with you or New Edge, please introduce yourself and the magazine.

My name is Oliver Brackenbury, a Canadian author, podcaster, and screenwriter with a deep love of Sword & Sorcery. Recently I've also become an editor and publisher.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery is an illustrated short fiction and non-fiction magazine featuring original stories, interviews, reviews, and articles all centered on the titular genre. Our motto is "Made with love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!"

"Made with love for the classics..." means we care deeply about letting readers know what makes classic S&S characters & creators worth exploring. In just two years we've been blessed with the latest Elric story by Michael Moorcock, are on track to publish the first Jirel of Joiry story in 85 years, and have or will soon publish numerous articles introducing new readers to notable figures from the S&S canon like C.L. Moore, Charles Saunders, and Cele Goldsmith Lali.

"...an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!" means we're working hard contributing to there being a broader swath of humanity on the page, behind the keyboard, and in the fandom. We're also hungry to see how we can expand the possibilities of what S&S can do (themes, story structures, prose styles...) while still being clearly recognizable as itself.

Judging by how things have gone so far, people like the results of our efforts!

Barely past our two year anniversary, we have expanded into publishing under the name "Brackenbury Books", and are currently crowdfunding our second book, "Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery", a pair of Mongol-inspired S&S novellas bound in a single paperback akin to the classic Ace Double line.

2) We've seen Mongol-inspired S&S out of New Edge before, but what prompted you to make it the focus of this crowdfunding effort. In short...Why Mongols?

In short, because it's a fascinating culture & period of history, Asian set S&S is almost always rooted in Chinese or Japanese historical inspiration, and because it allowed me to pair two authors I love in one book, writing characters I'd seen people react strongly to in our magazine, each exploring basically the same setting in their own unique way.

In detail, it was an organic product of how the magazine began, and grew into book publishing.

The magazine started with a sweat equity prototype issue #0, available free in digital and priced at cost in soft/hardcover, and the table of contents was drawn almost entirely from a single online community where a bunch of us had strong feelings about how to take Sword & Sorcery into the future.

This included two authors who set their stories in Mongol-rooted settings yet write with totally unique voices: Bryn Hammond writes the nomad Goatskin having adventures in a more fantastic version of our world, while Dariel R.A. Quiogue writes the deposed warlord Orhan the Snow Leopard's adventures in a secondary world heavily rooted in the same setting & time period - that of Genghis Khan.

Bryn is a respected, published scholar of historical non-fiction about that period, while Dariel is an amateur student of the era with over ten years experience writing fiction set in it. Bryn writes in a awe-inspiring, poetic, Weird-with-a-capital-"W" style, while Dariel specializes in pulse-pounding stories that astound with their action. Both can bring the full spectrum of Sword & Sorcery to a tale, but those are some of their specialties.

As part of the crowdfund we actually did a short story panel discussion livestream where we analyzed one Goatskin and one Orhan story, getting deep into what makes them worth reading.

But yes, having organically lucked into working with two knowledgeable, skilled authors - and great people - writing with complementary voices in a similar setting, Mongol S&S made perfect sense to me for this pairing of novellas.

3) I find that interesting, that you have both a fantasy novella, and a historical fantasy novella, and yet both are sword and sorcery. While sword and sorcery goes classically well with fantasy, what do you think the advantages, challenges and opportunities are for sword and sorcery as a genre to tackle more historical fantasy settings and characters?

Brian Murphy's most excellent book, "Flame & Crimson: A History of Sword & Sorcery", cites historical inspiration as one of the seven common aspects of the genre that make up his definition, saying that this lends "a degree of realism". He also rightly points out that S&S was born from Robert E. Howard deciding to add fantastic elements to an historical adventure story he was having trouble selling, thus birthing the genre with "The Shadow Kingdom" in 1929.

I'd agree there's that degree of realism, even when the story is set in a secondary world with giant snakes, sorcery, etc., and since historical adventure was pretty much a co-parent of S&S, it's always worth considering when reading, writing, or reviewing it. But yes, your question!

I think the advantages include inspiration, grounding the story so that the fantastic elements really shine by contrast when they show up, and providing a foundation for your worldbuilding that will help make the setting consistent even if most of that foundation remains below the surface.

The main challenge is, of course, if you really wed your story to historical fact then you may set yourself up for nitpicking; Lovecraft famously advised Fritz Leiber to invent that most influential Fantasy city, Lankhmar, rather then set his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories in ancient Alexandria, specifically to avoid getting picked apart by the history nerds. You may also end up being very rigid with yourself, denying your story the ability to go where the narrative would be best suited on account of needing to do something ahistorical to facilitate it.

But I think it's worth it, even if you're fantastic elements are really out there, to consider more historical settings and characters when writing Sword & Sorcery. It gives you the opportunity to justify spending time on all kinds of fun research, to use the fantastic elements to draw in readers who otherwise might not learn the historical details you're including with them, to highlight peoples of historical periods who are often neglected (Bryn Hammond is particularly keen on doing so, which works great in tandem with the subgenre's history of outsider protagonists), make historical subtext brightly legible Fantasy text, and so much more.

4. How do you think Sword and Sorcery reflects the current trends in Fantasy as a whole, today? What place does it occupy in its ecosystem?

I'm wary of defining something I love by what it isn't, however in terms of current Fantasy trends I most often see S&S discussed by fans in terms of how it doesn't follow those trends.

With doorstopper thick, trilogy-or-more high fantasy series the standard right now, Sword & Sorcery can be a refreshing break with its shorter, fast paced, more episodic storytelling. Its more inferred worldbuilding and soft or entirely absent magic systems can provide a breath of fresh air from over-explained settings that so often render the fantastic mundane. Meanwhile, a focus on grounded, outsider heroes just trying to survive a dangerous world can be more relatable than chasing chosen ones around on world-saving quests. And so on.

That said, it may grow in other ways to follow, not buck, publishing trends in the broader SFF sphere. For example, if we get to make our Double-Edge Sword & Sorcery book, the two novellas it contains will become Vol. 1 in what I hope will be only the first of several S&S novella series that we'll publish in the future. In that way S&S will be moving closer to the trend in SFF novellas that Tor has been the main driver behind in recent years.

5) Talking about trends in fantasy, and readership, what ideas do you have for introducing fantasy readers who think S&S is only Conan and bring them to see the potential of reading works such as Bryn and Daniel's?

Oh, lots of things! I'm a very enthusiastic promoter, so I've been working hard getting our authors out there for interviews across blogs, booktube, podcasts and so on. Getting contemporary S&S authors into venues where they can share their own unique take on the genre is a big part.

We also do our own regular short story panel discussion livestreams (here's a playlist) that focus on contemporary Sword & Sorcery tales from a variety of publications, with an eye to showing off the wide range of possibilities. For example we covered "Dara's Tale", by Mark Rigney, to show what S&S can look like with an adolescent protagonist in a story with some overlap with fairy tale tropes.

Naturally there's our magazine, New Edge Sword & Sorcery, which not only features a variety of stories where we aim to show off the full breadth of Sword & Sorcery, there's also non-fiction articles, historical profiles, interviews, and book reviews that help spread fun & interesting knowledge about what S&S can do. My note to our non-fiction authors is always to try and get people excited about the present & future fo the genre, not just the past, when they write pieces like Jon Olfert's article on neurodivergence in S&S, Nathaniel Web's upcoming piece on Heavy Metal's relationship to S&S, or even pieces on past figures because hey if this 20th century author could do X in the genre then what could be done to build on that?

And, honestly, crowdfunds are a great way to get the word out - especially if you make them a kind of community event to take part in, not just a chance to pre-order something. We do our best, mainly through livestreams that have included interviews, panel discussions, TTRPG sessions, and even live music as a way of drawing people in to find out what this S&S thing is all about!

There's always more I could say on this, but that feels like a good answer for now.

6) Is there anything else our readers should know about the campaign, or New Edge, or the two fabulous writers?

Well, the campaign ends at noon EST on Saturday, October 19th so you'll want to back it before then!

Some fun items I haven't mentioned yet include...

• The physical editions are traditionally printed, with the softcover a classic mass-market paperback, and there's a very limited run hardcover of the same dimensions that sports a nice bookmark ribbon. We love the Book As Object and do our best to produce a high quality product.
• There's a crowdfund exclusive bonus short story and, if we hit 300 backers, that will have poetry added to it! Both tie into the novellas, but are not mandatory to enjoy or understand them.
• Other crowdfund exclusives include a bookmark with art from each cover on either side, battle-axe logo stickers, signed author bookplates, and more.
• Our crowdfunds are also the best time to buy New Edge Sword & Sorcery back issues, which we discount only when providing them as Add-Ons for backer pledges.
• We aim to have a Final Friday "Telethon" livestream this Friday at 7pm EST! You can watch it right on the crowdfund page, where the trailer sits at the top. Past crowdfund's Final Friday livestreams have featured TTRPG live play sessions, live music, interviews, and other fun treats; I won't spoil what we have coming for this one!

Our authors can tell you plenty about themselves in the recordings of their recent livestream interviews, so I'll let them speak for themselves.

As for New Edge / Brackenbury Books? As I write this we're a mere $225 from hitting 100% funding on this book and we'd love for you to help take us soaring past that point! We're excited to make the book, naturally, and this crowdfund succeeding will put us in a great place for continuing to produce high quality publications featuring titanic tales paired with awesome art, all coming to you from a diverse array of talented creators.

So go on, check it out!

Thank you so much, Oliver!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Review: Shadow of the Smoking Mountain by Howard Andrew Jones

Hanuvar’s story continues as he meets new allies, enemies, and challenges

This, third in the series, is not the place to really start with his story (that would be Lord of a Shattered Land). Shadow of the Smoking Mountain continues the story of Hanuvar, Volani General trying to survive and help his scattered and enslaved people in the wake of the Dervan invasion. The Dervans are expy Romans, the Volani are the Carthaginians, and Hanuvar is the terror himself, Hannibal. The story of his life after Carthage fell in our timeline doesn’t get much interest except for real enthusiasts of the period, and it is not a happy one. Jones, in his secondary world, has given him a different, and so far happier, path. But not an easier one.

The book continues its structure of being a series of short stories about Hanuvar’s adventures and efforts to free the enslaved surviving Volani. In doing that, he gets tied up and wrapped up in all sorts of local situations. This world is a sword-and-sorcery reflection of our own, so gods, demons, strange beings, and dark magics are all real, and to be feared. Hanuvar knows about magic, and at points in the book poses as a worker of magic, but in the end he is a general, tactician and warrior. He knows of magic as a tool, and struggles against it, but he is no spell-slinging wizard.

The title will give you a clue as to the culmination of where the book and its characters are headed. Indeed, Hanuvar is going to find himself on the slopes of a mountain ready to go boom, but in classic sword-and-sorcery fashion, it’s going to be even worse than a simple catastrophic eruption. The story of Hanuvar finding that out, and who the real enemy is, and the struggle against them, are the meta-plots of the novel, overarching individual episodes. Another overarching plot is one he’s had since the first book: what happened to his daughter? As much as he is working to free all of the Volani, he is especially interested, passionate, about his daughter and her fate.

That is an advantage to the Hanuvar novels that counters the view that a number of people have about sword and sorcery as a genre. The idea that Conan is just a muscle-bound idiot hewing through life idiotically with no overall sense of connection to anyone or anything, or other sword-and-sorcery heroes having few or no ties, is a misperception that Hanuvar seems tailor-made to counter. Hanuvar wants to free his people, abstract but concrete, but he is also looking for his daughter, and sometimes makes a bad decision or three in order to further that goal. There is a slow-burn romance for Hanuvar in the novel as well. One of the stories breaks away from Hanuvar altogether and makes Antires (his biographer) the main character in a very fun change of pace, as we get to see what makes him really tick.

My favorite character, however, is the “Catwoman” of the book, and that is Aleria. We met her in a previous volume, but she really swoops into the narrative here on multiple occasions, and her dynamic with Hanuvar is some of the best character bits in the book. The classic “heroine of her own story” with her own goals and motivations, but she wouldn’t mind having Hanuvar as a partner, far from it. One wonders, given Jones’ erudition, if Aleria isn’t meant to invoke Valeria from the Conan story “Red Nails”. (and yes, the Conan the Barbarian movie, but that Valeria is quite different than the original character). Aleria is the kind of character that could be spun off on her own adventures in stories and novels, easily.

And that brings me to a topic that, as of the writing of this review, has been in the air again,and that is worldbuilding. The worldbuilding in the Hanuvar novels, including this one, try to walk the line between infodumping and having the reader sink or swim. Some of the footnotes in the text also do help in this regard, but some of those are as much about the interpretation of the text as anything. They are not Vancean/Pratchettian in their design and intent.¹ Jones works heavily on the expy model to get readers halfway to their understanding of their world, and leans into some simplifications to make things easier. As you know, Jane, the Romans defeated Carthage once and for all over a century before they became an Empire. They fought three wars against Carthage. But for simplification for the worldbuilding, the Dervans are already in the Principate, they fought only two wars against Volanus, et cetera. But the smoking Mountain of the title, Esuvia, is most definitely meant to be Vesuvius under another name. The Herrenes are most definitely the expy of the Greeks. A lot of the names Jones uses, as you can see, are close enough to rhyme with the real world particulars to help get the reader there.

For me, worldbuilding is best when it provides the imagination a space that seems larger than the events in the book itself. It feels grounded and complete enough that you can imagine, afterwards. This doesn’t mean I need or want an RPG manual “The GM’s Guide to Derva” but when I am reading, I am putting myself into the world and into the characters. I want to be able to feel the road beneath my feet, and imagine, what if Hanvuar took a left here, rather than a right, and plausibly have enough of the world to imagine it. I don’t need to know what the other side of the globe is like (although I wouldn’t mind) but for the purposes of the work, there is a trompe l’oeil that there is much more to the world than the road Hanuvar walks.

Shadow of a Smoking Mountain accomplishes all this for me, and so for me, is successful at worldbuilding.

¹Like previous books in the series, there are footnotes in the text. The book is presented as a reinterpretation of a previous text, the Hanuvid, with commentary. Jones is having his cake and eating it too basically presenting the story in this frame.

Highlights:

• World continues to be rich and engaging.
• Good use of characters both as point of view and secondary, to provide a tapestry of interaction
• Strong sword and sorcery writing

Reference: Jones, Howard Andrew. Shadow of the Smoking Mountain [Baen, 2024].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Removing He-Man from his own show was exactly what the franchise needed

The sequel to the classic 80s cartoon fixes its main problem: its protagonist

When your character is defined plainly as "the most powerful man in the universe," there's no such thing as narrative stakes. In any episode of the classic He-Man show, which ran from 1983 to 1985, there's never any question that the hero will win. He's beyond Superman syndrome, beyond Dragon Ball syndrome: he simply can't be beaten. Whereas Superman syndrome was addressed early in his stories with the addition of kryptonite, and Dragon Ball syndrome can be temporarily patched with yet another escalation, He-Man syndrome has no solution. He's essentially Space Jesus. He's morphed beyond a character and into a flat fact of the universe: He-Man always wins, period. Which is why, if Kevin Smith wanted to tell a He-Man story that would be interesting to the trope-savvy audiences of the 21st century, He-Man had to go. Not fully, and not permanently, of course: as Smith himself has stated, Mattel Television would never retire such a lucrative character. But this first season of Masters of the Universe: Revelation, with He-Man out of the picture, provides a valuable opportunity to explore many questions that his huge shadow had hidden: What is it like to live as ordinary people in Eternia? Why is it a place worth defending? And who are these people who would choose to shun ordinary lives and fight for Eternia?

There's a reason why its sister show, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, ended up when it did: just after She-Ra has become an unstoppable and undefeatable warrior. The reason is a technical one which has to do with the fundamentals of the Western storytelling tradition. The core engine of narration in the Western canon is the tension between a character who has a desire and some factor in the world that opposes that desire. How the protagonist resolves that tension (or not) is how a story emerges. There's no more story to tell once your protagonist has everything they want. The Good Place had to end when its characters made it to heaven. After Puella Magi Madoka Magica turned Madoka into a goddess, the only way to produce a sequel was to lift another character to a demonic role to dethrone her.

With He-Man, who can lift mountains and punch moons, the only way to keep producing hundreds of episodes was within an 80s-style episodic format: the villain conceives some harebrained conquest plan, the hero stops it, the end. There's nowhere for the story to grow beyond this status quo where He-Man is always already the guaranteed victor. In the 80s, this narrative prison cell matched well with an audience that wasn't so overstimulated as today's and didn't know to demand a more exciting format. Even though the new series was conceived for the same viewers who were kids in the 80s, you can't tell 80s-style He-Man stories today. Sensibilities have shifted too much. Classic worldbuilding elements like "This guy and only this guy is the chosen hero" have evolved into "Who did the choosing, and according to which standard, and in the service of which interest?" (see The Matrix Reloaded). Established conventions like "These characters are here to be the hero's supporters" now prompt the question "How did that hierarchy emerge, and why don't they get to have lives and interests of their own?" (see every Robin ever). Epic missions like "Let's defend the royal palace" have turned into "Why do we even have royalty?" (see Thor: Ragnarok).

My favorite moment of Masters of the Universe: Revelation is in the first episode, when newly knighted Teela boldly says no in the king's face. The speech that follows is a great critique of the classic He-Man status quo. For years, Adam and his supporters let Teela fight side by side with them, but they never thought she could be trusted with the truth of what she was risking her life for. The stated reason for the secrecy is a command given by a prince to a soldier as a matter of political safety, but it intruded into the intimate realm of what a father could tell his daughter, so the fairness and legitimacy of that command deserved to be questioned. The king reacts in anger toward the soldier who lied to him about his son, but not toward the wife who did the same (and whose betrayal ought to hurt more). All these details reveal a set of power dynamics that the original show would never have acknowledged. Of the sizable cast of He-Man, Teela is the perfect choice to be the character who challenges those conventions. Instead of secrecy, this season runs with a repeated motif of "I'll go where you go," where burdens are shared and trust is based on openness.

This shouldn't have been controversial. Supergirl spent two entire seasons questioning the wisdom of Kara's choice to keep her secret from Lena, who clearly was on her side and risked her life on a daily basis for her. In Masters of the Universe: Revelation, we watch Teela free from the constraints of chivalry and monarchy, struggling to build a meaningful life that doesn't revolve around her service to He-Man.

With no more Castle Grayskull to fight over, Eternia becomes a less simple place. Factions are no longer as clearly defined as they used to be. Evil-Lyn recognizes that she shares with the Sorceress the goal to preserve the magic of the world. Beast Man is willing to go against former fellow villains to protect Evil-Lyn. Man-At-Arms is no longer defined by his political allegiance, but by his chosen family. So instead of unchangeable alignments in rigid opposition, we have community and cooperation.

Finally, there's Adam, who nevertheless remains the main hero of the show. He has Paradise. He has eternity. What more story is there to tell about him? It is to Smith's credit that he gives Adam a believable reason to give up the blissful afterlife: enough people have died for his sake. Classic He-Man never showed a character dying, or even a sword being used as a sword, because children's television was run by puritans, but the truth is that a life of war damages even its survivors. There's an emotional honesty at the center of this show that puts to shame the original's nonchalance about perpetual war. The fact that Adam's return to the living world doesn't result in a restoration of the status quo (which, frankly, would have been a boring erasure of all the themes of the season), but instead leaves us with an overpowered Skeletor and a weakened Adam, promises to make season 2 even more interesting. As an ordinary mortal, Adam can show us what makes him heroic when he doesn't have infinite power at hand. The final episode establishes that champions go to Paradise, but mortals go to dust. So Adam doesn't even have the prospect of everlasting reward for his coming challenges, and he doesn't have the assured victory he always had. This is the first time he'll have to face a battle he might lose. What will make it worth for him to keep fighting?

As you may have heard, this readjustment of the stakes didn't sit well with a segment of the fandom. You know which segment: the same that couldn't handle an all-woman Ghostbusters, felt betrayed by Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, and lost their heads because Lola Bunny is no longer voluptuous. The segment whose opinion only has weight in the conversation because it's loud, not because it's well informed. The segment that demands every beloved franchise stays the same or else their childhood will be ruined. The segment that claims to uphold He-Man as an icon of traditional masculinity while completely missing the mountains of queer subtext in the original cartoon. This new round of outrage is even less articulate than the previous ones. Self-proclaimed "true fans" are making nonsensical arguments that fail to grasp the basics of narrative. A perfect character can't sustain a compelling story. A fatal flaw in the Narnia books is that you enter the plot knowing Aslan shall win, which removes all the tension. Bible fanfiction only becomes exciting with a twist like Milton's choice to make Satan the focus character. Likewise, an updated He-Man series couldn't hope to be an engaging story if it kept, like the original, its Space Jesus intact. This is a very simple principle of the crafting of adventure fiction, and it's exhausting to have to hear the furious complaints from those who don't get it. Now Skeletor is Master of the Universe. Now Adam is powerless and injured. Now that's worth paying attention to. We finally have stakes to care about.

Nevermind that Adam will in all likelihood end up regaining his powers: this time he'll have a journey to get there instead of just being handed a magic sword. Kevin Smith is doing the franchise an enormous favor that should be recognized. He-Man is no longer the static epic of an invincible warrior. It's no longer a childish power fantasy. Now it's the tale of a relatable human struggle.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for sharp dialogue, +1 for Griffin Newman's heartfelt voice acting as Orko, +1 for the soundtrack.

Penalties: −1 for being too short and not showing us Teela's journey to the present point, −1 for not giving Andra sufficient development, −1 for oversimplifying Beast Man's character.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.