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Your blogs on Beginners guide to Drucraft speaks volume of the in depth background knowledge behind writing the books of IoM. I realize reading your novels I have barely scratch the surface of what it TAKES TO WRITE A NOVEL
Keep at it

A complete set (18 issues) of Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and published 1947-1952

Donald A. Wollheim edited a magazine between the years 1947 to 1952 called Avon Fantasy Reader for Avon Publishers. There were 18 issues, publishing mostly reprints.

Erik Mona reviewed the first issue of Avon Fantasy Reader for Black Gate back in 2023.

I’ve never seen a copy of any of these, but in the late 1960s, George Ernsberger selected some of the best stories from the magazine for two paperback volumes. I believe there were only two. Here are some quick looks at the paperbacks, which I own and have read.

[Click the images for fantastic versions.]

The Avon Fantasy Reader and The 2nd Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim
and George Ernsberger (Avon Books, January and February 1969). Covers by Gray Morrow

The Avon Fantasy Reader (1969), Avon Books. Contains,

A very short Foreword by Ernsberger
“The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen” by Robert E. Howard, which features a Conanesque hero named Pyrrhas
A Northwest Smith story by C. L. Moore called “Black Thirst”
“A Victim of Higher Space,” by Algernon Blackwood
A fine story by Nictzin Dyalhis called “The Sapphire Siren” (or “The Sapphire Goddess” in Echoes of Valor III)
“The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson
“The Crawling Horror” by Thorp McClusky
“The Kelpie” by Manly Wade Wellman, which is one of his better stories

The 2nd Avon Fantasy Reader (1969): Contains “The Blonde Goddess of Bal-Sagoth by Howard, and also has stories by C. L. Moore (Northwest Smith again), Zealla Bishop, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Edward Lucas White, Robert Bloch, Laurence Manning & Fletcher Pratt, and Sax Rohmer.

Back covers to The Avon Fantasy Reader and The 2nd Avon Fantasy Reader

“The Black Kiss” by Bloch was excellent, and very Lovecraftian in feel. Several of the stories had that kind of edge to them.

Overall, these two collections are more horror than Sword & Sorcery, although Howard’s two stories fit S&S. The title, “The Witch of Hell’s Kitchen” doesn’t suggest S&S but the tale’s other title perhaps does — “The House of Arabu.” I found both collections generally enjoyable.

I also love these cover illustrations, both of which are by Gray Morrow.

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was  The Sword & Sorcery of John Jakes. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.

In reply to Bill.

I usually don’t settle on a name until after the edits are done, since to me it’s just “part 4 of the ongoing story”.

In reply to Bill.

Also any news on the Book#4 edits or even a projected title for Book#4? It’s frustrating for a book to be just known as “4” rather than having an exciting/evocative title!

Life Sigls enhance (or impair) the way that the human body functions then is there a way to produce Sigls that improve the various drucraft skills?

Will the Hobbs and Joanna characters feature more in Book#4/#5? I was rather hoping that these characters would appear more in the developing storyline…

 Sitrep:

So, J10 is off to Goodlifeguide who said they will get it back to me by the end of the month. So, on track there.

I am past the half way point writing the current manuscript. It is a bit of a struggle here on out though. Not fun. There are a lot of ships and stuff to keep track of.

In other news, it is unseasonably hot... or soon will be here on the west coast. Way too dang early to be kissing 95 let alone nearly 100 later in the week! GRR! I hate hot weather!

On to the snippet!  

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Chapter 3

 

Triang

 

Jones checked the news with an eye to what they'd missed. The team had dispersed after the Antigua job. Much to his annoyance, the Feds had gotten a bit more than they'd like. The client was most likely not going to be happy.

If he wasn't careful, he might find himself on the wrong side of a cleanup spree. He had participated in them before. He never wanted to be on the wrong side but knew that it was a risk of the job.

The colateral damage had the media up in arms. The Feds had plastered images all over the media. There was no mention of DNA. So much for cyber covering their tracks, however. They had been lucky to get out of Antigua at all.

Well, the good news was that they'd had some partial success and turned over the DNA samples to the lab goons. He had not been offered a bonus, and he'd been wise enough not to ask about it.

If he got out of the area alive, he'd be quite content and call it a win.

<<(O)>>

Triang orbit

 

“There was no viable DNA in any of the samples that were recovered, sir,” the tech reported.

Nigel Mosfet was surprised and alarmed. He was unsure how that was possible. He frowned and then realized in the haste of the situation there might have been cross-contamination. Besides, it wasn’t like it had been a sterile environment to begin with. “Contaminated?”

“No, sir, no DNA. Not a trace of the target DNA. The only DNA we found were from the team which we filtered out.” He looked offended. “I ran the test three times to confirm.”

“How is that possible?” Nigel scowled. “All beings shed hair, skin … There should have been something!” He flapped his hands in distress.

“Unknown.” The tech frowned. “It could be that the hairs lacked follicles. I don’t understand the lack of skin cells.”

“Clearly we need to figure it out if only for our own uses in the future. So look into it.”

The tech nodded, looking slightly relieved to not be in trouble. “Yes, sir.”

Once the tech had retreated, Nigel frowned as he leaned against the chair. He tried to frame the report but he didn’t know how to do it without it coming back to bite him.

The one bit of good out of the report was that he couldn’t get called on the carpet for the failure. The general couldn’t ream his ass through the ansible. But the delay was hardly comforting. It just put off the inevitable.

He sighed softly and then selected a program. He selected a sympathy card in the pre-determined selection. He used his cipher to write three code words into the innocuous message and then read it. It looked good enough so he hit send.

What happened next was out of his hands.

He frowned. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He knew he had another mission coming up. But he could and probably should tidy up some loose ends.

Two of the mercenaries had come out on the passenger liner with the samples. Jones and Smith. Well, not Smith, he had links to the senator and was too useful. The review he’d seen had shown that Smith had done just about everything right.

He frowned thoughtfully and then called Smith in.

“You summoned me?” the agent asked in mild amusement.

Nigel turned to him. “Yes, I take it you heard?”

“Heard?” the lead agent asked mildly.

“Never mind then. Thoughts on fallout?”

“Moderate. They got better images and video than I’d thought.”

“I know.”

“I have a couple of agents on Antigua. I can have them work on some quiet cleanup.”

Nigel nodded thoughtfully. “We need to get into those files and erase them,” he warned. “All evidence needs to be contaminated or destroyed.”

Smith nodded. “That will be tough and won’t come cheap.”

Nigel frowned. “I’ll check with higher on a budget.”

Smith nodded.

“What about the operatives that got out?”

“All extracted successfully as of last report in. Four are headed south to ET. They’ll get lost there.”

Nigel frowned but then nodded. If they didn’t get picked off by the mobsters, they might get picked up by the Feds. If they did, they might have to do something about loose ends later.

The ET connection would obscure the real client, however, he reminded himself. But it would draw attention to unwanted parties.

“The good news is that it had the desired effect,” Smith said.

Nigel blinked as that statement penetrated. “In what way?” he asked.

“The side client wanted the heat off of his home. He got it. The target’s mother raced home in a courier. Word is she just got there.”

Nigel blinked and then pursed his lips.

“You know this how?”

“Saw it on the news a few minutes ago. I was actually coming to tell you.”

“Ah.” Nigel thought about it and then nodded. “Funny how she made the news.”

“The connection to her illustrious husband and of course the recent attack on her family no doubt,” Smith stated.

Nigel nodded.

“What about the operative that came in with you?”

“He’s solid. Laying low. Waiting for orders. Possibly expecting the ax to fall.”

“Paranoid?”

Smith snorted. “Wouldn’t you be in his shoes?”

“True,” Nigel admitted. “I’ll find out from higher if they want a general housecleaning. You and I both know that they won’t be happy.”

Smith froze. He turned to Nigel. “I take it the samples had issues?” he asked slowly.

Nigel just stared at him.

Smith’s Adam’s apple bobbed briefly and then he nodded slowly. He was internally kicking himself for not checking the samples sooner. “Good to know. Though I don’t understand how that could have happened.”

“Be more careful in the future.”

“Definitely,” Smith said fervently. “Most definitely.”

<<(O)>>

Arcane Arts and Cold Steel (Pulp Hero Press, December 24, 2025)

David C. Smith is a name that speaks to lovers of sword & sorcery, if not with the power of a Karl Edward Wagner, then not far behind, and if you love the genre but don’t know Dave’s name…1) Shame on you; 2) Let me get you up to speed.

A powerful writer of the genre’s last great flowering in the late 70s, Dave’s Tales of Attluma — a sunken lost continent — have spanned five decades, chronicling multiple eras in the lost land’s history — including its destruction — beginning with the epic saga of Oron and most recently, the Unforgiven-esque Sometime Lofty Towers, which I will go on record as calling the best s&s novel since the Elric-fixups, and with more emotional punch.

The Red Sonja series by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney (Ace Books, December 1981-May 1983). Covers by Boris Vallejo

Dave is also the man who, with another S&S giant, the late Richard L. Tierney, successfully took one of the most vapid characters in S&S — Roy Thomas’s sexing up and dumbing down of Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonya into Marvel’s Red Sonja — and wrote a brilliant, six-volume work-for-hire that are worth the sometimes high prices they command in used bookstores.

Finally, his Literary Biography of Robert E. Howard is one of the most important pieces of Howard scholarship produced in the last twenty years.

Sometime Lofty Towers by David C. Smith (Brackenbury Books,‎ December 2025). Cover by Saša Đurđević

All of which is saying, Dave knows this genre inside and out. Not just its history, but how to write it.

And that bring us to Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (with a foreword by BG‘s very own John O’Neill).

Advertised as “Part master class, part genre analysis, Arcane Arts and Cold Steel is written for authors who want to write bestselling sword-and-sorcery for a modern audience.” This is true, but the publisher undersells the book’s power. Yes, the book has a lengthy appendix in which Dave speaks directly to the aspiring writer and reveals his tool kit, and an interview transcript where he speaks to both his career, his long hiatus, and the lay of the S&S writing landscape today. But the core of the book is something much more.

Tales of Attluma by David C. Smith (Pulp Hero Press,‎ December 24, 2025). Cover by Tom Barber

Beginning with a short, concise history of the genre, Dave gets into what IS sword & sorcery fiction, not by trying to create a list of characteristics (Brian Murphy and the late Howard Andrew Jones already did yeoman work here), but by the working nuts & bolts that is usually reserved for snobby lit-crit books.

Smith sees sword & sorcery as the ancestral descendent of myth cycles — Gilgamesh fighting Humbaba, Theseus & the Minotaur, the adventures of the Argonauts — as those tales are immediate and personal, whereas high fantasy is more akin to the great epics.

The Sorcerer’s Shadow by David C. Smith (Zebra Books,‎ September 1978). Cover by Doug Beekman

Like Howard Andrew Jones, he sees the immediate predecessor of the genre in the historical adventure fiction of the late 19th century and first years of the 20th century: the work of Haggard and Lamb, the pantheon of pulp writers in Adventure and Argosy, that all coalesced as a young man from west Texas synthesized those experiences, the successful John Carter and Tarzan pennings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the weird horror he already wrote and created the characters of Solomon Kane, Kull and Conan, launching a new genre along the way.

Drawing on a century of fiction — from the foundations laid by Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, to the gritty reinventions of Karl Edward Wagner and Charles Saunders, and into the “New Edge” renaissance pioneered by Howard Andrew Jones, Smith looks at story structure: character & setting; plot & scene construction; style, voice, and tone; the use of horror & the supernatural; even the role of the inhuman as character and lens on human issues. Like a lit-crit academic, he digs deep into these topics through extensive examples from real published sources.

The Shadow of Sorcery by David C. Smith (Wildside Press, March 5, 2026). Cover by Mike Hoffman

And this is the first gold mine. Yes, of course, we see Howard, Leiber, Moorcock and Wagner being cited and examined, but there are as many — or more — examples from the writers of Smith’s generation, such as Adrian Cole, Richard Tierney and Charles Saunders, and even more from active writers today: Jason Ray Carney, Milton Davis, John Fultz, Bryn Hammond, Schuyler Hernstrom, John Hocking, the late Howard Andrew Jones, Dariel Quioge, Jason M. Waltz, Clint Werner and more.

Where the work differs from the usual lit-crit manual is that the author is actually a major figure in the genre he is analyzing and has an actual love of the material he is not afraid to show. This is not some dry, literary analysis of sword & sorcery as literature — this is a paean to the genre, to the power of *genre* fiction and *plot* to do all of the things usually reserved for pure literature.

Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery by
Brian Murphy (Pulp Hero Press,‎ January 16, 2020). Cover by Tom Barber

Along the way we get snippets of genius from a century of writing, and I guarantee you’ll find stories and writers you never knew about. But you will also see why the oft-maligned “genre” can be powerful literature in its own right, even when its first goal is — gasp — entertainment. You will also find that there is a clear pattern of what makes sword & sorcery a distinct sub-genre, the defiant “attitude” coined by Jason M. Waltz in his massive anthology Neither Beg Nor Yield, making this a perfect companion volume to Brian Murphy’s Flame & Crimson: A history of sword & sorcery.

It’s rare that we get to see a genre analyzed by one of its own luminaries, even rarer they then sit down and tell you how to hone your writing for that field. This is a delightful read that serves on many levels and deserves the praise it is receiving.

 

Is it practically used when developing a new sigl to use a nervous systhem enhancing sigl to get better results? I must but wonder, if having ten people sitting around a manifester and enhancing them would give better results?

I assume one could also get the protegé status easier, with such a setup?

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward

Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Nightfire (February 24, 2026)

Length: 304 pages

Author Information: Twitter

Catriona Ward has built a reputation for writing horror that’s strange, unsettling, and often surreally disorienting by design. Nowhere Burning continues following in that same vein, though in this case, it might have gone a bit too far, pushing the story into hazy disjointedness. As a result, I didn’t quite take to this one as much as I’d hoped, finding it occasionally difficult to stay invested in what was happening from one section to the next.

In one major thread, we follow Riley, a teenage girl on the run with her younger brother Oliver. Desperate to escape their abusive foster home, she decides to seek out a place called Nowhere, rumored to be a safe haven hidden deep in the mountains where runaway children can live off the grid. The place, however, comes with its own dark history. The land once belonged to a reclusive actor named Leaf Winham, who built the sprawling ranch retreat years earlier. But what was meant to be a private sanctuary eventually became the center of a horrific scandal before a devastating fire consumed the property. All that’s left now are the burned-out ruins and the bad memories and ugly rumors that have grown around them.

In addition to Riley’s story, a couple others also run alongside in tandem. One follows a pair of filmmakers digging into the ranch’s past for a documentary, interviewing people who were connected to it from before the fire and trying to piece together what really happened. Another thread looks back at Leaf Winham and the early days of the estate, hinting at the secrets that shaped its creepy reputation. As the novel moves between these perspectives, details about Nowhere, its former inhabitants, and the events that led to its ruin gradually come together, showing how past and present collide.

Unfortunately, with so many separate threads and sudden jumps in time, the plot can start to feel a little choppy and hard to follow, and not every storyline gets the space it needs to fully develop. Riley’s is by far the most compelling and arguably the most important; some of the others, however, feel less essential. These came and went like side narratives that only appear in short bursts to give background information before shifting back to Riley’s perspective, which I started looking at as the “main” story. At least her chapters had plenty of emotional themes to anchor them, like her love for Oliver and her determination to secure a safe place for them to live. This was not the case with the “before” and “after” storylines, whose purposes were less defined and didn’t hold my interest as much.

That said, Ward still does a solid job creating a strong sense of place. The isolated mountain setting gives an unsettling edge right from the start, and once we get to the section where Riley finds Nowhere, the behaviors of the young people living there make things feel even more off. And no wonder. Bad things have happened in this place, and the kids here now have had bad things happen to them. The book is heavy with themes of trauma, abuse, and the misery that leads people to make desperate choices when they feel trapped with no way out. It can be difficult read at times.

At the same time, the nebulous tone that defines much of the author’s work can make the reading experience frustrating. The story often hints at deeper, hidden meanings without fully explaining how everything fits together. Granted, it’s clear that some of the vagueness is intentional, since there are secrets buried in the timelines before and after Riley’s storyline that don’t connect until the very end. And yet, the confusion it leads to doesn’t always feel rewarding since the story withholds too much information for too long.

In the end, Nowhere Burning ended up being a bit of a mixed bag. The premise is intriguing, the setting works well, and Riley makes for a strong central character. But the crowded structure and hazy storytelling kept the book from fully coming together for me. I’ve enjoyed Catriona Ward’s previous books (even the more surreal ones!) but this one might end up being my least favorite. Fans of her dreamlike style may still enjoy the ride, but for me this one ultimately landed somewhere in the middle.

Do the planetary associations have any actual meaning of some kind? Or is it just old mythology that carries over from when drucraft was probably thought of in more religious/mystical terms?

Im away from home so i cant dig through notes for dates, and some of them are pretty unspecific because when they happen exactly isn’t hugely important. I’ll give you a few with hard dates that align with canon events. In chronological order:

The Good Storm: 1879

A Surfeit of Annas

Zachary’s Day Out

The Beautiful Ajatara

Who the Wolf Loves: 2007, detailing the events of around 1975-1990

Too Wise to Love

City of Broken Hearts

Judgement of King Kieran

The Time of Two

Bred in the Bone

We did better than expected on the Three SF Books Kickstarter—and that’s due to you backers! We’ll let the credit card process progress through Kickstarter and then send out the surveys in the next week or so.

Thank you so much!!!

Could a life sigl related to the nervous system be used to limit / dampen pain reception? Or it that too precise? Can the pain signals be dampened without dampening other nerve function?

I’m very tired of being Ilona Andrews, so today will be a no promo day.

A while ago I started making crocheted plushies and bought a lot of yarn. In my defense, it was cheap and very soft. The plush making phase has now passed, so I was left with a large amount of yarn. The yarn that was very, very soft. Squishy soft.

I read the care instructions and it turns out it is both washable and dryer-safe. It was also light. A lot lighter than other bulky yarns.

I crocheted a blanket for Gordon.

As we all know, great photographer I am not. It is cream and French blue, it is very soft, and very textured.

The yarn is Premier Parfait Plush, colors Cream and French Blue. Warning: the dye lots very in color quite a bit. You can see there are 2 shades of blue. They sent me two skeins from a different dye lot.

Now for the pattern. I can’t find it. It was a free pattern and it isn’t in my favorites, it’s not in my library, it’s not in my pattern folder. I’m just going to write it the best I can.

Chain to desired width.

Section 1: textured elastic stitch.

1. Double crochet across.
2. 1 front post double crochet, 1 back post double crochet.
3. 1 back post double crochet, 1 front post double crochet’
4. Repeat Row 3
5. Repeat Row 4
6. Repeat Row 3
7. Repeat Row 4

Section 2: wheat braid.

1. Change color, half double crochet across
2. Half double crochet across, but in the back loop. When you do a half double crochet, there is a third loop that forms on the wrong side. We’re going to be anchoring our stitches into those loops.
3. Change color, 2 half double crochet, skip one stitch, single crochet, a 2-cluctsre into the skipped stitch: yarn over, draw a loop, yarn over again, draw a loop, draw through 2 loops, yarn over draw through remaining loop. The original pattern had a 3-cluster, but the yarn is so bulky that it felt too poofy. Keep going until two stitches are left, 2 half double crochets.
4. Repeat row 3
5. Change color, half double crochet across
6. Half-dopuble crochet across

When starting the next section, which would be double crochets, make sure that you anchor them into a back loop. If you don’t want to mess with the back loops, the pattern will still work, it just won’t have the border ridges.

Repeat until happy.

I will try to find the actual pattern for you. I’m just too tired to figure out where I saw it. It was this pretty cream blanket.

There is a lot of tired happening right now. Also, now I need to find something else to do with my hands, and I need something small. Maybe I will do a shawl. I can work on it on the plane.

The book is at 150,000. We just realized we need to add a scene at the beginning and I cannot deal with that at the moment. I need to clean the house. I need to do the taxes. Need to finish the book. I need to get images for the website designer. Instead I went to the doctor today, and now I have two more doctor appointments to go to.

I saw the sketch for the This Kingdom’s sequel and it is beautiful.

::looks at the manuscript, which is not at all worthy of the cover right now::

::exhales::

Shawls. That’s the ticket. Also, if you have Netflix, Pursuit of Jade. Grace Draven recommended it and it is so good. So, so good.

The post Blankets and Life first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Nat Schachner

Nat Schachner was born on January 16, 1895 in New York. He earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from City College in 1915. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I in the chemical warfare service from 1917 to 1918 and, when he returned to New York he earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence from New York University in 1919, the same year he married Helen Lichtenstein. The couple would have a daughter.  He worked as an attorney until 1933 when he became a freelance writer.

On April 4, 1930, Schachner, along with G. Edward Pendray, David Lasser, and Laurence Manning, founded the American Interplanetary Society, which would be renamed the American Rocket Society four years later. The organization designed and launched liquid fueled rockets and in 1936 the organization was awarded the Prix a’Astronautique by the Société astronomique de France.

1930 also saw the start of his career as an author with the publication of “The Tower of Evil,” which he co-wrote with Arthur Leo Zagat. The two men collaborated on eleven stories published in 1931 before both turning to their solo careers as authors.

Wonder Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930. Cover by Frank R. Paul

Schachner’s first solo story was “Pirates of the Gorm,” which appeared in Astounding Stories in the May 1932 issue. His most famous story appeared in the December 1933 issue, “Ancestral Voices,” a time travel story the was an early example of the grandfather paradox, although in this case, Emmet Pennypacker travels back to the fifth century and kills a Hun who was a distant ancestor of his. Although known for the grandfather paradox, Schachner has stated that the story was a commentary on the destructiveness of the concept of racial purity that was popular in the 1930s.

The same year “Ancestral Voices” was published, Schachner published the three stories which made up “The Revolt of the Scientists,” which was set in the then near-future of 1937, indicating that a technocratic society held the keys to lifting the country out of the throes of the Great Depression.

As the Nazis and Fascism rose to power in the late 1930s, Schachner continued to address their ideas in his fiction, focusing on championing human liberties in his writing, and writing stories in which authoritarianism was ultimately defeated. By 1935, he was writing “World Gone Mad” in which Schachner warns the reader of about the pending global war, although Schachner sets it in 1990, with the U.S. on one side and the Sino-Russian alliance and United Europe on the other side. Despite coming up with interesting ideas and trying to include messages in his fiction, Schachner’s fiction rarely rises about average. Paul A, Carter, writing in The Creation of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction, described Schachner as “the earliest of pulp science fiction’s anti-Nazi Paul Reveres…”

In 1937, Schachner published Aaron Burr: A Biography, launching a new writing career for himself.  He continued to publish science fiction through 1941, with the story “Eight Who Came Back” in the November issue of Fantastic Adventures, but after that he focused on biographies, publishing books on Alexander Hamilton (1946), Thomas Jefferson (1951), and The Founding Fathers (1954).  He also published a work on Medieval universities in 1938.

Serving on the editorial committee for the American Jewish Committee, he published The Price of Liberty: A History of the American Jewish Committee in 1948. He would also go on to serve as the Director of Public Relations for the National Council of Jewish Women from 1954 until 1955.

Schachner died in Hastings-on-Hudson on October 2, 1955. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Hudson-on-Hastings, New York.

Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 393 pages
Publisher: Amulet Books
Release Date: August 17, 2021
ASIN: B08WJS9RV8
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Raybearer duology
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 5/5 stars

“For the first time, an Empress Redemptor sits on Aritsar’s throne. To appease the sinister spirits of the dead, Tarisai must now anoint a council of her own, coming into her full power as a Raybearer. She must then descend into the Underworld, a sacrifice to end all future atrocities.

Tarisai is determined to survive. Or at least, that’s what she tells her increasingly distant circle of friends. Months into her shaky reign as empress, child spirits haunt her, demanding that she pay for past sins of the empire.

With the lives of her loved ones on the line, assassination attempts from unknown quarters, and a handsome new stranger she can’t quite trust . . . Tarisai fears the pressure may consume her. But in this finale to the Raybearer duology, Tarisai must learn whether to die for justice . . . or to live for it.”

Series Info/Source: This is the 2nd book in the Raybearer duology. I borrowed this on ebook from my library.

Thoughts: I really enjoyed Raybearer and the sequel to it, Redemptor, is also very well done. I was immediately sucked into the story. This is very well written, and I enjoy the magic and the characters.

Tarisai sits on Aritsar’s throne; for the first time there is an Empress Redemptor. Alongside the challenges of ruling comes the knowledge that Tarisai must descend to the Underworld as part of her agreement to end future sacrifices to it. As if this wasn’t enough, Tarisai starts to be haunted by child spirits who drive her to push herself harder and harder. With her tight circle of friends driven further away from home to deal with other threats, Tarisai finds herself increasingly isolated.

This was very well done. I enjoy the characters here and the unique system of ruling in Aritsar. I like the magic and the blend of otherworldly elements (like the Underworld and ghosts) as well. This story wasn’t what I expected it was going to be; I thought most of this book would be Tarisai’s journey in the Underworld. Instead, that was a very small portion of the story. The majority of the book is about Tarisai trying to figure out how to be a good ruler to her people, protect the everyday person from injustice, and keep her found family from falling apart.

I did like that there are some intriguing social issues discussed in this book. These are primarily issues around not wanting to have children and around not wanting to have sexual relationships. There is also a lot of discussion about overworking yourself and not getting adequate rest when you are trying to right various wrongs.

My Summary (5/5): Overall this is very well written and I really enjoyed it. It is fast-paced and hard to put down. The characters are relatable, and the story and dialogue both flow beautifully. This is a book that is very engaging and very easy to read. When I saw that Ifueko had written an additional book set in this world called “The Maid and the Crocodile” I immediately put it on my to be read pile. I would recommend to fantasy fans that like some magic in their books.

Other LitStack Spots Here are a few other titles we have our eyes on, including…

The post Spotlight on “The Penguin Book of the International Short Story” appeared first on LitStack.

 

It's time to show the books Jeffe ordered for me, because I couldn't order them myself.You'll notice they have a theme ;-)
The US hard cover of Nine Goblins!Now I will confess a certain online retailer had it listed, but when I ordered it, it went in stasis for an undetermined time as is often the case when I preorder at that particular site, so I asked Jeffe to buy it for me as she was going to send a package anyway.

I confess I wanted this edition just for these end papers alone!
The other books were the Owlcrate editions of the Sworn Soldier books.Yes! I already got my trotters on the amazing US hard covers, but just look at the pictures below! I could not resist.


What Moves the Dead







What Feasts at Night

What Stalks the Deep





I can tell you T. Kingfisher got her own shelf in my bookcase by now.

I hope you enjoyed seeing so many cool book mail pictures.I promise I'll have reviews again next week

Cover Artists Cover #8 – Jimmy Makepeace  Cover #9 – Plastiboo  Cover #10 – Matej Kollár

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery (NESS) mgazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (champion and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS’s first two magazine releases (also Greg Mele’s review of #1), and then into 2024 with NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes and its two-novella combo book Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, and then in 2025 we covered NESS‘s publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry tale! (2025) and we interviewed one of their key New Edge authors, Bryn Hammond.

Now in 2026, NESS brings us more with promises of Issues 8, 9, and 10!

The campaign to fund and expand them ends just days after this posting (March 14th )!  Hurry now to Backerkit to get some exclusives like a poster featuring live models in full S&S costume, discounted back issues, and a cover art postcard; also, backing unlocks more interior art and bumps author payments. If you miss out, or want some of the prior rewards from previous crowdfunding, get back issues and other NESS offerings in their shop, noting that print copies often have limited print runs.

So what is in the next three issues? We asked Oliver Brackenbury that, and his answer is below. And we had a feeling Jirel of Joiry would return, and we asked Molly Tanzer to provide a bit of perspective on the heroine.

Oliver Brakenbury on What’s New for Issues 8, 9, 10

“Loving the magazine as an object, we’re increasing the page count not only to make room for new features like our letters page, but to allow us to increase the white space for a reading experience that’s even easier on the eyes. Meanwhile the paper will be upgraded to something more textured, akin to classic paperbacks. Along with the letters page we’ll be introducing our first S&S film review, and are proud to include an author profile on Howard Andrew Jones penned by his own child, Caster Jones. Finally, our special issue for 2026 is called Timeworn Terra, expanding upon a science-fantasy tradition begun by Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, William Hope Hodgson, Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique stories and more to tell tales of futures so far they feel ancient; when magic & technology blur together; our home is transformed into a wondrously strange setting; where Earth’s days are short yet still we lust and laugh!”

“Jirel in the Forest of Night” Back Cover Illustration by Saša Đurđević Molly Tanzer’s Insights on Jirel

“I always have a blast writing the Jirel stories, and one thing in particular that’s been fun for me, when it comes to expanding on the original stories, is giving Jirel more of an historical context. We know from “Quest of the Starstone” that Jirel lived in France, around 1500. While I never want to take the focus away from Jirel’s magical adventures, in “Jirel Meets Death,” I give Castle Joiry a bit of attention… it was built atop a Roman foundation, and still has a Roman bath, and I added a few servants to make it feel more lived-in. In the upcoming “Jirel in the Forest of Night,” we begin the story with Jirel being annoyed by a proposal of marriage that would be impolitic for her to refuse. While this kind of stuff isn’t at the heart of the Jirel stories, in my opinion, it’s fun to put a character known for visiting other worlds into thorny situations here in — or at least in a version of — the real world. It gives, I think, a broader sense of who Jirel is — her character, her strengths and weaknesses, her desires, dreams… and nightmares, too!”

Bryn Hammond Highlights her new story

“In this story, Goatskin certainly goes further than she has gone before, into the unknown. And the unknown gets a grip on her in ways she has not faced. This story changes her.”

Recall, we interviewed her last September. To learn more about her Goatskin yarns, and her writing muses, check out: Interview with Bryn Hammond.

Waste Flowers and What Rough Beast? A Tale of Goatskin, written by Bryn Hammond, both with cover art from Goran Gligović Check out the Backerkit campaign by clicking here! NESS Press Release

Launching on February 12th, short story & non-fiction magazine New Edge Sword & Sorcery will be running a crowdfunding campaign on Backerkit to produce issues #8, 9, and 10 in accessible digital, classic softcover, and luxurious hardcover (w/endpage art and a bookmark ribbon!) formats. These will be released in November of 2026.

Leading the charge is JIREL OF JOIRY, returning with her third new story since the originals by her creator, legendary Weird Tales regular C.L. Moore. She was the first Sword & Sorcery heroine and, like Alice in Wonderland with a big f***ing sword, Jirel had compelling adventures in bizarre dream-logic realms, balancing a rich emotional life with terrifying struggles against dark forces! Predating Red Sonja, she & Moore were a direct influence on Robert E. Howard’s writing, and others who came after.

Authorized by the estate of C.L. Moore, “Jirel in the Forest of Night” has been written by the magnificent MOLLY TANZER (editor of Swords v. Cthulhu, author of Creatures of Charm and Hunger, and so much more).

Thirty other authors are spread across the three new issues this campaign is funding, including names like legendary S&S editor Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Bryn Hammond, and Milton Davis.

With #10, NESS looks to the impossibly far future in “TIMEWORN TERRA,” a special issue featuring stories inspired by Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique cycle, and others. Readers unfamiliar with those names will be enthralled by futures so distant they feel ancient, where sorcery has returned or technology is indistinguishable from it, where Earth is so transformed as to feel alien…yet still humanity struggles, seeks meaning, even laughs as their home world’s clock winds down.

Every story and non-fiction piece in these issues will be paired with two original B&W illustrations as soon as the crowdfund meets its first stretch goal – Double Art. The goal after that is a fund to cover shipping discounts for backers outside the United States, and from there every stretch goal is a pay raise for contributors. These goals make clear the magazine’s values of paying creators as much as they can, and making NESS financially accessible.

The magazine’s editor, Oliver Brackenbury, promises the magazine is “Made with love for the classics and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling,” delivering high quality writing and art in a wide variety of styles. Sword & Sorcery can be many things and still be Sword & Sorcery.

Readers should race to back the new issues before the campaign ends on March 14th, so they can benefit from crowdfund exclusives like a poster featuring live models in full S&S costume, discounted back issues, and cover art postcards.

From Feb 12th to March 14th the crowdfund is on BACKERKIT.

 

S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books and interviewing authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.” He has taken lead roles organizing the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium (chairing it in 2023), is the lead moderator of the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery Group, and was an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As for crafting stories, he has contributed eight entries across Perseid Press’s Heroes in Hell and Heroika series, and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia Fiction; short stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone Amateur S&S Magazine, Swords & Sorcery online magazine, Rogues In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades Vol I & II, DMR’s Terra Incognita, the 9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Savage Realms Magazine, and Michael Stackpole’s S&S Chain Story 2 Project.

 

 

 So, I couldn't resist posting this here:

I 3D printed this guy at the original scale that Sabertooth Collectibles sold it as, made another and sent it to Regal Rebel, but then I got to thinking and well...

Lol.

I added fur and here he is. Nice learning project for fur and airbrushing. Special thanks to Uncle Jessy and M.M. Props Shop for the encouragement.

I've got enough fur to do 1-2 more projects. Debating on which. Mom asked me to make an ewok. lol. I was leaning towards Snarf.