Book Review - Battleborn Magazine Issue 1

REVIEW by David A. Riley

BATTLEBORN # 1

Edited by Sean C. W. Korsgaard

Published by Iron Age Media

From the very first page there is an atmosphere of blatant enthusiasm about Battleborn magazine, and you can tell straight away those involved in it have a love for the genre which is infectious.

The fiction opens with a Hanuvar story by Howard Andrew Jones, perhaps the greatest sword and sorcery writer of recent years, who died at far too young an age in January last year. Though part of Hanuvar’s ongoing saga (see the volumes from Baen Books: Lord of a Shattered Land, The City of Marble and Blood, and Shadow of the Smoking Mountain) “A Stone’s Throw” is a standalone story about an assassination attempt, though the reason for it is far from what even Hanuvar himself at first assumes. A well-wrought tale, it exemplifies why Howard Andrew Jones is held in such high esteem.

In complete contrast the following a tale, “Blood of the Oni” by C. L. Werner, is set in medieval Japan during the time of the Shogun, involving a sorcerously empowered sword, unscrupulous treachery and a truly hellish monster. I loved the neatly placed historical details in this story, which is far more complex than I at first expected and features some of the most realistically detailed sword fights I have ever read. C. L. Werner obviously knows what he is writing about.

Gregory D. Mele, who authored the third tale here, “Jaguar’s Children”, is familiar to me as he had an extraordinary story in Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 10 (“The Salt of Tilantokka”) last year. This again has a South American setting, laced with ancient peoples and piracy and a strange, sacred, crimson bird. Memorably action-filled.

This is immediately followed by another action story, “Vengeance Vow” by T. J. Marquis, wherein a huge assassin ingeniously tricks his way into a highly-fortified king’s palace during a day of drunken, drug-filled debauchery in honour of the nation’s depraved gods. His mission is to kill the king in retribution for what was done to his people. But things become far more complex than he expects by the time the deed is about to be done.

One of Robert E. Howard’s heroic poems follows, “The Road of Kings”, to remind us of whom we owe the genre of sword and sorcery.

Erik Waag’s “To Boast of Victory” is an amusing tale with more than a few twists, not the least of which comes at the very end. Recommended.

“Temple of the River King” by Lee Patton is a much more sombre affair. Rightly compared to Clark Ashton Smith for his colourful imagery, this again is filled with ongoing action with a protagonist who is uniquely macabre, and would, I am sure, have appealed to Smith himself. I am pleased to see other tales of this ancient, undead warrior have already been written.

I was a trifle unsure about the next story, “The Fury’s Blade” by Robert Rhodes, with its two female Furies, armed emissaries of their church, charged with recovering a stolen relic, namely a sacred cloak. Female sword-fighting protagonists is becoming something of a cliché these days. But I was soon won over. Wonderfully well-written, with a storyline that never becomes predictable or boring, this is another outstanding tale.

It’s good to see that unlike too many periodicals Battleborn does not shy away from publishing reprints. Obviously, we have already had the Howard poem, but there is also a long out-of-print novelette from the pen of the late Michael Shea, “the last sword and sorcery writer to win a World Fantasy Award.” “Pearls of the Vampire Queen” is new to me – although I must admit I haven’t, so far as I am aware, previously read anything of Michael Shea, even though my friend, Jim Pitts, illustrated a deluxe copy of The A’rak (part of Shea’s Nifft the Lean series) for Centipede Press. “Pearls of the Vampire Queen” is another Nifft the Lean story – and a uniquely strange tale it is, highlighting Shea’s intricate writing style and deft use of grotesque imagery. It is set in a very dark world, one in which there is safety for no one, especially those who, if only for the merest moment, succumb to complacency and let down their guards. After reading this, I will certainly seek out other Nifft the Lean tales. And it is to Battleborn’s credit it has highlighted a writer who should not be forgotten.

Other than these novelettes and short stories there is also part one of a three-part serial: “The Last Spell” by Schuyler Hernstrom, which I deliberately left till last to read. And I can see what a cunning ploy it was to include this serial – as nothing could possibly create greater inducement to buy the next two issues than to read the rest of this novel! Extremely well written, wickedly amusing, and filled with inventiveness.

Other than stories, novelettes and a serial there are also a number of columns, which add to the broader interest of the magazine.

At over 200 pages, Battleborn is a substantial read, with ne’er a poor story anywhere in sight. Definitely an important addition to the growing number of sword and sorcery publications appearing today in what is truly an exciting period in our genre.

 

 

Welgar the Cursed - Reviews on Goodreads

There are now three five-star reviews and one four-star on Goodreads for my collection from Tule Fog Press, Welgar the Cursed. 

To see these reviews follow this link: Goodreads 

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR BY WILLARD M. OLIVER

The latest issue of Phantasmagoria magazine #27 includes my review of Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author by Willard M. Oliver. Below is a copy of this review: 

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR

By Willard M. Oliver

Published by University of North Texas Press, 2025

This is a big book (579 pages), especially for a writer whose life ended after only thirty years. But when you look at the amazing literary legacy left behind by Robert E. Howard this is not too long a book at all. And Willard M. Oliver does full justice to all of Howard’s many stories, heroes, and the different genres in which he wrote, with chapters on Weird Tales, “On Werewolves and Horror Yarns, 1925”, “The Last Celt”, “Solomon Kane and Historical Fantasy, 1928”, “Steve Costigan and the Boxing Yarns, 1929”, “King Kull and the Birth of Swords and Sorcery, 1929”, “‘Lovecraft, One of the Greatest Writers of Our Time’, 1930”, “Bran Mak Morn and the Picts, 1930”, “Oriental Stories, The Magic Carpet, and Historical Fiction, 1931”, “The Cthulhu Mythos, 1931”, “Westerns both Strange and True, 1932”, “‘Hither Came Conan, the Cimmerian’, 1931”, “Steve Harrison and the Detective Yarns, 1933”, “Breckenridge Elkins and the Tall Tale Yarns, 1934”, “El Borak and the Adventure Yarns, 1934”, and so on and so forth.

Not only are we given detailed biographies of Howard’s parents, but also of his close friends and his only girlfriend, Novalyne Price, as well as those writers he became involved with, mainly through frequent correspondence, such as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Willard M. Oliver’s thoroughness is exemplary, and he is never boring, giving the reader a keen understanding of the times in which Howard lived and wrote, his constant problems with editors, the rejections, rewrites and struggles with payments, the latter being especially important to him as Howard was determined from the start to be a full time writer with no other employment to distract him if he could manage it.

I was fascinated with Howard’s continual rejections from many markets, including his main standby, Weird Tales. His determination to make his way as a writer despite numerous setbacks is inspirational, but I sense eventually this all took its toll, especially when he began to rely on the payments he received to help cover medical bills for his mother, which only became greater and more frequent as her terminal illness (tuberculosis) progressed towards its inevitable end.

As I read this book I became increasingly more impressed with what Howard managed to produce over those few active years as a writer and what he had to endure, both mentally and physically. I must admit, though, it’s a book whose final chapters I approached with growing trepidation, knowing how it would end: with him sat alone in his car with a loaded gun. With the failure of his friendship with Novalyne Price, who it is obvious he would have wanted eventually to marry had things gone differently and their relationship hadn’t finally soured, plus the toil of the necessity to look after his mother both physically and financially, all took it out of him, till the end had a dreadful inevitability about it, especially for someone given to periodic bouts of black depression.

Despite the tragic end to Howard’s life, this is an incredible book, utterly readable, insightful and impressively thorough, one of the best biographies of a writer I have ever read, and I recommend it unreservedly for anyone with an interest in the creator of Conan.  

 

A 5-star review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 10 on Goodreads

An interesting, in-depth review of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 10 has been posted on Goodreads by Richard Fisher. Check the review here.

Book Review: Bohun - The Complete Savage Adventures by Steve Dilks - In Full

 

My full review of:

 

BOHUN: THE COMPLETE SAVAGE ADVENTURES

 

By Steve Dilks

 

Carnelian Press, 2024. 219 pages

 

Cover artwork Adam Benet Shaw

 

Interior artwork Kurt Brugel

 

With the completion of my reading of this collection here follows my review in full:

The opening story, The Festival of the Bull, is an action-packed, violent and intricately woven tale of treachery, deceit and peril. It’s also an origin story, though these details are subtly inserted into the narrative without holding up the action.

For those unfamiliar with Bohun he is a huge black warrior from the ill-fated kingdom of Damzullah. The last surviving warrior from its betrayed army, his sole mission now is to find and rescue his beloved wife Dana who was sold into slavery.     

Having just escaped from the galley into which he had been imprisoned as an oarsman, we first meet Bohun soon after he has swum ashore and scaled the fortified walls of the coastal city of Tharnya where a squad of the city guard attempt to capture him. Minutes later, after a desperate fight which introduces us to his fighting skills, Bohun flees into the city’s labyrinthine streets, where he stumbles across a woman being attacked by a desperate gang of cutthroats who have already killed her bodyguards. Thus it is that Bohun finds himself plunged unwittingly into an insidiously dark world of deceit, treachery and deadly perils.

This was one of the first stories submitted to me as editor of Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 1 in 2020, and I would have accepted it there and then except, for all its action-packed pages, it didn’t involve any sorcery or magic, which was something of an important requirement for the kind of anthology I was putting together. Fortunately Steve was quickly able to rectify this when he submitted the next story in this volume, the superbly eerie The Horror from the Stars, which became the first Bohun story ever to be published. (The Festival of the Bull went on to appear in Savage Realms Monthly in January the next year.)

After this thrilling introduction to Bohun, The Horror from the Stars opens at a slower pace but is no less menacing as our hero is warned “…evil is abroad in Al-Siwar” by a strange old man, who inexplicably disappears soon after. But Al-Siwar is where Bohun is heading and no dire warnings will stop him from going there because its sultan, Akim Harrad, possesses Bohun’s wife, Dana, as one of his harem slaves and Bohun is determined to free her.

If there was no sorcery in the first story, Dilks more than makes up for it here, with a particularly nasty creature which is probably an alien entity of some kind, that feeds off people’s life forces and intends to replicate itself in an especially nauseating way. Bohun is pushed to the brink in this tale – and in some ways beyond it. His life is not an easy one, nor is it bereft of grief. It’s a tough, heartless world in which he lives and in the end it takes all of his resilience and fortitude to survive, both mentally and physically.

The third tale, By Darkness Enthroned, was first published in Schlock! Webzine issues 24 and 25 earlier this year.  After already ratcheting up the eeriness in these Bohun stories Steve Dilks goes for the dark sorceries of two contesting sides in this tale with an absolute vengeance. Still recovering after the events in The Horror from the Stars, our Damzullahan warrior enlists in a mercenary army, perhaps longing for what he sees as the cleaner, more straightforward life of soldiering. Little does he realise occult forces have already been stirred into action by those opposing the army he has joined and that he too will soon be drawn into the machinations of another insidiously supernatural force. This longer tale is viewed from the perspectives of both sides, in which even some of those we would instinctively see as the villains have their doubts and pricks of conscience. In this it reminds me of the kind of tale Karl Edward Wagner was a master at creating in his Kane stories – and By Darkness Enthroned is no less redolent of his colourful and vivid language.

Intrigue in Aviene previously appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly no 48 in 2022, and is really just a short episode in Bohun’s progress through the so-called civilised cities. Still a hired soldier, he is suffering now from having spent too much time in battle. “His nights were filled only with dreams of death and blood. He knew nothing now but the madness of battle. The life he once knew, the dreams he once had were but ashes in his memory.”

Thus it is that he sets out to an inn to meet a young revolutionary who wishes to bribe him to assassinate Acilius, a local magistrate. “‘In the name of the people and in the cause of revolution – he must die!’” the young man insists.  But before they part they are interrupted by three ruffians who deliberately pick a fight with Bohun, which results in him being arrested and taken to be sold as a slave. Despite the dire circumstances into which he has sunk Bohun is not so easily subdued – nor for long.

Though short, this story has some neat twists, helped along by Bohun’s innate ability to see past any lies he is told.

Black Sunset in the Valley of Death is the second story in this book first published in Savage Realms Monthly (Issue 10, 2022), a digest-sized magazine that has again and again proven itself to be one of the best sources for fresh, new and original sword and sorcery in recent years. Black Sunset in the Valley of Death is no exception. Opening with Bohun in the most perilous position we have seen him in so far (tied to a sacrificial altar with the officiating priest about to deliver the coup de grâce with a copper dagger) this story rapidly moves on to Bohun’s desperate escape across the wastes of a searingly hot desert, before reaching the welcoming shade of a jungle where he stumbles across a delicate pre-human race in a secluded valley whose ancestors once created the most advanced civilisation the world had seen, only for it to be corrupted from within and destroyed. The aftermaths of this corruption, though, have not died but linger on. And despite enjoying the time he spends with these strange people, and the peace and quietude of where they live, Bohun finally realises for the sake of them all he must go on and face this festering horror and destroy it. In doing so he comes up against the most formidable supernatural menace he has yet had to fight in a grotesque, dark and bloody climax.

Red Trail of Vengeance is the final story in this collection taken from the pages of Savage Realms Monthly (Issue 28, May 2024). And true to form this additional segment of Bohun’s saga is filled with all the action and colour you would expect.

Never gifted with having much luck, when our intrepid hero arrives at the ruins of an abandoned castle expecting to find shelter for the night, he finds instead a well-armed band of ruthless bandits waiting for him, who demand his horse and what gold he carries. Unwilling to hand over either, and knowing they will kill him regardless, a fight ensues. Outnumbered, though, Bohun is quickly overwhelmed. Badly wounded, he is stripped of his armour and left to die. But death doesn’t come so easily to men such as Bohun, whose Damzullahan ancestors were endowed with an almost preternatural endurance. Which for the bandits means one day he will recover from his wounds and seek them out to exact his revenge… Another colourful tale with plenty of twists and turns and vividly described action, which culminates in an ancient city ruled by bandits.

The final story is Harvest of the Blood-King, first published in Neither Beg Nor Yield – Stories with Sword & Sorcery Attitude (Rogue Blades Entertainment). It’s certainly the longest and perhaps best story here, beginning with Bohun again in chains, sent to a far-flung fortress of the Valentian Empire where he is reunited with his old commander, Tibeirus Varro, from By Darkness Enthroned, who frees him immediately they meet, openly acknowledging the crucial role the Damzullahan played in their past victory. Now, though, out of favour in the capital, Tibeirus has been placed in charge of a small group of specially selected men, including Bohun, who set out to rescue the young son of a senator kidnapped by a hostile tribe beyond the empire’s frontier. Of course not everything is by any means as it seems and there is dark treachery and even darker sorcery afoot, culminating in Bohun having to fight what is undoubtedly the most ferocious creature he has met so far amidst a bloody bedlam that slakes even this warrior’s appetite for combat. A grim, action-packed tale, ideal for ending this epic collection of Bohun’s savage adventures.

 

This review can also be read now on amazon