Why so many died / just to see him fly

This song should be played at the start of EVERY Dungeons & Dragons sessions. RJD...RIP....

Formulaic...but in a good way (review of Hard Day's Knight)

Urban fantasy is the hottest subgenre in fantasy nowadays - the shelves at the local bookstore (where those still actually exist....) are groaning with new paperbacks coming out by the month, and half the ebooks out out by indie writers fall within it's boundaries. Son it's not surprising that a genre as popular as this has it's own conventions and cliches and well worn ruts, its plots ever recycled, its archtypical characters trotted out time and again in new clothes. Now this isn't a bad thing by any means - every genre out there has it;s conventions, which exist large part because the readers want them. The trick is to find a new way to bring those old tropes to life.

I came across Hard Days Knight while looking for a new urban fantasy story that stood out in some way from all the rest. Bonus points if it came from an indie writer. This book fit the bill quite well. There is a sardonic tone to it that goes down very nicely, much like a bottle of vino verde on a warm summer night. The characters are not the typical vampire one comes across in this sort of story, being less iron bodied languid princes of the night and more like the kids from the Dungeons & Dragons group you hung with while in college. Everymen, basically, stuck with immortality and a real allergy to sunlight. There is a surprising depth of character her despite the short length (only a couple of hundred pages) They very much come across as a pair of ordinary fellas making the best of an unusual situation, and keeping their sense of humor in the process, a welcome change from the usual doom-and-gloom vampire protagonists.

Also, it's set in Charlotte, NC. Nice to read a story that doesn't take place in New York, Chicago or LA.

The only real beef I have against this tale is the somewhat rushed feeling behind it. Granted, that may have something to do with the length but it did feel a bit off. Also, there isn't much in the way of world building, though that's more a fault of the genre than of the author - given its conventions, most urban fantasy worlds tend to have a similar feel.

All in all, a worthwhile read.

They don't make 'em like this no more....

Limited time offer...

For one week only, Gaebrel's Gamble is now on sale for just .99 cents. Click on the link to the right and order your copy now!

Another attempt at digital art...

I try, I really do try...didn't come out quite the way I hopes. 


Still...you learn from your failures....

A rant for a new Romanticism....

We live in a rational age, a new Enlightenment (for a given value of enlightened....) Science pushed ever further towards revealing what few mysteries are left. The mind, far from a fog of the unknown, if declared a machine like any other, bound by rules that can learned and understood, and manipulated by those who possess the knowledge. Love...chemical reactions in the brain, to delivered in pill form courtesy of Big Pharma! Hate...a sickness to be cut out of your gray matter, really its for your own good in the end. What need for silly things like faith, hope, charity, imagination and wonder, they're all nothing more than electrical impulses firing in the great central switch box that is the brain? God is dead, Science has replaced him. Instead of priests we have physicists, biologists and various other -ist's, telling what what we need to know, what we're supposed to think and why we should think it. And lest anyone think to object, there's a whole intelligentsia following up behind them, writers, reporters, professors, commentators of every stripe and color, all eagerly proclaiming that we are nothing more than lumps of self-mobile meat destines to end up rotting and to think otherwise is to prove yourself a silly relic, a throwback to the ancient darkness in dire need of re-education....

We've been here before, of course, there's a reason why I refer to the Enlightenment. The Golden Age of reason, where outmoded superstition in all it's dark splendor was hurled aside in favor of a bloodless clockwork rationality. The world would be rebuilt, it would be sane, orderly, every though would finally be made the way it was supposed to be....uncountable deaths later, from all those wars fought in the name of Reason, and they still couldn't admit they might have been wrong.

Against this tyranny of the boring and the unimaginative rose a new move. Romanticism, a lovely rebellion against this mindset. Love, desire...to feel is to be alive, the understanding that there is more to life than dull rationality. “Only religion and art can educate a nation—what use is science, which analyzes everything and explains nothing?” So spoke Richard Wagner, and whatever his other faults, I think he had a point.

Nowadays were live a world that is more technocratic than ever, presided over by a new priestly caste who wave their credentials as a bishop would his crozier. Worthless in the end, man is more than the sum of his flesh and organs! We need a new Romantic movement, something once again affirms the centrality of wonder, of emotion, of desire and bliss! Love, not mere sexual attraction. Glory, not simply prosperity. Something that once again lets us know You are a human being. You are more than mere flesh and bone. Even in death you are alive.

Here endeth the rant.

Dragon prince...Ahead of its time

Gather round children, and cast your minds back to the ye old days of the late 80's/early 90's, when fantasy was still very much an underground thing, most stories were tedious Tolkien retreads or Dungeons and Dragons sessions put down on paper, and writers of the feminine persuasion were notably light on the ground. Which makes this book and the various series it spawn so interesting....

Nowadays, female fantasy authors are a pretty common sight, so it's a bit shocking to consider just how ahead of its time Dragon Prince was in terms of what could be done in a traditional fantasy novel. When I first picked it up, it was amazed just how different this was from the other fare to be found in bookstores (yes, books were sold in actual stores. Ask your Dad....)What Melanie Rawn did with this story was take all the elements of an awesome epic fantasy and mix it with the conventions of a romance novel, seasoned with some of the most detailed and compelling examples of world building to be found anywhere. The result was something groundbreaking. While there are battles galore and fantastical deed by the score, the core of this tale is the relationship between Rohan and Sioned, the passion that draws them together, the dangers and obstacles that block them. No final voyages to Valhalla here...more along the lines of a traditional romance, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, or any number of bodice rippers sold by the dozen made magnificent by the inclusion of dragons.

Today it's a common enough formula, which makes this book something of a groundbreaker. It showed (to angsty Gen-X teenagers at least) that fantasy could be more than just the slay the dragon while standing on a mountain of skulls. That there was room for real emotion and passion.

In short, a good read. Not to mention the cover art by Michael Whelan, reason enough to buy the printed version.