Review of The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

Lightning-cracked time portals.  Secret tombs. Slave ship mutiny. Snake men.  Buried alive.  Parlays with kings.  These are just some of the adventurous elements of Leigh Brackett’s The Sword of Rhiannon.  (Though initially published as Sea Kings of Mars, it quickly changed names, and in reprintings since has consistently been known as The Sword of Rhiannon.)  Written in 1953, it was one of the last threads of the pulp era yet benefits from increased expectations regarding prose and characterization.  It never, however, fails as an adventure.

Matt Carse, Earthman and grave looter on Mars, meets with the opportunity of lifetime one evening walking the streets of Jekkara.  Shown the mystical sword of the mighty and long dead sorceror Rhiannon, its gleaming jewel only set his mind moving in other directions: where there is such a beautiful sword, there must also be treasure of greater magnitude.  Taken to the tomb, its there his greed gets the better of him.  Examining a particularly strange artifact, the rug is pulled from under his feet and, like Alice, through the rabbit hole Carse goes.  With only Rhiannon’s sword in hand, he arrives at a Mars millions of years in the past and into the middle of one of the biggest plots the planet has ever known. Carse’s problem is, his actions are what unleash the plot and send the world of the Sea Kings into turmoil.

Review of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I am agog.  Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1912 A Princess of Mars is a book I’d never read, that is, until turning the last page today—and I am agog.  Like a genre rosetta stone, I now understand the root of America’s pulp science fiction and fantasy tradition.  Purple prose, heroes of a larger-than-life variety, a plot that continually expands its extent of incredulity, science fiction cum fantasy cum science fantasy—all the pulpy pieces are in place in one big, mythically maudlin male fantasy of the finest, squishiest cheese.  And the blazing sexism, disguised racism, undoubted ethnocentrism—everything WASP-ish, I’m just agog…

A Princess of Mars is the story of John Carter, a man who comes to be the greatest hero Mars has even known.  An officer in the Confederacy, after the Civil War he goes west seeking a fortune in gold in Arizona.  Finding a rich vein, he and a colleague head to civilization to get the equipment and laborers they will need to mine it.  But a tragedy occurs, and Carter is forced to defend himself.  Finding a cave to hide out, strange forces take over, and before he knows it, he lies naked in the middle of the Martian wilderness.

Review of "Dark Moon" by David Gemmell

 (This review has also been posted at www.fantasyliterature.com)

In writing reviews of fantasy, everybody makes mention of those derivative books of sword and sorcery which lack imagination and either borrow exclusively from previous works (think Terry Goodkind) or possess so many archetypes that the whole book becomes cliché (think the Dragonlance series).  Everybody knows these cardboard Conans and Gandalfs wielding battleaxes, wands, and uttering the worst one-liners published today.  But these comments about garbage fantasy are always directed to the “others”—someone else—never the work under review.  Nobody wants to step on any toes.

David Gemmell’s Dark Moon is pure genre fantasy.  This is one of the books everyone is indirectly referring to when they mention derivative fantasy.  Reptilian uni-mind creatures attack innocent people for no reason. Check.  A female fighter who acts and talks like a man.  Check.  Gouts of random magic within an undefined system.  Check.  Castle wall siege including tunneling.  Check.  And so on.  I read an interview with Gemmell who said something to the effect: “I don’t plan anything when I’m writing.  I just take an idea and run with it.”  Well, it shows in Dark Moon.  The story is a jumbled mess.  Too many things are packed in disorderly fashion into such a small book.  Ultimate evil cannibal bad guys have a sudden change of heart and promise to love everybody.  Aliens appear on the medieval scene to bring peace (yes,aliens!).  A man invents a catapult that didn’t exist (in a time of castles, swords and shields, go figure).  And all this rubbish does is bring heartache., because after all, the story began with such promise: the main character, a man at war with a demon trapped inside himself, tries to come to terms with who he is.  What better a premise to start a good fantasy novel?

In summary, if you’re already a lover of those books everyone refers to disparagingly—women warriors with impressive breasts, a young orphan boy becomes king,  dragons, dragons, dragons—then this book may be for you.   Otherwise, if you’re looking for a fantasy story that works within the genre but offers a new take, operates within a larger structure, has logical outcomes, as well as characters more human than wood, look elsewhere.  In the meantime, we need to find an author to take Gemmell’s premise and flesh it out into a real story.