First Trailer for Children of Blood and Bone Adaptation

In the epic fantasy world of Orïsha, a young woman goes on a quest to reclaim the magic that was violently stolen from her people. She and her brother ally with the daughter and son of the king to fight back against his brutal rule.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, Children of Blood and Bone features a stellar cast including Thuso Mbedu, Damson Idris, Amandla Stenberg, Tosin Cole, featuring Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Zackary Momoh, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, Academy Award winner Regina King, with Idris Elba and Academy Award winner Viola Davis.

Age Of The Dragons (2011)

Imagine the elevator pitch "Moby Dick, but with a dragon".

Concepts don't come much higher and much more sublimely brilliant than that.

What a shame then that Age Of The Dragons ultimately fails to meet these expectations.

Now I've never actually read Moby Dick, but I know enough to recognise the character names have remained unchanged - Ahab (Danny Glover); Ishmael (Corey Sevier); Starbuck (David Morgan); Stubbs (Vinnie Jones), Flask (Larry Bagby), Queequeg (Kepa Kruse) - and that large chunks of dialogue are either lifted almost verbatim from Herman Melville's classic novel or, at least, are very close.

There are some great fantastical touches, like having Ahab's small crew serving on a land barge that wouldn't have looked out of place in one of Philip Reeve's World of Mortal Engines novels.

Unfortunately, the tense atmosphere of the hunt is undermined by shoehorning in of a stupid romantic subplot with Ahab's adopted daughter Rachel (Sofia Pernas) and the dumb revelation towards the end that Ahab knows exactly where the Great White Dragon nests... turning it not so much into a hunt as just a journey.

In the book, it should be noted, Rachel is the name of the vessel that ultimately rescues Ishmael from the sea - so you can see what they were trying to do here, it just comes across as a bit heavy-handed.

There are other plot holes as well, but there's enough monumental scenery chewing by Glover as the scarred captain, haunted by dreams of his youthful failure to save his sister from the White Dragon, and dramatic, cod-Shakespearean dialogue, to carry the story through these choppy waters.

The CGI effects are quite primitive as well, giving the movie the feeling of a slightly upmarket Asylum production, but the snowy scenery and rumbling landship provide adequate compensation in this department.

Surprisingly, I'd say this hour-and-a-half film needs to have been longer, with more plot development, some better explanations of the various characters' motivations, Rachel should have been cut from the story totally and the White Dragon should have been rather harder to track down.

Besides that, it's great!

Oh, and the movie could have done with a better title than the rather bland and generic Age Of The Dragons.

Although there are no traditional extras on the DVD, it actually includes - unmentioned anywhere on the DVD box - an entire second dragon-themed movie, Dragon Hunter which, if memory serves me right, isn't much cop at all. But still, a nice surprise nonetheless.

Ahab's "ship" The Pequod

Keep Calm And Carrie On

She just wanted a friend. They gave her a fight. All episodes of Carrie, a new series from Mike Flanagan, premiere on October 7 on Prime Video.

Apple TV Is The Place For Top Quality Sci-Fi

Callum Turner stars in the cyberpunk series adapted from William Gibson's genre-defining 1984 novel. Streaming on Apple TV on January 22.

Based on the best-selling novel by Blake Crouch, Dark Matter is a story of the road not taken. In season one, the series followed Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life.

Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived.

Season two picks up with the Dessens as they settle into a quiet life in a world that finally seems safe until the unimaginable forces them to run once again.

Dark Matter Season 2 — August 28 on Apple TV.

The Draugr Has Arrived!

You didn't think I'd get all excited about the novelisation of the great horror movie, Draug, without wanting to pick up my own copy?

Well, here it is in all its glory. 

I can't wait to see how writer/director Klas Persson has brought his terrifying and atmospheric tale to the written page as Draugr: A Viking Folk-Horror Saga.

As happens, this 350-page paperback has leapt into second place on my "to be read" list, meaning once I've finished the brain-scrambling, cosmic horrors of Jean Ray's Cruise of Shadows then I'll be picking up Draugr and plunging into the dark creepy, Swedish forests of a thousand years ago.

For those wondering about the change in spelling: as far as I can figure it, Draugr is Old Norse whereas Draug is more modern, but both words mean 'stinking, superhumanly strong, vengeful, reanimated corpses'.

Anyway, I've got one final tale to go in the Cruise of Shadows anthology, The Mainz Psalter, the yarn covered on the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast several weeks ago that lured me in to the writings of Jean Ray.

As long as my sanity holds up, I hope to finish it this weekend. 

As well as the rulebook for Dragonbane, I also have some comics and magazines that 'need' reading, but I'm so delighted with this current spell of actually reading novels and anthologies that I want to keep it up. It feels like so long since I've had such a burst of reading.

And that makes me feel very positive (for a change).

TBR: My immediate "to be read" selection

PROJECT 60: Off The Rails!!!

Photo by Pixabay

Some of you may recall in the past I've talked about my PROJECT 60, an ambitious desire to get both a skirmish wargame and a roleplaying campaign all set up and ready to run by the time I turn 60 towards the end of this year.

You might also have noticed that I haven't actually mentioned it since February - when Nick and I went to our local wargames show and I picked up some suitable 3D printed buildings.

I'd like to blame the hot weather and my general ill-health, but honestly it's my fickle nature and life-long inability to stay focused on any one particular aspect my hobbies for long.

PROJECT 60 was, therefore, rather ambitious - but that was the point.

On the skirmish wargame side, I'm still sticking firmly to my plans to build a tabletop Wild West town for games of Dead Man's Hand.

I just haven't sent off any Western figures for painting this year and have actually done nothing concrete towards assembling and painting the buildings, which was always a goal for this Summer.

Everything has simply remained in a clutter in the gamesroom.

I really need to get sorting that before things go missing as I move books, Blu Rays, and bits & bobs around looking for other things.

And this isn't to say my wargaming thoughts haven't gone round the houses from Bronze Age Greece to Fantasy Medieval and 17th/18th Century pirates and highwaymen!

They've just circled back (for the moment) to the American West.

On the roleplaying game front, my initial passion for Twilight Sword has rather dampened (even before the printed materials show up), and been replaced by flickering flames of interest in Dragonbane.

I haven't found the time to read the rules properly yet, so my confidence still swings all over the place and my mind darts off in other directions every now and then (even, most recently, considering a Wild West roleplaying campaign... but with a twist).

However, as well as 40-year history in Sweden, Dragonbane (aka Drakar och Demoner) has a solid core of fans who really, really love the system, which gives me a lot of encouragement. 

I have actually noticed some mechanical similarities between Twilight Sword and Dragonbane, which has led to my brain classifying Twilight Sword as modern Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons whereas Dragonbane is modern Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!

Of course, I'm essentially starting from scratch with Dragonbane, and you know how slow I am at reading and absorbing things... especially new things.

So, I'm still hoping to get these games back on track for PROJECT 60, but I know my birthday isn't that far away and I have way fewer years ahead of me than behind.

Even if I can one or both of these games up and running, just how long will these "forever campaigns" actually last now?

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Whole World Is A Sourcebook!

As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?

In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".

Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.

My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).

Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.

From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.

Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.

That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.

Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.

In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.

These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.

It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!

Red Sonja (2025)

I'd put off watching Red Sonja for ages because I really, really wanted it to be a grand slice of sword-and-sorcery, but everything I had heard about it said it was awful.

If I remember rightly, the film had languished in post-production hell for (seemingly) years after it was shot, then suddenly popped up, got a single-night cinema release (I guess for legal or accounting reasons) and was then dropped on digital and solid media without much fanfare.

Things were not looking good, but I still held out hope.

And the thing, now that I've seen it, I wouldn't call it bad per se. But I couldn't, in all conscience, call it good either.

Red Sonja was created for Marvel Comics, at the height of their Conan boom in the 1970s. Although she treads the Hyborian Age lands of Robert E Howard's Conan, she was never a character in Howard's books. He wrote about a 16th Century warrior called Red Sonya. But there is no connection - except for red hair and a similar name.

Red Sonja is now a hugely successful character at Dynamite Comics, with several titles of her own as well as frequent transdimensional crossovers with other members of their stable, but still operating primarily in a version of Howard's Hyborian Age.

The film script by Tasha Huo bandies around names from Robert E Howard's adventure yarns of Conan The Barbarian, and I think there was even a half-hearted (and erroneous) nod to the Cimmerian warrior himself. 

But, Red Sonja never feels like it's part of an epic, sweeping world. It all feels rather small and ragtag, like a Roger Corman offering from the 1980s (but devoid of the raucous charm those films often had).

The scenery, both the Bulgarian exteriors and the (presumably) CGI fantasy locations and sets are all very impressive and certainly help create the mood for a fantasy movie.

It's just Huo's script and the direction of MJ Bassett that lets down the brave actors, who are coping as best they can with the material they have to work with.

After she survives the slaughter of her tribe by barbarians, Sonja (Matilda Lutz) grows up in an enormous forest, always looking for other survivors. I find it hard to believe, no matter how big this forest is supposed to be, that after 10 or 15 years she'd found no clues.

Eventually, she comes to the attention of the wicked emperor Draygan (The Umbrella Academy's Robert Sheehan) when she is captured and forced to fight in his gladiatorial arena.

Of course, she organises a rebellion and leads the gladiators to their freedom. They are pursued by Draygan and his army, which includes his consort, the highly-skilled ex-pit fighter Annisia (Krypton's Wallis Day), who is more adept with a blade than Sonja. 

And, honestly, that's about it for plot.

There's a bit about Draygan seeking the lost half of his ancient "book of secrets", which helps tie him (unsurprisingly) into Sonja's backstory. 

Despite what the Japanese film poster (below) may suggest, Draygan is not a wizard (which would have been way cooler) but some kind of techno-inventor. He's not quite steampunk, but he does create spikey Warhammer-like vehicles and mortars, which just feel incongruous in this setting.

Nature-loving Sonja has a special bond with her horse, which really reminded me of Brego and Aragorn in The Two Towers, but might also be a take on Geralt of Rivia and his horse, Roach, in The Witcher.

Like quite a lot in Red Sonja, this bond isn't really explained. And while some things work as a mystery, others need some degree of backstory.

For instance, there are a couple of great-looking ape-people in the film. And I liked the fact that there was no explanation of their presence, their species didn't even get a name. They were just part of the ensemble of characters.

We also can't overlook the nice gag about Sonja's infamous chainmail bikini. 

Towards the final act, Sonja undergoes a mystical transformation, truly becoming the She-Devil With A Sword we know from the comics - but really it's too late in the story.

This also really draws attention to the character's pre-transformation competence, the script never really gets a handle on how good a fighter she is supposed to be. Her skill with various weapons changing from scene-to-scene as the script required it.

However, upon her post-transformation return for the final showdown, she seems to have become almost a superhero (there's definitely a touch of The Crow in her face paint).

And, as with the bulk of superhero movies that follow this arc, it would have been far more interesting if she had been "powered up" from much earlier in the story. Gandalf didn't become Gandalf The White just for the Battle at The Gates of Mordor in Lord Of The Rings.

The fight sequences in Red Sonja are generally okay, but the majority of actual death scenes either happen off-camera, in darkness or hidden some other way. This isn't what the target audience for this genre of movie are looking for.

That being said, I was surprised at how touching and well-done the last moments between Sonja and Draygan were, as I'd been expecting her just to lop his head off.

However, Red Sonja's very final scene, set some time later, is a hilariously unearned attempt (imitating Marion Ravenwood's introduction in Raiders of The Lost Ark) to pry the door open for a sequel.

Don't hold your breath.

Japanese poster for Red Sonja

Vintage Guide To Conan's World Now In My Collection

Crom may not care, but I do! Hence the serious face

As we're talking about reading today, I thought I'd share my latest non-Amazon purchase that's just arrived: A Gazeteer of The Hyborian World of Conan and An Ethnogeographical Dictionary of Principal Peoples of The Era.

Compiled by Lee N Falconer and published by Starmont House in 1977, I have been after a copy of this (rare?) guide to the world of Robert E. Howard's Conan The Barbarian since I first heard of its existence several years ago.

Eventually, one popped up on eBay. But it was in a store in the United States. After a bit of umming and ahhing, I thought 'this could be my only shot at getting this book', and so I pulled the trigger.

As I found out a year ago, once you've accepted the shipping costs, it is very comforting ordering from the States via eBay because your trans-Atlantic package is tracked all the way from the seller to your door: every single stop, every depot, every sorting facility, as it passes from the USPS to DHL and finally Evri  in the UK (which delivered it far quicker than I was expecting).

And the 49-year-old paperback arrived in top grade, ship-shape condition, complete with that nice old book smell that takes me back to my youth and rifling through the shelves of second-hand bookshops.

The bulk of the 127-page book is an alphabetised catalogue of places in Howard's Conan and Kull stories, followed appendices covering chronology, key peoples, heraldry and cartography.

The book closes out with three maps of the Hyborian World, including one based on Howard's own sketch and one superimposed on modern Europe. 

This is a very exciting addition to my small Howard library and makes me very happy to think that, once again, my (rare) patience paid off.

Originally the Gazeteer (sic) came packaged with a stunning, full colour map.

However, I've never seen one of those particular maps for sale... and, anyway, I  don't have wall space for a 28" by 40.5" map (as much as I love fantasy maps).

READING REPORT: Sailor Tom & Reconcile

 

I had a pretty impressive - for me, anyway - weekend of reading. I finished two books (one cover-to-cover in a handful of hours) and started a third.

First up was Mark Finn's homage to Robert E Howard's Sailor Steve Costigan: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey. 

One of the big differences between Sharkey and Costigan is that Sharkey was a real professional boxer in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Finn has simply given him, via the use of "tall tales", a pulpy life outside the ring and past his retirement.

Another big difference is that Sharkey's two-fisted adventures are much wilder and weirder than Costigan's, this collection includes weird science, ghost stories, battling robots, dinosaurs, and monsters (of several stripes). 

Because of his time in the ring, Sharkey is also a celebrity and is often recognised on his various travels, freely giving out autographs to his admirers.

Each story is short and succinct, but told with great gusto by Finn channelling Sharkey's voice.

My next read - which thankfully only took a couple of hours - was far less inspiring: Bruce Campbell's Western novella Reconcile. 

I hoped the A.I. art of the cover was just a glitch, a slight error of judgement. But the more I read of this short work the more I began to wonder if A.I. hadn't also infected the text within as well.

The adventure is set in Oregon in 1866 and within a few pages we meet a tribe of Northern Paiute Indians... playing (American) football!

If it had been kickabout proper football it wouldn't have stuck out so much like a sore thumb.

So I had to stop and check: American Football was first played between two college teams in November, 1869.

From there, it just kind of went downhill. There's no sense of place and direction for all the scenes that unfold, so when some crash into others it strains credibility.

If only there had been a map included, I might have had a better grasp of how close everyone was supposed to be, and what directions headed where. 

After his family is 'accidentally' massacred by an enraged Paiute, elderly engineer, George (who I think is who Campbell is portraying on the cover) teams up with an ex-army scout Joe (half-Paiute/half-white).

Togther, they seek to thwart the impending war between the natives and the real bad guys, the US Government forces who have just erected a new fort in Paiute land and want to corral the original inhabitants of the land into a reservation (or simply kill them).

The plot is pretty pedestrian, but I couldn't help wondering if the story (which gets quite gung-ho in its finale) wasn't recycled from an old Xena, Brisco County Jnr, or Jack Of All Trades script, because it can't decide if it's cartoon craziness or deadly serious (for instance, the brutal slaying of George's family is quite horrific, but the ultimate fate of the fort's commander almost comes with built-in Looney Tunes sound effects).

A disappointment in the wake of Campbell's excellent series of memoirs, nevertheless Reconcile was a quick read and that freed me up to start Cruise of Shadows.

This is an anthology of weird fiction by Jean Ray, an author I only recently learned about from the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast.

I'm two-and-a-half stories in... and it's very weird. But in a good, Lovecraftian way. 

A WESTERN NOVELLA BY BRUCE 'ASH' CAMPBELL!!!

A new arrival for my "to be read" shelf has immediately leapfrogged to the head of the queue, and will be the next book I crack open once I've finished Mark Finn's Fight Card: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey .

So, what is this tome of great literature, I hear you ask...

It's only a freakin' Western novella written by the B-movie legend Bruce Campbell.

That's Ash from the Evil Dead franchise, Autolycus from Xena: Warrior Princess, Pizza Poppa in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Winkie Gate Keeper in Oz the Great and Powerful, and countless other roles: the most pertinent of which is, possibly, the titular lead in all 28 episodes of the weird western The Adventures of Brisco County Jnr.

This isn't Campbells first book, as he's written a number of humorous autobiographical memoirs, as well as a couple of satirical works and a political thriller.

But this is a Western! 

Released just at the tail-end of the month-long window for the annual June On The Range event, sadly, I didn't learn of Reconcile until too late for that reading challenge.

But, never mind, the 105-page novella is now in my greasy mitts.

The back cover blurb, which is also the promotional text for the book, reads as follows:

"My mother, Joanne, loved the Western genre. She read every Zane Grey novel he ever wrote. I know because I drew stick-figure cartoons in the margins of her massive paperback collection.

"Westerns, by nature, are riddled with clichés – the steely-eyed, unshaven hero protecting innocent pioneers from brutal, unforgiving savages.

"With Reconcile, I tried to sidestep many of the cliché elements we've read or seen in Westerns for a generation. Reality isn't tidy or reliable. Reality has unpleasant circumstances that don't always resolve themselves like they do in the movies. In the heat of battle, the "good guys" and "bad guys" aren't so easily defined.

"In the sprawling history of the American West, I'd like to think a different kind of story was possible, and I hope you enjoy it."

So, do I have a clue what it's about? Nope. But it's a Western... written by Bruce Campbell. That's all I need to know. And that's why it's at the top of my TBR list!

PS. I know the cover looks like AI, but I have read that it is genuine art from a friend of Bruce's that has been "modified" by AI (I guess to put his head on the main character?).

Yes, I think it's disappointing if AI was involved in the production of this cover, even in an apparently, "small" way. Perhaps future editions will feature real, untampered, AI-free art? That would be nice.

Meet The Characters of Little House on The Prairie

Deathstalker's Deeds Finally Set Down On Paper

Deathstalker - as portrayed in Steven Kostanski’s recent, excellent, movie - finally finds his way onto the written page, this September.

Bret Nelson's official adaptation of Deathstalker, published by Encyclopocalypse, will be available as a 190-page mass market paperback and and an e-book, with an audiobook following along later this year.

With a foreword by the great Patton Oswalt (who voices goblin-dwarf wizard Doodad in the film), the book - according to a recent article on Rue Morgue - will expand:

"...upon the film’s world of monsters, magic, mayhem, and adventure, bringing readers deeper into the war-torn realm of Abraxeon and the dangerous quest that places its reluctant hero at the centre of an unplanned adventure after accidentally unleashing a curse upon…himself."

Nelson, who has a solid track record with movie tie-ins, having penned adaptations of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manborg, as well as numerous works of his own under his belt, says in the Rue Morgue piece that his was inspired by Conan The Barbarian comics and the works of Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock, as well as many hours of sword-and-sorcery roleplaying game campaigns.

I strongly suspect this is going to be delightfully pulpy and cannot wait to get my hands on the paperback.

"The legend returns... bloodier, bolder, and more outrageous than ever.

"Deathstalker is a thief, a mercenary, and a survivor with a talent for finding trouble wherever he roams. When a dying prince's mysterious amulet becomes bound to his soul, Deathstalker finds himself hunted by assassins, monsters, sorcerers, and creatures that should have remained buried in the darkest corners of the realm.

"Armed with an overwhelming desire to be left alone, Deathstalker embarks on a perilous quest across the war-torn kingdom of Abraxeon. Along the way he'll battle two-headed trolls, flesh-eating serpents, ancient curses, sinister magic, and an army of enemies determined to claim the amulet's deadly secret.

"Adapted from the screenplay by Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman, Frankie Freako) by Bret Nelson (Manborg, Plan 9 From Outer Space) and featuring a foreword by Patton Oswalt, Deathstalker is an epic journey into a world of gloriously old-school adventure.

"Sharpen your sword, and try not to get cursed along the way.

"Deathstalker rides again."

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Kickin' It Old School!

Supreme fantasy author Michael Moorcock admired pulp maven Robert E Howard's brutal barbarian Conan so much that when he set out to create his own swords and sorcery epic he wanted it to be as unlike the tales of the Cimmerian as possible.

And so, he created Elric: the doomed, feeble, albino sorcerer-king kept alive by, first, mysterious narcotics and later by the evil energy of his cursed sword, Stormbringer.

When I last reread the first of the Elric books - Elric of Melnibone - it took just about two days, I still couldn't put it down.

A combination of my insomnia and the power of the writing saw me reading at all hours of the day and night.

Moorcock proves you don't need a ponderous, phonebook-sized tome to tell a thrilling, memorable fantasy tale.

In a 'mere' 190-pages Elric goes from languishing on his Ruby Throne to dealing with elemental creatures, fighting off an invasion, crossing the Young Kingdoms to find his kidnapped sweetheart and finally journeying to another plane of existence to retrieve Stormbringer at the behest of the Chaos demon-god Aroich.

Outside of Tolkien's main Lord of The Rings' characters and Conan himself, Elric and his legendary sword must be two of the best known names in fantasy literature... their dreamy, nightmarish adventures seeping into all manner of related media (e.g. heavy influences on early roleplaying games from Dungeons & Dragons and Arduin to Chaosium's own Stormbringer game; to the prominent technomage in Babylon 5 universe called... Elric).

And next year, we're getting three different new Elric roleplaying games: one for Dragonbane, one for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and one for 5e!

Reading Elric of Melnibone again stirred in me nostalgic memories for the other books of my youth - Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox - and the old school fantasy roleplaying games of my teen years.

It filled me with a hankering for that '80s Dungeons & Dragons-style vibe, that feeling of wonder and "not knowing what's around the next corner".

To quote Wikipedia:

"Some fans of pencil and paper role playing games use [old school] to describe RPGs characterized by simple game mechanics and flexible rules. The character generation system in such RPGs tend to lack extensive lists of skills and abilities. Basic Dungeons & Dragons and the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons are often considered 'old school' role playing games."

All this hankering for past gaming glories was also been stoked back in the 2000's by several great rules-lite, war story-heavy fantasy gaming podcasts I listened to at the time. Sadly, these are now gone - swept aside by the tidal wave of "actual play" podcasts.

The pods I listened to eschewed the attitude of some of the more snobby or 'elitist' podcasts back then which looked down their virtual noses at "game stories" or the "tell me about your character" attitude.

Personally I believe that's a central element of roleplaying games - you are generating collective stories, so why not share them? Isn't this just another form of creating fantasy literature?

As long as the stories are interesting, they are as valid as any other anecdote you may care to tell.

What's To Be Read?

My current "to be read" (TBR) books

As a notoriously slow reader these days, I have been inspired by Booktube (particularly Michael K Vaughan's channel) to really try and pull my finger out this year.

Last week, I actually finished two books: Philip Reeve's latest thrilling World of Mortal Engines offering, Bridge of Storms, and then a short history of the fascinating Mansa Musa, the 14th Century emperor of Mali.

Although I had a vague knowledge of this celebrated - and incredibly wealthy - ruler, it wasn't until he popped up as a character in Apple TV's criminally underappreciated Time Bandits series that my interest was truly piqued. 

I'm currently reading Mark Finn's Sailor Steve Costigan homage Fight Card: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey, but this week's potentially record-breaking, red-alert heatwave (thanks global warming) is putting the kibosh on reading as its scrambling my already shaky concentration.

Nevertheless, I still have a "to be read" collection of four books by the side of the bed that I am determined to get as soon as possible.

This is, of course, on top of any new comics that arrive and my concerted effort to read the core rulebook of the Dragonbane roleplaying game, which has really taken my fancy of late.

A mix of novels and short story collections, the books on my reading list (as pictured above) are:

• Cruise of Shadows, a collection of early-to-mid 20th Century weird fiction by Jean Ray, a Belgium author I hadn't heard of until a few weeks ago when the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast did a breakdown of his short story, The Mainz Psalter, which is included in this collection. It was such a mind-blowing, Lovecraftian tale that I knew immediately I had to read the full thing and some more of Ray's work. I have to thank Rachel for getting this for me as a present, which arrived this morning and immediately jumped to the top of my TBR list.
• The End of Everything, by M. John Harrison. A post-apocalyptic take set on Britain's South Coast. Like the subsequent books on the list, I know nothing really about this story except that its marketing on the Blackwells book store site made it seem really interesting And this special edition - signed by the author - includes a bonus short story.
• Corpse Priest by Carson Winter. I think this one might have been mentioned on Michael K Vaughan's booktube channel, but the fact that it's described on the back cover as a mix of "sword and sorcery and cosmic horror" makes it sound like just the sort of thing I'd like.
• Warriors of The Boundless by Mike Chinn. This was a Christmas present, although I can't for the life of me remember where I first heard of it. It sounds like something Michael Moorcock would have written in the '70s or '80s. The back cover blurb talks of infinite worlds, bizarre lifeforms, and "now something is wrong, something is not where it should be and needs to be returned by any means necessary". The book contains six interconnected stories of epic fantasy.

MORE ARTISTIC INSPIRATION!

If only I'd been a bit patient the other day, I could have added a third art book (well, booklet) to my recent acquisitions of visual inspiration.

Today's new addition - which arrived quicker from the eBayer seller than I was expecting (thank you so much) - is Fighting Dragons and Demons: "a collection of Dragonbane drawings by Jann Galino".

Jann is the primary Dragonbane artist for Dunderdagar, a third-party publisher of material for Dragonbane, the English-language iteration of Sweden's most-enduring and beloved fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner (which has been in print since 1982).

The black-and-white art in this 38-page booklet is fantastic, and - as with yesterday's grand, sweeping, full-colour masterpieces - instantly evokes the character and excitement of each particular illustration, transporting you into the fantastical realm it is portraying.

Below are three random spreads from the booklet, poorly photographed by me, to help suggest the excellence of Jann Galino's art:

This picture, The Oracle, should explain some of my love for Dragonbane

INSPIRATION! INSPIRATION! INSPIRATION!

Although I sometimes feel a bit of a heathen, the majority of my inspiration for gaming is visual (e.g. movies, TV, comics etc), which is why I have a soft spot for art books.

As much as I enjoy reading, ultimately it's "the pictures" that more often hook me into a particular narrative or environment.

While not in the slightest artistically gifted myself, a great piece of art sets my creative neurons firing, giving me a new window into the current fantasy setting of choice - generally one of my own creation for whatever roleplaying game I'm "into" at that moment.

As we speak, I'm really hungry to play (run?) a swords-and-sorcery roleplaying game, which is why my comic book pull-list is increasingly filled with titles that either land squarely in that genre or, at least, have some tangential connection.

Yes, I have many comics, graphic novels, omnibuses etc, along with a broad library of movies and TV shows that scratch that particular itch, but there's always room for the straight-forward art book, with erudite commentary.
 
Thus, this week, I've acquired a second-hand, hardback copy of Paul Kidby's The Art of Discworld and the brand new, just-published softback edition of The Book of Jusko.

Joe Jusko's striking artwork can be seen on the covers of sword-and-sorcery, sword-and-planet, horror and superhero comics, as well as paperback novels, calendars etc

You can open either of these tomes at a random page and be swept away to another world, which is exactly the kind of extra fuel I need to keep the mental fires of my fantasy gaming dreams from fizzling out.

DING! DING! ROUND TWO!

Yes, I am wearing my Conan The Barbarian t-shirt. 

Just over a year since the first glorious volume arrived from the Robert E Howard Foundation Press (via Amazon, I must confess), the second hardback collection of the prodigious pulp writer's boxing stories is now in my hands.

And on the weekend of 40th annual Howard Days over in Cross Plains, Texas, no less.

I was particularly keen to get my mitts on Fists of Iron: Round Two because it's wall-to-wall Sailor Steve Costigan yarns. 

Although Howard is best known for his swords-and-sorcery stories featuring the likes of Conan, Kull, and Bran Mak Morn: as I've declared many times before, Sailor Steve Costigan is my favourite of Howard's many characters. 

That's Steve and his bulldog Mike on the cover

This is only the second volume of a planned four-volume series of Howard's boxing stories. And money - and space - willing I'm all in for the complete set.

I'm not generally what you'd call a sporty person, but there's a definite fascination in Howard's journalistic, blow-by-blow descriptions of boxing bouts, be they legal or otherwise. 

And Costigan is a charming, hard-drinking, goofy lunk, prone to being led into chaotic misadventures by a pretty face, and who resolves his problems with his fists and his feisty bulldog, Mike. I mean, what's not to enjoy?

Complementing Fists of Iron: Round Two, I also picked up  the self-published Fight Card: The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey by Howard scholar Mark Finn (he even wrote the introduction to Fists of Iron: Round Two!).

Finn's homage to Sailor Steve imagines a boisterous, pulp adventure-packed life for the very real, early 20th Century, boxer Tom Sharkey after he officially hung up his gloves. Sharkey, I believe, was an inspiration for Howard when penning the Sailor Steve tales. 

Mark Finn also wrote Blood & Thunder, the highly-regarded biography of Robert E Howard.

Sailor Steve has already found a home on my Robert E Howard shelf