Review: Necromancy in Nilztiria by D.M. Ritzlin

D.M. Ritzlin is the owner/publisher of DMR Books, which is one of the few publshers to put out Sword & Sorcery. They are publishing both original stories and books as well as reprints. I have a couple of their releases, and when I saw this tome of short stories being advertised, I decided to grab it.

Nilztiria is a distant world orbiting a red sun; a little oddly, the sun is described as being bright in the sky, rather than dim like most red giants are thought to be. There is nothing made about its being a “Dying Earth” kind of world, either, though there are several comments about the number of lost civilizations and a few references to antiquity. So while the stories are definitely going for a Zothique from Clark Ashton Smith vibe, they do not do so with blatant imitation.

I want to start off by saying that I liked the volume very much, but it might have been a good idea to have gotten an editor. Not because of misspellings or grammatical errors – there was only a single misspelled word that I noticed, which is very refreshing and a better job than the last St. Marin’s Press books I read as an example – but because there were a few errors/oddities in the stories’ scenes. I’ll give two examples. In one, a character has his sword out as he is advancing; then a moment later he rolls between the legs of a skeletal adversary and “unsheathes” his blade. It might make sense to put up your blade as you perform an acrobatic maneuver, but it should be mentioned rather than being assumed and having a character unsheathe a blade that is already bared. Second, and worse, there is a sea voyage where a character is surprised by another tossing out an anchor behind him. There is no mention of the boat preparing for anchoring before or after this; indeed, it is mentioned that they are in water of “unknowable” fathoms and far from their destination still. There is no logical reason for the character to have tossed out the anchor, and it mars an otherwise gripping scene. Someone who read these stories for DMR before publication would likely have caught these errors.

That out of the way, the stories were very good. They indeed harken to Smith and Zothique with both humor and vivid imagery. There is a certain narrative detachment, which is uncommon for S&S stories, but works well here. There is a wonderful use of language, both in obscure words and fashioning sentences. The first few stories read a bit rough to me, but it might have been because I was adjusting to DMR’s narrative voice; I did not notice any roughness in the writing after the first few stories.

There are a few recurring characters, warriors and rogues. It is nice that the same character does not dominate all of the stories, and at the same time I like the recurring guys. They give an idea of the breadth of the planet and the strange cultures on its surface. There is also a lot of weirdness, and it is presented vividly. I should also note that many of the stories are bawdy, past the point of being risque. It didn’t bug me, but some might be so I mention here.

Tough to single out any of the stories as a favorite. They are all very good and atmospheric. Overall, this is a very strong collection of weird S&S stories, and I will not hesitate to get more of Ritlin’s Nilztiria stories when they are published.

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