Review: Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Volume 2

I am publishing this two months later than I intended. My reading has slowed a bit – well, a lot – and I’m not sure why. But I enjoyed reading this volume in chunks, though. My apologies to Adrian and the authors for savoring their work!

As before, I will try to avoid most spoilers, and those I include will be in parentheses, so skip those sentences if you intend to read the stories (which I recommend)!

And again there were a lot of poems in this volume, which I don’t review here; see the review of the previous volume for an explanation.

A quick word on typos – I only remember one from Volume 1. This volume has quite a few more. Given how many I seem to generate myself, and the general decline of standards in the publishing industry, I guess this is not as big a deal as I have made it out to be in the past. But it did stand out to me in contrast to the previous collection. The odd thing here is that they came in bunches, usually within a single story; for instance, one story toward the end had a bunch of typos that consisted of no space between two words – likethis. Another story had some commas in place of periods. Most stories had nothing that I noticed, though.

This volume has a great cover illustration by Robert Zoltan. There is no story to match it inside, unfortunately, but it sets a tone. There is a very brief introduction by Mark Finn along the lines of “The King is dead/Long live the King!” variety. Maybe I expect too much from an introduction these days? I’m not asking for a Lin Carter-type exposition, but…well, maybe I am.

The first story is Demon-Fang by R. Michael Burns, and it features a character from Volume 1, Hokage. I have stated before that I love recurring characters, so this is nice to see. The story is good, but solved a little too easy for my tastes (killing the mystic leader kills all of his mystic army). As in the story in the last volume, the author has some unusual turns of phrasing; sometimes they work (“At once his gaze snagged on a certain tangle of shadow behind a spray of bamboo.”) and other times it grates (like using the word “bloom” twice within a couple of pages of each other; either use was OK but using it twice calls attention to itself and took me outside the story). That is minor, however. I like the character and the godling that follows him around, and I am glad to see the author is developing some novels based on them.

Edit: there was a typo in the paragraph above – “developng.” Since I complain so much about typos, it’s only fair that I point that out.

The second story is the exhaustingly-named The Worship of the Lord of the Estuary and the Wages of Heroism, by James Frederick William Rowe. This story is great. It is a Celtic fantasy about a truly epic struggle, and the vile priesthood formed around a monster. The only thing that doesn’t absolutely ring true is that the monster stayed close to shore during the struggle, rather than simply heading to deeper water; but again, the tale is so strong, and conveyed with the air of mythic greatness, that this doesn’t matter. I loved the way the cycle perpetuated itself. The greatness of the hero is a bleak contrast to the character of the people he saved. I’m not sure the last section was necessary, as it just drove home the point that the story made, but this is a minor quibble. Simply an awesome story.

Next up is Death at the Pass by Michael R. Fletcher. This is the story of an undead army freshly raised, from the point of view of an ancient general who is part of it. A very strong story, with precise world-building done effectively in so short a space. I was a little fuzzy on why the viewpoint character still had so much awareness and will, but it is explained adequately enough for the story’s purpose, especially given the constraints of a short story’s length. Some fun characters, some dark humor done well.

This is followed by The Princess Trap by Peter Darbyshire. Humor can be pretty subjective, so it is difficult to do well. This story pulls it off decently; it is not offensive or smug in its reaching for smiles. The setup is amusing, and the simplicity of the viewpoint character helps sustain the jokes. Not bad.

The Crown of Sorrows by Sean Patrick Kelley is next. This is a Greek-style fantasy, a play on an old legend. I don’t buy everything in the story – like forcing a mercenary to accomplish the ultimate move in a decades-old feud, rather than somebody of unquestioning loyalty (and the second of the three challenges rings a bit hollow – the character would have drowned before the chamber emptied of water) – but the story is told in strong language and has a visceral feel to it. A pretty good ending, though the final fight is not as climactic as it could have been. Despite the nits I pick here, I liked this one quite a bit.

Next up is another humor-driven story, Rhindor’s Remission by Russell Miller. The humor here is a lot broader, and unapologetically so, to the point of being absurd in some parts. It veers between serious and gallows humor, often in the same sentence. But the narrative is strong, and the story is pretty good, so it blends well and does work. Humorous stories are not my favorite, but this one is good, and the ending did have me chuckling out loud.

The next story is A Game of Chess by David Pilling. It is an Arthurian fantasy told from the viewpoint of Sir Kay. It straddles the line of being comedy, but tasteful and not broad. The author does a pretty good job of depicting the quirky but unmistakable menace of the fae, as Sir Kay takes on Oberon, king of the faeries, in a game of chess with Sir Gawaine’s life at stake. I’m not sure why the choice of sacrifice Kay was about to make upset Oberon, causing him to discard the game – something I am unfamiliar with in the Arthurian legends about the connection between the faerie king and Bruce Sans Pite? (“Without Pity”) Maybe I’m missing the obvious…at any rate, I didn’t quite understand why he ended the game, and so the tale left me a bit confused.

Then we have a very short tale, A Song for the New King by S. Boyd Taylor. This is another one that left me a bit unsatisfied. A man who has labored in vain his entire life, losing all he loves, finally gets his dream commission. He goes through writer’s block, and then with time winding down, he comes through. The story ends on a rhyming couplet, paralleling the final lines the character wrote, I suppose. I read this one twice to see what I missed…and I’m still not sure. It is not bad, the writing is concise and strong; but I feel like it went over my head.

I hope that does not become a habit!

Next up is Dusts of War by Ben Godby. This is a very strong story, and it could have been great but for a few things. A war rages between unnamed powers, and an agent comes to an out-of-the-way village, untouched by the war, on a mission. Great development in the beginning of this story, as there is no action but the writing conveys a hidden menace with almost every simple conversation. Things start to happen quickly, and quickly spiral out of control. The flaw for me was the ultimate ambiguity. I get that the author is saying there are no winners in war, but saying there are no real sides – well, an interesting point, but I think the story tapers off because of this ambiguity. Also, “summer dust” and variations of the phrase showed up a half-dozen times in the story, and became a bit grating. Still, a very good story.

Kingdom of Graves by David Charlton is next. A half-orc gravedigger comes into a town town ravaged by plague; he is well-known in this region, and some suspect him of bringing the plague with him (he doesn’t). There’s a dwarf and elves (the latter under a different name), which usually gets a story the deprecating label of “D&D fiction.” But this is a good tale. The half-orc and his dwarf companion end up discovering the origin of the plague and a whole lot more. A new nation is established at the end, and though it is because of their actions, the main characters almost seem tangential to its existence. A few scenes don’t ring true (as when the elves confront the half-orc and pin him to a wall with mystic javelins – for that to happen, he would have of course would have held his hands in exactly the right position for them to be pinned, which seems unlikely), but I liked this tale very much.

The next story features another protagonist of orcish blood, though this time a full-blooded orc, Lord of the Tattered Banner by Kristopher Reisz. This is a strong story from start to finish. Fengr, the main character, is loyal to his lords, but there are those who undermine it. He thinks he is free, and that is the crux of this story as he can’t quite stop events from unfolding. Even though there is manipulation in this story, nothing feels contrived. The world-building, while broad, is convincing. I’d like to read more stories set in it.

After this is Nicor by Matthew Quinn. This is a decent story, a viking fantasy, held back (for me) by some awkward descriptions of situations, which may not even register with others. (Specifically, their longship encounters another that has been beached, and the captain orders them to “come along side” so they can look down into it. This is not possible – a ship on the beach is on the beach; you cannot come along side of it unless you haul your own ship onto the beach. The oars would also keep you from getting beside it…but anyway. Later they chase a creature into a cave system. The main character sees the water around him getting red with blood – in a pitch-black cave system underwater. Yeah, there is mention of some moonlight coming through a few convenient holes in the roof, but having been in caves before, a few moonbeams will not illuminate everything that the characters saw.) Sorry to go into that digression, but things like that (and a few others I see no need to point out) pull me out of the narrative. So that aside…it was a decent story. Being a jaded cynic, I saw the ending realization coming…but I still liked it. The pacing of Geiri’s awareness was done well, as it straddled glorifying things at a few points, before the author made things clear for the protagonist.

The last story is The Lion and the Thorn Tree, by J. S. Bangs, an African fantasy. Good pacing, told in a good voice. I liked it, but still, it felt tangential to a larger story; like the story of Imaro’s mother, rather than the real hero. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but since there is nothing following this, it feels unmoored to me. Why couldn’t she have been the one prophesied to destroy the evil sorcerer, rather than being the bearing vessel for that hero? Ahh, it’s probably just me. This is a good story. Stories should make you feel like there is a lot more to the worlds they take place in, and this one accomplishes that.

And there we have it. Another top notch collection of Heroic Fantasy. Thanks again to Adrian for the complimentary copy (and apologies again for the delay in the review). I am looking forward to digging into Volume 3!

Below is a link to buying this book on Amazon. If you put it in your cart and buy within 24 hours of doing so, I will get 3% of the purchase price, at no cost to the publisher or additional cost to you. Help me keep the heat pumps going in my secret Antarctic base!

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