When I ride out to my own Camlann, you can bet I’ll be thumping some Orff.
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So I see it’s basically been six months since I updated this blog, at least by the way I reckon time (November basically being December, and December meaning the year is over, so it’s essentially January of 2013 right now and I’m only just getting over a terrible hangover from New Year’s Eve, even though I swore I wouldn’t do that to myself again this year) and I figured I should put something up here for the google bots to fondle.
Of course, I can never talk about all the secret CIA assassin stuff I fill my days with (not without having to contract a hit on myself, mind you), but I did get a treat in the mail today I thought I’d mention. The esteemed Wolfe scholar Michael Andre-Driussi has recently completed another of his wonderful companion books to the worlds of Gene Wolfe, and this time it’s a biggie on par with the irreplaceable Lexicon Urthus. Gate of Horn, Book of Silk is a companion to the Long Sun/Short Sun cycle and, even after just a light flip through, I can tell this is another must-have for Wolfe aficionados.
But this isn’t a review, or even a plug, more of a promise for a proper review sometime in the future, most likely at Black Gate. Thinking along those lines though makes me realize just how long it’s been since I read these fantastic series — over ten years since a reread of New Sun and even longer for Long and Short. Hell, I don’t think I’ve read Short Sun since it was originally released, and I actually read them as they came out.
So I guess I have twelve books to reread on top of everything else — which means maybe it’ll be another six months (my time) before I have anything to say here.
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- Title: Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau
- Author: Charles R. Saunders
- Genre: Heroic Fantasy/Sword & Sorcery
- Year: 2011
Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau will feel a bit like new territory for fans of Charles R. Saunders. Unchanged, of course, is the terrific action and imagination of Saunders, and the fidelity to character and setting — indeed everything there is to love about Saunders’ Imaro and Dossouye stories is evident in this latest offering. But The Dancers of Mulukau is Saunders’ first full-length sword & sorcery offering of recent years that is not based wholly or in part on existing material, and represents the Saunders of today, not of decades ago. After the various ups and downs of Saunders’ publishing career, it feels good to at last come to a place in which this author’s classic works are now safely preserved and easily available. Now he is able to move forward into as yet uncharted territory to tell new stories and develop new themes, reminding us once again why he must be counted among the giants of the field of heroic fantasy adventure fiction.
Dossouye herself is in new territory at the start of The Dancers of Mulukau. The story of how Dossouye, formidable warrior woman of the Abomey, came to leave her people and wander the land is told in the first book, a picaresque fix-up novel based on classic novellas penned by Saunders in the 70s and 80s, with additional unpublished material and a new story added for the book’s release in 2008. I won’t trouble to repeat much of what I said about Dossouye in my original review of that book, but readers can be assured that all of the hallmarks of those foundational stories have returned and are enlarged upon in The Dancers of Mulukau.
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Someone on twitter (and I forget who, sorry) posted this link to pictures of the prop magazines designed for Blade Runner — you know, the sort of things seen on newstands in the dark and rainy background, the kind of things you would have noticed if you hadn’t been so fascinated by Harrison Ford using chopsticks.
Anyway, some very cool versions of 2019 magazines as imagined in 1982. Of course those of us who actually live in the future can all now see what Scott and company couldn’t, that there won’t actually be any magazines left in 2019. And no Pris either, sadly.
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