Fans of Michael Ehart’s 2007 release The Servant of the Manthycore (Double-Edged Publishing) will find a lot of familiar ground in The Tears of Ishtar – in fact the later book contains all of the stories collected in the former, some of which have been enlarged or altered, alongside new material. While I will admit to feeling a slight twinge of disappointment upon discovering that I had already read most of the stories in this book (and, when one factors in those stories appearing in other anthologies such as Rogue Blades Entertainment’s Rage of the Behemoth, I think I may have read nearly all of these tales at one time or another), that feeling quickly dissipated. These are, after all, good stories in the tradition of classic sword & sorcery, and this new collection-cum-fix-up-novel showcases Ehart’s Ninshi stories in a more complete and ultimately satisfying way than the previous book.
The Tears of Ishtar spans something like 3,000 years in the life of the cursed, nearly immortal warrior woman Ninshi, the Servant of the Manthycore. Beholden to this legendary, man-eating beast, Ninshi spends long centuries luring men into murderous ambush to satisfy the Manthycore’s appetite – and in exchange is rewarded with brief glimpses of her imprisoned lover, a man ensnared by the Manthycore’s magic and used as leverage against her. But these grim transactions do not comprise the main action of The Tears of Ishtar, as Ninshi finds herself confronting all manner of gods and spirits as she wanders the lands of the ancient Near East. Set against the backdrop of the rise and fall of empires, Ehart’s stories, which move relentlessly forward and often skip centuries of intervening time, capture the sweep and almost unimaginable chronological depth of a time and culture too-often merely abstracted as ‘Ancient Mesopotamia.’ It is that familiarity with the nuances of history, the inclusion of solid details of material culture and belief, and frequent biblical and historical allusions, which elevate the setting of The Tears of Ishtar in a memorable and compelling way.
It was with some sorrow that I came to the last page in Robert Low’s The Prow Beast — the fourth and, sadly (for now?), final book in the excellent Oathsworn saga. Beginning with 2007′s The Whale Road, the Oathsworn series has followed Orm Ruriksson’s intrepid band of adventurers the length and breadth of the Viking world in the 10th Century, from Scandinavia to Constantinople, from Jerusalem to the steppes of Russia, all the while taking them from an obscure band of raiders to far-famed men the subject of song and saga. And it is this fame that lies heavily around the necks of the Oathsworn in this final volume, for their reputation makes them both a target and an ill fit for a settled life away from the sea.
The novel begins with a bang, in the middle of a grim sea-fight against desperate odds — and a wildly dangerous pack of ulfhednar, the ‘berserkers’ of Viking lore. Orm, our narrator for the whole of the saga, then backtracks to explain how his men’s current predicament came to pass, and how the alliance of revenge-fueled Randr Starki and Pallig Tokeson, King of the Joms, was born. A perfect storm of factors collides upon the Oathsworn, who find themselves hated, their treasure coveted, and the pregnant Queen with whom they were entrusted, Sigrith, wife of the King of Sweden, hunted by rivals who do not wish to see her birth an heir to the throne. The Oathsworn’s Hestreng Hall is looted and burned, their longship the Fjord Elk destroyed by Greek fire, and the remnants of the Oathsworn and their families find themselves hunted and on the run. And that is just the beginning.
This short essay, ‘Future Realities: The First Line of Neuromancer,’ originally appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of The First Line.
William Gibson’s 1984 blockbuster Neuromancer forever changed the way science fiction was written – and the way, too, we look at our own future. Slick and seedy, hardboiled as any noir thriller yet rich with New Wave stylistic pyrotechnics, and packed with enough extrapolative speculation and real-world texture that the future it describes feels, not like the product of one man’s imagination, but more the inevitable revelations of a prophet. This legendary book has an opening line to match, one that points clearly at the themes and questions Gibson explores: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
The most striking part of that line is, of course, the use of television static to describe the natural world. That we can see with perfect, intuitive understanding exactly what this image depicts* with its juxtaposition, and that it feels at once completely natural and perhaps a bit startling to us, only reinforces that we ourselves are living in the world Gibson describes. His near future is a place where a suite of technologies — electronic, genetic, and informational — infuse and inform all human activity. It is our own world to the nth degree, the post-everything world that we already feel spinning out of control around us, one in which we are increasingly uncertain of what it is to be human.
Tomorrow afternoon (3:00 EST) and Monday night (9:00 EST) Paizo will be hosting a chat featuring all of the great names in their fantasy fiction stables. Also, I will be there.
Saturday 3:00pm EST
Dave Gross
Howard Andrew Jones
Liane Merciel
Erik Mona
Kevin Andrew Murphy
Steven Savile
Amber E. Scott
Bill Ward
Monday 9:00pm EST
Richard Lee Byers
Elaine Cunningham
Ed Greenwood
Dave Gross
J.C. Hay
Howard Andrew Jones
Liane Merciel
Erik Mona
Kevin Andrew Murphy
James Sutter
Bill Ward
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This short essay, ‘Future Realities: The First Line of Neuromancer,’ originally appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of The First Line.
