Kings of the Wyld is a Wild Ride

Great storytelling hay can be reaped by taking old tropes and flat out running with them until you reach their natural, logical conclusion.  (See, e.g., M.L. Brennan’s Generation V series.)  Eames does just that with the band of adventurers model common to D&D and other RPGs.  What would a world filled with adventuring bands look like?  What would the economics be?  How would adventurers be seen by society?  Much is made of the rock and roll allusions in Kings of the Wyld, but I really think that this is the more interesting angle.

It makes for a rollicking read, if not one that ever quite meets its potential or Eames lofty aims.

Follow Every Day Should Be Tuesday on Social Media

The best way to follow Every Day Should Be Tuesday is using an RSS reader (I use the G2Reader).  But EDSBT does have a social media presence and you are welcome to and encouraged to follow me elsewhere.

Every Day Should Be Tuesday Facebook page: Every Day Should Be Tuesday

Don’t like Facebook?  I’m also on Twitter: @tuesdayreviews

You can find me on Litsy as TuesdayReviews

And, last but not least (ok, probably least), you can follow me on Goodreads

June 2019 Month-in-Review and Mid-Year-in-Review

After a very hectic May, June provided a more sedate pace.  The rest of the summer should prove even better.  Hopefully two trips to Canada provide plenty of reading time.  I hope to read even more in July and August than I read in May and June.  Sadly, it looks like there will be no summer blog series this year.

June was my fourth-best month ever at Every Day Should Be Tuesday and my fifth-best month ever at Hillbilly Highways.

Short Review Roundup – Falling Behind (Expectations) edition

The purpose of a book review blog is to publish book reviews.  (Look at me—courting controversy!)  I really feel like I have been slacking off around here.  I haven’t even really been reading that much (fantasy), but I have a backlog of books to review nonetheless.  And the longer you wait after reading a book, the harder it gets to review.  So I am going to go ahead and (almost) clear out my queue in one fell swoop.

(Looking back after writing my short reviews, each of these books came to disappoint me in some way, mostly due to overly high expectations walking in.)

My To Be Reviewed stack

Short Review Roundup – MonsterVerse Movie Edition

Everybody’s got to have a potential cinematic universe.  Some are more welcome than others.  I grew up watching Godzilla movies on Saturday mornings.  I am not about to complain about a Godzilla reboot in an age of CGI riches.  We also seem to be going through a bit of a kaiju movie Renaissance: three MonsterVerse movies, Shin Godzilla, the two Pacific Rim movies, Rampage, and The Meg.

I’ve been behind the 8-ball, but I finally watched the 2014 Godzilla and told my wife all I wanted for Fathers’ Day was for her to watch the baby so I could go watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

We will get at least one more movie, King Kong v. Godzilla, but the fate of the MonsterVerse is in doubt after relatively lackluster and declining box office receipts.

Crowfall Caps a Landmark Work of GrimHeart

Ed McDonald does something remarkable with Crowfall.  Crowfall is the third (and presumably final) book in his stellar Raven’s Mark series.  Third books—especially third books that close a series—follow a certain pattern.  The first book sets up the world; the second book in particular sets up the story for the third book.  That is certainly true here.  But McDonald places a major event—the titular Crowfall—in the six year gap between the events of Ravencry and Crowfall.  Doing so helps him sneak a staggering amount of worldbuilding into a third book.  It is both novel and enormously successful.  Book 3 includes everything that makes the first two books great, enhances book 2 with some additional explanation of what happened there, and adds new, wonderful stuff all its own.  The Raven’s Mark series is absolutely now one of my favorite series.

If you haven’t read book 1, Blackwing, do so as soon as possible.  Well, read my review first, but then read it asap.  For those of you who have read books 1 and 2, read on for my lightly spoilery review of book 3.

Throwback SF: Cirsova: Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense no. 1

I have fallen behind in my Cirsova reading.  With the name change and the change in focus, I decided to jump ahead from the last issue I read (issue no. 3 from volume 1) to the newest issue.

Formerly, Cirsova: Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, the new title is Cirsova: Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense.  The name change signifies both a shift and focus and an attempt to more squarely brand the magazine based on its content: as a modern day pulp magazine, something “adventure” conveys better than “fantasy and science fiction.”  Per the editor, he sees Cirsova as more of an Argosy than a Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

So how well does the issue reflect that?  The Tarzan fragment (more on that in a bit!) is an obvious aide.  Tarzan is speculative fiction, if not obviously so.  But it doesn’t fit into any of the modern SF genre categories.  In addition to the Tarzan story, I would group 3-5 of the other stories into the “adventure” category rather than one of the more usual and modern SF genres.  Not a sharp change, but not an insubstantial one either and probably just what the editor was looking for—he never intended to drop the fantasy and science fiction entirely.  There are still plenty of examples of those, including a wonderfully bizarre and grotesque Vancian tale, a novelette that would have been at home in Weird Tales, and a couple science fiction that would have fit right in during the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

The big news here, of course, is the Tarzan fragment.  The story of the fragment is as good (better, honestly) than the story in the fragment.  The fragment lay undiscovered for decades.  When it was discovered, several writers passed on completing it.  Michael Tierney (a Cirsova regular) agreed to do it.  Before he did, though, Burroughs’ grandson Danton, also the president of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., died.  When Tierney resumed discussion of the fragment with ERB, Inc., they initially did not realize that he was talking about a fragment rather than a piece of Tierney’s original work.  Eventually the confusion was rectified and, remarkably, the original of the fragment, thought lost in a fire, was discovered.  (You can read the full story here.)

The finished Tarzan fragment is also responsible for what is probably my second favorite Cirsova cover.