Yamada Mongartari: To Break the Demon Gate by Richard Parks

Yamada Mongartari: To Break the Demon Gate

by Richard Parks

To Break the Demon Gate was written in 2014, by Richard Parks. Mr. Parks is a Mississippi native who currently inhabits New York with his wife; and veteran author of short stories who has only recently started writing full blown novels. While this is the first work of Mr. Parks I've read, looking at a list of his work there is a certain bend towards Japanese influenced fantasy. It's kinda interesting how wide spread Japanese works and influence is in North America. I'm certainly not immune to it, the first work from outside the Anglo sphere (English speaking nations, pretty much the United Kingdom and former colonies) was a Japanese light novel. Part of this is the sheer amount of Japanese work that makes it to North America.  Speaking for myself when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s, my choices were often English fiction, American fiction or Japanese fiction. Back then, that last was mostly in the form of anime but that did spark an interest in the culture of Japan in a lot of people. That's not entirely one sided either, anime was inspired by Disney Animations. To be honest if I had to guess, I would say that Japanese works are often foreign enough to be new and interesting but influenced enough by American works that it's not completely bewildering.

To Break the Demon Gate, fits into that. It's set in a semi-historical feudal Japan where ghosts, demons and more are real and drop by way to often for comfort. Our main character, Yamada Mongartari is a broke washed-up minor nobleman who now works as “nobleman's proxy”: solving mysteries and problems for the wealthy and powerful who need these issues resolved quietly and discretely. When he's not working, he's drunk. Mostly to forget his failures and personal loses. In other words, he's a noir private eye. In feudal Japan. With magic and ghosts. You could stick him in the Maltese Falcon and he would work just fine! I can almost hear Mr. Parks yelling at the top of his lungs ‘Genre conventions be damned I want my Japanese ghosts in my detective story!’ The thing of it is, it works masterfully in this novel. Yamada is an interesting character, the mysteries he's hired to solve are complex, strange and help to pull you in. Additionally, Mr. Parks clearly has an understanding of Japanese history and culture and unlike a lot of writers goes to the pre-Shogunate era, to a time when the court of the Emperor of Japan did actually rule Japan. This is a very neglected period, so it gets bonus points from me. When I read this book I actually feel like I'm reading a noir mystery that could happen in a ghost ridden Japan of that bygone age. Additionally, there is an attention to detail in the time period that I enjoy. Characters communicate by exchanging poems (something the nobles of the time did to both show off their education and maintain a level of privacy in their communications). The word samurai isn't used as it hasn't come into vogue yet, instead the warrior class are referred to as Bushi and they're not at the top of the totem pole yet, so they mostly serve as retainers to the noble class. The Taira and Minamoto clans are both referenced although their confrontation in the Genpei wars hasn't happened yet. Instead the story takes place during the Taira domination of the Imperial Court (made possible by their strategy of getting the Emperor married to a Taira princess as often as possible without causing massive inbreeding). However conflict between them and the provincial Minamoto clan (whose claim to power is they're doing all the actual fighting against rebels and barbarians to the north) is on an upswing.

Before I get into that let me get into some of the characters, first off we have a character who doesn't actually have a lot of screen time but looms large over the plot: Princess Teiko, 2nd wife of the former Emperor, mother of the current heir to the throne (imperial succession was complicated). While we don't get to see a lot of her, her actions shape a lot of the plot. She acts with one goal on her mind, to ensure that her son gets crowned Emperor of Japan. She does this using every tool and person at her disposal--including herself--with a ruthlessness that is actually rather shocking in its purity. In fact I'm going to note that frankly she is the most ruthless character in this book. For all that, she's not malicious or violent. In fact she's actually a fairly sympathetic character, showing that sometimes ruthlessness is wasted on the wicked. Alongside her is her brother Prince Kanemore, who wants nothing more than to renounce his title, start his own clan and hack his own fief from the howling wilderness. For that to happen his nephew must take the throne. Prince Kanemore not only is a friend to our main character Yamada but also serves as patron, ally and conduit into the halls of power where a lot of the struggle takes place. He's also serves as kind of a straight man to Yamada's sneaky cleverness at times. On the other end of society we have the vagabond exorcist Buddhist Priest Kenji. We don't find out a lot about Kenji in this book but we do find out that while somewhat reliable (when sober) Kenji wears his vows lightly (hence the sober remark). That said, he's often a useful ally to Yamada and helps shines a light on supernatural matters. Arrayed against them is Lord Sentaro of the Taira clan, who himself is wealthy, powerful and ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. Placing a son of the Emperor and Taira princess on the throne of Japan. To that end he will lie, cheat, steal and even murder men, women and helpless children; and sleep contently because he honestly believes such a goal is worth any sacrifice. I honestly love villains like this. Lord Sentaro isn't in this for primarily personal gain (he's already at the very top of his social structure) he's playing for the benefit and enrichment of his family and his family's family unto the 10th generation. Lord Sentaro is a vile human being in a lot of ways but he's one I can understand and even respect. I'd still recommend shooting the bastard mind you, but I can respect and hate a person at the same time.

The conflict between the Taira clan and the various other clans clan over control of the Imperial court under-girds the whole book, providing the basic conflict but the book avoids focusing on that. Instead it's about the personalities and their conflicts that really take center stage. This isn't just a dynastic struggle between two family groups. It's a personal struggle between Yamada, who is fighting for people he loves and cares for, against a man he hates. After all it was Lord Sentaro who got Yamada ousted from the Imperial court in the first place. Meanwhile Lord Sentaro blames Yamada for his failure to get his candidate chosen as heir to the throne. So both these men are carrying large grudges against each other and would really love if if the other guy could just... Fuck off and die already. On top of this are a number of characters with their own secret motivations and desires that I can't discuss for risk of spoilers. Those motivations however cause actions that end up steering the plot in many ways and it's how Yamada and Lord Sentaro navigate and deal with those actions that display their virtues and vices. Throw in a number of unexplained murders, a supernatural uproar and plots within plots and you have a really fun story.

The characterization is downright amazing,the attention to detail both historical and plot-wise are very well done (he has most payments being made in rice! Yamada pays his rent in rice! Everyone forgets that detail about Japan, a lot of payments were made in rice!). The dialogue can be a bit stilted to western ears as Mr. Parks adopts a more formal way of speaking with his characters (which also makes sense as most of them are upper class noblemen with an education, not to mention that Japanese has a formal form of the language that English just lacks entirely.  Translating would also lend to the stilted feeling.) which may be a problem for some readers, although it honestly didn't bother me. That said I did grow up with the King James Bible so any work that doesn't have Thees and Thous (there is no such thing in this book, just a formal tone in speaking) is honestly not that difficult for me. Perchance if thou had hast my training in thy youth, thou wouldst tread upon the same path as I. There is an issue with pacing as well. Mr. Parks did most of his writing in short stories and it shows here, so in a lot of ways this book reads more like a series of interconnected short stories than a full length novel with a single story. On the one hand, I kinda like that and I can say that Mr. Parks manages to do in 50 pages what more than a few of the recent books I've read couldn't do in over 300. That is: tell me a story with a middle, beginning and ending! On the other hand, he should consider working a bit harder to develop stronger interconnections between chapters. In total it didn't impact my appreciation of the story; it was still quite easy to follow; and at least I didn't feel like the last 75 pages or so was a headlong rush to wrap everything up because oh crap we've run out of novel (you know who you are. You know!). Your mileage may vary on Mr. Park's pacing though, so be aware of that going in.

All in all I really enjoyed the book. It's not often I read a story before the Genpei Wars in Japan and less often that I read a story set in a Japan that never was that's not about samurai doing samurai things to each other. On top of that, I appreciated the noir style of the tale and characterization, but the same time the story didn't leap headfirst into the darkness that lot of modern noir tales tends towards. I also enjoy a story willing to defy rules like when and where certain stories are suppose to take place and do it well. The pacing issues and the dialogue may detract from the enjoyment and sadly do bring the grade down on this book, but I am also left more than willing to read more of Mr. Parks work and certainly would like to see more of Yamada. After the last couple books, this was a welcome breath of fresh air and I am glad not to be taking a veteran writer to task but to celebrate their work instead. Because of this I am awarding Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate by Richard Parks a B+. Let's see if we can keep up the good times right?

Next week, we return to light novels for a bit as I need kind of a brain dump before tackling one of the historical non-fictions on my shelf demanding that I get over here and learn something. See you then.

This review edited by Dr. Ben Allen.

Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender by Onrie Kompan Art by Giovanni Timpano

Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender

by Onrie Kompan

Art by Giovanni Timpano

I actually picked up this comic at Phoenix Comic Con this year, because I wanted to read something short and was interested in the subject matter. I wasn't planning on buying any comics this year but when the gentleman running the booth told me what it was about well... I figured what's one more comic in the box right?  I thought I would break trend and read, then review it within weeks of buying it instead of months.

Onrie Kompan is an American born and raised writer, as far as I can find out this is his first project and he's labored on it for almost 3 years. This includes several trips to Korea to research Admiral Yi. His passion for this work even got Stan Lee involved, who wrote the foreword to the comic. I do want to note that his passion for this is self evident, even just reading the comic I can see this is something that Mr. Kompan worked very hard on and believed in very much. Mr. Timpano is an Italian born artist, who is still very new to comics. That said his art is pretty damn good; I personally like the choice of deep, rich colors for this comic. That said I could do with less use of black and shadows as it makes even scenes that are taking place in broad daylight out on the open sea feel like they're taking place in some twilight forest, though everything is easy to see and tell apart. Which given the equipment of the time is hard to do. I also want to mention I appreciate the care lavished upon the gear and ships in this series. The Turtle ships themselves are incredible! They look menacing and dangerous from the first panel, just like a super weapon ought to!

Let me talk about the real life Admiral Yi, who was ironically an officer of the Korean Army sent to the navy as a punishment. So one of the greatest admirals of all time... had no formal training as a naval officer, he just kinda taught himself. Seriously if you wrote a fictional character who did this, critics like me would eat you alive. He joined the military at a time when the military was looked down upon as a lesser career path. This was a by-product of the Confucian philosophy that had major influence on Korea at the time. I believe the saying that illustrates this is “Good Iron does not make nails and good men do not make soldiers.” That said officers were still considered upper class and had to pass examinations to achieve rank. Yi passed his examinations and served with distinction in the army but had a lot of political enemies who constantly got him demoted. Dumping him in the navy was intended to be a kind of final insult, but ended up in some ways being the salvation of the Korean nation, preserving it from Japanese Conquest for hundreds of years.

The comic begins with the Japanese invasion in full swing (with a quick prelude of Shogun Hideyoshi vowing to conquer the world) and starts us off with the battle of Okpo in 1592. It's the first of several battles shown in the graphic novel and they are well done. Sticking fairly close to the historical record of what actually happened, with a few flourishes here and there to make things a little easier to follow or to make it work better as a story. One example of this is a confrontation between Admiral Yi and ninjas. As far as I can find out, ninjas were never used by the Japanese Army in Korea. On the flip side they could have been and the fight itself is pretty awesome... so I'm willing to forgive it. When it comes to the actual war itself, the graphic novel does a good job. Showing the grim odds against the Koreans that were overcome by a combination of new weapons, Yi's genius and the troops own courage and masterful execution of the Admiral's plan. I enjoyed these parts greatly and like the sheer amount of effort put into it. It's when the graphic novel wanders away from the battlefield that it gets into trouble.

While I enjoyed the graphic novel over all, there are a number of decisions that I have to disagree with, and others that I don't disagree with but I disagree with the implication. There are also some choices I could go both ways on.  For example, the Japanese Generals Todo and Michiyuki are revealed to be having a love affair with each other. My problem here is that neither general was gay in the historical record and there is no evidence of such an affair. This might seem like a small thing, but these were real people. In such cases I feel we should try to get as close to the actual person as possible (for example there was a gay President of the United States, he was unmarried and had a male 'friend' in the white house with him. I leave it to the reader to figure out which President that might be. I will just say showing him as let's say in a passionate love affair with a woman would not have my support either). On that vein is the disappearance of Admiral Yi's family in this story! His eldest son and his nephew were present at a number of battles with him. He was a married man (and also had a concubine but given that was the custom of the time, I won't hold that against him). His best friend was the Prime Minister of Korea! Instead the Admiral Yi we're shown in this graphic novel is a grim island unto himself with admirers and supporters but few friends. By choosing this more boring approach, Mr. Kompan has turned his back on a number of story possibilities.  In story terms, it seems like he did this to create a semi-romantic relationship with the head nurse Injung, but that doesn't go anywhere so I'm left asking “why?”. Speaking of romance, we also have a young refugee lady named Jin who seems to exist in this story mainly to stir up trouble. I'm holding my opinion on her here because her story arc ends in a cliff hanger of sorts, but like Injung her subplot doesn't seem to go anywhere. Also, her decisions make very little rational sense to me and I have no idea what she is supposed to be doing.

Another issue I have is Baron Seo, a Korean informant to the Japanese, and former slaver who hates Admiral Yi with all his being for some past action. He's supposed to be the main villain but he's just so unnecessary! We don't need a conflict between Seo and Yi because we already have a several conflicts! We have Yi vs the Japanese, as they attempt to destroy his way of life and his very nation. We have Yi vs his fellow admirals and officers as they fight for credit and to steal command from him. We have Yi vs his own damn king who wants to keep Yi under control and worries about a wildly popular and successful military man overthrowing him and taking his throne. Let me throw this in as well; Seo is really one dimensional! He has one character trait which is that he is Evil Mcevil Face! Seriously every time he's the focus of the book he is either doing something worth the death penalty or helping someone else do something worth the death penalty. Frankly he brings the quality of the whole work down, because I'm not invested here, I'm rolling my eyes and asking when I can get back to Yi fighting off a mass invasion with only a small army of devoted men. Which is kind of the story I paid money to see!

While I was entertained and enjoyed a lot of this comic, there are entire characters and sub plots which felt like wasted space. Additionally, changes to made to historical characters didn't really seem to make the story any better. That said this wasn't a bad comic. The battles were awesome, the story easy to follow and the art was good. All of that said Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender by Onrie Kompan is going to clock in at a C+. It's better than average but the fact is that Mr. Kompan added a lot of things that didn't need to be added and took away things that made the story weaker. I'm going to suggest my readers check out the Extra history series on Admiral Yi as well, you can find it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ieaDfD_h6s)

Next week, we go back to novels. See you then.

Edited by Dr. Ben Allen.

Drawing the Dragon by April Adams

Drawing the Dragon

April Adams

Drawing the Dragon was written in 2011 by an independent author, April Adams. Ms Adams is a former Army Paratrooper (this is a Marine review series but I won't hold that against her), who graduated UC Santa Barbara and lives in San Diego with her husband, children and pets. I bought the book from her in person at Phoenix fan fest 2015 thinking it might be a good review someday, and here we are 6 months later.

The setting is something of a mash up of fantasy and science fiction. The idea is that after settling the moons of Jupiter and pushing out into the galaxy we run into the natives of the Andromeda galaxy; who happen to be humanoid, skinny, short and have pointed ears. As such we dub them elves (for some reason what elves call themselves is never an issue). We also discover great space faring monsters that we dub dragons. Fortunately dragons are friendly. Unfortunately they're dying, or they were before humans came up with a way to say them by turning them into giant cyborg spaceships. I'm going to take a moment to admit that is an awesome idea and I really like this part of the setting. Ms. Adams goes one further by linking the dragon's captain and the dragon itself in a symbiotic relationship. I'm not sure how I feel about this part because it seems like everything is in a symbiotic relationship in science fantasy these days. In this case they bond with their pilots as hatchlings (who are called Jordans for some reason) and grow into fighters and from there into capital ships. The dragons are grown via...magic. An “engineer” gathers together the metal and other materials needed (for example diamond) and using unexplained magic powers bonds that material to the dragon and by increasing the air pressure inside the dragon (remember they've been modified to have human/elf crews living inside of them) cause them to grow quickly. We're actually shown this happening in the book so I have to give Ms. Adams points for showing instead of telling.

The dragons and their Jordans are the main characters of the book, there are three of them each naming themselves after the color of their dragon: Jordan Blue, Jordan Scarlet and Jordan Jade. The story mainly focuses on Scarlet (a human woman) and Blue (an elf woman). Jade (an elf man) isn't really as prominent. We are given a view of his life, but we don't spend as much time with him as the other two. To be fair, he's not as interesting and doesn't have lot to do in this book, but he does get one important job. I found Scarlet the most interesting because in a lot of ways she is the most flawed. She's vain, taking a lot of effort and care to preserve her admittedly very good looks (on the flip side, good looks are something that do take a lot of work to maintain, like strength or intelligence), and she has a vile temper. She is also prideful and petty, making decisions driven by those emotions. She is also brave, tough as hell and driven beyond belief. She does all of this without becoming a terrible person. In combination, these traits mean she is often driving the plot. Blue is no slouch either being a fairly decent character in her own right, but because of her really tight relationship with Galen (a doctor and an elf) she often feels like half a person. It is possible that because the story is about Blue, I end up giving Scarlet more credit for stealing a good chunk of it. Blue does have her own stuff going on, there's a fair amount of strangeness in her back story Most of her life however seems to revolve around her dragon or her boyfriend Galen, to the point of getting some sort of magictech comm chip embedded in her ear so she can talk to him 24/7. Which does seem a little unhealthy. While I don't dislike Blue, I kind of find her confusing and while I appreciate her character, there's not a lot of pay off. I'll come back to this.

There is one element I do know how I feel about, the Chimera. The Chimera are an artificial race built to look perfect and be in great physical shape, so of course they were built as a slave race. More specifically, a race of pleasure slaves and living status symbols; owning a Chimera was a sign of wealth and prestige. Until they eventually rose up, killed their masters, and fled out into the darkness of space to plot revenge on the societies that created them. These are, of course, the villains of the story and honestly they're kinda lame.  I'll grant that an interstellar society allows for a vast scale so even exclusive luxury goods can be made en mass, but that same scale means they would be extremely widely scattered across light years. Hell there could only be a couple thousand of them on a planet. These aren't sapient creatures being created in millions to toil in factories or mines, but people being made to serve as sex toys and status symbol nannies, butlers, and maids for the super elite. All of this begs the question of how the hell did they managed a coordinated uprising and escape? Sure they had people helping them who weren't Chimera but you would need a hell of an organization to pull that off. This also brings up another question. Why? OH WHY? WOULD YOU EVER MAKE SAPIENT SLAVES!?! ESPECIALLY SAPIENTS WHO WOULD REALIZE THEY'RE SLAVES AND HATE IT!?! WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WANT TO!?! This is a society where we are shown they have the ability to make non-sapient constructs who do the jobs that the Chimera did just as well and were just as pretty. So even pretending there would be no moral questions about this, there are a host of practical and safety related questions that arise.

This is a repeating theme in fantasy and science fiction stories that take on the role of a morality play (a story meant to teach about good and sinful behavior basically). Honestly I'm getting a bit tired of it, or rather I get tired of it being jammed in without any real thought about it. The humans in this story are suppose to be descended from our Earth. The book even shows us a far future remake of the Wizard of Oz, so clearly parts of our popular culture survived and spread. One of the repeating lessons of our popular entertainments is that creating slave races is bad! So why would you do it? It doesn't help that a lot about the Chimera themselves are left a mystery. We know they have ships (or at least one ship) but are they now a rival empire? A roving fleet? A terrorist organization? The book treats them inconsistently, with the central government refusing to authorize violent action against them despite them committing several acts of war. This is something I found frustrating because there's no explanation for why the central government is dragging it's feet. And then there's Bjorn.

I loathe Bjorn. Not in the love-to-hate way I do a lot of villains of page and screen, but in the way I do characters that just annoy me. Ms. Adams seems to want me to sympathize and root for Bjorn when he decides that he's in love in Scarlet but I just found this creepy; mainly because he decides this after spending a couple hours torturing her, including taking a blowtorch to her ribs. Call me old fashioned, but I'm of the opinion that once someone tortures you that severely, they're off the dating list forever. Frankly, his willingness to throw away his plans and advantages to protect Scarlet from others comes across as creepy and obsessive. It doesn't help that Ms. Adams like to suggest that Scarlet does feel a major attraction to him and is just lying to herself about her feelings. Okay yes, Bjorn is very pretty, but I'm going to argue that prettiness stops being compelling after a torture session that almost kills you, along with various murders and attempted murders of people you know and care for.

Additionally, the pacing is a mess. There are flashbacks without any announcement, so you're left trying to figure out why a character who was piloting a dragon 2 pages ago is now on vacation with her boyfriend on abandoned Earth. Changes in viewpoint character are sudden and if you're not paying attention you miss them entirely. I get the feeling that Ms. Adams is trying to create a feeling of being unmoored in time and space for her reader as part of the theme she is proposing rather haphazardly in the book, but instead makes the book hard to read and the story difficult to follow. Several minor characters wander in and out of the story without much announcement, which only makes the problem worse. There's also the narrative device she chooses to impart the history of her universe to us: that of a Grandfather telling stories to his unknown-how-many-great's grandkids. I'm supposed to being wondering what the Grandfather's deal is and who he really is, but I'm so overloaded with mysteries and schemes in this book that I simply don't care. It would also help if she didn't try to hide the identity of the characters in the flashbacks. Yes, I get that the Jordans changed their names upon becoming Jordans. No, having flashbacks to their training appear as disconnected sections with nothing to do with the plot until the very end without any identification of who the hell I'm reading about didn't make me feel favorable. It's fairly easy to figure out by the 2nd time it happens, so when the reveal comes there's little feeling of pay off. Frankly this book needed an editor badly or at least someone to tell Ms. Adams that yes, she is being very clever with all of this but cleverness comes in a distant 2nd to telling a story that the reader can follow.

There's also my eternal complaint. The story isn't complete. We're left with questions that are only raised in the last 30 pages of the book, and character conflicts that literally only happen in the last chapter! Instead of this being a pay off for the story and a conclusion, it's basically an announcement to read the next book to find out what the hell is going on. At this point I think everyone knows how I feel about that. It's okay to end a book with someone setting up a quest for the next one. Just make sure you've told me a complete story before you do it. I pay you money for this, the least you can do is give me a complete story! I feel like I'm banging on this drum every other review and I honestly don't mean to, but everyone keeps doing this! We had a build up about some revelation about Jordan Blue that was frankly half done for example.  So I find myself very frustrated with Drawing the Dragon. There's a good story here with an interesting universe and very human characters but it's screwed up by lousy pacing and jarring shifts in the narrative; and a lack of a satisfying conclusion. So, while I want to give it a higher grade because cyborg dragons! In Space! In the end Drawing the Dragon by April Adams gets C, because that's what it earned.

Bah, next week we're going to try something new. A historical graphic novel. See you then.

This review was edited by Dr. Ben Allen.  

Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues by Gail Simone

Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues

By Gail Simone

Art by Walter Geovani

Oh... Where to even start here? With the long and strange history of the character of Red Sonja? With her creator Robert E Howard? The fabled career of Gail Simone? To Discuss Brazilian artist Walter Geovani? Not to mention the graphic novel itself? You know what? I'll start with Gail Simone.

I kind of feel like Ms. Simone is both a warning and an example to comic editors everywhere about what might happen if you turn to a fan and ask “You think you can do better?” Because as it turns out... she can. Personally speaking, I'm very comfortable in saying she's one of the better comic book writers out there, which is interesting because before becoming a writer she was a hair dresser who had studied theater in college. She first came to everyone's attention when she joined a small web site called Women in Refrigerators which took it's name from an infamous scene where Green Lantern Kyle Rayner came home one day to find his murdered girlfriend stuffed into a fridge. The website pointed out that an awful a lot of female superheroes and other characters were being murdered, raped or otherwise brutalized; to serve as plot devices in the stories of male characters. Which in a lot of cases turned them into well... props for the plot instead of fully realized characters in their own right. I'm going to risk jumping in the white hot gender wars of the internet and say Women in Refrigerators had a point. This isn't to say you can never hurt a female character, just that if you're killing Supergirl just to invoke angst in a Superman story you might not being treating Supergirl as a character in her own right. The same of course holds true in reverse. From there Ms. Simone wrote a column on Comic Book Resources and moved on to writing Simpson Comic Books. Then DC comics hired her and the rest is her becoming so beloved by comic book readers that when DC editor Brain Cunningham fired her on the 9^th of December, the fan outrage was so powerful that she was rehired on the 21^st of the same month (this would be the warning part for editors...). Red Sonja was written in the next year for the up and coming company Dynamite (who sadly I won't be discussing in this review, space and all).

Walter Geovani, the artist is a Brazilian born artist who had worked mainly on independent comics. Honestly I feel that Red Sonja is some of his best work so far (it's the latest example I've seen, to be fair) but I can see rapid improvement in the young man. Now I'm not an art critic, so when the improvement is so dramatic that I can notice it, it must be good. The art on Red Sonja is pretty damn good too; the action has weight and movement, and it conveys a certain brutality which is what you need for a character like Sonja. I'm actually left with high hopes for the man.

Let me talk about Red Sonja, who springs from the same mind that gave us Kull, Solomon Kane and most famously of all Conan the Barbarian. I speak of course of one of the more under appreciated fathers of sword and sorcery and maybe American Fantasy in general, Robert E Howard. I intent to write more about Howard in a later entry in this series but here's what you need to know for now: he's awesome, I love his work and will make no apologies for that. Interestingly enough Red Sonja wasn't written as a character in Conan's setting. She was instead a character in one of his historical works “Shadow of the Vulture,” set during the actual siege of Vienna. In it the character of Red Sonya is a red haired, gun slinging sword's woman who is after revenge on the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and his consort Roxelana (Roxelana was a real person who became the wife of the Sultan, the first woman that was actually married by the Sultan in hundreds of years). It is revealed that Roxelana is actually Sonya's sister and she had betrayed the family to the Sultan.

Fast Forward to the 1970s, Marvel Comics is making Conan the Barbarian comics and they're converting Howard's other works into Conan stories to avoid running out of material. Roy Thomas rewrites Shadow of the Vulture into a Conan story and combines the Red Sonya of that story with another Howard character Dark Agnes De Chastillon (Interestingly Dark Agnes also inspired another character Jirel of Joiry who would become the prototype in turn for a legion of female heroes. This is what I mean about Howard not getting his fucking due!). Red Sonya proved to be a popular character (her first appearance was not in the scale bikini but that would come along shortly) and took off. Roy Thomas and friends would hammer together their own origin story in 1975 that appeared as a story in a Kull comic. It's... a very 1970s origin story I'm going to have to say. Red Sonya is basically a peasant girl whose family is brutally murdered while she is raped and left to die. While Sonya lays there the goddess Scathach (The goddess in question is based on a woman from Irish mythology, a Scottish Warrior Woman who trains the great Ulster Hero Cu Chulainn) appears to her and basically offers her superpowers, that she may be as a strong and fast and skilled as any man with a weapon. As long as she swears to never lie with a man who doesn't first kick her ass. I'll admit from the year 2016 that origin is a bit... well...look guys “I Spit on your Grave,” was a thing back then but it ain't anymore. Plus that vow really kinda bothers me, I mean, the only person Red Sonya can have a sexual relationship with is someone willing to beat the crap out of her? That's kinda of... Rapey. I'm not big on these issues so I kinda feel when I notice it, it's time to tone it down.

That's why we have Gail Simone who in this graphic novel gives us a 3^rd origin story for the character. In Queen of Plagues we have Red Sonja dealing with her past, an invading army of men and monsters from the ocean deeps, a plague, and the fact that the woman she considers a sister has turned on her and gone batshit crazy. To be honest when I read the novel for the first time, I considered it the 2^nd best origin (Shadow of the Vulture is the best one!). On reflection (having read it three times now) we have a story where Red Sonja is dealing with betrayal by a sister, a siege on a city by an expansionist empire of an alien culture and her own mental issues; the mixing of the two origins is actually pretty damn good and I find I like it. The only thing I disagree with is writing out the goddess (seriously I would just modify the deal to make it less 70s revenge porn). We get to peer back into her childhood where she was raised by a hunter, before her family was murdered before her very eyes by a wanna be warlord (that's a nice touch, it's not a real band of soldiers, but a bunch of thugs who think they're soldiers who do this, making the following scenes much more believable). We see this in flashbacks, as well as where Sonja learned to be a two legged whirlwind of death. She had been taken as a slave and taught to kill by a fellow prisoner Dark Annisia (who may herself be a nod to Dark Agnes, man, we got layers here!). She and Dark Annisia were freed when a man lead a coup to overthrow the brutal and wanton king of the city. Dark Annisia left, Red Sonja stuck around for awhile moved by the mercy and generosity of such a man. Sadly without support Dark Annisia had sunk into a kind of PTSD driven insanity where she believed herself literally hounded by the souls of the men and women she killed. This insane rage led her to a path that collided with Red Sonja and while they may regret it, neither one of them were backing down and neither one of were pulling their punches. I really wish we got to spend more time with Dark Annisia to see how she slid into her current stage. This is a very comic book version of PTSD and the reactions of people who suffer from it. I would have liked to see it treated with a more realistic tone. I would say that I hope in the future Ms. Simone gives something like that more consideration, because it's a real issue and some of my brothers in arms are still laboring under it. That said, Ms. Simone never treats it as anything but a tragedy and does not make light of it, which counts for a lot with me. She is after all, a civilian and as far as I know doesn't have a lot of direct experience with such things.

Red Sonja Queen of Plagues is a successful re-imaging of the characters origin that includes a lot of nods to her inspirations. The action is great, the dialogue rather snappy without being to modern which helps it retain a serious tone. Because of this Red Sonja Queen of Plagues by Gail Simone is an A. Ms. Simone's first appearance on this review series is a triumphant one and I hope for more to come.

Quick note, this is the first week I've had someone else proofread my review.  Give a thank you to Ben Allen for his hard work folks. Next week, we go back to novels. See you then.  

The Dinosaur Lords By Victor Milan

The Dinosaur Lords

By Victor Milan

The Dinosaur Lords is a great example of what you call a high concept novel. High concept basically means an idea that you can easily communicate in a few or even a single sentence. In the case of The Dinosaur Lords, that single sentence is “Knights fighting on dinosaurs.” Which, I'm going to be blunt here guys, is an awesome concept. I mean who doesn't like the idea of riding a multi-ton monster into battle? I've loved dinosaurs since I was kid and by that I mean like a lot of kids I was utterly besotted with them. Having grown up... Despite having acquired many more loves and tastes, I still love the damn things. Dinosaurs are awesome. There's no debating that. I'll gleefully sit down and watch a documentary on dinosaurs, or read a book on them or have a completely over the top debate over whether or not the Tyrannosaurs Rex was a predator or a scavenger (he was a predator obviously, although I'm sure the Tyrant King also stole any kill he could get to). So when I grabbed the novel, I was sure no matter what happened I wouldn't be bored.

The Dinosaur Lords was written by veteran writer Victor Milan, who was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma (my own home state) in 1954. Mr. Milan has literally been writing longer then I've been alive and has written and published over a 100 novels and short stories. He has written Forgotten Realms books, Mech Warrior books, cyberpunk, fantasy, science fiction so on and so forth. His most famous book was perhaps the Cybernetic Samurai, a cyberpunk novel released in 1985. I went ahead and looked into the Cybernetic Samurai which was an award winning book and might be appearing in this review series someday (if nothing else I would like to expose some of my readers, a number of whom are of tender years to the kind of fiction written in the 1980s. Especially the cyberpunk). But! We're not here to talk about Cyberpunk, we're here to talk about what, I at least think, is a fantasy novel.

The Dinosaur Lords takes place on the planet of Paradise, which our good author goes out of his way to tell us is not in any way, shape, or form Earth. On Paradise there are a small number of mammals. Horses, dogs, ferrets, cats and most importantly Humans, the rest of the wildlife is straight from the Mesozoic Era, that's right not just dinosaurs but all the creatures that shared the planet with them from the flying pterodactyls to the great monsters of the deep. Paradise teems with them and they all live here without respect for silly things like if they actually lived together on earth. Stegosaurus roams the land alongside the Tyrannosaur Rex (fun fact kid, there is actually less time separating us from the T-Rex then there is separating the Tyrant King from the Stegosaurus) for example. These facts among other things leads me to think that there is something of the artificial about Paradise (there's a sentence you could parse several ways). That said I got to give Mr. Milan points for depicting at least some of the dinosaurs has having feathers and vibrant colors. Something even Jurassic World skimped on. Another point is given to Mr. Milan for having most Dinosaur knights riding war hadrosaurs, because riding a multi-ton carnivore is dangerous and expensive. That said there are characters who ride Allosaurus and (of course) T-Rexes but it's a privilege reserved for wealthy high nobles who have the land and money to feed and maintain such monsters. Frankly I'm not turning my nose up at the hadrosaur as a war mount either. I mean sure it's a herbivore but so are horses and the average war hadrosaur is over 3 tons! If that wasn't enough Milan exercised his right as a fantasy Arthur to kick it up notch by giving hadrosaurs the ability to attack using special cries that can burst blood vessels and cause intense physical damage as if they were giant monstrous banshees. Now granted I'm pretty sure the real hadrosaurs likely couldn't do that, but I don't care. As long as a story is internally consistent I'm willing to accept some flubbing on the biology and abilities of an extinct species brought back to life specifically so I can ride it into battle and hit other people with sharp bits of metal.

Dinosaur Lords has 3 and a half separate story lines that run through it, 2 and a half of those story lines weave around each other while one stands completely on it's own. In one story line, bard and dinosaur master Rob Korrigan follows fallen lord Karyl Bogomirskiy, once the most feared military leader around but now fallen on hard times, on a job to raise an army to defense a province of pacifists. I'm going to take a moment to say I've always felt that strict pacifism (a refusal to engage in violence even in self defense) makes no damn sense. My life experience has taught me the hard way that there are people who will take nonresistance as an excuse to indulge their worst impulses and refusing to fight doesn't make the world better. It only gives those people free reign to be brutal monsters. That said there are times and places where refusing to engage in violence is the right idea. We've seen that demonstrated in history that people engaged in nonviolent protest and action can do what all the armies in the world can't but a blanket refusal towards violence is frankly madness in my view. Especially when there are armies specifically coming in to murder, rape and enslave people while specifically saying they're doing so because they know you won't fight them. I mean you live in a world where there are nobles who train raptor packs to hunt men for sport, how does nonviolence sound like a good idea here!?! Lucky for Karyl, he's able to find volunteers. Now he's just to figure out how he's going to beat armies full of men who trained their entire lives to kill people and their dinosaurs with small bands of peasants and townsmen who only realized that the pointy end of a spear is dangerous 3 weeks ago. Karyl is an easy character to respect but hard to like, we spend most of his story line inside Rob's head who is easy to like but at times hard to respect. That said Rob is a charming, earthy fellow so it's not like I disliked him as a view point character.

Our second story line follows the Imperial Champion Jaume, who is a pretty amazing guy. He's a knight who founded his own knightly order and the kind of guy who can stand up to a T-Rex without quailing. He's a poet who loves beauty and a honorable man who loves truth. However he's got a problem, see the Emperor of the Empire is pretty much a figure head and always has been (it's a kind of Holy Roman Empire situation they got going on here) but the current Emperor has decided to change that. Part of his solution is to send Jaume off to support the people attacking said province of pacifist. Course that's an issue when Jaume's own religious beliefs are more in line with theirs then with the Emperor's. Jaume agrees to lead the army because that's his duty which I understand it's his behavior on the campaign I don't get! Let me warn everyone that spoilers are following. Jaume's army is also suppose to attack and subdue a number of semi-rebellious nobles who have been playing bandits. His army is made up of his knightly order, imperial troops and a number of feudal levies led by nobles who have fallen into a religious sect which... Well encourages them to treat peasants like shit. When Jaume wins the battle against the rebels (no thanks to the nobles in his army) he arranges a truce and everyone seems happy but when those same nobles use a false flag of parley to break into the castle and town of the rebels and proceed to murder and rape everyone they can and Jaume is woken up in the middle of night with this news... He refuses to do anything, because... He's worried about the effect on the army or the empire. This flabbergasted me so much I went and checked with some medieval historians I knew just to see if I was missing anything. I wasn't. This makes no damn sense! If Jaume doesn't act, then no one will ever bother making a truce or surrender to him ever again because he's either a liar who can't be trusted or a weak man who can't control his troops. This kind of behavior means that frankly Jaume doesn't have an army, he has an armed mob that walks in the same direction he does and that's worse than having no troops at all! I may be spoiled by my experience in a 21^st century military but this is not shit that William the Conqueror would have stood for and he lived over 900 years ago!

Next we have Imperial Princess Melodia who utterly frustrates me even more then Jaume. Why? Because her story line is she watches other people and talks about it with her ladies in waiting. She is in the imperial court and I think it's suppose to give me a sense of of the intrigue and plotting going on but Melodia is so removed from all of it I don't really get any good information. So I get a story line that involves talking about other people and watching other people do stuff and her being in a snit with Jaume (who is her lover) because she thinks this war is a bad idea to. She complains, sneers and pouts and frankly I don't really care for her and I'm asking what was the point of having her as a view point character? She doesn't do anything! Her entire story line is... You know what I'll come back to this. Lastly is Count Falk who is mostly interwoven with Princess Melodia, a former rebel who swears loyalty to the Emperor and bullied by his servant and mother plots and schemes to gain control of the Emperor's advisory council... Well he mostly carries out his servant's plots and schemes and then gets drunk and talks about how terrible Melodia is for flirting with him and not fucking him (she doesn't really flirt with him, she dances with him once and tells him she doesn't like him). Falk almost feels like an internet “nice guy” transported into a fantasy novel. Which is reason enough to loathe him (2 tips from my life guys, 1 if you have to tell people you're a nice guy... Then you're not a nice guy. 2 if the only reason you're nice to a girl is so she'll sleep with you? You're not a nice guy and she shouldn't sleep with you. I get the frustration, I do! I've been told no way more then I like as well but for fuck's sake guys get a grip! Okay back to the review) but there's even more reason to hate Falk. He's a bloody whiner! Everything is about how awful everyone is to him and how nothing goes his way and everything sucks... You want to slap him in the mouth and scream “You're in the top 1% of your society and you ride a T-Rex to war! Grow Up! You're embarrassing humanity in front of the dinosaurs!”

There's good stuff in this book, the battles and action are very well done and given to us from different view points so we get to watch from afar and be right in the front lines. There's also a good variety of action from one on one fights on dinosaur back and on foot to mass battles and everything in between. However I never got the same sense with the intrigue or the plotting. I'm left very fuzzy on what the different factions in the imperial court are and what they want. Additionally... This entire book feels like a prologue not a complete story and I HATE that. This is especially true of the whole Melodia story line which could have frankly been saved as chapters in the next book and acted as the beginning to her story line. Jaume's story doesn't come to a conclusion so much as kinda meander to a stop. While Karyl's story line which is the closest thing to a full story ends on a semi-cliff hanger. Look, there's nothing wrong with writing an interconnected series of books telling a single grand story but each book that I paid cash money for should give me a complete story in and of itself. I mean Larry Correia can do it, Kevin Herne does it masterfully in the Iron Druid series, I expect a veteran writer like Milan to do the same. It's not that The Dinosaur Lords is a bad story mind you, it's that it's not a complete story. Still I did like most of the characters and really enjoyed the battles and the world itself is very interesting so it's not like I felt I wasted my money. Still I can't in good faith give The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milian more than a C+. Lack of a satisfying ending in any of the story lines and issues with the characters and the politics is holding down what should be something awesome. Hopefully the sequel can address some of these issues.

Next time: I am going to Phoenix Comic Con! But you're still getting a review! Let's see what I think of Gail Simone writing of the Red Devil of Hyrkania. See you next week!  

Leviathan Wakes By James S.A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes

By James S.A. Corey

Take a space opera setting designed as a role playing game. Take a pair of talented writers. Take a cast of interesting characters and put them in space. Add in the greatest war in human history which as started due to a mystery. Now add in something worse. That's how you get Leviathan Wakes, a science fiction novel published in 2011, nominated for the Hugo in 2012 and the Locus Award in the same year. The book also serves as the basis for setting of the television show The Expanse, which I haven't seen... Yet, but it has been well received.

James S.A Corey is a pen name used by Daniel Abraham and Ty Francis (fun fact, the S.A in the name is actually the initials of Mr. Abraham's daughter). Ty Francis first worked out the setting of the Expanse as a pitch for an MMO game, but the company folded. It was possible that the setting would have been folded up and put in the back of a mental closet if not for Mr. Francis' sister who while taking a creative writing course asked him for a story idea and (as any writer would have told him would happen) wrote it wrong. So he rewrote it to match his idea and sold it. Mr. Francis would then go on to run the Expanse as a RPG setting on a message board where the inspiration for many of the characters would take root (being derived from characters people made for the game) but the game ended before they could get anywhere really interesting. It looked like the Expanse was heading for that mental closet expect for a meeting with Mr. Abraham. Daniel Abraham, who had been writing since a young age was at this a veteran writer. He had written fantasy, urban fantasy and wrote the science fiction novel Hunter's Run (along with George RR Martin). They both cemented their friendship when Mr. Francis was hired to work as Mr. Martin's personal assistant (I would like to take a moment and point out that Mr. Martin has helped a number of writers over the years and deserves nothing but credit for that). One of the things they did has friends? Role play in the Universe of Expanse.

While Mr. Francis had no great ambitions for a novel, Mr. Abraham did and saw that the Universe of the Expanse would make a great one. They worked alternating chapters and editing each others work (Mr. Abraham wrote the chapters following Detective Miller, Mr. Francis followed Captain Holden). So, the two of them set out to do the one thing that everyone warns you not to do, don't adapt your old campaign (everyone says this, with good reason, but it's amazing how many fantasy and science fictions start out this way).

The setting is what many traditional science fiction writers would consider an in between setting. It is not the 20 minutes into the future of Cyberpunk and it's related genres. It is not set in some far distant future where humanity has scattered itself across the galaxy. Instead humanity has taken space, but not yet the stars. The Moon and Mars have been settled. Mars is independent and working to terraform the planet to be capable of supporting life. Meanwhile humanity has also spread across the asteroid belt and into the outer planets. Wedging themselves into stations and hollowed out moons and worldlets driven mostly by Mars' need for resources to drive the terraforming process. The Belters has they call themselves have lived out nearly beyond the light of the sun for generations now. Developing a distinct appearance based on growing up in a low gravity and a distinct culture based on their cramped living spaces and being so on the edge of disaster that someone who lived their entire life on a planet, an environment that is not constantly trying to kill you, cannot really grasp it. This is reflected in the language that has developed in the belt, a mash up of dozens of languages and as many different grammar rules. A Belter can often have an entire conservation in this slang ridden patois that no one from the Belt could even begin to follow (this makes the Anthropologist in want to tackle the nearest Belter character and demand they do their duty to humanity and help me compile a grammar of this shit, because this shit is a cultural event!). This growing cultural separation is fueled by the resentment that the Belters feel towards the people and governments of the inner planets who frankly use them as cheap labor and do little if anything to address their concerns. As a consequence of this, revolutionary groups have sprung up across the outer system, uniting under the banner of the OP determined to stand up for the rights of Belters and stick to the inner system man. Meanwhile Earth and Mars, while allied for decades have their own divisions and resentments bubbling away under the surface. The whole system is a giant pool of gasoline and some jackass decides to go ahead and start lighting matches. As they always do.

The story itself centers around two men that are incredibly alike despite being different in every way. Detective Miller is a cop on Ceres, a hollowed out worldlet that is policed by a security corporation on contract. He's jaded, tired, divorced and a barely functioning alcoholic, who despite this is actually a fairly decent cop if he can unfuck himself for 20 minutes. Detective Miller is slowly and quietly working and drinking himself to death because he can't bring himself to care about much else. Things take a strange turn however when his captain assigns him a little side job. There's a rich family on Luna with an estranged daughter named Julie Mao. She's disappeared. Detective Miller's job is to track her, find her and get her back to the inner system, no matter what Julie Mao has to say about it. I've known men and women like Detective Miller, people who have without ever discussing it with themselves or admitting it, have decided to just let themselves slide slowly and unavoidably into a moldering death. Often because things have fallen apart and they no longer feel they are strong enough to pull their lives together, or sometimes because they can't bring themselves to care. More than often then I'd like, there is simply nothing to be done and no way to bring out of their slow, lazy spiral into the end. But sometimes, sometimes what they need is someone, or something that latches on to their focus and turns them from a drifting, sputtering glider, into a high powered guided missile. When that happens you have three choices, help, get out of the way or follow behind them. Because they will not stop and they will go right through you, if need be, no matter the cost. Detective Miller has just become a high powered, human missile that will not stop until he finds Julie Mao be she alive or dead.

Holden born on Earth, dishonorably discharged from the Earth Navy is the XO of a water hauler that comes down with a terminal case of exploded. Finding himself the Captain by right of survival and now responsible for the well being of a number of crew men (and women) who have also survived this attack. Captain Holden is younger, idealistic, believing all he has to do is discover the truth and get it out there and people will Do The Right Thing. He's also angry at a system that has both been failed by him and failed him and determined not to let it happen again. Like Miller he was mostly drifting through his life, not circling the drain but floating along comfortably. Content to simply slide through. Life however decided to smack him in the nose with a hammer and scream wake up at the top of it's metaphorical lungs. Captain Holden is going to find the people responsible for killing his old ship. He's going to keep his crew mates alive and he's going to get to the Truth and get it out to everyone, even if it kills him. Working with and for him are a couple of interesting characters, from the medic Sled, Amos the space mechanic (who is my favorite), Naomi the Belter engineer and Alex the Martian Redneck pilot. The by play and interactions of the crew are great and I really enjoy them. Captain Holden is a man who believes in right, truth and doing your damn job and he's going to do his level best to live up to those ideals. This honestly makes him a more likable character then Detective Miller and a vastly more relatable on a lot of levels. To be fair on the day I start feeling more like Miller then Holden, that may be the day I need to go in and talk to a shrink or 5.

You may be wondering about the remark I made earlier about this these two men being very alike despite having nothing in common. Captain Holden and Detective Miller have incredibly different life experiences, different world views, different ideas on how society and people work, on everything really. Boil that all away and you get two men with the same core however, men who want to do their job to the best of their ability and want everyone to just deal with each other decently. Detective Miller has been beaten down by life to stretch out his definition of decently and Captain Holden idea of doing his job well drives other to the edge of madness at times but that's what it is. There's also a lurking anger in both of them as they have been repeatedly denied the very simple things they want and while they express it in different ways, it's still there. As you might guess those shared personality traits only make things more difficult for both of them.

That said it's not a perfect ride, the transition between chapters gets a bit choppy at times. The rpg elements tends to peek through from time to time. Some of the actions scenes feel more like fights lifted from a rpg game then a written scene, those scenes are a minority though so the book manages to push through that. I also felt that more time could have spent on the complaints that caused the division between humanity in the first place. Still the setting and the characters get me through that. While the setting isn't hard science ficton, it feels like it could be. I really enjoy the setting and the divisions and how they're played out on the ground level as opposed to the top `10% of humanity that a lot of space opera focuses on. The characters don't explain why the tech works but they do have to deal with the effects of the tech working and the more time spent on the implications of technology as opposed to dry numbing recitation of how it works the better. All these things considered this is good space opera and good story. It's also despite being the first book in a series a complete story in and of itself. If I were to put this series down right here... I'd still have a full story that ends on a satisfying note. I'm giving Leviathan's Wake by James S.A Corey a B+. In all honesty I'm really interested in this story now and I'm pretty sure the series is going no where but up (especially with more of Holden's crew).

Artesia Afield by Mark Symlie

Artesia Afield

by Mark Smylie

Artesia Afield was written and released in 2006 as the sequel to Artesia. The second book picks up fairly soon after the first one. Artesia having overthrown her King and lover Bran for his betrayal on both a religious and personal level has been selected to lead an army from the region called the highlands to the middle kingdoms, a group of allied feudal nations under the rule of a High King. These middle kingdoms are being invaded by the Empire of Thessid-Gola, an empire that has laid quiet for centuries as it's emperor lay in a magic slumber only to recently began expansion and warring again. This campaign of expansion and war has been fueled by dark magics and forbidden rituals which has many people trembling in their boots.

Course the Empire of Thessid-Gola isn't Artesia's only problem. In some ways it's her simplest problem. They want to conquer her allies and possible her home and kill her in the process yeah, but at least they're fairly open and honest about it. Her allies in the court of the middle kingdom on the other hands are full of the knights of the Sun God, the same order who were trying to kill her last book. They had to bury the feud... For now, on the account of the unending horde of foreign soldiers trying to kill them all. That doesn't stop them from being very clear on how much they would like to see her made into a torch, nor does it stop the other people in the middle kingdoms from sneering and whispering about her. Or for some people to express their displeasure at her actions in more direct and violent ways. Artesia is also frustrated that despite having led an army to help fight off invaders, the court of the middle kingdoms keeps her at arms length and well doesn't let her do much until the big throw down where they basically have no real choice but to let her throw down. That said there isn't a lot of politics between Artesia's men and the middle kingdoms here. Instead we have politics inside her camp, as we see some of the divisions between her followers (part of that being the division between her woman followers and her men followers).

We also meet a new culture the Islikids, a group of islanders in service to what appear to me to be demigods? Anyways those demigods are cruel and demanding masters to the mortal men in their service. To the point that even Artesia thinks they might be messing with things best alone. That's a bad sign given that she's not the kind of girl who really respects social boundaries. The Islikids aren't part of the Empire but they are allied to it and their dark magic and dabbling in the forbidden and outright unhealthy is frankly a bad sign as to where the Empire is heading.

We also see more magic as Artesia interacts with the ghosts of her dead, the fellow concubines of the king she overthrew and interacts with the spirits and spells of the empire and her own highlands. It's interesting to see because in a lot of ways Artesia does not walk in the same world as her soldiers or her allies or even possibly her enemies. In her world the ghosts of the dead advise, ravens speak warnings, gods and goddesses walk openly doing their divine duties with little care for the mortal realm. It's because of this that her enemies in the middle kingdoms and the highlands label her a witch, while her friends and followers label her a priestess and both may even be right in the end. I'll admit I find this part of the world of Artesia and the story utterly fascinating. I'm a Christian and my tradition being deeply and fully American can trace it's descent from the Puritans who first brought Christianity to their shores. While you would think my native Pentecostalism doesn't have much in common with the stern Puritans (you might just be wrong by the way) it does share a certain stark view of the world that has no rooms for spirits, ghosts and things not of heaven or hell. That views tends to spread to a lot of fantasy writings where mostly Christianish readers are more comfortable with mechanical impersonal magic systems and morality systems not to far from our own. That's not a criticism there, one does need to be able to relate to the characters you're reading about at a certain level. Magic and religion in Artesia operates completely different from say Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings (although it does share a few common points with Narnia... Hmmmm). It is not secular, it is not clean or mechanical and it is certainly not impersonal. It is dangerous, it is wild and very interesting, not unlike our main character herself.

We learn more about Artesia's early life and origins. We learn from her where she found her heavily enchanted and powerful sword (looting it from a dead warrior woman), we learn more about her mother and we hear of her father for the first time in the series. Course what we do learn is that her father sat there and watch as her mother was burned for being a witch. We also learn that her very skin is enchanted to protect her, which I found interesting as well. This came out in the by play between her and the smith Hymachus, who remains the most distinctive and recognizable of her male followers for me. That does bring me to a complaint, a lot of the male cast still blurs together for me. Next to no time is spent on any character that isn't Artesia and due to the speed of the story we don't get much of a feeling of her individual relationships, just how she relates to them on a whole. I would honestly like Mr. Smylie to slow down a little, let me get to know the other captains under her command and see how they relate to Artesia and each other as individuals. We also see her waging an internal conflict as to whether or not to claim the crown of Dara Dess, the citadel whose King she killed last book. She is hesitant because she knows once she does that there is no turning back and... She doesn't want to be a Usurper. Which I do kinda understand but let's be blunt here, King Bran took the throne by force and turned on the woman who was his main instrument in keeping it. As such I can't see much of a compliant when having been given the choices of be killed or kill, she decided to kill. If you don't want the tigress to rip off your head, don't poke her with a stick. Crowns should not rest on the heads of fools, not when the consequences of their foolery can doom entire nations.

That said the massive battle that is the capstone of this story is pretty awesome to read and the art is as always drop dead gorgeous. The Appendixes at the back are interesting reads but the good news is that even if you don't read them you can still follow the story and make complete sense of everything going on. I know this because the first time I read the book, I didn't read those Appendixes and I still felt pretty sure of everything. That said I wouldn't recommend this book for minors as there is quiet a bit of nudity both male and female and sex is pretty front and center here. The book is not porn by any means but I would keep this to the adults. All of that said Artesia Afield get's a A-, it's going a bit to fast I think but otherwise it's a damn good read and I encourage everyone to give it a shot.