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Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Review: Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

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Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Legends & Lattes is light fantasy, set in a tabletop-game-inspired fantasy universe that’s reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Viv is an orc warrior who has been living as an adventurer: delving in dungeons, slaying monsters, wielding a named sword of legend, the whole package. Unfortunately, age and old wounds are starting to get the better of her, so after one final big score she’s looking to reinvent herself wholesale. She moves to the big city of Thune . . . where she plans to open the first coffee shop ever seen there.

That’s it. That’s pretty much the whole story. And it is delightful, a slice-of-life tale that pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go.

The subtitle of Legends & Lattes is “A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes,” and Mr. Baldree isn’t kidding there. There are a few tropes borrowed from more high-stakes stories: a mystery connected with Viv’s last great adventure, a conflict arising from her old dungeon-delving party, another conflict with local gangsters. Still, those elements of the plot are secondary. The real meat of the story is about Viv’s quest for a quiet, peaceful way to live out the rest of her life.

Viv has planned her move very carefully. She selects just the right location for her new venture, hires a contractor to renovate the building, sets up her gnome-designed coffee machine, and opens her doors. Of course, even with all her planning, she had no prior experience as a small-business owner or as a barista. Some things don’t work entirely as expected. As with all startup ventures, she soon suffers the “valley of death” in which all the money is going out rather than coming in. Still, some of the locals soon begin to discover the delights of well-made coffee.

Watching the mechanics of Viv’s startup is certainly fun. She encounters problems, places where her careful planning failed, and she must find ways to overcome them. Watching how Viv reinvents her social style is even more engaging. She quickly discovers that she can’t succeed on her own, any more than she could when she was slaying monsters for a living. Her encounters with potential customers, with business partners, and with new friends are worth the price of admission on their own.

Travis Baldree has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is top-notch. The story structure is very straightforward. Mr. Baldree sticks almost exclusively to third person close viewpoint and a single perspective, and the plot unrolls at a carefully measured pace. A very workmanlike debut novel here.

I fully enjoyed Legends & Lattes, and while I left with the sense that Viv’s story had come to a satisfying conclusion, I certainly wouldn’t object to discovering the existence of a sequel or three. Very highly recommended if you enjoy light Pratchettian fantasy.

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

Review: The Raven and the Dove, by K. M. Butler

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The Raven and the Dove by K. M. Butler

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Raven and the Dove is a historical romance, telling the story of an unlikely couple amid turbulent times in the early medieval period. The story covers a little less than two years in the late ninth century, in the northern lands of the Frankish empire, a region that will one day be called Normandy.

At the beginning of the story, the Norse chieftain Rollo has established himself as the jarl of Rouen, wealthy from years of raiding deep into Frankish territory. Rollo’s raids, and those of his fellow Norsemen, have driven many of the region’s Frankish nobles into exile. Rollo sees the resulting power vacuum as an opportunity, which might enable him to create a new kingdom of his own. For now, he is still working to establish and defend his power.

One of Rollo’s officers is a shield-maiden named Halla: a fiercely independent woman, who lives by the Norse code of courage and honor. When we first meet her, she has just taken part in a raid, and fights to defend her people against a Frankish counterattack. Rollo soon sets Halla to lead an expedition toward the Frankish town of Lillebonne, which he hopes to integrate into his growing demesne.

When she reaches her destination, Halla meets Taurin, a Frankish landowner who is one of the leaders of the community. Lillebonne has been abandoned by the Frankish nobility, and Taurin fears that the town is doomed if it doesn’t make an agreement with Rollo and his Norsemen. He therefore accepts an invitation to return to Rouen with Halla, to meet Rollo and negotiate for the town’s fate. When Halla is made a chieftain in her own right, and the jarl’s representative in Lillebonne, she makes the fateful decision to marry Taurin and work with him to govern the town.

Halla and Taurin marry for pragmatic reasons rather than for love. Although they have a frank and vigorous sexual relationship, it takes a lot of time and work for them to become true partners. The obstacles in their path are considerable. Halla is a pagan, a warrior whose fortune was built on raiding and violence. Taurin is a Christian who inherited his wealth and station, a man of peace. Halla takes a pragmatic view of the world, whereas Taurin is an idealist. Norse and Frankish customs are starkly different; the two peoples regard each other as heathens and barbarians, and there is little love or trust between them. Halla and Taurin have a difficult time learning to understand one another. Yet somehow, despite external threats and the constant risk of violent rebellion, they need to find a way for two peoples to live together.

If you know the history of this period, you know the result is a foregone conclusion. In the following generations, the blended folk of Normandy will become one of the most dynamic and powerful peoples of medieval Europe. Yet here we’re seeing the very beginning of that process, at a time when Halla and Taurin could not count on success. The two of them will have to think fast, take risks, and learn to trust each other despite all the obstacles they face. The story that follows is a deeply engrossing visit to a historical period few modern readers will find familiar.

K. M. Butler has a very clean prose style, and the editing here is superb; I noticed one or two copy- or line-editing problems, but they never posed any risk of fatally distracting me. The story alternates between two viewpoint characters, but each section is labeled, and viewpoint discipline is otherwise strict. The story sometimes risks falling too deep into expository passages, but these are usually placed in the voice of one of the viewpoint characters, avoiding pulling the reader out of the story. In all, a very workmanlike novel.

The historical elements of the story are well researched. Early medieval and Norse history are not my specialties, but I found the setting and the behavior of characters quite plausible. The only quibble I had was the prominent role of “shield-maidens” in the Norse forces. The archeological evidence for Norse women warriors is patchy at best. Still, shield-maidens are prominent in the Norse sagas, and they have captured the modern imagination in creations like the Vikings TV show. It’s a perfectly viable move to center this story around one of them, especially if the objective is to tell the tale of the foundation of Normandy through a love story. In the end, I had no quarrel with the result!

I thoroughly enjoyed The Raven and the Dove, and it left me wanting more. Very highly recommended if you enjoy well-done historical fiction with a strong dash of earthy romance.

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

Review: Lurkers at the Threshold, by Jürgen Hubert

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Lurkers at the Threshold: 100 Ghost Tales from German Folklore by Jürgen Hubert

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Lurkers at the Threshold is a compilation of ghost stories from German folklore, translated into English from German collections, many of which have never been translated before. It’s an interesting collection, covering a branch of European folk tales that will be both strange and hauntingly familiar to an American audience.

Full disclosure: The compiler and translator of these stories, Jürgen Hubert, is a long-time acquaintance, although he and I have no professional relationship and I have received no compensation for this review.

Dr. Hubert published his first collection of translated German folklore (Sunken Castles, Evil Poodles) in 2020. That effort was apparently so successful that he plans to release a series of similar books, each tied to a specific theme. Lurkers at the Threshold is the first of these, devoted to ghost stories. The book contains exactly 100 narratives, most of them rather short, each of them accompanied by translator’s notes and commentary. Just reading the stories themselves is likely the task of a single afternoon, but the supporting material is very rich and will reward closer study. Each entry is thoroughly footnoted, and the book also contains extensive contextual material on German geography and history.

Since this collection is centered on a theme, it calls some repeated tropes into sharp focus. German ghost stories are different than a modern American reader might expect. Ghosts are not translucent and immaterial; usually they are frighteningly tangible. Many ghosts are evil, others are simply unpleasant, a few are benevolent, but they’re all dangerous to encounter. They sometimes need the help of the living to escape their condition, but they’re often bad at making it clear what needs to be done to help them. You probably don’t want to attend church with a bunch of ghosts . . . and whatever you do, don’t shake a ghost’s hand!

I was surprised to find several headless ghosts, including a few Headless Horsemen. I suspect Washington Irving must have done his own reading in German folklore back in the day.

As with Dr. Hubert’s previous work, this collection has plenty of entertainment value, but it’s also valuable as a scholarly resource. Authors and game designers will find the series useful as inspiration for their own fantastic literature. Dr. Hubert continues to support such uses by placing his translations under a Creative Commons license.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lurkers at the Threshold, and I’m looking forward to further volumes in the series. Highly recommended for anyone interested in folklore and ghost stories.

Review: The Wild Court, by E. G. Radcliff

Review: The Wild Court, by E. G. Radcliff

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The Wild Court by E. G. Radcliff

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Wild Court is the most recent installment in a high-fantasy series, strongly flavored by elements of Irish mythology.

Áed is the young king of a human realm, struggling with physical disability, the responsibilities of rule, and the growing possibility of a relationship with one of his royal counselors. On the evening of a liminal festival – a time when Áed’s mundane realm and the Otherworld come into contact – his kingdom is savagely attacked by the fae. He soon learns that a war in the faerie realm is spilling over into his own kingdom, threatening widespread death and devastation. He resolves to visit the Otherworld in person, hoping to uncover the causes of the faerie war and end it before it can do any more harm. Several other characters go with him on this quest; he meets both foes and surprising allies along the way.

The greatest strength of this story is its characters. Áed reminds me a little of Maia from The Goblin Emperor; he’s very earnest but also surprisingly clever in a pinch, and he overcomes steep obstacles to be an effective ruler. His supporting cast – his heir Ronan, his advisor Éamon, a fae girl named Erin, and many of the people he meets in the Otherworld – are all interesting and sympathetic. Even the villain of the piece (a truly horrifying figure) is very well-drawn.

E. G. Radcliff has a very clean prose style, with either very good self-editing skills or a sharp editor; I don’t recall being pulled out of the story even once by a copy- or line-editing problem. Her style is always at least workmanlike, and occasionally lyrical. She has a clear eye for the details of character and place, and a gift for making the reader feel part of the story. I found The Wild Court engaging and a very clean read.

One observation I made was that the plot is very straightforward, even a little predictable at times. The story sets up one or two mysteries, but none of these are at all difficult for the reader to unravel before the characters resolve them. That’s not a weakness of this story – not all fantasy tales need to be convoluted and mysterious, after all! The reader’s motivation is to watch a team of brave and clever characters as they deal with personal issues and relationship drama, even as they face down villains and try to end a war. On that basis, The Wild Court succeeds admirably.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild Court, and in my experience the story did a very good job of reaching its objectives – once I finished it, I immediately went to pick up the earlier books in the series. Very highly recommended if you enjoy honest high fantasy with a strong Celtic flavor.

Status Report (30 January 2022)

Status Report (30 January 2022)

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Well, the honey and the biscuits are not quite coming out even.

I’m making decent progress on “Remnants,” a new Human Destiny novelette. However, that’s going more slowly than I had expected; I’m discovering that writing a murder mystery is a bit more challenging than my usual genre. I’ve also settled on an indie novel to review before the end of the month, and I’m plowing through that text at a rapid pace. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough free hours left before the end of the month to get both tasks finished.

Doing at least one book review a month has to take precedence, so as a result, there will be no charged release for my patrons for January 2022. I’ll most likely be able to finish “Remnants” in the first week or so of February, and that will probably be the next charged release. I haven’t settled on the next major project to get attention, but I suspect I may be looking hard at a major round of revisions to the Architect of Worlds design sequence, based on the new research I mentioned in this post from last week.

More news early in February.

2021 in Review

2021 in Review

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In some ways, 2021 was a pretty good year at the Palace. The blog has been growing steadily every year since I resumed it in 2018, and 2021 was no exception. We got several thousand distinct views, which isn’t bad for a non-themed, meandering blog by a part-time creative. On the Patreon side of things, I’ve reached almost two dozen active patrons. I’m not sure yet, but I think income from my original work is approaching the level that I make on the long tail from my tabletop industry period years back. Not a bad milestone, even if it’s still orders of magnitude short of “quit the day job” money.

This was the first full year after I started cross-posting to social media. It was also the first full year since I started posting one or two reviews per month of self-published or indie fiction. Those no doubt helped.

As usual, the main factors holding me back are the part-time nature of my work, and the fact that I likely have too many distinct projects under way. Those items make it hard for me to hit major milestones. For example, it’s been over a year since my debut novel, The Curse of Steel, was released – yet the sequel, The Sunlit Lands, is still not nearly complete in first draft. I started a space-opera novel, Second Dawn, for Kindle Vella but that project has been stalled too. My main non-fiction project, Architect of Worlds, made significant progress but still isn’t close to being finished.

My creative style seems to work for me – I don’t get completely blocked very often, and I usually make progress on something every month. I worry that it demands patience from my readers, though.

Anyway. I usually take this opportunity to look back on the top-ten new posts from the previous year. This year looks kind of different on that score. My book reviews are clearly driving some traffic, and when I can connect my work to the popular RPG Traveller, that seems to bring a lot of clicks. Something to keep in mind.

  1. Update: The Scorpius Reach Setting
  2. Two Starships
  3. Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller
  4. Architect of Worlds: A Side Project
  5. The Scorpius Reach
  6. Review: Saint Dorian and the Witch, by Michael Raship
  7. Review: The Craftsman and the Wizard, by Joel Newton
  8. Notes for a New Project
  9. Architect of Worlds – Current Status
  10. Review: Nothing, by R. J. Goldman

Overall, I think my goals for the coming year are going to involve two meta-objectives: to make progress on all of my outstanding projects, and at the same time to finish one of the book-length items. The best candidates for the latter are Architect of Worlds and The Sunlit Lands. Still, we’ll have to see how things go.

Review: The Shivering Ground & Other Stories, by Sara Barkat

Review: The Shivering Ground & Other Stories, by Sara Barkat

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The Shivering Ground & Other Stories by Sara Barkat

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Shivering Ground & Other Stories is a collection of eleven short stories, combining science fiction with an almost Victorian sensibility and prose style.

A woman has her heart surgically removed to better survive the demands of her society. Ordinary people are caught up in irreversible climate change. A prison guard watches over the last prisoner from a war that ended long before. Two lovers living in alternate universes carry on a doomed affair through letters. These are some of the worlds explored in this unique collection.

The stories are independent, although they share some common features. Many of them seem to be set in steampunkish universes, with dreary industrial districts, airships in the skies, a sense that humanity struggles to thrive in the world it has built for itself. Several stories focus on the details of ordinary life in the shadow of massive disaster: war, ecological collapse, or the fall of civilization.

The prose style here is immaculate – I caught a couple of places where line formatting seemed to go awry, but copy- and line-editing were otherwise superb. Her style reminds me of some Victorian fiction: dense, with a broad vocabulary carefully deployed, often focused on fine descriptive detail. Sara Barkat is painting word-pictures, and she does it with considerable skill. Another reviewer likens the result to Emily Dickinson, and it’s not a bad comparison.

The reader will find most of these stories mysterious; each one contains a mystery, a puzzle that the reader may not be able to solve before the story closes. If you find yourself asking “what’s really going on here” right up to the last word, then the story is probably hitting its objective. Some of the pieces are barely stories at all, in the sense that they don’t seem to have much plot – they’re portraits, windows into universes that are not quite like our own.

I very much enjoyed The Shivering Ground, and I’m going to be looking for more from Sara Barkat. Very highly recommended if you enjoy evocative science-fiction stories in a distinctive style.

Review: Those Left Behind, by N. C. Scrimgeour

Review: Those Left Behind, by N. C. Scrimgeour

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Those Left Behind by N. C. Scrimgeour

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

Those Left Behind is a space-opera novel, the first in a planned trilogy.

The human world of New Pallas is on the brink of destruction due to internal strife, overpopulation, and environmental collapse. Its only hope lies in the hands of Alvera Renata, a revolutionary turned starship captain. She intends to command a state-of-the-art ship, the Ranger, on a desperate mission to find a new home for her people.

When Ranger flies through a “waystation” on the edge of the New Pallas system, Alvera and her crew find themselves amid a galaxy-wide civilization called the Coalition, governed by a loose alliance of humans and several other species. In theory, the Coalition could provide new homes for all New Pallas’s billions. In practice, the alliance has troubles of its own. Aggressive outsiders, the Idran-Var, threaten the peace. Even worse, there are signs that some completely unknown entity is preparing to attack the Coalition – a force which may have eradicated whole civilizations in the past.

At first, the Coalition cautiously welcomes Alvera’s mission. Then a shocking betrayal scatters her crew and threatens to end her mission before it can even begin.

The story that follows is told from multiple points of view: Alvera herself, the son of her worst enemy, a colonist girl with unusual skills, a deadly young woman who refuses to be a warrior, and a soldier who comes to suspect he is fighting the wrong war. As we follow these five characters, we get a tour of Coalition space and the sense of a terrible conflict that is about to begin.

Those Left Behind is very clearly the first novel in a series. This book sets up a complex, multi-threaded story, and it resolves very few of the conflicts it starts. Even so, the characters are clearly drawn and engaging, and I found myself compulsively turning pages to see what would happen to them next. I usually dislike ensemble stories told from multiple viewpoints, but N. C. Scrimgeour has the skill to make it work. Her prose style is very clean, too – I had a hard time finding any copy-editing or line-editing problems in the text. This is a very professional job.

If I had a concern about Those Left Behind, it’s that the setting and plot felt a little derivative. The author’s ad copy mentions that “fans of Mass Effect . . . will love this,” and she is not kidding in the slightest. If you’re acquainted with the Mass Effect universe, then a lot of elements of the setting and plot are going to feel familiar here. It’s not a matter of copying – the most I would say is that this story is strongly inspired by the world of the video game series. N. C. Scrimgeour has done a superb job of remixing and reworking familiar tropes, building a compelling story atop them.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Those Left Behind, and I’m going to be watching for the next book in the series. Very highly recommended if you enjoy high-octane space opera in the vein of the Mass Effect games.

Review: Dio in the Dark, by Rizwan Asad

Review: Dio in the Dark, by Rizwan Asad

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Dio in the Dark by Rizwan Asad

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

Dio in the Dark is an urban-fantasy novella, centered on the lives of the Greek pantheon in the modern world.

The protagonist of this story is Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, although in the modern day he prefers to be called simply “Dio” to blend in. Dio, and the other Olympians, live in present-day Toronto. They retain a few of their divine powers, but the modern world has moved on from their active worship, reducing them to shadows of their ancient selves. Zeus works as an eccentric sanitation worker, Apollo is a musician with a preference for fine electric guitars, and Dio spends most of his time at bars and clubs.

At the beginning of the story, Dio is at odds with Zeus, holding a long-standing grudge for the fate of his mortal mother Semele. Zeus, on the other hand, is concerned with a threat only he foresees, a so-called “Darkness” that he fears may be coming for the Olympians. Soon Zeus disappears, and Dio is left to solve a mystery. Where has Zeus gone? Who or what is the Darkness? Can the Olympians survive?

What follows is a clever urban-fantasy tale, well-informed by the details of Greek myth. I was very impressed by Rizwan Asad’s prose style; it’s very clean, with almost no copy-editing or line-editing problems that I could find. The story snaps, with plenty of truly audacious moments in the plot, and I found myself pulled along with ease.

About the only complaint I had was with respect to pacing. A major plot development comes in the middle of a time-skip that isn’t well demonstrated to the reader. There are also a few odd interquel chapters that are interesting, and that develop Dio’s character, but that seem to intrude into the plot. These are minor quibbles! By and large, the story is well written and tightly plotted.

I very much enjoyed Dio in the Dark, and I’m going to be looking out for more from this author. Highly recommended if you enjoy urban fantasy steeped in the intricacies of ancient Greek myth.

Review: The Chains of Ares, by Frank Schildiner

Review: The Chains of Ares, by Frank Schildiner

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The Chains of Ares by Frank Schildiner

Overall Rating: **** (4 stars)

The Chains of Ares is a collection of four short stories, all set in the time of the late Roman Republic, involving action-filled adventure and supernatural horror.

Marcus Fabius Maximus is a member of the Roman aristocracy, descended from a very old patrician family. He is the son-in-law of the Dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who appointed him to the position of rex sacrorum or “sacred king.” That isn’t just a political appointment. As one of the Republic’s foremost priests, Marcus is an expert on religious ritual and on the supernatural, and he is often sent to deal with paranormal threats to the growing Roman empire. He is accompanied on his missions by Kara Fabia, a formidable female warrior who was once a gladiator and now serves as his bodyguard.

Marcus and Kara are close friends and partners who (rather refreshingly) have no romantic interest in each another. They’re also far from a clichéd “brains and brawn” pair. Just as Marcus can handle himself in a scrap, Kara is by no means dumb muscle. The dynamic between these two characters is one of the most attractive elements of these stories.

Each of the stories in this collection involves one of Marcus and Kara’s missions, against ghosts, bizarre cults, or monsters out of ancient myth. The stories often involve puzzles that Marcus and Kara must solve, along with plenty of bloody action scenes. Each story is well embedded in the historical setting; I caught a couple of stumbles in the research, but by and large Mr. Schildiner has done his homework with careful attention to detail. If you’re familiar with the work of Robert Howard or H. P. Lovecraft, you may recognize some of the “ancient lore” that Marcus deals with.

The biggest weakness of The Chains of Ares is in its prose mechanics. The draft badly needs a copy-editor, with grammatical errors and odd word choices scattered throughout. It’s a testament to the fast pace, interesting characters, and clever world-building in these stories that I wasn’t pulled out of the narrative.

I quite enjoyed The Chains of Ares, and I found myself wishing for more about these characters and their world. Highly recommended if you enjoy pulp-style adventure, with intriguing characters and plenty of action, set in ancient times.