The Next Elder Scrolls Game (discussion)

Like many, many people, I’ve played a lot of Skyrim. And then watched as it got repackaged and released for various new consoles (next gen consoles, the Switch etc). And waited for the next Elder Scrolls game. And waited.

Skyrim came out in 2011 and there’s seemingly no prospect of the next Elder Scrolls game coming out this year, so it’ll probably be an eight year gap at best. Oblivion, the previous entry, came out in 2006/7 (latter year for the PS3).

I enjoyed both Oblivion and Skyrim a lot, but must admit I’m wondering if the next Elder Scrolls game will stand up against the competition. Videogame franchises can decline either due to making poor changes, or standing still whilst the industry moves past them.

Plenty of new RPGs have come out since Skyrim. Many of them have had a strong focus on your choices making significant changes to the world (in Skyrim, the only real choice is in the civil war, with the Dawnguard expansion choice of good/evil, although both choices have similar paths).

The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverance are particularly good in this regard, as is Pillars of Eternity. When we look at the most recent Bethesda RPG (Fallout 4) I think it surprised on the upside when it came to companions, but there was, again, a lack of significant choice. Most quests were simply run on train tracks rather than presenting serious options that changed things in-game.

It is worth pointing out that there is no single way to make a good RPG. Games might emphasise realism/survival heavily, as per KCD, but The Witcher 3 takes a more traditional/softer/easier approach to this aspect. Both styles work perfectly well. However, the old style of quests, where almost all of them (including major storyline quests) have one outcome and no player input beyond jumping through hoops is beginning to feel as outdated as fetch quests.

A good example of how this could’ve been different in Skyrim would be the Thieves Guild. At no point can you destroy this, or report it to the authorities. You *can* do this with the Dark Brotherhood, although that isn’t flagged up so most people were never aware it was even a possibility. And the same opportunity (reporting werewolves to the authorities, for example) isn’t possible elsewhere either. You can’t side with the Thalmor, even if you’re a high elf.

Now, it might sound like I’m having a go at Skyrim. I have sunk a lot of time into it and really like the game. But if the next entry doesn’t make some changes it’ll suffer by way of comparison with recent RPG entries, many of which are really rather good.

I do have some optimism. The settlement system is overdone in Fallout 4, but the bones of the idea are sound. And imagine it in Elder Scrolls VI. It’d be building your own castles, and that sounds fantastic, if they take the good ideas from Fallout 4 and remove the repetition, giving us fewer but larger sites.

Likewise, the companions improved substantially from Skyrim to Fallout 4, from a huge number of people with little character to a smaller number who were much more individual and had more depth. Continuing that pattern for the next Elder Scrolls would be another good, and obvious, step.

However, the key for me is choice in quests. And not just X or Y which alters nothing (yes, Redguard woman in Whiterun, I’m talking about you), but a choice that makes a meaningful impact upon the world and/or my character. If I piss off a local lord, that should have consequences beyond a line of dialogue.

The next Elder Scrolls game will sell like hotcakes regardless of whether this change comes about. But in the long term, Bethesda can’t just rely on churning out the same game when we’re seeing others make more interesting RPGs that actually allow the player to make choices that affect their game.

Thaddeus

An Interview with Terry Mancour

Pleased to say that today I’ve been joined by Terry Mancour, author of the Spellmonger series (10 parts currently and still going strong). There are some spoilers in the interview below.

What's the premise of Necromancer, the tenth and most recent instalment in the Spellmonger series?

Necromancer is a climactic book, in a couple of different ways. First, it’s the tenth book in the series, and hitting double digits deserves some celebration, plot-wise. There are elements that I brought up in Spellmonger, Book 1, that I didn’t revisit until Book 10. Secondly, it’s also the conclusion of a trilogy (quadrology?), of sorts. Books 8 (Court Wizard) and 9 (Shadowmage) take place partially concurrent with Book 7, Enchanter, but from different character perspectives. In Necromancer I had to unite those three disparate character and plot perspectives and put Minalan back into the picture, character-wise. All of those deeply personal questions that arose at the end of Enchanter had to be answered.

Plot-wise, Minalan the Spellmonger is in rough shape . . . but he has hope. It involves an impossible quest and a tricky set of moves in which he manipulates everyone he needs to, from his own vassals to the very gods, to get what he wants. Thematically, it’s a quasi-Orphic quest in which he goes into both a figurative and a literal Land of the Dead in order to bring his wife, Alya, back from a persistent vegetative state. It’s a fight between Min’s ego and intellect and the dark forces around him – not all of which are readily apparent. He emerges from a dark place, by the end of the book, but only at great cost.

The early books focused very much on the goblin threat, but more recently it’s on the backburner. Can you tell us whether the Dead God and his goblin hordes will be coming back soon, or even at all?

The role of the gurvani (goblins) has changed, since Spellmonger, but they are still very important to the over-all plot, as is their fossilized Dark Lord. As truths about Callidore’s past get revealed, Sheruel’s simple desire for genocide will seem quaint and wholesome compared to Korbal – or, at least, the reader might feel a little more sympathetic to the gurvani. They have been kicked around by a lot of different peoples over the years, and they feel sidelined by the Nemovorti. They were finally on top, with an undead Dark Lord of their very own, and now this! They very aren’t happy about it. We will see Sheruel again, and the rise of the Goblin King as rebels against Korbal’s betrayal. Gurkarl will decidedly play a role, because yes, I enjoy drawing out plotlines that far for the pure hedonistic joy of it.

There are many parts already in the series, and many planned ahead. How much detail have you charted out the course of future books, or do you make a vague outline for each planned instalment and only develop it when you arrive at that book?

In some cases, quite a bit. I know how it ends, more or less. I know what has to happen for the end to happen. I know the cool scenes I want to write. But there is much undiscovered country along the way, and part of the joy for me, as the writer, is having unexpected stuff fall out of my brain and onto the page. I know we can expect to see some familiar fantasy tropes tackled in a slightly new or different way.

Min will go on the road, during his exile, and there will be a lot of adventures before the end. But I’ve learned not to over-plot my books before I’ve started them. That’s boring for the reader and for me. And its too much work. It’s easier to hitch my subconscious to the plow of my keyboard, or somesuch other analogy, and let it do the heavy work. That opens my writing up to spontaneous inclusions of interesting bits of stuff I pick up in my research.

Writing a series offers both writer and readers the ease of a consistent world and characters, as well as enabling for more character depth and development than a single volume, but keeping consistency without making things repetitive or ‘samey’ can be tricky. What’s the greatest challenge you’ve found writing a series which is now up to part 10?

Thankfully, while the piano only has 88 keys they still keep getting new songs out of it. Fantasy is much the same. Both J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin use the medieval European fantasy setting, dragons, swords, magic, etc., but they are two entirely different stories. Hopefully, Terry R. R. Mancour will be able keep playing across those tropes in an entertaining way.

The episodic format of series fantasy fiction is helpful. But it’s also important for the writer to not abuse that. I make a point that each of my novels is a complete novel, in itself, not merely a section of a larger work. That means they need a beginning, a middle, an end, a plot, character development, and the rest.

Part of that can rest on the natural progression of events and character development. If you do it right, and understand human nature sufficiently, then figuring out how your character is going to change and develop in response to the course of events isn’t as hard as most writers seem to make it. In Enchanter, Minalan underwent stages of psychological response to a major personal trauma. That’s a pretty clear course of development to follow, and it gave the story greater depth without a lot of psychobabble. Or not much.

Part of that has to be supplied by the author applying a different approach or perspective on the same old medieval fantasy tropes. I find I take a lot of inspiration from significant events of the Middle Ages. Journeymage, for instance, was inspired by the Children’s Crusade.

Thankfully, the Middle Ages had a lot of fascinating stories that Fantasy literature has endlessly reinterpreted. While knight vs. dragon, elf vs. dwarf, etc. has had a lot of play, there are plenty of great tropes I haven’t used yet. In the future, expect some stories and plots revolving around the plague, voyages of exploration, peasant’s revolts, pirates, a succession crisis, and perhaps even the Inquisition. I’ll also be doing some more-familiar Fantasy tropes, such as the Dragon’s Lair, the Secret Cult, the Lost Civilization, the Ancient Evil, etc. Any of these is enough to hang an entire novel on, if you do it right. Mixing and matching them in the Spellmonger universe is a joy, and I have a long way to go before I start running short of material.

The series is focused entirely on Minalan to start with, but more recent instalments have seen other perspectives become increasingly important. Was this always planned, or did you feel that either telling the story or offering a new point of view was necessary to keep things fresh?

At a certain point, I think you have to vary the perspective in order to keep the reader’s attention. Consider that an awful lot more happened in the Civil War than what Rhett Butler saw and experienced. Offering those different perspectives allows you to give true depth to your world-building. It also allows the author to inject differences of perspective that can be jarring.

A case in point is how I handled the character of Dara in Necromancer. Dara has been the lead in the Young Adult/Cadet spin-off series I’ve done chronicling the events of the Spellmonger Series from her perspective. An adolescent girl and a middle-aged man see things very differently, and their perceptions of each other are as flawed and biased as anyone’s. I caught some flak from fans about how Dara, after being a strong and resilient character in one series, seems to be a whiny and self-absorbed girl in the main series.

Here’s the thing: to Minalan’s perspective, she is a whiny and self-absorbed girl. But Min’s perspective is informed by only a few brief scenes, not the introspection that Dara is undertaking as she moves from childhood to adulthood. To her, Min is a wise and powerful wizard who always knows what to do, not a self-doubting and sometimes self-loathing mage who frequently feels he’s in waaaay over his head. Which perspective is the “true” one? Neither. Each is just as valid, and by shifting viewpoints and characters to review the same events I hope to build up a tension that eventually erupts into conflict between the two.

A similar thing occurred with Pentandra. Responding in part to the popular ideas that a) there were no good female leading characters in Fantasy (which I dispute) and b) that men could not write good or convincing female characters, I wrote Court Wizard from Pentandra’s perspective. Within the novel she sees quite a bit of Callidore’s society that Minalan doesn’t, thanks to both her class and her gender. More, I had to change not only the nominal gender of the main character, but had to work to understand her perspective myself. Regardless of the politics of the moment, men and women generally tend to approach the same situations from slightly different directions. While there are notable exceptions, writing a female lead convincingly had to encompass some of these basic differences or Pentandra would have just sounded like Min in drag. No one wants that.

The further excursions into perspective, specifically Book 4, Knights Magi, and its more-or-less sequel Book 9, Shadowmage, explore the relationship with Tyndal and Rondal, Min’s senior apprentices. They’re undergoing an entirely different journey than Dara. They have different motivations and seek different risks and rewards. And they all see Callidore differently.

It’s not just a matter of keeping things fresh. Changing characters and perspective can serve the greater story when the reader knows things that the main character doesn’t. In fact, keeping track of who knows what, when, and how that advances the plot is something I spend a lot of time on.

Your books are selling nicely and well-reviewed, but do you ever want a break from the Spellmonger world? Are you working on anything else/have other plans, or are you just enjoying writing the series?

I’m so glad you asked! I am absolutely devoted to the Spellmonger series – it’s like a rich mug of ale. But I have two sci-fi series underway, at the moment.

The first is my Tanith series, a continuation of H. Beam Piper’s classic space opera novel, Space Viking. After the original author tragically committed suicide with no heirs, his work became public domain. I’ve written two short sequels to the original already, Prince of Tanith and Princess Valerie’s War, and I’m working on a capstone finale to the work now, called Trask’s Odyssey.

And I will be totally honest: one reason it’s taking so long to produce the final book is that I’m enjoying it too much. If Spellmonger is like a rich mug of ale, then the Tanith Series is like a dirty double martini with three olives.

Secondly, I have a second sci-fi trilogy I’ve begun publishing. I won’t get into the background of the work here, but it’s an original time-travel piece that’s also (wait for it) openly pornographic. Sexually explicit. With all the best dirty words. It’s called the Casanova’s Butterfly trilogy, and the first book, Bad Penny, was released last summer to generally good reviews. I’ll be releasing the other two parts this summer and next, respectively. It’s already written, I just want to space it out because I’m like that.

It’s a trashy beach read and a lot of fun for any student of history or erotica or both. The main character is an anti-hero Pick-Up-Artist who goes pro by joining an elite government-sponsored time-travel program which goes back in time to insert certain genetic corrections into the human genomes to avoid a future catastrophe. The Old Fashioned Way: by seducing your grandmother. Most of the MC’s work is in the mid 20th century, the 1940s-1970s, one of my favorite historical periods. Along the way, the character’s hubris and arrogance screws up the time stream but good. If Spellmonger is a rich cup of ale, Casanova’s Butterfly is like a classic Manhattan with a roofie in it. I like to think of it as the Thinking Man’s porn novel.

The Spellmonger series is classic high fantasy. What were your inspirations, whether fictional or (for the political side, probably) real life?

It goes without saying that Tolkien is my bedrock inspiration, and my appreciation of the Professor grows every time I start another book. I also credit George R. R. Martin for some inspiration, because I began reading him before Game of Thrones and enjoy his approach to prose.

Other influences may be more obscure or subtle, even when I try to make them blatant, but here it goes: First and foremost would be Steven Brust’s Adrilankha series. My approach to Min’s character is closest to how Steve handles Vlad, his main character. Careful readers of both series will recognize me blatantly ripping off Steve’s character for a kind of cross-platform cameo in Shadowmage. But Steve’s wit and humor informed Min, and his approach to a well-drawn character is something I am proud to have stolen from him. Brust is the spiritual heir of Roger Zelazny’s amazing style, and I can’t recommend his stuff highly enough. Zelazny, himself, is a huge influence as well, particularly the Chronicles of Amber and the Lord of Light, but I even tracked down his “hard boiled detective novel” from the 1960s, and it rocked.

Another powerful influence was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. Even though it has dragons and castles, it isn’t Fantasy. Not a lick of magic in it. It’s high-concept Sci-Fi with really good characters. Much of my cadet novels were cribbed from her Harper Hall YA trilogy. Another was Andrew Offut, who might be a little obscure for some folks but who did some great work back in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly for the Thieves’ World shared-universe series (for which Brust contributed a story, last volume). If you aren’t familiar, Thieves’ World was a wonderful collection of fantasy stories that really demonstrated the chops of some of the better fantasy writers of its time. Offut’s stories always impressed me the most. His original novels were likewise superior, though he didn’t get the acclaim that he deserved for their quality. Andy Offut knew how to get the most out of his characters, especially the minor ones, and when I need inspiration I frequently turn to his stories in the anthologies.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Fritz Lieber and Robert Howard, whose magnificent bodies of work informed the adventurous imagination of my childhood and occasionally leak all over Spellmonger. They made the world safe for brawny-thewed barbarians everywhere.

Non-literary influences should be included. Count the Boy Scouts and Dungeons & Dragons (which I was, incidentally, introduced to in Boy Scouts by Chris Evans – thanks, Chris!) as among my strongest. The BSA led, of course, to the Kasari culture in Spellmonger, and D&D has been a constant source of both inspiration and research.

Looking back at the 10 parts to date, which character (whether major or minor) have you found most enjoyable to write, and why?

I have a few favorites, and I’ll take the various main characters off the table for the sake of this question. Writing Crazy Alya was fun, largely because she’s usually so level-headed. I love writing the various Wizards of Sevendor, especially Olmeg the Green and Banamor. Both are based on people I know. Gatina the Kitten was a delicious delight to write, because she combines utter commitment with youthful enthusiasm. Onranion is a blast because he just doesn’t give a crap, and so is the Sorceress of Sorsha Wood, Lilastien the Rebel, M.D., the last remaining member of the Callidore Colonial Medical Service.

I love Sire Cei. I love writing Azar. There are characters that I absolutely love and who I haven’t even gotten to, yet. And yes, sadly, some won’t make it. But I have plenty to work with, and as long as I can keep them all sounding different and exciting, we’ll keep seeing them. Some will even get their own books. Banamor, Olmeg, Sire Cei and Zagor the Hedgemage will all get separate stories focusing on their perspectives, hopefully this year. Others will be explored in the future.

When can we expect the 11th instalment, and can you reveal anything about the premise?

I thought I might tell this one from the vampire’s point of view.

Seriously, Book 11 begins the second major arc of the series. The first ten books (decalogy) is The Spellmonger Ascendant. The second ten will be The Spellmonger’s Exile. In the first series, we see the rise of Min from lowly village spellmonger to senior noble of a unified kingdom. We saw how he built Sevendor from scratch and changed the feudal society he found himself in for the better: Magic in the Service of Man.

The second series will go a little darker. Now that Min has been exiled from Sevendor for at least three years, and then put unexpectedly in charge of the Magelaw, he has an even greater task ahead: building Vanador, a city designed to challenge the might of the various Dark Lords directly, without messing around too much with the rest of the Five Duchies. He has recovered his family, somewhat, and finds himself threatened in ways he never suspected once he becomes Count of the Magelaw.

In one way, the pressure has never been higher. At the end of Necromancer we saw our understanding of the war, so far, challenged by events and revelations from the past. Humanity has finally caught the attention of the Sea Folk, and now Min has to figure out what to do with it . . . as well as solving the complicated thaumaturgic puzzle of how to re-create the freak Snowstone spell. His wife is only beginning to recover her sanity and her fragmented memories. He faces a dauntless foe with very few resources or advantages, and no allies nearby to speak of. His political situation has never been more dire, and the future looks grim.

Yet in another way, Min has never been happier. The accomplishment he feels after retrieving the Handmaiden in Necromancer gives him great power, and he doesn’t see the various threats to Vanador as serious, compared to Korbal and Sheruel. The goblins are fighting each other, for a change, and the thousands of former slaves he helped free are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives in a shattered and depopulated land. Min has learned how to develop a country, thanks to Sevendor, and he has a lot more help this time. He’s living where he originally wanted to (more or less) with the girl of his dreams and their children. His enemies are far away and think he’s been bound by his exile, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Min sees his exile as a means of catching up on some important work while allowing Sevendor to grow naturally, without his direct guidance for a while. In a way, he’s off the game board of Kingdom-level politics. In a way, he’s at the center of it.

It’s a time of restful watchfulness and preparing for future battles. A time of repose, reflection, rebuilding and consideration of the future. So, nothing of consequence happens. I anticipate that it will be a really long and boring book on peasant market economics and the fascinating study of crop rotation’s effects on overall productivity and peasant farmers’ risk management schemes. I foresee some fascinating discussions on comparative thatching techniques. Perhaps some titillating debate about the differences between canon and secular law. Livestock will be discussed in depth and detail. There might even be some authentic pottage recipes, if you’re good.

There will be a mix of old characters and new. To the fore will be Tyndal, Gareth, Ruderal, Carmella, Azar, Wenek, Sandoval, Terleman, Landrik, Caswallon, Thinradel, Cormoran, the Dradrien, and others. On the back burner (in the “Meanwhile, Back In Sevendor . . . .” sense) will be Rondal, Gatina, Pentandra, Anguin, Sire Cei, Banamor, Olmeg, and Dara. Ithalia and Onranion will be present. Varen, Fallawen, and Lilastien will have cameos, at best.

We’ll also see some new folk in the woods of the Wilderlands: Rumel’s people, commonly known as Wood Dwarves. Durin’s Folk, they ain’t. Some new critters we haven’t seen before, including powderhorns and shapeshifting predators. We’ll see how someone other than Dara commands a wing of Sky Riders. We’ll start to get to know Min’s kids as more than names. Including the children of Greenflower. We’ll see what light an ancient AI from humanity’s past can shed on the current colony’s precarious position. We’ll find out more about the Forsaken. And we’ll see just who among his many manly minions Korbal considers powerful enough to challenge the Spellmonger.

As to when it will be out, that’s difficult to say. It takes a while to craft a book like that, a lot of research and a lot of writing. I took much of this year off of Spellmonger to prepare for the next series and finish up the audiobooks for the first one. I’ve committed to publishing three other novels and some stories before I even get there. I’m also feverishly working on additional texts, like the Atlas of the Five Duchies and a FRP module and sourcebook, in conjunction with superfan and recognized Mage Knight of Sevendor, Aaron Schwartz. I need to continue my marketing efforts and my development efforts. I’d really like to see some elements of Spellmonger in an AV format, someday, and have been working in that direction. I’d also be interested in exploring a comic adaptation, if I could find the right artist. I’ve been looking for a few years, now, but haven’t found someone who can do it, yet.

All of that being said, I can make this simple guarantee: YOU WILL SEE BOOK 11, THAUMATURGE, BEFORE YOU SEE WINDS OF WINTER. Likely sometime in early 2019.

So, suck it, George R. R. Martin.

Links:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terry-Mancour/e/B004QTNFOO/

https://www.amazon.com/Terry-Mancour/e/B004QTNFOO/

Audible: https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchAuthor=Terry+Mancour

Thaddeus

Info-dumping, a few thoughts

When I did my first snapshots post (reviewing a small number of SFF samples) one thing that struck me was the varying approach taken by the authors when it comes to the problem of informing the reader about necessary backstory, without splurging information in a wall of text (info-dumping).

The background is, as the name suggests, just there as a backdrop for the action, it shouldn’t be the mainstay of the story. There’s only so much information people can, or want to, take on board at once. If you throw constant references to past events and new character names, keeping track becomes difficult. And reading for relaxation shouldn’t be about trying to remember a splurge of information.

There’s also a trade-off with pace. Beginnings can work whether fast or slow, but the more backstory you include the slower the pace. If you have a dramatic fight scene right at the start, and keep banging on about the past events of the protagonist, you slow down the action and rob it of urgency, making something that should be fast into something turgid.

Fantasy and sci-fi often have a lot of backstory and putting it into context (after all, there’s usually a whole new world to try and get across to the reader, although this should be done where it informs the story not to flood them with irrelevant information) without erecting a wall of info-dumping can be tricky. Character interaction can help. As well as fleshing out individuals, if someone’s mocked for a certain accent, you introduce [without it being clunky] the differing nations. Instead of writing ‘she was a man-hater’ you could have a woman mock a chap as a ‘fallopian-deprived ape’. If someone has long sleeves, they can dip in a drink or the sauce/gravy of their meal.

In short: show don’t tell, where possible.

That’s easier said than done, of course. [I’ll be doing more snapshot reviews in the future. At the moment, I’ve got books to read, so it’ll be a little while].

Thaddeus

Review: The Norse Myths, by Carolyne Larrington

Being into history and fantasy, the Norse myths seemed a nice blending of the two, so I bought this book.

The author adopts more traditional spellings for Viking gods (Loki is identical, but Thor’s name is spelt with the rune ‘thorn’ and two Rs). It’s more in keeping with the history, but like Greek names spelt with Ks (Hektor, Akhilleus etc) it can look a bit odd.

Like most people, I have only a passing familiarity with Norse myths (I could name maybe four gods before reading this book), and was interested to learn more. The book begins and finishes with the start and end of the world, with the intervening chapters covering the gods, their opponents, and human heroes.

Loki is the most intriguing fellow, because gods are usually good or evil with small nuance, but he’s genuinely tricky to pin down (amongst his odder feats was becoming impregnated by a giant’s horse and giving birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse).

An interesting perspective was offered on Thor’s giant-killing antics, which is generally shown as being a good thing, but when he and Loki encounter a sleeping giant, he decides it’s hammer time and tries to smash the giant’s skull in, which looks murderous (and impolite) rather than heroic.

In addition to the myths themselves, there’s also quite a lot of artwork (both from the time and more recent versions in paintings etc) and some mentions of recent literary works (most famously, Tolkien’s stuff) that were influenced by Norse myths.

I especially enjoyed the author’s inclusion of commentary on the impact of Christianity and the dating of certain myths (which affects both Christian influence in storytelling and in the way the gods might be painted as inferior to Jesus). The suggestion put by several ancient writers that the gods were in fact excellent real people, whose deeds led to exaggerations and mythologising, is a neat way of wrapping together ancient Norse myths and (then) contemporary Christian thinking, without discarding wholesale the value or interest in said myths.

Downsides are minor, but irksome. For a start, CE. Common Era is a daft revisionist nonsense applied by some to the Christian calendar (BC/AD becomes BCE/CE) for reasons that are beyond me. There’s also a reference to a certain story reflecting, in the author’s view, ‘the patriarchy’. I’m not fond of imposing modern political perspectives on interpretations of ancient stories.

The book was enjoyable, and a good introduction (from my limited knowledge of the area) to Norse myths. I’d give it four out of five.

Thaddeus

Three guides to the medieval mindset

Whether reading a fantasy with an emphasis on realism, or simply seeking to understand the way people thought in the past, these three books offer a great guide to political, military, and everyday thinking.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli

Strictly speaking more Renaissance than medieval, the archetypal politician’s handbook is still relevant to both the modern and medieval worlds. Machiavelli’s work, which includes many historical examples (frequently classical but also more recent), is a masterpiece on human psychology and the realities of power. It reached an infamous status in the past due to its chapters regarding when it’s appropriate for leaders to lie to their people, and why it’s better to be feared than loved.

The Prince offers little in the way of rhetorical flimflam, and offers the unvarnished (and sometimes uncomfortable) truth about why those in power act the way they do. It’s a great book to read in itself, and excellent as a guide for how leaders think and act (in both governance and military spheres), particularly before democracy became quite so popular.

[As an aside, those into audiobooks may wish to check out the edition narrated by Ian Richardson. It’s like having Francis Urquhart give you lessons in political cunning].

By Sword and Fire, by Sean McGlynn

Getting the balance right when it comes to mercy and brutality in medieval warfare can be very difficult, as the way of thinking in those days is so different to modern morality. By Sword and Fire does a great job of putting the rationale in context, and explaining why certain actions that today would be universally condemned (Richard the Lionheart and Saladin executing prisoners in the Holy Land) made sense at the time, without imposing modern norms on the medieval world.

As you might expect, it’s a grim book, so those who are easily upset by such things shouldn’t read it. However, I found it invaluable as a resource to understand how mercy and brutality could be justified (and advantageous for the commander) in a medieval setting.

The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer

This is an absolutely fantastic read that puts the reader in the shoes of a 14^th century fellow. It’s a sort of everyman’s history, looking at the food people ate, the way they travelled, what they wore, how justice worked, and so on. For everyday details it’s utterly invaluable and packed with interesting snippets of information (one of the best is that monks had a rule preventing them eating meat in the refectory, leading them to invent a secondary dining room called the misericord, in which they did eat meat).

Being roughly situated in the 14^th century, the book includes information about what it’s like when harvests fail, or plague strikes. It is very much about people and the world in which they lived, and is of great use in trying to see things from the perspective of an ordinary sort of fellow.

[Equivalent editions are available by the same author for Elizabethan England, and Restoration Britain, the latter of which I’m currently reading and will review].

These three books collectively offer fantastic insight into the way power politics, military morality, and the everyday world operated in the medieval age. If you’re planning on writing something set in an approximately medieval setting, or simply find the history interesting, I can highly recommend all three.

Thaddeus

Review: The Last Wish, by Andrzej Sapkowski

Like many people, I really enjoyed The Witcher 3, and when a fellow of sound judgement suggested giving The Last Wish (the first, I think, Witcher book, the body of which the games are based upon) it seemed like a good idea.

The Last Wish is a collection of short stories interspersed with a continuous mini-storyline of Geralt recovering from a particularly grim wound. Violence is fairly high, there’s a helping of strong language, and sex is minimal and painted in a hazy watercolour rather than the explicit detail some others prefer (personally, I think the hazy approach is better).

The short stories are often around 50-60 pages in length, covering a particular monster contract or similar. As with the game, there’s an element of complex morality woven into what might otherwise be straightforward plots, which both elevates the story above the average and helps to deepen both the character of Geralt himself and the world in which he fights.

Writing style is a little difficult to comment on neutrally because I have a lot of Witcher imagery from the game to fill in any blanks there might be. I found the writing easy to read, and also moreish, often reading rather more than I’d expected. There’s no pat on the head and slab of explanatory text, instead, knowledge about Witcher skills (for example) is conveyed through actions more than words.

It’s a charming mix of old school European fairytale and modern day grim cynicism.

The translation from the original Polish is perfectly good with only occasional slips (a U in ‘evaporate’, and one apostrophe was back to front, though I suspect that was someone else’s minor mistake).

All in all, very enjoyable and I intend to read more of this series in the future. I’d give it four out of five.

Thaddeus

The Ninth Rain – just 99p/99c for now

The Ninth Rain, the first part of The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, by Jen Williams is just 99p on the UK Amazon Kindle store.

Described as ‘perfect for fans of Robin Hobb’, the trilogy opener focuses on the teetering Eboran Empire and Tormalin the Oathless, who prefers the comforts of the tavern to trying to hold things together. Joining an eccentric explorer, and a pyromaniac, Tormalin the Oathless does his best to flee the empire, preferring tomb-raiding and monster-slaying.

But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure'lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall...

Anyway, this fantasy is highly rated and it’s just 99p (or 99c if you’re an American). Not sure what the time frame is for the discount to end (the second part is £7.49). If it seems like your cup of tea, now’s the perfect time to give it a look.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Thaddeus

Samples Snapshot Review #1

On the 24^th of March I had a quick look at Amazon’s Kindle books, specifically the top 10 from new releases (30 and 90 days) and hot new releases. Disregarding things that looked really not my cup of tea and later entries in series, I noted a few down and gave the samples a quick going over. Here are my thoughts.

Thunder & Lightning, by Christopher G Nuttall and Leo Champion

I found this near(ish) future sci-fi easy to read, with multiple POVs and an interesting premise. A telescope on the Moon (now colonised) discovers alien ships heading to Earth. The telescope’s director announces it publicly, and the seven Great Powers have six months to decide how to react. There were a few small problems with typos (and clunky writing/repetition, one line describing two nations as firm allies, then the next saying one might be a slight ally to the other) but nothing that got in the way.

Blueshift, by Joshua Dalzelle

A small crew of humans have developed travelled, mostly in stasis, aboard a less than perfect ship to a different star, and come back. Due to dilation of time, just over eight years has passed for the crew, but nearly a thousand has for Earth. What will they find? Upon returning to the solar system, problems arise with the ship, and the only signal they can get is a repeating beacon from Mars. Can they decelerate to actually return to Earth? What’s the state of mankind? It’s possible the author deliberately curtailed the sample to avoid giving away whether or not, and how (if so), they get back to Earth. Very early on is there are quite a few character names thrown in at short order but that shakes itself out fairly soon, and the crew reactions to the difficult situation help to set them apart. I was left wondering how things pan out.

Sevenfold Sword (Champion), by Jonathan Moeller

NB I cheated with this one. The fifth and final book, lacking a subtitle, appeared on the list and I decided to check out the first.

Unusually for fiction, this uses blank lines rather than indented paragraphs. It doesn’t detract at all, just looks a bit unusual at first. The opening story follows Ridmark and his family as they attend a grand do. He and his wife Calliande recently lost their newborn daughter, and Calliande leaves the house for the first time in months to attend. All seems well, until an unexpected guest arrives. Interesting setting, which seems to be a mix of high fantasy and Roman/European history, but there is an awful lot of info-dumping (much of which appears unnecessary) that bogs down the earliest part of the story.

Embers of War, by Gareth L Powell

Told from multiple POVs, this sci-fi sample is intriguing but also a little frustrating. The story appears to cover the end of an interstellar war and a new conflict emerging afterwards, but the sample feels too small to get to grips with the premise. The writing style is well done and I enjoyed what I read, but there wasn’t enough text there for me to feel engaged with the story. It may well be a very good book, I just wish there was more in the sample to gauge whether it was my cup of tea or not.

Blood and Sand Trilogy Box set, by Jon Kiln

Told from the single perspective of Vekal, I really liked the sample of Blood and Sand. It’s set, as you might expect, in a fantasy desert location. Vekal’s a Sin Eater, a religious warrior-monk type of fellow who can remove the sins from others to ease their passing into the lovelier side of the afterlife, but who is nevertheless held in contempt by those who serves. His city’s been overrun by barbarians and his immediate task is to stop himself getting killed. Even in the sample there are some plot twists and I like the way things are going. The odd flashback helps add to Vekal’s character and break the otherwise continuous narrative of what he’s doing, and the action’s well told without being overdone. I may well buy this (and it doesn’t hurt that it’s just 99p for the equivalent of 520 pages).

Quite a lot of good stuff, and if I had to pick just one, it’d be Blood and Sand. Not only did I enjoy it the most, it’s very reasonably priced.

Thaddeus

Red Sister Deal – just 99p

Red Sister, Book of the Ancestor part 1, is cut to just 99p on the UK Amazon Kindle store. (Not sure what the previous price was but Grey Sister, part 2, is out in May and pencilled in at £9.99).

Mark Lawrence, as well as running the excellent #SPFBO contest, is the author of the Broken Empire Trilogy, which was very well written and I can recommend.

So if you’ve been pondering what fantasy to buy next and like things grim, now is a great time to take advantage of a highly rated book for 99p.

Thaddeus

Review: How to Draw Fantasy and RPG Maps, by Jared Blando

I spend most of my time reading, writing and staring at various screens. But away from this I have the wildly different hobby of staring at a page and drawing stuff. Maps are very common at the start of fantasy books, but how does Jared Blando’s book stand as a guide for those of us with the artistic talent of a potato?

Suggested materials for art include both traditional and electronic approaches and cover the bases you would expect (reasonably nice paper, decent pencils and pens etc).

Naturally, ways of drawing the most obvious features (rivers/seas/lakes, forests and mountains) are all included. A nice touch is adding a panel at the end of each such section offering alternative methods of depicting mountain ranges, forests etc.

Beyond the obvious essentials there’s a lot of little extras that can help add character to a map. Methods of drawing cities are offered, ranging from basic iconography to various mini-city drawings (as per the approach I adopted in the map below). Little distinguishing features to help make each city feel unique are another nice touch (for example, a merchant ship beside a coastal trade city). On similar lines, the author describes ways of indicating different borders, roads and paths.

My own effort at a simple map. 

For each feature indicated above, there’s a clear step-by-step guide that’s simple enough for a drunk wearing oven gloves to follow.

There are also suggested symbols depicting sea monsters, mines, ruins and so forth. Outside the map proper, there’s quite of a lot of interesting extra stuff such as a little font info (full alphabets would’ve been better, though), ideas for keys and compasses, and for bordering the map.

All in all, there’s a lot in there, clearly presented and easy to follow (even for beginners or those suffering from a deficit of talent).

Downsides? Well, all the maps are overland. There’s scope for a second volume focusing on city maps and/or subterranean realms (dwarven kingdoms, that sort of thing). That’s all that springs to mind. Although if we’re to critique things that aren’t included, I would’ve liked to have my copy hand-delivered by Olivia Wilde. There’s also potential for more extreme environmental conditions (icy tundra, deserts, pyramids, igloos etc).

The innkeeper considers this be a four and a half out of five pints.

Thaddeus