{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Middle of the Night by Riley Sager by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager is his latest novel, published in June 2024. In this story, the main character Ethan Marsh is still haunted 30 years later by the disappearance of his best friend Billy from the tent in the backyard they were camping out in at the age of ten. When Ethan woke in the morning, Billy was gone, the roof of the tent slashed. Billy was never seen again. Now, as a 40 year old, Ethan returns to the New Jersey cul de sac Hemlock Circle, where it seems Billy is trying to get his attention, maybe from beyond the grave. In this place, then and now, nothing is as it seems--least of all those who populate the area. 

As usual, this novel skirts the line between horror and the supernatural, which I love in my fiction. However, all my usual complaints (when it comes to a Sager story) are here--and in ample supply. First, the book was a good 150 pages longer than I believe was actually necessary. Also, there were far too many characters to keep track of and for the author to flesh out adequately--which, I know, is what's wanted in this niche genre (made popular by Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, S.J. Watson, and Sager himself, among others) where the narrator of any given story simply can't be trusted to tell his or her own story with any degree of veracity. Sager upped my stress level by telling Middle of the Night from the entire cast of characters' point of views within this book. I've read four of his eight available titles written under this pen name, and thus far he usually keeps it to a single POV within a story. So now I had to juggle a whole host of suspicious people doing disturbing things, all sporting their own nefarious motives.

Now when most people read psychological thrillers, they know to expect unreliable narrators, unexpected plot twists, and featuring characters who are not only complex but usually also liars (to themselves and everyone around them). That's the name of the game. If you like that kind of story, there's no reason you wouldn't love this book. It's got all of that and you won't ever feel entirely sure who's the culprit while reading. 

Despite that the tension was aplenty within this tale, my pet peeves about Sager's works became overkill. Even for Sager, the sheer number of characters and viewpoints, the overabundance of motives--certainty developed far more than the individual characters were--all packed into this weighty 365 page book (hardcover) left me weary. The more I read books like this, the more I don't like and trust the author. I felt overwhelmed by all the characters, all of whom seemed guilty of something, their half-truths and skewed perceptions. What really cinched it for me was that one of the characters in the book was barely mentioned the entire length of the story until the end. When he was pulled like a chicken (instead of the expected rabbit) from a hat, all my hackles rose and I cried "Unfair! Cheater!" 

For the most part, usually I believe this author has played fair with readers--if we're really paying attention from one page to the next--we can't deny that the answers were all there, buried deep in multiple levels of deceptions on everyone's parts. Here, I argue that we weren't given the information we needed to make the leap. Or maybe the book was just too long and convoluted and I missed that vital bit. Who knows? For me, neither the ghostly aspects nor the shocking, twisted denouement could save this story, let alone top his previous endeavors. Ultimately, Middle of the Night did receive more than fair reviews elsewhere, so if this is your usual type of suspense, you may end up much more satisfied by it than I ultimately was. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

What's Horror For?

As I mentioned last week, one of the speakers at this year's ICFA proposed that horror articulates feelings and experiences for which we often can't find the words. It gives concrete embodiment to metaphors for our fears.

In IT, which I still consider one of Stephen King's best novels (even though an older one), he creates a monster that incarnates fear. It appears to people in the form of whatever they're most afraid of. I always get irked when commenters reduce the eldrich cosmic entity in IT to a "monster clown." Pennywise is only one of It's many faces. As the narrator reflects at one point, It prefers to feed on the emotions of children because their fears are more concrete, raw, and primal than those of adults. Grown-ups are afraid of dull, mundane threats such as heart disease, old age, and financial ruin. In the nightmares of children, deeper horrors show up unmasked.

King's nonfiction work DANSE MACABRE suggests that ultimately the work of all horror is to portray our fear of death in shapes we can deal with. In horror fiction, the monster can frequently be destroyed. A boy character in King's vampire novel 'SALEM'S LOT declares, "Death is when the monsters get you."

At ICFA, our panel on changing concepts of monsters in popular culture discussed the phenomenon that classic folklore and literary/film monsters often serve as metaphors. Werewolves and other shapeshifters may represent the beast within, the animalistic or savage side of human nature, as the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does. Lycanthropy can also suggest the trauma of puberty, an uncontrollable transformation of one's body accompanied by strange new impulses. Body horror in general (for example, a pair of anthologies I recently read that focus on pregnancy and childbirth), too, portrays the experience of one's physical self in an out-of-control state. Characters such as the Phantom of the Opera and Quasimodo illustrate revulsion toward deformity and disability. Vampires serve as metaphors for disease, foreign invaders, forbidden sexuality, transgressing the barrier between life and death, forced transformation, toxic power dynamics, and allegedly threatening Others of countless types. Both vampires and zombies embody the horror of a loved one changing into an unrecognizable Other. Ghosts may awaken guilt about how we treated the dead during their lifetimes and what revenge they may take on the living.

Conversely, nowadays the horror of monsters often comes from the image of an inhuman or no-longer-human creature as the persecuted outsider. In stories of this kind, ordinary humans can become the real monsters while the Other represents the oppressed and abused victim. Frankenstein's creation, of course, is a classic example of body horror and a monstrous violation of the line between life and death as well as a victim of persecution.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

These Old Bowels Of Mine

With apologies to Rod for today's totally inappropriate earworm: "This Old Heart of Mine" by Rod Stewart and Ronald Isley of the Isley Bros.... but he invited it with the line, "You've got me never knowing if I'm coming or going"....

Writing tends to be a sedentary business, which can lead to a spreading butt and through-put issues. In my case, which is possibly TMI, I have to give up eating potatoes. So, this morning, after I'd baked aging cod (on sale at half price), and prawns (also aging and half price) in Guernsey Farms cream -- because one always cooks fish in milk when it might be on the fishy-smelling side--I wondered what I could do to soak up all that good, wicked, creamy/fishy liquor, and turn the dish in a MAHA direction.

M.A.H.A. is "Make America Healthy Again".

A week or two ago, I would have thickened it with commercial Knorr Hollandaise powdered sauce, and put mashed potato on top, but my arthritis would have flared up and I would not have been able to walk (without pain) for a month.

I could have tried pasta, but that is basically durum flour and water, which is not all bad, but pasta causes constipation in some unfortunate individuals. Which is not, as The Bard said, "A consummation devoutly to be wished."

So... I seized three handfuls of Red Mill barley, and simmered it in the liquor (after setting aside the cooked fish and prawns). Then, I mixed the lot together in a casserole dish, put sliced yellow summer squash on top, to prevent any barley grains from getting hard and breaking a tooth.

 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/barley-benefits

I would not be sharing if it did not work out deliciously. One benefit that the healthline writers omit is that barley is also good for the bladder bladder (as opposed to the gall bladder). The British use lemon barley water as a cure for UTIs. Americans use cranberry juice. It is actually worthwhile to make cranberry-barley juice. But, consuming barley might fend off a UTI in the first place.

Barley is also good for preventing various cancers, including bowel cancer, for lowering cholesterol, for preventing heart disease and diabetes, and much more. It is also quite inexpensive.... possibly less expensive that a "pre-biotic" product being advertised on TV, costing $50 for 60 capsules which, an actor brazenly avers, "helps my daily bowel movements," and brings out the pedant in me.

How does one "help" something as insentient (one hopes) as a bowel movement? It might help the generator of the bowel movement to eliminate fecal matter by softening it, or bulking it up. A more accurate line would be, "helps me to have bowel movements daily."  

Alas that advertisers are permitted to bombard us all with horrible grammar.

Raw oats has many of the advantages of barley. I think I've written about that before. For the perfect meal at each day-start, use Quaker rolled oats or quick oats, add half a cup of strained Greek yoghurt, a cup of boiling water, blueberries, raspberries, sliced banana, stir and leave to sit for about an hour.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in these reviews. 

The House Across the Lake was Riley Sager's 2022 release, a thriller that went on to be compared to Hitchcock's Rear Window. I really thought I had this author figured out after having read three or four of his previous books (though not in order of publication). Almost without fail, he puts a too-curious-for-her-own-good female who's on the edge in a precarious situation where nothing is as it seems. He also plays the "unreliable narrator" card so often, I can see it coming in five words or less now. I've learned to never, absolutely ever trust his narrator because her (so far as I've gotten in reading his backlist, all his lead characters have actually been female) perspective is forever going to throw false impressions and skewed perspectives all along my path. Additionally, I can always be certain this viewpoint isn't innocent because there are secrets yet to be unearthed--sometimes not until the very last pages. Finally, I can be assured this author will insinuate supernatural involvement somehow in his novel, which is something that probably draws me to his books more than anything else. 

From the first page until well past the middle of this very long book, I couldn't have been more haughtily convinced I knew exactly where the plot was going. Everything felt predictable and even stereotypical. My interest waned often. I felt as though I'd read this basic scenario many times before and at least a few times better executed. Then literally out of nowhere…!!! A typhoon on a sunny day, and hell on earth instead of the tranquil paradise I was beginning to fall asleep in. I just didn't see the hurricane coming until I was hit full-force by it. I guess the author lulled me into a state of lake-time oblivion, given how I was almost literally snoring when the nightmare hit me blindside. Talk about a twist! But there was much more in store for me--a diabolical twist on another draw-dropping twist topped with a final, stunning sucker punch twist. Wowza! I couldn't catch my breath until I devoured the second half of the book within little more than an hour (after drowsing through the first half of the book over the course of a leaning-toward bored several days). 

The surface story here is that a recently widowed actress named Casey has retreated to her family's lake house in Vermont. Been there, literally, done that, right? But it's not that ho-hum. There are a few interesting points. Lake Greene has gained some notoriety of late with the disappearances of three young girls who are presumed dead, the victims of a supposed serial killer. Lake Greene is also associated with a neat urban legend. Based on the Victorian-era belief that reflective surfaces can trap souls of the dead (and therefore the living covered all the mirrors after someone died), the tribes that lived in this particular area long before European settlers arrived went still bigger with their beliefs--lakes could also be considered reflective surfaces, so if a person saw their own reflection in the lake after someone died in that body of water, they could become possessed by the soul trapped beneath the water's surface. I do have to comment that one of the characters told this old wives' tale in a shocking bit of cabbageheadism, which basically means that the reader needed to know this so the author spoon-fed it from one character to the others in the scene. In any case… 

Grief has made Casey a drunk and apparently a voyeur when she realizes her new neighbors are a controlling tech innovator named Tom and his former supermodel wife. After Casey saves said wife Katherine from drowning, she begins to realize something is very wrong with their marriage. Then Katherine abruptly vanishes, and Casey suspects Tom had something to do with it. 

One more aside: Sager made reference to his fictional setting of Camp Nightingale from his novel The Last Time I Lied, which I reviewed back in January of this year, when Katherine claims she was a "Camp Nightingale girl". Cool! I love it when the author wants to see if his fans are paying attention. 

The twists in The House Across the Lake are what made this story compelling. It was well-written with good characterization, however, as I said, I've read a few of Sager's books now and all the main characters strike me as similar. They have different names, settings, and situations, but they could easily be swapped out for each other from one of his books to the next. 

Additionally, (another thing I've said nearly every time I review one of Sager's books), this novel is just too darn long. He could have cut half of the 349 pages that were in the hardcover edition and came out with essentially the same story. As is almost always the case, everyone is a suspect--including the one who vanished as well as the one investigating the crime--and all have a secret that makes them a likely killer. Motive and opportunity aplenty for each and every player in the book. Culling his list of suspects so there weren't so many red herrings could have helped a lot.

If you'll remember, I did state from the beginning of this review that my interest was seriously flagging at the halfway point. If not for that first twist, I'm not sure the whodunit (or more aptly, who didn't do it? since it was anyone's game for most of the story) could have been salvaged. I was a single word away from "skim"-reading (which is what I do when I'm at least semi-committed and then a story disappoints me too much to continue reading word for word) just to get through it to the end. 

I think a lot of readers might have maintained interest all the way through--namely, those who are fans of this type of "unreliable narrator" thriller genre. I've read a couple truly good ones (Ruth Ware is a solid favorite of mine in this category), but the majority are usually not my cup of tea. This one was saved at the eleventh hour by the twist so it is worth reading. If you're patient, there is good stuff in store for you. 

Incidentally, in March 2023, there was talk about Netflix making a film adaptation, and I think that medium would be ideal for this particular tale. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

ICFA 46

The 46th annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was held in its usual Orlando hotel last week. Guests of honor were Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of MEXICAN GOTHIC and other horror fiction as well as an editor of the sadly now defunct Innsmouth Free Press online magazine, and guest scholar Sarah Juliet Lauro, a zombie specialist. The con focused on the theme of "Night Terrors" (not in the technical meaning of a specific sleep disorder, which one attendee who's a medical doctor as well as a horror film scholar brought up, but in the broader sense).

My plane took off an hour late because of an unspecified maintenance-related delay but miraculously landed only 30 minutes late. Orlando had bright sun all week. However, Thursday was unusually cool for this time of year and Friday downright chilly. Saturday warmed up nicely.

The two luncheons and the Saturday night banquet served abundant and delicious food, as usual. Happily, each meal's dessert included plenty of chocolate. (Sometimes banquet menus miss the point on that requirement.) They're always buffets, so there's something to please everybody and lots of it.

At the guest author lunch, Silvia Moreno-Garcia proposed that horror fiction articulates experiences we can't find words for in mundane contexts. She also discussed the concepts of "hostile architecture" and the horror of the "unplace." Sarah Juliet Lauro's guest scholar lunch talk elaborated on the connections among zombies, slavery, and capitalism.

Some other items I particularly enjoyed: A panel on horror in comics. A paper on Dark Lords, their motivations, typical traits, etc. A session on fairy tales and folklore, including a presentation on diseases that helped to shape the folkloric images of vampires, werewolves, and zombies. The annual iteration of "Fifty Shades of Nay," about issues of consent in speculative fiction.

I read three flash fiction pieces at a "Worlds and Words" short-reading session for multiple authors. People seemed to enjoy all of the stories, especially my own favorite, "Interview with a Reluctant Vampire." (All my experiments in flash fiction are available as free reads on my website, whose URL is below; click on "Complete Works" in the sidebar and scroll most of the way down.) I also participated in a panel called "Reimagining the Night," on the development of monsters in popular culture, especially contemporary fiction and film. It was organized by the Lord Ruthven Assembly, our vampire and revenant division. A lively, fun discussion with good attendance.

The annual LRA business meeting took place on Friday, followed by a screening of THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, Hammer Studio's adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla." The film adheres fairly closely to the original story, aside from pointlessly switching the names of Le Fanu's heroine (Laura) and her friend who's killed early in the movie. The LRA awards for work produced in 2024 were announced at the Saturday banquet: Fiction, WHAT FEASTS AT NIGHT, by T. Kingfisher (my top choice among the many novels considered); nonfiction, THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK OF THE VAMPIRE, edited by Simon Bacon; other media, a tie between ABIGAIL and the latest adaptation of NOSFERATU.

My Sunday return flight launched on schedule and arrived home on time.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Atlantic Making Waves

Kudos to The Atlantic for providing a search tool so authors can type their name into a search bar and find out if they are included automatically in the copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta (formerly Facebook) for using 7.5 million pirated books.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

The Authors Guild has a check list of 5 actions for affected authors to take.

https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/

Thanks also to SFWA and Authors Guild for sharing this information.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's

A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,

Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

As I said last week in this two-part review, I feel bad for Martin. He went head-first into A Song of Ice and Fire and there was no stopping the epic as it grew larger and larger in many different ways, not simply from a writing standpoint but also in the market for the series as it crossed boundaries into TV and other media and merchandising. 

With series that have overarching plots like A Song of Ice and Fire does, finishing in a doable amount of time becomes a nightmare if the entire series isn't written in toto, in advance of publication. Now, obviously, even when he wasn’t as famous as he now is, Martin had a much, much larger audience than I'll ever have as an author, so I've had several luxuries in my writing he's never had. As authors, both of us realize only too well that an overarching series (as opposed to the kind of series with standalone story installments) can't be put off or set aside for too long without becoming off-track and distracted, momentum derailed, and mindset potentially being upset irrevocably to the point of feeling that, as a writer, you're trying to pound an enormous square peg into a very small round hole. In Martin's case, he's spoken of feeling like his books are delayed because he's trying to untangle "the Meereenese knot" (a reference from his own series concerning a nearly impossible act of contortion, and named after the city of Meereen in Slaver's Bay), perhaps in regard to chronology synching up with all the various plot threads. 

Authors who are in the middle of a long, popular series that has left readers dangling for countless years between installments have a tremendous amount of pressure put on them. Who's to blame for that is a combination of many influences, predominately the author's own, the publisher's, and the fans. In this case, Martin had the HBO series aspects added to his stress. However, that pinnacle of outright terror they--Martin in particular--must feel could very definitely impact the quality of writing. I would absolutely hate feeling like practically the whole world was waiting on me to deliver something. Nothing about the scenario appeals to me, though authors who have gone through this situation may have all the money and fame a writer could possibly ever wish for. Does that make the torment worthwhile? Depends on who you ask. Added to Martin's already ponderous burden is this question I imagine he faces each and every day: What if readers are disappointed when he finally provides series arc resolutions with second-to-the-last and final volumes? If there are special types of hell for writers, that's one right there, for sure.              

I've also often wondered how he deals with the fact that the HBO series is finished and he still hasn't finished the book series. The producers were forced to continue on with the conclusion without him, though he reportedly did provide input. Keep in mind, though, that, 1) The writers and developers of films and television have different audiences and opinions on viewer satisfaction than book authors do, and 2) I can't imagine a writer wanting to give away key details about an unfinished book series that may incite readers to feel they have no reason to continue following the series in literary form when he finally finishes writing it. Because the TV show supposedly screwed up the end of the series (according to critics anyway), this gives Martin a unique opportunity to offer the end of the series the way it was meant to be, especially if his rendering is mind-blowingly fantastic. Martin is just too polished and concerned with quality to provide any less than that. But it must be a concern that bugs him even when he's not aware it's there lurking like the harbinger of doom. I also wonder if he's actually watched the portions of the TV series past the point where his published book series ended. As an author, I absolutely would not have watched it or read anything about it. He's said that he doesn't read message boards anymore to prevent his writing from being influenced, so I wonder if that means he avoided watching the final seasons of the TV series, too. I'm not on social media enough to really know whether he did or not watch it or stop after a certain point. 

How a writer ties up the end of a series can either lead readers to becoming lifelong fans or dire enemies, banning that author forever. Like I said, I don't envy authors in this position, regardless of their money and fame. Maybe the challenge is part of the fun for many writers. Nevertheless, those are risks I simply never want to take as a writer because they could so easily blow up in my face. As they say, fame and infamy are two sides of a coin. 

As a writer, I tend to be adamant about being certain even before I begin work on a project that I can actually finish the series in a satisfactory way…or at all. That's for my own peace of mind as well as for my readers. With both of my overarching series writing projects, I made a point of working on the installments one right after the other. For Arrow of Time Chronicles, I completed all four volumes over the course of about 2 1/2 years. They were only published after I finished writing them. They came out one a month from January to April 2020. The three novel parts of Bridge of Fire, Book 10: Woodcutter's Grim Series were written back-to-back and published within days of each other in September 2021. A series with overarching plots absolutely requires successful release dates to keep fans invested and, let's face it, given these days of social menacing, less vicious. While, as I said, Martin probably didn't have the option or maybe even the desire to hold back this series until he'd finished writing all of them, he wouldn't have had to face the monumental pressures he is now if he'd only completed writing the series before editors, publishers, TV networks and producers, and fans got involved. I suspect a fair portion of the delay in finishing Books 6 and 7 is due to wanting to make them both absolutely perfect, far beyond what fans of the TV series are expecting or even hoping for. 

While I wait as patiently as I possibly can for further installments, I'm reading what else the author has to offer apart from A Song of Ice and Fire, mostly enjoying it, and also looking for other "Game of Thrones" connected fiction, like House of the Dragon and the Egg and Dunk adventures, which I'll review below and hopefully provide something to tide you over for The Winds of Winter. 

 

I first read "The Hedge Knight" in the Robert Silverberg edited Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy collection (1998). This story is associated with George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, set in that world 90 years before the events that take place in the novels. 

It's hard to find a definitive title for the series "The Hedge Knight" is part of because, I suppose, this story was the first and therefore not well-defined at the time it was published. I saw it called Tales of Dunk and Egg, Dunk and Egg Adventures, A Knight of the Seven Kingdom, as well as simply Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The three currently available short novels in the A Knight of the Seven Kingdom series (which is what it was called in the trilogy compilation published in 2015 as well as what it will be called for the forthcoming HBO series) are touted as being part of the A Song of Ice and Fire, or even as a prequel. I don't think either are good descriptions. The storylines are completely different. I would call A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms an off-shoot of that series, at most. 

"The Hedge Knight" takes place while the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and it does include characters from A Song of Ice and Fire--Aegon Targaryen (known here as Egg, the future King Aegon V) and Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk, the future Lord Commander of the Kingsguard). In case you're wondering, as I was when I first started reading this, a hedge knight is one without a master that travels the kingdom searching for employment (and sleeping in the hedges). Hoping to gain the interest of a lord as a knight for hire by participating in a tourney, Dunk instead finds himself fighting for his life when he crosses the wrong Targaryen in order to save a young, pretty puppeteer artist. 

The first time I read "The Hedge Knight", I'd just started getting into the "Game of Thrones" world and its massive cast of characters. I didn't really know that series as well as I do now, having both read the books and watched the HBO series countless times since. I had no idea how these characters fit into that world and series. Additionally, the Dunk and Egg (as in, "dunk an egg") aspect seemed silly to me. Beyond that, I have an even stronger opinion of tourneys than Ned Stark--what a waste of time, money, energy, and blood. So I can't say I appreciated the story the first time I read it. However, when I reread it recently in connection with my review of the two Legends short novel collections, it was with a much clearer comprehension of the primary series. I really liked and rooted for Dunk and Egg. As soon as I finished this story, I ordered the trilogy of novellas, published together in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. In large part, I suppose I gave this story more of a chance the second time around because I'm ravenous--more like absolutely famished--for more Ice and Fire world stories. 

"The Sworn Sword", the second story in the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series was originally featured in the Legends II collection (2003). I started reading "The Sworn Sword" within that anthology but my copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms came, so I jumped over to that collection of the three stories the author has written thus far in the series. I read this short novel in almost no time, and I was unable to keep myself from going on to the third story instead of returning to Legends II. I absolutely loved "The Sworn Sword" in which, a year or so after the events of "The Hedge Knight", Dunk and Egg find themselves sworn to the service of an aging, has-been lord with secrets the old man hasn't bothered to reveal to his "employees". When the water on the land of this lord is stolen with a dam built by a neighboring house, Dunk and Egg go to the thief who's been painted as black as night by their lord. But things aren't at all what they initially seemed. 

In the third short novel, "The Mystery Knight" (published in 2010 in the Martin and Gardner Dozois edited anthology Warriors), Dunk and Egg are on the road, staying out of sight after prior events in the other two stories but longing for a soft bed instead of the hard ground, and good food instead of the hardtack that takes away the will to chew, let alone live. When they hear about a wedding taking place nearby, complete with a feast and mini tourney, Dunk decides maybe winning the tilt will provide the means for him and his squire Egg to make their way to Winterfell to see about serving one the lord there. They quickly become embroiled in another deadly conspiracy, this one involving a dragon egg. This series is absolute must-read, as is the one it's set in is. 

The compilation of all three short novels was a joy to read alongside illustrations by the fabulous Gary Gianni. Prior to the frequently placed, amazingly detailed black and white sketches, I'd pictured Dunk as a much older knight (I was inadvertently thinking about the actor Liam Cunningham who played Davos Seaworth in the HBO Game of Thrones series). I also imagined Egg as being older and much larger. The illustrations show a much younger man for Dunk, and small Egg is adorable with his bald head in Gianni's artwork.

In 2011, it was reported that Martin was working on a fourth novella for A Knight of the Seven Kingdom (The She-Wolves of Winterfell) but he was forced to stop writing it with the demand for the next title in A Song of Ice and Fire. In 2014, Martin said he'd roughed out another Dunk and Egg story, The Village Hero, set in the Riverlands. Which will be written/published first remains up in the air. He also has notes and "fairly specific ideas" for a number of other installments with potentially revealing plot titles: The Sellsword, The Champion, The Kingsguard, and The Lord Commander. 

The first three stories were adapted as comic books and reprinted as graphic novels. Additionally, after talk of this series becoming another HBO TV adaptation in the Ice and Fire universe, it was given a straight to series order in 2023 and filming began on the first season, consisting of six episodes, in June 2024. Release date is supposedly late 2025. I can hardly wait! 

If you're a lover of high fantasy similar to The Lord of the Rings (but much, much more graphic) with timeless characters and rich, medieval settings, suspense and danger galore, I can't imagine you wouldn't absolutely love both of George R. R. Martin's connected series, whether reading the books or watching the series, just like I do. The added appeal of dragons, blue-eyed ice creatures, hedge knights, and would-be princes in hiding sold me from the moment I heard about them. There's a lot already available here in this amazing universe with the promise (though I've probably wisely stopped holding my breath) of still more to come. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

The annual ICFA in Orlando meets this week. I'll be doing a flash fiction reading and participating in a panel on the evolution of monsters in modern popular culture. Con report coming next Thursday.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Of M.I.C.E. And Memory

Many moons ago, tt seemed to me that too many fiction book blurbs began with a "When..." clause. I found it rather boring and formulaic.

Recently, I understand why a blurb might start with "When". Most works of fiction are expected to begin with a life-altering event for one of the protagonists. Some would say that conflict must leap of the page in the first sentence.  Here's an excellent craft article by Benjamin McEvoy.

https://benjaminmcevoy.com/7-questions-fiction-writers-can-answer-improve-writing/

Is there another starter-word in the "How/What/When/Where/Why/How/Who/Which..." set of questions? Some would say "Is" and "Does".

As I mused on "When" as the most important (first) word of a blurb, I remembered Orson Scott Card's use of the "M. I. C. E." quotient as a mnemonic.

"When...." would have to come under the "E." of the  "M. I. C. E." acronym.

"M." is for "Milieu."

"I." is for "Idea."

"C." is for "Character."

"E." is for "Event."

https://fantasy-faction.com/2018/taming-mice-the-mice-quotient-and-storytelling

My preference is to write Character-Driven novels, so perhaps subliminally, I recoil at "When" and its suggestion of an Event-Driven story. Of course, one must have Milieu, Ideas, Characters, and Events.

No doubt, a Regency romance, or an inter-galactic warfare series would be novels of Milieu, but Fantasy Fiction dot com has a fine explanation. However, while poking around, I stirred up a veritable of plague of mice acronyms.

There is M.I.C.E. in marketing, and also in hospitality: Meetings Incentives Conferences Exhibitions.
https://www.cvent.com/uk/blog/hospitality/what-is-mice

Spookdom has M.I.C.E, to remind secret agents what they need to remember when recruiting assets and prospective colleagues: Money Ideology Coercion Ego
https://spyauthor.medium.com/mice-the-4-pillars-of-cia-spy-recruitment-61d3f5cf9d3c

Cyber secutity has M.IC.E..:Money ideology compromise ego
https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/mice

Civl Engineers -- and aren't all Engineers civil? -- can be M.I.C.E. also.

For further entertainment, there is a handy acronym finder.  https://www.acronymfinder.com/MICE.html

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews of George R. R. Martin's

A Song of Ice and Fire and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,

Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

I can't help it, I feel bad for George R. R. Martin. He takes a lot of flak I don't believe he deserves. He had an idea for a phenomenal, epic fantasy story a la Tolkien (and yes, he, like the father of modern fantasy literature, considers A Song of Ice and Fire one very, very, very long story published in several volumes) and it became larger than life, to the point where he couldn't keep up with it and was quickly finding that each installment was growing and spiraling wildly in a way that undoubtedly felt out of control by the time HBO got involved and began producing the television series. 

Add to that stress, Martin isn't just an award-winning author and editor for many, many success anthologies featuring other authors--he's also a successful TV and feature film writer. When he begins to feel writing for TV compromises "the size of his imagination", he, in frustration, returns to book writing. In 1991, after having a vivid idea of a boy seeing a beheading and finding direwolves in the snow, he wrote the first scene of A Game of Thrones. In this fictional world, seasons last for years and can come to an unpredictable halt. Violent political machinations with several family dynasties vying for control of Westeros--including the daughter of the deposed Westerosi king attempting to return from exile and assume the throne she believes belongs to her--are at the heart of the tale with the growing threat of powerful supernatural creatures returning to the civilized world forming an intriguing backdrop I found irresistible from the first time I heard about these "White Walkers". 

Before long, Martin was researching, making maps and genealogies, and writing a few more chapters, which were interrupted for a TV series he worked on for years that ultimately never aired. In 1994, he returned to novel writing and A Game of Thrones. 1,400 manuscript pages in, he started to realize this was going to be a much larger endeavor than he'd originally thought. It was published in August 1996 with 1,088 pages, not including the appendices. At that time, it was touted the first in a trilogy, but, by the time the second book was published, "trilogy" was dropped. A Clash of Kings was released February 1999, coming in at 1,184 (sans appendices) pages. 

In 1999, after Book 2 reached #13 on The New York Times Best Seller list, producers and filmmakers started showing an interest in the film rights to the series. A Storm of Swords, the third book, was turned in several months late, published in November 2000, with well over 1,500 pages. A Feast of Crows, Book 4, came out five years after the previous (November 2005) with events set up to directly follow where Book 3 had left off, and focused on characters from King's Landing, the Riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. Book 5, A Dance with Dragons (with a whopping 1,600 pages) was set in the same time period but focused on characters in Essos, Winterfell, and the Wall. Only Arya, Jon Snow, Tyrion, and Daenerys had chapters in both parallel-running volumes. It came out in July 2011. With this story, the series had caught up with what had happened in the previous installment around the two-thirds mark of the novel, and then went further. However, it covered much less than the author intended and left several agonizing tenterhooks that fans have been hanging on all this time. While rude critics claimed Martin had lost interest in the series or, devilishly, was looking to make more money and so held off on finishing the book for publication, he says he just spent too much time rewriting and perfecting it, which I heartily believe. 

In the meantime, in 2007, HBO had acquired the rights to turn A Song of Ice and Fire into a TV series, Game of Thrones. The first 10-episode season aired in April 2011. The series was officially a hit. Though the book series debuted without any mass market publicity or buzz of any kind in the genre, forcing the author to earn his audience the hard way--by writing damn good books that his fans were avidly talking about with other readers--Game of Thrones practically came out of the gate with a cannon explosion. Soon, Martin was carried along by the blitz with a seemingly endless succession of book tours and conventions, though he was trying admirably to juggle all that while writing one script per season of the TV series, writing the sixth book in the series, along with his The World of Ice & Fire companion guide and the Dunk and Egg novellas. 

In March 2012, Martin said that he expects the final two installments to be 1500 pages each but later talked about not being "firm about ending the series with a seventh novel". Book 6, The Winds of Winter, is supposed to resolve the cliffhangers from A Dance with Dragons early on, opening with two big battles that were built up in the previous installment. The viewpoint of Sansa and Arya Stark is supposed to be covered, as well as Arianne Martell's and Aeron Greyjoy's within this title. As for the ending to the series, the author says he wants a satisfying depth and resonance but plans to avoid disappointing fans "by deviating too far from their own theories and desires". 

By October 2012, 400 pages of the sixth novel had reportedly been written, half of which needed revising. HBO was churning out the popular series by mainly following the books already published to a fanatical increase in viewers, and Martin was working hard to deliver in hopes of Book 6 being published before the sixth season of Game of Thrones. By early 2016, he announced he wouldn't be able to catch up with the books in time for the last season of the show. As of this writing, July 2024 (13 years later), we still haven't seen the sixth installment (though in October 2022, he said it was approximately three quarters done), let alone the final (probably) book, A Dream of Spring. 

Martin is said to have told the TV show producers the "major plot points" of what may be in the final two installments. One presumes he told them enough so that the show and its stellar actors (some of whom received a million dollars per episode toward the end) went on to earn countless awards. That said, the final season's ending responses from fans and critics were a pretty mixed bag, with a lot of people unhappy with it. 

For my part, I didn't appreciate the very abrupt end of the supernatural angle of the series. It was almost like the producers came up with a checklist out of nowhere and this vital subplot was checked off summarily within an episode or two. I can't really think of how else it might have been done, so I survived that. That said, for the ultimate end of the series, I had three requirements or I would have been absolutely wroth: Arya, Tyrion, and Jon Snow had to survive and Dany had to die by Jon's hand. So I was pretty pleased with the series conclusion. I don't expect to be quite as pleased with the author's own ending, should we get it, given his own words to the effect of killing off major players so readers don't rely on the hero coming through unscathed and instead experience the tension those characters go through page by page. 

You can almost hear the exhaustion in his voice in a 2003 interview when Martin talked about never again writing anything on this scale, of returning to his fictional universe only in standalone novels, and of writing about characters from other time periods within the setting, such as his Dunk and Egg stories. Disaffected fans in this thirteen year interval between book have been abusive and downright merciless, judging the writing process by their own woefully ignorant prejudices, adding to the stress this author is no doubt feeling to the extreme since the Game of Thrones TV series ended in 2019. 

Martin has also been involved in HBO's follow-up attempts to cash in on more success in this fictional universe, not only with writing the massive two-volume, complete history of House Targaryen that--along with novellas "The Princess and the Queen" (published in the 2013 anthology Dangerous Women), "The Rogue Prince" (2014 Rogues anthology), "The Songs of the Dragon" (2017 The Book of Swords anthology) and the Asimov's Science Fiction and Dragon compilations "Blood of the Dragon" (taken from Dany's chapters in A Game of Thrones), "Path of the Dragon" (Dany's chapters in A Storm of Swords), and "Arms of the Kraken" (based on Iron Island chapters from A Feast for Crows)--spawned the House of the Dragon HBO series currently (as of this writing) in its second season as well as the upcoming one for the Dunk and Egg adventures, and several others which seem to have failed to move forward (the Jon Snow one was what I personally was most looking forward to) or are still being discussed. 

I, for one, devoured every installment of the book series when they were first published and continue to read them every couple years in hopes that a new volume will come out soon and I'll be ready to read it the very instant it's released. I also watch the HBO series at least once a year. My only complaint with it is that it's very hard to watch the over-the-top gratuitousness that goes far beyond the "honest necessity" to reflect real people Martin deliberately includes for "an immersive experience" in the novels because sexuality is "an important driving force in human life". I tend to fast-forward through the worst of it. Other than that, over the course of three or four intense days, I binge-watch the entire series every time I get started with it because I'm tortured with the situations the characters are going through and I can't leave long before I have to return to find out what will happen (though, at this point, I obviously already know). 

I love that the characters are so complex and well-fleshed out, it's sometimes hard not to believe they're just fictional imaginings. Not surprisingly, Ned Stark, Jon Snow, Tyrion, Arya, and Davos are my favorites. The settings are lush and vivid while the events are so authentic and suspenseful, I would love to live in the time period--in theory anyway…okay, so maybe just LARPing there. According to Martin at some point since 2012, he definitely doesn't plan to allow another writer to finish his book series for him if he's unable to complete it himself (he is 76 years old, after all). 

In the meantime, I'm avidly, anxiously, agonizingly waiting for the series to be finished, but I'm also understanding of the author's need to do it in his own time, to the very best of his ability, while also trying to juggle so many other things in the process. The less stress his disgruntled fans put on him, the more likely we'll see the next installments, which hopefully come out with satisfactory conclusions instead of the series exponentially growing and growing and growing with each new volume. So practice patience and enjoy what else the author has to offer, as I am, including non-Song of Ice and Fire offerings, as well as Ice and Fire connected House of the Dragon and the Egg and Dunk adventures, which I'll review next week and hopefully provide something to tide you over for The Winds of Winter. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Brain Cell Computers

Human brain cells are being used in experimental "biological computers":

Biological Computer Made of Human Brain Cells

A company in Melbourne called Cortical Labs has constructed a prototype of a biological AI composed of tiny human neurons (too small to see with the naked eye). Brain cells in a box are shown "responding to inputs from a nearby computer. Put simply, the neurons were learning."

This system learns faster than a non-biological AI. As a plus, it draws much less power. An early version, called DishBrain, learned to play Pong. Not on a pro level, its creator admits -- "it hit only slightly more balls than it missed." But it performed measurably better than an untrained system.

I'm reminded of a SESAME STREET skit in which Ernie watches Bert play checkers with his pet pigeon. Ernie's excited by the amazing accomplishment of a pigeon's learning to play checkers. She must be very smart. Bert counters that she isn't really that smart; in all the games they've played, she's beaten him only twice.

The chief science officer of Cortical Labs, Dr. Brett Kagan, remarks, "The only thing that has 'generalised intelligence' ... are biological brains." Therefore, his team doesn't aim to produce biological computers to "replace the things that the current AI methods do well." Rather, they hope to grow neuron networks able to "infer from very small amounts of data and then make complex decisions" in ways non-biological networks can't.

A related article expands on possible research the brains-in-a-box might be used for. For one, the researchers plan to study the effects of ethanol on their learning abilities -- "to see how alcohol and medicines affect the cells, with Dr Kagan saying they will use ethanol to get them 'drunk' and see whether they play Pong more poorly."

Brain Cells in a Dish

The first article above compares these experiments to "brain organoids" -- lentil-size, 3D lab-grown "brains" -- being produced and studied at the University of Queensland. In both cases, scientists make a point of the fact that brains-in-boxes (or dishes) don't have the complexity to possess awareness or emotions. Suppose "eventually, larger networks could experience consciousness or an understanding of their condition," even on a human level? The Frankensteinian ethical implications would be mind-boggling. The morality of turning artificially grown brains into alcoholics, for instance. :)

Of course, present-day neurons on chips capable of simple learning and problem-solving have a long way to go before they might achieve self-awareness and free will. But in the future?

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

"Best Spinach Ever"

While reviewing the gustatory delights of the day, yesterday, between the final episodes of Everwood on Amazon TV, my husband told me that the spinach I gave him for lunch was "the best ever".

There was no spinach in it, but it was leafy greens.

Beetroot leaves (however many are crisp and green on your bunch of organic beets)
Baby Arugula (two grabs with a clawed hand... which is no different from a handful)

Leafy fronds of carrot tops, snipped from the petiole.

Two curly kale leaves, freed from the stalk.

Spicy chicken stock (Swansons in the cardboard box).

Shake of garlic powder (not garlic salt) according to one's taste.

Dash of extra virgin olive oil.

Wash everything leafy, of course.

Dump it all into a saucepan.

Snip everything roughly but carefully.

Pour in enough chicken stock to lubricate the pan. (Maybe a cupful).

Add dash of olive oil.

Bring to the boil, then turn off the heat.

Stir in a shake of garlic powder

Leave on residual heat until it looks like a dark green mass.

Reheat portions as needed in ovenproof dish. This recipe will serve at least 4.

The secret is probably to substitute a good quality, tasty, spicy chicken stock for cooking water.

The humor is that many recipes say "add.... to taste". You can taste whatever the dish is perfectly well without adding that spicy ingredient. "To taste" means "according to your taste for the stuff" rather than "in order to taste".

During Covid, and for some post-Covid, some senses may be lost including the sense of smell or taste, so "to taste" may take on new meaning.

I apologize if this recipe is a little repetitive. I serve real beetroot every day. It really does help with an invalid's blood pressure.

If one is trying to get away from sugar and overly processed --or artificially colored-- commercial cereal, a variation on muesli can be delicious;

Original rolled raw Quaker Oats (or the Minute variety, which is just more finely minced).

One banana, sliced.

Blueberries, (about a cupful), washed

A cupful of boiling water

A cupful of Fage strained Greek yogurt.

Warm bowl.

Add fruit and yoghurt

Stir in the boiling water until yoghurt is a sauce-like consistency,

Shake in the oats and stir again until stew-like.  

Set aside at room temperature or in a Bain Marie for about an hour,

The oats will continue to take up liquid, so it will thicken.

This is quite delicious, and easy on digestion and sensitive teeth. Raw oats has more benefits for heart, cholesterol, weight loss, bowel movement, blood sugar control.

If you do not have a nut allergy, or sensitive teeth or sensitive gums, this recipe is improved with the addition of walnuts or flaked almonds, or sesame seeds or pine nuts, pecans .. even cashews.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review Legends and Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy Edited by Robert Silverberg Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review

Legends and Legends II: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy

Edited by Robert Silverberg

Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in these reviews. 

Last week, I reviewed the first installment of Legends. This week I'm reviewing Legends II. 

The two Legends short fantasy novel collections, edited by Robert Silverberg, have an intriguing concept. In the introduction, Silverberg says that these masters of the genre became famous through the series their particular stories are set in. Seemed like a great initiation into already popular series from the crème de la crème of fantasy writing. I'll say upfront that all 11 stories in each collection, even the ones I couldn't really get into, were well written and engaging. I have no trouble believing that those who are fans of the individual series represented here will love these bonus offerings. That said, having not read any of them previously, or recently, I found myself mainly feeling helplessly lost. 

Originally, both collections came out as massive volumes with eleven short novels each. 

Legends II (hardcover published in 2003; trade paperback in 2004 with 784 pages) contains:

1.   Robin Hobb: "Homecoming" (The Realm of the Elderlings)          

2. George R. R. Martin: "The Sworn Sword" (A Song of Ice and Fire)             

3. Orson Scott Card: "The Yazoo Queen" (The Tales of Alvin Maker)            

4.    Diana Gabaldon: "Lord John and the Succubus" (Outlander)        

5.    Robert Silverberg: "The Book of Changes" (Majipoor)      

6. Tad Williams: "The Happiest Dead Boy in the World" (Otherland)           

7.     Anne McCaffrey: "Beyond Between" (Dragonriders of Pern)        

8.     Raymond E. Feist: "The Messenger" (The Riftwar Saga)  

9.     Elizabeth Haydon: "Threshold" (Symphony of Ages)        

10.  Neil Gaiman: "The Monarch of the Glen" (American Gods)            

11.  Terry Brooks: "Indomitable" (Shannara)   

The order above is how the stories are featured in the full collection. 

In 2004, the stories were divided up across two volumes with new subtitles:

·       Volume 1: Shadows, Gods, and Demons with Gaiman, McCaffrey, Williams, Hobb, Silverberg, and Feist.

·       Volume 2: Dragon, Sword, and King with Brooks, Martin, Gabaldon, Card, and Haydon.

 

Let's get to the reviews. As I've said before in my Rogues Anthology review, rather than insult some perfectly good writers and stories I just didn't happen to connect with--though I'm certain others will, I'll mainly go in-depth with reviews of the particular stories I actually liked in the second collection. 

From Legends II: 

1)   1) The first story in this full collection, "Homecoming" by Robin Hobb is part of her Realm of the Elderlings Series. The short description of this tale is that a group of exiles are forced to learn survival in a ghost-inhabited hellscape--or perish. Within the story, the narrator effectively summed up the intrigue that ran all through the tale--that some of those involved had started out as lords and ladies, others pickpockets and whores; being stranded and unable to leave this place, they begin to recognize they're equals in their desperation and dependency on one another just to get by day by day. The introduction of an elaborate city built beneath the bog provides striking evidence of a culture long dead but nowhere near gone. I enjoyed this story so much, I was very sorry when it came to an end. I wanted to know more about the lost civilization buried beneath the "Rain Wilds" swamp as well as more about the main character and her family who begin to build a new life for themselves in this harsh landscape. While I'm not a hundred percent sure how this particular offering fits in the three related trilogies the author has written (maybe, hopefully, telling the story of the lost civilization?), I do know I want to dive into them as soon as I possibly can. "Homecoming" is brilliantly unique, to say the least. I will mention that several scenes that described the buried city reminded me of the setting in Susanna's Clarke's extraordinary Piranesi novel (published in 2020), a favorite of mine. 

2    2) The second story in the Legends II collection, "The Sworn Sword" by George R. R. Martin, is the second in his "Dunk and Egg" series, grounded within the setting of A Song of Ice and Fire about a hundred years before the events of that series. I started reading this within the anthology but my copy of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms containing all the currently available stories in the series came, so I jumped over to that trilogy collection, reading "The Sworn Sword" in almost no time and unable to keep myself from going on to the third story instead of returning to Legends II. I plan to fully review this trilogy in a separate blog post, but I will say I absolutely loved this story in which, a year or so after the events of "The Hedge Knight", Dunk and Egg find themselves sworn to the service of an aging, has-been lord with secrets the old man hasn't bothered to reveal to his "employees". When the water on the land of this lord is stolen with a dam built by a neighboring house, Dunk and Egg go to the thief who's been painted as black as night by their lord. But things aren't at all what they seem. This series is absolute must-read, as is the one it's set in is. 

3    3) "The Happiest Dead Boy in the World" by Tad Williams is the sixth story included in Legends II featuring characters from his Otherland series. This tale started out as a hoot with the protagonist Orlando kicking back in style in Tolkien's Rivendell while inside an artificial universe on the worldwide computer network Otherland. For those who haven't read that series, this place is kind of like The Matrix in reverse. In that series, the real world isn't the one we all know and sometimes love--that's just a construct of the actual, frighteningly barren world taken over by a superior species. In Otherland, there's a lot of vicarious fun with simulations of fictional fantasylands we'd all kill to visit. Unfortunately, Orlando is trapped in this place. His former, real world, disabled body is gone, though he can visit his parents virtually. In the novels in this series, Orlando and his friend Sam apparently saved Otherland from an evil "program", the Grail Brotherhood, within the system. This tale takes place after that and highlights the bizarre consequences of those events, in which some unexpected developments plague Otherland. While, as I said, this story started out as a lark, quite promising, it quickly turned dark and somber, maybe a little too much. I will say it was well-written, enjoyable, and the author obviously knows a lot of about computers, technology and literature. Unfortunately, I left the novella feeling like 1) I wasn't really sure I enjoyed it after it turned dark and 2) that I'd gotten as much out of the premise as I cared to. 

4     4) The eleventh and final story in the Legends II collection, "Indomitable" by Terry Brooks is, as I said, the story I bought the anthology for and it's the direct sequel to his novel The Wishsong of Shannara, Book 3 of his Shannara Series. Brooks was one of the first fantasy authors I came to love and Wishsong was a favorite of mine (and my son's) with Brin and Jair Ohmsford as the protagonists. Jair is just a kid, excited with the potential of his magical gift, in Wishsong. Together, the siblings have to destroy the Ildatch, a book of dark magic. Only Jair finds out later, in "Indomitable", that one page was missing and it has to be found and obliterated. Familiar characters Kimber Boh and her grandfather Cogline also play starring roles in the novella, which is the perfect bonus to the series, in which Jair is the hero, a young man who never anticipated having to use his power again. I highly recommend the Shannara series and its many off-shoots, as well as Brooks' wonderfully creative Magic Kingdom of Landover series. 

Concerning the arrangement of the stories in Legends II, I would have had these stories interspersed in this way with the other stories: 1st story: "Homecomings"; 3rd: "Happiness"; 9th "Indomitable", and "Sworn" last so the two strongest are at the beginning and end and the two other strong ones are straddling the central areas of the beginning and end. I wish there'd been another I thought was an incredibly strong story positioned at #6. Given that I can't say I overwhelmingly loved "Happiness", I probably would have put "Indomitable" at #6. But certainly those who know and love the other series and authors would possess more of a connection with those stories I haven't reviewed here than I did. 

While I wanted to like all the other selections in the first Legends (after all, I usually like Stephen King's writing and several other stories mentioned possible dragon appearances--dragons!!!) and Legends II collections, I just couldn't get into them. One story I was really looking forward to in the first collection was the final story there, an off-shoot of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, which has been on my radar since I saw Amazon Prime was adapting it into a TV series. That looks seriously good. However, I initially found Jordan's writing style in "New Spring" plodding. Far too often he used words and phrases that meant nothing to me--obviously things that fit into his series, things I couldn't understand, having never read any of the novels, and things which he didn't bother trying to clarify here. Sigh. Despite this, the story was fairly compelling and definitely something fans would thoroughly enjoy. I spent too much of it lost to get there myself. 

I think sometimes there's no getting past the fact that few people can "unknow" or forget things, even authors. Once a writer has established something in a series, he or she can't write about a time before the events of those books as if they didn't happen yet. While writing, details are backfilled by the author without, barely, thinking about them and he or she neglects, either ignorantly or arrogantly (I don't need to explain--who hasn't read my series?), to explain them. Fans appreciate those "series lore" factors--I know I do. They need to be there because new readers to the series can quickly find themselves lost and unable to catch or keep up if the writers refuse to "backtrack" elucidations for the readers who need them. (I'll inject here that sometimes impatient and sparse publishers don't want to include them either, so it's not just authors at fault here.) If a reader has never read anything else in a series, they need to know what series specific details mean--concisely. Part of a writer's skill is in conveying those special elements in an intriguing way without overwhelming the reader with too much that may not be needed in this particular story. Some of the short novels I read in both of these collections simply assumed I knew much more about the series they're associated with, and I didn't or, alternately, they assumed I knew nothing and engulfed me. Therefore, I was underwhelmed and those tales fell short of the mark for me. While I wouldn't say this has definitely ruled out the possibility of me trying to read the series the stories are associated with, these may not have been the best representations of their series to me, at least at this time.

There's a lot for fans of the genre and of the excellent writers and their popular series to love with the 22 stories included in the two Legends collections. You may even find something new, as I have, to further broaden your fantasy reading horizons. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/