Book Review: "Fantastic Schools Vol. 1"

Chris Nuttall is not only a prolific writer, but he appears to be getting into the production side as well. Here's my review of his newest project, the collection Fantastic Schools Vol. 1 that he edited in addition to contributing a story.

The Plot

Most people are probably aware of the Harry Potter series that takes place at the magical boarding school Hogwarts, but the "magical boarding school" genre is actually much older. Chris and several other authors have written stories of their own set in these types of environments--Chris himself has a lengthy series entitled Schooled In Magic--and this volume collects fourteen of these magical tales into a book of respectable length.

The Good

*The collection is pretty long for an anthology--the Kindle version has 500-odd pages, as does the paperback. You're definitely getting a lot for your money with this one.

*The collection ends with "Gennady's Tale" by Chris himself. I haven't read any of his Schooled In Magic series, but I know enough that this is one of the villains' Start of Darkness. This story starts out with him as a crippled boy treated horrendously by the superstitious ignorant villagers he grew up among. And though magical school brings many improvements to his life, it also brings more bullies. His need to be respected, his need to be powerful, is understandable under such circumstances, but how he goes about trying to get these leads down a very dark road. This story serves as a warning to those whose bad circumstances might tempt them to envy, resentment, and spitefulness. 1 Corinthians 10:12 comes to mind--everybody who thinks they're standing should take heed lest they fall. You can see the train wreck coming, the temptation he falls to, but it's relentless. Our hero definitely has an arc, but it's a very bad one. Definitely well-done, and rather sad.

*One of the other top stories in the collection is "The Last Academy" by G. Scott Huggins,  a parody of Harry Potter with a dash of Lovecraft. The Chosen One has defected to the Dark Lord and the only bastion of wizarding society not under his control is a school for magical misfits meant more for containment than teaching them how to function in society. I enjoyed the evil counterparts to the HP Golden Trio (Harry, Ron, and Hermione), especially evil Hermione, and there's a good joke in there about the misuses of the Invisibility Cloak. Not going to go into any more detail for reasons of spoilers.

*Another story I really liked is "How To Get Into A Magic School" by Erin N.H. Furby. Not only do they touch on some deeper topics like high-stakes testing and apply the whole "hidden magical world" to an American setting rather than Harry Potter's British one, but it made me care about the characters and the choices they make. It also touches on Native American mythology in some interesting ways.

*Another story with well-developed characters that makes me care about them is "Metamorphosis" by Roger D. Strahan. Although some of the stories set in pre-existing worlds didn't stand on their own--more on that later--this one followed a completely new character and made the protagonist of his novel The Witch of New Orleans a side character. That seems like a good technique for writing short works in an established fictional universe and it's something to keep in mind.

*I also liked the opening story "Little Witches" by Mel Lee Newmin. It takes a lighthearted approach to a fairly heavy topic--sexism among British wizarding schools in the Victorian era, with the girls' school getting the short shrift on funding. It doesn't appear to be set in a broader fictional universe based on my googling the author's name and checking out their Amazon page. That's helpful because there's no need to be more familiar with a broader fictional universe to understand it, which was an issue with some other stories in the collection.

*Another interesting one is essentially a LitRPG story featuring a Christian seminary student from our world who ends up as a wizard in a Dungeons and Dragons style fantasy. Who knew that knowing Koine Greek could be so helpful? :)

The Bad

*Some of the stories are set in the authors' pre-existing fictional universes and don't really stand well on their own.

*In "Gennady's Tale," a couple characters' actions seem rather out of character and severe and happen far too quickly. It seems like they're there for plot purposes rather than happening organically due to the characters.

*Unfortunately "Metamorphosis," despite being one of the best stories in the collection, begins with what appear to be formatting problems. The paragraphs aren't indented, nor do they have spaces between the paragraphs. The rest of the story looks normal, so I assume this is an error rather than an artistic choice.

*The shadow of Harry Potter hangs heavily on the stories. Although some hang a lampshade on that and even poke fun at the Potterverse, one story does have something that looks to me like the author was copying the Sorting process.

*One of the stories has an absolutely unsympathetic, two-dimensionally evil Complete Monster lead whose capabilities and actions reach Villain Sue territory. The story would have been much better if the reader were able to sympathize with them at all.

The Verdict

Definitely a good concept and with some very good stories in it. Some weaknesses though. 8.5 out of 10.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Merlin (1998)

The film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood that I'm on is doing a dedicated television movies month. Thomas's contribution to the list was the 1998 television miniseries Merlin, which features none other than Jurassic Park alumnus Sam Neill as the legendary wizard. I watched it when it was on TV and could remember a lot of the general beats, so I figured I'd give it a spin.

Here's the podcast, which among other things features me rasping a lot and swearing. And now for the review...

The Plot

It's the 6th Century AD or so and Britain is a mess. Various Christian and pagan factions are at war with each other, while the Saxons invade from Europe. The goddess Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) and her henchman Frick (Martin Short) attempt to stem the decline of "the old ways"--since if gods aren't worshiped, they cease to exist--in the face of the growing power of Christianity. To do that Mab creates Merlin (Sam Neill) as a sort of anti-Jesus (complete with what seems to be a virgin birth), but Merlin refuses to serve Mab after he discovers just how cruel and unpleasant she is. The supernatural cold war between the two drives the events of the story of King Arthur (Paul Curran) over what seems to be a generation or so.

The Good

*Most Arthurian stories don't take the Saxons into account even though the earliest historical accounts of Arthur are about fighting the invading Saxons. I suspect this has to do with Le Morte D'Arthur and The Once and Future King, which don't feature the pagan continental invaders and focus instead on conflicts among the Celtic Britons. The prologue to the film depicts the Saxons, who respect neither Christian churches nor Celtic pagan shrines, as one of the various problems assailing Britain, which was nice. I'd have liked more of them, but more on that later.

*The acting is for the most part good. After all, they do have Sam Neill, Martin Short, and other talented actors to work with. There are a couple moments of apocalyptic badness (that believe me I make sure to mock in the podcast), but I'll get to those later. Miranda Richardson is raspy and annoying, but she has one really good moment that I discuss in the podcast, since it's spoiler-iffic.

*Paganism is referred to as "the old ways," which however annoying the way they keep saying it is, does make sense. One reason animistic and polytheistic "old religions" tend to fall before proselytizing religions like Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam is that they lack strong organizational structures and in many cases even literature and writing. They're just things people have always done, and that's a pretty weak reed when facing societal collapse (the fall of Rome, the Saxon invasion) or the arrival of a much more organized new faith bearing with it various advancements like literacy (and thus more coherent governmental administration), new crops and farming techniques, etc.

(Yes, I am aware of persecutions of polytheists by ascendant monotheists, but the new faith has to get into a strong enough position to do that in the first place. It took 300-odd years for Christians to persecute Roman pagans; before it was the other way around. And St. Patrick in Ireland was a straight-up slave.)

*When Mordred makes his move, he goes into battle wearing the sun-god image on his armor that's associated with the film The Wicker Man. Considering he's paganism's last champion against oncoming Christianity, that's a nice bit of detail.

The Bad

*For a being of such great power, Merlin comes off as extremely weak and passive. He takes no action (other than to berate Arthur about it) when he learns that Morgan has slept with Arthur even though he's sure a child will result due to Mab's scheming. Even though he knows Morgan is laired up in Castle Tintagel with the young Mordred and Mab getting up to who knows what, all he really does is beg her not to raise Mordred in the "old ways." He doesn't attempt to kidnap or kill Mordred or Morgan despite knowing the threat they represent (and the Vortigern plot shows Merlin is capable of physical violence if he wishes), nor does he have Arthur attempt to take control of his son or attack Tintagel with his armies if Morgan objects. One could argue that this could provoke the wrath of Mab, but Mab is not omniscient or omnipresent. Merlin could pull a fast one and Mab wouldn't be able to prevent it.

*Per the above, so many bad decisions made by so many other people. We're talking Matrix Revolutions levels of stupidity (listen to the podcast in which I discuss that) among people who should know better. It's a lot harder to enjoy the movie when people who are supposed to be such great heroes are all a bunch of morons.

*Per my earlier comment about Mordred, when he enters the picture as an adult, nobody seems able to deal with him. He just walks into Camelot, claiming to be Arthur's son, and starts stirring up trouble. Even in The Once and Future King, it takes years for him to build the support base to challenge Arthur and he's more conflicted about doing it. And once he makes his violent intentions clear, all Arthur does is slap him and he knocks around some soldiers who try to arrest him. That would've been a very good time for a Zerg Rush, since however skilled he is he's just one man.

*Mab's voice is weird and annoying. She's supposed to be an otherworldly being and I know what they're going for, but they could have done something else than have her rasp and screech. Mab also has got too much eyeliner and looks like she's BoToxed to hell. Is this supposed to be a metaphor for her refusal to accept her own obsolescence? She's not super-duper impressive as a villain.

*There are two scenes where Merlin and Mab face off and Neill, for all his acting chops, just comes off as really goofy and ridiculous. "I WILL BEAT YOU MAB! I WILL FIND A WAY!" or something to that effect. If Mab were more genre-savvy, she should have just slagged him right there before he gets powerful enough. Someone really needs to read the Evil Overlord List. And in another scene, Merlin is all like, "ARTHUR WILL HEAL THE LAND!" Excessive drama aside, heal the land from what? The previous king Uther Pendragon is shown to have...issues...but the situation hasn't reached Vortigern-level issues of tyranny or (large-scale) civil war.

*Although Frick is one of the film's more amusing characters, there's a scene later on where he comes off as really passive and foolish. Life lesson: If someone you know is extremely powerful and capable of doing really bad things to you with magic does something bad to someone else, use your own powers (and he has them) immediately rather than just yell at them and give them a chance to hammer you down. This person is someone he knows very well, so he should know just what they're capable of. Idiot.

*The passage of time in the film is really wobbly. Nimue seems to be a trainee nun (or just hanging around an abbey) for one or two decades and however much the Church emphasizes hospitality, at some point they're going to tell her to shit or get off the pot. Arthur is gone hunting for the Holy Grail long enough for problems to result, but the Holy Grail is supposed to be in Britain itself. He'd basically be riding around his own kingdom and could probably check in at Camelot fairly regularly.

*Speaking of the Holy Grail, there's very little foreshadowing about it. Apparently there's a deleted scene explaining that when Frick had the young Morgan put a stone in Arthur's crib (that scene stayed in), it was supposed to curse him with impulsiveness, but that scene really should have stayed there. Knowing Arthur's impulsive behavior is of supernatural origin would explain both some of the good and bad decisions he makes.

*The Saxons aren't mentioned at all after the prologue--the story is super-focused on the "Summer Kingdom" and how it ended, but it was Arthur's unification of the various post-Roman Celtic factions to defeat the Saxons that made the SK possible. There should've been at least one battle against the Saxons--who BTW look like a bunch of central casting Vikings complete with horned helmets--in addition to the various British warlord-types.

*This ties in with my last major problem--the movie is way too long for what happens in it. Yes, it's a TV miniseries, but they should have had a lot more stuff in the allotted time to make it entertaining and less draggy. Per my earlier remarks, making Saxons a larger presence would have been one way--Merlin and Mab could be forced to temporarily work together to help Arthur's Celtic coalition fight off a Saxon invasion, since the Saxons don't respect the Celtic pagans any more than they respect the Celtic Christians, and their victory would be Mab's undoing just as much as the triumph of Christianity. A Nazi-Soviet pact between Merlin and Mab, if you will.

(Incidentally this would deal with my beef with Merlin being so passive and Mab not crushing an obvious threat while he's still weak--he can't move against Mab, nor can Mab move against him, because of the oncoming Saxon invasion. They can snip at each other and impede each other in minor ways, but the apocalyptic showdown simply cannot happen or both Celtic pagan and Celtic Christian civilizations are doomed. Once the Saxons are beaten back, then we move into the endgame.)

During this period of the story, Mab could try to seduce Merlin back into her service (perhaps by offering to heal Nimue's injuries), while Merlin could try to find ways to undermine and destroy her in the process of working with her against the invaders. For example, he could at least try to undermine young Mordred's faith in "the old ways" by explaining that for all her power Mab is ultimately dependent on her worshipers (i.e. she's a parasite and needs them more than they need her) and that she's not even a goddess, but a being from "the land of magic" (i.e. an alien or, as they might understand it, a Fae). Although this doesn't work, the Saxons could still be beaten and Arthur could celebrate the defeat of the Saxons and what appears to peaceable relations with his half-sister with the building of Camelot and the quest for the Grail, only for Mab, Morgan, Mordred, etc. to backstab him before Merlin can backstab them by inciting a coup in Camelot while he's away. If Mordred is old enough to participate in said battle with the Saxons, it could earn him allies among Arthur's supporters that barging into Camelot and griping about Guinevere's affair with Lancelot really wouldn't.

*Finally, is Merlin's guardian Ambrosia a Christian or some kind of non-theist who follows her own conscience? Mab assumes she's become a Christian when Ambrosia tells her to her face she no longer believes in "the old ways," but Ambrosia claims she "follows her own heart." However, she also invokes angels with a dying patient, something neither an atheist nor a Celtic pagan would believe in.

The Verdict

It's not enjoyable enough for the time it takes to watch, especially due to the nonsensical behavior of much of the cast. 6.0 out of 10. Don't bother.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Shrieker (1998)

Once upon a time, I was in the habit of staying up late watching movies on the Sci-Fi Channel (they spelled it correctly then) and one I remember in particular was Shrieker. I recall enjoying the movie and trying to find it on DVD or VHS (that's how long ago it was) and ultimately finding it not worth the bother.

(The film was ultimately released to DVD, apparently in multiple editions.)

Well, I found it on Amazon Instant Video and since I'm laid up for a few days with a back injury, I needed something to do. Time for a "Blast from the Past" movie review that's not related to Myopia: Defend Your Childhood. In the immortal words of the Heath Ledger Joker, here we go!

The Plot

College freshman and math major Clark (Tanya Dempsey) is looking for a cheap place to stay. She's invited by Zak (Jamie Gannon) to squat with him and some others at an abandoned hospital near campus. Said hospital has been abandoned for a reason--back in the 1940s, a series of grisly (and unsolved) murders took place.

Occultic shenanigans ensue. Does the mysterious Robert (Thomas R. Martin), who has been living in the basement unbeknownst the others, know what's going on? Can our heroes find out more before they all end up dead?

The Good

*The beginning features some discussion of the titular monster's origins and the wider occultic world that fuses both Christian and Lovecraftian elements. I'd have loved to see more on the cosmology.

*The filmmakers know that it's better to leave stuff to the imagination than show your hand (or monster) too early. In the beginning of the film all we get of the monster are its screams and brief glimpses and it's more than a little spooky. There are few if any full-body shots of the creature.

*There are some legitimately tense and scary moments in the film. I was actually surprised to find this.

*The movie starts with a bang with the Shrieker's first appearance in the 1940s. When we get to the present day, things get started pretty quickly. Clarke moves into the abandoned hospital and meets her fellow squatters, the Shrieker makes its first modern appearance, and Clarke meets the oddball Robert within the first fifteen or twenty minutes. It's rarely if ever boring.

*Some of the characters are pretty amusing, like the aspiring revolutionary Tanya (Alison Cuffe) or the property- and guns-rights enthusiast David (Parry Shen). Given today's concerns about representation, the depiction of David as something other than a wimpy nerd or a karate master might be attractive to some. I found Tanya and David's contrasting politics amusing.

*There's a joke involving the characters comparing their situation to the musical Rent I actually found amusing.

The Bad

*The acting in general really isn't much to write home about.

*There are some transitions of questionable quality, including what look like commercial-break edits from the television version. There are also some obviously reused shots. The film could've used a better editor.

*The film's run-time is a little over an hour. It would have been better if there was more to it. They could have fleshed out the cosmology and characters a bit more.

*In the prologue introducing the mythology, one of the ancient alchemists looks like they're sketching the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser. Umm...would it have been that hard to come up with some original Evil Eldritch Writing? Especially when they do have plenty of that elsewhere in the film.

The Verdict

Good bones, so to speak, but a little bony. Just rent it or watch it on TV. 6.0 out of 10.

In The Grim Darkness of the 1940s, There Is Only War...

I had an idea the other day for a parody of Warhammer 40,000 that made fun of the people (mostly on the political left, like Bill Blum) who complain endlessly about American foreign policy post-1945 but overlook or even defend the exact same thing the United States did during WWII.

(Frex, complaining about US support for dictators in Latin America, never mind that they defend similar allegedly "defensive" imperialism by the USSR in its own border zones or U.S. aid to Stalin during the war, complaining about civilian deaths in bombing during Vietnam or Afghanistan and not caring about Hamburg or Dresden, complaining about McCarthyism and ignoring how Trotskyists and isolationists were tried as seditionists alongside legitimate fascists during the war, etc. Blum went so far as to claim in the edition of Killing Hope I read in high school that the United States was beloved after its victory in World War II but squandered this goodwill by "intervening" everywhere.)

Here goes:

It's a dieselpunk 1940s. The Western Allies are dominated by a United States united in worship of the comatose Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept alive in a gigantic golden wheelchair and sustained by the daily sacrifice of Japanese-Americans from the internment camps. The United States Marine Corps serves as the vanguard of the armies of the United States and the other Allies as they fight to destroy the armies of the Axis all over the world, all of them sustained by the US, Commonwealth, and what remains of the USSR's vast military industrial complex. Hoover's FBI and Beria's NKVD hunt for enemy agents and seditionists within the Allies, since only through unity of purpose can victory be achieved.

Ranged against them are the dread forces of the Third Reich, forced back into their own homelands in the west but compensating by occupying vast swathes of what was once the USSR, sustaining their war effort by offering Jews and Slavs in human sacrifice to supernatural evil forces. In the East the ever-victorious Japanese have placed Hirohito on what was once the Imperial Throne in Beijing and harnessed Asia's vast manpower in service to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

In the grim darkness of the 1940s, there is only war...

This started out as a bit of political snark, but this could actually be a really interesting war-game. For example, the Australians could be played very similar to the Cadians, since they'd be on the front lines against uber-Japan like the Cadians are against Chaos, or possibly the Catachan Jungle Fighters since they'd be fighting in the East Indies and New Guinea a lot. Soviet or Scandinavian Allied troops could be like the Valhallan Ice Warriors and the "Desert Rats" of the North African war like the Tallarn Desert Raiders. On the other side, the Ahnenerbe could be played something like the Thousand Sons Marines and Ahriman, while Admiral Yamamoto could be a saner and less ridiculous version of Ghazghkull.

I'd be leery of trying to market a game like this, since I would imagine I'd catch a lot of hell from pretty much everybody--making the WWII U.S. into some kind of super North Korea complete with a personality cult, depicting an East Asian polity as a vast army of warlike barbarians crushing their enemies beneath their numbers, etc. Given how it took me quite some time to find a source on the 1944 sedition trial in the US that didn't come from some entity like the Institute for Historical Review (cough *Nazis* cough), I could easily imagine my customer base would consist of people who try to drag the US and (Western) Allies down into the mud so they can claim moral equivalence with the Nazis, whom they secretly sympathize with.

However, there's a dieselpunk anthology accepting submissions until August and I could write something more subtle in this vein...

On "Problematic" Elements in a Fantasy World

On Twitter this morning, I came across the following Tweet by Avery Edison, re-tweeted by well-known author Dan Wells, whose John Cleaver books I am a fan of.

Avery Edison ‏@aedison 20 Feb 2013

I HAVE CREATED AN EPIC FANTASY WORLD WHERE DOGS CAN FLY AND GOLD CAN SPEAK and also women are subjugated sorry that's how it was then OKAY?

This isn't the first time I've seen that argument. A particularly vocal member of New Millennium Diverse Fantasy (a Facebook group I would join if it weren't for how aggravating some of its members are) insisted the manifold cruelties of A Song of Ice and Fire cannot be defended on the grounds of "realism" because this is a world where there are dragons (capable of nursing from lactating human women no less) and the Others.

The argument is superficially plausible, but emphasize "superficial." The pre-industrial societies most fantasy worlds are based on (including Martin's) for the most part sucked. For everybody (by modern standards even nobles were poor), but women in particular had it bad. A feudal economy and/or social structure is going to produce elements the Internet Social Justice crowd will call "problematic" by its very nature. Power corrupts and putting all the power in the hands of rich, strong young men is going to have bad consequences for women, the poor, etc. For all its vaunted power, the medieval Catholic Church tried and failed to restrain private war, violence against the Jews, forced marriage, etc., and this was an institution that supposedly had authority over said rich, strong young men's everlasting souls.

(If anything, this is a reason to call out fantasy worlds with princes, princesses, etc. for how they idealize a time that was very bad for almost everybody. George RR Martin's brutalities deconstruct these tropes--the handsome prince Joffrey Baratheon is a spoiled sadist, the pretty princess Sansa Stark is unbelievably naive and suffers for it, and rather than being a Perfectly Arranged Marriage, the union between King Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei Lannister is unequal and abusive. And the violence the brutish Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch inflict on the Riverlands is based on a specific military tactic from medieval warfare.)

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings has been criticized by SF author David Brin due to how, despite its feudal-ish nature, the society is depicted as fairly benign. Perhaps the Stewards of Gondor keep a close eye on the nobles so they don't oppress the common people (in the vein of the Chinese emperors or certain Byzantine dynasties--and Tolkien himself compared Gondor to Byzantium, so that might actually work), but I don't remember this from the text. The Knights of Dol Amroth, in order to have the leisure time needed to become effective cavalry, almost certainly rely on the labor of a large number of peasants. Human nature being what it is, a more realistic portrayal of this type of society would see peasant unrest and complaints, especially in bad times. It's not like real history lacked for them in England or in France.

Now, this is not to say any story based on such a society HAS to be an atrocity pit. Even the pre-modern societies all of us can agree were cruel and restrictive (toward women and others) weren't nearly as restrictive as one might think. Misogynistic medieval Europe still produced personalities like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc. And in fact, fantasy elements can actually serve to undermine social injustice.

For example, the Wheel of Time series (which I admit I haven't read) depicts magic as something only women can use safely. Such women would have a much greater capacity to defend themselves against male violence, which would reduce the need for male protection and thus male control. Even oft-criticized Martin depicts the ruling Targaryen dynasty, whose members of either sex have a unique ability to bond with dragons and thus have an overpowering weapon in war, forbidding the conquered Westerosi nobles from claiming the right of First Night over peasant women.

So if you're going to base your fantasy world on a pre-industrial society, depict it with all its rough edges. If you're going to depict it being less unpleasant than it was, justify it. Although Avery Edison's flying dogs and talking gold wouldn't make faux medieval Europe a less misogynistic place, a woman with feminist inclinations and a fire-breathing dragon (and the ear of a man with similar assets) just might.

Guest Post: An Introduction to Schooled In Magic

Here's another guest post by Chris Nuttall. Take it away, Chris!

An Introduction to Schooled in Magic

One of my favourite themes in science-fiction and fantasy is the concept of a person from our world being transported back in time or into an alternate world where the rules of science are different and magic exists.  Lest Darkness Fall and Island in the Sea of Time are examples of the former, A Wizard in Rhyme, The Narnia books, The Wiz Biz and The Wizard of Oz (and sequels, spin-offs, etc) are examples of the latter.  Often, the lines are blurred; Harry Potter, to some extent, is a variation on the fantasy version of the theme.

Such stories work on two levels.  They’re exciting stories (they have to be) but they also let us see the alternate world through the eyes of everymen heroes from our own world, allowing us to see the differences and changes in the timeline thanks to the time traveller.  This allows the writer to sidestep one of the most common problems with alternate history, the need to explain the point of divergence to the reader without either absurd conversations or long expository pieces of text. 

But something that tends to annoy me about the fantasy version of the theme is that they rarely have room for modern technology.  A Wizard in Rhyme has modern technology rarely working in the alternate world, while even The Wiz Biz runs through the ‘magic as computer programming’ theme rather than introducing modern technology.  Indeed, the only book I can recall where the newcomer Stranger in a Strange Land introduced modern technology to a fantasy world was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and that may not be considered fantasy at all.

[I’m pretty sure that I’ll be bombarded with emails about other exceptions to this rule .]

Schooled In Magic and its sequels follow the adventures of Emily, a shy and somewhat emotionally amused teenage girl (and history nut) from our world as she is accidentally kidnapped into another world by a necromancer with bad intentions.  Rescued in the nick of time by another magician and warned that the necromancer is still after her, Emily is sent to Whitehall School of Magic and told to learn how to use magic.  For Emily, it becomes a struggle to fit into a new world where nothing is quite as it seems and her mere existence brings her enemies.  But she starts to adapt and win friends...

And after that, when it dawns on her that quite a bit of what she considers normal on Earth is utterly unknown in the nameless world, she starts suggesting ideas to her friends.  And each pebble she tosses starts off a ripple of changes that sweep across the world and sometimes come back to bite her in some very strange ways.

The nameless world itself is largely medieval, set after the last great empire had shattered, leaving a handful of successor states facing the necromancers, who are slowly strangling the Allied Lands to death.  The large kingdoms are ruled by tyrannical monarchies, while city states are semi-democratic and magical families help tie the various kingdoms together.  Technology is in stasis, largely because of a combination of social pressure and magic filling in the holes, but the laws of science still work the same way, at least on first sight.  There’s nothing to stop Emily introducing all kinds of ideas, from steam engines to gunpowder, that will change the face of the world forever ...

If, of course, she isn’t stopped.  And there are many people with a vested interest in stopping her before the ripple of changes become a tidal wave that will sweep away all they know and replace it with something new.

Schooled in Magic is available in ebook form now.  A free sample can be downloaded from here, then you can download the book from the links here.  And you can read my annotations (warning; spoilers) here. 

The Strange Death of Sokullu Mehmed Pasha

From A New Look at Sokullu Mehmed Pasha, published at Miskatonic University.

The consensus of historians on the assassination of Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pasha on October 11, 1579 AD (or 20 Sha'ban 987 AH in the Islamic reckoning) is fairly well-known in our field. The Ottoman Sultan Murad III, alienated from the vizier who had served his father and grandfather so long and ably by his mother Narbanu Sultan and Venetian-born wife Safiye Sultan, took steps to reduce the vizier's influence on government. The vizier's allies were sent to faraway positions or assassinated. Ultimately, a mentally-unstable dervish talked his way into the vizier's office and stabbed him. This kind of intrigue was fairly common in the Ottoman Empire, especially during the period known as the Sultanate of Women.

However, some recent discoveries by Miskatonic University researchers of documents thought lost forever during the civil unrest that wracked Constantinople when the Janissaries were suppressed has shed new light on the circumstances of the vizier's assassination and an incident that took place in 1571.

These documents paint a far more sinister picture of the vizier. They include accusations of dealings with agents of Safavid Persia, with whom the vizier had counseled peace as opposed to the usual border wars, and even black magic. The documents accuse the vizier of, under the influence of an agent of Persian Shah Tahmasp I, acquiring a book of black magic from an Armenian merchant who had visited the long-vacant shrine of a corrupted Sufi order that had been destroyed by Turkish nomads not long before. The use of this book resulted in an incident in Constantinople that killed dozens of Ottoman soldiers, destroyed one war galley and forced the scuttling of a second, and caused significant damage to the Bayezit II mosque.

These accusations against Sokullu are not new, but have been long dismissed as the slanders from his political enemies. However, the mosque was damaged somehow, necessitating repairs by the famed Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in 1573 and 1574. Furthermore, it is often said that converts make the best zealots. Safiye Sultan was a Catholic before she became a Muslim, while the most recent evidence suggests Narbanu was an Orthodox Greek from Corfu before her conversion. If Sokullu was involved in the dark arts, or was widely believed so, this could have provoked the ire of the Imperial women. They would not wish one so tainted to continue virtually ruling the Ottoman Empire in place of their son and husband. And the dervish orders might be willing to provide an assassin to dispose of the vizier, especially given his (tangential) connection to a Sufi order that had become warped by dark forces.

Of course, this is all just speculation. The documents describe how the soldiers killed in the incident were buried in a mass grave outside Constantinople that was given special attention by Muslim imams, Orthodox Christian priests, and even a Jewish rabbi, while the materials used by Sokullu in the incident were confiscated, burned, and abandoned in Persia. Should this mass grave or the dumping site be found, it would lend credence to the incident described in the documents.

So just why was the Grand Vizier assassinated, and is the author's theory about dark powers manifesting in Constantinople actually true? Read "The Beast of the Bosporus," available in the short story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire.

Book Review: "The Royal Sorceress"

The Royal Sorceress by Chris Nuttall takes place in Britain in the 1830s, but not the Britain of our world. In the previous century, magic was discovered and scientifically categorized, allowing for Great Britain to crush the American Revolution and grow even more powerful than it did historically. Airships have begun to fill the sky, but the industrializing cities teem with millions ground underfoot by poverty and an indifferent if not abusive ruling class.

It's in this environment that young Gwendolyn Crichton, frustrated with the limitations imposed on her by her gender, is given the extraordinarily rare opportunity to be apprenticed to Britain's royal sorcerer. But at the same time, a renegade magician bent on revolution is returning to Britain...

Full disclosure: Chris and I were both longtime members of the alternate-history message-board I've referenced here before and we agreed on a review-for-review swap, his novel for my Kindle-published short stories. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to go any easier on him than I go on the fellow members of my writing groups. Here goes...

For starters, it's a quick, fun read. The story is well-plotted and tied together nicely. Things start out fast--within the first seven pages, Gwen becomes the sorcerer's apprentice. Chris has a particular talent for chapter endings--they either serve as suspense-building cliffhangers or as means to speed the story along. There are a lot of scenes that are pure fun to read, including a food fight between Gwen and some male apprentices who resent Gwen's presence and several revolutionary happenings in the last half of the book that I'm not even going to hint at lest I spoil them.

Also, Chris manages to do exposition without boring the reader. Although exposition through dialogue is frowned on (the infamous "As You Know, Bob" from the Turkey City Lexicon), Gwen's session with a tutor does a good job explaining just how magic was used to defeat the American Revolution.

There are also some shout-outs to other books I enjoyed. One of the supporting characters is none other than Mycroft Holmes and his more famous younger brother and his brother's assistant appear but aren't named. We also meet Irene Adler at one point. There's also a reference to the Draka novels, in particular an early model breech-loading rifle that went largely unused in our history but was used by the proto-Draka to defeat and enslave the native Africans in the Draka timeline.

However, the book does have its flaws. Some of his sentences are a bit too wordy, although it might be my journalism training and consequent disdain for semicolons coming through. Some of the issues I have come up late in the book and I can't really go into detail without risking spoilers, but one character commits a terrorist act without concern for some innocents who would be killed when earlier he'd gone to the trouble of rescuing some children being prostituted. I thought that was out-of-character and even if he couldn't avoid doing what he did, at the very least he should have expressed some misgivings at the time as opposed to later on. Also, a character is revealed to have a magical talent so rare that it's not even confirmed to exist until halfway through the book. That risks the character turning into a Mary Sue, although given the way the scene it's revealed turned out, it wasn't even necessary.

(I've talked with Chris about this and he said there are storyline reasons for this. Hopefully we'll get into this more in later books. After all, according to a talk I had once with Michael Stackpole, flaws in one book can be an opportunity for later stories if the explanation is good enough.)

Furthermore, one reason Britain is ahead of the other powers in terms of magic is because in some other countries, the Inquisition persecutes those with magical talents with a vengeance. In our history, the Inquisition played a large role fighting witch-hysteria and Scotland saw a great deal of witch-hunting. One could argue that the Inquisition might change its tune when faced with real witchcraft, but that doesn't necessarily mean the situation in Britain would be any better.

(Hmm...an idea for a sequel)

Finally, there's a minor character named Bruno Lombardi who is a rather shy younger son of an aristocrat and a fellow pupil of Gwen. I'd have liked some more of his back-story, considering his distinctly non-Anglo-Saxon name. Of course, that's something that can go in a sequel.

Overall, I'd give it an 8 out of 10. Those interested in an excerpt or some behind-the-scenes material can find it here.