While The Black Stars Burn

While The Black Stars Burn
By Lucy A. Snyder
$4.99 on Amazon
166 pages

One of the things I enjoy about short stories, is I can fit them in when I'm waiting for someone, riding the busy, or just looking to kill a few minutes.

Not too long ago, Amazon had While The Black Stars Burn on sale for 99 cents. As I am a book hoarder, I picked it up. I'd never heard of Lucy A. Snyder previously and was eager to see how I'd like her writing style.

The book includes several short stories that fit straight into the 'horror' genre. A few of them fall into the Lovecraft vein. One of them is a Doctor Who short story.

I found that the original works tended to be a little more telling for me. Her writing chops are fantastic. If anything, the thing that annoyed me most about While The Black Stars Burn, is that a lot of the stories end just when their getting "good", when my interest in them was at its peak.

If you're a Call of Cthulhu "Keeper", you should pick this up. There are several bits that fit right into a horror story right away.

The Strange Architecture of the Heart: In a war ridden society, the bonds between people may be fragile but that between mistress and robotic sex slave? Priceless! I'm not even kidding. The strain of living in a foreign land and having to work puts a woman more at home with a robot that does all it can to please the woman and her desire for a family. Solid social opinion.

Approaching Lavender: Here's a great "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" using a different medium instead of plants. Imagine you marry someone but they turn out to not be who you thought? Imagine that you sadly find out you were right as your own life is taken over by a painting.

The set up and slow build in Approaching Lavender are fantastic and it would make for a great one off, where the characters notice after a large art show opening that people have changed, or as part of an ongoing campaign where one of the character's friends exhibits vast differences in outlook and opinion.

Dura Mater: If you've ever watched the horror-science fiction movie, Event Horizon, this one shares some themes. Isolation, horror, the unknown. It goes with a more traditional "alien/outer alien" then the whole "Warp/Hell" bit of Event Horizon, but again, if you run one off's, this would be a great story to structure around.

Cthylla: Of the directly inspired Cthulhu stories, this one is the best. A young woman, the daughter of a computer scientist and a model, finds herself like neither of them and in being an outside, gets caught up with another outsider. The layers of conspiracy that get pulled back and the descriptive prose make the "switch" ending worth while and provide a great "cult" enemy for Keepers looking to add something to their campaigns. 

In terms of fantasy, there's one story that stands out, Spinwebs. A family owns spiders but the mob mentality against their ownership is  turning hostile. A young girl and a newly hatched egg are going to fight against that tide. But just when that determination is made, the story ends. Still, in the span of a few pages, the world building that happens is great. 

If you're looking for inspiration for horror one shots or direct stealing for a Call of Cthulhu RPG, While The Black Stars Burn is a well written book.

Tales of the Far West A Wuxia Western Anthology

Tales of the Far West is an anthology of wuxia western basis for the Far West setting. I didn't back the Kickstarter but it's a topic I'm interested in. One of the things I like about antholgoies is that it's a little easier to sneak them in then a five hundred page monster novel. In between some of the games I ran at Gen Con, this was good 'buffer' material to prevent me from rereading sections of the One Ring over and over again.

In terms of why I bought it, first thing up movies. While The Man With the Iron Fists isn't going to win any awards, there were some great fight scenes. Another favorite of mine, Sukiyaki Western Django combines a lot of those elements and then there's the Warrior's Way where a man from the east winds up in the west. Of course this ignores Kung Fu from back in the day.

Anyway, you can see why I might be interested in the theme.

The book is hit or miss. For example, Riding the Thunderbird by Chuck Wendig just doesn't go anywhere for me. I found that odd as I enjoy a lot of Chuck's work. I check his website on a regular basis and have bought several of his books on writing. He has a good 'voice' if you will. Maybe it was just too short for me.

And that's exactly the problem with Purity of Purpose by Gareth-Michael Skarka. I would swear that if the RPG comes out, this is going to be the chapter opener for how advancement or combat works. It's well told but so short I was left wondering why it was included. It's basically a well told fight scene. Yeah, it's well told. Love the description of the guns for example.

Mind you as science and technology go, I wonder how longer term that will work. In most fantasy genres, the strength of the ancient swords and armor are reliant on the old magic and forge abilities that have been long lost. That doesn't necessarily work that way with technology. Hard to look at a gun from one hundred years ago and think, "Yeah, that's going to out class some of the newer stuff."

The good news is that I didn't feel lost when reading the stories. There are a few things that poke odd as odd but I assume they'll be getting more details in the future. For example, how 'magical' is the setting. Demons are mentioned as a rumor, but there are 'thunderbirds'. There's a lot of 'steamtech' but seems fairly out of the way for the most part.

The setting also seems capable of handling more than just straight up wuxia action. For example, Ari Marmell does a tale that fits soundly in the horror-suspense field. While its a little jarring compared to some of the high action we see in other tales, its told well enough and fits with one of the other themes of the setting, steam punk weird science.

That genre blending comes into focus in the tale Crippled Avengers by Dave Gross where the main characters all have some type of crippling injury inflicted on them by the villain only to have Science! restore them.

The even better news though, is that there are some solid stories in here. The strengths of Riding the Thunderbird and Purity of Purpose may have seemed weaker and out of place because they followed He Built the Wall to Knock it Down by Scott Lynch and In Stillness, Music by Aaron Rosenberg, both of which were longer and fuller and really brought the action.

He Built the Wall to Knock it Down hits a lot of the standards of 'fantasy' writing/showcasing that I've mentioned before. It includes the unknown stranger with a dark past, the building up of the stranger in terms of his strength by showcasing what a powerful fighter he is against more and more outrageous odds and then the final show down. Even better though, some of the characters introduced can make future appearances or even show up in flash backs to previous tales. It's that strong in my opinion.

All told there are twelve tales including authors like Matt Forbeck among the others I've mentioned. The electronic version is under $5 so if you're looking to dip your toe in something a little more off the beaten path, this should have you covered.

Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology

Milton J. Davis and Charles Saunders assemble a variety of material here that reminds me of some of the older anthologies in that, for me, it's a lot of names I didn't recognize and a lot of different writing styles with some good, some bad, and some great stuff. I initially didn't realize that there was an Imaro story in the book itself until I got to the end.

I'll be discussing specific spoilers below so if you'd rather avoid those, know that for the low price, it's worth looking into.

Among my favorites are the following:

Skin Magic by P. Djeli Clark. It has a few elements I enjoy in a story. A different style of magic, in this case, a cursed thief who can summon monstrous creatures from inside himself. In some ways, this ability reminded me of Corum's early ability in the first trilogy where can can summon monstrous creatures that are undefeatable. It's also got the 'young' hero going on where the character is still learning of his abilities and learning how to work this curse into an actual ability. The character is still very vulnerable at this point. Very much like a low level character.

The Three Faced One by Charles Saunders. In terms of role playing games, I think the concept of a high level character, as Imaro is here, looking for rest and recuperation, but most importantly, anonymity from his previous heroism, is an interesting twist on a hero's rise to power. Imaro did all that in the last of the series and paid a heavy price for it. Now he needs time to heal and recuperate. It's not that he's all the sudden in a boring situation, for after all, what fun would that be, but that he is no burdened with the weight of all his previous expectations.

In a role playing game, as the players gain more and more levels and powers and toys, the weight of those background elements can weight heavily on them. One of the fun thing about Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and Planescape, is the ability to quickly move the campaign to fresh territory. Big hero in country X? You're nothing in country Y. This leaves the opportunity to revisit older material in future stories while also expanding the campaign setting.

In The Wake of Mists and The Generals Daughter, the former by Kirk A. Johnson and the later by Anthony Nana Kwamu show some interesting choices that can be put into a RPG. In the former, the main character is essentially whisked away from a battle to go through a quest to gain power. The readers keep getting hints that there is a price for this power. In the General's Daughter, the main character's daughter dies and he is given the opportunity to save her, but at the cost of many others who would suffer from his actions.

In the Wake of Mists has enough naming conventions and ideas in it to mine for a small adventure in and of itself. In between encounters the character, Sangara, is healed of his wounds so that he may approach each challenge at full strength. Almost like having a cleric that.

Characters, no matter how powerful, may encounter situations where sacrifice may be called for. There may be an attack on multiple fronts that they can't handle all at once. Characters may also be called on to make tough choices. Do you save your friend, or a city? Do you save your wife, or a world?