Conan The Nostalgic

This was the late 1970s and into the 80s: At the age of about fifteen a friend introduced me to the works of Robert E. Howard and I began to work my way through his Conan short stories and one novel. These were published in the UK by Orbit.  I consumed them with great vigour.

The works were edited by Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter who collaborated on many volumes in this series and others. As the original works were published a number of authors started to write pastiches. To be honest these varied in quality and tended to follow the Conan verses wizard format. However, the last book published by Orbit was Conan: Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner. This was a serious piece of writing and like his Kane stories was well written with a great plot.

Orbit stopped publishing them when the fantasy market fell away in the late 1980s. I transferred my allegiance to the Tor Originals. These too varied in quality, with a variety of authors commissioned to write novels of our barbarian hero. Robert Jordan cut his teeth here with four novels before he embarked upon his Wheel of Time epic. After a couple of years I had moved on to other things and Conan was pretty much forgotten until recently.

Sat on my bookshelf were two unread novels of the Cimmerian that had been there for 31 years. Having noticed that Conan had been resurrected in the Marvel comic universe, fond memories came to the fore and I dug out one of those books. Conan The Marauder by John Maddox Roberts (pictured). I bought it in Bristol's Science Fiction bookshop, Forever People, that used to reside on Park Street. Like most of Bristol's bookshops it has long gone, but seeing the price sticker on the cover brought back a wave of nostalgia.

A friend said 'what do you want to read that for, they are all the same?'  Yes they are. Then again people watch football or antique programmes every week, and from my perspective they are all the same too. I was not dissuaded.

I have just started the book and it is like relaxing into a different place, when I was a different person. No literary greatness here, but a fun story. A little of what you like is a good thing, even if it is self-indulgent nostalgia.

Super Relaxed Fantasy Club - March 12th 2019

Sangu starts the first reading

I thought it was about time there was some record on the WWW of SRFC. So here is a brief write up of the evening. Please feel free to drop me a line if I have got something wrong or missed any thing. If you have better pictures do share.

This evening was our first event at The Star of Kings and it went very well. Finding a new space for a regular event had not proven to be easy. The Star offered a compromise between cost and space. On announcing the event the take up was quite large. On the night we had 35 attendees, 3 readers a few guests and Kristina, Magnus and I. It was a bit of a squeeze, but with a few of us standing at the back we were all accommodated.

Kristina took the role of host for the evening. Our guest speakers were Sangu Mandanna, Tasha Suri and Natasha Ngan. To have three women for the evening was great, to have three women of colour was amazing. During their time talking with us they shared their backgrounds as Indian, settled in Britain, British Indian and Chinese Malaysian respectively. I summarise some of the discussion below, but there was a huge range of subjects discussed, including women's issues.

We opened the evening with a reading from Sangu from her book A Spark of White Fire . A science fiction novel. the first in a trilogy, where gods walk among men. Sangu explained she had based this writing around her fascination with the Mahabharata. This epic tale of war is the longest poem ever written  arising in the 9th or 8th century BCE. I have never read the original, but suspect Sangu has her work cut out. Her novelisation sounded very intriguing, labelled YA, this is one I have added to my TBR. A Spark of White Fire  is out in hardback from Sky Pony Press now and available later in the year as a paperback.

Tasha Suri Reading

Tasha Suri was next up with a reading from Empire of Sand, again first in a trilogy. Tasha introduced her work as being set in a medieval India that was inspired by the Murghal Empire. I really enjoyed the reading and became fascinated as Tasha said her magical system was based on ritualistic movement and dance. I had already bought a copy of this one and Tasha kindly inscribed it for me. Empire of Sand is out now in Paperback from Orbit

Natasha Ngan closed the evening with a reading from Girls of Paper and Fire. After a short reading Natasha answered questions and talked a fair bit about the themes in the book: being a prisoner, small rebellions in a closed world, losing one's you love and also sexual assault. Natasha was very forthright and said that she was a sexual abuse survivor and had included this aspect with care and thought.  In a book about people taken hostage as concubines it was not there to deliberately shock, but it was important to her. Girls of paper and Fire is out now In Hardback from Hodder, with paperback due in July 2019.

Kristina (K.K.) Perez and Natasha Ngan

A great evening, three very different authors who bought new ideas, themes and understandings of history and personal experience to their books. Usually SRFC is fun, but tonight it was excellent. It highlighted how much more is out there untapped and waiting to be written by new authors. I think the future of speculative fiction is looking good.

Simon Seabag Montefiore - Sashenka

The pain and pleasure of belonging to a book group is encountering new books and authors that displease or delight, or even just pass you by. I have to say I was quite enthused when this book was chosen by a friend as our next read. We had recently read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles which I at first was doubtful about, but was entranced by it and would thoroughly recommend it.

Mr Montefiore tells a much darker tale, but it was not one that drew me in. There is no question of doubt that the author knows his history and has bound together elements of his knowledge to create this story. A tale of a young aristocrat, Sashenka, who becomes a revolutionary. Eventually falling foul of, and into, the self-consuming maw of the USSR's communist party. The novel contrasts well the Tsar's secret police and the party's similar agents or Checkists being much the same. There are a wealth of facts within the novel. For example I was not aware that the core of the parties revolutionary efforts were mostly Russian-based Georgian Bolsheviks.

The novel failed for me in several ways. I never became concerned with any of the characters. I felt they were very simple caricatures: too upstanding, too loyal, too cute, too horrible. The book was slow, meanders through some pointless scenes and a good third of the novel was just a repeat of what has gone before. Some of the descriptive language was just weird, for example: "Lala could savour the leather and cigars even in her tears". The final sin was Simon Montefiore's obsession with breasts, busts and bosoms. The first thing we learn about the protagonist is that she has the most prominent bust in here class at school. Similar references are made throughout the book. The most ludicrous being when Sashenka is being strip searched prior to a KGB interrogation and thinks what nice breasts she has!

Overall some great history, but frustrating and repetitive. Far too long but elements in here of a potentially good book. This is the first book in a trilogy, so perhaps better things follow.

Matt Ruff - Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff tells us a series of Lovecraftian tales highlighting the state of racism in 1950s America. I am quite a fan of stories in the mould of H.P. Lovecraft. Not in his style, but that grasp the ideas that appear in his stories: the haunted house; the murderous cult; travel in time and space; the scientist; other body experiences etc. Matt Ruff takes these ideas and places an African American family in the middle of them. The obvious comparison is that the day to day horror of the racism they face is often far worse than the supernatural or other-worldly terrors they are confronted with. Well written and evocative of the time I felt he painted a realistic picture of the racism. Much to my surprise Matt is not African American, but he is complemented by other reviewers on not pulling his punches and writing the uncomfortable truth. I am not sure this is a novel, more a series of novellas linked by the common characters of two brothers, George and Montrose, their friends and family. While the book lagged a bit in the middle and was a bit of a stitch up at the end, it was both shocking and enjoyable.

As a footnote I also enjoyed the book cover.

Sally Rooney - Normal People

When our book club selected this as a book club selection I was somewhat disappointed as I do not tend to go for books of this type. A friend was judging the book as part of a book prize and kindly lent me her copy.

I sat down and read it in two sittings over the next 48 hours. I was very much drawn to the two characters. I enjoyed the book, but it did make me miserable. The outcome was not one I wanted for the two lead characters.

The writing was good, but I found the lack of punctuation annoying. It is accomplished in its ability to spark your interest the two characters, Connell and Marianne. This is a love story and (a bit of a spoiler) I am not sure it is a romance. I was continually frustrated by the fact they were too cynical, educated and  intelligent to follow their hearts and see what was in front of them. I felt their lack of communication was very realistic given their histories and social backgrounds.The book is about two people, everyone else is something of a shadow in terms of motivations and characterisation.

One aspect of the story I found slightly repugnant was an aspect of the sexual relationship Marianne develops.

Not the ending I wanted, but I could not stop thinking about the book. Given this and the fact I could not put it down I have to say that this was a very good read.

Jack McDevitt - The Long Sunset (Academy #8)

I have read a few of McDevitt's Academy books, Engines of God being the book to note. Overall he creates a believable framework of characters and politics in The Long Sunset. We see our hero Priscilla Hutchins, or Hutch, adapting to life on an earth where mankind is becoming afraid of what horrors interstellar travel may unleash (Sound  like the USA today?). A small group are drawn to investigate an unusual broadcast deeper in the Milky Way.

This leads to an enjoyable read as our protagonists rush to investigate. While I enjoyed the book and found the prose easy to read, couldn't help thinking that the plot meanders a bit and the big surprises always remain something of an enigma. With a well established character, Hutch, McDevitt does not put much into the plot. Instead he gives us something of a wonderful story of discovery.

However, what we discover are really just aliens, who are human beings in costume. The aliens are just too human and McDevitt's worlds are just like earth.

Overall an enjoyable read.

Try It & See What Happens

Hello,
I have never done this sort of thing before and if I am honest I am not even sure about my motivations. As much as anything I want to share my reading experiences and do a bit of promotion for  Super Relaxed Fantasy Club. A regular London (UK) event for writers, readers, publishers and agents. Anyway, I suppose this is something of a blog.

I am probably starting at the wrong end of the curve as, I am told, blogs are in decline, but I read a fair bit and want to share those books I enjoy. I read quite a variety of stuff, but it is primarily genre: SF, fantasy, crime, thrillers a dashing of horror, biography, history and science.

I am conscious that what I read could become constrained, so I try and read outside my comfortable frame of reference. I belong to a book group and so get surprised with new tomes from time to time. I also have quite a diverse group of friends and contacts who cause me to open my eyes to things that I may be blind to.

So I shall see how I get on. Your comments are always welcome.
Cheers
Phil