Two New Reviews: Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, edited by Edward Willett; illustrations by Wendi Nordell and I, Brax: A Battle Divine (A Dragon Assassin Adventure) by Arthur Slade

“Shapers of Worlds Volume IV”

Edited by Edward Willett Illustrations by Wendi Nordell

Published by Shadowpaw Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$29.99  ISBN 978-1-98-989398-88-3

You might want to read Shapers of Worlds Volume IV on a sunny beach, or at least in a pleasant space with other people around, because I can 99% guarantee that something’s going to scare the heehaw out of you in this 402-page anthology of sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories, ably edited by Regina, SK’s Edward Willett. Willett’s an award-winning and much-published writer and podcaster who has selected nineteen writers he’s featured on his podcast, The World-shapers, for his fourth Shapers of Worlds anthology. The stories “have nothing in common except they’re all fantastical and they’re all written by authors I’ve interviewed,” he explains. Artist Wendi Nordell’s provided one black and white illustration for each story: I found this particularly helpful in the story in which a many-tentacled “Tangle” is sprouting “small smiling heads” and “flashing needle-like teeth.”

There’s a rich variety of themes, styles, plots, characters and worlds packed into this chunky nerve-rattler of a book. That’s what happens when your contributors hail from across North America and they’re writing about places as diverse as Halifax, California, and “the Sagittarius Arc.” The individual stories are  impressive, most especially—and I’m showing my bias here—the horror stories, but “Garbage,” Joshua Palmatier’s cautionary, futuristic tale about failing to recycle (it’s also about a doomed relationship) will also stay with me.

This anthology covers the horror realm well, rather like the old TV Series, “Ghost Story/Circle of Fear” did. You have your unhappy ghosts, possessed objects, scarecrow people, and various versions of hell. For Elliot Lawson—the protagonist in Sherrilyn Kenyon’s “Matter of Life and Death,”—hell is a nasty, best-selling writer who, posthumously, doesn’t like her book cover, title, or font, and continually sends callous emails to Elliot from the beyond. I didn’t see the terrifying plot twist coming in this simultaneously light-hearted and hellish tale. I  loved it.

“Advent,” by James Kennedy, is in my Top Five. A gripping, multi-layered story, it features some of the scariest horror tropes—a terrifying basement; a communicative furnace (that says “̒I will eat your time’”); a corn husk doll made by the child narrator’s now-deceased father when he was a child. The doll was “decorated with seeds and bits of wood and leaves and pine cones” and the boy’s father “made eyes and a mouth out of seeds and hair from pine needles.” This story works brilliantly in large part because Kennedy’s created such a credible voice, and because beneath all the supernaturalism, this is actually a story about grief. (Another strong story, “Yiwu,” by Lavie Tidhar, is about loneliness.)

There’s a tale about a lawyer who does bad TV commercials; the terror-inspiring “Monster Under the Bed;” a smart story, told via e-mails, about an apartment manager going insane (or is he?); a sweet brotherly bond in “Souvenirs;” and a vase that won’t break in the beautifully-written “Nineteenth-Century Vase.” Also: a graphic story about MAGA-types discussing how to lynch intellectuals, immigrants, etc. In these times, perhaps that’s the scariest of them all.  

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“I, Brax: A Battle Divine” (A Dragon Assassin Adventure)

By Arthur Slade

Published by Shadowpaw Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-26-3

 

I’m unaware of any writers as simultaneously prolific and talented (ie: winning the Governor General’s Award and receiving the $10,000 Cheryl & Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence) as Saskatoon’s Arthur Slade. With more than thirty YA, middle-grade and graphic novels to his credit, Slade is a literary powerhouse. I’ve just completed reading I, Brax; A Battle Divine (A Dragon Assassin Adventure), a thrilling fantasy for young readers who enjoy well-read, wise-cracking, goat-eating dragons (the eponymous Brax, a “Scythian” dragon, is also the narrator of this “diary”); eye-swapping; formally-trained, teenaged-girl assassins; and battles in which the dead are sometimes still alive, will enjoy sinking their teeth into this thick fantasy.

This novel is classic Slade: simultaneously gruesome, literary and comical. Brax bears a sarcastic inner voice, and it’s his internal quips and his dialogue with Carmen—the seventeen-year-old assassin who’d plucked out Brax’s dragon eye and plopped it into her own vacant socket, after which a mortal eye grew in Brax’s socket—that make this book another winner. (The eye swap gave them special talents, including the ability to communicate telepathically with one another.)

Where thar be dragons—even dragons who are dynamite at “̒chess and marbles. And checkers’”—thar be battles, and the duo first confront farmer-attacking “ammits,” which “had the head of a crocodile, the front legs of a leopard, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus … Very, very, very ugly.” And they spit: “The acidic projectile, a brownish, lumpy substance about the size of a mortal head,” hits both Carmen and Brax. The spittle stinks enough to “curl [Brax’s] nostrils inside out” … and it causes hallucinations. What’s not a hallucination is the after-battle pile of ash that issues a warning to Brax, threatening to “̒lacerate [him] from liver to limb.’”

There’s a moat-full of magic in this book, and poof, the female-voiced ash pile forms “into an ancient symbol: the sun surrounded by a snake,” and then it transforms into a leather-vested, hairy-legged, twelve-foot tall being with “leopard-spotted” arms and “a reptilian snout populated by long, sharp teeth.” You know this isn’t going to go well. Meanwhile, Emperor Lipit has been assassinated and his thirteen-year-old nephew, Nagar, is the heir. Nagar, we learn, shares Brax’s taste in literature, and the boy “hires” Brax and Carmen to bring his uncle’s murderer to justice.   

Which, magically, brings us to libraries. Libraries are important in this tale. So are family and friendships. Carmen’s twin brother, Corwin, has his own special eye: a wizard’s. Alas, he’s in “̒a smorgasboard of slices.’” Brax and Carmen are summoned by a “spellbird” to his death scene in “Azadiq”—Brax airlifts Carmen (she travels on his back, naturally) to “the whole dead-brother situation.”

Are the murders connected? Who is the “̒snout-faced-woman goddess thing?’” Will Brax’s character flaw—“to help the weak”—and the fact that he’s “̒a stickler for language’” be relevant in the grand scheme of things within the “̒great empire of Akkad?’” Read this otherworldy book, and have fun discovering the answers.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM