Start grubbing for small change, worms - Sanctuary is back on the map... Lynn Abbey (lots of girlie fantasy, some D&D novelizations – whatever makes you happy) was one of the co-creators, with then-husband Robert Asprin (the M.Y.T.H. series, among others) of Thieves’ World, the groundbreaking, addictive, magnificent shared-world anthology series which gave us the most vibrant city in fantasy, spawned spinoff novels by Jan Morris, Andrew J Offutt, C J Cherryh et al, a roleplaying game supplement (take my word for it, one of the best of its kind), comics, a board game, countless imitations and now, finally, the Next Generation. The new stuff started last year with Lynn Abbey (now solo) writing Sanctuary, a novel that returned the reader to the city some twenty odd years after the events of the original series. This was closely followed by Turning Points, a new anthology. There were some old hands in there – Diana Paxson (popular in Germany with her Arthurian series) and Andrew Offutt (he’s kind of annoying, a snot-nosed kid who happens to have all the coolest comics, so you have to slime to him a little), Lynn Abbey herself, and some newcomers. The most, err, I was about to say illustrious, but I’ll stick with famous, is certainly Raymond Feist. Getting him must have been something of a coup for Abbey, and he turns out a surprisingly modest piece. The other pseudo Big Name is the bizarre Dennis McKiernan, for whom the word modesty is a defilement of the English language and who, predictably, screws up horribly - those who know his Collected Works (the Mithgar series and a couple of standalones) will not be at all surprised by the unfounded arrogance and cloying nature of his writing. We just have to hope he doesn’t get invited back for the next anthology. This December, Tor Books will be re-releasing the original 2 anthologies (Thieves’ World & Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn) in a trade paperback omnibus edition called, oddly, First Blood. By then, both Sanctuary and Turning Points should be out in mass market paperback editions. Considering the turbocapitalism and recycling madness practised by Wizards of the Coast (the current home of D&D), there may even be reason to hope for a D20 repackaging of the original RPG supplement, as well. But the heart of the matter is the city of Sanctuary itself, that unsightly carbuncle nestled in the nether regions of the Rankene Empire’s butt cheeks. This is the seediest and sleaziest of all fantasy cities, with the possible exception of Nadsokor, City of Beggars from Moorcock’s Elric tales. For those who haven’t yet read the originals, you can look forward to a many-coloured series with an atmosphere coming straight out of one of the great eras in fantasy literature, both commercially and artistically, the late 70s - early 80s. This was a time when the fusion of different media (novels and short stories, comics like Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated, and the first fantasy role playing games) was an alchemical marriage between the morally ambivalent Howard-Leiber-Vance classics, the residual hallucinatory fantasy of the 60s and 70s, and the technical possibilities of a new fantasy literature interested in social and historical systems. The format of Thieves’ World, with individual writers concentrating on individual characters within a consensual framework, created a rich and entertaining world that by its very nature defied stasis or stagnation. With two pantheons of the most choleric and irritatingly human gods you’ll meet outside of Leon Garfield’s God Beneath the Sea (go on, try and find a copy, I dare you), with some of the coolest characters not from the works of Steven Erikson or Fritz Leiber, and a deep atmosphere of pain, perversion and shifting loyalties, Thieves’ World remains every bit as readable and relevant as the classic tradition it grew out of and the modern forms it influenced. . Oh, just go and read the damn books, you’ll thank me for it some day.

PS. The original series of anthologies, most volumes of which can be found in Another Country, is much better than this new generation could ever hope to become. But that’s one of the immutable laws of this world, isn’t it?

Lynn Abbey (& others), paperback editions all published by Tor in the US Sanctuary (ISBN 0812561759) Turning Points (076534517X) First Blood (031287488X) (December 2003)

Nice that someone should ask me about Steven Erikson, because his Malazan Tales of the Fallen series is getting better and betterer. Book five, Midnight Tides, is coming out next March, and judging by the incredible leaps forward he’s making from book to book so far, it should be a corker. Now this is absolutely not to say that the series started off weak, because it most emphatically did not. Gardens of the Moon was thrilling and dense and wildly colourful (see elsewhere on the AC website for a short burst of enthusiasm on my part for Erikson’s work), and Deadhouse Gates was a sprawling, insane wonder of a book. The third, Memories of Ice, sinks you yet deeper into an example of world-building that quite simply has no equal in fantasy literature. This immersion gets more hallucinatory, more intense, and more demanding of your intellectual and emotional attention in book four, House of Chains, which begins with a 265 page „novella“ that really slaps the competition down. Because no-one does what Erikson can do with the materials to hand. His interest in and aptitude for creative anthropology is evident in myriad realistically drawn and yet utterly alien cultures, the magic system is visceral and visual, the violence and boredom-traumata of warfare are suggestive of what Glen Cook (Black Company series) could do if he weren’t so defiantly pulp-oriented, and Erikson masters the art of summoning tidal waves of thick black monolithic PLOT in the background like no one else, in any genre. The man’s a master of his trade and, frankly, the only other writer worth reading in the genre of multi-volume epic fantasy these days would be George Martin – everything else is strictly kids’ stuff. That’ll do, now go fill out your Christmas wishlists.

Steven Erikson, paperback editions published by Transworld in the UK: Gardens of the Moon (0553812173) Deadhouse Gates (0553813110) Memories of Ice (0553813129) House of Chains (0553813137)

Unfortunately this is still an age in which Terry Brooks’ every last transcribed orgasmic grunt gets onto someone’s bestseller list, with the expected result that any number of infinitely more gifted writers don’t get a look-in. Whatever, we love digging for raw ore all by ouselves, don’t we? So take the time and pester Alan about getting some Martha Wells, especially the ineptly-titled gaslight fantasy Death of the Necromancer; for those of you who like the ladies, especially when they’re published by Tor, DAW or Roc, there’s also the deliciously naughty Jacqueline Carey, and the solid Carol Berg; and one oddity which may be worth looking into is Lois McMaster Bujold’s Curse of Chalion – yes, an epic fantasy. On the one hand, you’re saying, „Well, DUH, as if there weren’t enough fat fantasy novels around,“ and then you’re thinking, „But all the other SF writers who tried to do fantasy because they thought it would be easy slumming (David Drake springs alarmingly to mind) really sucked, didn’t they?“ And you’d not be wrong on either count. But let’s not forget that Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan stories are, at the heart of it all, warm, exciting character-driven romps. And what better genre than epic fantasy for a little bit of thrilling romping, I ask you?