Edited by Oliver Brackenbury
80 pages
Published 2023
Read from March 19 to March 26
Rating: 3 out of 5
The first thing I notice about this issue, the first “official” issue of NESS, is how much more polished the printing and presentation is compared to issue 0. We’ve upgraded from cut-rate print-on-demand quality to a much more professional printing, and the layout and artwork has gotten crisper to match.
That brings up the second thing I notice: the artwork. This issue is bursting with terrific black-and-white artwork, and the cover image is instantly iconic. I’m so excited for this issue!
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“Carnivora” by Kirk A. Johnson. This story sits at the intersection of Sword & Soul and Spear & Fang. It should check all my boxes for a good time. There’s grisly magic, towering demons, memorable depictions. There’s even a passing reference to the skull of a Styracosaurus. The story itself didn’t fully click for me, though. The prose was just kind of there, not bad but lacking a certain oomf. It was fine, but I had hoped for more from it. I will say it’s a lot better (and gnarlier) than my own Spear & Fang draft. I should get a lot weirder with it.
“Come Lay the Crone to Rest” by Margaret Killjoy. The proverbial “D&D campaign turned into a story,” starring a polyamorous trio of adventurers checking out the magical instability left by the death of the grandmother of one of their party. I loved the idea of it, and the art that accompanies it is killer, perfectly capturing that early 1980s AD&D aesthetic. You can tell the author did her research on medieval weaponry, or else had a preexisting hyperfocus on the subject, which gave the story a fun specificity that most pseudo-medieval fantasy lacks. I found the narrative itself a bit flat, though, once again without much oomf.
Perhaps it’s me that lacks the oomf. Trying to read to distract myself from the collapse of ~everything~ isn’t working that well, neither as distraction nor as motivation to read. I’m depressed as fuck, y’all. Don’t take any anhedonic reviews here to heart.
“Sister Chaos” by Bryn Hammond. Another solid Goatskin story, though this one feels more like a hangout episode, an anecdote really, as Angaj-Duzmut and Qi Miao lose their camel and encounter a rather odd saiga antelope. I do enjoy how weird this one gets by the end, and also its intimately affirming coda.
“Chak Muuch” by Jesús Montalvo (originally published 2015). This piece brings a Second Wave Sword & Sorcery vibe to historical Chichén Itzá. It’s moderately entertaining, though blunted a bit by the way the narration insists the titular character is a cool renegade badass, instead of giving him much opportunity to show that in action.
“Tears of Eb” by Sarah A. Macklin. The first story in this issue that I felt checked all the boxes: a solid Sword & Soul entry with professional prose, interesting characters, and brisk pacing. It culminates in a fun aquatic fight against trident-wielding spirits. My favorite so far!
“The Pillars of Silence” by Prashanth Stivatsa. Another solid, professional-grade entry, a classic Sword & Sorcery outing rendered in beautiful prose. I’m reminded of Phyllis Eisenstein’s “The Island in the Lake” (read and reviewed here). This story features the same understated courage and quiet determination as an Alaric tale, albeit with a blademaster as its hero instead of a bard. I suspect there’s a parallel with Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but somehow I’ve yet to actually read that one.
“The Folk of the Forest: An Elric Story” by Michael Moorcock. I haven’t been impressed by the Elric stories I read in the past, but I’m willing to concede that encountering only late-period Elric, without the context of the earlier stories and how they innovated what S&S could be, perhaps did me no favors. This is a new Elric story from Moorcock, commissioned specifically for NESS. It takes us back to a younger Elric, long before he went to the future and got mixed up with immortal aesthetes. Lacking the full irony of the Elric stories I read previously, “Folk” manages to capture that 1970s-does-1930s vibe that helped inspire D&D and launched a thousand painted vans. It’s a more-fleshed-out iteration on Clark Ashton Smith’s primordial weird. There are giant pirates and tiny firefly warriors. “Travel the moonroads on dream couches” is the most 1970s stoner thing I have ever read. My favorite Moorcock story by far—the first one to make me want to seek out more tales of Elric. (Though there is a portion in the middle that clearly got missed during editing; substantially overlapping dialogue repeats in a first draft sort of way.)
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We move on to the non-fiction essays and interviews portion of the issue.
First up, we have another general essay on the theme of “Why (New Edge) Sword & Sorcery?” by Brian Murphy. It raises the interesting proposition that Sword & Sorcery waves coincide with periods of social upheaval: the Great Depression, the 1960s and ’70s, and the present.
Next, we have a profile of “Cele Goldsmith Lalli—Midwife to the Second Sword & Sorcery Boom” by Cora Buhlert. This is the type of historical essay I want to read! Fascinating and educational.
Another interview transcript sourced from editor Brackenbury’s podcast: “Fresh Blood & New Thunder! Bringing New Readers to Sword & Sorcery, with Sof Magliano.” The gimmick here is that Brackenbury gave younger fantasy fan Magliano a list of six S&S stories—three classic, three newer—to get her thoughts on finding new readers for the subgenre. This interview is how I learned about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Return of the Sorceress. I was ready to dismiss this feature as page-filler—you could fit a whole story or two in this space—but it’s a legitimately interesting conversation, if a bit long.
Lastly, a review by Robin Marx: Woman of the Woods by Milton J. Davis. It sounds interesting.
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And that’s it! This issue has been a slog, but I swear the problem was me this time, far more so than its contents. The last three stories absolutely clicked for me, and nothing was outright bad in my opinion. Plus, the art in this issue is amazing and bountiful. Perhaps the issue wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be, but I’m willing to say NESS was still finding its footing at this stage.
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