When Karl Edward Wagner began writing his Kane stories in 1970 he inherited the legacy of the barbarian hero from Robert E. Howard. Howard had almost single-handedly created sword-and-sorcery with his works, but Wagner – in creating his character of Kane – not only went back to the roots which had been planted by Conan and Kull (as so many other pale imitators had done), but also infused those roots with the rich traditions of fantasy and horror which had blossomed in the forty years since Howard had died.

Kane is one part Elric, one part Conan, but a creation all his own. His tales inherit the purity of Howard’s barbarism, but also reach back into Howard’s own influences to crank up the elements of Lovecraftian horror. You can feel the influences of Moorcock, Leiber, Moore, and Tolkien bubbling beneath the surface.

To this rich tradition, Wagner brought his own natural talent for the fantastical and the horrific, telling his stories with a brutal, beautiful prose.

Gods in Darkness, from Night Shade Books, is a collection of all three of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane novels: Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves. It has a sister volume, The Midnight Sun, which collects all of the Kane short stories.

BLOODSTONE

Unfortunately, the first novel in this collection is almost certainly the weakest. Perhaps the most persistent and grating problem here is Wagner’s infatuation with the thesaurus, coupled with an inordinate amount of obvious pleasure taken in finding the most obscure terms possible. The intention appears to an evocation of Lovecraftian prose, but the effect which Lovecraft so expertly crafts is rendered impotent through the sheer tenacity with which Wagner pursues it.

The plot, while strong in many regards, is conveyed in an episodic fashion – with many events relegated off-stage with description or narration. The effect, in later works, is to keep the action focused on the primary cast of characters – seeing their place and their reactions within a large world. In Bloodstone, however, the effect is disjointed and further weakened by the fact that most of the characters (with the exception of Kane himself) have strong taints of the cliché about them.

Coming to BloodstoneI had heard that Wagner was something of a hidden gem in the sword-and-sorcery genre: A writer whose talents compared favorably to Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock – but whose career had been cut tragically short by an early death. Reading Bloodstone, I was disappointed to discover an author of only mediocre skill.

DARK CRUSADE

Fortunately, the second novel in the collection is Dark Crusade, which should be on the reading list for any fan of sword-and-sorcery.

I don’t know if Bloodstone was just an early work which took its time getting into print, if Wagner was simply rushed or off his rhythm while writing it, or if Wagner had a major breakthrough between ’75 and ’76: Whatever the case may be, everything which was only nascent mediocrity in Bloodstone comes together in Dark Crusade to craft a top notch novel.

One of the interesting things to note about Kane is that, unlike his fellow heroes-in-arms, Kane frequently finds himself on the wrong side of a conflict. Conan finds a crown when he joins a just rebellion against a tyrannical king. Kane seeks empire, and frequently allies himself with any power which becomes convenient or available. He believes that he can overcome whatever flaws or corruption exist within the power base he takes advantage of, but finds – time and time again – that the flaws and corruption are inherent to the power. As a result, Kane often finds himself in a role which would be villainous if it were not for his own nature as an anti-hero: Often he destroys his own dreams in an attempt to purify them of a tarnish which cannot be removed.

It is this dark depth of contradiction and tragic flaw – a wisdom and strength coupled with folly and weakness – which makes the character of Kane so infinitely fascinating. Like all of the great sword-and-sorcery tales, it is not the plot of pulp adventure which makes the stories of Kane a compelling read: It is the careful drawing of their larger-than-life protagonist.

DARKNESS WEAVES

The third novel in Gods in Darkness is on the same playing field as the second. If anything, Darkness Weaves represents an improvement over the craft and skill which went into the telling of Dark Crusade. Notably, a more complex cast of characters is invested with more detail, drawn in more depth, and (as a result) given greater significance.

Ultimately, none of these novels impressed me with the quality of Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon or Leiber’s “Ill Met in Lankhmar”. But Dark Crusade and Darkness Weaves are both classics – and if I want to see more of the war in Dark Crusade and more of the twin romances in Darkness Weaves, that’s only a testament to the strength of what’s already on the page.

GRADES:

BLOODSTONE: C+
DARK CRUSADE: A-
DARKNESS WEAVES: A-

Karl Edward Wagner
Published: 2002 (1975/1976/1978)
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Cover Price: $35.00
ISBN: 1-892389-24-X
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

If Charles Dickens hadn’t laid claim to the line a century and a half earlier, Kage Baker could have used it to pithily sum up this jewel of a novel.

(The only spoilers in here are for the first five pages of the book, even if it doesn’t look that way. Honest.)

Imagine a future in which two inventions revolutionize the world: Time travel and immortality. Actually, you invent the immortality first, and then you invent the time travel in order to test it. But, in any case, both of them come with catches: First, the process for creating an immortal is horrendously expensive, can only be performed on young children, and requires surgery so horrendous that few parents would subject their children to it. Time travel, on the other hand, is an incredibly expensive, one-way street: You can send people into the past, and bring them back to their point of origin, but you can’t send them into the future. Plus, most people find traveling into the past uncomfortable: It’s dirty. It’s violent. It’s unpleasant. It’s full of strange people.

What do you do?

Well, if you’re the Zeus Company you find a simple solution: You go back into the past to the dawn of interesting human history, pick up some orphaned natives, turn them into immortals, give them a top-notch education and massive historical databases, and then come home. Now you don’t have to keep shuttling back and forth your operatives: You just let those immortal natives you’ve recruited travel through time the old-fashioned way – by living it. Along the way they’ll be saving priceless works of art from destruction, preserving endangered species, and recruiting more agents to the cause.

Cool concept? I thought so.

Having rapidly crafted a cunning universe, Kage Baker begins crafting a cunning tale. On the surface, it is a simplistic (perhaps even obvious) tale: A young, orphaned girl is rescued from 16th century Spain by the Company, turned into an immortal operative, and then sent on her first mission to Queen Mary’s England.

Viewed from that simplistic angle, The Garden of Iden is an unremarkable – even boring – novel. But, in truth, the story of this novel is not a nifty time travel mission. The story of this novel is the story of its title character: It’s an emotional, gut-wrenching tale, and the most surprising thing about it is the subtlety with which its emotional punch it delivered.

As you read The Garden of Iden you are lulled into a seeming complacence: Pieces seem to fall into place just the way you would expect, the cast of characters seems to do just what you would expect, and so forth. Through this complacency you are kept heartily – if lightly – entertained through Baker’s irreverent wit, startling reality and depth of characterization, and beautifully accurate descriptions of setting and history.

But then, suddenly, you realize that this complacency is all an illusion. While you’ve been enjoying a light tale of romance and mild adventure, Baker has been gently gathering up the rug you’re standing then: Suddenly she’s yanking the rug out from under you and throwing an emotional fist right into your gut.

And as you stumble back from the impact, you realize that you’ve actually been reading brilliance at work. Because the surprise doesn’t come out of left field: Baker has been building it up from the very first page, and you didn’t see it coming at all.

GRADE: A

THE GARDEN OF IDEN
Kage Baker
Published: 1998
Publisher: Avon Eos
Cover Price: $5.99
ISBN: 0380731797
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I’ve been meaning to give Lawrence Watt-Evans a try for a long time. Last week the stars finally conjoined in such a way that I found myself with a copy of Nightside City clenched between my fists.

One sleepless night later the novel had been devoured and I had come to one simple conclusion:

Nightside City is an unsung masterpiece.

This book stands somewhere between Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and deserves to be as well-known as both. Lawrence Watt-Evans crafts a riveting tale which is one-half cyberpunk and one-half detective noir, with strong dashes of hard SF sensibility, insightful characterization, and tight plotting thrown in to spice the mix.

The world in which the novel takes place is not only immediately memorable for its unique conception (a city in a crater on the dark side of a planet, slowly revolving into the devastatingly deadly rays of the sun), but also deeply immersive as a result of the loving detail Watt-Evans flawlessly weaves throughout the story.

The plot is a tight, fast-paced mystery told with all the style and aplomb of a Chandler – although I’d recommend skipping the back cover text on this one (my edition calmly summarizes the first half of the plot and removes most of the mystery).

In case I haven’t made myself clear, this one comes highly recommended.

GRADE: A

NIGHTSIDE CITY
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Published: 1989
Publisher: Foxacre Press
Cover Price: $13.50
ISBN: 0970971117
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