July 1, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
Canto, Comics, Fantasy, HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, IDW, review, Steampunk
Canto #1
Written by David M. Booher
Drawn by Drew Zucker
Colored by Vittorio Astone
Lettered by Deron Bennett
Published by IDW
The Skinny: A boy with a clockwork heart ventures into a dark world in this grim steampunk fairytale.
Canto’s people live in chains. Denied freedom, identity and even hearts, they toil for cruel masters bigger and stronger than themselves. But Canto believes in two things: A fairytale about a boy who saved a princess, and the girl who gave him his name. When she is injured by the cruel slavers, he’ll do the only thing he can to save her: Leave the confines of their labor camp and bring back her heart.
A sinister but none-the-less charming steampunk fable, Canto #1 opens with a familiar fantasy theme, but plays it expertly. Booher and Zucker’s steampunk fable starts on all the right notes for a great series. The story flows around the gaps in the characters’ knowledge, the questions that Canto will have to find the answers for. It is also doesn’t flinch away from the horrors of its world.
Zucker’s designs are doing a lot of great work here. Canto and his people are little clockwork knights, and their is brutal and violent without being gory. They don’t have or lose blood, but Time. It’s a clever and occasionally devastating use of metaphor that works well on the page. The designs are all funhouse mirror, with the squat, dwarfish slaves and their towering, bestial masters. Even Canto’s face looks like a mask. Astone’s moody colors are dark but also deep and rich. The art and colors are what really elevates the story.
Canto #1 is an excellent start to a story that looks to take a critical, or at least subtextual eye the tired quest motif. I can’t wait to see how far it goes with its material. You can find it digitally through Comixology, or pick up a physical copy at your local comics shop!
June 30, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Free Fiction, Humor
I was a sailor, and wrecked in a storm, I washed up on a strange shore.
I awoke in the house of a giant, who warned me, “You may go wherever you wish, but stay out of my cellar.”
As I recovered, his warning weighed heavily upon me. I recalled every story of man-eating giants I’d ever heard. Eventually, I snuck into the forbidden room.
I found it stacked floor to ceiling with balloons, banners, and supplies for a welcome party.
“It was going to be a surprise, the disappointed giant said. “But now you’ve gone and ruined it.”
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
The first collection of Everyday Drabbles stories, Winter, is now available from Amazon!
June 8, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Fiction, Uncategorized
Fantasy, HLF, Hugh Likes Fiction, LGBTQ, The True Queen, Zen Cho
The True Queen
Written by Zen Cho
Audiobook narrated by Jenny Sterlin
Published by Recorded Books
The Skinny: Cho’s second Sorcerer Royal novel is just as delightful as the first.
When Muna washes up on a beach after a terrible storm, she can only remember two things: Sakti is her twin sister, and they have both been cursed. In order to break the curse, save her sister and discover who she really is, Muna will have to travel to the distant and strange island of Britain and pass herself off as a great sorceress. But with war brewing between Britain and Faerie within, will she be able to save her sister, or will she be drawn into the intrigues of the Faerie Court, or worse, English high society?
The follow up to the delightful novel Sorcerer To The Crown, Zen Cho returns to her Regency-era fantasy filled with dour magicians, witty witches, and blithely cannibalistic faeries. The author has carried over all of the charm of the first book, telling a new tale with just enough of her beloved cast of characters while introducing new main characters and shifting the spotlight. Muna is a fantastic main character, and I loved spending more time with Henrietta, Rollo, and of course, Ma Geng Gang.
Cho’s fantasy England is centered on the sort of very real people who were pushed to the margins by 19th Century British society: women, people of color, gays and lesbians. Cho deftly presents high society through Muna’s point of view, making it as strange and inaccessible to her as the Faerie Court. It is a welcome and fascinating shift, carried over from the first book that continues to astonish.
Jenny Sterlin returns to narrate, and does an excellent job. Her acting and narration flow well together and her voice is perfectly suited to the story.
The True Queen is a rollicking adventure that builds on its prequel, but new readers won’t be lost if they pick this one up first. It is available in audio, print, and ebook. It has my highest recommendation.
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April 28, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fantasy, Fiction, Parenthood
After she finished peeing, she pulled her skirt back up and washed her hands. She stared as the liquid reacted to the reagent in the bottom of the little clay vessel.
It didn’t take long. There was a pop, and a spray of blue sparks. The rune burned into the bottom was unmistakable, and identical to the two tests beside it.
When her husband came home, she sat him down at the table.
“I went to the alchemist this morning.”
“Then we’re…” he said, unable to finish. She nodded and patted her belly.
“He’s going to be the Chosen One.”
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
March 31, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fantasy, Free Fiction
One day a dog wandered into the seer’s sanctum and began to speak.
“Seer, I was once my queen’s greatest bodyguard. Everyday she asked me a question, and I had no answer. In the years since, I’ve searched far and wide for the answer. You are my last hope.”
“Look in my magic mirror, and find what you seek.”
The dog did as he was bid, but soon became angry. “There’s nothing here!”
“What was your mistress’s question?”
The dog stared in the mirror for a long time. “It was me,” he whispered. “I was the good boy all along.”
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoyed this story, why not support my work by buying me a coffee?
March 22, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Fiction, Review, Uncategorized
African SFF, Book Review, Fantasy, HLF, Hugh Likes Fiction, P. Djeli Clark, Steampunk
The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Written by P. Djeli Clark
Audiobook read by Julian Thomas
Published by Recorded Books
The Skinny: A light fantasy adventure novella set in an alternate 1910’s Cairo.
What starts out as a routine haunting for two agents from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities quickly expands in a plot involving smuggling rings, women’s suffrage, and the uneasy mingling of cultures in an alternate 1912 Cairo that is the center of the modern and magical world.
Never quite hard-edged enough to put the punk in its steampunk, Clark never the less wrestles with the concept of empire, if only by having the characters discussing how glad they are to not have the English in charge anymore. His Cairo is a cosmopolitan jewel, with a mixture of vibrant cultures and characters both real and mythical. Much like his earlier short story that shares the setting, “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” Haunting evokes a deeply complex world that challenges both the reader’s and the characters preconceived notions.
And speaking of which, his characters are memorable delights, from sassy shopkeepers, to obsequious transit officials, and his two main leads, the tough, world-weary agent Hamed and the sharp, but soft agent Onsi. Clark skirts the line of some well-worn procedural tropes, but his dialog and realizations of the characters breathe unexpected life into them.
I listened to this book on Audible, and Julian Thomas gives an excellent, if a bit slow, reading. His performance of the characters makes each of them clearly recognizable, and to my inexperienced ears he handles accents well, making them distinctive but still easily understandable to a listener generally unfamiliar with the region.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is available in ebook, print and audiobook from Amazon, Audible, and your local independent book store. It’s well worth checking out if you’re on the hunt for a well-realized historical fantasy that plays outside of the typical Western European sandbox. I’m eagerly awaiting Clark’s next entry in what is quickly becoming one of my favorite fictional settings.
January 20, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Everyday Drabbles, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Free Fiction
The Elemental Creators all stared in horror as the Fire God’s javelin slammed into the Sea Goddess’s chest in a pillar of flame. Silence rang throughout the slowly forming plane. She slowly pulled the projectile out and examined it dispassionately as the flame guttered.
The other gods all looked on, ready to intervene if he attacked her again.
“Can we all get back to work, please?” The goddess asked in a voice like the tides.
Once they all resumed their work creating the fledgling world, the formless Wind Deity whispered in her ear. “Aren’t you mad though?”
“Steaming,” She replied.
This story was first published on Wattpad as a part of Everyday Drabbles, a daily hundred-word writing project. Click the link for more free flash fiction!
December 30, 2018
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Fantasy, Free Fiction, Short Short Fiction
The huge creature stalked across the room, its expression unreadable in a twisted face of beak and fang.
Siobhan cleared her throat and the owlbear froze. Its head twisted at an unsettling angle to stare at her.
“The laying was successful. You can go on in now.” The monster squeezed his bulk past her and into the delivery room, leaving a trail of hairy feathers behind.
She was the best midwife in the kingdom, but chimerical deliveries were always challenging. If she ever found the wizard that crossed birds and bears, she would give them a lecture they wouldn’t forget.
December 23, 2018
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Elvish Medicine, Fantasy, Fiction, Microfiction, Short Short Fiction
“Ho, what fair yonder maiden does my elf eye see?” Aoife jumped in surprise and looked up. There was Mr. Aradol, bathrobe flapping in the breeze and long white hair streaming behind him. She sighed.
Some folks thought elves were immortal. It wasn’t true, of course. They lived for centuries, longer even than some dragons, but they succumbed to the same infirmities of time as anyone.
Aofie hated working the Elvish Dementia ward. Some idiot had left the door unlocked last night, forgetting how hale some of the residents were. She’d be pulling them out of the trees all morning.
December 12, 2018
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
Fantasy, HLC, Horror, Hugh Likes Comics, Image, It's a pun, Kieron Gillen, review, Stephanie Hans
Die #1
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Stephanie Hans
Lettered by Clayton Cowles
Published by Image
The Skinny: Less “Dungeons and Dragons” and more “It.”
In 1991, Dominic and his friends played a game, and then disappeared. In 1993, they returned, unable to tell a soul where they had been or what they were doing. And one of them, Dominic’s best friend and GM Solomon, never returned at all. Twenty-five years after that, Dominic receives a strange and chilling birthday present: A crystalline 20-sided die. The game isn’t over.
Writer Kieron Gillen’s first creator-owned project since The Wicked + The Divine tackles nostalgia, trauma, and the scars left by fantastical childhood journeys on adults. This isn’t untrodden ground, of course. It has been approached in all sorts of ways, from the Robin Williams movie “Hook” to Stephen King’s It. This tale hews more closely to the latter, as you might expect. Gillen makes things more interesting by incorporating another element: Dungeons and Dragons. His epigraph at the end of the comic makes the reference more explicit: The unfinished 80’s cartoon which transported six real-world kids to the roleplaying fantasy land. He’s also tapping into the 80’s “satanic panic” surrounding the game, with six kids who were literally swallowed and chewed up by the game. It’s an interesting twist on the concept, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Hans’s art is gorgeous, and impliments some cool tricks with light. The is dull, dark, and full of shadows. Not to spoil things, but this is reversed in a double-page spread late in the issue to great effect. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the outstanding logo design from Rian Hughes, which takes a D-20 and spreads it flat into a maze of triangular segments. Hans takes it and pulls off a neat trick on the cover, interposing the design for a character and her in-game persona.
Die #1 is an intriguing new fantasy horror series, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next. You can find it at Your Local Comic Shop or digitally from Comixology.
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