Mage, Maze, Demon by Charles Allen Gramlich, 2016

A barbarian sent on a mission of no return.

The cover of Mage, Maze, Demon, the latest fantasy story by American writer Charles Allen Gramlich, is so striking that it instantly reminded me of the covers of Conan the Barbarian comics I read as a teenager, and still do sometimes.

I could visualise Bryle the barbarian built like Conan, and like the Cimmerian warrior, filled with raw courage and a grip that never loosens its hold on his mighty blade.

The story begins with the barbarian fleeing a raging forest fire, the howling flames licking his skin and flesh, wolves and deer outrunning him to the safety of dry land and greener pastures.

But Gramlich’s narrative is more poetic than that — “The flames shriek with joy like a fiend.”

He continues in his distinctive style, to recount Bryle’s narrow escape into a dark cavern, where he meets an evil sorcerer who baited the brave protagonist into coming to him.

Bryle is trapped inside the enormous cave. The sorcerer, whose two unseeing eyes are like black holes, offers freedom in exchange for a dangerous task — the barbarian must enter a treacherous maze to retrieve a mysterious talisman and bring it back. To get there, however, Bryle will have to get past a beast guarding the amulet, confront a powerful demon central to the story, and surmount orphic challenges.

Can he trust the necromancer? Will he let him go if he succeeds? Bryle is not sure. But like Conan, he is curious and therefore adventurous even if it means putting his life at risk. Paying no heed to his own safety, Bryle ventures into the depths of the labyrinth, unaware of help from a quiet and unlikely friend.

I think the beautiful part of fantasy and its sub-genre, sword and sorcery, is the uncertainty — neither the protagonist nor the reader are prepared for what is coming next. It’s a literary form where fear and pity have no place. Gramlich, an expert on the phantasmagoric works of Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, piles on the suspense and surprise with every narrative line.

Mage, Maze, Demon is the first sword-and-sorcery yarn I read, and liked. However, it was my second fantasy story by Gramlich, the first being his Harvest of War. Both stories are about brave warriors turned survivors.

This story is based on “a concept developed by David Cranmer (publisher of Beat to a Pulp) for the Veridical Dreams Series 3, inspired by the dreams journals of Kyle J. Knapp."

Mage, Maze, Demon is a very readable fast-paced action-adventure that will appeal to readers of fantasy fiction, and particularly sword and sorcery.

Photo Essay: Books by Weight

The auditorium at Sundarbai Hall near Churchgate Station in downtown Mumbai, a popular venue for exhibitions, is so vast that you can browse through stuff and exercise your legs at the same time. If it’s a book exhibition then you end up walking around even more, because once in you don’t want out. Seldom is exercise so enjoyable. It’s a pleasant workout for mind and body. And it beats loitering inside a mall and buying things you don’t really need.

© Butterfly Books

Last week, my wife and I went to the Books by Weight exhibition at Sundarbai. Yes, the same one I visit twice a year. We spent nearly three hours browsing and reading. Eventually, we bought a few books.

Once inside we went our separate ways, our taste in books pulling us in different directions. Since we follow the British pedestrian and motoring system, I started with the children’s section on the extreme left and slowly made my way to the extreme right, through eight uniform rows of books covering a wide range of topics including education, history, cooking, medicine, photography, biographies, reference, management, and architecture and interiors. I then retraced my steps, going back to where I started.

Paperback and hardback fiction sat tightly, sweating it out—cover to cover, spine to spine, back to back—on two neat rows, each nearly twice the length of a bowling alley. I had to frequently sidestep the cartons of books on the floor, two of which contained science fiction and legal thrillers—where Isaac Asimov and John Grisham discussed storytelling over warm beer. 

I noticed that contemporary authors—Michael Connelly, James Patterson, Harlan Coben, Robert Crais, Jeffrey Deaver, Bill Bryson, Joanna Trollope, Ian Rankin, Anna Smith, Peter James, Donna Leon, and Dale Brown, among many others—were flying off the display tables. Those who were buying books knew their authors well.

At one point I was tempted to pick up a few hardbacks of two of my favourite authors, Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) and Alistair MacLean, for old times' sake. But then, I saw that most of these were Book Club editions, and not first editions as I thought.

I observed other people browsing and the choices they made. One bespectacled gentleman in the fiction row was peering at a handwritten list of books and then peering at the titles. I looked down at his wheeled-basket and saw Wilbur Smith and Robin Cook having a tete-a-tete. These were bestselling authors I read in my teens. If you are Indian you’d still be reading bestsellers from the seventies and eighties. I hope he got lucky with his bucket list of books.

Butterfly Books, which owns and runs the million-odd Books by Weight, sells by the kilo. Paperbacks cost Rs.100 a kg and those are the ones I usually buy—I get as many as seven for the price of a dollar and half. Hardbacks, not that many.

This time, though, I picked up a hardback—a first edition of a most interesting book about detectives. You will have to wait until I finish reading and posting a review. I promise to do that soon and lay your suspense to rest.

For now, I will leave you with delectable scenes from the book exhibition where I could have done a Julie Andrews and sung, “I could have browsed all night.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

© Photographs by Prashant C. Trikannad

Never judge a book by its cover

Here's why.

This afternoon, I visited the Books by Weight exhibition where they—you guessed it—sell books by weight. How else? There I came across a hardback with an uninspiring but intriguing title. And now I'm kicking myself for not picking it up.

The book was A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005), a 336-page novel by Marina Lewycka, who, I read later, was born in a refugee camp in Kiel, Germany, after World War II.

I did not read the back of the book at the time. I weighed the book in my hand, looked at the cover, raised my eyebrows and nodded my head, so to speak, and put it back in its place.

This is what the award-winning debut novel was all about.

"Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.

"Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must (set) aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.

"But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget..."

See what I meant. I'm sure you feel like kicking me too.

This "hilarious" book has over 300 reviews on Amazon. I read and liked quite a few of them including this little piece by Georgie.

"The deceptively light tone has baffled some reviewers into believing this is not a good book, but if you look at what it actually tells you about the famine and war in Ukraine, you'll find the whole of human tragedy is there. If you prefer to feel like you're reading an annotated text book then perhaps this is not for you. This is how Eastern Europeans deal with the deep betrayals they have dealt with in living memory - cry about it, laugh about it, grow some vegetables and get on with it. This, I assume, is why the author has chosen to deal with the topic in this faux-comic way. It's a lovely, touching read with well-realised characters."

So now you know what I missed. Never judge a book by its cover. 

Coming up: Pictures from Books by Weight, now more or less an annual feature on my blog.

A Gift of Life by Henry Denker, 1989

I was in my late teens when a great-uncle introduced me to the interesting and affecting stories of American author Henry Denker. In those days I read mostly general and bestselling fiction. I remember one of his novels, The Gift of Life, quite well. It involved a cardiologist, whose name I don't recall, who must decide on the most deserving recipient of a critical heart transplant—a rich and powerful man working closely with the US President or an ordinary wage-earner with a family to take care of. One heart, two candidates—which one will it be?

The doctor must overcome external pressure and inner turmoil and make the right decision that will ultimately spell hope for one man's family and doom for the other's.

The Gift of Life is a family drama, as many of Denker's novels are. In fact, it reads like a soap opera with varying shades of emotion, anxiety, suspense, and intrigue, as the doctor's moral dilemma and confusion are compounded by his own problems, of marriage and loneliness.

I don't think Denker has trivialised a serious topic like heart transplant. He has merely woven a human interest story around it. The Gift of Life is not to be compared with the medical thrillers of, say, Robin Cook. It's just a nice, well-written novel.

Henry Denker, who died in 2012 at the age of 99, wrote Broadway plays, radio scripts, television movies, and nearly forty novels. He wrote about ordinary people like boxers, doctors, lawyers, and movie people. The New York Times paid him a fine tribute.

The Odd Fellows Society by C.G. Barrett, 2015

Opening line: "There was no point in screaming. Philip Cannon was a dead man."

C.G. Barrett, publisher of a Tampa newsmagazine, World of Westchase, has introduced me to his new mystery novel The Odd Fellows Society released last December.

The book has been named a Top Book Pick and given a 5-star review by IndieReader, which specialises in small and independent publishers.

Synopsis

"Santiago Torres, the Jesuit headmaster of a Washington, D.C. high school, knows two truths. First, historian Jasper Willoughs, his closest friend, didn’t toss himself off a dormitory roof. Second, a Georgetown University secret society — a running joke on campus — has blood on its hands. When Torres’s pursuit of the truth triggers a bizarre and deadly scavenger hunt, its clues, scratched out on parchment by his dead friend, lead Santi to risk everything he holds sacred: his job, his life, even the woman he secretly loves."

The thriller explores America's national preoccupation with race and will have readers looking at the US capital, and its monuments’ secrets, in a whole different shade of black and white.

A native of Northeast Pennsylvania, Barrett’s popular novels have included both young adult and adult fiction in the genres of fantasy and mystery. His humour writing about life as a parent has appeared in over a dozen parenting magazines throughout the United States. He lives with his wife, his three daughters, and his two Shetland Sheepdogs in Tampa, Florida.

Readers can learn more about his books at www.cgbarrett.com.

Top Gun 2

Three decades later, a sequel to the universally popular film Top Gun is ready for takeoff. A curtain raiser for Overlooked Films, Audio and Video at Todd Mason's blog Sweet Freedom.

© Paramount Pictures

The news is more or less confirmed. There will likely be a Top Gun 2, after all. Last week, Jerry Bruckheimer, who co-produced Top Gun in 1986, told Wired he was teaming up with Tom "Maverick" Cruise and David Ellison for a possible sequel. Ellison's Skydance Productions is developing the film. So far, Val Kilmer, who plays his rival in the original, is on board. There have been no further disclosures.

"There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick. It is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is, I don’t think, what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon," Ellison told Wired in what I thought was a confusing statement. One Maverick too many, perhaps.

The timing couldn't have been better, as Tony Scott's Top Gun completes three decades this May, though it is not known when the sequel will be released.

Apart from Maverick's flying acrobatics in the sky, I remember Top Gun for the adrenaline-pumping and exaggerated masculinity of its fighter pilots and the award-winning song Take My Breath Away, written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock and performed by Berlin, and Top Gun Anthem, the instrumental rock-song composed by Harold Faltermeyer, of Beverly Hills Cop fame.

Sequels rarely live up to their originals. I hope this one does. Tom Cruise was only 24 when he played the reckless US Naval Aviator the first time. He is 54 now and I hope not too old for the Tomcat cockpit.

The Case of the Invisible Circle by Erle Stanley Gardner, 1956

Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

Any veteran investigator will tell you that it's very easy to overlook the most significant clue in a murder case. 

Erle Stanley Gardner wrote The Case of the Invisible Circle for the July 1956 issue of Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine. It is one of dozens of short stories and novelettes he published over more than four decades. These do not include the series of novels and stories based on his principal character, Perry Mason, and lesser-known protagonists like Cool and Lam, Doug Selby, Terry Clane, and Gramps Wiggins.

The Case of the Invisible Circle differs from his trademark mysteries in that there is a crime that is so perplexing as to baffle the police and pathologists.

The first-person narrator of the story, who I assume is the writer himself, is sent by the city editor of the Denver Post to the capital of Colorado — to investigate and report on the brutal rape and murder of a beautiful college girl, whose body is discovered at the bottom of a snow-covered ravine. He is accompanied by Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, a famous medico-legal specialist and author with a keen eye for homicide cases.

District attorney Hatfield Chilson, who is described as “a shrewd lawyer, a competent investigator and, above all, a fair man,” is in charge of the case. Our storyteller and Dr. Snyder assist him in getting to the bottom of the sex crime that has eluded police officers, forensics experts, and pathologists.

The challenging mystery is eventually solved after the men discover a vital clue in one of the photographs — a circle on the naked right hip of the girl — that everyone had missed the first time.

There is not a single dialogue in the story. The narrative is plain but engaging. I think Gardner deliberately wrote it that way. Instead, he offers the reader a structured investigation and police procedural that helps to nail the murderer in the end.

Interestingly, the author makes a strong case for the high character of district attorneys and lawyers in the country. He wants the public to know what these people are capable of and how they measure up to their responsibilities while investigating homicide cases.

If you are a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner, you will enjoy this story.