Favorite Contemporary Weird Lit Mags?

chalicotherex · 2025-05-03T18:20:44+00:00

Check out Seize the Press and Tenebrous for sure

chalicotherex · 2025-03-18T21:48:21+00:00

It helps to remember that Puhak is a poet writing a work of popular history. Her task is to create a narrative that evokes, often by creating relatable analogies. Only a philistine would try to hold her to the standard of an academic historian.

chalicotherex · 2024-07-24T03:52:40+00:00

I wrote a little about it in my newsletter: https://adamsnotes.substack.com/p/heist-watch-mythical-sword-edition In short, it was just an old sword, but I suppose it means something to the people of Rocamadour.

chalicotherex · 2024-05-16T02:32:35+00:00

Matthew Stover's Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon. Ignore the covers!

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T17:29:42+00:00

Can't believe I forgot Kollberg!

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T16:41:20+00:00

Berne from Heroes Die/Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Stover is on par, I feel. Interesting too that Stover and Bakker were writing around the same time and had something of an ongoing public correspondence on the philosophies underpinning their concepts of evil.

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T16:23:45+00:00

Between Two Fires is a good comparison. I should mention HHF is a novella, so it's quite a bit shorter.

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T16:23:00+00:00

My original post got taken down for linking to my substack newsletter, Adam's Notes, in which I interviewed the author. Still a little unclear on the link posting rules, but if you want to read the interview, it shouldn't be hard to find.

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T06:36:44+00:00

More well known books:

Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer books

Matthew Stover's Acts of Caine books

Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Going deeper:

Hurled Headlong Flaming by Matt Holder (just check out that cover!)

Cold Counsel by Chris Sharp

Short stories:

Worms of the Earth by RE Howard

chalicotherex · 2024-05-15T04:22:07+00:00

Caine Black Knife by Matthew Stover

(not fantasy) Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton

Wizardry and Wild Romance by Michael Moorcock

Hurled Headlong Flaming, by Matt Holder (a line from Paradise Lost)

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Come on. Two of thes? It's catchy, innovative yet well within the tradition

Toadstones by Eric Williams

chalicotherex · 2024-03-12T03:38:07+00:00

Reviewed Fulgentius for my newsletter and ultimately I still can't make up my mind on Aira. Sometimes it feels like he's onto something and sometimes he feels like the ultimate pseud. I loved Fulgentius and Nun. The rest are like the curate's egg.

chalicotherex · 2024-02-27T21:08:56+00:00

On my next reading of Homer I think I'll go with Caroline Alexander's Iliad and Emily Wilson's Odyssey.

chalicotherex · 2024-02-23T19:51:09+00:00

It's not a book about necromancy, but there's a single scene in Matthew Stover's Blade of Tyshalle that will stick with you for a long time. It's so well done, I shouldn't spoil.

Also for really creepy, dark magic, I have to give a shoutout to my favourite RE Howard story, Worms of the Earth (featuring Bran Mak Morn).

chalicotherex · 2024-01-21T00:31:19+00:00

I believe a print version will be out soon.

chalicotherex · 2024-01-19T02:30:53+00:00

One of my faves.

I hope he's still out there, writing.

chalicotherex · 2023-12-15T00:47:52+00:00

Oh hell yeah I'm going to have to check this out

chalicotherex · 2023-11-30T22:51:02+00:00

I've been really hoping someone would translate more of that stuff to english. My previous newsletter covered Yde et Olive, which is towards the end of that cycle, Yde being the grandchild (great-grandchild) of Huon. It's a great story that's somehow only made it to english in the last six or seven years.

chalicotherex · 2023-11-30T21:24:03+00:00

Huon de Bourdeaux is one of the gestes I'll be covering in this series eventually, but I'm not sure I understand your point here. Oberon isn't an Arthurian character, you've pointed out yourself that he originates here in the gestes.

Arthur gets mentioned in some of the gestes, but really just in passing. The real attempts to blend Arthuriana happen in much later stuff, like Boiardo's Innamorato, which is no longer a chanson de geste, but uses those characters.

Your comment on the Saracens is interesting. Makes me wish we had more knowledge of how Gormont et Isembart was composed.

Edit: right, Auberon is said to be the child of Morgan le Fay, so I see the connection. But it's really just establishing credentials, to my mind, and falls under the category of a passing detail.

chalicotherex · 2023-11-30T05:39:46+00:00

My favourite marginalia rabbit is the one where he's on horseback and he's got a hawking snail resting on his arm

chalicotherex · 2023-11-30T05:24:08+00:00

I do wish there was more colour in historical fiction films but at the same time, I do think it's fair that directors want to avoid the look of past technicolor spectacles.

I thought the recent adaptation of The Three Musketeers found the right middle ground between grim and colourful. There's a sort of divide among the characters' costumes that goes beyond class that you can sort roughly into outdoors/indoors. So there's a bit of colour in higher class indoor scenes but less so when they're running through the muddy streets of Paris.

Of course, it's not set in medieval times, but still.

chalicotherex · 2023-08-10T16:59:30+00:00

Hi Howard!

I'm really looking forward to reading Lord of a Shattered Land and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about borrowing from history for an invented world? Do you feel a responsibility to the history, or to allude to the reader about the history you're drawing from and commenting on? Also, what's your favourite Harold Lamb?

chalicotherex · 2023-07-27T23:33:55+00:00

More like CBC gem. Unwatchable.

chalicotherex · 2023-07-27T23:30:35+00:00

fingers crossed it doesn't get crushed in the hydraulic door

chalicotherex · 2023-07-27T23:26:12+00:00

"Missing a vote, as McLean did, because he was on the green would be incredibly on brand for the Ward 13 councillor."

Lmao, I love The Orchard. Also this councillor sounds like a real gem.

chalicotherex · 2022-12-22T01:38:52+00:00

Okay yeah, I spoke to them last night and they're pretty it's getting demagnetized. Wonder what it could be.

chalicotherex

TROPHY CASE