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OtherRealms Issue 19 Part 05
Electronic OtherRealms #19
Winter, 1987
Part 5
Scattered Gold
Charles de Lint
Copyright 1987 by Charles de Lint
Installment 2:
In which we travel a little further afield
Reviewed in this issue:
Dover Beach
by Richard Bowker
[**]
Bones of the Moon
by Jonathon Carroll
[****]
Weaveworld
by Clive Barker
[***]
Slob
by Rex Miller
[***]
Mantis
by K.W. Jeter
[***+]
The Lost Boys
by Craig Shaw Gardner
[**+]
The Sensitives
by Herbert Burkholz
[***]
Crow's Parliament
by Jack Curtis
[***]
Sepulchre
by James Herbert
[***]
The Hamlet Trap
by Kate Wilhelm
[***+]
A Man Rides Through
by Stephen R. Donaldson
[***+]
The Forge of God
by Greg Bear
[***]
A Book Dragon
by Donn Kushner
[****]
Postcards from the Edge
by Carrie Fisher
[****]
It was Lord Dunsany who first coined the phrase "Beyond the Fields we
know," referring to the lands of Faerie that lie beyond the fields of
men. We, however, reading as we do so much fantasy and SF, might
consider ourselves to already be in the lands of Faerie, so when I
mention that we'll be travelling further afield in this column's
subtitle, I mean to take us into some unfamiliar lands, yes, but it'll
be more like journeying from Faerie back to more mundane fields to see
how some out-of-genre writers are handling themes which we're already
quite familiar.
Last issue I promised a review of two books by Richard Bowker.
Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the special order I made on
Malborough Street published by Doubleday, so all I can cover here is
the Spectra release which I do have on hand.
Dover Beach [Bantam/Spectra, October, 1987, 272pp, $3.95, 0-553-
26810-4] is a private eye novel set in post-holocaust Boston. In a
world where basic survival takes up most people's concerns, would be PI
Wally Sands first case begins when he's hired by a clone to find the
prominent biochemist from whom he was cloned.
The premise is good, the first person narrative smooth, but there's a
certain lackadaisical quality to the plot that makes it plod. There are
lots of great touches -- like the bookseller who collects
post-holocaust novels, or the image of two young teenagers who have
known nothing but pain, finding a moment's peace dancing cheek to cheek
in an abandoned bomb shelter --- but somehow the book never quite
clicked for me.
One of the great strength's of Jonathon Carroll's two earlier books --
The Land of Laughs (Viking, 1980) and Voice of Our Shadow (Viking,
1983) -- is his own particular, and peculiar, juxtapositioning of the
Fantasy element with the real world. The fantastic slides into the here
and now, starling in its originality, yet the mesh is perfectly apt.
Unfortunately he doesn't quite pull that off in Bones of the Moon
[Century Fantasy & SF, 1987, 216pp, #9.95, 0-7126-1504-0].
Cullen James has serial dreams of an otherworld named Rondua where
events, apparently not connected to her life in the waking world,
eventually prove to be very relevant. The real world sequences are
wonderful, showing Carroll's other strengths: he's a superb stylist and
his characters live beyond the page the moment they're introduced.
Cullen and her husband Danny, the wonderfully eccentric Eliot
Kilbertus, the intense film director Weber Gregston, Alvin Williams the
murderer who Cullen calls "the Axe Boy" ... they're brought to life
with sure deft strokes.
But in Rondua....
Carroll's portrayal of the otherworldly dreamland balances between
absurdism and surrealism on the one hand, and bits that are very
effective on the other. Where the fantastic elements bleed into the
real world, they work wonderfully, but taken as a whole in the sections
where Cullen is on her quest for the Bones of the Moon in Rondua, they
don't always ring quite true.
In a lesser writer's hands, this could have easily flawed the entire
book. But coming from Carroll, with all the strengths of his writing,
I was captivated enough to put those slight nags at the absurdities of
Rondua aside and read on. And I can still wholeheartedly recommend the
book to any lover of contemporary Fantasy. Because even lesser Carroll
is still better than so much else that's out there on the stands today.
This, by the way, is the English edition of the book that I'm
reviewing. You can probably get it through an importer, or you could
wait for the Arbor House edition which is due out next spring.
Ever since the publication of the first three volumes of Clive Barker's
Books of Blood (Sphere, 1984) which garnered the British author the now
famous quote from Stephen King -- "I have seen the future of horror and
his name is Clive Barker"-- Barker's star has been on the rise. Not
solely from that quote, but the quote didn't hurt.
Barker set the horror genre on its ear, basically forwarding the
premise that there are, and should be, no limits to what one writers.
Following his own advice, Barker's Books of Blood are full of graphic
depictions of violence, sex, and gross horrors. But present though
those elements are, they are not the sole reason that the work exists,
and that's what makes the difference between Barker and those other
writers who just go for the "gross-out."
"It's a real problem," he has said, "if you'd doing graphic work of one
kind or another, that there's always going to be a segment of the
audience who will read, or view it, for just that reason. They don't
see beyond what's underpinning that violence."
What Barker did for the genre was to open it up -- to allow that
anything was possible in a creative work, so long as it had a viable
reason for existing that was beyond mere shock value. He continued this
thematic thrust of breaking new ground with a second three volumes of
Books of Blood (Sphere, 1985) and then his first novel, The Damnation
Game (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985).
By this time Barker was a publishing phenomenon in England and genre
readers in North America were eagerly anticipating his debug here. In
England, the six paperback collections of Books of Blood were reissued
in hardcover editions, complete with cover art by Barker himself, as
well as in deluxe boxed editions that are now worth hundreds of
dollars. A playwright before he began writing fiction, he's now a
screenwriter and film director as well, with theater's currently
showing his newest film -- based on his novella "The Hellbound Heart"
(from Night Visions 3, Dark Harvest, 1986).
With all this behind him, anticipation of the publication of his new
novel Weaveworld [Collins, October, 1987, 732pp; Cdn $24.95,
0-00-223271-5] has been running high.
Simply put, it's an epic contemporary fantasy mostly set in Barker's
hometown of Liverpool. To hide from the Scourge, an enemy bent on
genocide, a race of magical beings known as the Seerkind have woven
their entire world -- their arts, philosophy, flora and fauna, and
themselves -- into a carpet, the Weaveworld of the title. Considering
themselves better than mankind, the Seerkind refer to humans as
Cuckoos; our work as the Kingdom of the Cuckoos.
When the book opens, the two human protagonists are looking for the
carpet at the same time as others are -- the later set upon the
destruction of the Weaveworld and its denizens by delivering them to
the Scourge.
Where the book fails is that it breaks no new ground. Barker doesn't do
for contemporary fantasy what he did for horror. All the elements of
Weaveworld -- questing, hidden magical world, human protagonists,
magical beings, evil antagonist -- are the staples of fantasy. We've
seen them all before, in other guises.
However, there's a delightful description of conceptual reality when
the lack of magic in our world is explained. "We realized that your
kind like to make laws," one of the Seerkind tells a Cuckoo character.
"Like to decree what's what, and whether it's good or not. And the
world, being a loving thing, and not wishing to disappoint you or
distress you, indulges you. Behaves as though your doctrines are in
some way absolute."
Barker's previous strengths and weaknesses are both present. The plot
is a rambling affair, the characters are distanced from the reader and
often have confusing motivations, and there is some very sloppy
writing. On the plus side, there are also sections that feature some
Barker's best prose to date. The characters, particularly the
protagonists, are more accessible than those in Barker's earlier work,
and there's a wild sense of imagination let loose in these pages that
often carries the book ahead all on its own, particularly in his
physical descriptions of the evil characters and their minions.
It might be that Barker has taken on too many careers all at once --
novelist, film director, playwright and artist. Any one of these would
be a full occupation for someone else. Trying to juggle them all must
be a very difficult task.
Yet if Barker isn't breaking new ground here, he's at least not losing
ground either. Weaveworld's disappointments are due more to the high
expectations readers will have because of the startling originality of
his earlier work, rather than particular weaknesses in this novel.
coming from another author, this might well have been considered a tour
de force. From Barker, it's merely marking time.
For entertaining as it is in parts, Weaveworld appears to be more of a
bridge between Barker's earlier work and what is still to come, rather
than a book that will make us sit up and take note of it now.
Imagine a monstrosity of a man -- five hundred pounds of serial killer
that you can smell a half block away. He's been trained by the
government. He's a Vietnam vet and an ex-con. He has a presentient
ability to sense people, even in the utter dark. And he loves to kill.
Against him only one man, Special Agent Jack Eichord, an expert in
serial killings, has a true inkling just how much of a horror the killer
is, and he pursues him with a relentless need to see him brought down.
If it sounds like Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (Putnam, 1981; made into
the film Manhunter a couple of years ago), then you're right. Slob
[Signet, November, 1987, 301pp, $3.95] does tread some of the same
ground, but it is by no means a simple rehash.
There are flashes of real brilliance in this, Rex Miller's first
novel -- scenes so chilling, so repugnant, so seamlessly portrayed in
their intensity that they can't help but tear a reaction from the
reader. Its contemporary flash flickers like a music video and its
portrayal of a serial killer makes the true case histories in a book
like Elliot Leyton's Hunting Humans (McClelland and Stewart, 1986) seem
tame by comparison, though one should never forget that Slob is only
fiction, while Ted Bundy and his like were really out there. Are still
out there.
But unfortunately, for all of hits high points, the book has some real
flaws as well. Most of these are probably due to Miller's need to grow
as a writer. He tells more often than he shows with long scenes of
authorial exposition. He begins with an effective juxtapositioning of
past and present tense scenes, but they begin to bleed into each other
at times, killing their effect. And sometimes his prose simply gets out
of control, stumbling into the machine gun ramblings when it should be
lean and tight.
Still it's an ambitious novel, with some astonishing moments and real
muscle. Not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but the darkness is out there
and sometimes it's good to be reminded of it when we start feeling too cozy.
Mantis [Tor, October, 1987, 281pp, $3.95, 0-812-52009] is a twisted
book. Coming from the author of Dr. Adder (Bluejay) it's perhaps not
all that surprising, but this book really gets down into the ugly parts
of the human psyche. that isn't to say that it's not worth reading -- this
is very well done portrayal of the dissolution of a man's sanity -- but
I'm giving you fair warning, it could leave you feeling a little queasy.
What's really interesting about mantis are the continual surprises that
Jeter throws at the reader -- but this also makes the book difficult to
talk about without spoiling some of those surprises.
So let me say this: Mantis is about a man who lives on the edge of the
Wedge -- a red light district where the cheap bars exist and the
hookers ply their trade. He's a commercial artist who has a very
strange relationship with a man named Michael who haunts the Wedge, a
man who gives certain women what he believes they want -- pain, and a
close brush with death. It's not until Michael and the protagonist meet
Rae -- a woman as obsessed as Michael -- that things start to get
really out of hand.
Jeter keeps the tension razor tight and, as I mentioned above, he keeps
throwing curve balls, one after the other, each of them unexpected,
each of them changing the reader's understanding of all that went
before in the narrative. This is strong stuff. I haven't seen a
fictional exploration of pain this intense since Whitley Streiber's
"Pain" (Cutting Edge, Doubleday, 1986). Both are unpleasant pieces, but
where Streiber wallows in his material, trying to convince us that pain
can lead us to a kind of redemption, Jeter is exploring a disturbed
psyche, giving lots of intense characterization, but not trying to
preach, to convince us of anything. Except that people like this
really do exist. And that they can offer up reasoned explanations for
the most despicable of actions.
Scary Stuff indeed.
I don't normally read, or review, movie novelizations, but I like the
idea of teenage vampire gangs and having read and enjoyed one of
Gardner's light high Fantasies -- A Malady of Magicks (Ace, 1986) -- I
was curious to see what he could do with this contemporary subject
matter. Well, The Lost Boys [Berkley, August, 1987, 220pp, $3.50,
0-425-10044-8] ain't high art, but it's entertaining.
Michael and his younger brother Sam move to Santa Carla, California,
with their recently divorced mother where Michael gets caught up with a
biker gang called the Lost Boys and Sam meets a couple of weird comic
book fans who consider themselves to be "vampire hunters." Naturally,
in the best tradition of this tongue-in-cheek kind of story, there are
vampires and both brothers get caught up with them very quickly on.
Gardner's prose isn't exactly inspired, but it moves nicely, his
characters are well sketched out, and he keeps the light story moving
ahead at a good pace, plus there are lots of good one-lines of
dialogue. In other words, it's a light read, suitable for a night when
there's nothing on the tube, but you don't feel like starting some new
heavy-handed opus and just want to have some fun.
Taken on those terms, The Lost Boys is highly successful -- Gardner
delivers the goods.
One in a million -- these are the "sensitives," people with a gift of
sensitivity to the thoughts of other people that's almost like
telepathy. They are usually found in asylums or homes for the
retarded, often abused as children or considered mad because of their
inability to deal with the bewildering influx of other peoples'
thoughts that fill their head.
That's the way it's remained for ages until the world's intelligence
services learn about them. Tracking them down, they train these sensitives
in the use of their gifts, letting them live the high life between
missions in which their powers can make all the difference between a
successful negotiation and failure. The down side is that not one of
the sensitives lives past the age of thirty-two, because the Rauschner's
Syndrome that gives them their gift also shortens their lifespan.
That's the background to Burkholz's new novel, The Sensitives [Atheneum,
1987, 278pp, 0-689-11842-2] against which he plays out a relationship
between American sensitive Ben Slade and his KGB counterpart Nadia
Petrovia. Does this sounds like a near future SF novel? Of course it
does. But it's marketed as a standard thriller -- another case of SF
themes unobtrusively finding its way into the mainstream.
The writing style has all the ear marks of a thriller: one man against
the many, lots of plots and counter-pots, lean fast-paced writing. The
settings range from European casinos to a Gypsy carnival. The
intriguing thing about Burkholz's book, however, is that the SF aspects
of it -- for all that we've seen telepathic agents innumerable times in
the field -- maintains a sense of freshness.
Burkholz isn't hampered by the SF traditions. The idea's exciting to him
and that excitement is conveyed to his readers -- even the hardened SF
reader -- so that they're carried along with his enthusiasm for the material.
Crow's Parliament, a debut novel by West Country author Jack Curtis
[Bantam Press, 1987, 329pp, #10.95, 0593-012151] is another case of a
mainstream thriller masking some SF/Fantasy elements. Again a form of
telepathy is involved, though this time on a much smaller scale than in
Burkholz's novel.
Simon Guerney specializes in the rescue of international kidnap
victims. When he's called in on his latest case -- the abduction of a
wealthy man's teenage son -- it soon involves in him a complex net of
international intrigues. complicating this is the strange bond Guerney
comes to realize exists between himself and the kidnap victim -- a form
of telepathic communication that comes in dreams as the boy sends
Guerney information on his abductors and where he's being held.
Again there are a number of the formula aspects of an international
thriller present -- the one man against many, betrayals, complex
plotting. In Curtis's case, what makes the book work so well is the
strength of his prose. Oddly for a thriller, it literally singes in
place -- evocative, moody -- without ever letting go of that lean
tension so necessary for this kind of a book.
It makes for a fine first novel, and an intelligent entertainment for
the discerning reader.
While delving into some of the same material explored in the Burkholz
and Curtis titles discussed above, James Herbert comes at it from a
different direction again. Known primarily as a horror writer -- of the
grisly school of horror -- Herbert has begun to present a positive
world view, rather than a bleak one, with this fiction. His recent Moon
(New English Library, 1985) and The Magic Cottage (Hodder & Stoughton,
1986) bear this out.
Sepulchre [Hodder & Stoughton, 1987, 316pp, Cdn $25.95, 0-340- 39472-2]
doesn't so much continue this trend as present a blend of his old
grisly style with the new more positive outlook that he's begun to
experiment with.
Liam Halloran is an operative of Achilles Shield, a security
organization dealing with the solving and prevention of international
kidnapping. their newest client is the Magma Corporation who wants
their resident mystic Felix Kline protected. Kline's gift is a form of
precognition that allows Magma to stay ahead of its competitors in the
field of mineral resources.
What Halloran discovers, however, is that Kline is not so much a gifted
individual as the recipient of power from an ancient Summerian cult.
The use of this power has a price, one that Halloran begins to learn of
firsthand as he begins the task of guarding the reclusive Kline at a
haunted country estate.
While this book has many of the elements of a spy thriller, its true
flavor remains rooted in the horror field, creating an odd, but
satisfying mix of genres. And if it hasn't Burkholz's freshness, nor
Curtis's evocative prose, it's still an ambitious book for a writer who
could have merely continued to churn out his bestselling horror novels,
but prefers instead to stretch himself as a craftsman should with each
now project.
Speaking of the freshness that an author of one genre can offer to
another, perhaps it's time to see what SF author Kate Wilhelm does for
the mystery field with her new novel The Hamlet Trap [St. Martin's,
1987, 234pp, $15.95, 0-312-94000-9].
The detectives -- ex-NYPD cop Charlie Mieklejohn and his wife,
psychologist Constance Liedl -- have appeared at least once before, in
the excellent novella "The Gorgon Field" (Asimov's, August, 1985). In
their first book-length appearance, they don't appear on stage until
some eighty pages into the story.
Now this is something different. Mysteries usually start with the crime
in the first chapter (or the search for the missing person, object,
etc.) and are often told in first person as well. What Wilhelm has done
is started with the characters, well before the crime, and lets us get
to know them very well, before having the crime occur and bringing in
the detectives.
In fact, the detectives, unlike those in most mysteries, remain cyphers
to some degree -- at least in comparison to the rest of the cast who
are all fully rounded. What this lets the reader do is concentrate on
knowing them, understanding them, and thus making their own conclusions
about the mystery.
You'll notice I'm not saying much about the plot. There's a good reason
for this -- to tell too much will spoil the story -- just as the blurb
did for me. Don't read it,; just read the book. The prose is excellent,
the setting of a small Oregon town's repertoire theater is brought vividly
to life, the mystery's a real puzzler, and the characters are wonderful.
For the past couple of years, Stephen R. Donaldson has temporarily put
aside his popular series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the
Unbeliever to give us his two volume work Mordant's Need. Volume one,
The Mirror of her Dreams (Del Rey, 1986) introduced us to Terisa
Morgan, who was taken from her apartment in New York City to the
magical land of Mordant by the apprentice Imager Geraden
In Mordant, magicians work with mirrors and are called Imagers.
Donaldson has obviously taken some care in developing his system of
magic, providing not only detailed workings of and limitations on the
Imagers and their mirrors, but also raising the philosophical concern
as to the reality of what the Imagers bring out of their mirrors.Are
these beings and objects created by the Imager, or do they have an
independent existence in their own world?
When Geraden brings Terisa back, claiming her to be the champion he was
sent to find, the Congery, or conclave of Imagers, are more divided on
the question of her existence. It doesn't help that Terisa claims to
have no importance in her own world (she doesn't), nor does she believe
it likely that she has any kind of magical power in Mordant.
To complicate matters there are a number of political divisions in Mordant
as well, all ready to go to war with one another. The true villain, the
Master Imager Eremis, is perceived to be a heroic figure, so when
things being to go wrong, it is Terisa and Geraden who are blamed.
Volume one ends with Terisa imprisoned and Geraden fled, presumed dead.
Volume two, A Man Rides Through [Del Rey, November, 1987, 656pp,
$19.95, 345-33299-7], opens with the principal castle of Mordant under
siege and continues with the complex plotlines introduced in the first
volume being played out. It moves at a slow pace, but the reader is
rewarded by the obvious care that Donaldson has put into his creation
of Mordant, its surrounding Kingdoms, Imagery, and the large and varied
cast through which he tells his story.
Mordant's need makes a nice change of pace from the dour outlook of the
covenant books, and the main character Terisa, after remaining largely
ineffectual for the first volume, really shines in the second. Moral
choices and loyalty are the keystones to survival here and both are
handled with a richness and depth absent from many of the fantasies
that currently proliferate on the bookstands.
The two books aren't a quick read -- this isn't a movie or television
show translated to the written page -- so the reader looking for a
fast- paced thriller might be disappointed. But for those who can
appreciate a slower pace and expect a little more thought in their
fiction, Donaldson's latest will amply reward them for the time they
spend in its company.
I might as well admit at this point (you're going to find out sooner or
later) that I'm not much enamored with hard Science Fiction. I like the
speculation involved, but most of what I've read (and admittedly it's
been some few years since I've made much of an effort to read any Hard
SF unless it was assigned for review) has been very long on the speculation,
but short on story and especially on character. Not to mention that the
prose often reads like it came straight out of a tech journal.
But of course there are always exceptions -- the odd hard SF writer who
is equally at home with good writing (plot, character and prose) as
they are with the scientific speculation.
Greg Bear's Blood Music (Arbor House, 1985) and Eon (Bluejay, 1985)
come to mind. As does his recent The Forge of God [Tor, September,
1987, 474pp; $17.95, 0-312-93021-6].
A large cast becomes involved with various mysterious happenings.
Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, vanishes. Strange cones with the
look of volcanic origins appear suddenly in Death Valley and Australia.
And then Earth learns that aliens have landed.
This is a fine first contact novel with numerous strengths. I like the
fact that Bear spends time with common folk like you and me, as well as
with experts and political world leaders. He explores both soft and
hard sciences. His prose is straightforward. And best of all there's a
good plot and some fine characterization mixed into the brew.
Part of the reason for the success of all of this might be that Bear is
equally at home with SF or Fantasy and he brings his expertise and
understanding from one genre to the other. His duology The Infinity
Concerto (Berkley, 1984) and The Serpent Mage (Berkley, 1986) stands
head and shoulders above much else in the contemporary fantasy field,
mostly because of Bear's careful extrapolations behind the fantastic
happenings -- an SF strength. but the characterization, and especially
the fantastic sense of wonder, carry over from his Fantasy work to his SF.
In fact, in Bear's prose the lines blur. And that's how it should be.
Pigeon-holing creative endeavors helps only the publisher, retailer and
critic. but if confines the author and reader. So if you're a Fantasy
reader, give one of Bear's SF books a try; if you prefer SF, read one
of his fantasies. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised either way.
In a time when the word Fantasy merely conjures up images of
Tolkienesque clones, its refreshing to come across something like A
Book Dragon [MacMillan, September, 1987, 197pp, Cdn$16.95, 0-7715-9515-8],
proving perhaps that it takes someone from outside the genre to breathe
some new life into it and that just because something is marketed as a
Young Adult book doesn't mean it's just kids' stuff. After all,
Tolkien's books themselves were initially aimed at a YA market.
Donn Kushner is a Canadian author, a professor of microbiology at the
University of Ottawa and a violinist. The latter enthusiasm was
responsible for inspiring his previous book, The Violin-Maker's Gift
which won the 1980 Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for
Children Award.
A Book Dragon follows some five hundred years in the life of a dragon
named Nonesuch who, when he sees how men are taking over the world,
learns to shrink himself. Instead of a hoard of treasure, a dragon's
traditional raison d'tre, he guards an Illuminated Book of Hours.
The story ranges from England in the Middle Ages up to an unnamed
harbor town on the New England coast in contemporary times, describing
quiet joys but it also has its fair share of intrigues and adventure.
What makes the novel so outstanding is Kushner's clear lyric prose and
his ability to write tongue-in-cheek humor while maintaining his
respect for the subject matter.
The novel is illustrated and designed by Nancy Ruth Jackson who
provides her own whimsical touches to the book with tiny archers
shooting page numbers off the page, dragons and birds perching on page
tops and delightful illuminated letters to open each chapter.
Warm and charming, this really is a book for all ages -- aimed at a
Young Adult market, yes, but meant for the child in us all.
Postcards from the Edge's [Simon & Schuster, August, 1987, 223pp,
671-62441-5] connection to the SF/F genre is tenuous as best -- for
that one reader out there who doesn't know, the author played Princess
Leia in the Star Wars trilogy -- but it's such a fine book, never mind
that it's only her first, that I wanted to just mention it in passing.
The plot is simple: it deals with an actress recovering from drug
abuse. But what makes the book so outstanding is Fisher's delightful
wit. The story could have drowned in pathos. Instead, it remains
serious without ever losing its sense of fun. For any reader out there
who senses the absurdities in life, while still willing to take life
seriously.... this book's for you.
Well, it's time to go. Next time we'll be looking at how Raymond Feist
handles contemporary Fantasy, at Michael Bishop's use of Phillip K.
Dick as a character in his new book, and at new novels by Koontz and
King. And that's just for starters.
See you then.
OtherRealms #19
Winter, 1987
Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
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All rights are hereby assigned
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OtherRealms may not be reproduced in any form without written
permission of Chuq Von Rospach.
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republished in any way without the express permission of the author.
OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by:
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