'The Flame Knife' - Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp

Well, I was going to try and break things up a little bit but if I'm being absolutely honest, 'The Flame Knife' looked like another quick read that would give me time to get in a couple of extra games of 'Frozen Free Fall' before I got to work. I've been filling up my phone with 'Frozen' stuff just recently, Hope is really into it (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it), and some of the apps I've found are a real testament to just how far developers will go to jam an idea into a concept. I can just about get my head around the whole 'look after baby Ana and Elsa' app (cos' they were babies once upon a time) but the 'stitch up the large gash on Ana's face' app…? Nope, me neither. Hope loves it though, she's bloodthirsty like that…

But, 'The Flame Knife'…

 

A little digging (thanks 'Conan Wiki'!) revealed that 'The Flame Knife' was originally an El Borak tale that De Camp reworked (extensively too) into a 'new' Howard story for publication in 1955. This feels more than a little harsh to me; poor El Borak and poor everyone else who thought that they were getting a brand new tale. It's not as if the tale was worked from a fragment either, it's a re-jigging of something that was already doing the rounds. Like I said, poor El Borak… I couldn't help but have this at the back of my mind while I was reading 'The Flame Knife' which is a bit of a shame because it's a very entertaining read.

Now leader of a group of kozaki, Conan, on the run from the displeased king of Iranistan, finds himself in the demon-infested mountain ranges of Drujistan where he discovers a hidden city and the secrets of the cultish Hidden Ones. 

The danger of following one 'Conan' review with another 'Conan' review is that you don't really leave yourself with room to say anything new; especially when the second tale is written by the same author who wrote the first one. You don't have to feel sorry for me or anything but, well… Maybe feel a little bit sorry for me. It's a tough line to walk though. The length of 'The Flame Knife' gives De Camp more room to explore the world of Conan and the reader gets to follow Conan through some gloriously bleak desert landscapes as a result. Or is it El Borak? I'll stop with that now…

Whoever and whatever, 'The Flame Knife' has all the hallmarks of a classic Conan tale; more than likely because Howard's hand is more evident in the proceedings rather than 'just being the muse' as he was for 'Black Tears'. All the usual ingredients are there (I loved the bit with the obligatory huge monster that Conan has to defeat) but there just seems to be more zest and energy to the proceedings. As it happened, I ended up giving 'Frozen Free Fall' a miss so I could finish reading 'The Flame Knife' and that says it all really (given that my attention span has shrunk to the size of my phone screen). 'The Flame Knife' can be found in 'Conan the Wanderer'. 

'Doctor Who And The Image Of The Fendhal' - Terrance Dicks (Target)

 If there is anything that looks more dated than old Doctor Who cover art I have yet to see it...  :o)

A sonic time scan draws the TARDIS to the Fetch Priory on Earth. There, the Doctor and Leela discover an impossibly old human skull that is the key to a nightmare from the Time Lords’ past.

A murderous monster stalks the priory grounds; and within, someone is intent on unleashing a malevolent creature that feeds on death itself... 

I think this is likely to be the last 'Doctor Who' book (well, Target novelisation) spoken about here for a very long time. I've done enough comfort reading around Doctor Who anyway and there's also the inescapable fact that the more of these books I talk about, the less I have to say. They all follow the same lines structurally and thematically which doesn't leave you a lot else to talk about. One day, I'm considering copying an old review (just swapping the title for something different) and seeing if anyone notices… ;o)

But in the meantime, 'The Image of the Fendhal'. If 'The Curse of Fenric' was the story that scared me as a teenager then 'The Image of the Fendhal' is very much the book that scared the life out of me as a child. The opening scenes, which cut between an experiment that takes an unexpected turn and the resulting death of a hitch hiker build up tension very nicely to a well placed climactic scene which pushes you headlong into the rest of the plot. 

'The Image of the Fendhal' is another Doctor Who story simply told and very formulaic. You certainly get what you pay for here (in this case, a penny via Amazon New and Used…) Making up for this though is a really dark undertone of horror that props the story up. When even the Doctor is scared of the Fendhal you know that they are an enemy who will take some defeating. And you really feel the rising terror in the characters when they find their legs refusing to move as the Fendhaleen bears down on them… It's moments like this that make the story worth reading and I wouldn't mind tracking down the DVD to see how the story comes across on screen. 'The Image of the Fendhal' is a simple tale but also a dark one that taps into Doctor Who in a way that I don't normally find with the TV show. Are all Fourth Doctor stories like this (I seem to remember reading a few like this as a kid)?

I'm not sure I'll be in a mad hurry to re-read 'The Image of the Fendhal' (nostalgia will only take you so far after all) but it was fun while it lasted and still had the capacity to make the hairs on my arms stand up. Can't ask for a lot more than that really.

‘The Princess and the Queen’ – George R.R. Martin

A brief update from yesterday, I didn't get the job after all. Oh well, next time is the charm :o)

‘The Princess and the Queen’ can be found in the GRRM & Gardner Dozois collection ‘Dangerous Women’ and follows on from the events of ‘The Rogue Prince’ (which was reviewed over Here). Proof then that not getting round to reading things when they are published can actually work out very well indeed. Go me :o)

While I attempt to clear the decks for a big ol’ ‘ASOIAF’ re-read (looking very unlikely right now but stranger things have happened) it’s been nice to catch up on the world of Westeros by reading some of the shorter pieces. ‘The Princess and the Queen’ is one of the longer shorter pieces, weighing in at around eighty pages long which makes it a novella according to the front of the book. It recounts a Targaryen war of succession, a couple of hundred years before 'ASOIAF' and GRRM being GRRM, the story actually feels like it’s four or five times that many pages (at least); not only is there a lot happening but it’s all carried by a cast so long that (yet again) I developed a small headache, behind my left eye, trying to keep track of who was who. They pretty much all die by the end which made the headache even less worthwhile, I should have expected it really.

Find your way past the overpoweringly large cast though and ‘The Princess and the Queen’ becomes a treat of a read for fans who are starting to get itchy feet about ‘The Winds of Winter’. It has everything to it that the main series has, just condensed into a much smaller space. This can work for and against the plot; you don’t get much in the way of character development, for example, but they all seem to do a lot more. There isn’t that constant politicking (which you may or may not appreciate) but the story itself moves along at a brisk pace which, for me, really made up for it. Basically, have a think about what you like best about ‘ASOIAF’ and then be aware that there may not be enough room in ‘The Princess and the Queen’ for GRRM to go with it like he normally would. There is still a lot to get out of it though (the sheer scale of events depicted in such a short space is astonishing), not least of which is full on dragon warfare across Westeros.

To go from a world where there are only three half grown dragons to a world where the Dragon Pit in Kings Landing is full… It’s an amazing experience, especially when the dragons on both sides go at it in the skies above Westeros. We all knew that GRRM could write a mean battle sequence but what he does with the dragon fights is something else; you really get a feel for the brute impact of battles fought with tooth, claw and fire. GRRM doesn’t treat his dragons any better than his human characters; big players die when you least expect it and by the end of the tale you’re in no doubt that the ‘Dance of Dragons’ marks the passing of an age.

Definitely one for fans then but ‘The Princess and the Queen’ also feels like a good jumping on point for anyone who just watches ‘Game of Thrones’ and wants to know what GRRMs writing is like without getting into a multi-volume epic. Of course, that would currently mean you buying a massive anthology but, you know what I mean… ;o)