Warriors 3

Yes, I admit it, I am a completist. Despite being largely disappointed by Warriors 1 and 2, I still went ahead and bought Warriors 3, just so I could have the entire set. I'm probably going to wind up getting the anthology tentatively entitled at this stage Dangerous Women, also edited by George R.R Martin and Gardner Dozois, because it will contain a new Dunk and Egg story, although even at this early stage I have the feeling that it's also going to contain some real howlers, as did all 3 paperback volumes of Warriors. A little note about the cover. I know it seems rather odd to give a book called Warriors a hot pink cover. It's actually salmon in reality, but for some reason the pics that are on the internet are all that pink colour. Anyway onto the stories.

This final collection opens with George Martin's by now familiar intro and then we go into Robin Hobb's The Triumph. Hobb is best known for her Farseer and Liveship series. I've read the first Farseer trilogy and the first Liveship Traders trilogy. I'm not all that enamoured by her writing, she starts off very well, but kind of fails to deliver in the final books to me. This story was a definite change of pace. It was set in the Punic Wars and it had echoes of Steven Saylor's The Eagle and the Rabbit from Warriors 1 in that it concerned the Romans and the Carthaginians, although this time the Romans were the slaves and the Carthaginians were the victors. It wasn't a bad story, very violent and brutal, well told. I would have liked to know exactly what the 'dragon' was that brought the Romans undone, but this frustratingly was never explained and that's a hallmark of Hobb, she regularly leaves things unexplained and untied off.

Soldierin' by Joe R. Lansdale was next up. Lansdale writes across genres, including Westerns, and that's what Soldierin' is; a Western story. It's set after the Civil War and concerns the battle against the Apaches. The twist is that the narrator and his closest soldier friend are both former slaves who fought during the Civil War. It's mostly played for laughs and is passable. One irritation for me was that the author chose to use first person narration and therefore a lot of it was written using the slang of the day. I find accents in stories somewhat gimmicky and Soldierin' was no exception.

I've never read Lawrence Block before and if Clean Slate is representative of his work, then I never want to again. The story is called Clean Slate, an alternative title would be How Not To Write A Piece Of Short Fiction. Terrible is being too kind. Firstly the collection is called Warriors, pretty much everyone else who contributed to this collection managed to write a story about someone or something that fit that definition, even Peter S. Beagle's confusing mess Dirae in Warriors 2 fit that brief sort of, but not this abomination. The main character was a serial killer. The story had no real point, it was written confusingly and unrealistically, the dialogue was truly awful and there was no sympathy for any of the characters. Ugh! How this bit of unpleasant dreck even made it into the collection I will never know.

After that pretty nasty experience about the best story from this or any of the other two collections popped up. The Girls from Avenger by Urban Fantasy author Carrie Vaughan. As well as being the author of the successful Kitty Urban Fantasy series Carrie Vaughan is also a regular contributor to George Martin's baby Wild Cards. I haven't previously read any of her work. I can't come at Wild Cards (I tried with the first volume years ago, but just could not get into it) and I don't want to get involved in another Urban Fantasy series at this point. However The Girls from Avenger was great. It's about the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), these criminally unrecognised ladies, while not in combat roles, performed an invaluable service for the US war effort and it has even to this day gone largely unrecognised and unrewarded. The story is about the search by one girl to uncover the truth about the death of a friend. Everything that Clean Slate wasn't, this was. It was well written, it fit the brief of the collection, the dialogue sparkled and was believable and the reader genuinely felt for the characters. Top notch stuff. Carrie Vaughan does have some standalone novels in print, and I may have to look at one of them. She can write.

The Pit by James Rollins was an unusual one. Rollins is a vet by profession when he's not writing, and it showed in this story. It's about a pit bull terrier forced to fight for survival in illegal dog fights. What makes the story so different is that it's told from the dog's point of view. I once saw a film, I think it was called 'It's a Dog's Life' which was similar, but that was made years ago, and this is current day. Dog lovers may find it hard to stomach, because the animals are treated very brutally, but again I felt that was close to reality, and it's likely that in his chosen profession James Rollin has come in contact with some of these dogs. It was let down a little by the ending, which, while happy, was totally unrealistic.

Next up was My Name Is Legion by David Morrell. Morrell would be one of the better credentialled highest selling authors in the collection. He's best known as the author of First Blood, which was the first Sylvester Stallone Rambo film, he also wrote the sequel for the film. I read some of Morrell (the original First Blood, before he rewrote the ending to tie in with the film, and some of his other militaristic fiction), so was comfortable with his style and his interest in military organisations. My Name is Legion is about the French Foreign Legion, so ties in with this. It's well done from a historical view point and he's done his research, however he got a bit too wrapped up in this and didn't leave enough room for character development, which made the actual story component fall a little flat.

As in the previous two volumes the final story was a novella length contribution by one of the collection's heavy hitters. A Lord John Grey story from Diana Gabaldon. I haven't read any Gabaldon and if this one is representative I don't think I will in the future. It's not bad, it's just uninteresting to me anyway. The setting and the main character were of interest and she does relatively good battle scenes, but it was just very blah. I did have to laugh when I read that a peripheral character was called Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The character of James Fraser in her highly successful time travel, historical fiction romance Outlander series is based on one of Doctor Who's early companions; a young Scotsman by the name of Jamie MacCrimmon, and she's also stolen the name of her Brigadier from the long running British sci-fi series. This is the lady who last year ranted very strongly against fan fiction! Pot meet kettle. There may be something to her writing, but this novella didn't really display it.

There was a lot of hype about Warriors when it came out in hardcover form last year, and I have to say that overall it was not justified. About two thirds of the stories were duds by largely unknown authors, some of the better known authors also turned in some pretty uninspiring work. To be blunt this collection would have been unlikely to see the light of day without the name George R.R Martin attached to it as an editor and his contribution. It's basically a grab for money by the publishers and an attempt to cash in on George Martin's current popularity and name.

Warriors 2

Yes, I admit it. I got sucked in. Although I wasn't all that impressed with the quality of most of the fiction in offer in Warriors 1 (the first paperback volume of the massive hardback anthology edited by George R.R Martin and Gardner Dozois; Warriors) I still went ahead and bought Warriors 2, because it did have a few authors I was interested in.

The introduction is the same George R.R Martin introduction from the first volume. The collection did open promisingly with a contribution from Naomi Novik. Naomi Novik is best known for her Temeraire series (think Patrick O'Brien with dragons if it was written by Jane Austen and you'll get the idea), which I have liked from the first book (I'm currently reading the 6th Temeraire book: Tongues of Serpents), she has recently begun to spread her wings (sorry, couldn't resist the dragon metaphor) and write outside of that concept. Seven Years From Home is an Avatarish science fiction tale. It's quite clever and well executed. I find Novik's elegant style very accessible and although she abandons the nineteenth century speech and sensibilities in this it is still unimistakably her. I enjoyed it and would not be adverse to seeing more of this from her.

Peter S. Beagle (best known for his classic The Last Unicorn) provides the second contribution. It's distinguishable for it's style, which is to put it bluntly bizarre. The story is called Dirae and it is to be avoided at all costs. It was remarkably bad and if this is the best Beagle can do then he's fallen a long way in a fairly short period of time.

Ancient Ways by S.M Stirling was a step up. I've read a couple of Stirling's (Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador) and thoroughly enjoyed them both. This particular story is set in his post Change world (all modern technology fails worldwide) and was thoroughly enjoyable, it had likeable, if somewhat stereotypical protagonists and was good old fashioned swashbuckling adventure. Knowledge of the world was not required and it would have worked equally as well as historical adventure. It's prompted me to be put the Change work on my to be read list at some point, and I'd like to see further adventures with the heroes of Ancient Ways if Stirling ever wants to write them.

David Ball is best known for historical fiction. I've never encountered it. This is probably a happy circumstance. There's very little to recommend The Scroll. It's a brutal, blood soaked pointless exercise. Yes, it's probably historically accurate, although I've seen better research and writing. I found myself asking why. I wouldn't be picking up anything with his name on it.

The co editor Gardner Dozois chimes in with Recidivist. Set in a post AI future, where the technology has taken over from the people. In some ways it was a little reminiscent of Syfy's ill fated Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica, but overall it was an excuse for Dozois to take a trip down memory lane and recall things from earlier days. If this is representative of Dozois' work then he's better sticking to editing.

The first time I ever heard of Howard Waldrop was as part of one of GRRM's infamous April Fool's jokes on his Not a Blog. He's best known for short fiction, and he's a regular contributor to Martin's beloved Wild Cards concept. Ninieslando is set in the First World War, it's saving grace is that it's most likely set in an alternate world. Some of his descriptions aren't bad, although I've read better, and if you're going to use British servicemen as your main characters at least do some research to get their slang right and give them believable backgrounds.

The final story was a novella by David Weber called Out of the Dark. Weber is best known for his military SF. I haven't read him because I'm not really a fan of the genre, but judging by this novella he's a pretty good writer. It's about an invasion of Earth by doglike aliens and their surprise when the local populace fight back. It's a well done invasion guerilla resistance piece and it has a horror ending that I didn't see coming. As with the first collection the novella length final story was the best piece in it.

I'll pick up the 3rd book when it comes out, because I'm a completist, but I will remain wary of anything edited by George R.R Martin where he gets to pick the contributors.

Warriors 1

In 2010 a massive anthology called Warriors was released. It was a grab bag of stories loosely themed by being about warriors. The line up of writers was 5 star stuff from Tad Williams to one of the books editors George R.R Martin. I never bought the book at the time, because I find hard covers overpriced and not particularly travel friendly (I do most of my reading on the train to and from work), and I was really only in it for Martin’s contribution.

A couple of weeks ago a paperback of this anthology (note: the stories will be released in 3 separate paperbacks, the collection is simply too large to be released as one single paperback and the publishers will probably wind up making more money by releasing it as 3 books) appeared on the new releases at my local SFF shop, so I snapped it up.

I’m not really a fan of short stories or anthologies, but I am a bit of a fanboy when it comes to George R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and there was an Ice and Fire related story in the first volume of Warriors.

The book begins with an introduction by the man himself; George R.R Martin. He reminisces about growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, and how his love of reading and writing was kindled by browsing through the local corner store’s selection of paperbacks. The paperbacks lived on something called a ‘spinner rack’, and you never quite knew what you were going to get. George likens the selection of stories contained between the covers of Warriors to the selection of books on that spinner rack.

Forever Bound – Joe Haldeman. I’ve never read anything by Joe Haldeman. He’s largely a military SF writer and that’s simply not my thing. This story was set in his Forever World universe and concerned a student drafted into the army due to his aptitude for being able to operate a huge battle machine called a Soldierboy. The story covers some of his basic training and his relationship with a fellow draftee. It lost focus after he met the girl. The story from that point on concerned itself more with the interesting sorts of sex they could have utilising their cerebral implants than anything else. It may have helped if I’d read any of the Forever World books, the story didn’t inspire me to try them, though.

The Eagle and The Rabbit – Steven Saylor. Steven Saylor is a historical novelist whose area of interest is the Roman empire. This story is about the sack of Carthage and the psychological and physical battle between a captured Cartharginian slave and the cruel, brutal Roman slaver that takes him prisoner. A fairly entertaining piece of historical fiction.

And Ministers of Grace – Tad Williams. I like Tad Williams writing. I always have. This is pure space opera about a cybernetically enhanced assassin in a religiously dominated future. It’s very bleak and suffers a little from brevity. Williams is at his best when he can build elaborate, intricate worlds and the constraints of the short story format don’t allow him to do that. I did like the name of the assassin though, Lamentation Kane. He reminded me a little of Jubal Early from the Firefly movie; Serenity.

The King of Norway – Cecelia Holland. I’ve heard and seen the name, but never read her. According to the brief bio at the start of her story she’s a highly respected historical novelist. You wouldn’t know it judging from The King of Norway. It’s a story of Viking raiders, it’s largely one confusing blood soaked battle scene. Boring and not one character connected with me. Henry Treece did this sort of thing far better back in the ‘60’s and he wrote for a pre teen audience.

Defenders of the Frontier – Robert Silverberg. By far the most decorated author in the anthology. In fact I think it was Silverberg’s own anthologies; Legends I and II, that inspired George R.R Martin (who was a contributor to both) to get this project off the ground. The story concerns a group of warriors defending an endless frontier with the distinct feeling that the war is over and they’ve been forgotten by their Empire. What made it hard to connect or develop sympathy with the characters was a very clever trick that Silverberg employed, the characters were only known by their position within the unit (eg: Captain, Engineer, Surveyor, etc…). I found myself wondering at the end what the point of the whole thing was. Nice use of language, though.

The Mystery Knight – George R.R Martin. Largely the reason I purchased the anthology. The Mystery Knight is the 3rd ‘Dunk and Egg’ story. These tales about a hedge knight in a Westeros roughly 90 years before the events in A Song of Ice and Fire, first appeared in Legends I, and that was called The Hedge Knight, Legends II had the follow up The Sworn Sword. I believe Martin originally wrote The Mystery Knight for a 3rd Legends collection that never eventuated and he dusted it off and polished it up for Warriors. Of the 3 my favourite is still The Hedge Knight, however like George R.R Martin, I relish any excuse to visit Westeros and that’s what The Mystery Knight is. I suspect George likes going back into Westeros history and playing around there, which is what the Dunk and Egg stories allow him to do. This one is a fun romp with Dunk trying and failing to win glory for himself, but instead enveloping himself in a deadly murder mystery that could have ramifications for the holder of the Iron Throne itself. It was definitely the standout story of this collection. You don’t have to have read any of A Song of Ice and Fire or the previous 2 Dunk and Egg stories to get a kick out of this, but afficionadoes are privy to a few in jokes and get some more context being aware of events before and after.

I’m undecided as to whether I’ll pick up the next two Warriors collections in paperback, it will depend on the roster of writers. I will say that given the calibre of writers for this collection I came away a little disappointed.