"Even Dragons Dance" by Chris Kastensmidt
"The Fallen Angels of Jude" by Terry Bramlett
"Vilkatis" by David Downing
"Proper Magic" by H.S. Sheikh
"The Sleeping Quartet" by Jason Sizemore
"Alkyone’s Journey" by Cat Rambo
Forgotten Worlds #6 kicks off with a short tale by Chris Kastensmidt, "Even Dragons Dance." Sir Gillard, Consort of Princess Adelaide, has a dragon to slay, but not before the princess expresses her annoyance with his recent less-than-amorous behavior. He has no time for love or romance it seems, as his responsibilities elsewhere come first. Of course, his encounter with not one but two dragons dancing beautifully in the sky gives him much to ponder. This is a charming little story. Anyone who can read this and not smile needs to have his heart examined, as the slaying of dragons is an overrated aspect in the art of chivalry, and beautiful princesses are not.
Terry Bramlett tells a rural horror tale in "The Fallen Angels of Jude." Attending the funeral of his slightly older cousin, Raife, Andy reflects back on when the two grew up in the hills of Mississippi. Both their fathers were bootleggers back then, owning a still in the Hollow, a mysterious backwoods area where supposedly the missing link of mankind, a possible early version of Homo erectus, lives. The creatures are somewhat like Bigfoot, but shorter.
This is a gripping novelette that spans a great deal of time, from 1959 to the present. What elevates it above the standard horror tale is Bramlett’s characterization. He nails the backwoods life of these low class bumpkins so well that it scarcely matters if there is a speculative element. But the fantastic lurks not only in the Hollow, but with every haunting scene. And the most haunting is the cave the creatures come from, a gateway to another world. The eponymous fallen angels play prominently into the story’s biblical theme, the creatures being cast out of heaven. I found this too incredible for my taste, but the rest of the story is so strong I was able to overlook it.
The title creature of David Downing’s "Vilkatis" is a werewolf whom warrior Kalat is assigned to slay. Kalat is a wanderer, roaming the land and given his assignments by a messenger raven sent by a beautiful woman, Melista. The town of Gaizenolms is where the encounter takes place, and it centers around a prominent local denizen, Merchant. Though not a fully realized character, Kalat has a mysteriousness about him, the lone wandering warrior. The raven and the woman have much to do with this, though they are in the story very little. The imagery is vivid, but I found the narrative a bit ponderous. Still, a good tale with an iconic charm.
In "Proper Magic" by H.S. Sheikh, the story’s narrator rides his bike to a magic stand run by its proprietor, Emir. Emir tries to impress this finicky buyer with various magical items of yore: Bluebeard’s scimitar, a magical ring, the Sorcerer’s Stone, etc., but the narrator is unimpressed. This is a very short story which, in the end, didn’t have the clever payoff such a piece requires.
Jason Sizemore is this issue’s featured writer with his horror tale, "The Sleeping Quartet." The quartet in question are two men and two women with sleeping disorders. Jack Taylor is our reluctant hero entering St. Jude’s Sleep Clinic to see if they can help his sleep apnea. His wife has told him that he almost dies from suffocation a hundred times a night, that it’s like listening to a thousand little deaths. It’s easy to place oneself in this story, the delay in the waiting room to the eccentric staff in charge of the therapy. Told mostly in past tense, it switches to present tense when the nightmares begin. But is the whole experience a huge nightmare for Jack? Authentically frightening.
Jason Sizemore is this issue’s featured writer with his horror tale, "The Sleeping Quartet." The quartet in question are two men and two women with sleeping disorders. Jack Taylor is our reluctant hero entering St. Jude’s Sleep Clinic to see if they can help his sleep apnea. His wife has told him that he almost dies from suffocation a hundred times a night, that it’s like listening to a thousand little deaths. It’s easy to place oneself in this story, the delay in the waiting room to the eccentric staff in charge of the therapy. Told mostly in past tense, it switches to present tense when the nightmares begin. But is the whole experience a huge nightmare for Jack? Authentically frightening.
Cat Rambo tells a sylvan tale of magic in "Alkyone’s Journey." Young Alkyone goes into the forest on a coming-of-age journey. Her mother, Kyone, is a trained mage, and now it is Alkyone’s time to take on her responsibilities, but she suffers from disillusionment. While this is the basic conflict, it took too long before I felt much tension. Rambo captures the flora and fauna well, but keeps Alkyone the person at a distance for too long. This has a fairy tale feel about it, but it’s told as a modern short story, oddly subjective while focusing on the minutiae of the forest. That’s fine to a point, but I found it difficult to be swept up in the narrative, despite the meticulous rendering of the bucolic detail. Alkyone finally comes to a decision at the end, but by then I didn’t much care. While well written on a descriptive level, the storytelling aspect fell short.
This is the first issue of Forgotten Worlds I’ve read, and overall, I was impressed. You can tell that this is a labor of love for the publisher and not one motivated by profit. My only real complaint is with the layout, as I found it difficult to read. The small print is understandable; the publisher’s trying to get over thirty thousand words of fiction into fifty-four pages, but in addition to the small font, the paragraphs are not indented. Each line is flush with the left margin, and there is no white space between paragraphs. One does get used to it, but I found myself looking along the right margin at the end of sentences to see whether I’d encountered a new paragraph. Perhaps you find this complaint silly, but as Gertrude Stein said, "the paragraph is the emotional unit of the English language," and paragraphs are offset from each other for a reason.