Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

This is a wonderful anthology of weird fantasy, sword and sorcery, and cosmic horror, one of the best from DMR Books. Fultz has a distinct voice, so it is somewhat difficult to offer touchstones of comparison as his fiction is very unique. A more recent comparison might be the work of Schuyler Hernstrom and Dave Ritzlin. To risk a generalization--all three of these authors are published by DMR Books--this trio shares an occassionally similar eclecticism and aesthetic of tensions: they take a potentially campy and puerile genre and, without watering down its excesses in imagery, they treat it artfully and often with high seriousness (Dare I say I attempt to do this as well?) (Imagine an airbrushed 1970s van painted by visionaries with their chakras wide open). This unique combination comes through most clearly in Fultz' gorgeous tale, "The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria," which uses the gushing, neon tropes of sword and sorcery to explore the monochromatic, gray scale problem of a real world marriage destroyed by infidelity. My favorite of the anthology was "Chivaine," a structurally symmetrical narrative about the return and retreat of a hero. One notable tale that struck me as artistically ambitious was "The Gnomes of Carrick County." This combined Celtic and American Frontier myth in a very unique way, and it somehow managed to deploy the colonialist and pulp trope of "indigenous hostiles" with humanity and compassion. Fultz is a true bard.