Great Novellas and Short Novels
Requests for really good novellas or short novels come up a lot on the Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque Discord, so I made a Google Sheet of some of my favorites, which anyone can access here. I'll add more as I remember them or...read them.
Since those posts have no comments section, I wanted to mention here that having just discovered your reviews of RAVENLOFT fiction past I proceeded to dive in.
ReplyDeleteSomehow my fondness for the Demiplane of Dread remains diminished, but the experience of being spared all risk of reading these novels by reading through selected deadlights* reminds me yet again of my personal Opinion - may, must just an opinion, an Opinion - regarding official tie in fiction for tabletop games.
It should always, ALWAYS be read as the after-action report from an author’s personal campaign (The better to preserve one’s own idea of the Setting).
*Obviously the only correct choice for an equal and opposite of ‘highlights’, Bless you Stephen King.
Good grief, ‘Vampires Suck’ is my consistent mantra but I have always been under the impression that Strahd Von Zarovich had immense gravitas (Whenever I picture him one thinks of the late Ben Cross in FIRST KNIGHT).
ReplyDeleteAlso, ‘Strahd did it … in Faerun. Somehow!’ is Jason Voorhees level hackwork.
Yeesh, you’d think that ‘Darth Vader and Dracula, Gothic Frenemies’ would be much harder to **** up than ‘Interview With The Vampire, but with Elves!’ (well, one Elf).
ReplyDeleteTo my eye the key problem is that so far the authors seem to have confused ‘Fantasy’ with ‘Sex Dream’ (Which to be fair is quite in the Gothic tradition - looking at you, Mr Stoker m, and your eternal love of ‘voluptuous’): for my money RAVENLOFT is most interesting as the theatre in which Mystery Plays* are mounted in the grand style.
Also, and more particularly, as a place where both Heroes AND Villains are put to the test, sometimes by each other, sometimes by the nature of the Demiplane itself and possibly even by the Dark Powers.
*In the more forensic, modern sense of the word but also in the Medieval ‘let us explore the higher mysteries’ sense.
Monsieur Jacques, how in tarnation did you read so many of these things? A certain amount of pandering to the adolescent male market is understandable, but your reviews make it sound as though they forgot to actually include the Cressida along with the Pandarus.
ReplyDeleteIt’s also not an especially good sign when authors are perpetually circling back to the Iconic Characters of a setting, rather than creating their own.
Wait, isn’t a Wolfwere supposed to be a wolf that turns human rather than vice versa? How the heck can Casimir have a human upbringing and human standards of morality?
ReplyDelete… heck, a horror story where much of the horror derives from a perfectly good wolf being spoiled by too much humanity might have been a genuinely-interesting Gothic horror (Especially if the fact we have a lycanthrope on our hands is telegraphed, but the fact they started as a wolf is not).
Good grief, no wonder you seem to have left this series of articles trailing in your wake: laughing so hard as you typed them up must have been nearly as physically-painful as reading such dreck!
ReplyDeleteHaving now stumbled into your old reviews of that DnD ‘Tome of Foes’ sourcebook, I’d like to suggest that the key difference between Halflings and a goes is that while Halflings have big, hairy feet, the Gnomes have cartoonishly large noses.
ReplyDeleteHa! On a more serious level, I’ve always tended to assume that while Halflings at their best are generally the classic ‘little
guys’ of Fantasy and a useful barometer by which to measure how much tolerance a setting has for Pure Tolkien the Gnomes are much more Fairy Tale ‘little people’ (with the Dwarves being more ‘Ancient Sagas’): nosy, colourful, otherworldly and with just a hint of Muppetry about their appearance.
Jack Guignol, I’ve been toying with the notion for a RAVENLOFT domain/Fantasy horror scenario that one would like to run past you: might I please ask if you would be willing to look it over and, if so, where the most sensible place to post the basic notion would be?
ReplyDeleteI can basically sum it up as ‘Tolkien Vs Lovecraft (Also there are Vikings)’.
Best place to send me things is totgad @ gmail dot com, but this time of year a timely response is not guaranteed!
DeleteMy dear Jacques, I may be a recurring nuisance (One hopes not, but opinions may differ), but please be assured this is mere enthusiasm and not malice or hubris - Real Life must come first, this I know and most cheerfully accept.
DeleteEven at Christmas, which has steadily diminished in my estimation since the season started to limp - not run - from sometime in October to the week before New Year.
You’d think at least one Government or other regulatory body would have the good manners to insist that Christmas run only from November 24th to December 26th each year, if only to spare us all the expense in Jade-tinted glasses.
By the way, thank you most kindly for your trust!😊
ReplyDelete