CHAPTER 1

“The world’s dead, and we killed it,” says the Bartender.
Cliché bastard, I think and gag on my second shot of Absinth. If I hadn’t paid for the damn thing I would’ve been convinced someone was trying to poison me.
“Not dead yet,” I say to him. “Not while we’re still dying in it.”
He smirks at that. Smirks the way men do when they don’t agree but have nothing to say. The so-called barkeep had deluded my drink with purified water and made the point, “It’ll cost you extrah,” quite vigorously. The cost of it didn’t matter, I had enough creditcards left to squander and wished for something which may take my mind off the ache in my feet. The alcohol never helped with that; when I drink enough of it, I realize the ache is actually in my head. I throw a card in the bartender’s outstretched hand. He checks the stamping on it with his good eye, the other looking past my shoulder. He sees the Mastercard logo and flashes his crooked teeth into a grin, then jams the piece of plastic in his coat pocket. I can’t help but imagine how easy it would be to rob the guy blind.
Apparently, he had come across a cache of the green, alcoholic spirit a while ago and had decided, of all things, to open a bar. I find it ironic how the only establishment of such kind serves drinks which look more radioactive than the sky. I toss him two more creditcards, both belonging to some long gone, local bank and tell him to bring me a bottle of water instead. He inspects each of the cards and nods.
Despite how it may seem, the bits of plastic are not easy to come by.
I had run into a bit of luck a few weeks back and the lady herself seemed to look upon me with grace as she lead me to a dead body. I had always thought the bitch to be a morbid one, but when I had taken note of what the dead currier had been hauling, my heart leapt. The brown bag was full of creditcards of all manner and design. Some were almost fully bleached. Whatever horde of fingers had groped them before my own, made sure the logos remained visible, intact. For the most part at least, so that value could be extrapolated from each. Mastercard and VISA cards held the most worth and could be traded handsomely for all manner of things. They were also the most difficult to obtain. I am told there had once been other ways to pay. But who would use something as fragile as paper must have never expected the world to burn.
I shift my eyes from the drink before me and look around the makeshift bar. I came to understand – for the guy sitting on my left wouldn’t shut up – that this place was as much an inn as anything else. Built inside a run-down and crumbling building – the only building for miles which still held any semblance of shape – the inn sported shady faces and people that, with their manner and posture, looked more like wet dogs than human beings. I knew each of them had a story to tell. I wasn’t interested in any of them. What I was after was the rumor that a bank, or more precisely its vault, still awaited intact, somewhere in this town. Buried under a landslide of some kind, the vault had evidently been waiting for anyone brave or stupid enough to try and dig through all the rubble to get to its presumably buried treasure. Some had already tried and, as the rumor went, a tunnel had been dug more than half-way to it. Why the digging had stopped no one knew, or as I have found to be the case in most instances like these, they simply didn’t want to say. Everyone I had talked to about the subject had a hopeful expression in their eyes. Someone even told me what they were all thinking, “That’s right, boi,” I took offense at being called boy despite being taller than anyone I’ve ever met, “you go and take that vault and we’ll be waiting for your body when you fail. That coat looks mighty fine.” I understand that desire.
I sip some water and look at the bottle. This thirst… it is a test like so many before. A test I am growing more tired of with each passing day. Thirst, my friends, is an ever-present thing, an unyielding reminder that I truly am alive in this world gone to shit and ruin.
It takes all of my resolve not to jug down the whole bottle.
The midday sun hammers on, its crude outline hiding behind the radioactive dust groping the air. A white sheen reflects off the building’s walls around me, chafing them with brightness.
The part of the “inn” where the rooms are located still has some roof left, but where the bar stands and where I sit, the building above looks like it had been bitten off by some vast beast. I smell more of the wind than I feel, and here, sitting behind the bar on top of a hill overlooking the wastes of what had once been a town with a population of no more than fifteen thousand, I think, “How did I end up here?” I wish someone could make me disappear.
How the war happened I have no idea. I wasn’t alive back then to witness the spectacle. I am what they call a rad-child. Born after the world had already gone to hell. I never got to see the planet as it once was. Blackened trees, broken ruins and broken people are all I know. Once in a while, I come across a picture or a half-burned photo of someone holding a fish or standing behind a beautiful vista. Such things are all that remind me rivers once snaked over the soil and that all manner of green had flourished in this world. A world that might as well have been another planet. The Ancients have built many wonders, but what they apparently failed to build was something to protect them from themselves. We forgot most things they had to teach, but what we didn’t forget and apparently never will, is how to kill each other.
The year lay somewhere in the thousands. Never did I discover the actual date, since everyone I ran into gave me a different one. Time flows strangely in places. The year was a number between some millennium most people wished they were never born in. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing would change for me, or anyone else, if I knew the actual date. I found dates important only when they hold meaning, and in this world, everything was as pointless as the people living in it. But my life isn’t. I feel there are things I must do, and this is what drives me.
Most that I have met couldn’t even tell me the season, since everything remained perpetually veiled in a golden twilight. Only in times between noon and three o’clock, a light behind the clouds comes that may resemble what the sun had once been. And if the date proved elusive, I know one thing, at least. I know I am not the only one who would give much to have its rays touch my face.
I had been told it would take generations still for humans to see the stars again. And to travel beyond and into the dark… probably never again. The Ancients have done it, I am told. Escaped. I never believed that. But if they did, the bastards are probably laughing down at us from their accursed vessels.
As for my story, I came from far up north; from a land they once called Norway. I had trekked for half my life, and found no one like me. Everyone else stayed put, no one wished to go places, see things. In their words, “It is all wasteland, boi, head for the sea down south if you’re intent on seeing the world, I hear good life can still be found there.” I imagined none of them even knew what ‘a good life’ might look like…
My name is not important, you wouldn't like it anyway, nor do I wish to remember my life when people still called me by name, but I am told people like me, even though we are rare, are called nomads. Never content in one place, always searching for a home. I liked the title the first I heard it and, in a strange, inexplicable way, it spoke to me, so I kept it. Some of the old gizzers I’ve come across who were kind enough to offer me shelter – which I figured had mostly been due the fact I carried an MP5 – had told me I look like a Viking.
As for my journey and its purpose, it is as much a spiritual search as it is a material one. Lately, however, circumstances have forced me to shift my priorities to a more basic kind of being, one centered around survival and the procuring of credicards. I loathe such a base existence, yet find I cannot escape the inevitability of it.
The first time I looked at myself in the mirror was when I was eighteen years old. I imagine my beard is even longer now. The old guy with whom I have spent a weekend with, helping him rebuild his shack – an act for which he was more grateful and happy than I had ever seen anyone since – had told me people of my kind are a rare sight.
About a week ago, I had passed a hill and its winding, half crumbled road to a town whose name everyone seemed to have forgotten. It took me almost a year to cross over the Eastern Alpines and arrive into a sub-alpine country, which I was certain had once been beautiful to gaze upon. I traversed its valleys, hunting what I could, making sure that every shot from my MP5 hit a bird or some animal which I could cook over a fire. They all tasted terrible. Everything did. I only had one and a half cartridges of ammunition left, and always slept with the weapon hugged over my chest.
Sometimes I dreamt the gun was a woman.
Many had told me, “That’s no way to live, son.” But it felt perfectly natural to me. I wouldn’t trade it for their static existence even for a whole sack of credicards. Perhaps I would trade it for a woman. But who would want me?
I halt in my introspective musings as a pang blips inside my head.
I like to think I had developed a sense about when someone is watching me. Such things tend to happen when you’re perpetually paranoid for most of your life.
A look at the bar’s far end reveals a man wearing a heavy overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, looking, staring at me underneath the brim of it. His jaw and nose are covered by a brown rag stretching over his face in a downward triangle tied behind his head. His coat looks like something that would look better on me.
I elbow the chap to my left. His Central-Engleshe is bad, but good enough for me to make sense of his jabber.
“Who is that?” I ask, nodding to the guy on the other side of the bar.
“Dey call em Ty,” he grumbles, his face like something men should by all rights die from, “com in town last monthsabout, lookin’ for something. The vault is wut iz after.”
Movement catches my attention and I turn my head. Ty stands up and walks over to me. He doesn’t look at me or acknowledges me. He simply sits down on the stool to my right, the wood crackling under his weight, his leather coat swishing.
“I hear you’re here for the vault,” he says, his voice gruff but not wholly unpleasant, muted behind the rag on his face.
I figured it wouldn’t do much to try and deny it. I have been asking about the vault around town for a good part of the week. Not the best way of doing things incognito, if I’m honest. I nod, “Aye.”
“That’s a fine firearm you got there,” he notes, looking straight ahead. He subtly lifts the right side of his jacket to reveal a silenced pistol hidden underneath the heavy coat. No way of knowing if the gun actually has any bullets, or if it’s just for show. In any event, if the gesture was intended to intimidate, it had failed miserably. I snort a laugh. “I think you may have mistaken me for someone who cares about your weapon,” I say.
His reply comes laced with a subtle layer of venom. “Just a precaution, friend. I am not without protection should you decide to do something.”
“We have a thing in common,” I say.
“Good, then perhaps I can interest you in a quiet place to talk.”
“About what?” I ask.
“A partnership.”
I see I have met someone like me.
“You wish a fellow wanderer then?” I ask.
He laughs at that. It is a coarse but sincere thing. “I think whoever coined that phrase had never wandered in an apocalyptic wasteland full of people who wish to kill you and take your gun.”

That's right, now you can access this bitch of a site by typing in www.kzfreeman.com. I would have been more excited, if the setting up of the DNS and redirect garbage hadn't made me feel like one of those old farts that can't figure out how to work the menus on a newly bought mobile phone device. But it's done now, so that's pretty great.

"When the evening faded and night fell, the distant booming of destruction at my heels, I realized this was the end. I didn’t want to accept it. I fought it until I could fight no more. I built my own coffin and buried myself from the world.”
“How did you do this?” I ask as we begin to walk ahead. Visibility is high and I can see far into the distance. Almost as if someone fashioned my view so I could see it all. There’s an explosion out there, building a twisting red and yellow spire into the sky. 
“Nomad?” Ty says, his voice uncertain, afraid. Ash the color night falls from a layer above us. The clouds are thick, thundering. A heat reaches us and I can smell it, like a thousand dead bodies. We stand in the light of it and all I see of the others are their black silhouettes. I look at Calyx, I gaze at Ty. They are silent, caught in a state like me, between marvel and utter terror. Our skin begins to burn. The pain is total, all-encamping. But it soon fades. What remains is light. And in that light, I am them, they are me, we are one. I see their black bones in the light until those too are wiped away like shapes drawn in the sand.

Read it.

The guy who wrote this is "on par" with Martin can go screw himself. Because this is better.





In my previous review I stated that I hate hate hate Mark Lawrence. That hate has turned into something far worse (and far deadlier) after reading the King of Thorns, because no one should write this good and live.





With this instalment, Mark has managed to ruin the character that was Jorg Ancrath. He ruined Jorgy in the most heinous way imaginable. By making him even better. From the ruins a phoenix rose, you might say.
Jorg’s story has always been the struggle of a boy’s heart, an ‘evil’ and blood-thirsty boy, it has to be said, but one who is struggling none the less. This time around, we find Jorg pushing forward, cracking wise-cracks (?) and pushing in age and stature, while becoming a real pest for the Prince of Arrow who all the prophecies foretell of. The Prince is to be Emperor or some such, but screw that. Jorg has other plans for the blond bastard, plans that may or may not involve the sharp point of a sword.





We find Jorg roughly where we left him in Prince of Thorns, but it’s not the same Jorg. There’s other things on his mind now, besides being Emperor. His rather silly infatuation with Katherine makes him do some unexpected things, his bond of brotherhood likewise, and his love for other people brings out stuff which no reader is likely to expect.
What I wanted to read more about is The Builders, I admit, but that’s something I’ll get more of in later instalments, hopefully, for I managed to catch wind of there being a new book next year, The Broken Empire setting the stage once more for some slaughter. (I would spill our more but that bastard Lawrence wouldn’t say more)

But let’s get back to this beastly tome. I will say this, if Mark doesn’t bring back a certain character in the next book I may just have to pay the assassins double, then hire a necromancer so they may murder him twice (death-threats, oh my!).

Anyway, it seems this part of the story is more about redemption, where the first was largely about vengeance. The writing itself retains what the first book offered and builds on it; although there were two instances in this book where I thought the author’s voice came through just a bit too much and there was a bit of rambling involved. But hey, I’m a generous sort and forgiving one page in 600 is something I can pull off.





I sped through this book as if the pages were burning. That alone is proof enough of its greatness. I don’t think I yawned once, a pretty solid achievement for the author, I dare say.
I may just decide to recall those hitmen after I get my hands on the Emperor of Thorns, but we shall see just how far that book shall stretch the limits of my generosity.

11/10




Emperor of Thorns Review 

Prince of Thorns Review 

Reasons why I hate Mark Lawrence:

1. He wrote the best dark fantasy book there ever was.
2. He created the best character there ever was in dark fantasy.

And there you have it. These two reasons are, in short, why I hate hate hate Mark Lawrence. There, I've said it and I don't want to take it back.


Emperor of Thorns Review

They whisper to me in my head. They walk in my dreams. I see their silhouettes watching me, saying things I cannot understand.
I take steps in my mind to ends I do not see, yet each tread spells the promise of some new doom for me.
Each breeds the thought of something extraordinary. And the further I go, the more possibilities loom closer, move nearer. They seem without me, yet are always me -- whispers of I. I am the one who is moving and I do not wish to stop. Do you?

Read more in The Ghost Within.


Pictures by Anoxia.

I've recently taken it upon myself to read the Majestic Warlord Chronicles, or, as they are also known, The Arthur Books.
It just so happened that I got the first book in the mail by a presumed admirer... because who else would send me this book?

So, before I begin this review, a big thank you to whoever it was that had sent it to me because these books are fucking fantastic!

Having said that, I must also point out that, have I not been interested in this subject and the Arthurian Myth in general, I would have probably stopped reading, for the first chapter consists of what I thought to be a rather curious case of world-building. Curious because (spoiler alert) almost every character that is painstakingly described and introduced through sheer "telling" gets screwed over badly (murdered).
The build-up still somehow works, however, since it cements the story of Derfel Cadarn, who is the protagonist and hero of the story and who in one fell swoop looses everything. How's that for a poor orphan with bad luck.

I should say that the books can be described pretty simply.

Honor. Loyalty. Friendship. Love. War.

These are the basic themes that run through the three novels and which are told with amazing skill and finesse. I wasn't bored in the least when reading these books, ever.
Yet there's a thing about the first book which the other three lack, and which I found pulled you in quite a bit (but by the second you're spellbound anyway, so I wouldn't say the other two lacked anything). Simply put, the first one is slower and builds up every chapter much more gradually. It then reaches the chapter's climax and suddenly you wish to read even more.

The historical aspects are added to and are made real by the names running rampant throughout the tale. Some of which are quite fun to pronounce. Gorfydyyd!

I will not get much into the story, other that the fact that is is great.
There's a lot of surprises and the prevailing sense of confusion, when you don't know if what Merlin and the druids can do is real, or if their magic is just circumstance, sheer luck and worldly wisdom. The religious aspects of the book are thrust into the forefront from the start. Although in the beginning it will seem as though everyone mostly just "spits to avert evil" (there's a lot of spitting), or pisses to avert evil spirits, but later, when Christianity comes into play, the strife between the two religions, and the differences, become quite interesting. Not to mention that the druids sometimes (especially at the end of the series and the end of each book) seem to truly have some magical powers that are baffling, but can mostly be explained by superstition and happen-stance, which makes it all the better and all the more confusing for the reader. But confusion in this case is good.


The first book is largely a "quest" book, since everyone is on a quest for something, Arthur, Derfel, Merlin, Morgan and even Nimue. The second book is almost all political intrigue with smaller battles aka skirmishes, while the third is where the larger battles take place, as the Saxon threat truly becomes real.

I never tired of the descriptions of shield-wall battles. It's interesting, to say the least, on how combat looked like back then, and how a group of 200 veterans in a shield wall was considered an army and a considerable threat. Did you notice I said looked like? The imagery is quite vivid and visceral indeed.

There's a lot more I could say about these books, but I will say nothing else but the fact that I wish there had been more of them.


Now I'm going to have to read the Warrior Chronicles... Damn you, Cornwell!

10/10

Cover art by http://reku-a-day.tumblr.com/

"Granted that the machine-victim has leisure. What is he going to do with it? What memories and experiences has he to form a background to give significance to anything he can do? What can he see or do that will mean anything to him? . . . What has heretofore made life tolerable for the majority is the fact that their natural workaday routine and milieu have never been quite  devoid of the excitement, nature-contact, uncertainty, non-repetition, and free and easy irregularity which build up a background of associations calculated to foster the illusion of significance and make possible the real enjoyment of art and leisure. Without this help from their environment, the majority could never manage to keep contented. Now that it is fading, they are in a bad plight indeed; for they cannot hope to breast the tide of ennui as the stronger-minded minority can. There will be, of course, high-sounding and flabbily idealistic attempts to help the poor devils. We shall hear of all sorts of futile reforms and reformers-standardised culture-outlines, synthetic sports and spectacles, professional play-leaders and study-guides, and kindred examples of machine-made uplift and brotherly spirit. And it will amount to just about as much as most reforms do! Meanwhile the tension of boredom and unsatisfied imagination will increase-breaking out with increasing frequency in crimes of morbid perversity and explosive violence."

It's been a while since last a read a bit of Warhammer 40k madness -- and madness it is.

Especially when penned by masters such as Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill, and now Aaaron Dembski-Bowden! And yet... Aaron is the usurper dethroning all with his most recent and fairly heretical instalment.
I first suspected what he was up as I read The First Heretic -- which was to climb on that blood-slick throne and laugh his warp-damned ass off.

And he has done precisely that, because Betrayer is the best the Horus Heresy series of books and Black Library has offered thus far.

First look at the cover art. Go on... I'll wait.

Did you look? Slightly awesometastic, isn't it?

As for the writing it has to be said that to truly appreciate these fine scribblings you have to have read The First Heretic and the novella Aurelian, then, after having listened to the insanity that is the Butcher's Nails audio drama, you may read this book. (having read stuff like After Desh'ea and Lord of the Red Sands is also welcome).


The reason I say this, is because the story of the two brothers, Lorgar and Angron (the perpetually angry one), evolves through these stories, well mostly Loregar's, but it's still fun to read how the two work together - or should I say clash.
Lorgar always gets calmer, even when he says "You are not Fulgrim," (although he might punch a guy or three with a psychic mace to the face), while Angron simply gets angrier. At everything. All the time. Sometimes he too punches people, although he does it quite literally and with an axe. It is rare that he keeps his anger in check, but that eventually gets even worse. (for everyone)

And this, my friends, is the crux of the story; the relationship between these two titanic and sadly flawed characters. The Betrayer himself, aka Kharn, is also splendidly written, (the true quality of the written word comes out in its full when voiced in the audio book). His calm demeanour seeps through the pages while retaining a sense of simmering rage beneath, waiting to explode in someone's face.

Focusing on these two characters (the primarchs) is what makes this story great, because sometimes even other characters talk about these two, which again creates a sort of centred feel, almost as if Lorgar and Angron are the planets around which both legions gravitate.

Most know the tale and how it ends, but if you're a fan, you'll no doubt wish to know exactly how it shall happen. [Minor spoliers ahead] And I'll admin there was a bit of nerdboy glee on my part when Kharn "scolds" Angron for being so, "meh, whatever, dude" with Lorgar, after the first heretic had just saved the bloody one's behind.
And also, could a story go without Erebus screwing things up as usual? No. Although this is the first time he gets told to "piss off". [/spolier]

Superbly written action scenes punctuate the tale nicely and are thoroughly vivid, although not in the vein of McNeill, who likes to describe his gore quite elaborately.

A theme runs though most of The Horus Heresy books, meaning that each tends to subtly centre, or have behind it a specific God of the "Warp Pantheon" or Gods of Chaos. In this case it is the almighty Blood God Khorne and Tzeentch, who seem to be at the forefront. Splendid indeed!

All in all, the only reason I cannot give this book a ten is because I want Aaron to bleed his mind onto some more pages and make the next one even better!

9/10

For quite some time now, I thought I should perhaps review the books I read, since I tend to read quite a bit.

Lately I have been preoccupied with a certain tome I had been wanting to get my hands on for a while, but always ended up reading short stories on my mobile device or computer instead. I finally bought the damn thing and let me tell you, this was the best book purchase I have ever made!

There is a thread and a certain style which runs through all of Lovecraft's writing that appeals to me greatly. A grandness, or a sense that, even though at times you are reading about "ordinary people", you get the impression of something vast moving behind the curtain and, as a result, the people themselves become far less than ordinary. Them coming in contact with what Lovecraft liked to call "unnameable", is always chilling. And there's always something behind that curtain, you can feel it, sense it.

One thing which I suppose might bother "new-age" readers, is that Lovecraft tends to be very descriptive and tends to "tell", rather than "show". In some stories descriptive narrative may become overpowering, but it never did, at least for me.
For example, the last story in this edition, called The Dream-Quest of Strange Kadath, is an overwhelmingly rich tale when it comes to visual description, as the author jumps between scenes and landscapes a lot. But you can't fault a guy for doing so when he describes sailing the ocean and in so doing has the protagonist reach the moon, can you?

What is truly special about Lovecraft, is how every story draws you in with a certain mystery which the protagonist wishes to reveal or solve, or in most cases, dreads to reveal. There is nothing mundane about any of the stories and most have a special twist. Some you will see coming, while others you may not.

The mysteries behind the veil will slowly come into light through the story itself, making the masterful unravelling a joy to read indeed.

I will admit I had expected more from Call of Cthulthu, a story which I purposely didn't read until I have gotten the print version of it into my hands. But I think that's only because I read it so fast once I got to it, and enjoyed it far more on my second read. I like other stories in this collection a lot more, like The Outsider, The Colour Out of Space, Cool Air, The Silver Key, The Strange High House in the Mist and Through the Gates of the Silver Key, and others. Although Call of Cthulthu did provide with what  I think of as the most memorable and profoundly captivating first paragraph in anything I have ever read.

Indeed there was not one story in this whole 800 page thickness which I did not enjoy. It is, however, a matter of taste which one you will prefer most.

The common thread in all of them is psychological horror, as you might imagine. In this sense everything else is worked around that horror so that when it happens and while it slowly begins to happen, you will gaze onto the pages with a certain emotional investment.


If you want to read truly good tales, I would recommend this book, as it one of those rare tomes I cannot give anything less than a 10/10.

   

I saw a video yesterday of a sphere refuelling at the sun. The foxnewsian explanation is that these are in fact solar eruptions of a special kind - a solar activity called "prominence" which is as of yet a little understood phenomena and happens every so often.

What is startling for me is the very notion that these events have been observed before, as well as the fact that 'the thing' indeed looks like a giant, dark sphere which, in the video at least, shoots away from the sun in an unprecedented display as though detaching from it and causing a tumultuous event on the surface and around it. But does it appear like this due to perspective?

What intrigues me are the questions that arise should this not be the so-called coronal cavity, that is to say that, what if this is something completely different than what we think it is? The possibilities are endless should the observed event of solar activity in fact prove to be something unnameable and altogether different. Something from the void of space where no man can exist.

When I think in terms of 'what if', the possibilities are somewhat mind-blowing indeed. Yet in these wanderings of the mind I find one excerpt stands out from all other thoughts. It is the first paragraph from H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulthu, since his version of something from 'out there' is the most primal and I think the most true in terms of what may float in the farthest reaches of the cosmos - something man can neither comprehend nor emulate, let alone witness without severe repercussions to our collective sanity.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far. Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents."