Sails & Sorcery: Tales of Nautical Fantasy, edited by W.H. Horner

In his introduction to Sails & Sorcery: Tales of Nautical Fantasy, edited by W.H. Horner, Lawrence C. Connolly contends that the mystery and glory are in the quest, not the treasure. This may well be true, and there are some fine adventures to be had in this volume, but the treasures are, at times, buried amid unnecessary dross.

The anthology shows promise at the outset, opening with “Return, My Heart, to the Sea” by J.C. Hay. Ysabelet is a Windmaiden who uses the divine favor of the sea goddess to protect ships through her singing. She has joined the crew of a new ship to preserve her vow of chastity after falling for the captain of her previous vessel. Her obsessive lover seeks her out, however, attacks the ship, and takes her aboard his own. Ysabelet must choose between the man she yearns for and the goddess she adores, and this time, she must enforce that choice.

This piece offers a well-developed and interesting mythos and strong characterization, however, the ending seemed a bit abrupt and unsatisfying.

In “Sea of Madness” by Jon Sprunk, Michael Pender captains the Mariner, a trading ship. After hauling in a good catch, along with a very strange looking “fish,” the ship experiences a string of bad luck: a terrible storm in which two crewmen are swept overboard and lost, rotting food and tainted water, and an eerie calm that reminds Pender of a time he was stuck off the coast of Sri Lanka for 17 days. Then they see land where there shouldn’t be any and go ashore, though the captain knows in his heart they shouldn’t.

“Sea of Madness” takes the reader on a seafaring adventure with hearty, experienced sailors who nevertheless encounter something older and more terrifying than they could ever imagine. It is told by one who knows the sea (as far as a landlubber like me can tell), and manages to convey a lot of detail about the running of a ship without bogging down the story in exposition. Unfortunately, the opening epigraph from H.P. Lovecraft telegraphs a little too much and spoils some of the suspense.

Chun Lee offers a tale set in the postapocalyptic world of a planet that has stopped rotating in “Stillworld: Sailing to Noon.” Perez, a mage adept in controlling gravity, and his apprentice sign on to help fly an Orc pirate’s ship to the scene of a mysterious artifact that Perez believes could help set the planet rotating again and save the world.

Unwieldy for a stand-alone piece, this story is bogged down at the beginning by exposition. It feels like a much longer work cut down and retrofitted to find a place in this anthology. Even the battle scene is talky, with Perez explaining his actions to the reader in second person, as if conducting a tutorial session with his apprentice. Further distracting from the story are flat, cartoony characters, like the Orc pirate whose dialogue is repeatedly punctuated by “Arrr.”

Murray J.D. Leeder’s “Female Rambling Sailor” gives itself away by its title, which is unfortunate, as withholding a bit could have made it stronger. The story begins like a standard sea adventure: William the bard sails off on the Harriet, or Harlot, as the crew fondly call their ship, to avoid the pursuit of a jealous husband. But there is much more afoot on the Harriet, as William discovers in conversations with the ship’s strange mage and a mysterious sailor called Jack. This tale offers more depth than I expected, and is well worth reading; I only wish the title wasn’t such a spoiler.

“The Bokor” by Jens Rushing opens with a mysterious, threatening letter that drives one man to suicide and another to obvious and uncharacteristic terror. Henry Appleby, an officer in His Majesty’s Navy stationed in colonial Jamaica, seeks out the letter writer who seems to be threatening his future father-in-law. What he finds leads him to question his plans and his seemingly bright future. The voices in this story ring true, as does the historical setting. Rushing introduces the reader to interesting characters engaged in exciting, well-described action.

In “Albatross Dark” by Jaleigh Johnson, Cai is a Magus, servant of the fire god, onboard to protect a trading ship from pirates, despite the fact that the sea goddess “doesn’t suffer magic kindly” due to her feud with the fire god. When a plague ship is destroyed by pirates in nearby waters, a survivor is pulled ashore. This survivor, Kaari, turns out to be a Dark, immune to the plague and thus serving as a caretaker of those afflicted when her ship went down. She stays onboard under Cai’s protection, until she begins to realize her true nature.

This is an exciting tale with an interesting premise. But outside of Kaari, character motivations are a bit murky. I was distracted by trying to determine the source of the captain’s burning hatred for Cai. Cai also remained more mysterious than I would have liked.

In Gerard Houarner’s “The Sea in Silence,” Jeloc, scion of the rulers of an immortal race, was banished from his homeworld for rebellion and has now forged a pirate force on another world through his magic. He plans to overcome the empires ruling his new home to make a place for his pirate allies. But his magic seems to be failing him in small ways, engendering doubt in his mind on the eve of battle.

Houarner offers plenty of adventure, as well as some nice turns of phrase, and more depth and introspection than many of the stories in this book. However, the ending is quite talky, with the young representatives of the three empires vying with each other to explain themselves to Jeloc.

Christopher Heath tells of Damon, a young scholar on a mandated journey of discovery to bring back information on myth and legend. However, he is on a ship bound for a reputedly dangerous land, with the last of a dangerous race, and among some unsavory characters.

“Azieran: Distilling the Essence” reads like the first chapter of a larger work. As such, it offers explanations of the characters’ backgrounds and their reasons for being on this particular journey, but little in the way of a self-contained tale. The seeming adventure in the land of the Ky’Branthians ends easily for Damon when he is spirited away to ponder his discoveries in the safety of academe, leaving me as a reader feeling cheated, as if this was just the setup for some larger story.

Next, William Ledbetter gives us a swashbuckling adventure in “Thief of Hearts.” Captain Birch’s pirates find the ship they’ve been trailing easier to attack than expected, as it comes out of a fog badly and inexplicably damaged. Onboard, they find a mysterious girl, naked, with hair rooted all the way down her back. Some believe she is a witch, others a selkie. But the girl befriends the young Malagasy cabin boy, who tells the captain that she is neither witch nor selkie, but a member of an ancient and magical race his people know. In time, the captain finds that this strange girl can give him his heart’s desire, but not in the way he expected.

Believable in historical detail and internally consistent, “Thief of Hearts” is intriguing and mysterious, and stands out as one of the stronger stories in this anthology.

In “Beneath the Sea of Tears” by Patrick Thomas, a pixie/ogre hybrid and another member of Queen Mab’s all-female elite guard sail to find a hidden city on a sentient ship made from enchanted trees. They journey to arrange an alliance between Queen Mab and the rulers of this city against a tyrant who is threatening Faerie.

“Beneath the Sea of Tears” seems unfocused, with a vaguely defined overarching conflict obscured by seemingly random smaller battles and contests of will. The interpersonal conflicts might serve to promote character development if the characters didn’t appear as flat “types”—the misunderstood hybrid that everyone sees as a monster, the spoiled princess—or if their interactions didn’t seem stilted and forced. Furthermore, a great deal of page space is expended on exposition, with long explanations of creature types and magic items that fail to further the plot.

“The Second Voyage of the Stormreaver’s Blade” by Jordan Lapp tells of Kessler, who sails with a group of cursed pirates to the ominous Mud Shark Atoll to break their curse in exchange for the freedom of the governor’s daughter, whom the pirates hold.

This is tale of adventure, told by Kessler himself, as though over a hearty pint to a group of rapt townsfolk. The narrator’s voice is authentic, and vivid descriptions bring the story alive. Strong tension throughout keeps the reader interested, and there is a nice twist at the end.

In “The Drum of the Sea,” Gerri Leen brings us Sir Francis Drake in his quest to wrest Panama from the Spaniards. A bewitching Cimarron woman Drake once knew arrives to visit him on the boat, signaling to him with a drum. This strange personage offers Drake both wisdom and comfort at a critical moment in his life.

This well-told historical fantasy sent me straight to learn more about the intriguing adventurer and the Legend of Drake’s Drum. You don’t have to know the legend to enjoy “The Drum of the Sea,” but this tale adds interesting elements to that legend.

T. Borregaard offers the tale of a runaway daughter who is more than she seems in “Cassia’s Song.” Cassia, running from her merchant father, seizes a convenient opportunity to sail from the Roman port of Ostia as a purser on a ship. There she meets the swoon-inducing Galinn, a Norse mage who keeps the ship at full sail to speed its travel.

I found this piece distractingly anachronistic. We are pointedly told that this takes place in ancient Rome, a time and place when most young women were considered the property of their fathers or husbands. I found it very difficult to believe that a young woman on her own on the docks could so easily hire herself onto a ship, as a purser no less, and apparently then be in no danger of becoming something else entirely to a crew of sailors. The crew’s unquestioning acceptance and respect for the Norse mage was also difficult to swallow. In this historical milieu, I would need some strong reason why there was no distrust or animosity toward someone Romans would consider at the least a dirty barbarian to be enslaved, and at most a dangerous barbarian to be feared.

“Cassia’s Song” also suffers from too much exposition, yet leaves a myriad of unanswered questions. A conversation between Cassia and Galinn provides a forced explanation of how magic works, yet motivation for the change in attitude toward Cassia among the crew is reduced to nothing more than, “Something about necromancy made the living want to kill.” The reader learns each character’s emotions through explanation, not action, and then endures a talky battle in which the mage gives a blow-by-blow of what is happening to Cassia. Still, although Cassia’s true nature is revealed by the end, the reader learns little of her background, or that of her parents, which would be crucial in making this revelation meaningful.

James M. Ward’s “The Duel” is set in a fantasy world based on the days of English naval supremacy. Lord Bassler, with the help of an amazingly efficient, Jeeves-like aide, gets the naval code changed to allow his nephew to participate in a duel in order to gain the release of POWs.

Like its predecessor in the anthology, this tale suffers from talkiness and over-exposition. The first half is concerned with explanations of the setting and long descriptions of characters, down to their exact height in feet and inches. We also learn about their personal histories—it seems all the interesting incidents in these people’s lives happened before this story (shipwreck, amnesia, battle, unspeakable horrors). The action happens offstage—either in the past or at a distance—and the characters talk about it, punctuated by awkward forays into characters’ thoughts.

Finally we get to the actual duel, nearly ten pages into the story. But the meandering first half of the piece has built no tension, and there is no question of who will win. “The Duel” reads like an incident in a larger work, not a story in itself.

In “Dryad in the Mast” by Leslie Brown, Captain Jeptha is forced to come to terms with the consequences of keeping dryads on his ship.

Unfortunately, exposition overruns character development here. Jeptha seems to spend much of his time thinking about how his world works in order to impart such to the reader. The reader is also told, rather than shown, why characters behave as they do. This leads to a lack of character depth, and I was unable to feel for the captain, the crew, or the dryads.

In “Balaam’s Bones: A Tale of the Barbarian Kabar of El Hazzar” by Angeline Hawkes, a pirate couple, Aeneas and Ninsu, take a ship, but are promised more by a Marduk, a shifty mage they find in an inner cabin. But it’s a trick; Ninsu is kidnapped, and Aeneas must enlist his brother, the king of el Hazzar, to embark on a quest to retrieve the necessary relics needed to rescue her.

I’m all for a quest. Really, I am. But when my suspension of disbelief is disrupted at the get-go by the most credulous pirates imaginable, I have a little trouble staying focused. Even I, as a nonresident of this world, can see that Marduk is trouble and there’s treachery afoot. My initial disbelief aside, I tried to enjoy the rest of the tale, but found myself frustrated by all-too-familiar encounters with predictable monster types, two embarrassingly cliché love scenes, unbelievable coincidences, and flat characters, all leading up to a foregone conclusion.

“The Pirate and the Peach” by Robert E. Vardeman is set in the waters off imperial China. Lai Choi San is a pirate trying to gain the peach of immortality as a ransom to rescue her husband from the Emperor’s prison. She is willing (quite literally) to sail her junk through the Gates of Hell to do so.

This tale of adventure to rescue a loved one opens in battle, setting the tone for action and excitement. Although the characters are not particularly well-rounded, this is more than made up for by the engaging plot.

In “Hostage” by Renee Stern, fear among non-magic people has brought mages to servitude. Koros is a bondsman, serving on a ship on a dangerous expedition in the frozen north, while his family is held hostage far away to ensure his service and good behavior. His ship is trapped in the ice, however, and the usual component for his magic, living wood, is now in short supply. But Koros hits on an idea to save the ship, an idea that could unleash great power, as well as require personal sacrifice.

Here is a different and intriguing take on a wizard protecting a ship. Stern’s prose is tight, and her characterization strong. Koros’s isolation among the non-magic crew is well-rendered, and his internal deliberations are authentic and moving. This is a true gem.

Jeff Houser offers “Rum Runners,” in which an exploration ship is attacked and sunk by a band of besotted pirates with uncanny fighting ability. The captain and the last of the expedition, totaling five souls, row toward the only land in sight, the pirates’ island lair, where they discover the source of the Rum Runners’ powers.

This is a decent enough adventure, sort of Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Legend of Drunken Master. Because the plot is fun, I can forgive the anachronisms and the conveniently well-balanced party of adventurers.

In “Rowing Near Hell” by Jeffrey Lyman, Captain Richard Attain has made several attempts to escape from Purgatory and is given one more chance to do so in the form of a wager with the wounded angel he sees as his nemesis.

“Rowing Near Hell” takes patience, as some elements that seem discordant or confusing hang over the story until near the end, when the pieces begin to come together. Richard’s lesson is hard, and it is not always easy to follow him as he learns it, but the journey is worth it.

Lindsey Duncan’s “Current and Clockwork” is a swashbuckling adventure aboard ship with a captain who is also a tinker and has a penchant for clockwork toys. Captain Silverhand is joined by his first mate, Vlisa, a shapeshifter. Between the captain’s inventions and Vlisa’s ability to change her form into that of various sea creatures, they have survived many adventures together. Now they are transporting a pair of passengers who are more than they seem. In addition to an enjoyable adventure, this tale offers a reasonable, uncontrived premise, and believable, sympathetic characters for whom to cheer.

In “The Medusa” by Chris Stout, Percy travels with his wife to the New World to oversee his father’s lands there, and to discourage his wife from her infidelities. He is already proving a failure at the latter but must focus his attention elsewhere when the ship is attacked by pirates, and then by something worse. It seems Percy will meet a grisly fate but for the help of a witch traveling on the ship and a more powerful wielder of magic.

The action sequences in this tale are alive with vivid description. However, the story is, in essence, one of revenge, the plot and characters forced to bend to that purpose. It is never explained why the captain of an English ship in colonial times would knowingly carry a practicing witch onboard, let alone allow her to brew potions and keep familiars. And too many characters’ actions and abilities are waved away with a “somehow” or “for some strange reason” to be believable.

In “The Islands of Hope by Heidi Ruby Miller, Julian is trying to keep a near-mutinous crew in line on a ship that should have been his, while the captain raves in his incense-clogged cabin. Now a mysterious stowaway has appeared, inciting violent intent from the crew and a feeling of kinship from Julian. This stowaway helps Julian to discover that his dreams require sacrifice.

Miller’s prose is clear, bold, and direct. She introduces us to a realistic, interesting, sympathetic character in Julian, whose motivations are believable and clearly communicated in a tale that arcs gracefully through conflict and complications, and comes to its inevitable, but still unexpected conclusion.

In Jack MacKenzie’s “The Sounds from the Deep,” Poet and his friend, Sirtago, are on a sea voyage to the Golden City to find work. The ship is periodically rattled by apparent collisions, and a piercing tone assaults Poet’s ears, but none of the crew will answer the passengers’ questions about these events. The two then meet a mysterious woman who may be the cure for, or the cause of, the ship’s troubles.

This story starts a bit slowly, with Poet doing a lot of thinking about Sirtago’s background and fate as the heir to the Trigassan throne. Its strength is well-described action, however, and when the threat arises, the pace and excitement pick up considerably, making this a fun “buddy” escapade.

Elaine Cunningham makes an appearance next with “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” Captain Mayes is a gentleman who, as far as the Admiralty knows, runs down pirates, bringing in their ships and surviving crews, or sinking them. But the captain has a bit of a side business, in which his best men end up with ships and crews of their own with the understanding that they’ll never be seen in their homeport of Newport, Rhode Island again. Mayes hates to lose a good man and takes a debt of honor seriously. So when one of his best receives a mortal wound while saving the captain’s life, Mayes finds a grim way of repaying the debt.

Thomas, a good fighter but a rather simple man, tells the story and reveals much in the telling—of himself, his shipmates, and the captain. Cunningham handles the dialect narration expertly, drawing out the characters through Thomas’s words and engendering empathy. Sufficiently drawn in, the reader begins reading between the lines, realizing little by little the dark end that is to come. I was surprised that this treasure was buried near the end of the book, rather than appearing in a leading position where it belongs.

In “Consigned to the Sea” by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Sionna and her daughter, Kate, have been captured by North Sea pirates who want Sionna to show them a course to avoid detection by the crown’s ships. Their leering threats against her daughter have her frantic, but the pirates don’t know that she has one last hope—the selkie husband who abandoned her seven years ago. And even Sionna doesn’t know what such a reunion might bring.

High tension permeates this piece, carrying through each of the threats the characters face. Ackley-McPhail communicates Sionna’s desperate situation through tight prose and strong characterization without making the character a swooning victim or an object of pity.

J.M. Martin offers an island adventure in “Tisarian’s Treasure.” The tattered remains of the Decimus’s crew retreat to a nearby island after being attacked by a well-known pirate from his black magic ship. The narrator, Dr. Mallory, and the rest of the crew find it difficult to hide on the island, though, while carrying their injured captain with the pirate hard on their heels, looking for the treasure map he knows they hold.

Martin manages to maintain a large cast involved in a long tale without resorting to overlong descriptions of the individual players or forcing the reader to go back to determine their identities. Focusing on the good doctor, his budding love interest, and a few others, the reader is able to follow the story and remain interested through beach, jungle, cliff, and tomb.

Finally we have Paul S. Kemp’s poignant story of hope and faith. Zhayim is “The Spinner,” a former pirate who was caught and punished by maiming, then sold into servitude on a ship where he tells tales to appease the sea god. Necessary, but reviled by the crew, Zhayim befriends the children of the Votaries, members of a persecuted religious sect traveling on the ship. He is both saddened and charmed by their innocence and faith, and finds in them a means of atonement for his wasted life. Through vivid descriptions and strong characterization, Kemp spins a beautiful tale of light in darkness.

Publisher: Fantasist Enterprises (August 2007)
Price: $17.25
Paperback: 456 pages
ISBN: 0971360898