Souls of Darkness, by Gary Butterfield

It's no big secret that I'm a Dark Souls fan. I've played every game to completion, more times than I can count. I've PVP'd, PVE'd, praised the sun, slayed demons/nightmares, and again at soul level one. I've speedrun naked and killed gods with a spiked bat. I am, in short, fairly knowledgeable about the franchise.

But I was not prepared for this.

Gary Butterfield, along with his good friend Kole Ross, host several game-themed podcasts (perhaps most interesting to readers of this blog is Monster in my Podcast, in which they review each entry in the AD&D 2E Monstrous Manual one at a time to hilarious result). Bonfireside Chat, a review/talk show/analysis of every aspect of every Souls game, is what inspired this book. I'll let Gary explain the premise:

"Do you remember the Worlds of Power books? I do. Do you like Dark Souls? I professionally like Dark Souls! When these two interests collide, you get Souls of Darkness. Souls of Darkness is a parody of those Worlds of Power books but it's written as if Dark Souls was a NES game. Yes, I know it's confusing. Here are the important parts: 
- What if Dark Souls was a NES game? How would that work? Whoa! 
- What if a young girl got sucked into the game and got to experience a bunch of hilarious, exciting adventures in her favorite title? 
- What if the book featured amazing art by Nick Daniels? 
- What if the book (and associated Kickstarter side items) told a story open to interpretation, lampooning and emulating the way Dark Souls tells stories? 
- What if it was packed with love for the Dark Souls community? Tons of easter eggs!..."

Undoubtably you get the picture. This is a fan dedication to the highest degree, a sort of published fanfiction by Souls fans, for Souls fans. But is it nothing more than fanfiction?

In short, yes. I'll admit I never read any of the Worlds of Power books. However, I did read a lot of video-game related trash as a child, and I can say with certainty that my choices were above and beyond anything I found here.

The story starts with young Maya Hunter, a precocious girl with a big love for the game Souls of Darkness for the Superstation console. She knows all the tricks, except one (if you're thinking it has something to do with a pendant, you are correct). As our story begins she is busy attempting beyond all reason to solve this puzzle that nobody else has been able to. After a strange internal monologue in which she laments the fact that she eats ribeye steak every night because her mother works at a charnal house (?), and that her long-lost father worked at a popcorn factory (??), she sets the game down to get something to eat. When she returns, it is to find that her baby sister has accidentally fallen through the TV into the game, and it's up to Maya to free her and save the world!

I won't go into much more detail about the story, because it's exactly as you'd imagine a Dark Souls self-insert fanfiction to read (note: I am not implying that Gary Butterfield imagines himself as a 10-year old girl). She becomes friends with Not-Solaire, a skeleton named Lounging Carl (???) and a floating femur that spouts bone facts (????). She heads to the forest and faces Giantdad while Not-Artorias vapes and spouts casual misogyny in her direction (?????). At the end, she saves her sister, returns to her world, and maintains contact with the game world by feeding junk and scraps of food to Not-Seathe the Scaleless. I'm out of question marks.

I can't criticize too harshly the writing in this book for being atrocious -- because I'm not entirely sure it's not intentional, for one -- but it's still a chore to read. The lack of page numbers, which would be an interesting but annoying choice in any other book, is mitigated by the fact that I read the entire thing in an hour while holding a casual conversation with my wife. No, the writing is not what gets me. What I don't understand are the references. As you can see, I'm about as big a fan of the series as there is. But even I was left scratching my head throughout this book, wondering what point they were trying to make or what joke I was missing. I have a great respect for Gary, and he's a tremendously funny man, which makes it all the more baffling that none of his wit and subtlety come through here.

It's a crying shame, because I believe a well-made Souls parody could be really good. The games, while breathtaking in their scope, make a lot of puzzling design choices that fans have come to lovingly hate. Where, in Souls of Darkness, was the Sen's Fortress statue warehouse? The amazing chest ahead? Where in the hell was dino-butt lava valley? Hell, when they summoned a phantom to assist with Not-Quelaag, I half expected them to come in naked with bright blue skin and start cartweeling around brandishing a katana. THAT'S the real Dark Souls Experience.

Ultimately, this book reads less like a tribute to Dark Souls and more like a collection of half-hearted GameFAQs forum posts. Perhaps that was its intent all along.

Buy a Souls of Darkness physical copy for $17 here and as an $8 pdf here.










I do have to say the art is very nice, and definitely nails the "child transported to a magical-yet-friendly land" feel that I remember fondly from my childhood reading CS Lewis and Lewis Carroll.

The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson

Goddammit, Poul.

Before I continue, let me warn that if you're put off by talk of rape, incest, or other sexual atrocities that you're going to want to skip this one. You really won't be missing much.

Ugh. Let it also be known that I'm writing this after having accidentally slammed my finger in a door, which coincidentally mirrors the experience of reading the book. Truly, life imitates fiction. Well, I've put it off long enough, lets just get this over with so I can move on to Leigh Brackett.

The Broken Sword, written a year after Three Hearts and Three Lions, is another retelling of classical myth: in this case, Viking tales of faeries, trolls, giants, and other creatures of the Nine Worlds. And in that, it succeeds magnificently. The war between the elves (synonymous with faeries) and the trolls is a lengthy, well planned story. The way it goes about telling that story, though, is goddamn bonkers. So lets do this.

Imric is an elf-lord who desires a human son for unknown reasons. So he decides to steal one, but also can't do that unless he swaps it out in an even trade. So he goes down to his dungeons and rapes a troll he's held captive for several centuries. Imric does some magic to quicken the quickening, and the baby is born: half elf, half troll (this is important later). He does some swapping, and now he's the father of a handsome human male, who he names Skafloc.

The fake son then is raised as a human by a Viking family and is given the name Valgard. Owing to his troll nature, Valgard is a lunatic berserker, and fares well in combat alongside his father and brothers. One day, however, his brother doesn't come back from a hunt, having been ensnared by a witch who has cast a spell on Orm (the Viking dad) in order to kill his entire family. The witch has taken the form of a beautiful woman to seduce Valgard's brother, and when Valgard finds him, he too is seduced by her. In a fit of jealous rage, Valgard kills his brother. Then he goes back to his family, who eventually find out what he's done, so he is forced to kill his father and other brothers. Returning to the witch's cottage, she tells him that he is not actually human, and therefore shouldn't feel bad, and that his real dad is some distant fey asshole that he really should kill. Then she transforms back into an old lady, and he runs away in rage and presumed disgust at what he's been porking.

Valgard hatches a plan to get back at his real dad by joining forces with the trolls. So he kidnaps his two sisters (intending to sell them as wives to the trolls) and hitches a ride to Trollheim. This entire time, Skafloc has been reared in the arts of elvish fighting, and trained as a powerful lover by Leea, Imric's sister (who also sleeps with Imric, as the story is sure to remind us). In a remarkable coincidence, Skafloc and Imric are heading to Trollheim to wage war, and arrive at the same time Valgard does. A fight ensues, wherein Valgard accidentally murders one of the sisters and the other is "freed" by Skafloc, who we now learn is so handsome that he can seduce a woman despite looking exactly like her insane, fratricidal brother. The sister, Frede, is taken back to Elfheim. Meanwhile, Valgard stews in his anger and vows revenge against Skafloc and all of elfkind.

Skafloc and Frede quickly start a-wooin', much to the disappointment of Leea, who is deeply in love with the man. The trolls mount a quick counter-attack, however, leaving her little time to pout: the castle is overrun, and Skafloc and Frede make a quick getaway while the trolls are beating up Imric and having their way with the elven women. For the next 30 or so pages, Skafloc and Frede work as raiders, hitting troll encampments left and right and fleeing into the daylight whenever they are attacked. After realizing he's not doing enough damage, Skafloc decides to raise Frede's dead family to ask for advice. He is told to seek out the broken sword destined to be wielded by him (it was shown earlier, but not in any meaningful capacity) and also that he's been sleeping with his sister. He doesn't care, but Frede is livid and asks him to return her to the human world. With a heavy heart, she departs her beloved, but finds out later that she's pregnant with his kid.

Skafloc steals the sword from its hiding place in Elfheim by turning into a wolf, then an otter, then seducing Leea right out from Valgard's bed. With the sword, he heads towards the land of the sidhe, and then the land of the giants, seeking a blacksmith that can repair the sword. After the sword is repaired, he goes on several quests — killing a dragon, seducing giant women, plundering ancient ruins, etc.— that the book decides not to talk about. As in, the narrator literally says "Skafloc did these things, but they aren't part of this story so we're going to move on." Lord have mercy, I'm almost done.

So Skafloc's sword, along with the giant steed he stole, turns him into the sort of invincible hero that Poul would later satirize in "On Thud and Blunder." I implore you to read the facetious introduction to that essay, and then the following honest-to-god passage from this book:

"...Through the clangor rode Skafloc, smiting, smiting. His blows shuddered in byrnie and bone, shocks that slammed back into his own shoulders. Weapons lashed at him, to be stopped by shield or shorn across by sword. The hawk-scream of his blade sounded through wind and thunder. None could stand before him, and he led his men through the trolls and turned on the foe from the rear..."

Fascinating, no? Regardless, we're at the end. Skafloc kills all the trolls (along with Frede's new fiancé, because this book just can't let anything stay nice) and finally slays Valgard in noble combat. Oh wait, no he doesn't. What happens is Valgard kills Skafloc with the magic sword, then slips on his own blood and impales himself. The end. Fuck you.

To those who say I'm being harsh, I will admit that a lot of the above was embellished and over-simplified for humor's sake. This book is an attempt at the style of Norse mythology — gratuitous rape, murder, and incest being par for the course — that is, begrudgingly, fairly entertaining. And I've been led to believe that even Poul admitted towards the end of his career that he would not have written The Broken Sword again. From any other author, this book would be unremarkable. But from Mr. Anderson, who I've grown to respect greatly by virtue of his other offerings, I'm simply disappointed. The book is littered with plot holes (if both trolls and elves can't stand iron, daylight, or Christian prayer, why does the son of them have no such weaknesses?) and makes such baffling decisions with regards to plot and pacing that I was actually astonished to learn that it came after Three Hearts and Three Lions. I'm even more baffled that so many people seem to think this is a masterpiece of the genre, with Michael Moorcock claiming it better than Tolkien. My honest opinion? I don't feel I've gained anything by reading it, and I don't intend to read it again.

The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs

Prospero and Roger Bacon, the two main characters in a story that seems crammed with wizards, were wizards. They knew seven different runic alphabets, could sing the Dies Irae all the way through to the end, and knew what a Hand of Glory was. Though they could not make the moon eclipse, they could do some very striking lightning effects and make it look as though it might rain if you waited long enough.

We're taking a break from Poul Anderson for a moment, in part because the third book on the list (The Broken Sword, coming up next) hasn't arrived yet and in part because I really got a hankering to read about magic users. Personally, I like my mages like I like my scotch: well aged and made using a process I don't fully understand. Robes and floppy hats are a must. Wands are large, twisted and gnarled, none of these twigs maneuvered by a flick of the wrist. In my home campaigns, magic is a dangerous, unpredictable force of nature wielded only by those crazy and wise enough to have survived years of training, and I can respect a book that treats its power as dangerous both to the target and the caster.

I'm not going to get too deep into the story of this book, because I'm not quite sure I understand it myself. Perhaps that was Bellairs' intention. I will go so far as to say that the premise is fairly simple: two wizards find out they have been placed under a curse, and set off to defeat the evil sorcerer. Me losing the plot, therefore, had less to do with the complexity as it did with the absolute weirdness of the world it's set in. Our main characters face every challenge — from raising the dead to dispelling illusory towns to checking in on a Red Sox game — with the sort of bored nonchalance that you or I would do if asked to describe our daily routine. This position is understandable when you realize that we're talking about men with decades of magical training, but Bellairs is unabashed about not holding our hand when it comes to the world he's built. In fact, so much of the book is spent referencing things that are never explained that it sometimes gave me the feeling of reading the middle book in a series. Time is meaningless, as the aforementioned Red Sox game indicates, as is space: the book is set in the South Kingdom, a fictional land of 7 kings and countless duchies that is also adjacent to France and the island of England, which is besieged by either pirates or Mongols, I forgot which. This book is absolutely bonkers, but in a good way, like a half-remembered fairy tail from one's childhood.

It doesn't help that he first paragraph of the prologue, quoted above, does not lie with regards to the number of wizards in this book. Nearly every person our heroes reference or encounter is a mage of some sort — off the top of my head, I count 6 out of 10 named characters as possessing some magic ability — but for those expecting high-flying, world-rending magical battles, I recommend you look elsewhere. Magic in this world is more subtle, reflected early on in a hilarious passage wherein Prospero recites a spell that rattles all the pans in the house and causes all the clocks to chime: a spell, Prospero laments, that he has never found a use for. It makes sense, in a strange way: in a world where magic is as much a force of nature as gravity, it stands to reason that the vast majority of spells would be utterly useless, or at least incredibly specific in their use. I've always thought that a system like that, wherein magic users don't gain new spells but instead learn how to better control and manipulate the spells they already know, would be really interesting in play. Sort of like sympathy in The Kingkiller Chronicles, the test of a master wizard would be not in how much magic they can wield, but in how much they can wield safely.

The Face in the Frost is, ultimately, an exercise in world-building. It takes a few ideas and stretches them to their breaking point, and for that I have to begrudgingly respect it. I've never been one to demand strict explanations from my fantasy works (call it Gygaxian Naturalism if you will), because I find they often don't affect the plot to any significant degree. Think of it like Star Trek: you [TECH] the [TECH] to stop the [TECH] from overloading, and as long as you don't go into any further detail, the suspension of disbelief is never broken. The OSR, and rules-light games in general, seem to have embraced this philosophy in regards to world-building and dungeoncraft, and I for one believe it makes for a better game in the long run. To that end, I have to say that Bellairs book, for all its eccentricities and inscrutability, is as monumental as so many other sci-fi/fantasy authors have said it is.

Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson

The fantasy classic of a modern warrior, an ancient realm of sorcery, and a sword that sang of slaying...

There are few things in this world that pique my attention like retellings of classic stories that hide their plagiarism until the final act. I'll admit that such writing is invariably a double-or-nothing gambit: if the reader enjoyed the original work, the reveal will invariably send them back through the book gleefully looking for the parallels they initially missed. However, if either story falls flat, the reader will be left with nothing but a bitter taste and the feeling of having wasted their time. Risky business for a writer, but to quote my favorite Dark Souls NPC, "what is courage, without a dash of recklessness?"

Three Hearts and Three Lions (hereby abbreviated to THTL, or Thittle) follows the exploits of one Holger Carlson: engineer, Carlsberg beer enthusiast, and reluctant lothario. On the outset of WWII Holger joins the Danish resistance, and it is here that, during a daring escape to America, he is shot by Nazi's and awakens in a strange fantasy realm. From here on, the story becomes unabashed wish-fulfillment of the most enjoyable sort. Holger is preternaturally good at nearly everything he does: his wit and cleverness are unparalleled, women of all race and sort flock to him, and within the span of several weeks he becomes a literal hero of legend. This all makes sense within the context of the story,of course, because Poul Anderson is not a hack. That being said, good luck trying to recommend this book to a friend without them assuming you're trying to push air terminal schlock on them.

In fact, this goes back to the problem I spoke of earlier: because this book keeps its cards down until the final few pages, I imagine a lot of people found it derivative and quit early in. At its core, Thittle is a modern take on a chivalric chanson de geste, but someone unfamiliar with the concept of the heroic cycle (or someone whose literary world was saturated with invincible heroes, as I imagine mine will soon be) might not pick up on the often-subtle self-deprecation that Anderson weaves into the character of Holger. While the object of no less than 3 supremely beautiful women's affection, Holger is a jealous and bumbling man; though he is an unparalleled combatant, he begins most fights on his ass, having been taken by surprise. The big reveal becomes much less so when you realize that the book itself has alluded to it a thousand times throughout the story: Holger is not the hero, he's merely playing all the hero's parts.

In short, you should read this book. Hell, everyone with an interest in RPG's should read it, if only to see where the hobby got some of its best inspiration from. Holger is a dyed-in-the-wool paladin, complete with lay on hands and turn undead (well, turn fairies). The issue of alignment, a long standing source of confusion for gamers, is clarified expertly here: Law is the kingdom of Man, Chaos is the forces of those who oppose Man's dominion, and Neutral is anything too dumb or apathetic to take a side. It's right there, clear as crystal, and yet we as a hobby have had to endure over 35 years of chaotic neutral murderhobos and lawful stupid paladins. There are some really good ideas in this book, ideas I fully intend to steal for my future homebrew campaigns. If the rest of the books on this list are as influential as this, I can see why Gary was as inspired as he was to create D&D.