It’s that time of year again, when we decide to look back at what we’ve done over the past twelve months. Frequently it’s a shock (for me, anyway) – sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad. This year’s a good one, since I appear to have done far more than I thought I had (an aspect of that good ol’ imposter syndrome, I suspect).
I had a Sherlock Holmes story published in the The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XLIV: 2024 Annual 1889-1897 (that’s one away from XL5, for readers of a certain age): “Hollingbourne Grange”. Considering I once thought how nice it would be to write a Sherlock Holmes piece, somehow that had become several. I’m not complaining. I have one more in the pipeline, and I think that’ll be it. I’ve done everything I wanted with the character (and more!) so time to quit while I’m ahead (although I think Conan Doyle had thoughts along similar lines).
Peripherally connected was “The Return of Madame Sarah” in Sherlock & Friends: Eldritch Investigations edited by Lyndon Perry for Tule Fog Press, an anthology pitting investigators from the Holmes era against Eldritch horrors of a Mythos nature. I went with L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) and Robert Eustace’s Madame Sara and her nemesis police surgeon Eric Vandeleur (as narrated by his assistant Dixon Druce) versus Nyarlathotep (or Nyar-lat-hotep, as I had it).
Also from Tule Fog, in their Swords & Heroes e-magazine, was the short story “Two Swords Waiting”, a heroic fantasy tale of twin sisters Brindglais and Brandguin and a couple of magic swords in what I have come to call my A World of Gods and Monsters series (quite likely a book in the making). The sequel – “Sisters of the Swords” – will see publication in the future.
From Sarob Press came The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Landscape Figures, edited by Rosemary Pardoe, which reprinted “All I Ever See” in a lovely, limited edition hardback. I shared the ToC with old friends David Sutton and John Howard along with many other notable authors and it was quite a privilege to be published in such a prestigious volume.
Then there was Phantasmagoria magazine #24, and the second part of my swords and dinosaurs serialised novel (presently of no fixed title), “Beyond the Ghost Caves”. We meet the remaining two protagonists, witness more cross-time oddness, and know that soon all of the characters’ disparate paths will cross. Issue #25 published an interview of yours truly, conducted by Allison Weir and Sarah Graven Weir in what was little more than a broom cupboard at Cherry Red’s in Birmingham at the Alchemy Press 25th anniversary get-together (which also celebrated certain significant birthdays for some attendees, and the 50th anniversary of my first published short story – “Designs of the Wizard” – in the BFS magazine Dark Horizons, for which I published a very limited edition chapbook of the story with cover artwork by Jim Pitts; no one at the place was allowed to leave until they took one).
The major event of 2024 however was me dipping my toes into self (or independent) publishing. The first was a slim volume, Drawing Down Leviathan, collecting all three stories featuring (to date, anyway), the submarine USS Oswin: “Cradle of the Deep”, “Echoes of Days Passed”, and the previously unpublished title novella. My plan was to make all the mistakes and learn from the experience before launching into a novel, Hail the New Age – a fantasy thriller in the sub-genre spies and sorcery (which I invented, maybe, with any luck). Reviews for both books follow (with permission) so I’ll not say another word about them.
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Lyndon Perry, Tule Fog Press:
Mike Chinn’s 3 novelettes collected in the volume Drawing Down Leviathan is simply fun, wholesome, pulpy adventure. The action takes place on a new experimental US submarine set in the late 1930s at the ramp-up to WW2. These tales are high sea battle romps with enough navy lingo to lend credibility and verisimilitude but not so much as to get in the way of the story.
First two tales (“Cradle of the Deep” and “Echoes of Days Passed”) involve a bit of sea monster mystery – man vs supernatural beast trope. Entertaining, nothing ground-breaking, but they definitely hit the right notes of cinematic nostalgia – think of the childhood excitement of shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
The opening story features the author’s pulp-styled action hero protagonist, Damian Paladin and his enigmatic sidekick, Leigh Oswin; and it ends with a sly bit of nomenclature humour. I was hoping for a return of Paladin in the second story, but the tension and mystery weren’t lacking even though the focus switched to the submarine captain and his crew. (BTW, Paladin appears in a couple different collections of the author’s stories, namely, The Paladin Mandates and Walkers in Shadow. Worth looking up if you enjoyed “Cradle of the Deep”.)
In the final story “Drawing Down Leviathan”, we have an encounter with a dangerous female ‘bad guy’ – the Captain-Admiral of a floating fortress. I liked the steampunk feel to this story, my mind going to Jules Vern’s famous antagonist, Captain Nemo. Action-packed and satisfying. I’d like to read more stories where our brave submarine captain and crew go up against this evil mastermind.
If you’re on the lookout for some quick adventure (about 100 or so pages) that brings back the pulpy action heroics from your childhood, this short collection is just the thing.
Trevor Kennedy, Phantasmagoria magazine:
Sea monsters and Nazis! Just a couple of the perils faced by the crew of the submarine, the USS Oswin, named after pulp hero Leigh Oswin, who, along with her dashing pilot partner Damian Paladin, appear in the opening story of author Mike Chinn’s new trilogy of nautical fantasy adventure tales. It’s 1936 and Chinn’s recurring characters serve to help introduce the reader to the crew of the submarine cruiser, helmed by Captain Dave Bannon and Commander Brad Munrow.
In the first story, “Cradle of the Deep”, the new team assigned to the prototype sea craft are assisted by Damy and Leigh and together they soon encounter a strange sea beast. “Echoes of Days Passed” sees the Oswin boarded by navy top brass just as they face off against another terror of the deep, and in the final title story they come up against a nefarious world conspiracy involving Nazis and a huge, fully-armed ship. Gun battles of a seaborne nature and within the air ensue.
Drawing Down Leviathan is some old-school pulpy enjoyment and exceptionally well researched at the same time – Chinn really does know his stuff in terms of naval and aviation terminology and technical details of the era, along with other relevant historical knowledge. This, of course, lends an air of authenticity and believability to proceedings.
Plainly inspired by Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, this is strongly recommended for those of us who are into these types of underwater adventures from a seemingly bygone age, something that the author himself clearly still has a strong enthusiasm for, this being made quite clear inside the pages of Drawing Down Leviathan.
Chris Morgan, Birmingham Science Fiction Group newsletter:
Ninety years ago Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express was published. Now Mike Chinn has written a great fantasy version of it. In a more-or-less 19th century world, where wizardry competes with science and technology, a railway track has been laid between Ramini’s two major ports, Scan Leroth and Scana Carsofi. The inaugural two-week train journey is about to begin. On board are the technological genius responsible for the project, Professor Alva, and a small number of invited guests. They are meant to be celebrating the technological innovation of the steam railway. But nothing is as it seems to be and at least one of the guests is secretly a wizard (they are now out of power and beyond the law) determined to make the journey a total failure.
The Hercule Poirot figure here, who must work out who is who and prevent the failure of the trip, is Wilonek Scilli (dare I say that all the characters have been given silly names?) an unprepossessing youngish man. He has survived years of training at the wizards’ seminary without becoming a wizard or in any way favouring them. He’s also rather like a US crime fiction investigator, in that he’s often beaten up and bleeding. His weakness is this: his wizardry training has left him needing a liquid drug, chavet, every day or two, or else he suffers awful withdrawal symptoms.
All the power of wizardry on this world emanates from crystals of abaston, a rare mineral of which wizards control the supply. An important part of their training is the handling of abaston.
Aboard the train are a marvellous group of eccentrics. There’s the artificially created heteromorph, Batrix, currently in female shape, who is a military lieutenant-commander (in charge of the venture) with whom Scilli has numerous encounters, trying to convince her that they’re on the same side. Others include Thryme (Alva’s mentor), Senator Nachollni, Dr Tork (a medical man) and Scendik Boz, a fiction writer from a nearby country. Also present is Major Rengalet, a former military hero and current alcoholic, who commands a group of about a dozen Sharpshooter militia, who seem to be non-speaking characters, only there to be killed. This being 19th century-ish, the Sharpshooters all have muskets, while most of the others carry repeating pistols (another Alva invention) which are sometimes reluctant to work properly.
The journey is beset with a multitude of problems. There are appearances by various swamp creatures and other monsters. The main train driver (or pilot, as Chinn would have it) is Sanej, a planted detective and a great friend of Scilli. When he is killed, Scilli is accused of the crime. The steam-driven locomotive is revealed to be abaston-powered. There are crashes and uncouplings of carriages as characters and their pasts are revealed. Every scene contains tension, excitement and surprise.
Just when you think the novel is ending, along comes an advert for a second exciting adventure starring Scilli and Batrix. Hail the New Age is privately published with a wonderful cover illustration.
Benjamin Kurt Unsworth, British Fantasy Society Online:
Given the popularity of the murder-mystery genre, it is always nice to see a new spin on it; one of the latest of these comes in the form of Mike Chinn’s Hail the New Age. Set in a world where the fantastical and technological have been clashing in civil war, the Ramini Republic has emerged, most of the magical Chrysomancers have been weakened, and distrust prevails. But the herald of the new technological dawn is the Novandik, a train whose inaugural coast-to-coast journey is beset by spanners in the works, of which a wizard determined to end the Novandik’s journey and many a backstabbing, metaphorical or otherwise are just the start.
The Ramini Republic manifests like a serrated version of a Studio Ghibli universe, vibrant and with the steampunkish mix of societies coming across smoothly and without delay. However, whereas Studio Ghibli leans more into the world of dragons, capes, and breathtaking vistas, Chinn’s universe is a drastic step in the other direction. The protagonist Wilonek Scilli, a not-wizard but with wizard training and an addiction to a drug called “chavet”, finds himself being beaten up at every turn as he tries to stop the Novandik being sabotaged. Less the Hercule Poirot figure, his role as detective feels more an involuntary manoeuvre, since the whole affair is styled less like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and more Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express – you can picture Telly Savalas playing many of the grumpy, affronted characters in a film adaptation.
Although Chinn’s prose is attuned more to action than description, the fantasy realm bleeds off the page in a no-holds-barred sort of way, and for readers who naturally go towards the crime or horror sections of the bookstore, it’s a nice segue into a fantasy universe. And yet for all its vibrancy, there’s a deathly sense of chill running through everything; the characters opposite Scilli all possess the kind of internecine causticity you’d expect from a disgruntled werewolf, and lieutenant-commander Batrix aboard the Novandik embodies that. Although Batrix functions as quite a nice metaphor for non-binary or gender fluid people, being a heteromorph who flicks between genders on a semi-regular basis, they’re also impossibly distrusting, and you can’t help except imagine their many speeches prefaced by a scowl and an angry hiss.
As a murder mystery though, it does keep you on your toes, and the action sequences, some of which do involve fantastical beasts, never detract from that even though they’re the overriding aspect. Not to say some of the surprises you can’t see coming, but there are also enough there which feel fresh and distinctive to keep you turning the pages, and the fantasy elements are never used as a Deus ex machina, rather a tool to enhance the tension and make Chinn’s prose that little bit more vivid and unexpected.
Ultimately, it leaves each genre time to stand on their own and make its mark; however, as a mix of the two, its smorgasbord of gritty fantasia achieves something greater, both breathtaking and savage with to-the-point prose. For what seems like a very unassuming novel, the almost romantic sense of bitterness is very much at the fore, and as you turn the pages – because, don’t worry, you will feel compelled to do so – its crisp sense of humanity, or perhaps inhumanity, knows how to beat you down. Reading this is a fabulous way to spend a few hours.
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I’ll just leave you with a taster for 2025. Proving I learned nothing from the above experience I plan to publish two more books. Warriors of the Boundless, more heroic fantasy which I am proud to say will feature artwork by Argentinian artist Enrique Alcatena, who drew some of my fantasy scripts for DC Thomson’s Starblazer digest comic, and an introduction by another old friend, Adrian Cole. Then there will be a sequel to Hail, entitled Citadel of the Moon and featuring Batrix and Scilli, once again rooting out enemies of the Ramini Republic.
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