Roll the Bones: Fantastic Tales from Fight On! Magazine

by Ignatius Umlaut, Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Michael D. Turner

Attention! Old school stalwarts, sword and sorcery diehards, weird fantasy aficionados of every stripe - Roll the Bones is here! At long last Fight On! thunders down upon the sleepy world of fantasy fiction with 22 thoroughly thrilling tales of harrowing scope. Within these weird enclaves and black pits, you will find dark tombs, dragons, faeries, lepers, ostriches, Cerberus, Bush Nazis, love, vengeance, apotheosis, ignoble death, priceless golden hoards, and much, much more! Edited by Ignatius Umlaut and Del Beaudry, with a glorious wraparound color cover and interior b&w illustrations copyright Mark Allen, Roll the Bones features stories by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Michael D. Turner, Duncan Sandiland, Alicia Rieske, Tracie McBride, Andrew Knighton, Kristen Lee Knapp, Aaron Kesher, Robert E. Keller, Eric Juneau, A.H. Jennings, John Hitchens, Lance Hawvermale, Julie Frost, Mark Finnemore, James Dorr, Raven Daegmorgan, Melissa Cuevas, and Del Beaudry. Fantasy fan or gamer, old timer or fresh recruit, whether your tastes run to scintillating sword play, gruesome horror, eerie magic or pulse-pounding pulp action, Roll the Bones is the book for you! Fight on!

Genres: Canon

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2011

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went in expecting a quantity of sword-and-sorcery and came out impressed by the number of either experimental or literary works skirting the edge of 'adventure'.

There is plenty of sword-and-sorcery, with a number of Spider Temples raided and revenge sought and various skullduggery committed. And they are all lean, well-crafted stories delivering a single punch or trick ending according to classic short story design. Even within the constraint of sword-and-sorcery, there is range, from the rough and relentless "Weregild" to the playful who-won-this-game heist of "A Secret of the Trade" to the dungeoncrawl of "The Jewel Below" to the gritty-but-not-dour "Scaling The Tower" to the story-in-dialog of "The Heist" to That Northern Thing of "Odin's Last Boon" and the raid-heist of "Eyes of the Spider"

But then you also get the Weird West influence of "Badlands" and the hey-LitRPG-but-different "Terms of Use" and the canny-scribe-and-idealistic-knight mystery/comedy of "Leprosaria" and the dying-earth-relentless-swollen-sun-necropolis-and-corpse-trains-and-ghoul-necromancer amazement of "The Walking".

And then, to top it all off, the out-there unexplained Lost Boys concept of "How Pell Left" and the outright weird fantasy of "On The Border" and "Rush Hour" and "Remember When" and the apocalyptic nightmare of "God's Love" and the unspooling vignette imagery of "God of Blood and Rain" and the unsettling, phildickian brain pretzel what-was-that of "Owasa".

You get a lot for your money here.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really diverse collection of 22 tales that range from classic science fiction, to fantasy, to horror. It delivers all of the weirdness and adventure promised in the foreword. These stories provide modern renditions of classic story telling. No two are the same, and yet there is an overall cohesiveness in the collection. If you're looking for stories to entertain all types of sci-fi readers, there's something in here for everyone. Especially enjoyable are 'How Pell Left', 'Terms of Use' and 'God's Love'.