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Shared World
Not yet published
Expected 4 Aug 26A home to reavers and rakes, sorcerers and slayers, undead king and undying things—expanding a page at a time in the stories added by its authors.
In the Once Lands, a lineage of sorcerous wayfinders work to keep godlike monstrosities locked behind the crumbling walls of cursed cities by allowing the vengeful ghosts of forest gods to inhabit their living flesh.
In the wild wastes, tribes of cannibal huntresses fight to balance the old ways and new in a struggle to keep their culture alive by trading in death.
In the sprawling city of Khyber, ambitions dance on sword edges while clans of thieves and reavers clutch at power.
Welcome to Shared World.
In the Once Lands, a lineage of sorcerous wayfinders work to keep godlike monstrosities locked behind the crumbling walls of cursed cities by allowing the vengeful ghosts of forest gods to inhabit their living flesh.
In the wild wastes, tribes of cannibal huntresses fight to balance the old ways and new in a struggle to keep their culture alive by trading in death.
In the sprawling city of Khyber, ambitions dance on sword edges while clans of thieves and reavers clutch at power.
Welcome to Shared World.
162 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2023
About the author
Jonathan Ball
34 books35 followersJonathan Ball is the author of three books: Ex Machina (BookThug, 2009), Clockfire (Coach House Books, 2010), and The Politics of Knives (Coach House Books, 2012). He also wrote the academic monograph John Paizs's Crime Wave (University of Toronto Press, 2014) about the cult film classic, and co-edited (with Ryan Fitzpatrick) Why Poetry Sucks: Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry (Insomniac, 2014). He holds a PhD from the University of Calgary, with focuses in Canadian Literature and Creative Writing. He is the former Managing Editor of Dandelion magazine, the former film/video section editor at Filling Station, and the former short films programmer for the Gimli Film Festival. He writes the humour column Haiku Horoscopes (http://www.haikuhoroscopes.com), and can be found online at http://www.jonathanball.com and on Twitter @jonathanballcom.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 18, 2026
(This review includes a review of "Kyber; Shared World in second half]
Khyber is a collection of sword and sorcery stories by Winnipeg author, Chadwick Ginther. The stories all share the setting of the great city of Khyber, though a city with its best days behind it. Think Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork without Lord Vetinari to keep things running smoothly, or D.G. Valdron’s city in the Mermaid’s Tale. Ginther’s protagonists are Red, a young orphaned sword woman, and Needle, a tailor/assassin. I like them a lot. They are vaguely reminiscent of Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, my own personal favourites of the sword and sorcery genre.
Ginther, however, is writing more in the tradition of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. Lots of fantasy has swords and sorcerers, but unlike Tolkienesque fantasy, the Conan variety often edges a fair distance further into weird horror. Ginther’s stories feature spider gods, rat armies, unstoppable fungus, quests to the isle of the dead, and cannibal cults. If any of that sounds like something out of the 1930s pulp magazine Weird Tales, then Ginther has achieved his goal. His writing has a certain flair that puts him right up there with Robert E. Howard or Lovecraft, or even Fritz Lieber. I look forward to more Red and Needle stories.
The collection also includes 32 maps and images by GMB Chomichuk. These are more arcane than directly illustrative of the stories, but contribute to the atmosphere of ancient mystery and forgotten civilizations.
Which brings us to Shared World by Ball, Chomichuk, Gillespie and Ginter. Khyber became the city at the centre of work by all four authors, a shared universe they each participated in, and to which they now invite other writers to contribute. The Shared World collection duplicates two of Ginther’s stories from the Khyber collection, and introduces two stories by Ball and two collaborations by Chomichuk and Gillespie. Although each of these others’ stories are distinct from Ginther’s, they all fit comfortably within the Weird Tales vibe and all are fine examples of the S&S genre.
Shared World also includes an introduction by the great Mexican-Canadian literary horror writer, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and an afterword by the equally talented S. M. Beiko.
If I had to choose, I would likely recommend picking up Khyber first: if you do not enjoy it, then sword and sorcery is probably not for you. But if you need a break from your regular CanLit reading, or a break from reality, then these collections may fit the bill. They are engaging and accessible narratives, quick reads, and a nice exercise in world building. Horror, yes, but the sort of horror that says, “You may have problems, but at least they aren’t this.” And if you are a writer at all, well, I know I am myself more than a little tempted to try my hand at contributing to the open-ended world of Khyber and its environs.
[This review originally appeared in the Ottawa Review of Books, July 2024.]
Khyber is a collection of sword and sorcery stories by Winnipeg author, Chadwick Ginther. The stories all share the setting of the great city of Khyber, though a city with its best days behind it. Think Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork without Lord Vetinari to keep things running smoothly, or D.G. Valdron’s city in the Mermaid’s Tale. Ginther’s protagonists are Red, a young orphaned sword woman, and Needle, a tailor/assassin. I like them a lot. They are vaguely reminiscent of Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, my own personal favourites of the sword and sorcery genre.
Ginther, however, is writing more in the tradition of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. Lots of fantasy has swords and sorcerers, but unlike Tolkienesque fantasy, the Conan variety often edges a fair distance further into weird horror. Ginther’s stories feature spider gods, rat armies, unstoppable fungus, quests to the isle of the dead, and cannibal cults. If any of that sounds like something out of the 1930s pulp magazine Weird Tales, then Ginther has achieved his goal. His writing has a certain flair that puts him right up there with Robert E. Howard or Lovecraft, or even Fritz Lieber. I look forward to more Red and Needle stories.
The collection also includes 32 maps and images by GMB Chomichuk. These are more arcane than directly illustrative of the stories, but contribute to the atmosphere of ancient mystery and forgotten civilizations.
Which brings us to Shared World by Ball, Chomichuk, Gillespie and Ginter. Khyber became the city at the centre of work by all four authors, a shared universe they each participated in, and to which they now invite other writers to contribute. The Shared World collection duplicates two of Ginther’s stories from the Khyber collection, and introduces two stories by Ball and two collaborations by Chomichuk and Gillespie. Although each of these others’ stories are distinct from Ginther’s, they all fit comfortably within the Weird Tales vibe and all are fine examples of the S&S genre.
Shared World also includes an introduction by the great Mexican-Canadian literary horror writer, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and an afterword by the equally talented S. M. Beiko.
If I had to choose, I would likely recommend picking up Khyber first: if you do not enjoy it, then sword and sorcery is probably not for you. But if you need a break from your regular CanLit reading, or a break from reality, then these collections may fit the bill. They are engaging and accessible narratives, quick reads, and a nice exercise in world building. Horror, yes, but the sort of horror that says, “You may have problems, but at least they aren’t this.” And if you are a writer at all, well, I know I am myself more than a little tempted to try my hand at contributing to the open-ended world of Khyber and its environs.
[This review originally appeared in the Ottawa Review of Books, July 2024.]
June 30, 2026
An interesting spin of sword and sorcery that plays in a lot of different ponds from over the last couple of centuries. An intro to this world and one where the framework feels experimental, despite the stories being familiar. That is what this world is, though; it's a world both familiar and utterly strange. Curious to see how the following volumes handle the shared world aspect.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews