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Old Moon Quarterly Volume 8: A Magazine of Dark Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery
An old wardog protects his mistress by hunting the vile Baron Need and his comrades. A veteran of the Necromancer Wars wields a hero’s sword against a lich. A former gladiator confronts star-cultists as they plot the ending of an age.
Read these stories, and others, each penned by a modern master of dark fantasy and sword-and-sorcery short fiction in VOLUME 8 of OLD MOON QUARTERLY.
Read these stories, and others, each penned by a modern master of dark fantasy and sword-and-sorcery short fiction in VOLUME 8 of OLD MOON QUARTERLY.
- GenresFantasySword and Sorcery
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 13, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 6, 2025
this issue gets 3 stars, 2.65 of which goes all to Vaughan's "Rendezvous Aboard the Ship of Death." I am infatuated with this story. it makes me consider retaining an issue I'd otherwise toss. it made me continue reading the issue after I'd decided I could take only one more unenjoyable oddity story after such a dismal beginning TOC. it was like eating the Golden Apples of the Hesperides after suckling a ten-month dead sow's atrophied and wormy teats. I want more of this ship, these characters, this story.
Olfert, Fultz, and Langan entertained me. Barron put an earworm in my mind that grew better in the remembering than the experiencing, like a Tom Petty song.
Shocking issue, as a whole not what I anticipated nor much of what I want. Yet. Yet it gave me Vaughan's so spectacular story I can almost forgive and forget.
Olfert, Fultz, and Langan entertained me. Barron put an earworm in my mind that grew better in the remembering than the experiencing, like a Tom Petty song.
Shocking issue, as a whole not what I anticipated nor much of what I want. Yet. Yet it gave me Vaughan's so spectacular story I can almost forgive and forget.
January 5, 2025
When reading Old Moon, they always keep you on your toes. They have more variety than a charcuterie board. This issue featured a wonderful tale from a wolfhound’s point of view. Pretty bloody and visceral. Another tale told my a Mammoth appears for the second time in Old Moon. This one has a nice little twist at the end. There was a short little Arthurian piece that had a very nice touch. I really enjoyed the last, and longest entry. It featured a former military cook as a bar owner. He had to use his wits to get out of a rather precarious situation filled with sorcery and doom. John R. Fultz had a good tale in here as well. I always enjoy when Old Moon comes out, because I don’t think there’s anything out there quite like it.
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May 7, 2025I got this one in paperback as a treat. They are getting thicker and more decorated!
This was a very various issue, which is welcome. You never quite know what you might stumble on next.
My own favourites were:
'Shadows Under Assoil' by E.M. Morrissey, an atmospheric tale whose title and character names Tiphaine and Chatoyant promise you a fantastic lyrical romanticism, not in vain;
'Discovering the Caliper'd Heart' by Daniel A. Rabuzzi, a prose/poem/found document, which I enjoyed largely for its fine craft;
'A Grass Rope' by Jon Olfert, a follow-up story of the greatly-named mammoth Walks-like-a-Rockslide, with even more interiority than last time I think, and an ethical challenge;
'Nobody Kills a Wizard' by John R. Fultz, about the friends Brugo and Slint whom I liked so well in their New Edge Sword & Sorcery story (I wish to see more of battered old, likeable Brugo).
Also notable, an Arthurian, 'Galatine' by Alexander Atreya.
This was a very various issue, which is welcome. You never quite know what you might stumble on next.
My own favourites were:
'Shadows Under Assoil' by E.M. Morrissey, an atmospheric tale whose title and character names Tiphaine and Chatoyant promise you a fantastic lyrical romanticism, not in vain;
'Discovering the Caliper'd Heart' by Daniel A. Rabuzzi, a prose/poem/found document, which I enjoyed largely for its fine craft;
'A Grass Rope' by Jon Olfert, a follow-up story of the greatly-named mammoth Walks-like-a-Rockslide, with even more interiority than last time I think, and an ethical challenge;
'Nobody Kills a Wizard' by John R. Fultz, about the friends Brugo and Slint whom I liked so well in their New Edge Sword & Sorcery story (I wish to see more of battered old, likeable Brugo).
Also notable, an Arthurian, 'Galatine' by Alexander Atreya.
July 19, 2025
If you see a story with a title like “Rendezvous On The Ship Of The Dead” and your first thought is “sounds fuckin sick dude” then great news, something in this collection will almost certainly scratch an itch for you. Definitely not for everybody, but deep in your heart of hearts you probably already know whether or not you’re the type of person that this is for.
September 5, 2025
Hoo-wee, if Barron (mutant dog adventures) and Langan (four assholes in a bar with a cursed skull) by themselves don't convince ya, I'm here to tell you the rest is more than worth the price of purchase. Possibly the best OMQ in a very illustrious run so far?
December 18, 2024
Between this and Long Division, I got two new Laird Barron stories in the same week. I feel spoiled. John Langan was here too, I guess he follows Laird wherever he goes. I dug most of the stories, but Censor, Poet, Paper, Tree by Kyle E. Miller stood out as particularly good. Also this John Langan story felt like a sequel to something but I can't for the life of me recall part 1. If anyone has read a Fantasy story by Langan about a guy named Gull with a giant sword who gets into some drama by the docks, please remind me what it is.
January 17, 2025
A fine collection of strange and fantastical stories anchored by Laird Barron and John Langan. An entertaining mix of tales that are all strangely weird and diverting in their separate and unique tellings. Barron's and Langan's stories are the best of the lot and very different both in subject matter and the way the stories are told; however, I'd like to highlight three other stories as standout tales in this issue: A Grass Rope by Jonathon Olfert and Diamond Skin and Bones of Jewel by J.M.J. Brewer, and Nobody Kills a Wizard by John R. Fulz. If you enjoy dark fantasy/sword and sorcery that's a little off the beaten trail give this issue a go.
More at my blog: https://bookworminthedark.blogspot.com.
More at my blog: https://bookworminthedark.blogspot.com.
May 13, 2025
Big names ahoy! And let me assure you, Barron and Langan are absolutely worth the admission price and more. Sadly, not all the other authors involved are up to that standard, but this is still a more than decent selection of stories. Pity that the reviev column didn't make it this time, though.
April 22, 2025
Great collection of stories - not as fussed with some of the poetry and verse stuff but some outstares and I’ll be following writers like John Langan, John R Filtz and K H Vaughan as a result
December 14, 2025
Four and a half stars, rounding down this time out of fairness or something. Goodreads really should improve their rating system somewhat.
The latest issue of Old Moon Quarterly is slightly less experimental than issue 7, though there's still a healthy variety of prose and verse piece interspersed among the customary fantasy adventure yarns. The fantasy adventure tales, for their part, are largely above average. Interestingly enough, the stories adding the most star power to this volume didn't impress me as much as I expected, and two pieces I'd somewhat discounted at first far exceeded my expectations. I'll highlight several stories below.
Opening the volume with a Laird Barron story is an intuitively good choice, and "Now I Have the Scent" is a compelling story overall, pairing visceral grimness with an empathy of sorts as I've seen in Barron's stories previously. The choice of a warhound as the POV character and protagonist is effective, to say the least. Only a few elements at the prose level didn't do so much for me, mainly the motif of bracketed words that seem to be transmitting the warhound's baser thoughts and instincts. Still an enjoyable story.
K.H. Vaughan's "Rendezvous Aboard the Ship of Death" shouldn't have worked for me. I nearly rolled my eyes as I realized the story would center a dwarf and an elf in rivalry with each other, and I've read plenty of stories of ragtag mercenaries fighting their way through bleak circumstances. However, the elf-dwarf rivalry here lends some lightness and camaraderie to what's otherwise a veritable bloodbath with deep notes of space opera (even though the warships are merely flying, not in space) and Warhammer (or at least Warhammer as I imagine it through largely second-hand impressions). I thoroughly enjoyed several larger-than-life scenes that, if described to me in summary, I probably would've thought to be over-the-top.
The other piece that blew me away, even more so, was "Discovering the Caliper'd Heart" by Daniel A. Rabuzzi. Also unexpected: I wasn't deeply familiar with the historical literature being referenced, and the story gets off to a decidedly old-fashioned start. As the piece goes on, though, it turns out to be a love letter to the historical work The Caliper'd Heart, and an exceptional one at that. The prose sings (readers who disagree ought to revisit the piece, reading it aloud this time); I found myself going over several stanzas repeatedly to savour the writing craft. That, and the fictional excerpts, many times, are written like well-executed pieces of microfiction. This piece was simply delightful.
As for other not-strictly-fantasy-adventure stories, Jon Olfert's "A Grass Rope" and "Galatine" by Alexander Atreya really worked for me, too. (I do hope the OMQ editors maintain such a variety of works in future issues.) "A Grass Rope" does exactly what speculative fiction ought to, roping us in (sorry) with a premise that, while not wholly believable, is compelling enough to suspend disbelief; from there, it serves readers with the richly imagined interiority of a life quite unlike our own (Olfert's mammoth protagonist Walks-like-a-Rockslide) and serves us with stakes and emotional verve one would expect of a story about humans. Galatine, for its part, is in some ways typical of a piece of dark Arthuriana, but I found its particular tragic darkness quite lush thanks to the piece's atmosphere and tone. It makes one look forward to OMQ's upcoming Arthuriana-themed special issue.
Among the fantasy adventure yarns (Ship of Death aside), E.M. Morrissey's "Shadows Under Assoil" is especially well executed, introducing several different tension points early on that kept me waiting for one shoe or another to drop for a good while. (Morrissey also manages to maintain the feeling that her protagonists are endangered, at least for most of the story, despite one member of the party being a wizard.) Kyle E. Miller's "Censor, Poet, Paper, Tree" comes off as a weird Heart of Darkness-tinged military expedition at first, but the world that's broken in ways that are only hinted at and the collective cultural trauma that makes its way into many of the characters' interactions add richness to the piece. The other adventure stories were competently written (or better) but haven't stuck with me quite so much.
"The Fourth Intruder" by John Langan book-ends this volume and seems to have been another highly anticipated story, per other reviewers. I liked the character work here and some of the dark magic at play, but the extensiveness of the protagonist's inner monologue at every decision point stretched the story out more than I would've liked. (I well understand that in pondering each decision in what would otherwise be a fairly quick encounter-gone-awry in his tavern, Gull is also in dialogue with the expectations many fantasy adventure readers bring into the piece; Langan's intention is clear. Even still, I could've done with less of this for the sake of pacing.)
All in all, there were quite a few surprises in this collection, mostly good ones. No magazine will satisfy every reader (or any reader) with every story, but I'm more than pleased with what I've been reading overall, and I look forward to many Old Moon issues to come.
The latest issue of Old Moon Quarterly is slightly less experimental than issue 7, though there's still a healthy variety of prose and verse piece interspersed among the customary fantasy adventure yarns. The fantasy adventure tales, for their part, are largely above average. Interestingly enough, the stories adding the most star power to this volume didn't impress me as much as I expected, and two pieces I'd somewhat discounted at first far exceeded my expectations. I'll highlight several stories below.
Opening the volume with a Laird Barron story is an intuitively good choice, and "Now I Have the Scent" is a compelling story overall, pairing visceral grimness with an empathy of sorts as I've seen in Barron's stories previously. The choice of a warhound as the POV character and protagonist is effective, to say the least. Only a few elements at the prose level didn't do so much for me, mainly the motif of bracketed words that seem to be transmitting the warhound's baser thoughts and instincts. Still an enjoyable story.
K.H. Vaughan's "Rendezvous Aboard the Ship of Death" shouldn't have worked for me. I nearly rolled my eyes as I realized the story would center a dwarf and an elf in rivalry with each other, and I've read plenty of stories of ragtag mercenaries fighting their way through bleak circumstances. However, the elf-dwarf rivalry here lends some lightness and camaraderie to what's otherwise a veritable bloodbath with deep notes of space opera (even though the warships are merely flying, not in space) and Warhammer (or at least Warhammer as I imagine it through largely second-hand impressions). I thoroughly enjoyed several larger-than-life scenes that, if described to me in summary, I probably would've thought to be over-the-top.
The other piece that blew me away, even more so, was "Discovering the Caliper'd Heart" by Daniel A. Rabuzzi. Also unexpected: I wasn't deeply familiar with the historical literature being referenced, and the story gets off to a decidedly old-fashioned start. As the piece goes on, though, it turns out to be a love letter to the historical work The Caliper'd Heart, and an exceptional one at that. The prose sings (readers who disagree ought to revisit the piece, reading it aloud this time); I found myself going over several stanzas repeatedly to savour the writing craft. That, and the fictional excerpts, many times, are written like well-executed pieces of microfiction. This piece was simply delightful.
As for other not-strictly-fantasy-adventure stories, Jon Olfert's "A Grass Rope" and "Galatine" by Alexander Atreya really worked for me, too. (I do hope the OMQ editors maintain such a variety of works in future issues.) "A Grass Rope" does exactly what speculative fiction ought to, roping us in (sorry) with a premise that, while not wholly believable, is compelling enough to suspend disbelief; from there, it serves readers with the richly imagined interiority of a life quite unlike our own (Olfert's mammoth protagonist Walks-like-a-Rockslide) and serves us with stakes and emotional verve one would expect of a story about humans. Galatine, for its part, is in some ways typical of a piece of dark Arthuriana, but I found its particular tragic darkness quite lush thanks to the piece's atmosphere and tone. It makes one look forward to OMQ's upcoming Arthuriana-themed special issue.
Among the fantasy adventure yarns (Ship of Death aside), E.M. Morrissey's "Shadows Under Assoil" is especially well executed, introducing several different tension points early on that kept me waiting for one shoe or another to drop for a good while. (Morrissey also manages to maintain the feeling that her protagonists are endangered, at least for most of the story, despite one member of the party being a wizard.) Kyle E. Miller's "Censor, Poet, Paper, Tree" comes off as a weird Heart of Darkness-tinged military expedition at first, but the world that's broken in ways that are only hinted at and the collective cultural trauma that makes its way into many of the characters' interactions add richness to the piece. The other adventure stories were competently written (or better) but haven't stuck with me quite so much.
"The Fourth Intruder" by John Langan book-ends this volume and seems to have been another highly anticipated story, per other reviewers. I liked the character work here and some of the dark magic at play, but the extensiveness of the protagonist's inner monologue at every decision point stretched the story out more than I would've liked. (I well understand that in pondering each decision in what would otherwise be a fairly quick encounter-gone-awry in his tavern, Gull is also in dialogue with the expectations many fantasy adventure readers bring into the piece; Langan's intention is clear. Even still, I could've done with less of this for the sake of pacing.)
All in all, there were quite a few surprises in this collection, mostly good ones. No magazine will satisfy every reader (or any reader) with every story, but I'm more than pleased with what I've been reading overall, and I look forward to many Old Moon issues to come.
March 18, 2025
Exceptional collection at a uniform high level of quality and imagination. Barron and Langan together in a single collection!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews