Balefires

by David Drake

Balefires is the long-awaited collection of David Drake's weird and fantastic fiction. Before Drake was a best-selling author of military science fiction, he was a prolific writer of horror and fantasy short fiction. Balefires collects some of his earliest professional sales (including his first sale to Arkham House.) In addition, Balefires brings together many stories set in the worlds of his fantasy novels (Ranks of Bronze, Lord of the Isles, etc.) and contains original fiction. More than just a collection of stories, Balefires features extensive story notes that chronicle the development of the writing career of one of the science fiction's most popular writers, and provides detailed snapshots of the larger than life editors, publishers and writers that Drake has worked with throughout his career.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Ebooks, Collections, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 24, 2007

About the author

David Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in this book range from decent to great, although my favorite is not the author's favorite. If you like horror, then you should pick this up and enjoy. If you like to know how a writer's life can influence and even drive their writing, then definitely pick this one up! I like one of my favorite writers no even more than I did before. This is not a survey of David's writing, and it is not intended to be, but I would have loved if there had been a horror story set in the Hammer's Slammers universe.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting rather more for the commentary than the stories included. An interesting look into the early career and influences of David Drake.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of Drake's horror and fantasy short fiction.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of Mr. Drakes horror stories. This collection had a few I had never seen elsewhere.

[John Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of short stories

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was all right. It's a collection of some of David Drake's short fantasy fiction. His devoted fans will probably enjoy it as a collection ranging from his earliest to later days. As someone who is neutral WRT David Drake's work (I don't seek it out, nor can I recall having read any of his novels; this one simply looked interesting, so I grabbed it at the library.), at times his introductions to the stories were more interesting than the stories themselves. (Like the one where he talks about the study of Latin as his soul's anchor, and the one where he mentions a very disliked Vietnam-era colonel who received a medal for being shot down by his own men during a helicopter inspection.) People with an interest in the history of SF/F may find these to be of some interest. In some of the intros, he mentions the inspiration or source for the story as something more recent, like C.M. Kornbluth. There's also some fairly early Lovecraft semi-pastiche which I skipped over without finishing; it wasn't really holding my attention.

Drake states that writing about Vietnam was in some ways his therapy for serving there as an interrogator. Some of the Vietnam-set stories seem to sound the same note over and over, and I skipped over one or two without finishing them. However: probably the best story in the collection was "The Hunting Ground," which was one of the post-Vietnam stories. (It features a Vietnam veteran with pain from a chronic injury.) It managed to be genuinely scary without simply being grotesque or requiring too much suspension of disbelief. There are some stories in the collection inspired by German fairy tales, Norse sagas, and Beowulf, but I'm not sure that Drake connects that well with the source material. For the most part I thought those stories were sort of meh. There's also a story which features a character from his Isles fantasy series. I haven't read it myself, but fans of the series might be interested in that story, "The Elf House."

Drake was an assistant city attorney in Durham NC after the war and before becoming a full-time writer. Might be interesting to hear his comments on the Duke lacrosse rape case. But then again, maybe he's already made them and they would irritate me to no end ... I'm not going to try to find out.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had way too much fun reading this! Although not all were to my taste it's still a great collection of some of Drake's short stories/novellas. Definitely would recommend those who are interested in SF, fantasy and horror to give it a go! High marks mostly because it's so many favourites in one book!

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

A different side of Drake, going back to his early days-pre Hammer's Slammers. Horror fantasy not my particular cup of tea, yet the stories stretch the imagination.