More Further Adventures Of...

I hadn't been keeping track of Barbara Hambly's experiment in short fiction self-e-publishing, "The Further Adventures Of..." since I purchased the first round of stories back in November, but when I mentioned to a friend how pleased I was to have a new Benjamin January novel, she noted that two more Further Adventures had just been posted, one in the Darwath/Time of the Dark series and one in the Sun Wolf/Starhawk series.  Since those are among my favorites of Hambly's creations, I promptly went off to get the new stories.

Once again the purchasing was easy and smooth.  There's a shopping cart now, and even though I ordered the stories in the middle of the night, they arrived about half an hour after I made my Paypal payment.  I don't know whether they have it automated or whether whoever is in charge of sending them out is a night owl, but I was impressed at the after-hours fulfillment speed.

"A Night with the Girls" (13pp) is actually a Starhawk-only story, as she answers a call for magical help from their old mercenary troop, who are somewhat dismayed to get the warrior instead of the magic-user to face the magical monster that the inhabitants of a besieged town have called up.  So Starhawk and her mercenary friends Battlesow (with her sword Daffodil) and troop physician Butcher go off to investigate, run into a couple of townswomen, and join forces to defeat the monster while doing some female bonding:

"It won't," pointed out Starhawk. "They don't learn. They just come back. Indefinitely.  Whatever you do to them, they incorporate into themselves. Absorb it, and make it part of their attack." 

"I was married to a man like that once," remarked Butcher.

"Pretty Polly" (18p) takes us back to the Keep of Dare after the events of the most recent novel, Icefalcon's Quest (1998).  Gil-Shalos, exiled from our world and more-or-less content in Darwath as a Guard and the lover of the wizard Ingold, is forced to investigate alone after Ingold disappears while on the trail of a murderous monster deep within the back reaches of the Keep.  Interspersed throughout are Gil's dreams about the world she let behind, specifically her sister Donna, a victim of domestic violence, and Donna's cat, Pretty Polly.  But it's not entirely grim; between Gil and her fellow exile, Rudy, Hambly manages to work in references to Alien, Star Trek, and Ghostbusters. 

Both tales are decent enough short adventures that make me long for more novels, particularly in the Darwath series.  Read in rapid succession, however, they're similar enough to make me wonder if Hambly has something particular on her mind lately.  Series fans will definitely enjoy them, however, and I think they're actually fairly accessible even for those not familiar with the books, though "Pretty Polly" in particular will suffer from lack of background.

As before, $5/story is somewhat overpriced, but I don't begrudge it to one of my favorite fantasy authors.  I continue to be eager to support e-publishing experiments like this.

The Further Adventures Of... shopping site (with excerpts) is here.