More On Heroes!

Continuing from last time, I managed to read a few more stories in Cirsova's first issue, so I will let you in on my opinions on them. Next week I'll probably wrap it up.

First up is the poem "My Name is John Carter (Part 1)" by James Hutchings which is an epic poem retelling of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I'm not an expert on poetry at all, but it managed to catch the feel of John Carter up to where the poem ends. It certainly made me want to read more epic poetry.

"This Day, At Tilbury" by Kat Otis and "At the Feet of Neptune’s Queen" by Abraham Strongjohn were the next two stories, and I wanted to talk about them both at once. Tilbury is mostly a war story involving a boy (who becomes a man) in the midst of a war and Neptune's Queen is a very John Carter type of sword and planet fantasy. They are very entertaining with cool fight scenes and good characterization, but I'm not a fan of either's ending. The ending to Tilbury is kind of a downer that makes it feel more typical to modern stories instead of the swashbuckling that is the genre's calling card. Neptune's Queen made me shake my head that the main characters did not see that coming even though it was fairly telegraphed what was going to happen. I also wasn't a fan of a cliched turncoat moment that added nothing to the story. Otherwise I highly enjoyed both of them.

The last one I'll be talking about today is "Rose by Any Other Name" by Brian K. Lowe. This one was a lot of fun. a tale of a time traveler lost in time and dealing with a pursued pair of strangers at the same time. There is a sex scene in the story (though not graphic) that turns out to be a little icky after a reveal later on and the ending isn't really an ending, but those are really the only faults here. Everything else is very old school science fiction adventure and I totally enjoyed the experience.

For those who want to read it themselves, Cirsova's first issue is FREE on Kindle until Saturday. You can get it here.

Oh, and happy St. Patrick's Day!