Well of Shiuan

The broken moons streak across the sky and cause crazy tides that are drowning the lands.  Jherun is a peasant woman who sometimes raids old tombs for money.  After one such, she was chased by a strange man.  It was Roh, a fugitive through the Gate of Ivrel.  He queried of Morgaine and his cousin, Vanye.  Jherun did not know or see them.  However, when Roh left, Jherun followed.  She hoped to avoid marriage to Fwar.  Instead of Roh, she stumbled upon Morgaine and Vanye!  They wanted to know about the gates, here called "wells."  Jherun guided them to the Well of Shiuan.

At the end of Gate of Ivrel, Roh's body was taken over by the very enemy who had wiped out Morgaine's companions a century before.  It was yet another feature of the gates to inhabit new bodies and thus extend one's age.  Now Roh was determined to get to Shiuan and close it behind him, thus trapping Morgaine on this dying world.

This world is beset by constant rain and floods, making it quite bleak and all the folk hope to somehow escape the impending doom.  By promises of travel to new worlds through the Well of Shiuan, both Roh and Morgaine recruit armies to secure the well from the other.  Also, some of the clans were the same as from the last book, showing that the ancient race had planted people on different worlds.

Vanye is once again conflicted, never quite sure what to do.  He is a hard character to like and too often feels like a victim of circumstance who rarely overcomes his troubles himself.

Entertaining and interesting.

Gate of Ivrel

Our story opens with the information dump to end all information dumps.  There was a race that became so advanced that they created a interstellar gate system.  Not only did it allow transportation to any planet in the galaxy - provided there was a gate, it also allowed for time travel.  These ancient folk would tinker with the people on these planets, perhaps having been deposited there by them.  Indeed, the universe seems very human through the books.  They would change something and then jump forward in time a hundred years or so to see how that impacted the culture.  Of course, they never traveled back in time, as that was clearly a path to ruin.  However, eventually, they got close to the end of the galaxy and the only choice was to travel back and ruin befell.  Now, onto the next info dump!

A mixed race of people, who were a fusion of the ancient race and humans, built a new civilization among the ruins but the gates were a danger.  A team was assembled who would spend eternity shuttering the gates so that the disaster would not repeat.  Morgaine was just one of these.  While trying to close the Gate of Ivrel, the team was wiped out with the exception of Morgaine.  She fled through another gate that jumped her a century forward on the timeline.  To her, it has only been a minute.  To everyone else, she was some mythic figure from a long ago battle.

Now, our story begins.  Vanye was the son of a noble of one clan, but his mother had been a captive taken from a rival clan.  As such, he was viewed as a lesser son, a half-breed.  When he killed one of his half-brothers and maimed another, he was banished.  This was essentially a death sentence.  As luck would have it, he encountered Morgaine as she emerged from the gate.  By custom, he became her indentured servant.  The pair then set about closing the gate.  The same man who had wiped out Morgaine's compatriots a century before was still in control.  Could she overcome him this time?

The setting is truly outstanding and well-realized.  Here is a variation on Stargate long before Stargate ever aired.  Not only are the workings of this gate system gamed out in the opening chapter, the worlds that result have a mix of tribal people that repeat, showing how the ancient civilization mixed and matched to experiment.  Vanye's mixed heritage plays heavily in the first book, as he and Morgaine are able to recruit assistance from his mother's clan.  In fact, his cousin, Chya Roh, proves to be a recurring character in the first three books.  Though the founding race was clearly high tech, this world is Medieval.  Battles are fought with swords, spears, and bows.

Though armed with a dimension-ripping sword called Changeling, Morgaine is not some great warrior.  In fact, she is more of a planner and manipulator.  Her talents lie in recruiting aid to the cause, not in combat.  She is also one of the few who understands the workings of the gates.  By contrast, Vanye is a fighter, but he comes across as wishy washy.  Always his honor prevents him from doing this or doing that.  He has a lot of crises of conscience.

Back to Changeling, the sword creates a portable gate extending from its tip when drawn.  Enemies can be swept away to who knows where?  It is very effective but extremely dangerous.  How does one sheath such a weapon?  Not only can it sweep away enemies, it can function as an impenetrable shield as arrows and such will vanish into the void.

Highly entertaining and recommended.

The Ash Lad: In Search of the Golden Castle (2019)

Thanks to having rescued Princess Kristin (Eili Harboe) from the troll king, Espen (Vebjorn Enger) and his family are invited to a celebration at the royal mansion.  However, because they are common folk, Espen's brothers, Per & Pal, are mistaken for servants.  Given a tray with drinks, they are dispatched to King Erik, Queen Victoria, and the princess.  No sooner has the king and queen tasted the drinks than they fall into comas.  Assassins!  Per and Pal are imprisoned and sentenced to death.  Can Espen save the day again?

There is a legend that tells of a curative elixir that can be found at the Golden Castle.  However, the story further states that only one person has ever escaped the castle to tell the tale.  Epsen and Princess Kristin set out to find that mysterious survivor and learn where to find the golden castle and recover the healing potion.  Furthermore, they have only a couple of days in which to do it!  Worse still, the true villain behind the poisoning has sent his minions, led by Oholmann (Sidse Babett Knudsen) to stop them.  The long-nosed hag once again provides help and Espen recovers random bits and bobs along the way that prove helpful.  His long-striding boots were quite humorous.

Not quite as good as the previous entry, it did have one stand out bit.  When Espen challenged the Fossegrim (Tomas Lesmarquis) to a fiddle-playing duel, his unexpected victory was quite funny.

This is campy fun, a light-hearted fantasy epic that plays the brothers' imprisonment and forthcoming execution for laughs.  Good popcorn fun.

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King (2017)

Princess Kristin (Eili Harboe) was nearing her 18th birthday and her parents insisted that she get married lest the troll king carry her off.  As the saying went, a princess who did not marry by 18 would be abducted by a troll who would marry her.  Kristin thought that was nonsense.  Besides, she did not want to marry the odious Prins Fredrik (Allan Hyde).  Thus, she ran away.

Espen (Vebjorn Enger) was the youngest of three brothers who lived with their father.  He was not a practical young man, usually distracted by unimportant things.  In fact, given the task of getting food for the family, he lost most of it during a chance encounter with a strange girl (i.e., Princess Kristin) who ate much of the food as she was famished.  Left to guard the house while his father and brothers went hunting, he managed to burn the house down.

Meanwhile, Kristin discovered, to her great surprise, that the tale was true.  The mountain king awoke from his slumber, stomped through the forest, snatched her from the woods, and returned her to his mountain cave.

Determined to reclaim his bride, Prins Fredrik and his entourage happened upon the burned ruins and asked about Princess Kristin.  There was a reward.  The three brothers were soon trekking into the woods to find the princess.  Strangely enough, the sober and hard-working brothers were more often foiled in their efforts while Espen had a knack for solving each trouble they faced.  He would collect junk along the trail, junk that would later prove invaluable in overcoming the latest obstacle.

Can Espen and his brothers rescue Princess Kristin before the Mountain King marries her?  Can they get there before Prins Fredrik?  Can they get the reward that would allow for the rebuilding of the house?

Light and fun.  Recommended.

Red Sonja (2025)

In a quaint Hyrkanian town filled with peaceful, well-dressed and productive people, an ethnically diverse collection of children play.  One child, a red-headed girl, has a wooden horse.  Then, the barbarians arrived, bursting through the pathetic gate - entirely by surprise in the middle of the day - and slaughtering or enslaving the inhabitants.  The red-headed girl - let's call her Sonja - escaped into the woods.  Unspecified years later, Sonja (Matilda Lutz) traveled through the forest on her beloved horse, Veehud.  Her goal: to locate the survivors of her people.  On this particular day, she encountered a band of poachers, who killed some forest beasts for the horns on their heads.  This shall not stand.  Sonja hunted them to a burned and denuded section of the forest where a wooden fort now stood.

Draygan (Robert Sheehan) had been a slave, but has since risen to become a conquering emperor.  The secret of his success is a peculiar book, though he only possessed half of it.  Draygan has the standard army of black-clad knights, a baboon-looking General Karlak (Marty Ford), a former gladiator/mistress Annisia (Wallis Day), and scientist/alchemist Maester Crudelis (Trevor Eve).  Draygan has managed to conquer territory with his machines, one of which looks like a tank.  He also has mind-control disks and a power generator that reminds one of Ironman's arc reactor.  Yes, exactly what one expects in Robert E Howard's Hyborean Age.

Into this fortress Sonja ventured to kill the poachers and to free the forest animals that had been captured.  Though the poachers were killed, Annisia subdued her in battle.  Sonja was enslaved and sent to the arena, where she was sent to her first battle in a chainmail bikini and with a wooden sword; it was for humiliation, not protection.  Reduced to this sad state, can Sonja escape enslavement and rescue the forest from the depredations of Emperor Draygan?

The origin story of Red Sonja has been abandoned.  In the comic, Sonja's family is murdered, while she is raped and left for dead.  A war goddess bequeathed her unmatched fighting skills so that she could exact vengeance.  But there was a condition: she could never lie with a man who had not beaten her in a fair fight.  None of that appears here.  Instead, she has been a hermit in the forest for untold years where she just naturally picked up tremendous martial talents.  A goddess does eventually intervene to save her - or perhaps resurrect her - but the requirement was that she save the forest.  Yeah, it's some nature goddess who is concerned about how humans are mistreating the environment.  No message there.

The book proved to be a holy scripture of the nature goddess.  Really?  For some reason, the first half provided brilliant technical insights that allowed Draygan to rise from slavery.  Imagine what he could do with the whole book!  Well, the second half of the book was entirely about healing.  The whole point of preventing him from getting the book was nonsense.  What was that prophecy again?  Ugh.

Why is Sonja such a great fighter?  How does a 5 1/2 foot tall woman with no armor easily defeat four 6' tall soldiers in heavy armor.  That was her first fight in the arena.  Did she go to some warrior training school during her time in the forest?

Matilda Lutz is miscast.  The whole point of Sonja is the chainmail bikini.  The comic was about having a hot chick in martial combat while wearing almost nothing.  The character is meant to appeal to a male audience.  Lutz is an attractive woman but she does not fill out the bikini.  She is a slender woman where someone with more of an hourglass figure was needed.  Worse still, the script did her no favors with flat dialogue and no character arc.  Bland.

Rhona Mitra, who plays a fellow slave and arena fighter, had a small role.  She is most noted for serving as a model for Lara Croft in the 1990s and being the lead in Doomsday (2008).  It's an Obi-Won Kenobi like role, where she imparts some wisdom before being killed off.

The movie had been in developmental hell for 20 years and this was the script and cast that they decided to move forward?  Astonishing.  Skip.

Four Warriors (2015)

Three crusaders and their prisoner trek through Europe on the way home.  Richard (Christopher Dane) is the leader, William and Hamish his allies, and Khushtar the Saracen prisoner.  Why are they taking Khushtar to England?  He's used as a pack animal.  One day, they came upon a village populated only by women and a single child.  The women say that creatures have stolen the men and children.  Richard concluded it was likely slavers.  He deigns to remain a couple of days to scare off the slavers, but soon discovers that something dark is in the woods.  The old woman says only the Four Warriors can save them now.  She indicates Richard, William, Hamish, and Khushtar!

A low budget fantasy movie, it rises to the level of mediocre.  Of course, the hero is a man who has renounced God and views the crusades as wrong.  Yes, let's get that anti-Crusades propaganda in the film.  No need to talk about how Muslims conquered Christian lands from the Middle East, Northern Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and still pressed against Byzantium.  Nope.  Crusaders were in the wrong.  Hey, they've even enslaved the unfortunate Khushtar and use him as a mule.  By contrast, Khushtar proves to be completely honorable and trustworthy.  Heck, he even heals the worst of the crusaders, William.

The choreography is poor.  Despite waves of black-clad villains with 'scary' masks, our heroes stand toe to toe against them, neither getting killed nor killing.  Yes, it is like the A-Team where the fights result in no injuries, but the villains eventually run away.

Adding another modern message, Richard gets together with Alina, the single mom.  Well, that was common in the era as mortality was high.  Not in her case.  She explained to Richard that she met a Crusader who was on his way to the Holy Land some years ago and that she had a son with him.  Oh, so a random guy was passing through.  How did Alina get to be the leader of this village with that in her background?  This is the Middle Ages.

Hard pass.

Warlord (2025)

The city of Lloris was built and ruled by elves for millennia.  Then the humans came to trade.  Then they settled.  Finally, they moved against the elves and forced them from their ancient city.  Today, the elves are viewed as legend, not seen in two centuries.

Elwynn Brokenleaf (Stuart Brennan) and Tyfell Fallenoak (Richard Goss) are wood elves out on a hunt.  While ranging near the ancient city, they spot a naked human flee through the woods.  The man, Cameron, is brought down by other humans.  The humans castrate him, apply hot tar, and then a basket of feathers.  They leave him to die.  Tyfell left an apple at the man's side though Elwynn thought it a waste.

Lloris is now ruled by the sheriff (Billy Boyd) and his yellow-clad goon squad.  Each day, taxes are raised, putting out business after business.  The castrated man had been a baker who could not pay the tax; the punishment was extreme.  Emily (Aliona Baranova) is something of a leader among the people, aiding other bakers in paying the taxes.  Cameron has slipped back into town and tells his tale of elves and apples.  Emily takes the apple and has a grand plan.

Emily's parents had ruled the city before the sheriff came.  She was too young to know how the sheriff replaced her parents.  However, her parents had a fondness for elf things - like goblets - and knew some elf lore.  One thing Emily remembered was how to summon elves:

As once we were lost, together we may be found, let us come to speak and find common ground

She spoke the words at the foot of a great tree in the woods with the elfin apple as a focus.  Sure enough, an elf appeared.  Llanofinn Brokenleaf (Jennifer English) was not happy to talk to a human and had little sympathy for her plight.  Nonetheless, she agreed to consult with the elves and give an answer about aiding against the tyrannical sheriff.

The characters are mostly bland.  Billy Boyd doesn't sell himself as a villain.  Sure, he delivers bad guy lines, but has the face of a friendly hobbit.  Stuart is flat as Elwynn, which kind of works but also makes him boring.  He offers all sorts of sage wisdom to the young Tyfell and takes everything at a slow walk.  Emily is explained backwards.  Her oddly high status among the bakers is not explained until we learn of her origins.  Her friend Sam likewise gets major character development in the climax.  These revelations should not be surprises, since all the citizens know them and only the viewer is left in the dark.

The story progresses at a snail's pace and there is very little action.  When there is action, it is typically a case where the elf fires the bow then we cut to see a man with an arrow in him.  Same goes for sword cuts.  Slash with sword, cut to man with bloody gash.  When the elvish sword dancer arrives, she spins in close up.  No choreography at all.  Despite being set in a fantasy setting, there was very little action.  It is very talky.  So much dialogue.

The movie ends with a massive plot twist, a flipping of the table and a backstab extraordinaire.  The twist does not end the story but demands more story that does not come.  Nope, movie over.  Was this made with a sequel in mind?

Slow and plodding.  Skip.