Balefires

By David Drake

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1597800716
• ISBN13: 9781597800716
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Night Shade Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A collection of short stories

Balefires A collection of short stories, including: A Land of Romance Arclight Awakening Best of Luck Black Iron Blood Debt Children of the Forest The Master of Demons Denkirch Firefight Lord of the Depths Men Like Us Smokie Joe Something Had to be Done Than Curse the Darkness The Automatic Rifleman The Barrow Troll The Dancer in the Flames The Elf House The False Prophet The Hunting Ground The Red Leer The Shortest Way The Song of the Bone I highly recommend every thing Drake has written. Gunner August, 2009

Not Free SF Reader

I was a little hesitant about this book, having read the odd Hammer's Slammers story and not liked them much at all. Drake points out in this book though that he was a fantasy writer before he was a military SF guy, and he certainly isn't wrong. Quite a few of these stories are from never seen sources for me, Destinies, some magazine called Whispers, etc., so unfamiliarity is not too surprising. His introductions to each tale are rather lengthy, moving from his first story sale, on, mentioning he was friends with Wellman and Wagner, something of which I was not aware - writers that I like, so was starting to feel more pleased about this book after reading that. In fact, enough interesting stuff in these bits to bump this book over the edge of a 3.7ish rating to the 4 mark. Balefires is a pretty apt title, as the majority of this is what some might call dark fantasy, or fantasy and horror, barring the De Camp pastiche of A Land Of Romance. Depends which you would prefer to claim, but certainly a lot of crossover. Vampires, Mythos, witches, trolls, monsters and more. In fact, the weakest story is the Elf House. Fairly eye-rolling title given it isn't a horror twist or anything, and it disappointed just as much. There is also a little science fiction horror, too, in the last few stories. On a much brighter note, several Year's Best stories to be found here, and I pretty much agree with the quality of those - Children of the Forest, the Barrow Troll, Best of Luck, Something Had To Be Done etc. A pleasant surprise to stumble across these, certainly. Overall, 3.44 for these, a pretty good score for 20+ stories from the one author, even more so perhaps seeing a lot of it is from the seventies. So for those that like the low fantasy, dark fantasy end of things (some of which also has a Vietnam war setting) this is certainly work worth looking at. Definitely my sort of story, a lot of these, as far as fantasy goes. Now I will have to look and see if there is a novel of his that might fit in with this style. Balefires : The Red Leer - David Drake Balefires : A Land of Romance - David Drake Balefires : Smokie Joe - David Drake Balefires : Awakening - David Drake Balefires : Denkirch - David Drake Balefires : The False Prophet - David Drake Balefires : Black Iron - David Drake Balefires : The Shortest Way - David Drake Balefires : Lord of the Depths - David Drake Balefires : Children of the Forest - David Drake Balefires : The Barrow Troll - David Drake Balefires : Than Curse the Darkness - David Drake Balefires : The Song of the Bone - David Drake Balefires : The Master of Demons - David Drake Balefires : The Dancer in the Flames - David Drake Balefires : Firefight - David Drake Balefires : Best of Luck - David Drake Balefires : Arclight - David Drake Balefires : Something Had to be Done - David Drake Balefires : The Elf House - David Drake Balefires : The Hunting Ground - David Drake Balefires : The Automatic Rifleman - David Drake Balefire

Very enjoyable short-story collection from David Drake

If your exposure to David Drake has been limited to the Lord of the Isles series, which apparently maps the very same plot out with different names and places time and time again (drake actually describes this in an intro to a story in balefires), you should realize that once upon a time Drake wrote original stories with tight plots which often ended in a single book and weren't 600 pages long. This collection includes stories published in other drake compliation volumes before as well as stories I had never seen by him. One story was re-written by August Derleth shortly before he died (Denkirch) and definitely reads like an August Derleth story (I always felt Derleth's Lovecraft-style stories were a little too transparently constructed compared to the originals, and this story is that way too). Many of his stories set in Vietnam are here, as well as other fantastic stories with varied settings. I am very glad Night Shade published this title, and wish Mr. Drake still wrote stories like this.