…And the Ugly.

Last of the nine kinden who play a significant part in Empireare the Scorpions. Significant? Well perhaps their significance is their non-appearance. There are plenty of them, and they keep turning up and showing their nasty, toothy faces, and yet what impact do they make? The Scorpions care nothing for empires, for borders, morality, politics or […]

An Old Man in a Lean Season, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

So, after confirming that I wouldn't be using major characters from the books in these, here's a story about Hokiak. Well, perhaps he's not a maincharacter, but he certainly is persistent. This story has nothing whatsoever to do with postmodernist twentieth century poetry, and most especially nothing to do with TS Eliot(1). However, Eliot exerts a strange fascination on […]

Scorpion-kinden, by David Mumford

Scorpion-kinden live lives of violence, greed and savage joy. Raiders, traders, slave-takers and mercenaries, they can be found making a brutal living across the Empire, the Spiderlands and the eastern Lowlands. Clawed and belligerent, they respect only strength. For the old, the weak, the infirm of purpose, there is only death or flight. So it is […]