Deep in the woods there stands a dark castle. The walls are wrapped in thick, thorny vines, keeping even the most determined adventurer at bay. Inside the castle, the men and women of the house sleep. In the bower sleeps a princess, awaiting the arrival of the prince who will wake her from her long slumber.

"This is not the fairy tale you remember" proclaims the back cover of the latest chapbook from Scrybe Press, Eugie Foster's Ascendancy of Blood. And it's not. When the prince arrives and fights his way into the castle, he finds the princess. But before he can wake her, he must pull the wooden stake from her heart, and let the blood from his wrist fall into her mouth.

An interesting change to the old story. I won't say it's an entirely original idea. Hell, I had this very same idea over a year ago, but decided not to write it because it seemed a little too obvious. But Foster's got this style, this way of phrasing that makes you forget that you know what's going to happen, and instead get lost in the flow of her words.

"Within the castle proper, cobwebs hung heavy. They brushed like moth wings against Jiri's face and he waded through them like a swimmer in a murky sea. Pale cadavers crowded every clear space. Men in armor reclined on armchairs, cooks slumped over cutting tables, and maidservants curled before the cold, dead hearth. Another unnatural puzzle, these people were wholly unlike the strewn skeletons outside, for though deathly still, their flesh was hale and clean, untouched by putrefaction. There was a great wonder to it all. And a great sadness."

I've read Eugie Foster's work before--even singled out her story "A Little Soul Music" as one of the stand-outs from the In the Outposts of Beyond anthology--and it's nice to see her carry the publication on her own. She's a very good writer and I hope we start to hear a lot more from her. She's already got a slew of magazine and anthology publications, but I'd like to see some books with her name solo on the cover. Ascendancy of Blood is a good start.

My only complaint with this story is its length. At only 19 story pages, I felt there could have been more to it. Foster writes an interesting introduction and then gets things going with the story proper, but we're introduced to Prince Jiri and we follow his trek through the woods and inside the castle at such a leisurely pace, I expected a little more. As it is, the climax is anything but and the end of the story is nothing more than that old standby, the twist. I would have liked to have seen a longer, more developed story once Jiri wakes the princess.

But that's only 1 page out of 19, and the story up to then was . . . no, I won't say captivating. I'll never use a word like "captivating" in a review. But I did keep reading, wanting to see what happened next. And that's what I'll be doing with Eugie Foster's career, reading to see what happens next.



Related reviews:
In the Outposts of Beyond
http://www.epinions.com/content_123206602372

Recommended: Yes