Capsule Review Archive – The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories
This review originally appeared at This review originally appeared on Goodreads on August 25, 2021.
The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories
Edited by D.M. Ritzlin – DMR Books – January 1, 2019
Review by Robin Marx
Available free to mailing list subscribers, this promotional collection offers a sampling of the works by authors published by DMR Books. Most of the stories fall firmly in the sword & sorcery sub-genre of pulp fantasy. While not all of the stories left a strong impression on me, there were a number of standouts.
The books starts off strong with the title story by publisher D.M. Ritzlin himself. A muscular wanderer named Avok encounters a treacherous sorcerer and, but for his strength and wits, nearly finds himself the prey of a demon. A pretty traditional S&S tale, but an enjoyable one.
“Thannhausefeer's Guest” is another strong story. In this Viking-themed tale, a shipwrecked man finds himself drawn into a gladiatorial competition to entertain a giant cannibal. While a bit on the dour side, the story is vividly written and atmospheric.
“Into the Dawn of Storms” is more of a vignette than a self-contained story, but the situation it presents—an Elizabethan ship captain named Caleb Blackthorne receiving ominous portents from famous occultist Doctor John Dee—is intriguing enough to tempt me to seek out the complete book.
“The Gift of the Ob-Men” by Schuyler Hernstrom is a nicely weird sword & sorcery tale, also serving as the source of the title for Hernstrom's solo collection, The Eye of Sounnu. This story is one of the highlights of both books, seamlessly blending science fiction and fantasy.
Much like “The Infernal Bargain,” “Adventure in Lemuria” is another fairly traditional sword & sorcery adventure, this time complete with a strange cult, human sacrifice, and an evil temptress. The protagonist is ostensibly from Crete, but historical and cultural details are fairly light, seemingly more for spice than to ground the story in our world.
The book concludes with “The Heaviest Sword,” a horror story set in feudal Japan. This story is quite brief and vaguely sketched, but the Japanese flavor set it apart from the many Eurocentric stories in the book. I'd happily read more Japan-themed stories by Geoff Blackwell, but so far his output seems rather sparse and his Internet presence minimal.
Overall, this book offers a solid look at the kind of stories offered by DMR Books. It has encouraged me to research some of the authors further, but the anthology itself is harmed a bit by the presence of a couple novel excerpts that don't work particularly well independently. Most of the stories are by modern writers, so the inclusion of “The Sapphire Goddess” (1934) and “The Thief of Forthe” (1937) from the pages of Weird Tales also strike a bit of an odd note. That being said, this collection succeeds as a free sampler of DMR Books' output and is worth a read for sword & sorcery fans.
★★★☆☆
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