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Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The White Gold Score
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of Winter's Reach
Read Fantasy Book Critic's review of The Instruments Of Control
Read Fantasy Book Critic's Interview with Craig Schaefer

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Craig Schaefer was born in Chicago and wanted to be a writer since a very young age. His writing was inspired by Elmore Leonard, Richard Stark, Clive Barker & H. P. Lovecraft. After reaching his 40th birthday he decided to give in to his passion and since then has released twelve novels in the last three years. He currently lives in Joliet, Illinois and loves visiting museums and libraries for inspiration.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients' problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control.

Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his own former employer, a racket boss who isn't entirely human. Then there's Caitlin: brilliant, beautiful, and the lethal right hand of a demon prince.

A man named Faust should know what happens when you rub shoulders with demons. Still Daniel can't resist being drawn to Caitlin's flame as they race to unlock the secret of the Etruscan Box, a relic that people all over town are dying -- and killing -- to get their hands on. As the bodies drop and the double-crosses pile up, Daniel will need every shred of his wits, courage and sheer ruthlessness just to survive.

Daniel Faust knew he was standing with one foot over the brink of hell. He's about to find out just how far he can fall..

FORMAT/INFO: The Long Way Down is 372 pages long divided over forty-four chapters and an epilogue. Narration is in the first-person, via Daniel Faust solely and Artie Kaufman in the third-person for a singular appearance. This is the first book of The Daniel Faust series.

April 25, 2014 marked the North American paperback and e-book publication of The Long Way Down and it was self-published by the author. Cover art and design is by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design.

CLASSIFICATION: Featuring a cast of anti-heroes and with a magician con-man as the protagonist, the Daniel Faust series is Richard Stark's Parker crossed with The Dresden Files and set in Las Vegas.

ANALYSIS: The Long Way Down is the first book of the Daniel Faust series and while this book wasn't my introduction to Craig's books or even to Daniel Faust's world. It is a good place to start and enter the dark, crazy world that Craig has envisioned.

This book (as I've learned from reading all of the Daniel Faust titles released so far) have multiple plots running together. The story opens up with Daniel introducing the reader to his world in Las Vegas. This is a city that thrives on illusions and we learn that it just goes deeper than the ones that we see. Faust's world is one of magic but it's hidden and one can't really access it. The story follows the usual Urban Fantasy tradition of having a first person narrative. Faust introduces the readers to his friends in the Tiger's Garden, a hangout place which is only accessible to those in tune with magic & other supernatural latencies of the world. He then gets approached by an old Minnesotan man to find his granddaughter who previously had gotten into porn and has now gone missing. Further complicating matters is the fact that she was forced to participate in some heinous films and whose director is knee deep into seedier aspects. .

There's a few more plot complications (such as Caitlin's introduction, the main big bad, etc.) which further fuel the story and keep the readers guessing as to where the story might end up. All throughout this, the author keeps on laying the groundwork for the sequels as well as the character cast besides Daniel. We are given glimpses of his past and introduced to those whom he considers friends and family. We also get to meet the people he has associated with in the past as a criminal. He still does odd jobs and is a person who operates on the other side of law. But he has his rules and while he's not one to shy away from murder and deceit, he still tries to hold to a moral line of only killing folks who deserve it.

Craig Schaefer really effuses the story with lots of twists and the best way I can think of describing this book and the series is Richard Stark's Parker meets The Dresden Files. The main character and the rest of the characters that are introduced aren't heroes but they sure are heroic in their deeds. They regularly work as thieves and are often the type that would be featured as antagonists or at least working in the shadows. But to the author's credit, the story works and Faust is an absorbing narrator. I loved how the author goes about expanding the story and world while keeping the narrative tightly focussed.

The main mystery gets resolved however the other plot twists get introduced and the story takes a whole new path, leading on to a frightful climax. The story does end on a somber note and there's enough potential shown within that I wanted to read the second book immediately. The action is more on a personal level and the big battle towards the end does make up a lot for the start. However this book does have some inertia, particularly in the first third wherein the plot is set up and all the characters are introduced.

The author tries his best but considering this is his debut, there's some rough spots in the book which might slowdown the read for many a reader. For me, this book was a decent  but slightly slow read but since I had read THE WHITE GOLD SCORE previously. I soldiered on knowing that the once the plot finds its groove, it would be worth it and it definitely was.  The story has a good mix of action, plot twists and character drama, and the author hints at certain things that might play out in future books. There are some plot threads and twists which just seem to be resolved easily but this is done with the long haul in mind and something I as a reader could overlook.

Craig Schaefer ends his debut admirably as he leads up to a big climax which does solve most of the plot threads while setting up the sequels. The epilogue is a kicker and hearkens back to very first plot thread and brings it to a solid, fitting conclusion. Still I would rate this book as a three & half star effort, because after reading the sequels I know how good they are and in comparison, this book while absorbing, does its job of introducing the series, characters and world appropriately.

CONCLUSION: The Long Way Down is an admirable debut that introduces the readers to a world wherein the heroes aren't really heroic but charismatic nonetheless, the bad guys are evil but not entirely misguided and the stakes are truly world-shattering.  It was a debut that left me admiring the author's ingenuity & writing skills in spite of the flaws within. Give this book a shot if you love urban fantasy and want to read something darker than most titles that have been published so far.

I was drinking cheap Beaujolais at a cocktail reception for corporate lawyers, when an unexpected question caught me off guard. Why would you use the Thirty Years War as the backdrop for a thriller and not write a ‘normal’ historical fiction book? I looked so shocked that my interlocutor frowned, concerned that she had caused offense. I hadn’t even realized that anyone there knew that I was an author (I have an alter ego who’s a businessman), let alone knew anything about my books. Scrambling to refocus my mind on the question, I blurted the flippant response, “Why not?” and realized I would have to come up with a better answer than that.

The Devil’s Bible Series is set at the end of the Thirty Years War, perhaps the most violent conflict in history, and yet desperately under-represented in the English language. The war started with a bang: three men were thrown out of a seventy-foot window because of their religion. They survived, thanks to a soft landing in a dungheap, but aggrieved Catholics began arming for war with their Protestant neighbours, like the Empire going after that pesky Rebel Alliance. So there are immediately two sides to the story and a basis for conflict, which as Donald Maass (just google him) points out, is the number one ingredient for any thriller.

The 17th century itself was a century of discovery. The Reformation allowed even devout Catholics to challenge the Church’s repression of science. From astronomy to anatomy, to zoology and zymology, the next few generations saw the life expectancy of the common man more than double. This spirit of innovation was driven (slightly ironically) by the desire for more sophisticated ways of killing one another. The advent and development of the gun led to the decline of the sword as the weapon of choice, but the middle of the century was a heady mix of pistols and muskets, swords and halberds. And cavalry. Lots of cavalry. And cannon. Lots of cannon.

With this change underway, there would have been an advantage in mastering all forms of weapon and tactics. We know there was a competitive industry in mercenary companies: most were formed on a military basis, and often led by noblemen. In the services sector, training of staff is key to success – the companies which performed most consistently were those that invested in their people and other assets. Just like The Sons of Brabant, who are ready to kick ass at the drop of a hat.

And as for the scene-setting, I can’t imagine a more exciting backdrop. In the time of the Devil’s Bible Series, there was no Germany, no Italy, no Belgium, just a big Spain and a big Austria. The Netherlands was divided: brother fought brother as half the country struggled for independence. Tensions in England led to the Pilgrim Fathers epic voyage to colonise America, and ultimately to a bloody Civil War. They chopped the king’s head off! You don’t get much more thrilling than that.

But all was not rosy. The average life expectancy was approximately 30 years. Continuous war led to chronic famine across the continent and displaced millions from their homes. Cities became the only home for hordes of refugees, who eked out a living in abominable squalor. With hundreds of thousands crammed into tiny spaces, it’s small wonder that rats were able to spread the Great Plague, which caused millions to die in agony.

So upon reflection, my blithe “why not?” is actually a measured response. With a wealth of characters, world-changing discoveries and events, two sides at war, and yet enough freedom to bend the rules slightly, the 17th century seemed like the perfect place to set a thriller.

What do you think?

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"Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible." - Rod Serling

Way back when I had a respectable job, I took some college courses in software engineering. One of them was on compilers, a software program that transforms programming language into machine language used by a computer processor. I sat in there amid a serious bunch of guys wielding thick glasses, pocket protectors and computer science degrees, and I felt like an impostor. For my final exam, I wrote the front end of a compiler in AWK (anyone who knows what that is gets an Award of Excellence in Geekery). I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had imagination and a lot of nerve. I also feared the worst. When the instructor handed me my graded final, I expected him to say, “Who are you and what are you doing in this class?” Instead, he said, “I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” He gave me an A.

Turns out, this is an obscure metaphor for my take on fantasy and science fiction.

I spent the better part of my childhood reading not only speculative fiction but also the esoteric things that inspire it. I was the kind of kid who would do a book report on Hermetic occultism or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I was more somewhere else than here, but oddly, this taught me about reality. I never bothered to define the difference between fantasy and science fiction; now, I couldn’t say how many novels there are mixing strong elements of both. It's challenge to mix them without throwing out the definitions. Genres tend to blur over time, and then split into sub-genres, because gods forbid we can’t conveniently define something.

For the sake of argument, let’s call these genres distinct and go with classical definitions. To my mind, Science Fiction starts on a foundation of what’s known and provable, usually involving technological advances, the state of civilization, etc., and goes from there. Think Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke or Becoming Human by Valerie J. Freireich.

Fantasy deals more in the realms of myth, fairy tales and the unreal, usually involving magic or otherworldly forces—and that’s not to say it has to be soft or without rugged themes or realities. In this context, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings is definitive; the Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore, Blood Song by Anthony Ryan and Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Cycle are exemplary.

In fantasy, within reason, you can do anything if you can imagine it. This is probably why I’ve always leaned towards this genre, particularly the epic or high sub-genres where nearly everything is made up aside from basic references that serve to ground us in the story; for example, a medieval setting. I’ve written some science fiction, but it’s not my first love and despite a long and varied high tech career, I avoid writing it for the same reason I hid beneath an invisibility cloak in compiler class: Impostor! It’s a world full of geeks and somebody will call me out.

And yet, by way of my aforementioned nerve, I went there.

After writing Outpost, which is decidedly fantasy—if not epic or high fantasy if we want to get persnickety—I wrote this little tag line: “Epic fantasy entwined with Norse mythology and a touch of science fiction.” I must have taken out and put back in “a touch of science fiction” a dozen times. Finally, I removed it, but it left a stain. No science fiction here! I grumped, and then I thought about it—an inter-dimensional portal with specific dimensions and geometry built by extraterrestrial warlords to travel to and from other planets without having to wait for rare planetary alignments, humans trained in the principles of light, crystals, and energy so they can maintain the power source—Yeah yeah, ok. A touch of science fiction.

But it’s subtle. Said warlords are immortal, like elves, they are essentially Vikings—albeit highly evolved ones—and walk alongside warlocks, goblins, draugr and gods. Reprieved! The idea here touches on Arthur C. Clarke’s venerable quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In other words, what’s real? There is a seeming chasm in our society between science and magic; what’s acceptable as real and what’s not; and this is evident in these genre definitions. There’s a feel to it. However, as the advance of quantum theory is showing us, this chasm is itself an illusion.

Ergo, I can write the front end of a compiler in any language I want. Hold my beer.

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AUTHOR INFORMATION: F.T. McKinstry grew up studying classical music, reading books, drawing things, and searching the skies for aliens. With a background in computer electronics and software development, she wrote and illustrated technical documentation for many years, during which time she created fantasy worlds. Among other things, her work is inspired by Northern European mythology and folklore, fairy tales, swords and sorcery, medieval warfare, shamanism, psychology, mysticism and plant and animal lore.

F.T. is the author of the fantasy series The Chronicles of Ealiron and a short story collection Wizards, Woods and Gods. She lives in New England with a patient husband, a pile of cats, a couple of live-planted aquariums and a lot of gardens.