Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians. Truth in Advertising. Resurrected Post.
Lin Carter presents yet another anthology in his stellar Swords-and-Sorcery series. This one is��Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians. Is there more than alliteration fueling the subtitle? He���s certainly doubled the thematic possibilities. Let���s see.
Lin Carter���s introduction is a mere rehash of a theme. Perhaps he was getting tired of covering the same ground in different words. Let���s move on to the content. (Note, I found a good price on a paperback copy, that will match better with the rest of the series on my shelf. The cheap, book club hard back can find a new home, I suppose.)
The Bagful of Dreams. Jack Vance. Seeing Jack VAnce���s name in a publication always makes me happy. Sure, this is a Cugel the Clever story I���ve read before, but I don���t care. Vance���s craft, cadence, and fulsome use of the English language are a pleasure. The droll cynicism of every uttered or internalized thought makes me grin, if not laugh volubly. Cugel is as delightful, amoral, and unredeemable as ever. Vance���s boundless imagination is once again given full rein.��Bagful��is a superlative tale. I suppose this one falls under the rubric of Black Magicians, embodied in Cugel���s antagonist, Iolo.
The Tupillak. Poul Anderson. Mermen. That Northern Thing. Inuits, magic, mayhem. As should be expected, given the Sagas as an influence, the story is grim and tragic.Anderson brings a historian���s eye, a fantasists���s imagination, and his personal affinity for all things Norse to this one. Skoll. I figure this one is chock-full of Barbarians, from the differing parties��� perspectives, at any rate.
Storm in a Bottle. John Jakes. We had a bagful of dreams. Now we have a storm in a bottle. There���s an anthology concept for you: containers of unexpected things. Call it��Oddments. Anyway, it seems every barbarian swordsman must be enslaved at some point in his adventuring career, and Brak is no exception. I���m of two minds about this one. There is some decent adventure in this, and a suggestion of Brak���s intelligence, allowing him to piece together the mystery and solve the puzzle. On the other hand, there is no clean ending to this. Instead it seems the lead-in to another story. A story that does not follow in this anthology. And it all seemed a bit too long and too leadenly constructed to flow well. But stil, it was Brak, fighting sorcery. So, let it slide. And, besides, we get both a Barbarian and a Black Magician. Hurrah.
Swords Against the Marluk. Katherine Kurtz. I confess small familiarity with the Deyrni books. I read one or two of them when I was about twelve. I recall little, other than a certain dissatisfaction with what I felt was a lack of action. I was, remember, only a kid. (Digression begins. I remember much more clearly the library where I read them than the books themselves. I should ��� I clocked a lot of hours there. This was back in the early ���80s. Walking a couple of miles by yourself after school to the library to wait two or three hours for your mother ti pick you up wasn���t considered akin to child abuse back then. End digression.) Anyways, the story is a rather confusing muddle for someone unfamiliar with ��� or who has forgotten ��� the Deyrni novels. And it certainly isn���t S&S. This is High Fantasy. That���s fine, but it isn���t why I bought FS#4. I found the story largely uninteresting, the magic elaborately detailed fo no particular reason I could see, and the king, Brion, to be a bit of an idiot, without even minimal tactical competence. But, if pseudo-medieval European/quasi-elvish fantasy is what you���re in the mood for, this might do. Black Magician? Check.
The Lands Beyond the World. Michael Moorcock. I have a long-standing prejudice against stories in which the main characters forgets prior adventures, perhaps an entire novel���s worth of events, or even long chapters. I���ve read and invested in these doings. I feel cheated if the character who experienced them no longer recalls them, as if now none of those events were ���real.��� As if somehow, I had wasted my time. Added to a sort of generalized distaste for Elric and Moorcock���s sketchy, ruminative omphalos fixation, I wasn���t predisposed to like this tale, one that begins with Elric forgetting the events of his previous adventure. But, y���know, this one is all right. As always, when Moorcock exerts himself, he is inventive, painting colorful, exotic word pictures. He gives us a fine ending of swashbuckling and sorcery, as well as an interesting and subtly complex villain. Absent the brooding opening section, I���d consider this a superior Elric yarn. Black Magician? You bet your soul-stealing sword.
So, I���d say Carter delivered on a specific, though extremely broad, premise, giving us stories of Barbarians and Black Magicians. Overall, a fine entry in the series, though I feel with the addition of Katherine Kurtz that Carter is beginning to cast more widely afield for contributors.
Here���s the point in the post where I try to sell you something. I���m pleased to announce that I signed a contract for a three-book series. More on that later. But I can hardly sell you something that isn���t even on the publisher���s schedule yet. So, how about one of��these? Or one of��these?��This, perhaps? Or browse��here, see if something catches your eye. If you pick something up, let me know what you think of it. Feedback is, I think, valuable for writer who hopes to do more than just amuse himself with his scribbling.
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Published on��January 17, 2021 10:50
