Joseph’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2012)

Joseph’s comments from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.

I was just coming here to post about this.

Now I need to find the box that includes my books with authors whose last names start with SA.

My first encounter with Wagner (although I didn't realize it at the time) was his short story "Where the Summer Ends" in Kirby McCauley's anthology Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror.

I knew of the existence of Kane from Wagner's entry in Baird Searles' A Reader's Guide to Fantasy, which I checked out from the library repeatedly when I was in high school.

I didn't actually read a Kane story, though, until I ordered The Book of Kane direct from Donald M. Grant (as well as Robert E. Howard's Kull with the excellent Ned Dameron illustrations) while I was in college.

Then, a few years later, I was lucky enough to score all of the Warner paperbacks (plus the horror collections) at Uncle Hugo's. Great stuff!

I liked Thuvia well enough but didn't think it soared to the heights of its predecessors. (It's also the only Barsoom book, at least until maybe Llana of Gathol, not to have a framing story.) Chessmen is one of my two favorites after the initial trilogy (the other being A Fighting Man of Mars).

And another nice banner!

I just read Kane a couple of years ago, so I might stretch things to Wagner's Howard pastiches. As for Farmer, I'm leaning towards the Opar books, although I do also have the Dungeon series.

(My personal favorite Farmer, which again I read not super long ago, is Dark is the Sun, which is more of a super far-future dying earth sort of thing, and would be one of the major inspirations for that Gamma World campaign I'll never run.)

After Conan, I blew through Bone Silence (which is quasi-Victorian far-future space pirates, not sword & sorcery, but I loved it very much) and started Walter Jon Williams' Quillifer, which is at least getting back into the neighborhood.

Back to the source primeval with The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.

Relatedly, I'm starting to think I need to replace some of my Lancer Conan paperbacks with the Ace editions (and by "replace", of course, I mean, "keep both versions" -- not that I plan to reread them, necessarily, but I just love those covers, especially if I could find reasonably-priced copies of the black-spined versions.

Anybody else watch it? Only lasted 10 episodes -- a grubby historical series (on the order of Vikings or Lost Kingdom) from Kurt Sutter, the guy who did Sons of Anarchy, and yes, it's pretty much exactly what you'd imagine based on that description. It's streaming on Hulu.

I'm currently in episode 7. It's not great, necessarily, but there are certainly worse ways to spend your time.

S.E. wrote: "@Joe, I'm curious about your take on Harrow the Ninth"

I liked Gideon the Ninth a whole lot, but wasn't sure how she'd be able to continue the story. I'm currently only a few chapters into Harrow, but I'm starting to develop theories.

Not exactly S&S (although closer than you might think), but I just started Harrow the Ninth. Before which I read In an Absent Dream and Come Tumbling Down, the two most recent in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series.

OK, after spending two full weeks in Byzantium (which I don't regret in the slightest), I read The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, which I loved -- had a very deliberate wuxia vibe to it, although obviously with more focus on the characters than on the flying through trees and kicking each other, and started Gentlemen of the Road, which is historical, not S&S, but Michael Chabon definitely seems to be riffing on, say, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser and other well-worn S&S tropes.

Happily, I still have my original Flashing Swords paperbacks, so I'll just go ahead and reread those if the urge overtakes me.

I've watched all of Vikings, but need to add Last Kingdom to the mix. Maybe after I finish my current watch of S2 of Into the Badlands, which I suspect would be relevant to the interests of many folks here.

Started Robert M. Price's anthology The Mighty Warriors, not least because it has a David C. Smith story in it.

Christian wrote: "I can see why.

Currently halfway through Warlord of Mars and the relentless pace carries on. I also like how it didn't start on present day Earth, just BOOM, John Carter on the hunt. ..."

The sheer level of invention in those 100+ year old books is astonishing.

Nothing formal; and those are ones that have been sitting on my shelf for rather a long time ...

Oh, I have one! Thieves and assassins -- Among Thieves, The Book of Jhereg, Broken Blade, Thieves' World, etc.

Any of those would make me happy. Nothing else springing to mind immediately, but I'll let it percolate.

IIRC, John Carter and the Giant of Mars (the first half of the JCoM book) was written by one of his sons and originally published as an illustrated Little Big book or something like that? And it breaks canon in almost every paragraph -- aeroplanes, ray guns, telescreens ...

The second half of the JCoM book (Skeleton-Men of Jupiter) is at least passable, but it's incomplete -- it looks like it was intended as the first of another series of linked novellas a la Llana of Gathol and, I think, at least one of the later Tarzan and one of later Pellucidar books.

My personal favorites after the core 3 are The Chessmen of Mars and A Fighting Man of Mars.

All of Burroughs' series had this problem where they'd eventually start to sag, but I think the Mars books maintained the highest level of quality up through the end. The only real stinker is the first part of John Carter of Mars, and I believe that was actually ghost-written by his son. A few of the other tail-end books (Synthetic Men of Mars and Llana of Gathol) aren't great, but they're at least readable.

I already preordered the second set of Tarzan hardcovers (gotta lock in that 4-for-the-price-of-3 deal).

I keep wanting official ERB-sanctioned eBook editions -- pretty much everything is already available for Kindle, but it's all based on Gutenberg scans &c., so the quality is ... sketchy. I'd be happy to pay for them!