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

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

Yeah, plus there's just more room for variety when you have an entire planet to play with -- I read most of the Tarzan books back in my day, and there was an awful lot of sameness -- the only question was whether this would be one of those Tarzan books where there was a lost civilization hidden in the jungle, whether this was one where Tarzan would get amnesia, or both.

Finished The Chessmen of Mars, read The Master Mind of Mars in something close to one sitting (it was short) and started A Fighting Man of Mars.

Man, I love these books -- they're kind of old and creaky, but Burroughs' imagination was just an amazing thing.

Richard wrote: ""

I remember those as being a lot of fun.

Thuvia is short, so I finished it and am on to The Chessmen of Mars, which is one of my two favorite Barsoom books outside the original trilogy. (The other being A Fighting Man of Mars.)

Onward to Thuvia, Maid of Mars, the first third-person Barsoom book, and one of the very few that didn't include some kind of framing device telling how ERB came to hear the story.

I don't have as exciting a story about Dunsany -- I had become aware of him at some point in high school (probably via the Lovecraft connection) and may have even read a random story or two in some anthology or other, but one day I was at the local used book store and there sitting on the shelf was Gods, Men and Ghosts: The Best Supernatural Fiction of Lord Dunsany, so of course it had to come home with me. And it was a really great one to pick up, because it included a bunch of the Sidney Sime illustrations.

After that, of course, came the various collections & novels from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, and now there are the eBook reprints of the original collections. And I own the complete Night Shade edition of the Jorkens stories, which I do plan to get around to reading any day now ...

And just to tell the story: My first encounter with Burroughs was Tarzan books when I was young -- the public library had a bunch of the black-bordered Ballantine paperbacks, some with Boris Vallejo covers (although the most memorable to me was actually by Neal Adams:



So I was already familiar with the author when Dad gave me a copy of A Princess of Mars with the D'Achille cover sometime around junior high, and when I started reading it I was well and truly hooked. I then got a copy of The Gods of Mars, read that and came bang up against the massive cliffhanger that ends the book. Fortunately, the public library did have a copy of Warlord Of Mars, so I was able to see how it all turned out. And then, since the library had book 3 and my own funds were … limited, the next one I bought was #4, Thuvia, Maid of Mars.

Some time after this must've been when I got my paper route, because that's when I started filling out the series, although at that point they had been reissued with the Michael Whelan covers. Which I do love, but the D'Achille covers are my covers; and I'm not sure if Dad would've bought me a copy of

as opposed to



I've read the series many, many times over the years, and they never fail to captivate me. Well, at least not until John Carter of Mars, which is kind of terrible, but which I cannot stop myself from reading since it's part of the series.

Finishing up the initial Barsoom trilogy with Warlord Of Mars.

And time now for The Gods of Mars. I love these books (almost) unreservedly.

Ha! I admit I have trouble imagining Rumsfeld reading Dunsany, but who knows? Maybe he has an entire set of Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks on his shelf ...

And I just restarted (for about the millionth time) A Princess of Mars.

Jack wrote: "I'm drifting off of the fantasy track for a bit and doing a read/re-read of Issac Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation stories, totaling 15 (maybe 16) books and collections of short stories in all. I'..."

I love the original Foundation trilogy and will have to revisit them one of these years.

I started Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay -- it's a bit too soon for a reread of The King of Elfland's Daughter. This one is (as it says on the tin) a selection put together and introduced by William Butler Yeats -- it's from 1912, so it's some of Dunsany's earlier work. I expect I'll find I've already read most of the stories, but I'm always happy to revisit them, and it has at least one or two excerpts from his plays, with which I'm much less familiar.

I finished The Blood Star and am stepping into the group reads with Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay (since it's a bit too soon for a reread of The King of Elfland's Daughter)

Clint wrote: "If only I had time for both: Dunsany or Sword & Planet, hmmm."

If you can't fit in an entire Dunsany novel, maybe pick up one of his collections and skip around in it -- TBH, I think I prefer his short stories to his novels. Recommended: The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories or The Book of Wonder (both probably available free in eBook format).

That (massive dungeon crawl) was kind of the selling point of Alexey Pehov's Siala trilogy (Shadow Prowler &c.), but I don't think he really delivered.

FWIW, my favorite dungeon crawls in fiction are probably in M.A.R. Barker's The Man of Gold and Flamesong. Oh, and the trip through Moria, of course, and the Lonely Mountain & the goblin caves in The Hobbit.

I think the big new thing in Port of Shadows was the sections set in the time when the Dominator was still ruling -- we've never seen that before -- but if you haven't already read the original trilogy, at least, you don't really have context to understand everything that's being revealed. I agree with Jack -- for first-time readers, it probably makes sense to save PoS until after you've read more in the series.

(And because of the way he structures it, it's very possible to treat it as a "lost" volume of the Annals that doesn't get rediscovered until long after the events it chronicles.)

The art's going back all the way to the original brown booklets (or before) so yeah, some of it is going to be better than others.

And I'd kind of love a novelized megadungeon, at least if executed well ...

I'd say do continue at least through the original trilogy -- they're quite good, and might make sense of some of the events in Port of Shadows.

I just got my copy of Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History and have been flipping through it, and if you're interested in the history of D&D, or if you just want a massive book full of great art, well, you really should give it a look.