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

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

And as I get closer to the end of my Kane reread, a bit about my acquaintance with Kane and with KEW:

I knew about Kane as a character sometime in the 1980s -- I had read about him in Baird Searles' A Reader's Guide to Fantasy -- but his books weren't available at the public library (and I'm not sure if they were even in print at that point), so although I was interested, I wasn't able to actually read anything.

(I had read at least one or two stories by Wagner -- "Where the Summer Ends" in Kirby McCauley's excellent anthology Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror is the one I'm certain of -- but they were his horror stories, and I don't know if I made the connection between the stories I read and the fantasy series I'd only read about.

For my first real encounter with Kane, things are a bit fuzzy -- it was either the Karl Edward Wagner issue of Weird Tales (the Terminus revival from the late 80s/early 90s -- I had started subscribing sometime around then) or it was getting a Donald M. Grant catalog and ordering his edition of The Book of Kane (which remains one of my favorite Wagner collections, partly because of the art and partly because it had some great Kane stories in it, most of which were not included in Death Angel's Shadow or in Night Winds.

A year or two later, I was fortunate enough to lay hands on all five Warner paperbacks (plus Wagner's horror collections, In a Lonely Place and Why Not You and I?) at Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore (or maybe it was Dreamhaven?), and was happy to find that yes, they were as good as I had been hoping they'd prove to be.

(And then later came the Night Shade and Centipede editions, of course.)

And into the home stretch with Night Winds.

Please tell me this means we'll finally get a good, official, uniform release, including eBooks.

Onward! Dark Crusade is next, and then Night Winds. And then it'll probably be Black Company time.

Jack wrote: "As I await the arrival of the new Black Company novel, I'm diving into Lin Carter's The Black Star."

As Carter novels go, I remember that being one of the better ones; too bad he never got around to the projected sequels.

Jason M wrote: "I thoroughly enjoy DEATH ANGEL'S SHADOW, and I agree that while I like the Kane novels, I find his shorts more powerful and poignant. Or would that be KEW's shorts versus his novels?"

Did he write any non-Kane novels (aside from the two REH pastiches)?

Yeah, Bloodstone did wrap up pretty abruptly. I also wonder how much influence Kane had on the current crop of grimdark authors?

And continuing onward, now starting Death Angel's Shadow. Looking forward to it -- in some ways, I think Kane works better in short stories than in novels.

Jordan wrote: "Joseph wrote: "And has there ever been any kind of real exploration of the changes between the various editions?

I'm hoping to do this analyses next year after I get another chance of going up to..."

Excellent! I'll be very interested in your findings.

I just subscribed to the podcast, but won't be listening to it until I've finished rereading the books.

My mistake -- I believe he was trained as a psychiatrist. But those names do continue to sound like prescription drugs.

Finished Darkness Weaves, which really was good, and decided to keep going with Bloodstone. (I'm going in publication order, because I'm not sure if we have a good internal chronology for the stories.)

The first of the (magnificent) Del Rey Conan collections (the ones with pure, unadulterated Howard), The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, is currently $2.99 at Amazon and, I assume, other, similar places.

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-C...

(and that's also why I'm not sure if I'm going to read all of Kane, or if I'm going to take a break after Darkness Weaves -- as I recall, all three novels had relatively similar plots: (view spoiler)[Kane teams up with eldritch horrors to defeat his enemies; Kane realizes he made a terrible mistake; Kane turns on his former allies (hide spoiler)].

Not that they're not all worth reading; and the short stories are also great.

S.E. wrote: "Those names sound like prescription drugs :)"

Well, he was a doctor by trade, wasn't he?

Clint wrote: "The Gotrek and Felix books are entertaining, but repetitive. I read the first Omnibus a few years back. Reading them back to back was a mistake. I recommend portioning them out. I need to look into..."

Yeah, can't argue with that, and it's kind of true of his self-published stuff as well. But they're still fun.

For myself, I finished Hard in Hightown and H. Rider Haggard's Allan's Wife (both quite short) and am now about half way through Darkness Weaves for our next group read.

And, now that I'm about half way through the book, some impressions:

Centipede does really lovely work. (Although I did end up also buying the series on Kindle because I don't think I want to, e.g., take my Centipede hardcovers to the bar for my weekly night o' beer and reading.)

Wagner really was a great writer, although there are times when it's pretty obvious that this was his first novel. (And has there ever been any kind of real exploration of the changes between the various editions? I know that the first edition, Darkness Weaves with Many Shades, was pretty badly mangled by Powell when they published it in 1970; but the 1978 edition (the source for the text that I'm reading) also has things like a vision scene that explicitly references other Kane stories & novels, so I'm assuming Wagner did more than just fixing Powell's screw-ups.)

The one major complaint I have at this point is that for all his strengths as a writer, Wagner was pretty crap when it came to making up names. Thovnos, Lartroxia, Nostoblet -- I've certainly seen better in my day.

Jumping the gun a bit, but I just started my Centipede edition of Darkness Weaves

Peter wrote: "I just finished Trollslayer, a Warhammer fantasy tie in. Very decent sword & sorcery."

Yep, I liked Trollslayer and the rest of the Gotrek & Felix books (at least, the ones I've read -- the first half dozen or so). The author, William King, has also self-published a whole bunch of sword & sorcery novels that are quite entertaining.

I think it kind of sort of counts … My current book: Hard in Hightown.

(The genesis of this one is … complicated. It's a tie-in from the computer RPG Dragon Age 2, as written by one of the in-game characters, the dwarf (Varric Tethras). As you play the game, you occasionally find pages from a manuscript he's been working on -- a sort of hard-boiled noir detective story set in the city of Kirkwall (the setting for DA2), and possibly commenting obliquely on some of the characters or events in the game as you're playing it. For this book, they used those pages as the basis (not sure if they added to them or not) and created a 72 page illustrated book version.)

Michael wrote: "I loved Jade City! I plan to read the whole trilogy if it keeps pace with the first installment! "

Yep, me too!

By happy coincidence, The Black Company is Tor's current free eBook download. Here's the link; you do have to register:

https://www.tor.com/2018/08/27/downlo...

Also, note that the deadline is 08/31, so move expeditiously ...