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

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

More Hugo reading: Finished Down Among the Sticks and Bones and now it's finally time to go back to N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy with The Obelisk Gate.

I'm catching up for my Hugo voting -- read J.Y. Yang's The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, and am now reading River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (all novellas).

Definitely of interest:

https://dmrbooks.com/the-thief-of-forthe -- stories by Clifford Ball -- I know I've read at least one in one of Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy anthologies.

https://dmrbooks.com/the-sapphire-god... -- stories by Nictzin Dyalhis -- I'll have to check to see if there's anything here that wasn't in The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK TM, Vol. 4: Nictzin Dyalhis, but this one will actually be available in physical form for those who prefer to read from real books.

One of the current Humble Bundles is an assortment of Black Library (Warhammer & Warhammer 40K) books.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ta...

Seems a bit weirdly random in terms of what's included; or maybe they're all first books in various series? Either way, there's an awful lot of grimdark goodness for whatever amount of money you think is appropriate ...

S.E. wrote: "Joseph, you have any identified?"

Well, I think that'd take us back into Frazetta territory -- , for example, was a Molly Hatchet album cover, and didn't someone also use ? So this might be one to save for a subsequent poll.

S.E. wrote: "Richard, any artist you would suggest? I think once did “any Whelan” or “any Frazzeta”"

How about "any cover also used for 70s hard rock albums and/or van art"?

S.E. wrote: "Finally trying out Lumley’s Necroscope (not S&S, but he did write weird adventure like the Hero of Dreams). Turns out Necroscope was one inspiration for the Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen game."

I read the first three or four(?) Necroscope books back when they were coming out, and was very entertained by them -- kind of vampire spy/technothrillers.

Started Chains of the Heretic, the third & final in Jeff Salyards's Bloodsounder's Arc trilogy, a fine and somewhat overlooked piece of surprisingly intimate military fantasy.

I finished A Conversation in Blood, which was an entertaining way to spend a few hours. Thievery wasn't a major focus, but one of our heroes (Nix) has tendencies in that direction, and there was a visit to the headquarters of the local thieves' guild.

I decided this would be a good reason to start A Conversation in Blood, the third of Paul S. Kemp's Egil & Nix books.

Nice!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a bunch of Kickstarter-backed magazines & anthologies that I have yet to get around to actually reading ...

Nice! Well, John Carter of Mars was not great, but other than that, a fine haul!

I haven't read all of Language of the Night, but I did read her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", which I ... didn't completely agree with? Basically (and I'm going from years-old memory here) it laid out her contention that fantasy should be more ... numinous? Mythical? At one point she was kind of throwing some shade at one of Katherine Kurtz' Deryni books (albeit not by name), printing an excerpt from a council meeting and showing how with a few minor tweaks it could just as easily have been from a non-fantastic novel about small town politics or something equally mundane.

Which, on the one hand, I kind of see the point she's making, but on the other hand I think there's a place for both styles.

I believe that's also the essay where she counsels against avoiding the Lure of Dunsany, wherein one reads some of Dunsany's stories and finds one's prose falling inexorably into faux-Dunsanian rhythms.

S.wagenaar wrote: "Finished Eaters of the Dead and it was a good read; solid 3 star for sure. Thinking of taking a break from a Sword-oriented adventure to possibly some contemporary crime thrillers. I’ll see what I ..."

If you haven't read them, I'd highly, highly recommend Joe R. Lansdale's Hap & Leonard books, beginning with Savage Season. Two guys in east Texas who keep getting mixed up in stuff through no fault of their own. Well, mostly. The TV series is also first-rate.

After finishing the game on my PC, I decided it was time to wrap up Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher series, so started The Tower of Swallows, the second-to-the-last novel.

The closest I came to the SyFy (well, I think they were still SciFi back then) miniseries was watching the trailer a couple of weeks ago; and just that much exposure was physically painful.

The Studio Ghibli film (Tales of Earthsea) was watchable at least -- it's Ghibli, so you're guaranteed lovely animation and a good score. But it also took more than its share of liberties with the story (which was mostly, loosely, based on The Farthest Shore).

Was already kind of on my mind, but after the Black Gate article, I decided it was a good time to revisit The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane.

I finished The Farthest Shore, the third book in the original Earthsea trilogy, and decided to follow it with something completely different, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.

I'm much more interested in this (and it seems like a much better fit) than any Amazon Tolkien-based series.

As long as we get something that's closer to the Game of Thrones TV series than the Shannara TV series.