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

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

World's End is the Lin Carter series that when you describe it to me sounds like it should be my favorite, but when I actually read it ...

Avram Davidson is another one of those authors I need to read more of. Especially since I think a fair amount of his back catalog has made its way to Kindle.

Greg wrote: "Which did you enjoy the most - the week at Glacier National Park or the book reads on the way to and from there? :P ..."

Hmmm ... That's a difficult one ...

I just got back from spending a week at Glacier National Park. The trip was bookended with 24 hour Amtrak rides, which I used to good advantage to finally revisit Westeros -- I finished A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, and am finally starting something new (to me): A Feast for Crows.

Yep! And I'd say that we found enough that it can at least be voted on as a potential topic ...

Ha! Great minds!

(Edited to add: Although it might be kind of academic -- I think I'm going to be visiting Westeros for quite a while to come.)

OK, and a bit of poking around led me here:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?...

Which mentions lots of movies and RPG supplements, of course, but also The Scroll of Thoth: Simon Magus and the Great Old Ones: Twelve Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by Richard L. Tierney (which I think I kind of remembered, and which unfortunately looks like it's currently out of print and kind of expensive), Servant of the Jackal God: The Tales of Kamose, Archpriest of Anubis by Keith Taylor and The Egyptian by Mika Waltari (which is actually a historical novel).

And I'm also reminded of Cleopatra by H. Rider Haggard, and a number of Judith Tarr's historical novels and, of course, The Mask of the Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer.

That's the problem -- I like the idea, but don't know if anything actually exists ... :) I'll have to investigate.

Has there ever been any Egyptian-themed S&S?

Finished Jack of Shadows -- sometimes I miss the era of the 200 page standalone novel -- and decided it was finally time to revisit Westeros, so began rereading A Game of Thrones. This is going to take a while, isn't it?

Time for Jack of Shadows.

Greg wrote: "Michael wrote: "So far I've only read the prologue and the first chapter and I'm hooked."

That sounds promising! :)"

I thought the Ancillary books were great -- the first one deserved pretty much all of those awards.

Greg wrote: "Looks interesting. Kind of a steam punk novel? "

So far (about half way) it's been generally entertaining adventure fiction; maybe not quite as good as Dresden, but still a fun beach read sort of book. It has some elements of steampunk, but they're actually pretty minor -- if anything, I'd say I'm getting a bit more of an anime feel from it. (I'm reminded of Last Exile at points, if that helps.)

Still not actually S&S, but I'm now about half way through The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher (wrapping up my reading for the Hugo ballot). It does, in fact, have swords, and people who can manipulate "etheric energy", which is kind of like sorcery?

This was actually probably last fall, but on one of my trips to Uncle Hugo's I came home with:

Definitely one I'll keep an eye out for -- I really liked Courtney Crumrin, and his other series, Polly the Pirate Queen.

Jack wrote: "I have that Mathias Thulman book on my shelf but have not read it yet. Did you like it? (I'm a big Solomon Kane fan.)"

For myself, I did read the Thulman book and enjoyed it well enough; at some point I'd like to read Werner's other big Warhammer omnibus, Brunner the Bounty Hunter.

Having said that, I'd be much more likely to read further Warhammer, and Warhammer 40K, books, if they made it more convenient to get the eBook versions. Right now, as far as I know, the only place to get them is on the Black Library website, and they're ... not cheap. Not that I'm unwilling to pay $11.99 for an eBook, necessarily, but that does get above my comfort zone for 250 page sword & sorcery novels, all other things being equal.

Derek wrote: "Does anyone have a favorite omnibus edition for Kindle, either a near-complete REH collection, or a Conan collection? There seems to be a variety available for a range of prices."

For Conan, I went with the Del Rey editions, despite the fact that they're not cheap, just because I knew they were comprehensive and well put-together. I actually have all of the Del Rey editions on my Kindle; I just wish the REH Foundation would start doing Kindle versions of their titles as well.

TBH, I've always kind of preferred Burroughs, the Barsoom books in particular, to Howard. I just wish the Burroughs estate would actually release authorized eBook versions of his catalog. The closest we've come in recent years was the Disney John Carter omnibus volumes released to tie in with the film; and those were fatally flawed because they left out the prologues and introductions that were framing stories in about half of the books.

I got my copy of Gamma World for Christmas -- I'd asked for the original Basic D&D set, which my folks got for me, but they also got me the GW boxed set because it actually came with dice, unlike the D&D set.