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

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

Greg wrote: "Charles wrote: "Egads!"

LOL Maybe one could make a Goodreads challenge out of that list...."

The ironic thing is that the Straub book isn't even on that list -- its title is Shadowland, singular. And there are many, many other books called Shadowland as well.

(I did read the Straub book many years ago and enjoyed it.)

Nothing Orcish, at least not yet. And after I finish my current book, I think I feel a Dying Earth reread coming on, so I may not make it by month's end ...

S.wagenaar wrote: "Currently reading The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild. Epic historical adventure on a grand scale. I don't really have anything featuring Orcs to read at the moment..."

Excellent book! I need to reread it (and it sequel, The Blood Star) one of these years.

I'm reading something more pulpy than S&S -- The Weird Company: The Secret History of H.P. Lovecraft's Twentieth Century.

And, having finished The Barrow, I do definitely recommend it.

For obvious reasons, I had to add some Terry Pratchett to my queue; having finished those, I'm starting The Barrow by Mark Smylie, which seems like it'll definitely be S&S of a certain flavor.

OK, finished The Goblin Emperor, which was really, really good although there was only one sword mentioned briefly on one page. It's much more about a naïve 18 year old who suddenly finds himself made emperor and has no idea what on earth that's going to entail.

Next up is She by H. Rider Haggard -- maybe after that I'll try something more Orcish.

I volunteer not to be the victim.

I read Ouroboros back in December -- loved it, but there's no way I'm rereading it for probably at least another decade ... The Goblin Emperor is also one I've had my eye on, though.

(And, to cross over to the other, filthy side, I might have to at least dip into the Stan Nicholls books just because I already have one on my Kindle.)

My favorite Ouroboros art is the 1960s Ballantine edition:

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http://blog.tekumelfoundation.org/201...

Finally available as an eBook! (Without, sadly, the lovely Whelan cover shown above.) One of my favorite books, and possibly my all-time favorite fictional world.

I'm just starting Rapture, the third book in Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. And while not technically sword & sorcery (the setting seems to be SF, but on a desert planet on the ass-end of nowhere; think Tattooine settled by the Fremen or something), the heroine, Nyx, could certainly hold her own with any of the usual suspects -- she's a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, hard-drinking, hard-wenching gone-to-seed bounty hunter scraping out a living on the ragged edge.

http://blog.tekumelfoundation.org/201...

I think this may have to be a group read when the time comes -- The Man of Gold is getting an eBook rerelease.

(To be followed, one hopes, by the rest of the Tekumel novels.)

S.E. wrote: "Regarding the current Poll: With "Sword and Orcs" and The Worm Ouroboros leading (as of Feb 5) that features "Goblins"...we may be able to turn this into an Orcs vs. Goblin theme. Thou..."

I like it!

If you haven't read the Kane books yet, you're in for a treat -- and they all went up on Kindle recently, which is good since they're all currently out-of-print and not cheap. Centipede Press is going to be doing new hardcovers, but they also won't be cheap ...

Greg wrote: "Sounds like the introductions would make interesting reading in their own right!"

Oh, they do! Wagner really knew his stuff.

Greg wrote: "OK. So are these annotated books then?"

Nothing that formal; but Wagner was writing some pretty lengthy, research-heavy introductions (at least in II and III) and was using the series to reprint stories that had been kind of languishing in obscurity since the pulp days.

Greg wrote: "It's odd that two versions of the same story would be given back-to-back in the same anthology.

I think the goal was to be kind of academic. But in this case, the two version of the story were so similar that for a casual reader they needed some spacing.

All three of them are well worth your time. The only slight niggle is that in EOV2 the two versions of Frost Giant's Daughter are very similar, so you might want to space them out a bit.

I remember enjoying Nictzin Dyalhis' stories although I can't actually remember anything specific about them, other than that Nictzin Dyalhis is the greatest name ever for a fantasy author.

(Someday I want to write a sword & sorcery story about the adventures of those two loveable rogues, Nictzin Dyalhis and Vlada Chvatl (a Polish board game designer).)

I finished Swords and Sorcerers: Stories from the Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure. It was kind of middling -- seemed specifically designed to be given to young people to get them reading. Had excerpts from, amongst other things, The Princess Bride, Three Musketeers, Musashi and Bernard Cornwall's Excalibur. No actual sword & sorcery, though -- well, it brushed the margins with Dunsany's Hoard of the Gibbelins, which was by far the best story in the book.

I'm not sorry I read it, but it probably doesn't warrant seeking out.

Also, Black Gate has a ton of free fiction on their website, some from the magazine and some original.

If anyone's still looking for something (or many somethings) to add to their anthology shelf, it looks like back issues of most or all of Black Gate's 15 issue run are available:

http://www.blackgate.com/black-gate-s...

One issue (15) is currently available for Kindle; they also sell PDF versions of at least a few of their more recent issues, but the PDFs never quite worked for me -- the magazine was laid out in two-column format, which didn't convert into anything usable on a Kindle, at least not without an obscene amount of manual work on my part.

Lots of great stories, plus columns, reviews, etc.