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

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

OK, it's been sitting on my shelf far too long, so I just picked up Swords and Sorcerers: Stories from the Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure, edited by Clint Willis. Although as I look at the table of contents, I'm not sure how many actual swords, nor how many actual sorcerers, it contains. Further details as events warrant ...

S.E. wrote: "Is there any sorcery in "Vikings"? ..."

Nope, although most of the characters are followers of what I'm incorrectly going to describe as the Norse pantheon. But it definitely scratches the same itch.

For series that do contain sorcery, Krod Mandoon remains one of my favorites.

Coincidentally, I just watched the 2007 Robert Zemeckis version of Beowulf last night. Kind of a shame -- it seems like there was something interesting there, but I'd like to see it reshot with actual human beings on camera instead of Zemeckis' weird, waxy CGI puppets staring at me with their cold, dead eyes.

And has anyone been watching Vikings on the History Channel? The first season was quite good; need to watch the second season one of these days.

Sarah wrote: "I enjoyed Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, edited by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan."

I read that a couple of years ago -- lots of good stuff, and introduced me to some great authors.

Decisions, decisions -- I do have some unread ones (Barbarians by Robert Adams, for example), but it's also been a few years since I last reread Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms Of Wizardry, possibly my favorite Lin Carter anthologies.

I finally read Legend a couple of years ago (for another GR book club, as it happens ...). Gemmel is another one of those who I'd seen on shelves for years but never quite gotten around to. I enjoyed Legend well enough; at some point I'll continue with the series.

S.E. wrote: "Joseph wrote: "Finished The Worm Ouroboros night and will be starting E.R. Eddison's Mistress of Mistresses (first in the ever-so-lightly related Zimiamv..."

Yes, I liked Worm quite a bit. This is actually my second time through the cycle -- I read Worm and the Zimiamvia books I think 15 years ago; I remember the Zimiamvia books being very different, but I do remember enjoying them as well.

(But I was also reading them when on a family vacation, which meant that a) I didn't have many other options (pre-Kindle) and b) I had lots of time every day to read. Might be different trying to just fit them into my regular routine.)

Finished The Worm Ouroboros last night and will be starting E.R. Eddison's Mistress of Mistresses (first in the ever-so-lightly related Zimiamvian trilogy) tonight.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

And The Worm Ouroboros is underway. It won't be a fast read, but it's shaping up to be a good one.

Fortunately(?), I have about 6 hours each in airports and on airplanes tomorrow & Monday, so I should be able to make significant progress ...

Well, Worm has been available for a long time in multiple editions -- it must be old enough to have dropped into public domain -- but this is the first time the Zimiamvia books have been released in the US.

And at the moment, at least, the only eBook version of the Zimiamvia trilogy is the omnibus edition that has all four books -- Zimiamvia & Worm. They don't currently have listings for individual titles.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Zimiam...

As for myself, I'm working my way through Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (freaky stuff); then the next big thing on my agenda is E.R. Eddison Worm & Zimiamvia books, since they're just about to hit the Kindle.

S.E. wrote: "Athena (Shardbearer) wrote: "Since you read the omnibus, you've already read Shadow Linger."
Thanks Athena, Funny thing is that I don't think I read the omnibus (printed in 2007). My version has th..."

The last paragraph in The Black Company is "Thirty-seven years before the comet returns. The vision has to be false. I'll never survive that long. Will I?"

If that's the last thing you read, then yes, you want Shadows Linger, or to jump into the second part of the first omnibus.

I did fill out my Kothar and Kyrik collections this year; really need to add them to the queue.

I was actually always more familiar with the Raynor stories since they appeared in Echoes of Valor III; the Elak stuff I had to find piecemeal in various Carter or de Camp anthologies, at least until the Planet Stories collection came out.

Reading them, I did find them pretty solidly entertaining. I also think that in some ways, although Howard wrote the first sword & sorcery stories, with Kull & Conan, it was Kuttner and some of the other second-generation writers (would Gardner Fox count?) who really helped define sword & sorcery as a distinct genre.

(Similarly, although Tolkien wrote the first, it was really Terry Brooks and Stephen R. Donaldson and the Dragonlance books that defined the genre of epic fantasy.)

Evgeny wrote: "To the person who stole the manuscript: may the fleas of thousand camels infect your armpits. "

And other, more sensitive areas.

As I think about the timing, I wonder if that could've also had something to do with the delay between Dreams of Steel and Bleak Seasons, or if that was just the story kind of getting away from him.

Evgeny wrote: "I actually like books 2-7 of the series, the conclusion was OK, but not great, but there were different reasons for it and mostly it was not Cook's fault."

Yeah, very unfortunate circumstances.

(To summarize: Back in the 1980s, Cook & his wife used to host parties for fandom at their house, and at one such party, some "fan" apparently walked out with the mostly-completed manuscript for what should have been the next Dread Empire novel. For various reasons, including relatively poor sales, Cook pretty much abandoned his plans for the series and turned his attention to things that were selling better, namely the Black Company and Garrett, P.I. books, and there things stayed until I believe Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade acquired rights for the whole Dread Empire series and convinced Cook to write a final volume to wrap things up.)

Evgeny wrote: "The first Dread Empire book is quite weak, being the first published one of the author. The series improves by a lot in the next installments, so do not be put off by a bad start."

The series as a whole isn't as good as the Black Company, I'd say, but it's painted on a much broader canvas and has some amazing bits. My favorite Dread Empire book is probably actually Reap the East Wind, which is almost a side story (kind of like The Silver Spike) but which has some amazing set-piece sequences and some great use of battlefield magic.

And after 20+ years, he did finally write a concluding volume, so the series no longer ends on a massive cliffhanger.

On a somewhat related note, the first Dread Empire collection, A Cruel Wind is currently $1.99 on Amazon and the other usual suspects:

http://www.amazon.com/A-Cruel-Wind-Dr...

I remember discovering the series back in the summer of 1990 -- I plowed through them in a matter of days, a couple of weeks, tops, hit the end of Dreams of Steel and had no idea that I'd have to wait another six years to find out what happened next ...

These were the first fantasy novels I'd read that felt as if they'd been influenced more by the Vietnam war (grubby and ambiguous) as opposed to WWII (we're the good guys; they're the bad guys).

I was very happy when Planet Stories issued the collection; prior to that, I'd had to make do with random individual stories scattered in various 60s & 70s era anthologies. And the Raynor stories were a nice bonus.