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

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

The Deep Fix (Moorcock's band from back in the 1970s or so) has a couple albums up on Spotify, so I had to listen to one of them today.

Mark wrote: "Greg wrote: "Charles wrote: "Greg, you know, it could be. I'm just not sure."

OK. Either way - real memorial or hobbyist's model - it still looks cool. :)

Mark wrote: "..."

I liked that one quite a bit as well; it's a very silly book ...

Finished Sleeping Sorceress (my review) and I think I have one more in me -- Duke Elric.

OK, now it's time for Elric: The Sleeping Sorceress. Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!

Not to sway anyone's vote, but The Worm Ouroboros is going to be getting a new eBook edition in December, together with the whole Zimiamvian trilogy ...

Phil wrote: "I'm a little cautious about 'definitive' Moorcock editions - I think that his desire to tie just about everything he's ever written in to the same consistent reality doesn't necessarily make for be..."

Yeah, I can kind of see that as well. Regardless, these are the versions they're giving us, and eBook beggars can't be choosers. (Well, unless I want to temporarily change my Kindle's country of registration to the UK, and that just seems like a bother.)

Was just checking Amazon and it looks like more of Moorcock's back catalog is coming to the US as eBooks. I'm cautiously pleased, but I want to confirm that these are the same "definitive" editions that have been coming out in the UK.

For example: http://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Champio...

Also not entirely thrilled that they're releasing them all as individual books -- instead of The Swords Trilogy we get The Knight of the Swords, The Queen of the Swords and The King of the Swords, all for $7 each. Still, it'll probably be worth it just to have the Corum and Erekosë books on my Kindle.

I also need to slot in some Elric this month for the group read ...

On a similar line, I've always been partial to Grunts by Mary Gentle. And has anyone read the Orcs by Stan Nicholls?

And (based on comments above) I just picked up The Crusades and The Savage Warriors by Henry Treece. And The Great Captains should be en route.

(And after flipping briefly through The Crusades, I'm starting to wonder if maybe Dad owned a copy at one point -- it looks vaguely familiar ...)

Finished The Long Ships and thought it was excellent. Now I need to rewatch the movie because not only was it an adaptation of only the first 100 pages or so of the book, but I think it took considerable liberties.

Am now about 100 pages into The Long Ships and am really enjoying it. Already Orm has been captured, made a member of the Viking crew, been captured again (by Moors), served the Andalusian caliph and made his way back to the northland.

Bruce wrote: "I am currently reading Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham (no relation that I know of...). The book is a bit slow so far, but hey, it's Hannibal!"

Which reminds me I need to read his third Acacia book at some point ...

For many years my only actual memory of the Long Ships movie was the execution scene. I was happy to be able to finally put it into some kind of context.

Howard wrote: "Joseph, what's your opinion of Cossack volume 1 versus volume 2?

I think the post you're think of re: Swashbucklers was over here:
http://www.howardandrewjones.com/hero......"

Yep, I remember seeing that post and being thrilled that there was a Grey Maiden omnibus in the works. I was also thinking of Black Gate posts like:

http://www.blackgate.com/2013/10/10/v...

and

http://www.blackgate.com/2013/10/29/t...

Unfortunately it's been long enough since I read the Cossack books that I don't remember much except really enjoying them both.

I haven't read The Long Ships, but I recently rewatched the movie for the first time since I was about 12.

Eric Brighteyes might also be a good choice.

Or to stretch the definition slightly, I think most of K.J. Parker would qualify -- very few of Parker's books have any kind of overtly supernatural element to them.

Decisions, decisions.

Unfortunately, while Gollancz is currently doing a massive Moorcock reissue, it's British only (or, Sean, are they available in Canada?). Hoping for US releases at some point; or, alternatively, I'll change my Kindle's country of registration long enough to buy the UK editions.

In the meantime, for those new to the Doomed Albino Prince here in the Colonies, I think the best options are either Elric of Melniboné (the first volume of the 1977 edition S.E. mentioned above; probably not hard to find used) or Elric: The Stealer of Souls (the book Sean mentioned above, the first in a six-volume Del Rey edition that put all of the mainline stories in order of publication). Either way would work -- I'm kind of a fan of internal chronology, but going in order of publication might lead you to slightly more accessible stories.

Decisions, decisions ... I could go with Riders of the Steppes: The Complete Cossack Adventures, Volume Three (having already read the first two), or maybe The Long Ships.

Or I remember seeing some posts on Black Gate over the past few months about historical authors that looked worthy of further investigation.

Kidgreg wrote: "I wish they would republish some of those stand-alone Conan books by various authors in eBook."

I just checked Amazon and I do see eBook versions of at least some of the de Camp/Carter volumes (I'm guessing it'd be the ones that had no actual Howard content) and Karl Edward Wagner's Conan: Road of Kings.

OK, I'm also seeing a bunch of the Tor books as well.

I never read the Tor books back in the day -- even after I'd started reading the existing de Camp/Carter/Howard stories, the Tor ones never appealed to me for whatever reason.

I still have a lot of affection for the de Camp/Carter Conan books, warts and all -- they were my first real introduction to Conan. Haven't read them in years, though, especially now that the Del Rey editions are available.

(For me, the absolute nadir was in the 1990s when Tor was extruding Conan books by the pound but nothing by Howard himself, unadulterated or otherwise, was actually in print. Or at least actually on shelves.)

Just a random comment: Every couple of months you post the topics for the vote, and every couple of months I read the topics and want to select every single one of them ...

Finished (and reviewed) The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. Personally I prefer the historical or sword-and-sorcery, but it definitely had much to recommend it.