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

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

Finished The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng -- great series! -- and started a reread of Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons for the Appendix N Book Club Patreon discussion.

Apparently she's written a lot more books than I realized. Cool

Sped through Tanith Lee's Companions on the Road -- a fairly short but excellent collection of two novellas -- and am starting The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng, the third in K.S. Villoso's trilogy.

Finished Silence of the Soleri (second & final volume in Michael Johnston's Soleri series) and decided to reread American Gods for the first time in a good many years -- the TV series ended on a massive cliffhanger, so I want to refresh my memory of how the story actually went.

Yeah, "makes more sense" and "1st edition" are two concepts that don't really pair well together.

Which edition?

And just had a chat over on the Whetstone Discord that I think solves the timeline conundrum -- it says the new book "takes place between books 1 and 2 of the Elric Saga", and if they meant books 1 and 2 of the new collections that are just coming out, then everything fits into place -- Elric of Melniboné (the first new volume) includes the stories from The Weird of the White Wolf, which is where Elric & Moonglum first meet.

I picked up some used paperbacks several years ago after seeing a write-up on -- I think it was probably Black Gate -- and Golden Strangers is the only one I've actually read so far, but having them on my Kindle means I'll be much more likely to carry on.

Looks like a bunch of Henry Treece novels (The Golden Strangers, for example) just dropped as eBooks. They're historical, not sword & sorcery, but would probably slot in very comfortably if you're looking for a candidate for the obscure books category.

Started Soleri, the first of a two-book series by Michael Johnston.

Kirk wrote: "I was reading Elizabeth's Bear's Range of Ghosts and was looking for something more Sword and Sorcery but with a Central Asian secondary world. a friend mentioned this and I picked it up. I'm actually rereading it. Love the adventure of it all...."

I love Range of Ghosts and the rest of the Eternal Sky trilogy, and am very much looking forward to the third Lotus Kingdoms book (in the same setting) when it comes out later this spring.

I'm not sure it's entirely obscure, but this seemed like a good opportunity to go back into William King's now-lengthy self-published series of novels about Kormak the Guardian -- currently reading the second, Defiler of Tombs, and it has a pleasantly old-school feel to it.

In an ideal world (which this is clearly not), this would also lead to eBook releases of the Castle Brass trilogy, which I think is the last major piece of the Eternal Champion that hasn't been reprinted (in the US, at least) recently.

And also The Ice Schooner, just on general principles.

Maybe it's actually book 1.25. Or 1.75.

Already preordered! Although I think this hoses the chronology because in the existing series, Elric & Moonglum don't meet until much later? When he was putting together the six DAW paperbacks back in the 70s, Moorcock rewrote The Jade Man's Eyes (in The Sailor on the Seas of Fate) to replace Moonglum with Count Smiorgan Baldhead specifically for that reason.

Oh, well, I'm sure he'll come up with some explanation.

After finishing Matthew Hughes' Henghis Hapthorn trilogy, I decided to return to Lankhmar with Fritz Leiber's The Swords of Lankhmar.

After reading another set of Tarzan books (the new editions from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Authorized Library, which have lots of nice bonus materials) -- Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible -- I decided it was finally time to try some Matthew Hughes (an author who works very much in the tradition of Jack Vance) with his novel Majestrum.

Yeah, Cherryh is one of my favorites, although she writes primarily SF, not fantasy, and I think has been hugely influential on a lot of the recent big-name SF -- the Expanse books, Ann Leckie's Ancillary trilogy, Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, the Murderbot books, etc.

As it happens, I'm pretty sure the way that I learned about Cherryh was because Morgaine got a write-up in an early issue of Dragon Magazine, and that was followed up with some very enthusiastic reviews for some of her SF novels.

I'm in the process of working my way through from the beginning, and am definitely enjoying the podcast. Just got to the sword & planet episode, which was fun. If you're looking for more s&p to read, I might suggest C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine books, beginning with Gate of Ivrel, which are a bit of a different take on the genre.

After stampeding through Murderbot #3-#6 in about a week, I decided to take a (possibly ill-considered) revisit to my childhood, beginning with Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.