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

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

Finished Stealer of Flesh (fast and fun) and started Swords against Tomorrow for the group read.

Periklis wrote: "A great read. Wiliam King explains his love for the genre and Kormak's genesis in: Author’s Notes: Stealer of Flesh. Also a short Kormak story, Guardian of the Dawn, is available for free."

Thanks! I'll have to check out the author's note. I've read a fair bit of King over the years -- the first half dozen or so Gotrek & Felix books, then, more recently, his self-published Terrarch Chronicles (musket & sorcery -- the setting has more of a Napoleonic-era feel to it) and Sky Pirates, which was kind of Warhammer-flavored sword & planet, and enjoyed them all.

After a couple of non-S&S offerings (Obsidian and Blood by Aliette de Bodard, which I'd recommend, and The Witch's Head by H. Rider Haggard, which was pretty meh), I just started Stealer of Flesh, one of the books William King has been self-publishing.

I think Morrowind is the most interesting Elder Scrolls setting just because it's the furthest from standard fantasy tropes. But my understanding is that it also has the most primitive gameplay. I played maybe 10-15 hours each of Morrowind and Oblivion back in the day and keep meaning to return to them; someday.

I have all the physical issues, but the electronic versions would be just so convenient ... Unfortunately, the PDF's don't really work on a regular Kindle -- the page images are too small on the screen, and when I tried to convert using Calibre I ran into problems because of the formatting -- the two-column thing, primarily. But I'm sure they'd work just fine on an iPad or one of the larger Kindle Fires or something.

I'm really hoping that issues 1-14 make it onto Kindle at some point, and I'd happily pay for a collection of the more recent online fiction -- for some reason I have trouble reading lengthy fiction pieces in my browser.

I confess that I haven't given the Elder Scrolls games as much attention as they deserve. Myself, my favorite sword & sorcery video game is probably The Witcher -- it has a lovely grubby low fantasy feel and (because the designers are from Eastern Europe, I assume) it has some of the best medieval buildings & village layouts that I've seen.

I also enjoyed the original books (at least, the two translated into English so far), which I think are already on the bookshelf -- The Last Wish and Blood of Elves.

And now it's time: Just started The Bones of the Old Ones.

Already on my Kindle just waiting for me to finish up my current book.

Periklis wrote: "How about the Sword and Sorceress anthologies?"

Yeah, they'd definitely qualify, although I haven't read them and am not sure what the treasure-to-dross ratio is in that particular series, especially in later volumes.

Yes, I've seen both Come Drink With Me and Touch of Zen (thanks to Netflix) and really enjoyed them. The Dragon Inn version I've seen was the one from 1991 -- I could easily have seen it as a story by Karl Edward Wagner or something where the two opposing parties are trapped in the Inn, both trying to avoid being recognized, and the night is filled with all manner of skullduggery and treachery.

I'll have to see if I can track down the other two versions.

It's not actually sword & sorcery, but I could see the Hong Kong movie Dragon Inn being turned into a sword & sorcery story with minimal surgery. To quote IMDB:

During the Ming Dynasty, Tsao Sui Yan, the power-hungry and ruthless eunuch leader of East Chamber, craves his own kingdom. He intends on destroying the rebelling clans by using a traitorous secretary's children as bait. Ultimately, the two warring factions - the rebels led by Chow Wai-on and Mo-yan Yau, the East Chamber led by Tsao - end up in the rundown Dragon Inn right in the middle of the desert. Jade King, the beautiful owner and proprietor of Dragon Inn, hopes to cash in on the incident. But problems arise when Wai-on, desperate for the quickest route of escape, attempts to marry Jade in hopes of prying her for information; and the two clans go head-to-head in a no-holds barred finale battle.

Oh, also maybe a shelf for art books.

For the multiple editions, I'd be inclined to include multiple versions if they get listed, especially if they actually have different content (for example, the Del Rey Elric books are substantially different than the DAW Elric books). Err on the side of inclusivity rather than trying to decide whether this edition is sufficiently different from that edition. Then if there are questions regarding a particular series, we can always make that a discussion thread . . . :)

I think the shelves as listed make sense. For of-genre-interest, I wonder if we should split it into non-fiction (for things like The Blade of Conan where it's more of a collection of essays rather than a biography) and fiction (for fantasy books that aren't necessarily sword & sorcery per se but would probably appeal to sword & sorcery readers. (That's probably how I'd actually classify the Michael Reaves and M.A.R. Barker books I added.)

Periklis wrote: "Seems you're right. Found this thread here on GR. I shall remove it from the Bookshelf. ..."

That's too bad -- I did enjoy the two anthologies that were published, and would have been pleased to see more.

Speaking of the Pitch Black anthologies, did Lords of Swords II: Fantasy Fiction Anthology ever actually exist? Or will I only find a copy if I venture to some other portion of the Multiverse?

OK, I'm officially interested.

(And "clumsily [fill in the blank] by Zebra Books" is really not all that much of a surprise . . .)

Heroic Visions and Heroic Visions Ii -- those were the ones I was thinking of. I thought she'd edited some others as well but if she did they're not on my shelf.

Yes, just in terms of word count (not to mention quality of fiction), any issue of Black Gate stacks up favorably with any of the books listed here.

(And I'm also tempted, now that I think about it, to list Black Gate, but that would more properly go in a magazine thread, I suppose.)