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

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

Rogue Protocol, the third of Martha Wells' Murderbot novellas, which isn't even remotely sword & sorcery, but after the two Silverberg Legends anthologies (which I enjoyed immensely), it was time for a change.

Finished Legends and decided to carry on with Legends II, which I haven't read before. The first story is by Robin Hobb, set in her Elderlings world, and it has an almost Lovecraftian feel to it -- not the language, but some of the structure of the story.

Getting a head start because my selection is a big'un: I decided to end 2021/begin 2022 by just wallowing in epic fantasy, so started rereading Robert Silverberg's 1998 anthology Legends, where he got a bunch of well-known authors (Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, George R.R. Martin, Raymond E. Feist, etc.) to write new novellas in their famous worlds.

Will I follow it up with Legends II? Stranger things have happened.

Started Guy Gavriel Kay's most recent, A Brightness Long Ago. I'd forgotten just how good he is.

Greetings and salutations!

Just started H. Rider Haggard's Heart of the World, which I believe is going to turn out to be one of his lost race books rather than (as I initially expected) one of his historical novels.

Yeah, I gave up on getting caught up on ... well, anything ... some years ago, so now I just read/watch/listen to/play/eat/etc. whatever seems most appropriate/interesting at the time, and try not to worry about it.

If anyone's looking for yet another podcast to add to their list, I'd suggest the SFF Audio podcast. As you'd expect from its title, most episodes begin with somebody reading a story, followed by a group discussion of the story. I've only kind of dipped my toes into their monstrously huge back catalog, but of particular interest to folks here is that they've done several Robert E. Howard stories, most recently "Shadow of the Vulture".

https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio...

Starting The Halfling's Gem, the third in R.A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale trilogy.

The best/worst thing is when I'm listening to one of the discussions I didn't participate in, and constantly wanting to jump in and respond to whatever somebody just said on the podcast.

Time for Streams of Silver.

It's well worth becoming a Patreon supporter of the Appendix N Book Club just to get access to the full catalog of patron discussions as well as the regular, free episodes.

And another Patreon supporter discussion I was on made it into the regular feed!

https://appendixnbookclub.com/2021/11...

I'm about 95% certain that I read Crystal Shard when it first came out back in 1988 (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), but that's as far as I ever went. I'm hoping to at least get through the initial trilogy; I'm certainly not planning on trying to get through all 50+ of them in one go.

For reasons I find hard to articulate, I just started The Crystal Shard, the first (in publication order) of R.A. Salvatore's roughly one million billion Drizzt books.

Just starting Poul Anderson's The High Crusade, which inexplicably I don't think I've ever read before.

Finished The Mask of the Sorcerer and started Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer, a short story collection/sequel.

S.E. wrote: "here it is:
https://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.co...

The Reprieve, by Darrell Schweitzer, with artwork by Andrea Alemanno.  A new story of Sekenre the Sorcerer!  Riverland is a world full of..."

Thanks!

S.E. wrote: "Joseph, did you see the new Sekrene short story? I think its in the HFQ 50th issue"

I remember hearing about it; I'll definitely have to check it out!

I didn't quite have it in me to read an actual Conan pastiche, so I'm going to cheat and read Darrell Schweitzer's The Mask of the Sorcerer (which, as mentioned above, started life as a Conan pastiche) for the first time in some years.