Kothar of the Magic Sword (Kothar, #2) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

May 27, 2015 S.E. Lindberg rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed-by-se

Gardner F. Fox’s Kothar of the Magic Sword: unmet promises & meaningless fetch quests quell potentially-good adventure

The title and the author’s foreword to this second Kothar book (the first being Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman of five Kothar Series) promise conflict from two sources: (1) the magic sword “Frostfire” (cursed so that Kothar “can never be otherwise wealthy”, and (2) revenge from the sorceress Red Lori, whom Kothar contributed in arresting within a silver gibbet (in book-1 presumably ...more

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Sep 22, 2018 Lyndon rated it liked it

Shelves: paperback

Other reviews I read of this short novel panned Kothar as a weak "Clonan" adventure (a clone of Conan the Barbarian), and while it is a bit derivative, I thought the overall story-telling was pretty entertaining.

Maybe the structure of the book didn't click with people - this particular installment is actually two novellas combined together, continuing (evidently) an ongoing adventure from Book 1 (and probably concluding by Book 5) between Kothar and Red Lori, a sorceress who has lost her powers ...more

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Dec 22, 2008 Derek rated it liked it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery, appendix-n

The foremost impression is that Fox was putting the story together as he went along. Both novellas have a improvisational quality, of incidents strung together and veering far from the initial concept and littered with problems of story logic.

For instance, in "The Helix from Beyond", Kothar is employed to steal the titular "helix", which turns out to be both a portal to a pocket universe and the source or generator of such (not clear, and Fox breezes past such details). Having entered the world ...more

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