From the Bookshelf of Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"…

Swords Against Darkness

Paula Guran

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* February - March Groupreads - Anthologies
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What Members Thought

Jul 02, 2017 Joseph rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A nice, hefty, meaty collection of sword & sorcery stories with not a clinker in the bunch.

The stories span the full range from Robert E. Howard ("The Tower of the Elephant", one of the earlier Conan stories) and C.L. Moore ("Hellsgarde", featuring Jirel of Joiry) to Saladin Ahmed ("Where Virtue Lives", a prequel to his novel Throne of the Crescent Moon) and Scott Lynch ("The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats", which almost has a bit of a Vancean feel to it) and all points in between.

I'd rea ...more

16 likes · Like · see review

Oct 19, 2024 Bryn Hammond rated it liked it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

Unfortunately not the sword & sorcery collection I can point new people to. The classics do all right, but things get shapeless after that, blurry about this distinctive style of fantasy.

The Katherine Kurtz, Mercedes Lackey, and Elizabeth Moon aren’t S&S (that’s a string of women, but my mind turns to women who were writing sword & sorcery around this time, who might have seen here instead).

On the up side, Saladin Ahmed: a lovely story that endeared its main, a ghul-fighter aging and fat (his ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 05, 2018 Riju Ganguly rated it it was amazing

Sword & Sorcery is a sub-genre which mixes fantasy, action, adventure, horror, and several other threads, if done correctly. In lesser hands, it becomes routine, boring, and avoidable.
Tireless editor Paula Guran has, in this massive anthology, compiled a lot of stories. Luckily for us, most of those stories are rather enjoyable, with several of them gleefully breaking all the conventions that had been set by the past masters. Those unconventional stories are special, and they ought to induce you ...more

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May 11, 2019 Christopher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Excellent, all-encompassing “Sword & Sorcery” anthology that spans the history of the sub-genre from 1933 to present. While some of the stories veer a little too far off-template (sword and sorcery being a very restrictive sub-genre to begin with), overall I was pleased with the quality of the stories presented and found many new authors to consider.

As a long time fan of the genre, the earliest tales were still my favorite: Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, and especially Leigh Bracke ...more

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