Death Angel's Shadow in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Sep 09, 2018 Joseph rated it really liked it

Point of clarification: I'm reading the Centipede Press edition, which includes the contents of the original 1973 Warner paperback of the same title, and pairs them with an assortment of Kane stories primarily from later in Wagner's career in the 1980s & early 1990s. It's not an entirely easy joining.

The original Warner paperback had three stories: "Reflections for the Winter of My Soul", "Cold Light" and "Mirage". The first two I'm guessing are each novella-length -- 100+ pages each in the book Point of clarification: I'm reading the Centipede Press edition, which includes the contents of the original 1973 Warner paperback of the same title, and pairs them with an assortment of Kane stories primarily from later in Wagner's career in the 1980s & early 1990s. It's not an entirely easy joining.

The original Warner paperback had three stories: "Reflections for the Winter of My Soul", "Cold Light" and "Mirage". The first two I'm guessing are each novella-length -- 100+ pages each in the book. In "Reflections", Kane finds himself snowed in in an isolated castle while a werewolf (whose depredations, by coincidence(?), began around the same time Kane arrived). It's arguably one of the highlights of the entire Kane series, and brings a pretty substantial Hammer horror film vibe to the series. In "Cold Light", Kane has gone into exile in the plague-ravaged land of Demornte, and would be just as happy to stay there minding his own business, but one Gaethaa the Avenger leads a band of mercenaries there in an effort to rid the world of the evil that is Kane. (Which, to be clear, Kane is often pretty darned evil.) Needless to say, it doesn't go according to plan ... And in "Mirage", Kane finds himself in a castle being seduced by its mistress and again, needless to say, it doesn't go according to plan.

These stories are all first-rate -- Wagner was a master of mood and description and action (although there were far too many exclamation points! But, based on an essay from later in the book, those might have been added by the editors! Which, if true, was a mistake!), and are very much recommended.

The other stories, the ones new to this edition, are something of a miscellany -- there are a couple of more conventional Kane sword & sorcery stories written after the five-book Warner series had wrapped up in 1975 or so; there's "The Gothic Touch", taken from a tribute anthology to Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné (in which the Doomed Albino Prince meets, and is much confused by, a certain gigantic, red-haired wanderer); and there are several stories of varying length (including the long and possibly autobiographical "At First Just Ghostly") which bring Kane into the present day, and which seem to involve a fair amount of heavy drinking and cocaine. (From internal textual clues, and from other interviews, etc., with Wagner that I've read, it feels like these would have been pieces of some larger whole, had Wagner been with us longer.) These modern stories are all quite good (in a sort of nasty small-press horror magazine sort of way) -- Wagner's writing had only gotten better -- but it's also kind of jarring to have the same character transition from imaginary world sword & sorcery to buying out a London publishing house so that he can chat up a hard-drinking horror writer on the eve of a Worldcon.

Oh, and there's also a 1975-vintage essay about the origins of Kane that's quite interesting in terms of laying out Wagner's influences.

Recommended, although if the only version you can find is the original (which is also the eBook version currently available), then don't feel too bad about missing out on the more recent stories. ...more

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Oct 02, 2016 Lee Broderick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fiction-fantasy, fiction-short-stories

It seems churlish to complain that the first of the three short stories contained in this brief volume, and the second longest, is included in another, earlier in the chronology. Churlish because, although Death Angel's Shadow is the last in the series, it was the first published. Nevertheless, reading it chronological order, I'd already read Reflections for the Winter of My Soul in The Book of Kane (incidentally, if anyone's reading this review first, my advice is to skip that book and ...more

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