Darkness Weaves in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Sep 02, 2018 Joseph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Glorious, grim sword & sorcery of the 1970s (as published in Wagner's preferred 1978 revision, after Powell Press mangled the original in 1970).

Efrel, done wrong by, and horribly disfigured by, Emperor Netisten Maril, recruits the legendary warrior Kane (red haired, left-handed, possibly immortal, well-versed in both swordplay and sorcerous arts) to command her armies as she seeks vengeance against the Emperor, his daughter M'Cori, and the Thovnostian Empire as a whole. (And she may also have ma ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2020 Jason Ray Carney rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

9 likes · Like · see review

Aug 03, 2014 Lee Broderick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fiction-fantasy

I avoided this book for a while, wary of a biblically inspired protagonist from a Bible Belt author. That wariness, I now realise, was unjustified, even if I might like to flatter myself that it was understandable. Why shouldn't the Judeo-Christian mythos be any less fertile a ground for cultivating fantasy tropes than the Ancient Greek or Germanic legends? The answer, as I probably would have acknowledged before, is that there's no reason - it just requires the right author and that was what ma I avoided this book for a while, wary of a biblically inspired protagonist from a Bible Belt author. That wariness, I now realise, was unjustified, even if I might like to flatter myself that it was understandable. Why shouldn't the Judeo-Christian mythos be any less fertile a ground for cultivating fantasy tropes than the Ancient Greek or Germanic legends? The answer, as I probably would have acknowledged before, is that there's no reason - it just requires the right author and that was what made me wary. Neo-Wiccan fantasy writing probably annoys me just as much as any Christian fiction would. In truth, Kane is a great character set in a world that is inspired almost entirely independently of his own mythological roots - Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft are obvious touchstones.

Karl Edward Wagner begins to explore some of the boredom, ennui and detachedness that must surely accompany immortality. This is something that must be obvious to most people who've ever given the condition much thought and yet it's so often presented as an unquestionably good thing in fantasy literature that its treatment here stands out. Kane is also an anti-hero in the truest sense; his morality is skewed, as it very probably would be by his detachedness anyway if it weren't a generator of his curse. Kane is driven unapologetically to materially improve his own condition. He's also more than just a thug - time and intelligence have combined to give him the opportunity and potential to nurture both physical and intellectual (including sorcerous) powers to a high degree, making him a formidable being. This is a bleak, black story, however: the good guys do not fare well and even Kane can only make decisions based on imperfect knowledge which can lead to his decisions backfiring.

If the character of Kane is promising, however, his dialogue is not: I was exasperated every time I read a 'yeah' or a 'like'. It would be unfair to say that these speech patterns are anachronistic - how could they be in a make-believe setting? They still jarred with me though but perhaps that's simply a reflection of my Britishness (I confess it was eye-opening for me to discover that 'like' in particular was already a part of the U.S.American vernacular in the 1960's). If Michael Moorcock could decide to introduce his most famous creation to Wagner's though then the books can't be without any literary merit and the fact that the book managed to entertain hints that the prose between the dialogue wasn't quite as bad - despite showing an occasionally stereotypically fantasy-writer's love for the overly florid.

A little research after reading the book shows that I started in the wrong place. It seems the Kane series on GoodReads was organised according to publication date but it turns out that, chronologically, this is the last in the series - I've now updated the series here, including all known works, to reflect this. Night Winds seems to have a better reputation than this and so I'll be reading that and hoping the style improves to match the potential. In truth, what could I expect of a book that (again, discovered after a little more research) was not only the author's first attempt but was first published as crudely editted weird-porn? ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2019 Christopher rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, favorites

I have read Kane stories before and liked them to varying degrees. But this is by far the best. Not only that, but its one of the best sword and sorcery novel length tales of all time. It has basically everything you might want in such a story. Brutal fights, naval battles, eldritch monsters, twisted characters all around struggling against each other in moral ambiguity that culminates in one of the more utterly off the rails end battles.

Like · see review