We Are All Legends in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Nov 21, 2011 S.E. Lindberg rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery, reviewed-by-se

We Are All Legends is a must-read for fans of doomed protagonists (Karl Wagner’s Kane, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, David Gemmell’s Druss, etc.). It is Sword and Sorcery for the adult crowd. Darrell Schweitzer tapped into his extensive weird fiction expertise to craft this great string of tales. It is gritty, poetic, and intellectually rewarding. We Are All Legends mixes the horrific atmosphere of H.P. Lovecraft, with the story telling action of R. E. Howard, with the emotive style of C.A. Smith.

A We Are All Legends is a must-read for fans of doomed protagonists (Karl Wagner’s Kane, Michael Moorcock’s Elric, David Gemmell’s Druss, etc.). It is Sword and Sorcery for the adult crowd. Darrell Schweitzer tapped into his extensive weird fiction expertise to craft this great string of tales. It is gritty, poetic, and intellectually rewarding. We Are All Legends mixes the horrific atmosphere of H.P. Lovecraft, with the story telling action of R. E. Howard, with the emotive style of C.A. Smith.

A quote best communicates the motivations of Julian, a warrior jaded by the crusades who is cursed by evil forces. An apostate, shunning the god who shunned him. Julian is a selfish man, as the character reveals in the story Divers Hands: “I had many times longed for death. But then the familiar terror came… After death—damnation, the eternal torments I could escape only for a brief time while I lived. Like all men, I am ultimately selfish. I would sacrifice the whole world to escape Hell even for a short while. I could kill myself only on a sudden, saving impulse swifter than thought. If I reasoned what was right, just, and the moral thing to do, I would forget all about rightness, justice, and morality, and be paralyzed.”

What kind of atmosphere will readers experience? Just read this dose from The Riddle of the Horn: “The trees of earth, those which were solid and not phantasms of the snow, thinned out as I left the forest and moved into open country once again. It was foolish for me to do so, but as soon as they were out of sight—and they were almost at once—all directions looked the same and the only real thing was the agony of cold and of further motion. The wind stung my face with renewed fury, sweeping long and far over rolling hills and fields, no longer broken or held back by ancient trunks. I was without destination, like a corpse bobbing on an endless sea.”

And what horrors will the reader face? Not your typical demons, but indescribable evil. From the story The Unknown God Cried Out: “When the man came within the circle of the firelight, I could see that he had no face, and thus no mouth, and that was why he did not speak. In the place of a face there was a black oval, not a mask, not a burnt sore, but an absolute, limitless void sinking into his head in all defiance of perspective and dimensions. I feared if I looked at it too long I would be drawn into it, out of the universe altogether…”

In summary, We Are All Legends is a gateway to Hell and beyond. As I read it I felt that rewarding anxiety of "really" experiencing the unknown, running through meticulously constructed dioramas that only a sorcerer like Schweitzer could conjure. Great fun.
...more

18 likes · Like · see review

Aug 26, 2022 Derek rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

It's an accomplishment to merge the wandering-black-knight Medieval fantasy with an uniformly dour outlook and such phantasmagoria. Julian wanders through mysterious events and endures repeated failure and loss. The events themselves don't seem to have any internal meaning or logic but Julian's actions repeat the themes and make the journey intensely personal.

I'm not convinced that Schweitzer quite wrangles the material. The tone is so uniform that the stories blend together, each presented as m ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 15, 2016 Riju Ganguly rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This highly overrated book was a crushing disappointment. Yes, it contains seeds of numerous stories & images which could (should) have been developed into proper stories with a fast pace, robust narrative, occasional humour, and dollops of horror. The whole stuff read like some medieval manuscript (perhaps that was the aim, above all) which was unbelievably droll & boring. The protagonist's procrastination & lamentations went on & on, until it actually started resembling masturbation where one ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Oct 04, 2024 Charles rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

The character we follow through the stories is Julian, a fallen knight who believes he has failed God and will be claimed by the Devil, although, for reasons unknown, the Devil wants him to wander the world a while before taking his soul. Unlike most S&S main characters, Julian is not a hero, although he is a skilled warrior and is capable of bravery. He is often afraid and frequently selfish. He strives to live even though he does not value himself. Despite these weaknesses, or perhaps because ...more

1 like · Like · see review