Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Feb 28, 2018 Karl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A re- read

Originally read in the late 1970's.

Contents:

011 - Introduction - "Of Warriors and Wizards" - Lin Carter
017 - "The Bagful of Dreams" - Cudgel the Clever by Jack Vance
059 - "The Tupilak" - The Merfolk by Poul Anderson
101 - " Storm in a Bottle" - Brak the Barbarian by John Jakes
161 - "Swords Against the Marluk" - Deryni by Katherine Kurtz
203 - "The Lands Beyond the World" - Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock.

For a good time and some light reading, Lin Carter edits a collection of fun ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Derek rated it liked it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery, anthology-or-collection

Every time through a collection curated by Lin Carter, I have to wonder what the other authors thought of his excessively chummy, sometimes cringingly inappropriate filler material. What did they think of this whole SAGA organization that Carter mumbles on about, other than being a mildly amusing diversion and income source via the Flashing Swords! collections?

Again, this is a set of stories drawn from established series and characters, though Anderson's _The Merman's Children_ fix-up collection Every time through a collection curated by Lin Carter, I have to wonder what the other authors thought of his excessively chummy, sometimes cringingly inappropriate filler material. What did they think of this whole SAGA organization that Carter mumbles on about, other than being a mildly amusing diversion and income source via the Flashing Swords! collections?

Again, this is a set of stories drawn from established series and characters, though Anderson's _The Merman's Children_ fix-up collection is still in the future. But it shows considerable range.

You can never tell if Cugel the Clever, in Vance's "The Bagful of Dreams", is ever really in control of the situation. He is paired against a rival, Iolo, who is as conniving and amoral as he is, and both are striving for a complex goal in a contest with unusual rules. And, of course, nothing goes right. It is remarkable how the situation can be filled with so much conflict that never boils over into violence.

Anderson manages to wring a new shape of tragedy and loss in "The Tupilak", which is again crisp in writing while retaining the feel of pre-Christian mythology.

Brak the Barbarian kills off another pony in "Storm in a Bottle", but it is not his fault this time. Jakes establishes an intriguing setting, of a city driven mad by drought and on the verge of spiraling out of control. But this is seen from too great a remove as we follow Brak through an investigation that leads him exactly where the reader expects.

"Swords Against the Marluk" speaks to the conflicts besetting Gwynedd and the suspicions held against the Deryni, both of which are noteworthy and powerful, but the story's events are split between an indeterminably long mystic ritual and then a bloody and not terribly remarkable battle.

"The Lands Beyond the World" is an Elric piece inserted between two established stories, and so has a bunch of connective tissue on either end. This makes it feel ripped untidily from something larger. Still excellent, if you ignore the stray viscera.

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