Brak the Barbarian (Brak the Barbarian, #1) in Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"

Mar 14, 2016 Dan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, sword-and-sorcery

It’s been a while since I’d read a full length old school sword & sorcery novel, and I have to say that this really hit the spot. This is a collection of loosely connect short stories arranged in chronological order. They are very much in the vein of Robert E. Howard’s Conan. These are the tales of high adventure of a barbarian from the north who meets with cultures, customs and civilizations that are strange and incomprehensible to him. He encounters dark magicks and strange supernatural forces ...more

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Apr 23, 2015 S.E. Lindberg rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed-by-se, sword-sorcery-group-authors

Before John Jakes became known for historical fiction, he wrote a series of "clonans" (i.e. Conan-like heroes based off of Robert E. Howard's hero). Jake's hero was: Brak the Barbarian. In his introduction, Jake says he merely wanted to have more stories of the ones he liked. With a little more effort, he could have a really neat hero. Instead, he took a cookie cutter mold of Conan, stripped him free of specific goals, and set him on a general trip "south" toward Khurdisan, an apparently dreamy ...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Derek rated it liked it

Shelves: sword-and-sorcery

Here's some faint praise: better than the sequels. Not consumed by Jakes's excesses, anyways, though these lurk.

(These are, namely: that Brak is headed to Khurdisan with no real justification yet gives up much to continue; that Jakes plays with the order of narration to start in medias res and immediately flashes back to fill in the story; that Brak is frequently an observer or passive element in his own story; that he wears a must-be-disgusting lion pelt despite coming from the tundra and there ...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Charles rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy

This is the first book that John Jakes wrote about "Brak the Barbarian." It's a full length novel and I have a fond spot in my heart for it. It's clearly a Conan type story but I didn't mind that. The writing is more sparse and not as poetical as Robert E. Howard's work in Heroic Fantasy, but Jakes tells a good story that's worth reading. ...more

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