From the Bookshelf of Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"…

Swordsmen and Supermen

Donald M. Grant (Editor),

Robert E. Howard (Contributor)

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Mar 15, 2018 Derek rated it liked it

Shelves: whiskey-tango-foxtrot, anthology-or-collection, sword-and-sorcery, time-lost

A really curious grab-bag of stories.

"How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm" would require five more pages in order to be considered a 'confection'. Lin Carter writing in a Lord Dunsany mode but without the irony or hidden meanings.

"Meet Cap'n Kidd" a Breckinridge Elkins piece by Robert E Howard. It's in a humorous mode, and while Howard manages the action well and it is very sympathetic to the rough-mannered but straight-shooting and crafty Elkins, you either like this sort of thing or you don't. I d A really curious grab-bag of stories.

"How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm" would require five more pages in order to be considered a 'confection'. Lin Carter writing in a Lord Dunsany mode but without the irony or hidden meanings.

"Meet Cap'n Kidd" a Breckinridge Elkins piece by Robert E Howard. It's in a humorous mode, and while Howard manages the action well and it is very sympathetic to the rough-mannered but straight-shooting and crafty Elkins, you either like this sort of thing or you don't. I don't.

"The Slave of Marathon" is part of this Grey Maiden series from the old _Adventure Magazine_ pulp, tracing the history of a magical blade through the hands of various people and through major conflicts of history. The Grey Maiden itself has a bit of Stormbringer in it, but I'd really have to see more of the stories to make a major judgement. This one is gritty, realistic tactical warfare.

"The Death of a Hero" is a fragment of d'Esme's novel The Red Gods which looks like it has but a single 1923 edition in English. The editor carefully selected the portion such that it starts without preamble, ends in a curious cliffhanger, and the middle may abandon the lantern-jawed European protagonist in favor of the "Red Man" primitive Maa-Wang. I'm intrigued by what d'Esme offers, but the florid writing is a warning.

And, finally, "Wings of Y'vrn". Darrel Crombie apparently has nothing else to his name, despite Grant's talking-up of his abilities and his future. The imagery and construction here is so striking and so utterly weird that you can see an expert latching onto it, readers being turned off by it, and an author struggling to produce more.

Crombie describes a mystical tradition that reminded me of the intricate systems of Peter Valentine Timlett's The Seedbearers and sequels, yet has the descriptions and splash one would see out of E. E. "Doc" Smith. The magic-wielder Y'vrn constructs matrices of images or glyphs which respond in circuits and provide rays and screens and power fields and pocket dimensions and energization and geometry. In small doses this pseudo-psychic system is quite remarkable, but it quickly bogs down into fiddly details and highly specific descriptions and plot contrivances and other weird Doctor Strange nonsense that feels like it should make sense but doesn't. This is a short story to make a reader stop and stare. ...more

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Jan 20, 2014 Joseph rated it liked it

Pleasant but not particularly memorable. One Robert E. Howard story, but it's a Breckenridge Elkins story, one of his humorous westerns. An excerpt from some obscure French lost-race novel of the 1920s. Another excerpt, this from Grey Maiden: The Story Of A Sword Through The Ages by Arthur D. Howden Smith (coincidentally, Centaur Press also published the full novel). And two new stories, Wings of Y'Vrn by Darrel Crombie (as far as I can tell, his only published work) and How Sargoth Lay Siege to ...more

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Dec 31, 2008 Charles rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy

This wasn't one of my favorite collections. It has a Howard story, a humorous one, which is good but not really the type of fantasy one associates with Swordsmen. Not a bad collection but it was a bit misleading with the subtitle of "Swashbuckling" adventure. ...more

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Jul 04, 2016 Richard marked it as to-read

Mar 19, 2018 Jason Waltz marked it as to-read

Shelves: keeper, own, heroic, fantastical, s-s, anthologies

May 22, 2021 C.L. Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy-anthologies

Feb 07, 2024 Colin Leidner marked it as to-read

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