Blog Archives
sThere is more sword & sorcery from a writer normally associated with a different genre. This time it is James Reasoner who is well known for westerns and some well regarded crime novels. “Washed ashore on a jungle-choked island in the delta at the mouth of the great Jehannamun River, Jorras Trevayle has survived an […]
A fairly new small press publication is Savage Realms. It is a magazine with an ambitious monthly schedule. Their website states: “Savage Realms Monthly is a new sword and sorcery magazine for fans of R.E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, and Michael Moorcock, featuring heroic tales of savage barbarians, evil wizards, and beautiful maidens. We aim […]
DMR Books’ Renegade Swords series of anthologies have collected flotsam and jetsam within the sword & sorcery genre with a new book each of the past three years. I have covered the first and second volumes. The newest is volume III. Format is trade paperback, 191 pages, cover by Brian LeBlanc. Contents: Adrian Cole […]
I divide sword & sorcery characters into two archetypes: the Achilles archetype and the Odysseus archetype. Conan is of the Achilles faction. Clark Ashton Smith had the first Odyssesus archetype with Satampra Zeiros. Harry Otto Fischer created Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Fritz Leiber would expand on the two character and the first to get […]
The sword-and-sorcery movie boom of the early 1980s did not last long. I was there and saw some of the movies when they came out. I knew when I saw Red Sonja in summer 1985 that it was over. Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood by P. J. Thorndyke is an entertaining history and look […]
There is a rush discovering unknown or obscure fiction in your favorite genre. Sometimes you find a great story in an anthology or collection. You find that digest or pulp magazine that contains a story you never heard of that pushes all the right buttons. Swords & Sorcery, The Fantastic Swordsmen, The Young Magicians, Swords […]
Last week’s post on 1980s sword-and-sorcery movie posters proved to be very popular. I received some images of more movies and dug up more looking at the Tubi sword-and-sorcery movie list. Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1983): The son of Torren learns of his heritage, goes to avenge the deaths of his fellow villagers, and rescue his […]
The streaming service Tubi has a sword-and-sorcery movie section. Some of the movies I have never heard of. Others were prominent in the old video rental stores that sprang up in the middle and late 1980s. I have been watching some that I never caught the first time around while I get on the hamster […]
Swords & Dark Magic (Eos/Harper Collins, 2010). Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders. This was a book that I read over eight years ago and came across this review while looking for an old file. This was a sword-and-sorcery fiction anthology of original fiction from a mainstream publisher. I really enjoyed Andrew Offutt’s Swords […]
There has been round of blog posts in the wake of an interview I had at Jared Trueheart’s Legends of Men blog. That interview spurred a response by Jason Ray Carney who disputes that sword and sorcery is man’s fiction. Daniel Davis joined in at his Brain Leakage blog. Jason Ray responded to that. Go […]
Friend of the blog, Karl K. Gallagher, best known for his Torchship trilogy of hard sci-fi novels (previously reviewed here), took a swing at the fantasy genre fastball this spring with the release of his Lost War duopoly. The result is a solid, stand-up triple with much to recommend it. It’s a wild blend of […]
Brand new from DMR Books is Byron A. Roberts’ The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor. I have mentioned Roberts’ fiction in the past in Swords of Steel and Swords of Steel III. The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor is a collection of three novellas along with some appendices. The setting is antediluvian, just before the “Second Cataclysm.” “The Siege […]