Blog Archives
sI reviewed the first Swords of Steel anthology earlier this year. A second volume came out in 2016. Swords of Steel III had a release of Friday, May 19th. Dave Ritzlin sent me a file of the book to review. Good timing for me. Seems like life is full of putting out fires constantly leaving […]
Heavy Metal, and Sword and Sorcery: The Feedback Loop
Wednesday , 19, April 2017 Book Review, Short Fiction, Uncategorized 12 CommentsDavid C. Smith presents the first non-fiction piece in Swords and Sorcery II, and it’s a beauty. There exists a massive amount of scholarship on Robert E. Howard, his life, his history, and his work, and with very few exceptions (see: Damon Knight’s spiteful and amateur analysis), the analysts agree that Howard’s work conveys a […]
A Fever-Dream Quest of Grab-Your-Infogalactic Kadath
Wednesday , 12, April 2017 Book Review, Short Fiction 7 CommentsThe works of H. P. Lovecraft are often imitated, but never reproduced and certainly never surpassed. It’s a rare sort of genius that can launch an entirely new genre of literature, and rarer still is the genius whose imitators so consistently fail to improve upon his works. In the decades since the great old one […]
That Than Which There Can Be No More Terrible, by Michael Scalzi
Wednesday , 5, April 2017 Short Fiction 9 CommentsIn retrospect, it makes sense that one might find a ‘philosophical thriller’ lurking within the pages of a full-throated sword and sorcery collection of short stories written by metalheads. Those guys are generally well read and widely read, and the powerful effects in their music arises in part by their drawing inspiration from deep philosophical wells. That […]
Swords of Steel, Volume 2: The Lost City of Tehm
Friday , 31, March 2017 Short Fiction, Uncategorized 8 CommentsMorgan reviewed the first volume of Swords of Steel back in February of this year. The second volume was released in 2016, and it provides an excellent chance to analyze each of the twelve stories as part of Castalia House’s on-going effort to review the wealth of short fiction being produced by small and independent […]