Archives: Reviews

Conan Graphic Novels

I’ve come down with an odd recurring fever. I’ll be perfectly miserable for hours, then it will break, and I’ll think I’m on the mend… only to have the damned thing come back. It’s really messing with my ability to get writing and house work finished. Also it’s uncomfortable.

The one bright spot is that I’ve finally been able to read the old Marvel Conan comics, written/adapted by Roy Thomas. The local library has a pretty complete collection. I never read these when I was a kid (no idea why) so I’m coming upon them very fresh, and it turns out that they’re really fun sword-and-sorcery comics.

I started reading with volume 6, which is when Roy Thomas himself writes that he felt like he really had a handle on what he was doing.

Hex Crawl Chronicles

From time to time I talk about world building on this site. I think any writer has to give an awful lot of thought to world building, i.e. presenting a setting that’s not just consistent and logical but interesting.

One of the reasons role-playing game setting books appeal to me so much is that a good one just drips with ideas, and can be chock full of world building  inspiration both for writers and gamers. I’ve discussed other great settings, but I’m overdue discussing the Hex Crawl Chronicles written by John Stater.

The High House

File under “almost forgotten but excellent” fantasy novels. The High House, by James Stoddard, is a grand adventure story about a fantastic mansion that may contain the Cosmos itself. One of my favorites, and despite being award winning, I don’t hear it discussed very often. I often describe it as being what I thought the Gormenghast books might be like, but weren’t.

It also pays homage to the wonderful old Ballantine fantasy series. If you’re familiar with those, I think you’ll enjoy The High House even more.

 

The Lion of Lucca

I just finished the second Gardner Fox historical novel after loving The Borgia Blade. This one, The Lion of Lucca, didn’t thrill me nearly as much. Any time that there were tactics or battle scenes, it was great stuff. The rest of the time I was reading a romance novel from a guy’s perceptive, which meant that there wasn’t much about what anyone was feeling, just a whole lot of admittedly well-written descriptions of lovely renaissance women getting it on with the protagonist.

Swords in the Mist Re-Read: “Their Mistress, The Sea”

Bill Ward and I are continuing our read through of Fritz Leiber’s collection of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, Swords in the Mist. This week we’re looking at the third tale in the collection, “Their Mistress, The Sea.”

Howard: “Their Mistress, the Sea” can’t properly be called a linking story — it’s more like a linking interlude, an explanation as to what happened between the preceding story and the one that follows. Yet it’s not without some charm. Leiber clearly loved this world and his characters, and it shows in many of the small details.

The Borgia Blade

I know of Gardner Fox mostly through his comic creations (like, say Hawkman or the Justice Society of America) and the sword-and-sorcery adventures of Kothar. The Kothar stories are mild entertainment. They alternate moments of splendid action and inventiveness with head-slapping stupidity and nonsense. I once resolved to finally read through the entire series — they’re short books, after all — and mid way through the second book remembered why I hadn’t gotten any further.

But Morgan Holmes knows his heroic fiction, and when he told me there were some good Gardner Fox historicals, I believed him implicitly, and snapped up the three he said were the best. One of these, The Borgia Blade, I took with me to read on a  long plane flight recently, and the competence of the writing and the depth of the characters surpassed anything that I’d expected from the creator of Kothar.

Swords in the Mist Re-Read: “Lean Times in Lankhmar”

Bill Ward and I are continuing our read through of Fritz Leiber’s collection of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, Swords in the Mist. This week we’re looking at the second tale in the collection, “Lean Times in Lankhmar.”

Swords Against Death Re-Read: Conclusion

Over the last two months Bill Ward and I have been sharing our thoughts about one of my favorite short story collections, and the first sword-and-sorcery fiction I even encountered, Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death.

Swords Against Death Re-Read: “Bazaar of the Bizarre”

Bill Ward and I  are re-reading a book from Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar series, Swords Against Death. We hope you’ll pick up a copy and join us. This week we tackled the tenth and final tale in the volume, “Bazaar of the Bizarre.”

Bill: Let me just say right at the outset that this is one of the all time great fantasy titles — long before I’d ever read Leiber, I knew the title “Bazaar of the Bizarre” (from, I think, Dragon magazine) and it turned out to be the first story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser I’d ever read, in some since-forgotten anthology, and I still remember the anticipation leading up to it. I wasn’t disappointed.

Swords Against Death Re-Read: “The Price of Pain-Ease”

Bill Ward and I  are re-reading a book from Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar series, Swords Against Death. We hope you’ll pick up a copy and join us. This week we tackled the ninth tale in the volume, “The Price of Pain-Ease.”