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Post by etsmith on May 20, 2007 14:13:25 GMT -5
So, heres a thread for recommending novels and books of interest to our fellow fans of sword & sorcery fiction. If your experience is similar to mine, true blood and thunder adventure stories are difficult to find, buried as they are in a wall of contemporary genre fiction at the average big-box bookseller, if there at all. For me, the best finds happen in used book shops, in the musty dusty paperback bins. No great surprise really, as the heyday of S&S puplishing was also the apex of the paperback boom.
I request that anyone making additions to this thread follow a basic format: *Title *Author *Some basic publishing info, to help in tracking it down *a bit of spoiler-free description as to why you think this book is noteworthy, and what made it cool for you. Given the the gaming related nature of these forums, a little thought as to how the book can be of use at the game table may not be unappreciatted.
I'll start off with a near forgotten gem from the nineteenth century...
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Post by etsmith on May 20, 2007 14:58:30 GMT -5
"The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis" by C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne org. published 1899, 2002 reprint by University of Nebraska Press (www.nebraskapress.uni.edu)
d**n, this is a meaty novel. I started this book expecting something like other nineteenth-century adventure stories I've read. A few interesting moments of period action set-pieces hidden between long passages describing the mundane affairs of respectable, terribly dull bourgeois protagonists. I expected the heroines to be chaste, wilting flowers of Victorian femininity and the main villain to be some poorly-veiled symbol of foreign malice. Afte all, it wasn't till Robert Howard that good, ole-fashioned American sex & violence was invented, right?
Apparently not, and this novel bears such strong similarities to the Conan tales that I'd be very surprised if Howard wasn't familiar with it. The story is told of the last days of the empire of Atlantis, a once great civilization now fallen into decadence. Called back from his post as Viceroy of the province of Yucatan, our hero Deucalion finds himself embroiled in the conflict between the ancient priests of the holy mountain, and the new Empress Phorenice who defies their influence on the empire. Plots are foiled, alliances made, rebellions fostered and many a bloody battle fought, with time for a naked slave girl or two to writhe along the way.
All the hallmarks of s&s are here. Savage, prehistoric beasts are fought, strange cults lurk in the shadows, exotic narcotic vapors waft through the air and dark, terrible powers are invoked by power-mad men. The setting is paradoxically both primordially new and mysteriously ancient. All the characters are interesting, driven personalities. Deucalion himself is very compelling, a former acolyte of the mountain priests who has loyally served for decades as both a soldier and a administrator of the empire. Intelligent but ruthless when called for, he is a refreshingly competent and unconflicted character. He finds his antagonist in the Empress Phorenice, the beautiful, sensuous and madly ambitious woman who has seized the throne. At times she pursues Deucalion as royal consort, at others she seeks to slay the threat he represents to her power. It is perhaps most telling of the tone of this story that Phorenice most strongly wins Deucalion's favor by ably aiding him in butchering a mob of rebels.
Obviously, if you even have passing familiarity with the legend of Atlantis, you know how the story ends. But the journey to that foregone conclusion is vivid, and may very well be the earliest example of modern Sword & Sorcery written.
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Post by thegoodassyrian on Aug 5, 2007 10:47:13 GMT -5
It is not S&S fiction, but I would wholeheartedly recommend Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard by Mark Finn. Mark is an old friend of mine so it was a double pleasure to read because it was such a good biography of the much-misunderstood Texas writer. I was particularly gratified by Mark's effort to place Howard in the context of Texas literary and folk tradition. You can check it out at Amazon here: tinyurl.com/ywfew8TGA
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