By Ryan Harvey Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. A fierce warrior, magically born from a troll mother in the shape of a man, leads a troll army against the might of the elves. He stares at the troll king and mutters to himself: “I will succeed to your throne — but what good is that? What good is anything?” Thus speaks Valgard, half of the protagonist of The Broken Sword. His words contain ambition contradicted with…
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It’s a well-known tale in Sword-and-Sorcery circles: in 1954 the legendary fantasist Poul Anderson wrote one of the classics of the subgenre, a thrilling homage to the myths and Icelandic sagas of old titled The Broken Sword. Over fifteen years later Anderson heavily revised the book, and ever since readers have been debating which edition is better. Black Gate‘s Ryan Harvey leads us on a textual journey through both versions, giving you all the information you need to come to…
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Pawn to Infinity, edited by Fred Saberhagen with Joan Saberhagen (Ace Books, June 1982), and Unicorn Variations by Roger Zelazny (Timescape Books, February 1984). Cover artists: unknown, and Gerry Daly Pawn to Infinity: Ace Books, 1982, cover artist unknown, though this is a very cool cover. Although not Sword & Planet specifically, this is definitely the greatest collection of fantasy and SF stories to involve chess or a chess like game ever published. There are many great stories in here, and at…
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Three installments in The Heroic Legends Series from Titan Books: Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden (January 30, 2024), Solomon Kane: The Hound of God by Jonathan Maberry (November 28, 2023), and Bran Mak Morn: Red Waves of Slaughter by Steven L. Shrewsbury (March 26, 2024) Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations…
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I just finished two Euro-Mediterranean-inspired fantasy novels, and, by chance, both feature dragons on their beautiful covers. This post showcases both. Scott Oden’s The Doom of Oden wraps up a trilogy (Grimnir Series) and Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land begins a five-book series (Hanuvar Chronicles). Each offers anti-Roman myths/legends, Oden’s Grimnir overtly calls out Rome (and then introduces loads of Nordic fantasy) and HAJ’s Hanuvar’s primary antagonist is the Dervan Empire (obviously inspired by the Roman Empire)….
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The Last Man on Earth (Fawcett Crest / Ballantine, August 1982). Cover by Wayne Barlowe I continue to dip into the (seemingly endless) supply of anthologies from the three amigos of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. I’m not sure how many they actually produced together, but I’ve managed to track down around 80. They began collaborating in the 80s, and averaged over half a dozen books a year, until Asimov’s death in 1992. This time…
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The complete run of Swords Against Darkness (Zebra Book, 1977-1979). Covers by Frank Frazetta, Larry Kresek, Greg Theakston, and Luis Bermejo In my opinion, Andrew Offutt’s greatest contribution to literary history is the five book anthology series he edited called Swords Against Darkness. They were simply called I through V and published between 1977 and 1979, all by Zebra. I’ve got them all and have read them all. They knocked my socks off. I was just beginning to write around…
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The Chronicles of Hanuvar: Lord of a Shattered Land and The City of Marble and Blood by Howard Andrew Jones (Baen, August 1, 2023 and October 3, 2023). Covers by Dave Seeley Friends, Carthaginians, Dog-Brothers, I come to praise Howard Andrew Jones, not to bury him… That was a lot of mixed-metaphors, but Howard’s mixed a lot of themes, tropes and reached back into the very roots of early heroic fantasy in his Chronicles of Hanuvar to breathe new life…
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Fantastic magazine, edited by Ted White. August and October 1972. Covers by Jeff Jones and Mike Hinge My Retro Reviews of Amazing have concentrated on the Goldsmith/Lalli years, but I recently read this pair of issues from Ted White’s era, which extended from 1969 to 1979. As a youngster, I started reading Amazing in late 1974, so right in the middle of White’s editorship. These two issues, then, date a bit earlier than my first encounter with Amazing. I bought them…
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Darker Than You Think (Fantasy Press, 1948). Cover by A. J. Donnell Jack Williamson had an impressively long career in science fiction, from the pre-Campbell era into the twenty-first century. His first sale, in 1928, was to Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories; his last book came out in 2005, the year before his death at 98. Darker than You Think is one of the high points of that career, published in 1948 as a novel expanded from a 1940 novella that…
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