“What blazed in Charles’s eyes? What was at his core? I think he planted it deep in his books, liberating himself. Readers purify their own emotions and memories in the refining fire of his words.”--Jon Tattrie, To Leave a Warrior Behind
A talented author working in the second wave of sword-and-sorcery, Charles Saunders twice had his Imaro books under contract and in print by a publishing house … and twice had the series yanked from under his feet.
Partially as a result of these and other ill fortunes including shuttering of the newspaper on which he worked, Saunders died alone, near penniless. Worse, without family to claim his body he was buried in an unmarked grave.
That’s hard.
If that was your end, would you consider your life a success? Do you consider Saunders’ life a success?
You might not… unless you were to read To Leave a Warrior Behind (2026, McClelland & Stewart).
After which you’d answer that question quite differently. With a hell yeah. Saunders’ life might not look anything like the “success” you see on Instagram, but it was, nonetheless. Why?
He wrote some kick-ass S&S that we still read today.
He created a new (sub) sub-genre of fiction, sword-and-soul.
He had hundreds of admirers with whom he corresponded. Many friends, and as all fans of “It’s a Wonderful Life” know, no man is a failure who has friends.
And he will continue to be remembered thanks to this new biography.
Biography is what’s on the cover but probably the wrong word to describe To Leave A Warrior Behind. Biography often brings to mind dry text, heavily footnoted and indexed, the plain recitation of the facts of a life. To Leave a Warrior Behind is part compelling story of a fatherless boy, just like his greatest creation, Imaro, “son-of-no-father.” It’s part literary analysis of Saunders’ works. Part detective novel, from the search for an unclaimed body to the search for a missing past in the pages of hand-written letters. Part funeral dirge for the dying newspaper industry. And above all it honors Saunders the man, his unique life and literary and human legacy.
I don’t want to spoil all of that story here, as the book’s revelations keep coming, building chapter by chapter to a satisfying finish. By the end you will meet a Saunders you probably did not know.
But I do need to review it and so will reveal some of its contents here. You’ve been warned.
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Tattrie knew Saunders, as the two worked together for years as newsmen at the Halifax Daily News. So the work includes a fair deal of self-biographical/emotional/personal reflections from the author, which I enjoyed.
Shuttering the newsroom at the Daily News hit close to home. I was fortunate in 2004 when I quit my full-time job at a newspaper whose best days were behind, but one I loved and for which I felt survivors’ guilt. Tattrie observes that leaving journalism for greener, safer, corporate pastures can feel like a sellout, and as an ex-journalist I agree. I admire people who stuck out the profession for the love of the game. People like Saunders.
Saunders never wanted to do anything with his life but tell stories, and that’s what he did, even when there was no money to be made.
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| This book is worth a small fortune. |
Most of Saunders’ newsroom colleagues did not know he wrote the Imaro books. We get the full history here, starting with Saunders’ immense relief and pride after getting a $2,500 advance, to his crashing disappointment at finally seeing the cover of
Imaro, which featured a tanned Tarzan-like, possibly white hero and the infamous blurb “epic novel of a black Tarzan.” This drew the ire of the ERB estate and led to it being yanked from shelves, a costly delay. We also get a bit of insight into the workings at DAW. In 1985 founder Donald A. Wollheim was hospitalized and his daughter Betsy took over the day-to-day management of the company. It was her call to ultimately cancel Imaro.
Because DAW held the copyright to the first three Imaro books, Saunders was in a bind, unable to offer them elsewhere.
The book shines in its Imaro deep-dive, which all sword-and-sorcery fans and historians (ahem) will appreciate. Tattrie gives the series its due like few places did, save for perhaps The Cimmerian and Steve Tompkins (who by the way Saunders later extolled in an essay published in Rob E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur). We get the beginnings of Imaro, jointly influenced by Tarzan and a black character in Andre Norton’s postapocalyptic SF novel Star Man’s Son—2250 AD. But Saunders’ number one influence was Robert E. Howard, through the Lancers. We get his first appearances in the Gene Day edited magazine Dark Fantasy, and the big break when Lin Carter selected an Imaro story for his Year’s Best Fantasy Stories (DAW, 1975). It was Don Wolleheim himself who encouraged Saunders to submit Imaro for consideration, and ultimately acceptance.
After DAW cancelled the series Saunders did not publish a single piece of fiction between 1990-99. He did write the screenplays for a couple admittedly terrible S&S films, Amazons and Stormquest, which allowed him to pay the bills. He also wrote a few works of nonfiction about local black history and boxing.
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But beyond Saunders’ literary legacy we also get much on him the person. His college days during the rise of the Black Power movement. An attempted suicide in the 70s. The lifeline provided by his friends in letters, including the authors Charles De Lint and David C. Smith. With Smith Saunders mourned a joint loss of their early successes when their brand of “masculine fiction” fell from favor. We get the details of his marriage and its eventual failure. His work at the newspaper, Saunders’ raising his arms in triumph when CNNs’ Wolf Blitzer read on air his editorial about Canada sending ships to help the US during Hurricane Katrina. Lots of great details like this.
And we get Saunders’ fiction revival. His resurfacing after he was asked to submit a piece to the anthology Dark Matter. The republishing of his stories by Night Shade in the mid-2000s, which led Saunders to revisit the old Imaro stories and improve them. Tattrie walks us through Saunders’ work strengthening and deepening his characters, especially Imaro’s love interest Tanisha. “As he matured, Charles started treating fantasy not as a way out of our world, but as a deeper way into it,” Tattrie writes. Imaro begins to consider the feelings of others … “over time, core character traits reveal the man beneath the warrior.” Tattrie believes Saunders ultimately eclipsed Howard and his S&S roots by turning the focus of the stories from outer action to inner character revelation.
We get Night Shade’s disappointing cancellation of the series, but then the launch of Sword and Soul Media, and the first true visual depiction of Imaro on a cover that Saunders long imagined. In 2009, 25 years since his last new novel about Imaro, Saunders published his 4th and longest novel—Imaro: The Naama War, which brought with it a shift from the heroic fantasy of Imaro to a more epic storyline.
In short, To Leave a Warrior Behind is not just a biography, but important literary analysis. Analysis that along the way reveals striking parallels between creation and creator. Saunders, like Imaro, was deeply marked by the abandonment of his father and separation from his mother. Tatrie notes that he assembled the book by reading more than 250 letters over 50 years to a range of friends. Each letter was 3 pages, adding up to more than 700 pages of Charles writing about his life. In all that paper Saunders mentioned his father just once. When he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War he largely left his mother behind, too.
Yet this is not a good guy/bad guy story… I’ll end my review here, I don’t want to spoil anything, as there are some big twists at the end. Read this book for yourself and you’ll walk away with brand-new insights into Saunders the man. I regret not meeting Saunders when I had the chance, but I feel like I did after reading To Leave a Warrior Behind. Which is about the highest praise I can give it.
