"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
Friday, March 29, 2024
Some observations while reading Bulfinch’s Mythology
Monday, March 4, 2024
Our modern problems with reading
We don’t have infinite time. The amount of reading attention any new book must compete with is getting progressively smaller. So we have to be selective.
It’s basic math.
Robert E. Howard read Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack London and H. Rider Haggard (and many, many authors besides, but bear with me as I make this point).
Michael Moorcock read Howard and his contemporaries C.L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith… but is obligated to read ERB and London and Haggard.
Writers today read Moorcock and his contemporaries Karl Edward Wagner and Jack Vance and Poul Anderson. But also should read Howard and Moore and Smith … and ERB and London and Haggard.
The demands on new generations of readers multiply. What about readers and writers three generations from now?
Oh, and we all must read the classics. Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Hemingway.
Make sure you read outside your genre. One should read history, too.
The accumulated reading, generation on generation, cannot continue. The math doesn’t add up. How many books can anyone read in a lifetime?
Some books must fall by the wayside.
This is just the beginning of the problem. We have many more demands on our attention than previous generations. Movies, TV, video games, TTRPGs, YouTube, doom scrolling, etc., all compete for our attention during “free” time. And despite all the breathless predictions of the techno utopians, we don’t seem to be working any fewer hours.
That means we’ve got choices to make. As you get older, you realize you cannot fritter your time away. It’s far too precious.
So, what are we to do?
My advice: Read what you want. Just read, as long as its not Reddit forums or Twitter threads.
Read new sword-and-sorcery or read the classics. Read comic books, or graphic novels. Just make sure it’s something someone has created, with care.
Don’t listen to what other people think. I don’t. Because I’ve read enough to spot illogic and ad hominem and the rest.
Just because a book is old, published 60 or 80 or 400 years ago, does not render it out of date. C.S. Lewis tells us to rid yourself of “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.”
And our age is prone to its own illusions.
Anything still in print 60 years after it was published is probably worth your time. Because it survived the test of time. The books that influenced your favorite author(s) are probably worth reading too, even if out of print.
But don’t feel obligated to plow through classics that are going to kill your love of reading, either.
Read what interests you, and carry that fire against public opinion. Which is often shit.
That’s another benefit of reading widely and deeply—read enough good stuff and you’ll develop a sensitive and accurate bullshit detection meter.
Saturday, February 3, 2024
The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden, a review
Karash Khan left but a single watcher to mind the Cimmerian. This thankless task fell to the youngest of the nine Sicari, a quick-eyed Turanian not much older than twenty. No one knew his given name, but his brothers called him Badish Khan. Bred in the alleys of Sultanapur, when the Master found him he was already a hired knife at fourteen with more kills than throat-slitters thrice his age. He was like an ingot of iron, crude and without form; while Karash Khan was the hammer, it was dark Erlik who provided the flame.
Even so, the Sicari could not withstand the Cimmerian’s berserk fury. Death might have been their master, but neither god nor man could master this wolf of the North. His god was Crom, grim and savage, who gave a man the power to strive and slay and little else. And when he called upon Crom, it was not in prayer or benediction . . . it was so the dark lord of the mound might bear witness.
Among southern nations, Conan had seen madness dismissed: a disease physicians sought to cure, a weakness learned philosophers debated in shaded courts. Madmen were broken men, they said, who could hope for no better than a quick and quiet death. Among the barbarians of the north, however, madness was something else – a thinning of the veil between worlds, a harbinger of doom, or the curse-gift of that fey and feral goddess, Morrigan. The Cimmerians held madmen apart from others, their ramblings fraught with the truths of a perilous world.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Death Dealer 3: Semi-enjoyable (?) train-wreck
Short, negative review: Tooth and Claw ranks among the worst books I’ve read in the last decade. The series keeps going downhill (and book 1 was not even that good).
Longer and slightly more positive review: Tooth and Claw is bad enough to cross over into WTF I can’t believe I just read that territory, and so stands out as more memorable trash than many of the boring Conan clones and generic S&S offerings I’ve read over the years.
But it’s still awful. And awful crazy.
How crazy?
Well there’s this bit:
He was the size of a tree. He was indomitable. He was immaculate. He urinated white wine, his feces were soft gold, and he ejaculated lightning.
Would I be surprised to learn the author typed the manuscript while snorting coke off a hooker’s ass? No, not really.
I’m not making any accusations here, I don’t know Silke personally, but Death Dealer 3 was published in 1989 and possessed of a crazy, whacked out Wolf of Wall Street vibe I recognize. There’s so much nonsensical, bonkers stuff in here, told wildly and with intense energy and conviction, but with sloppy execution and abysmal, eye-gouging turns of phrase.
This is basically man romance. Romance for a certain kind of man, who like their women stunningly hot, offer them few words before and after the deed but possess the skill to play them like a medieval instrument:
Tonight he would tie her down in his hide-up and play upon her like a lyre, arouse her untamed passions until she could not resist him.
Or this bit of late-night Cinemax magic:
Gath stepped out of the concealing shadow for a clearer look. His eyes moved down the deep shadowed curve of her back to the cleft in her hard buttocks, then back up again, painting her pale flesh with his dark hot glance…. A stimulating animal pleasure rose into his groin. Heat played across his cheeks.
The plot of Death Dealer 3 hinges on the flimsiest of hooks—a disreputable bounty hunter named Gazul (with the incredibly stupid nickname “Big Hands”) wants to capture the cat-queen, Noon. Gazul offers Gath the chance to fight Noon’s guardian, the giant saber-toothed tiger Chyak, because it’s more challenge-worthy than any other fight anyone else could ever have. Which appeals to Gath, who otherwise is wandering around without purpose.
That’s the entire setup for the remainder of the book.
This wouldn’t stand up as a plot for the weakest episode of Thundarr, yet here we are. Gath accepts the offer and we’re off, fighting lyncanthropic beast-men, lions, crocodiles and all manner of beasts of the jungle before the final confrontation with Chyak and Gazul.
The Death Dealer books stand at the far end of the barbarian archetype/stereotype, not the apex but the nadir of this type of fiction. How do you distinguish yet another barbarian from the countless others that have gone before? Make yours bigger, stronger, more barbaric. Gath is a brute force of wild nature, so deep into barbarism that at one point he strips naked, eats raw animal flesh and fails to recognize familiar faces, even losing his ability to speak (he’s channeling his animal “kaa,” you see). You can’t get more raving barbarian than this dude. He’s not a character, but a caricature.
Silke attempts something of an origin story for Gath in this volume but it comes across as uninspired Tarzan pastiche. He also attempts to bring some level of introspection to the story with a muted/equivocal ending, some regret and “who is the real monster” angle to the proceedings. I won’t spoil it here, in case you want to seek this out. I read Tooth and Claw through to the end, groaning the whole way except when I was laughing. There is some entertainment value here; I’d probably watch a movie made out of this mess. The problem is, what works in a low-budget beer-swilling 90 minute film is not optimal for a 342 page book treatment. It sags, and there are all sorts of problems with the pacing, authorial emphasis, and cringe-worthy dialogue. Like this:
“Think of it this way, sweethips,” Gazul said callously. “Fear is a marvelous cosmetic. It puts real color in your cheeks.”
And this:
“Barbarian, I understand why you are upset. In my drunken rage at you for running off, I used Fleka wrongly. She is yours, and I should not have used her as a lure without your permission. But now that your fist has rewarded me for that mistake, we are even.”
Silke loves writing wildly indulgent and floridly descriptive paragraphs punctuated by two words. Like this:
Gnarled hands gripped the bars, appendages of the lurking darkness bent within, a wounded, scabbed darkness with hard gray eyes. Hot. Relentless.
And this:
Lowering to hands and knees, she crawled closer to the cage, and hesitated abruptly. The bars were the colors of flowers, a dazzle of pinks and reds and scarlets. Enchanting. Compelling.
In and amongst the cringe there is entertainment value to be had, including a 12-page fight between Gath and Chyak.
Death Dealer goes to 11... 12 for sabertooth tiger fights |
Is this bad trash or glorious trash? Your mileage will vary, hard. Personally I need never read this series again. But Death Dealer is an interesting historical artifact and probably worth it if you’re after the terrific Frank Frazetta cover art, or a fearless S&S diehard junky who can’t get enough of the subgenre—good, bad, and ugly.
And there’s still more to come with Death Dealer 4. The story continues…whenever I get around to it.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Organizing my bookshelves: How I do it (YMMV—no hate)
Tor Conan, ERB, CAS, Moorcock... and more. |
Ahh, love that Nasmith-illustrated Silmarillion. |
Part of my S&S bookcase... lots of REH, KEW, Anderson. |
The horror! Is that a figurine in there? |
More books... |
Friday, January 12, 2024
Going Viking at DMR Books
No, not looting and plundering Dave Ritzlin's book hoard, but do have a new post up on his blog: A Deep Cut of Adventure: The Saga of Swain the Viking, Vol. 1: Swain’s Vengeance.
This was a fun read with a lot of viking goodness and other badassery. While writing the review I took a worthwhile detour into the history of Adventure, the magazine in which the Swain stories first appeared back in the 1920s. Some interesting history to that long-running pulp. I recommend checking out the article linked at the bottom.
Skål!
Friday, January 5, 2024
The Truth of the Matter of Britain
Saturday, December 23, 2023
The Silver Key: 2023 in review
Monday, October 9, 2023
October reading update
Friday, August 25, 2023
Watership Down and the importance of stories
Stories convey Truth. Lacking a shared set of stories we can believe in, life is cacophonous noise.
Some stories are hard to hear, or don’t end well. But the same can be said for some aspects of life. I am drawn time and again to stories of heroism, of hard struggle in dark places against long odds.
I think these are the best stories, and the ones that matter most.
This is one reason why I keep coming back to Watership Down. I recently completed either a third or fourth re-reading of this 1972 classic by Richard Adams. As with all the great books I’ve read, I learned something new, again, in its familiar pages.
Great books meet you where you are in life. This time Watership Down met me in a new place, at age 50, with my children now full grown and headed off to college in the fall, leaving my wife and I empty-nesters for the first time. My girls are on their way to building lives, and their story has a lot to unfold. My life is still building, but I’ve shifted, subtly, from chasing a career and building a family, to passing on the wisdom I’ve accumulated. To telling them about my story, in the hopes I can convey a little wisdom and improve their chances of making better choices and building better lives.
So yes, this re-reading of Watership Down taught me about the power of stories.
The Rabbits tell each other stories of El-ahrairah, a great hero out of legend. He is the ideal, but because he is a rabbit, not a man, he is the ultimate rabbit ideal. A master thief, because rabbits steal from gardens. A prey item for a thousand hunters, because rabbits are relatively weak. But these deficiencies are offset with his great gifts of cunning, and great speed, driven by the power of his back legs.
El-ahrariah is a hero. Not without flaw; he sometimes makes poor choices, and suffers the consequences. He often falls victim to his own pride, and overconfidence. But he never gives up, and against every fiber of his being confronts the Black Rabbit of Inle’, and offers up his own life to secure the safety of his people. It’s a lesson in sacrifice for the next generation, which in the end is what being a good parent is all about.
The Rabbits tell the stories of El-ahrairah again and again, because they give their brief and often terrifying lives meaning. And something to hope for. His stories inspire Hazel, the hero of Watership Down (one among many), to lead his warren on a long journey through many dangers to safety, beyond the reach of the careless destroyer man.
Eventually El-ahrairah passes on, just as Hazel and Bigwig pass away. But their stories remain, and inspire, if we continue to pass them on.
Even if El-ahrairah is just a myth, his is a story worth believing in.
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
Lord of a Shattered Land: A review
And kick some ass along the way.
This is the premise of Howard Andrew Jones’ new sword-and-sorcery novel Lord of a Shattered Land (2023, Baen Books). A novel which is almost a short story collection. In it we follow Hanuvar on a sprawling series of episodic adventures that can be read and enjoyed as standalone tales (several were published as short stories appearing in Tales from the Magician’s Skull and elsewhere), or as a cohesive novel, the disparate adventures following sequentially in service of an overarching plot.
As with any collection I enjoyed some entries better than others. There are 3-4 terrific “stories” in here that easily stand among the best of the recent explosion of S&S fiction. My favorites included “The Warrior’s Way,” “The Second Death of Hanuvar,” “The Crypt of Stars,” and “An Accident of Blood.”
Lord of a Shattered Land serves as a promising template for how sword-and-sorcery can work in a longer form. Although its sweet spot is the short story and novella, S&S can and has proven adaptable to longer treatments—see the likes of Fritz Leiber’s The Swords of Lankhmar, or Karl Edward Wagner’s Bloodstone. Can it be done in a form familiar to fans of epic fantasy—3 or 5 thick volumes? We’ll see. But Lord of a Shattered Land is a promising start.
Jones wears some obvious influences on his sleeve. The setting is sword and sandal, as Hanuvar was inspired by the historical general Hannibal and the cultural and technological milieu shares many similarities with ancient Rome. The style evokes Harold Lamb: Briskly paced storytelling, and emphasis on plot over character. The final chapter is an interesting/ambitious look into Hanuvar’s mind, as told through a fever-dream sequence.
Other influences may be less apparent. Hanuvar’s wistful remembrances of Volanus and its fallen cities of white towers reminded me of Tolkien and the lost cities of the First Age of Middle-Earth.
Hanuvar is a truly heroic hero, and in this sense strays outside some of the stricter sword and sorcery definitions. He's a patriot, quite willing to sacrifice his own life to rescue the lives of his people. Jones has billed Hanuvar as some combination of Captain America and James Bond. I find him much more Bond; extremely competent but quite ruthless, a thinking man's fighter, aging but still deadly in hand-to-hand combat and very willing to take lives. Not a “hero” in the mold of an unhinged Mad Max, but very much in control, not after bloodthirsty vengeance but liberation. Not fueled by wine, women, and coin, but the hope he may one day find his daughter alive.
Does this somehow exclude Lord of a Shattered Land from the ranks of sword-and-sorcery? Of course not, unless you’re a pedant. Merely because many historical S&S protagonists were mercenary or self-serving does not mean all were, or that current authors should feel obligated to cleave to someone else’s definition of S&S. Embrace your influences and work unburdened by the past, as Jones does here.
Back to the review.
Some will find Lord of a Shattered Land not to their tastes, depending on the flavor of S&S they enjoy reading. For example, it lacks the primal barbaric spirit of Conan, or the otherworldly weirdness of CAS’ slice of S&S. Hanuvar is very much a civilized man and the world of Lord of a Shattered Land feels civilized, albeit with weird incursions and some cool monsters. But always the baseline is familiar, inspired as it is by history. So if you’re after the red-handed barbarism of Conan or Kull, or the weirdness of "The Isle of the Torturers" or the dreamlike underworld of C.L. Moore’s "Black God’s Kiss," you won’t get these here, precisely.
And in that regard Lord of a Shattered Land did not check all my S&S boxes. Some of the stories don’t match the heightened urgency of others, leading to some unevenness, as you’d expect in any collection.
But I nevertheless greatly enjoyed it, overall. And what you do get is a well-realized, quasi historical world that feels real, and lived in. Lord of a Shattered Land is very well written, moving in places, even elevated. I have not read widely of HAJ, though I have read some, including The Desert of Souls, and in this volume it feels like he’s come into his own as a writer. I was impressed by Jones’ authorial range. One chapter is outright humor, brushing up to slapstick (“The Autumn Horse”), while others are dark and violent. Still others are contemplative, and sad.
This is a journey we’re on, after all, and the figure we’re following has seen a lot, and lost much. But remains unbroken.
Minor spoiler: Lord of a Shattered Land offers no resolution; Jones has already announced the series will to run to (five!) books, so we can’t and shouldn’t expect Hanuvar to find his people and set them free in his volume. At the end the land is still very much shattered, and the people of Volanus still scattered. It will be interesting to see if Jones can pull off something this ambitious. But he’s well on his way with his most ambitious and successful work to date.
If you’re a fan of sword-and-sorcery, pick this up. For the sake of supporting the subgenre, but also for supporting tales well-told.
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Assessing the sword-and-sorcery "glut"
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
Talking sword-and-sorcery on YouTube and my current reading
Prior to my vacation to the Outer Banks I was invited to speak with Jan, a cool dude from the UK with a YouTube channel that covers pulp fiction and other related topics. We had a lengthy recorded session about sword-and-sorcery (of course!) on which he did a lot of cool post-editing, including adding tons of interesting visuals and cool transitions. It makes for nice viewing rather than staring at my unattractive face.
We cover what sword-and-sorcery is, its defining characteristics, the Lovecraft-Howard exchange of letters in A Means to Freedom, and the need for re-enchantment. Stuff you probably already know about if you’re a fan of S&S or have read Flame and Crimson, but otherwise might find interesting.
The final video is here. Enjoy!
***
Despite the above video I’m on an S&S break at the moment. I enjoy reading outside of the subgenre and needed a palate cleanser, so recently read The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris, love the film but had never read the novel until now), Gov’t Cheese (non-fiction/memoir by Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art) and am midway through a re-read of Watership Down. The first two were wonderful reads, and as for the third I’m reminded why it’s an acknowledged classic. It probably would fall in my top 10 books of all-time, should such a list exist.
Friday, June 16, 2023
Neither Beg Nor Yield, and other S&S developments
You can read part one here and part two here, which cover his literary inspirations, early writing career and breaking into Fantastic Stories, then Swords Against Darkness, and eventually landing a book deal at Ace. And much more.
Keith is not only still writing, but is due to appear in a new anthology I’m excited about—Rogue Blade Entertainment’s Neither Beg Nor Yield.
The past couple months have seen the announcement and/or publication of several new S&S anthologies. I recently purchased DMR Books’ Die by the Sword, which is getting some good press and has made it to the top of my TBR. The dudes over at Rogues in the House published a Book of Blades which I bought and enjoyed, and are planning a Book of Blades vol. 2. And I recently backed Swords in the Shadows, which leans hard into S&S’s horror roots. This last one should be shipping soon.
I’m awash in contemporary S&S but there’s always room for more.
Neither Beg Nor Yield is going all-in on attitude. With Judas Priest’s Hard as Iron on the landing page and the explicit inspiration for the anthology’s title you kind of know what you’re in for.
Can we pause for a minute and remind ourselves that Conan kicks ass, and that’s why we love him? That he never begs nor asks for quarter, and doesn’t stop until he claims the crown? There is a spirit to (some/most) S&S that speaks to the unconquerable spirit in us.
Editor Jason Waltz is seeking to capture that attitude with his latest and evidently last anthology, his publishing swan song. He previously published the anthologies Return of the Sword (2008), an important early title in the S&S revival, Rage of the Behemoth (2019), and others. Waltz later under the non-profit imprint Rogue Blades Foundation published the likes of REH Changed My Life and most recently Hither Came Conan (in which I have an essay).
That’s a solid 15 year run but it ends with Neither Beg Nor Yield.
Jason tells me that he drew inspiration for the title while writing the foreword to Lyn Perry's recent Swords & Heroes, in which he cuts through all of the various bandying definitions of S&S (including my own) and boils it down to the powerful heroic spirit, the “indomitable will to survive.”
Awesome.
There will be a total of 17 stories in the collection, and possibly an 18th if a stretch goal is reached. We know at least one is from Keith Taylor, we’ll see who else lands a credit.
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Blog slowdown/cryptic book announcement/life news
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
My Howard Days 2023 haul
Somewhere under here is a bar... |
Many amusing escapades and scrapes unfolded during Howard Days 2023, not the least of which was my complete and utter lack of restraint around anything vaguely book shaped. I was like a Grateful Dead fan in a pot shop or a PETA member in a rescue shelter, unhinged and helpless, grasping and wanting everything at once.
Someone should have taken my wallet from me.
I came home with 20 “books.” In my defense 9 of these were free, 11 were purchases. But the count is actually higher.
Two of those “books” were bundles of Fantastic magazine won in the silent auction, basically the entire run of issues published in 1961 and 1962. So that is technically an additional 23 digest sized "books" (May 1963 is missing). I also purchased a calendar. So technically I came home with 41 separate items, loosely classified as books.
And a Robert E. Howard Museum t-shirt. With Conan on it, of course. Not pictured.
I think I need help.
Worse, I packed lightly with just a carry-on suitcase and a separate carry-on leather bag. The latter is something resembling a leather briefcase, with some extra pouches on the side. I was warned to bring an oversized suitcase for the spoils and promptly ignored those warnings.
Come Sunday I found myself in deep shit. After carefully packing up all my books first (of course! they're the most important items) I was nearly full and hadn’t touched my clothes yet. That left me shoving items for which no room remained into every conceivable pocket. I wound up stuffing dirty underwear into my computer bag to make room.
Not proud of this, just stating the facts.
Anyway, somehow I made it home with a 60 pound carry on that was a beast to lug, even with wheels, and threatened to burst its zippers. I'm a pretty strong dude but I felt like Vasily Alexseyev on a max clean and jerk getting that thing into the overhead bin.
Following is a complete list of my gross take:
- The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, vol. 1
- The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, vol. 3
- Thick as Thieves, Ken Lizzi
- Cross Plains Pilgrimage, Bobby Derie
- The Robert E. Howard Trivia Book, Bobby Derie
- Hither Came Conan, Jason Waltz (editor)
- Scott Oden Presents The Lost Empire of Sol, Rogue Blades Foundation
- Death Dealer 3, Tooth and Claw, James Silke
- Chacal #2
- The Dark Man Journal vol. 13.1
- Stan Lee Presents Conan the Barbarian #1 (paperback collection of first 3 comics)
- The Filming of Conan, Cinefantastique Special Double Issue
- Skelos #4
- REHUPA Oct. 2012 (no. 237)
- From the Heart of Darkness, David Drake
- 2018 Investigations of the Robert E. Howard House Cellar, Jeff Shanks et. al
- Kagen the Damned, Jonathan Maberry
- Ken Kelly’s Robert E. Howard Heroic Fantasy Calendar, 1979
- Fantastic 1961 bundle
- Fantastic 1962 bundle
Good thing my wife doesn’t read the blog.
Sunday, April 2, 2023
The Goshawk, T.H. White
Enraptured by a raptor... |
And found it to be a wonderful little book.
In the summer of 1936 White holed himself up in an old workman’s cottage in the woods, miles from civilization, with only a pet dog, a wireless radio, and some booze for company. And set to work training a goshawk (a male hawk) based on the methods of three archaic books on the subject, including one volume originally printed in 1619. These books explained that a hawk could not be forced to submit to training and the will of the falconer, you had to win its love through patience and persistence and closeness. Part of this process of acclimation included staying up for three straight days/nights (!) with the bird, so that it would perch on its master out of sheer exhaustion. Man and bird becoming one. Something akin to love.
White actually did this, and it’s all described wonderfully in The Goshawk, as only White can. His descriptions of the bird and its unpredictable moods and odd quirks are lovely. It's a snapshot into a world that feels almost alien, so far removed from 21st century life.
I knew essentially nothing of falconry and left with an understanding of how it might have been practiced by medieval falconers. Which is about as practical as learning how to master hoop rolling or leaded window installation.
What’s the point, and why read something like this? Fair question.
To which I would answer: Because there are difficult crafts worth pursuing for their own sake. That we might pour two months or more of training to tame a wild raptor to see if it can be done, and to have had that experience and sense of accomplishment. And might learn something about nature, human and animal, if we carefully observe the process.
The Goshawk is mainly focused on the training of the bird but does have a few wonderful asides and commentary. Little observations like this, of the end of the old ways of falconry:
It happened like this in the world. Old things lost their grip and dropped away; not always because they were bad things, but sometimes because the new things were more bad, and stronger.
Or this, on writing and more broadly on any craft practiced well, which touched something in me. It’s something I love about writing, that if done well can achieve a sort of small and unassuming immortality:
To write something which was of enduring beauty, this was the ambition of every writer: as it was the ambition of the joiner and architect and the constructor of any kind. It was not the beauty but the endurance, for endurance was beautiful. It was also all that we could do. It was a consolation, even a high and positive joy, to make something true: some table, which, sat on, would not splinter or shatter. It was not for the constructor that the beauty was made, but for the thing itself. He would triumph to know that some contribution had been made: some sort of consoling contribution quite timeless and without relation to his own profit. Sometimes we knew, half tipsy or listening to music, that at the heart of some world there lay a chord to which vibrating gave reality. With its reality there was music and truth and the permanence of good workmanship. To give birth to this, with whatever male travail, was not only all that man could do: it was also all that eclipsed humanity of either sex could do: it was the human contribution to the universe. Absolutely bludgeoned by jazz and mechanical achievement, the artist yearned to discover permanence, some life of happy permanence which he by fixing could create to the satisfaction of after-people who also looked. This was it, as the poets realized, to be a mother of immortal song: To say Yes when it was, and No when it was: to make enduringly true that perhaps quite small occasional table off which subsequent generations could eat, without breaking it down: to help the timeless benevolence which should be that of this lonely and little race: to join the affection which had lasted between William the Conqueror and George VI. Wheelwrights, smiths, farmers, carpenters, and mothers of large families knew this.
Observations like these are what make White worth reading.
Is this book The Once and Future King? No, it’s not. The Goshawk is far less awesome in breath and scope, and not as artful. But I can’t really describe it as lesser. Just less ambitious. It’s a little slice of White’s life, utterly charming, a bit of sanity disconnected from the modern world, in between two savage world wars.
Monday, March 27, 2023
Contemporary sword-and-sorcery: 2023 reading updates
A "striking" cover (<=see what I did there?) |
- Blood of the Serpent, S.M. Stirling
- Sometime Lofty Towers, David C. Smith
- New Edge #0
- A Book of Blades
Saturday, February 11, 2023
Sometime Lofty Towers, David C. Smith
There is a metaphor in this tower, for sure. |
For reasons I can’t get into here, lest I derail this review, it suddenly seemed no one wanted to read this unique blend of swashbuckling action, horror, and fell magic. By the early/mid 80s it was over for S&S, at least commercially.
For a time it seemed Smith’s writing career was over as well. After spending some years away from writing altogether and later branching out to write realistic novels and epic fantasy, Smith recently returned to sword-and-sorcery under Pulp Hero Press with Tales of Attumla (2020).
Sometime Lofty Towers (2021) is his latest. It’s an ambitious novel that is recognizably sword-and-sorcery, but also contemplative, dark, mature, with an emphasis on exploration of character over typical fast-paced S&S plotting.
And in my opinion, is wonderful.
I have read some of Smith’s early material, including a few of his Oron stories and a smattering of Red Sonja, and the odd short story elsewhere. I’m hardly an authority on his body of work. But Sometime Lofty Towers is easily the best I’ve read from him.
Hamlin is a veteran of many battles and bears many scars, internal and external. The short novel (194 pages with afterward material) explores his struggles to overcome a great betrayal in his past, an ambush and the death of his comrades in a literal river of blood. The plot is essentially secondary to Hamlin’s story, but concerns the designs of the wealthy and avaricious Lady Sil who sets her sights on the native lands of the Kirangee. Sil hires a troupe of mercenaries to force out the natives at swordpoint, including Hamlin’s longtime friend-in-arms Thorem. Hamlin joins forces with the natives and so the conflict unfolds.
The book critiques colonialism and unbridled capitalism while plumbing matters of the human heart—the cancer of vengeance and vendetta, and the difficulty of letting go of painful past memories and finding peace in an unjust, cruel world.
Smith does a nice job building the culture of the Kirangee, which feels Native American but also a-historical, perhaps owing something to Robert E. Howard’s Picts. The method by which he does this reminded me of Charles Saunders’ Ilyassi from his Imaro series, complete with italicized native words that are unfamiliar but offered up in a way as to be understandable. No infodumps, Smith handles this all skillfully while telling a compelling story.
Sometime Lofty Towers contains some incredibly strong/queasy scenes of violence and brutality, including graphic depictions of torture. It reads angry, and in a helpful afterward we learn why: The story was born out of Smith’s bitterness and grief over the death of his father, who was exposed to asbestos for decades (even after the dangers of the substance were well known) and suffered for 17 years with declining health, hospitalizations, and treatment before his death in 1997.
The style of the writing is sparse and strong, which makes the reading easy. There is perhaps some sag in the middle of the novel. Looking back I think it’s when Smith moves away from Hamlin’s story and relays the unfolding external plot, which is interesting but not as compelling as Hamlin’s internal saga. When Smith returns to Hamlin for the third and final act it reaches a satisfying conclusion. There is a definite feel of Clint Eastwood’s William Munny here; Hamlin is not as rusty as the aged gunfighter we meet in Unforgiven, still every bit as vital and dangerous at 40 as he was in his youth. But he’s the equivalent of an aging, scarred gunfighter who wants to be rid of the ghosts of his past, and his memories to fall quiet. And when roused to violence is terrifying, because killing is second nature.
Overall this is the work of a mature author who has lived much and experienced life with all its griefs and disappointments and loss. When I read something like this I can’t help but wonder about REH, and whether had he managed the storms of his own clinical depression might have produced something similar in his latter years. Imagine Conan looking back on his adventures—the loss of Bêlit and Balthus, the betrayals of Amalrus and Strabonius--returning to Cimmeria to perhaps find some measure of peace, perhaps with Zenobia in his arms.
Smith has demonstrated the heights to which sword-and-sorcery can aspire with Sometime Lofty Towers, which to me is a welcome return from someone who experienced personal loss and professional disappointment but emerged from these trials to offer us a rich, thoughtful story.