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[Novels] Sell me on sword and sorcery books
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<blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 3877779" data-attributes="member: 1713"><p>What Teflon Billy wrote. Sword&Sorcery stories are an offshoot of adventure pulps, and they should be appreciated in that context. They do not have the soul-searching and long personality-building of Dostoyevskiy or, say, the personality dissection of Camus, but that's on purpose. They were the action movies of the age when movies were still in their infancy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>However, if you didn't get into Howard or Leiber, there are still writings you may appreciate. I second Wik's recommendation of Clark Ashton Smith, and would also add Lovecraft's <strong>Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath</strong>, a masterwork of surreal fantasy with its dreamscapes, exotic locales and uncaring, distant gods.</p><p></p><p>If you do not mind branching into more "mundane" genres, the historical fiction of Harold Lamb, particularly his Cossack tales, are highly recommended. Lamb pretty much defines "twisty plot", and he was an influence on Robert E. Howard - although virtually unknown today, he is very much his equal. A four-volume collection of these tales was published this spring; start with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Steppes-Complete-Cossack-Adventures/dp/0803280483/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9477631-0272963?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194507106&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Wolf of the Steppes</a> and buy the others if you like it.</p><p></p><p>On the same front, Talbot Mundy's Oriental and historical novels mix the plotting of pulps with more complex characters and a keen insight into human nature. In the first category, <strong>King -- of the Khyber Rifles</strong> is the one to read; in the second, I recommend the epic <strong>Tros of Samothrace</strong>, an immense historical novel set during Caesar's Gallic wars.</p><p></p><p>Neither of the two authors I just mentioned wrote "real" S&S, but they are close enough.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Melan, post: 3877779, member: 1713"] What Teflon Billy wrote. Sword&Sorcery stories are an offshoot of adventure pulps, and they should be appreciated in that context. They do not have the soul-searching and long personality-building of Dostoyevskiy or, say, the personality dissection of Camus, but that's on purpose. They were the action movies of the age when movies were still in their infancy. :) However, if you didn't get into Howard or Leiber, there are still writings you may appreciate. I second Wik's recommendation of Clark Ashton Smith, and would also add Lovecraft's [b]Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath[/b], a masterwork of surreal fantasy with its dreamscapes, exotic locales and uncaring, distant gods. If you do not mind branching into more "mundane" genres, the historical fiction of Harold Lamb, particularly his Cossack tales, are highly recommended. Lamb pretty much defines "twisty plot", and he was an influence on Robert E. Howard - although virtually unknown today, he is very much his equal. A four-volume collection of these tales was published this spring; start with [url=http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Steppes-Complete-Cossack-Adventures/dp/0803280483/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9477631-0272963?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194507106&sr=8-1]Wolf of the Steppes[/url] and buy the others if you like it. On the same front, Talbot Mundy's Oriental and historical novels mix the plotting of pulps with more complex characters and a keen insight into human nature. In the first category, [b]King -- of the Khyber Rifles[/b] is the one to read; in the second, I recommend the epic [b]Tros of Samothrace[/b], an immense historical novel set during Caesar's Gallic wars. Neither of the two authors I just mentioned wrote "real" S&S, but they are close enough. [/QUOTE]
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