STEVE CARROLL WRITES

One of Robert E. Howard’s finest short stories is  Worms of the Earth , first published in 1932, a pitch-black, horror-tinged piece of sword and sorcery pulp that features a very different protagonist from his famed Cimmerian, Conan. The tale revolves around the diminutive but powerful Pict King, Bran Mak Morn, and details his willingness to dabble with dark supernatural forces in summoning a race of degenerate subhuman underground creatures to achieve revenge against a Roman governor for the crucifixion of one of his comrades.  The task that stalwart dark fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner takes on in  Legion from the Shadows  is to give readers a direct novel-length sequel to Howard’s story, once again focusing on Bran Mak Morn and his ongoing war against Rome in ancient Britain. Wagner’s scope is impressive as he casts his net large enough to incorporate the mystery of the legendary missing IX Le...

Michael Moorcock’s doomed anti-hero,   Elric, the albino sorcerer warrior, returns in this collection of four stories.   Even this is a slight description of our   protagonist, who is also known as  the last   emperor of Melniboné, ruler of the dreaming city, and keeper of the ruby throne—Moorcock   likes his varied   titles.  These interrelated tales kick off with the kidnapping   of Elric’s wife, Zarozinia, by inhuman servants to a dead god. This event forces   Elric to once   again take up his hated sentient sword, the vampiric   soul-stealing runeblade, Stormbringer, in pursuit of his wife. His quest takes   him into near-constant   conflict with dark powers and their agents on land, sea,   and across other dimensions. He is usually accompanied by his loyal human   companion,   Moonglum, who serves as a relatable touchpoint for readers since   Elric himself remains somewhat distant and cold....

When I learned that Ben Haas, creator of two of my favorite action-oriented   western series of all time, Sundance and Fargo , had written a 2-book sword   and sorcery series under the name of Richard Meade, it became something of a holy grail quest for me. I was successful in tracking down the first book in what is called the Grey Lands   saga,  The Sword of Morning Star .  Haas   places his tale in a far future version of Europe that has been reshaped by the   “Worldfire,” a cataclysmic event that is most likely referencing nuclear war (it   is never fully explained). Mankind has degenerated into feudalism, complete   with kings, horseback-mounted   soldiers, and wolf-people—yes, mutant half   wolf/half people beings who ride horses and fight with swords and claws. Most   of the action takes place in   what would be Germany and the names of characters   and places reflect this.  Our protagonist is Helmut, the ...

Andrew J. Offut was a prolific writer in many genres, including   science fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, and even erotica. In fact, he   authored some   420+ published works of erotica under a variety of different   pen-names. But his real passion as a writer under his own name was in creating   fantasy   tales and writing books for the sword and sorcery brands originally   created by Robert E. Howard, with 3 Conan books, and a total of 6 books   featuring the   Gaelic Viking, Cormac mac Art.  Cormac is a contemporary to King   Arthur, though the British king never makes an appearance.  The Sign of the   Moonbow  is a direct sequel to  The Undying Wizard  and picks up immediately after that novel’s   resolution with Cormac and his crew having imprisoned   the powerful wizard,   Thulsa Doom, whom they keep impaled by swords to their ship’s mast to impede   his shape-shifting abilitie...

If an author were to set out with the intention of creating the anti-Conan, one couldn’t do a much better job of it than Michael Moorcock did in penning these first tales of Elric, albino ruler of the ancient island empire of Melniboné in the distant past of an alternate Earth. Physically weak and requiring the use of drugs, herbs, and sorcery to maintain his strength, Elric is a tragic figure made even more so by his symbiotic relationship to the sword, Stormbringer, a supernatural living weapon that feeds on the souls of those whom it kills. The sword is hated by Elric as it can cause him do things against his will, such as killing his beloved cousin out of drunken bloodlust in the early pages of the first of five stories contained in this volume. Melnibonéans are elf-like beings that are not fully human and have a long history rich in sorcery and divination with allegiances and pacts with many dark b...

Red Sonja began life as a comic book, the creation of writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith in 1973 for Marvel’s popular  Conan series. She was partially based on a character created by Conan author Robert E. Howard,  Red Sonya of Rogatino . However, it was the Marvel Comics version that captured the imagination of young boys in the 70s with her voluptuous curves wrapped in a chain mail bikini, her sword fighting skills, and her take-no-prisoners kick-ass attitude. She finally made the leap to novels in 1981 through the combined efforts of established fantasy authors David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney.  The first book in a 6-book series,  The Ring of Ikribu , even had its prologue written by Roy Thomas, giving it his personal blessing as a proper extension of his character. What follows is a reasonably straightforward sword and sorcery adventure tale with the twist that its sword-wiel...

I   have been aware of the tales of Fritz Leiber’s towering barbarian Fafhrd and   his diminutive companion, the thief known as The Gray Mouser, since my   earliest   flirtations with the Sword and Sorcery genre going back into my mid-teens. For   whatever reason though, I never read them back then, opting   instead for Robert   E. Howard’s Conan stories and their many (and typically inferior) pastiche   imitators. In retrospect, I am glad that is the case, as I never   would have   appreciated these stories as a teenager as much as I do now as a seasoned adult   reader.  My first foray into the tales of Lankhmar—the   mythical land where the   stories transpire—comes courtesy of the fourth collection of adventures,  Swords Against Wizardry . These three   stories and one   novella all feature a world-weary, lived-in quality that makes   Lankhmar seem quite tangible. Supernatural elements and magic...

Prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and numerous short stories (mostly within the science fiction genre), both under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. He may be best known for the  Dray Prescott  series of sword and planet books published as Alan Burt Akers. I didn’t know when I started this book that it is actually the second in a three-book series detailing the adventures of Odan, a Conan-like demigod in a revisionist version of Bronze-age Mesopotamia.  The mid-70s saw huge interest in the concept of extraterrestrial alien visitation in ancient history that directly influenced human culture. This theory was popularized by books, of which the first and most famous was Erich von Daniken’s  Chariots of the Gods . Clearly this inspired Bulmer as he embraces this concept as the source of the origin of the gods who visit earth in Whetted Bronze . And to be honest, it wa...

Gardner F. Fox was a highly prolific writer who worked in multiple genres and formats, from short stories, to novels, to comic books. In fact, it is estimated that he wrote over 4,000 comics stories, 1,500 for DC Comics alone. So, it was with some excitement that I waded into the first of four books in a series of sword and sorcery novels featuring the mighty Kyrik, a barbarian swordsman in the mold of Conan, but with blond hair (or tawny as we’re often reminded) and green eyes.  What I unfortunately discovered was a poorly constructed pastiche of Conan that lacked depth, characterization, or compelling plot. From the moment when Kyrik is released from a thousand years of bondage, having been imprisoned in a small statue of himself, all he seems to care about is drinking, fighting, and bedding down with every woman he sees. Furthermore, he’s just not that smart. We are reminded at every turn that everything ...

Long before the term Grimdark became a specific sub-genre of sword and sorcery, there was Karl Edward Wagner and his novels and short stories featuring his anti-hero, Kane, a hulking, amoral, mystic swordsman. Cursed with immortality, the red-haired and bearded brute is a wholly unique blend of Conan, Elric, and Barry Sadler’s Casca as filtered through H.P. Lovecraft. His immortality has enabled Kane to gain knowledge beyond most mortals which he puts to use in areas of warfare and arcane sorceries.  At their core, the Kane books and stories belie the fact that Wagner was  fundamentally a writer of horror stories. There is pitch black darkness and sense of foreboding nihilism that builds a palpable dread as the plot of Dark Crusade gets underway. It takes a while for things to get established as the reader is forced to wade through some needless history and politics involving the kingdom of Shapeli bef...

Brak the Barbarian   Versus the Mark of the Demons  (1969) by John Jakes While John Jakes would find enormous success in the late 70s with the wildly popular historical novels in his Kent Family Chronicles , even finding their way onto television screens in the form of more than one highly popular miniseries, he got his start as a journeyman pulp author tackling multiple genres including science fiction, westerns, mystery, and horror stories.  In the 60s, Jakes jumped onto the burgeoning explosion of interest in sword and sorcery that occurred following the reprints of Robert E. Howard’s Conan collections in paperback. Jakes, a huge fan of Howard, leapt at the opportunity to wade into this resurgent genre with his own broadsword-wielding hero, Brak the barbarian.  As was the case with most of the post-Howard protagonists, Brak is a mighty wandering swordsman prone to attracting intrigue and vi...