Review: Swords of the Crags - Fred Blosser

After reading Fred Blosser’s sword and sorcery novella SWORDS OF PLUNDER recently, I was in the mood to dive back into more of his work. I picked his collection SWORDS OF THE CRAGS.

This volume collects six stories that might have been the sort of thing Robert E. Howard wrote for the Spicy pulps in the mid-Thirties. The title story, “Swords of the Crags”, is set in Peshawar, India, and in the Khyber Hills. The protagonist is Pike Braxton, an American adventurer and former gunfighter from Texas who functions as a sort of unofficial secret agent for the British. When a beautiful young American heiress gets caught up in the schemes of a sinister Russian agent, Pike has to rescue her and recover some vital information. Seems fairly straightforward, if dangerous, but then Pike and the beautiful blonde find themselves confronting an otherworldly menace. This fast-moving tale is like placing Howard’s El Borak in a SPICY ADVENTURE STORIES plot, with a dash of Lovecraft thrown in. It’s well-written, works very well, and races along to a satisfactory conclusion. I really enjoyed it. (And it puts me in mind of Howard’s comments in a letter to Lovecraft where he suggested that Lovecraft should try to crack the Spicy market. He could use a pseudonym, Howard says, and just write up a fictionalization of one of his own “sex adventures”. Just the thought of Lovecraft’s reaction when he read that suggestion always makes me chuckle.)

In “Alleys of Terror”, the scene shifts to Shanghai and the protagonist is Ridge Braxton, Pike’s younger brother who’s just as fast with his guns and fists. The beautiful Eurasian pirate and smuggler Olga Zukor is framed for murder. The victim held the key to a deadly conspiracy Ridge is investigating, so he and Olga have to team up to untangle the mess even though they dislike and distrust each other at first.

Ridge Braxton returns to his West Texas stomping grounds in “Witch of Snakebit Creek”, a creepy contemporary Western that reminds me a bit of Howard’s “Old Garfield’s Heart” and “For the Love of Barbara Allen” although it turns out to be a very different kind of story. This is actually more of a mystery yarn with a nice late twist.

“The Girl From Hell’s Half Acre” finds another two-fisted, fast-shooting Texan adventurer, Esau Reynolds (a very Howardian name) turning detective as he tries to find a wealthy man’s missing daughter, who’s a beautiful blonde, of course. The trail leads Reynolds to the waterfront area of an unnamed city, where he clashes with—and beds—the beautiful queenpin of the area’s criminal underworld. This story, reminiscent of some of Howard’s Steve Harrison yarns, moves like the proverbial wind and is very entertaining.

“Sin’s Sanctuary” is another El Borak-like tale, with a heaping helping of Talbot Mundy influence, as an American adventurer infiltrates a hidden monastery in Tibet in search of a missing Englishman. He’s helped by a beautiful woman, of course, and they encounter unexpected danger inside the walls of the monastery. This is a really well-written and exciting story.

“Scarlet Lust” is a direct sequel to SWORDS OF PLUNDER and finds Cronn, the northern barbarian, out to steal a fabulous gem which he hopes will help him win the throne of one of the countries in his world. He gets some help, of course, from a beautiful woman. These are Conan pastiches, in a way, there’s no denying that, and they’re also better than most of the official Conan pastiches that have been published in the past few years. Like John C. Hocking, Scott Oden, and Chuck Dixon, Blosser understands the character and the setting. I don’t know if there are more of these Cronn stories, but if there are, I definitely want to read them. And if there aren’t, well, maybe Blosser will write some.

Blosser rounds out this collection with five articles about Howard’s efforts to crack the Spicy and Weird Menace markets, the spicier Conan yarns, and the influence of Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy on Howard’s work. As always with Blosser’s work, these essays are informative, entertaining, and well worth a Howard fan’s time.

Overall, SWORDS OF THE CRAGS is an excellent volume and a lot of fun to read. While it’s true that the main influence on these stories is Robert E.Howard, I found them reminiscent of E. Hoffmann Price, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Talbot Mundy, as well. Also, in Blosser’s stories the spicy bits are considerably spicier than what authors could get away with in the Thirties. They’re not overly graphic, but those scenes don’t fade out as quickly as the ones in the pulps did. So while they’re definitely Howardian, don’t mistake these tales for pale imitations. They stand on their own, and they’re well worth reading. SWORDS OF THE CRAGS is available on Amazon in a paperback edition, and an e-book edition containing the first three stories and the first two articles is available as well.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, July 30, 1923

A.G. Peck, an artist I'm not familiar with, painted the evocative cover on this issue of ADVENTURE. As usual, the line-up of authors inside is very strong: Harold Lamb, J. Allan Dunn, Georges Surdez, Hugh Pendexter, J.D. Newsom, Karl W. Detzer, Bill Adams, and Raymond S. Spears. Arthur Sullivant Hoffman was still the editor at this point. ADVENTURE was a great pulp, issue after issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, August 3, 1920

An unusual but effective cover by Dwight Franklin graces this issue of ADVENTURE. It's a good-looking issue all the way around with stories by W.C. Tuttle (the second Hashknife Hartley yarn, "A Whizzer on Willer Creek"), Harold Lamb (a Khlit the Cossack story), Hugh Pendexter, and Charles Beadle, among other writers lesser known these days. It's easy to see why ADVENTURE was regarded as one of the best pulps.

Forgotten Books: The Grand Cham - Harold Lamb

Several regular readers of this blog have been discussing Harold Lamb and his work, which prompted me to read something else by him. In the past I've read the novels DURANDEL and MARCHING SANDS and a few short stories, but it's been a while since I read anything else by Lamb. I started with one of his short novels, THE GRAND CHAM, which first appeared complete in the July 1, 1921 issue of the iconic pulp ADVENTURE.

This one opens in the year 1394, with Irish-French mariner Michael Bearn a prisoner of the Moslem potentate Bayezid, also known as the Thunderbolt, who is well on his way to conquering all of central Asia and parts of Europe. Although crippled by torture carried out at Bayezid's orders, Michael escapes and winds up back in Venice, where he joins a trade expedition to the fabled city of Cathay, which is ruled by a monarch known as the Grand Cham, or Khan. One of Michael's enemies is also part of the expedition, so treachery and danger ensue, and eventually they all wind up as prisoners of the Mongol warlord Tamerlane, who is actually the Grand Cham. There is no city of Cathay, only the great tent settlement of Tamerlane's horde. And as it turns out, an epic battle is shaping up between Tamerlane's forces and those of Bayezid, the man Michael Bearn seeks to destroy to avenge what was done to him.

If THE GRAND CHAM was a Fifties movie, it would be three hours long, have a cast of tens of thousands, and be directed by Cecil B. DeMille, that's how epic it is. As a novel, though, Lamb manages to pack a lot of story into a relatively short length. The characters are excellent. Michael Bearn is a dogged and stalwart protagonist, if a bit colorless. His sidekick, a former jester named Bembo, though, is great. Brave, funny, a little tragic, he really does a lot to liven up the story. The villains are properly despicable, and Lamb makes the historical character Tamerlane come alive.

I'll admit that I find Lamb's style a little dry at times, but there are still some fine scenes that make THE GRAND CHAM a good adventure yarn in the classic style. I definitely enjoyed it enough to read more by him, and next up is probably the short novel THE MAKING OF THE MORNING STAR, which is generally regarded as one of his best.

Forgotten Books: Marching Sands - Harold Lamb

I haven't read a lot of Harold Lamb's work. The novel DURANDEL and a few short stories, that's all I remember. But I've just read his early novel MARCHING SANDS, which was serialized in the pulp ARGOSY in October and November 1919, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

I'm a sucker for lost race and lost city stories, and MARCHING SANDS is both. Former army captain Robert Gray is hired by an American scientific society to lead an expedition into the wilds of the Gobi Desert, in the hope of finding a mysterious lost race called the Wusun, who supposedly live in a city known as Sungan, which may or may not have been swallowed up by the shifting sands of the desert. A British expedition is searching for Sungan and the Wusun at the same time, and the Americans want Gray to get there first, even though there's really nothing at stake but prestige.

The Chinese authorities have their own reasons for wanting both expeditions to fail, so Gray finds himself in all sorts of trouble once he sets out for his mysterious destination. There are lurking killers who can handle rifles but leave tracks in the sand like wild camels.  There are knife-wielding priests.  There are supposed allies who may be waiting for the right moment to betray him.

And then of course, there's a beautiful redheaded girl, the niece of the explorer leading the British expedition.

This is an old-fashioned high adventure novel, the sort of thing that H. Bedford-Jones wrote so well. Lamb's writing isn't as polished as that of HB-J, at least at this stage of his career, but MARCHING SANDS is still a very entertaining yarn. Robert Gray is a likable hero, Mary Hastings (the beautiful redhead) is a fine heroine, and the scrapes they get into are frequent and exciting. Lamb does a good job of layering in the surprises in his plot and weaves everything together into a thrilling climax.

MARCHING SANDS is a little creaky in places, no doubt about that, but what would you expect in a novel written more than 90 years ago? I had a great time reading it, and it's not completely forgotten. Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books has reprinted it in both a print edition and a new e-book edition. The Amazon link for the e-book is below, and if you'd prefer the print version the best way to get it is to order it through the Black Dog Books website. I'll definitely be reading more of Harold Lamb's work.