Neither Beg Nor Yield - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 5)

This is the fifth and final batch of reviews of stories from NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, the new sword and sorcery anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment and editor Jason M. Waltz. The previous installments of this series can be found here, here, here, and here.

In most anthologies, collections, pulps, or any bunch of stories that I read, there’s usually at least one that I bounce off of, which is not to say that they’re bad stories, just ones that don’t appeal to me personally. This has finally happened in this anthology with “The Last Vandals on Earth” by Steven Erikson. This tale of a small group of Vandals being pursued by and battling enemies in Africa is written in an elaborate, highly distinctive style that just doesn’t resonate with me. I suspect some of you would really like it, so don’t go by me. But I didn’t care for it.

“The Barbarian’s Lawyer” by Lawrence A. Weinstein is just the opposite. It introduces two excellent characters, the barbarian called Blazgorn and Cynric Magsen, the lawyer who defends him before the High Arbiter when Blazgorn is accused of stealing treasures from the mansion of one of the city’s most powerful nobles. Doing humor in a sword and sorcery tale is a tricky proposition, but Weinstein manages quite well, prompting a number of smiles and one out-loud laugh from me while I was reading the story. But at the same time, he also gives us some very effective action. This is a wonderful story, and I’d love to see more of these two characters.

Last year, the first novel in Howard Andrew Jones’ Hanuvar series, LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND, was one of the best books I read. I have the second book, THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD, but haven’t read it yet. I was very glad to see Jones and Hanuvar in this volume, as well. For those who haven’t yet made his acquaintance, Hanuvar is sort of an alternate world version of Hannibal (although that’s really too simplistic a description). His goal is to locate the survivors from his conquered country, Volanus, who have been scattered all over a world ruled by the Dervan Empire (think Rome) and get them to a safe sanctuary. In “Reflection From a Tarnished Mirror”, he runs up against an unusual threat to his quest, and as usual, Jones spins a well-written, compelling yarn. I’m not sure where in Hanuvar’s saga this story takes place, exactly, but it’s a strong reminder that I need to get around to reading that second book.

Finally, we have “Maiden Flight” by Adrian Cole. This is the first adventure of Ulric Wulfsen, a Viking raider who has a strange and dangerous encounter on a corpse-littered battlefield that leads to an epic confrontation and a poignant, very effective ending. I’ve been aware of Adrian Cole’s fiction for decades but have never read anything by him as far as I recall. This is a very good story and a near-perfect way to wrap up the anthology.

Looking back, I have some definite favorites among the stories in this volume. The top rank, for me, consists of the tales by Steve Dilks, Chuck Dixon, Keith J. Taylor, David C. Smith, Eadwine Brown, Jeff Stewart, Lawrence A. Weinstein, and Howard Andrew Jones. Four out of those eight authors are ones I’d never read before, and that’s one of the great appeals of a book like this, introducing the reader to new authors, or at least, authors they’ve never read before. I’ll definitely be looking for more work by several of these gentlemen.

In the meantime, if you’re a fan of sword and sorcery, I give my highest recommendation to NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD. Even though it’s relatively early, I have no doubt that it’ll be on my Top Ten list at the end of the year.

Neither Beg Nor Yield - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 4)

We’ve reached the fourth post in this series of reviews of the stories in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, the great new anthology of sword and sorcery stories from Rogue Blades Entertainment. The previous posts can be found here, here, and here.

Eadwine Brown is a new author to me, and his story “Vengeance, With Wind and Tide” features a new character he’s introducing, a female pirate named Azirah. She and her crew set out to find an island with a mysterious tower located on it, that tower being the stronghold of the sorcerer who is responsible for the deaths of another crew of pirates. Azirah wants vengeance on this sorcerer, as well as whatever treasure she and her followers can find. This is just a superb story, written in a style reminiscent of Robert E. Howard, with plenty of action, a strong protagonist, and a vividly realized setting. As I was reading, I thought, “You know, Brown could have sold this to WEIRD TALES in the Thirties.” That’s pretty high praise.

“Isekai Sengokumonogatari” is by one of the big names in the genre, Glen Cook. Like C.L. Werner’s story earlier in the book, this one is set in an alternate version of feudal Japan, complete with spider demons. Also like Werner’s story, I was predisposed not to be too fond of it, but Cook won me over just like Werner did and I enjoyed this tale of a young warrior who picked the losing side in a war. Hired to accompany a mysterious and somewhat sinister old man and three noble orphans on a journey to deliver the children to relatives, our hero Shinzutoro encounters considerable trouble and learns some things about himself and others, prevailing over all the dangers to his charges. It’s a fine story, as you’d expect from an old pro like Cook.

Jeff Stewart is another writer new to me, and his story “Bona Na Croin” is the first to feature Fergus Mac Ronan, a mercenary and adventurer in medieval Ireland. A violent encounter results in Fergus becoming a soldier for one of the local kings, and that plunges him into a war that culminates with the summoning of an ancient evil entity. This story has a bit of a GAME OF THRONES feeling to it with its betrayals, unexpected murders, and fiery sorcery. And it’s an absolutely terrific yarn. Fergus is a fine protagonist, the action scenes are very well done, and Stewart does a top-notch job capturing the grittiness of the setting. I really liked this one.

According to editor Jason Waltz, Steve Goble has been writing stories about the warrior Calthus for a long time, but both author and character are new to me. In “Virgins For Khuul”, Goble quickly gives us Calthus’s back-story: a mighty warrior once known as the Slaughter Lord, killed in battle many years ago, resurrected by wizards to meet a new threat, now a wanderer. When he comes across a plan by evil priests to sacrifice three hundred virgins to the vicious god Khuul, he teams up with an old enemy to put a stop to it. This leads to some apocalyptic action in Khuul’s stronghold inside a mountain. Colorful, fast-moving, and packed with action, “Virgins For Khuul” ends on an offbeat note that’s very intriguing, and I’m left feeling like I ought to hunt up Goble’s earlier stories about the character.

This is another strong group of stories and I’m looking forward to wrapping up my reading of NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD in the near future.  

Neither Beg Nor Yield - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 3)

Today we’re moving on to my thoughts on the next four stories in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, the big new sword and sorcery anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. The previous posts in this series can be found here and here.

Author Phil Emery and his character Corlagh are both new to me, although in his afterword to this story, editor Jason M. Waltz mentions that the character first appeared in Emery’s stories all the way back in the Seventies. “Golden Devils of the Crypt” is a post-apocalyptic yarn, set on Earth after a nuclear war wiped out much of humanity and gave rise to many different types of mutations and monsters. In the void left by science, sorcery has arisen to rule much of the world. It’s an interesting setup and certainly works as a setting for sword and sorcery stories. Barbarian Corlagh and thief Norad team up with an “astromancer” to battle an even worse threat. It’s a story packed with color and action. However, I have to say it’s also the first one in this volume that wasn’t really to my taste. Emery’s style reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith and C.L. Moore, two writers whose work I enjoy but only in small doses. Your mileage, as they say, may vary, and I suspect it would for many of you. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike “Golden Devils of the Crypt”, I’m just not as enthusiastic about it as I have been the other stories so far.

Now, I have to pause and wallow in nostalgia for a few lines, so if you just want to read my comments on the next story, David C. Smith’s “The Undead of Sul-Atet”, feel free to skip on down and do so. As for me, I’m going back in my memory to the first time I attended the annual Robert E. Howard Days get-together in Cross Plains, almost thirty years ago. One of the other Howard fans there that day was David C. Smith. I immediately recognized his name as the co-author, with Richard C. Tierney, of several REH pastiche novels I’d read and enjoyed. We hit it off right away and had a long, enjoyable conversation that afternoon.

Jump ahead more than two decades to the year David C. Smith was the guest of honor at Howard Days, and when we started talking we picked up the conversation as if only a few weeks had passed rather than many years. He’s a great guy and a superb writer, and I was very glad to see that his character Engor (the protagonist of his novel ENGOR’S SWORD ARM) returns in “The Undead of Sul-Atet”. In this story, Engor unwillingly helps an old friend and comrade-in-arms make a deal with a demon, then leads his friend’s army into battle against a rival. The tale is told with a fine mixture of brooding intensity and bloody action, and Smith’s prose displays the sure-handed touch of a longtime master of the genre. This is just an absolutely terrific story, one of my favorites so far in this volume.

I’m a little confused about Frederick Tor. I think that’s a joint pseudonym under which several writers spin yarns about a thief and mercenary named Kaimer, who operates in a vast and sinister city known as Skovolis. In “The Shades of Nacross Hill”, Kaimer and two companions are in a huge cemetery bent on robbing some tombs when they discover that there are more things lurking there than the dead. As one of the characters puts it, the cemetery guards are there not to keep people out but to keep things in. I wasn’t sure about this one—it’s another tale that’s not exactly to my taste—but it won me over for the most part and I wound up thinking it was well-written and enjoyable.

Time for more nostalgia. Joe R. Lansdale is my oldest friend in the writing business, other than my wife. I started corresponding with him in the Seventies after seeing his address on a letter in a fanzine devoted to hardboiled fiction, THE NOT SO PRIVATE EYE. That was the same way I met Bill Crider and Tom Johnson, both sadly no longer with us. Joe and I have met in person many, many times, and there’s no more entertaining conversationalist in the world. So I’m biased about Joe’s work, and his story in this anthology, “The Organ Grinder’s Monkey”, is a wonderful tall tale about mechanic Greasy Bob, his weapon of choice, a wrench called Ajax, his sidekick Olo, and the car in which they can travel between dimensions/alternate universes/other realms/whatever you want to call them. It’s fast and funny, and if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, it’s almost sword and sorcery. But you’ll have a good time reading it, that’s for sure.

So out of this set of four stories, we have one that’s pure, classic sword and sorcery and three that are varying degrees of offbeat. But they’re all good, and NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD maintains its momentum as a top-notch anthology.

Neither Beg Nor Yield - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 2)

Last week, I reviewed the first four stories in NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD, the massive new sword and sorcery anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. This week I’m moving on to the next four stories.

I’ve read and enjoyed Steve Dilks’ Gunthar stories. His novella in this volume features one of his series characters I hadn’t encountered before, Bohun, a giant black warrior from a world that seems to be very loosely based on our own. “Harvest for the Blood-King” is set in an alternate version of Britain, which is ruled by a Rome-like empire called Valentia. Bohun and a Valentian soldier named Tibeirus are dispatched to rescue the son of a Valentian politician who has been kidnapped by barbarians that bear a resemblance to the Scots. Dilks doesn’t belabor the background or the world-building, though, a quality I’ve noticed in his work that I really like. He’s more about character and action, and he does a great job with both in this yarn. He’s written other stories about Bohun and I have to seek them out, because this one is excellent.

I’ve been a fan of Chuck Dixon’s work going all the way back to his great runs on THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN, THE PUNISHER, BATMAN, NIGHTWING, and AIRBOY. In recent years he’s become a bestselling novelist with his Levon Cade series (Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture, as they say). His story in this volume, “The Stone From the Stars”, features a new pair of heroes, Hagen and Pilsner, a couple of mercenaries who find themselves on the wrong side of a war and have to strike out on their own. They wind up trying to save a wizard and his beautiful redheaded daughter from a monster summoned up by an evil necromancer. This story has some great action scenes and really races along, and Hagen and Pilsner wind up being very likable protagonists. I thought at first they might be a bit of an homage to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but they’re actually very different from those characters and stand just fine on their own. This is a thoroughly enjoyable yarn.

John R. Fultz’s “Evil World” features a series character I hadn’t encountered before, an indomitable warrior named Gnori. This story begins when Gnori is a child and follows him as he becomes that fierce battler, giving the reader just the right amount of world-building as the story moves along but never sacrificing the pace and scope that give it an epic feel. This is the darkest story in the anthology so far, but it works very well considering the story that Fultz is telling. Another excellent tale.

Keith J. Taylor has been writing sword and sorcery tales even longer than Chuck Dixon. His series character Nasach the Firbolg, a reiver and mercenary in and around medieval Ireland, has been the protagonist of stories since the 1970s. In “Reckoning”, Nasach and some companions of his find themselves throwing in with a motley crew of pirates. The captain is married to a woman who may or may not be a mermaid, and he's convinced she can find a sunken treasure for them. Unfortunately for him, even though he doesn’t recognize Nasach, the Firbolg has an old grudge against him, and when the time is right, Nasach intends to settle that score. This is a wonderful story full of action and humor and color, and it’s very well-written. I haven’t read any of Taylor’s Nasach stories until now. I hope at some point there’ll be a complete collection of them.

Four more stories into the book now, and NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD hasn’t taken its foot off the gas. It’s picking up speed and getting even better. So far, this is a terrific anthology and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find the e-book edition on Amazon while the print editions are still in the works.

Neither Beg Nor Yield: Stories With S&S Attitude - Jason M. Waltz, ed. (Part 1)

At almost 500 pages and more than 180,000 words, NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD: STORIES WITH S&S ATTITUDE, from Rogue Blades Entertainment, is the biggest Sword and Sorcery anthology ever published. I’ll be going through it for the next few weeks, a few stories at a time, because with my age-diminished attention span, that’s the best way for me to tackle a big book like this.

First of all, I like the cover by M.D. Jackson, and the interior illustrations he provides are really top-notch. I like them a lot. The same can be said for “It’s Not Gentle”, the introduction by editor and publisher Jason M. Waltz, which does as good a job of nailing down the appeal of Sword and Sorcery as I’ve ever come across.

The first story is “Hunters and Prey” by C.L. Werner, which is set in feudal Japan. Now, I don’t mind admitting that I’m not fond of stories set in Japan, so I might have been inclined not to care much for this one. But Werner is an excellent writer and I enjoyed this yarn quite a bit. I mean, you’ve got an outlaw samurai (Shintaro Oba, one of Werner’s series characters), a disgraced samurai turned bounty hunter, and a spider-demon that lives in the caves inside a mountain. Put those three elements together and of course it’s going to be a good story! I haven’t read much by Werner and I need to read more. His work is very good.

Several years ago I read a collection of Kormak novellas by William King and really enjoyed it. I planned to read more, but somehow (remember that attention span I mentioned above?), that good intention slipped away from me. So I was happy to see a Kormak story in this book, and it's a special one indeed, an origin story of sorts that looks back over Kormak’s life and career as a Guardian, charged with seeking out evil and destroying it. “Prince of Dragons” has a nice elegiac feel to it, along with some good action and a strong protagonist. Once again I say I have to read more of Kormak’s adventures. Maybe this time I’ll actually do it.

“Suspension in Silver” by Eric Turowski features another series character I hadn’t encountered before, the giant, monster-hunting biker known as Irons. “Wait a minute,” you say. “The hero of a sword and sorcery story is a biker? Is he transported to some other realm or what?” Well, you may not have said that, but I thought it when I started reading this one. I’m sort of a purist when it comes to sword and sorcery, and I just wasn’t sure about a story set in what’s basically our world, although it does have werewolves roaming around in Fargo, North Dakota. But again, the excellent, action-packed writing won me over. If sword and sorcery is largely a matter of attitude, the position this anthology takes, then “Suspension in Silver” does indeed qualify. I’m still on the fence about that, to be honest, but is this a good story? Absolutely. I enjoyed it and would gladly read more about Irons.

John C. Hocking is one of my all-time favorite sword and sorcery authors. In “Soldier, Seeker, Slayer”, he introduces a new character, a mutilated former soldier named Creon whose right hand has been replaced by a mystical weapon. Hocking drops us down in the middle of things with very little world-building or explanations of what’s going on, but that’s all right. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that Creon doesn’t really know what’s going on, either. His mind is a jumble of memories—perhaps false—and uncertainty, but he knows he has a job to do and he’s going to do it. Hocking gradually gives us, and Creon, enough information to figure things out on the way to a very satisfying ending. This is an excellent story all the way around, as you’d expect from Hocking.

With these four stories, NEITHER BEG NOR YIELD gets off to a very strong start. I’ll be back in due time with reviews of the next few entries. The e-book edition is available now on Amazon, with print editions in the works.

Robert E. Howard Changed My Life - Jason M. Waltz, ed.

I suppose it might be possible for somebody to read Robert E. Howard’s work and not have it change their life. I know logically that a person might like the stories, like them enough to read all of them, even, and then move on and never think about them again. I get that, because I’ve been that way with plenty of authors.

But man, as for me and all the Howard fans I know, once you’ve read those yarns, you’re never really the same again. I’ve written before about how discovering Howard’s work in the Lancer edition of CONAN THE USURPER (the one with the great giant snake cover by Frazetta) had a huge impact on me not only as a reader but also as a writer. Of course the stories were wonderful and immediately captured my imagination, but reading the introduction and finding out that Howard was from a small town in Texas (like me) and was able, against the odds, to become a successful professional author was more inspiration than I had ever gotten before in my budding desire to be a writer myself.

ROBERT E. HOWARD CHANGED MY LIFE, edited by Jason M. Waltz and published by the Rogue Blades Foundation, is a great new collection of essays from a number of fans and professional writers, artists, editors, and academics, about that same subject. The book leads off with “How Robert E. Howard Saved My Life” by Bill Cavalier, a fantastic memoir that I’ve been privileged to hear Indy (as Howard fans know “Indiana Bill” Cavalier) deliver in person. He’s a monumental figure in Howard fandom, and so is Rusty Burke, who is also present in this collection along with Howard scholars Karen Joan Kohoutek, Todd Vick, Bobby Derie, Fred Blosser, Patrice Louinet, Dierk Gunther, Jeffrey Shanks, Deuce Richardson, and Chris Gruber. Professional authors Michael Moorcock, Joe R. Lansdale, Roy Thomas, David C. Smith, Scott Oden, C.L. Werner, Charles Saunders, Howard Andrew Jones, Keith Taylor, Cecilia Holland, David Hardy, Mark Finn, Nancy A. Collins, Steven Erikson, and Adrian Cole are all on hand with essays that range from poignant to informative to humorous. I should point out that all of these people are Howard fans, many of the ones I refer to as scholars have written professionally, and many of the ones who make their living primarily from their fiction have also contributed greatly to the study of Howard’s life and work.

I consider many of them good friends from Howard Days, the annual get-together in Cross Plains, Texas, to celebrate everything REH. Many of the others I know at least through the Internet. It’s an absolute pleasure to read their comments about the effect Robert E. Howard has had on their lives. For those of you who have been to Howard Days, reading this book is like sitting in the pavilion next to the Howard House and listening to the smartest, wittiest bunch of people in the world having a great time talking about a writer they all love.

Simply put, ROBERT E. HOWARD CHANGED MY LIFE is the best book I’ve read so far this year, and I give it my highest recommendation. If you’re a Howard fan, you can’t afford to miss it.