The Glut of New Sword and Sorcery

Sword and sorcery is not just a literary form. It can appear in video games, tabletop roleplaying games, miniature wargames, traditional art, comics, and film. Nevertheless, at its core, it is a form of storytelling, mostly in written prose, and often in shorter prose forms: the short story and novella (or short novel).

Over the past few years, more and more people have been reading and writing sword and sorcery, both classic S&S and new iterations. Readers and writers are not alone; analysis is also happening. Scholars and fans are writing about S&S as well. Brian Murphy's Flame and Crimson consolidated the history of sword and sorcery in one well-wrought monograph, beginning with its creation by Robert E. Howard and ending with DMR Books. Several well-written forewords of new anthologies, such as Jason M Waltz's foreword to Tule Frog Press's Swords and Heroes, attempt to bridge the classics of sword and sorcery with new indie iterations of the genre by discussing a historically unspecific sword and sorcery "attitude." And let's not forget the Goodman Games' Tales from the Magicians' Skull blog, which continues to publish excellent, often award-winning articles. Academia has also taken notice: my own academic book, Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard (McFarland 2019), devotes several chapters to the modernity of sword and sorcery. New indie sword and sorcery is going strong, and it is sophisticated in its awareness of its past and the potential of its future.

But something different seems to be happening. There has been a notable development around the beginning of this year: the drip and trickle of new sword and sorcery has become a steady stream. More new material is being published than any individual can read (and maybe purchase). Several diehard S&S fans in the Whetstone Discord have challenged themselves to read as many of the new anthologies and magazines as possible, but it increasingly feels like a fool's errand because more comes out before the previous reading has ended. For example, very personally speaking, I am behind on several excellent series: Tales from the Magician's Skull (Goodman Games), Savage Realms Monthly (Literary Rebel), Swords and Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy (Parallel Universe Publications), and many more. Additionally, more material is on the way, e.g., New Edge Sword and Sorcery launched a successful Kickstarter, Rogue Blades Entertainment has teased a new anthology, Neither Beg nor Yield, and The Rogues in the House Podcast recently published Volume II of A Book of Blades. And, of course, Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery continues to publish new and emerging authors.

In a word, there is potentially a glut of new sword and sorcery literary material, and not only in the indie realm. Howard Andrew Jones' Lord of a Shattered Land is being released by Baen Books. Scott Oden has finished his excellent Grimnir series for now (the third book, The Doom of Odin, has been released recently). Outland Productions and Weird Tales Magazine have both released new sword and sorcery anthologies featuring big-name, professional writers. And if you're a fan of Games Workshop's "Black Library," the sword and sorcery and sword and sorcery-adjacent works of their grimdark worlds continue to be printed.

The question isn't just a matter of attention span, i.e. limited bandwidth. Due to the glut of new sword and sorcery, I find myself less patient with uninspired, cookie-cutter sword and sorcery tropes—plots, characters, settings—being deployed by writers without any unique spin or stylistic delivery. I can't point to any specific trope that has become worn out. However, this past year, I must admit that as I read some new S&S, I find myself thinking, "I've read this so many times." Conversely, when I come across something fresh, something brand new but still S&S—not only in terms of plot or character but also in terms of style—I feel refreshed and re-energized, excited about the genre. Howard Andrew Jones's yet-to-be-released Lord of a Shattered Land, for example, acknowledges and surprisingly inverts several S&S tropes. And it left me inspired and ready for more.

Another interesting development: because of the glut of new sword and sorcery, I find myself buying new books with a wistful sense of "One day I'll find time to read this." Am I alone? In other words, when I get a new indie S&S book, it's a predetermined fact that this purchase or Kickstarter won't be read any time soon because of a long and growing backlog. As I gaze longingly at my teetering pile of unread new S&S, I am starting to feel more like a sword and sorcery book collector than a reader, even though I always have one, two (or even three) indie S&S books with a bookmark lingering in my office.

I am in no way suggesting that indie S&S authors or publishers should pump the brakes. I don't think the glut of new sword and sorcery literature is a problem. But I do think this acknowledging this new phase in indie S&S might be helpful for writers, readers, and publishers. The pragmatist in me thinks that this new glut doesn't matter at all. The best stories will rise to the surface, and a natural process of selection will hopefully keep new stuff coming. I don't know if there are any "solutions" because I don't know if what I'm describing is unique to me or is even a problem that merits a solution. I would love for new sword and sorcery to continue to be published, read, and discussed. The issue is: how might this new phase change or influence the types of S&S being written, published, and sold? Do we need a top 10 list? A designated review site? Something to help others navigate what is increasingly feeling like a claustrophobic, crowded field?

Book Review: Soul Wars by Josh Reynolds

This is a fun Age of Sigmar novel that is a little thin in parts of the story. It focuses on the city of Glymmsforge in the realm of Shyish and concerns the efforts of the Stormcast Eternals to defend the city from Nagash, who desires the network of tombs beneath the city, known as the Ten Thousand Tombs. It also focuses on Phraus Thaum, a Lord-Castellant, and his demise after the Necroquake (a storm of death summoned by Nagash) and how he is transformed into a Knight of Shrouds to lead an army of the dead against the city he once protected.

The story isn't anything new. The trope of the paladin becoming a reverse paladin is familiar to fans of fantasy literature and fantasy gaming (e.g., Arthas Menethil and the Lich King in Warcraft). The strength of the novel is probably in its dialogue. The characters are somewhat two-dimensional, but they speak in a vibrant, stylized way that is very appropriate to the setting. The writing style is polished, but there are so many pages of battle that these scenes all start to blur together, and the stakes are lost. For example, I read about Stormcast Eternals smashing Chainrasps and Gravewalkers more than enough by the middle of the novel, but there was way more to come.

There was one scene with a Celestor-Prime, Helios, who faces down Pharus Thaum, and Helios is very arrogant and somewhat mischievous. I don't want to spoil this scene, but it will stick with me. I also really enjoyed being able to see the Anvil of Apotheosis in the Sigmarabulum. As far as I can recall, this was the first novel to include a scene in that hallowed location.

The Lord Arcanum, Balthus Arum, was a cool character, but he was so motivated and focused on the task at hand that it was hard to relate to him. He was basically a steamroller of indignation. Elya, the orphan child, was a great addition to the cast of characters, as she provided a bit of change from the predominantly good and evil characters. However, she was used more as a MacGuffin for the good guys to protect than anything else.

I enjoy Josh Reynolds' Age of Sigmar novels and will read more, but this one felt like thin gruel for much of its 400 pages. Like a lot of Black Library novels, it was sufficiently entertaining and a lot of fun to read for relaxation and distraction, but it occasionally tested my patience. I found myself ready for the book to end with about 50 pages remaining, but the final pages pulled me back in and enthralled me with the intriguing conclusion.

A Brief Analysis of a Clark Ashton Smith Letter to George Sterling, October 6th, 1911

There is an excellent webpage, Eldritch Dark, that is a repository of all things Clark Ashton Smith. I used it a lot when I was writing Weird Tales of Modernity. I recently watched the documentary Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams (2018, dir. Darin Coelho Spring) which reinvigorated my reverence for Clark Ashton Smith and reminded me of Eldritch Dark. Here is my review on Letterboxd. One of the great things about this Eldritch Dark is that it compiles a lot of Smith's correspondence (among other things). 

The first letter in the correspondence section of this webpage is dated October 6th, 1911. Smith would have been 17 at the time he wrote this letter, which was addressed to the poet George Sterling (1869-1926). The entire letter can be accessed here.

In this letter, Smith begins by commenting on a photograph of himself. He states, "To me the eye of a camera always looks like the mysterious, murderous muzzle of a thirteen-inch gun, and I am apt to look like the enemy." Most of the pictures of Smith suggest that the young poet did not enjoy getting his picture taken. He doesn't seem to smile (I don't think it was conventional in the early 20th-century to smile in portrait photos). He tends to look very anxious in his photographs and somewhat put out.

Later in the letter, Smith refers to his poem "The Star-Treader" and admits that he doesn't know what Sterling will think of it. "The Star-Treader" is an excellent, ridiculously ambitious poem. Here is the first stanza:

A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,

Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth

Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth

Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams

Thine ancient pathway of the suns,

Whose flame is part of thee;

And deeps outreach immutably

Whose largeness runs

Through all thy spirit's mystery.

Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze

Of stars where through thou camest in old days;

Pierce without fear each vast

Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past.

A hand strikes off the chains of Time,

A hand swings back the door of years;

Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears,

And opens the strait dream to space sublime.

This is such a fever-dream, mind-blasting vision. The poet is basically being hailed by the cosmos. The cosmos is telling the poet that the time has come for them to cast off their earthly form and reunite with eternity, rendered as "the blaze of stars." The rest of the poem is really intriguing and it's worth reading in its entirety. But this first stanza gives you a good sense of the scope of Smith's artistic enterprise. It often seems that being a mere human (a dirt person), for Smith, is a prison. Humans are detached from the cosmos in a tragic way. We are eternal souls that have somehow fallen into a prison of ephemeral form and the poet and artist feel the constraining nature of this ephemeral form most acutely.

Later in this letter, Smith discusses a few of his other poems and shares a few observational lyrics with Sterling. One lyric is titled "Wind Ripples." It is very different than "The Star-Treader." Here it is:

Did Beauty's unseen spirit pass

With tread unstayable and fleet?

Surely I saw the crested grass

Bow 'neath supernal feet!

This is a beautiful little poem, iambic tetrameter, with an abab rhyme scheme. The speaker has felt the caress of the wind and imagines that an invisible angel is passing near them. It's really fascinating that Smith could just write a lyric like this with little effort. I also like the idea of observational lyrics. Poets are basically acutely sensitive sensoriums who, unlike us mere mortals, make interesting and unique observations, and the genre of observational poetry clarifies this fundamental role. 

I would also argue that this random four-line observational lyric is almost the inverse of Smith's poetic enterprise in "The Star-Treader." Where an ephemeral lyric written in a letter is meant to be low-stakes and effortless, "The Star-Treader," is highly intentional and structured. It's like an oracle prophesying or a spell being cast.

The letter concludes with Smith discussing one of his poems, "Abyss," which I think is a shortened title referring to "Ode to the Abyss." Commenting on how a certain reader didn't grasp the theme, Smith states to Sterling, "I am astonished to find how few really grasp the sublimity and vastness of the stars and star-spaces." Smith certainly grasped the sublimity and vastness of stars and star-spaces, but his observational lyric, "Wind Ripples," also clarifies that Smith could attend to more granular elements of the human experience, i.e., the hidden beauty of a caress of the wind.

There is a lot in this letter and worth reading and pondering over. Eldritch Dark is a wonderful website, and I'm glad it exists.

Book Review: Sacrosanct and Other Stories

I have read two anthologies of Age of Sigmar short stories: Sacrosanct and Other Stories, and Hammerhal and Other Stories. The stories in Hammerhal were written from 2016 to 2017, while the stories in Sacrosanct were published from 2017 to 2020. The development and evolution of the Age of Sigmar lore is apparent in these two anthologies. Although there were several stories in Hammerhal that I enjoyed (that anthology still worth reading), Sacrosanct is a superior anthology, with many great stories that I could comment on.

C.L. Werner's novella "Sacrosanct" is an intriguing story featuring the Hammers of Sigmar, the first host of the Stormcast Eternals, and explores the relationship between Stormcast Eternals and how their previous mortal lives haunt their reforging. Werner made me see how cool the Stormcast Eternals actually are. The opening passage of this story, when the Hammers of Sigmar arrive in Shyish, is so memorable. Werner's other stories, "Shiprats" and "Witch Takers," are also great. "Shiprats" explores an airship of the Kharadron Overlords, and "The Witch Takers" explores the Order of Azyr (the Age of Sigmar Inquisition). "Witch Takers" captures some of Werner's great Matthias Thulmann atmospherics.

Josh Reynolds has several great stories in this anthology. His "Dirge in Dust and Steel" explores the forays into Shyish by the Hosts of Sigmar and introduces an intriguing new Duardin society and death deity. "Prisoner of the Black Sun" by Reynolds reintroduces a fun character from the Old World (no spoilers). Guy Haley's "The Volturung Road" was also great, more of a novella than a short story. It is ambitious in scope, telling the story of a Duardin lodge in Ghyran and their attempt to establish a new hold.

This anthology got me excited about Age of Sigmar lore. It's fun to see this world from its beginning, and it's great to see it becoming more fully realized. I was a little skeptical of Age of Sigmar in 2016. Now I'm in.

Review of Vinland Saga (Season 1)

 

Vinland Saga is an enthralling historical anime series available on Netflix, adapted from the manga of the same name. The story takes place in the 11th century during the Dane-controlled era in England and the wider Norse world. The plot follows Thorfinn, a young Dane who is seeking revenge, and Askeladd, a mercenary leader whom Thorfinn despises. Currently, there are two seasons of the show, with the first season consisting of 24 episodes, and the second season, which is still being released, having 14 episodes so far.

If you are a fan of Viking culture, literature, or Norse mythology, then you should definitely check out Vinland Saga. The series is an exploration of several themes such as the brutal nature of the world, human ignorance, the unpredictable nature of the gods, and the importance of honor in a deadly and ever-changing world. In addition, the show brings a unique element to the table: it portrays the absurdity and pointlessness of violence and warfare.

The animation and art style of the show are incredibly detailed and visually impressive, immersing the viewers in the Viking world. The animators pay attention to small details, including drinking horns, fashion, architecture, shipping elements, and even cutlery from the 11th century. The anime, although critical of violence thematically, glorifies it with visually stunning and realistic portrayals of bloody battles, intense duels, and other forms of combat.

The show boasts an expansive and intriguing cast of characters that are all woven together with Thorfinn and Askeladd at the center of the story. Other characters include Floki, a giant warrior who desires defeat above all else; Canute, a prince struggling with his faith and fear in a violent world; and Ragnar, Canute's loyal steward who defies the world with his kindness and loyalty.

What sets Vinland Saga apart is its exploration of the question "what makes a true warrior?" The characters repeatedly ask this question, suggest answers, and even act on them, but the answer is never entirely clear. This philosophical and introspective aspect of the show adds depth and complexity to the story, making it not only thrilling but also thought-provoking.

Overall, Vinland Saga is a fantastic series that deserves your attention, especially if you are a fan of Viking culture, literature, and mythology. With its intricate political intrigue, psychological depth of character, and historical accuracy, it is a show that you should not miss, particularly if you're a fan of the work of Robert E. Howard.