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.

Review: The "Iblis" at Ludd - Talbot Mundy (William L. Gribbon)

“The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is the third story featuring Talbot Mundy’s most famous character, Major James Schuyler Grim, better known as Jimgrim, an American adventurer who’s a member of the British intelligence service in the perilous days following the First World War. The first two stories were combined in the fix-up novel JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE, which I reviewed earlier this year. The short novel “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd”, from the January 10, 1922 issue of the pulp ADVENTURE, is a direct sequel to those two yarns.

Jimgrim is still in Palestine, which is occupied by the British army and torn between Zionist and Arab factions. His assignment is to find out who stole two tons of TNT that figured in the plot of the previous story, as well as to discover the identity of the ringleader of a gang of thieves that has been stealing munitions from the British army. This ringleader is rumored to be the Iblis, which means “devil”, a dervish afflicted with leprosy. But there may be co-conspirators, and the scheme may reach all the way into the ranks of the British army. Jimgrim is assisted in his investigation by the stalwart Sikh, Narayan Singh, and Suliman, an incorrigible young beggar.

While I liked it overall, my main complaint about JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE was that it was really talky and lacking in action. That’s kind of true in this story, as well, although I think that overall Mundy (whose real name was William Lancaster Gribbon) sets a faster pace and the prose is a little leaner. Things move along quickly enough to keep me interested, and while there’s still not much action, several scenes are genuinely suspenseful and Mundy does a great job with the setting.

The main virtue of “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is the Iblis his ownself, who’s a great villain reminiscent of the Thuggee cult leader in GUNGA DIN as played by Eduardo Ciannelli. I could certainly see Ciannelli in this role, too. The biggest weakness in the story is the way it’s structured. There are several storylines going on, and Mundy moves back and forth between them in a disjointed fashion that makes it a little difficult to keep up with what’s going on. It’s not confusing enough to ruin the story, but I think it would have been more effective if a few things had been shifted around a little.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I read some of the later Jimgrim novels when they were reprinted in the Sixties, and the character in these early tales isn’t as dominant and competent as he would be later on. But it’s interesting watching him develop, and as a writer, Mundy’s prose ranges from good to excellent, so I intend to continue with the series. “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is available on Amazon in several different e-book and print editions. I suspect that when it was first published more than a hundred years ago, Mundy didn’t give much if any thought to the possibility people would still be reading and reviewing it a century later.

Jimgrim and Allah's Peace - Talbot Mundy (William Lancaster Gribbon)

Back in the Sixties when Avon published paperback editions of several of Talbot Mundy’s Jimgrim novels, they made the books seem like a cross between Robert E. Howard (“Talbot Mundy’s exotic world of fantastic adventure” enthused the cover copy) and Doc Savage (“Jimgrim and his amazing crew”). So naturally, I grabbed them off the paperback racks and read them. They weren’t exactly what those covers promised, being leisurely paced stories mostly about political and religious strife in the Middle and Far East. But the characters were interesting, especially James Schuyler Grim, an American working for British Intelligence, and the occasional action scenes were well-done. I enjoyed them enough that I’ve wanted to read the entire Jimgrim series sometime, and at my age, if I’m ever going to, I’d better get started.

So I read the first novel in the series, JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE, which is actually a fix-up of two connected novellas, “The Adventure at El-Kerak”, originally published in the November 10, 1921 issue of the pulp ADVENTURE and “Under the Dome of the Rock” from the December 10, 1921 issue of ADVENTURE. The narrator is an unnamed American journalist in Jerusalem, which is under the control of the British at the moment, with the army enforcing an uneasy peace between Jews and Arabs. The ongoing conflict between Zionists and Palestinians is uncannily similar to the unfortunate things going on in the Middle East today. Even a little creepy, to be honest, and commenting on the similarity of current events to stories from a 102-year-old pulp is as far as I intend to delve into politics on this blog.

The narrator’s friendship with Jimgrim draws him into involvement with two separate but related plots by radical groups to destabilize things even more and start a war that will engulf the whole Middle East in blood and flame. So the stakes are really high as Jimgrim and his allies seek to foil these plots before they can come to fruition.

Unfortunately, except for a couple of excellent action scenes at the end of each source novella, foiling the plots consists of sitting around and talking, walking around Jerusalem and talking, and a lot of skulking. These stories are very well-written with superb settings and well-drawn characters, but they take “leisurely paced” to a whole new level. When Mundy wants to bring the blood and thunder, he’s perfectly capable of doing so, but he should have done more of it in JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE.

That said, I enjoyed this novel enough to continue reading the series, but I sure hope the other installments have a little bit more action in them.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, November 1, 1928

Gangway! I'm not sure why I like this cover by L.J. Cronin, an artist I'm not familiar with, but I really do. It just seems dynamic to me. And of course, ADVENTURE had some pretty dynamic authors in its pages, too, including in this issue Talbot Mundy, with a story featuring a character named Ben Quorn (also unfamiliar to me), Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Allan Vaughan Elston, Thomson Burtis, Bill Adams, and Warren Hastings Miller, among others.

Forgotten Novellas: A Soldier and a Gentleman - Talbot Mundy

It’s been a while since I read anything by Talbot Mundy, and I was in the mood to sample some of his work again. The novella “A Soldier and a Gentlemen” was published in the January 1914 issue of the iconic pulp ADVENTURE, where much of Mundy’s work first appeared. It’s been reprinted numerous times since, including in THE TALBOT MUNDY MEGAPACK from Wildside Press, which is where I read it.

This is an important story because it’s the first one to feature Mundy’s series character Princess Yasmini, who appears in a couple of novellas and several novels, sometimes crossing over with other series characters. It’s not the first story chronologically in her history, however. That would be the novel THE WINDS OF THE WORLD. I haven’t read that one yet, but “A Soldier and a Gentleman” is a good introduction to the character.

It’s set in India and involves a regiment of Sikh lancers commanded by British officers. They’re given the job of tracking down the notorious bandit chief Gopi Lall, since the corrupt local police have been unable to do so—or paid off to fail in that task. At the same time, a young British officer falls under the spell of the beautiful but mysterious and possibly sinister Princess Yasmini, who lives in an abandoned palace in the jungle with a number of nubile young female servants. Is the place actually a brothel? Well, Mundy takes pains to make it seem like it’s not, but this story was written and published more than a hundred years ago when writers were a lot more reserved about such things, so I’m not prepared to say either way. I think it’s fairly well established that Yasmini herself is not a prostitute, although it’s open to question what else she’s capable of and why she’s really living in this rundown jungle palace.

The two storylines eventually converge, of course, and things come to a fairly satisfying climax, although it could have been a little more dramatic if some of it hadn’t happened off-screen. Yasmini is an interesting character, and so is Dost Mohammed, a stalwart Sikh officer who’s not actually the protagonist but maybe should have been. Mundy’s style tends to be long-winded at times and heavy on the telling instead of showing, but again, that’s to be expected in a story written more than a century ago. And honestly, I kind of like that lush, slower-paced style at times. Too much modern fiction I’ve read comes across as shallow. That’s certainly not the case here. Mundy really immerses the reader in what’s going on.

Despite that quibble about the ending, I really enjoyed “A Soldier and a Gentleman”. I plan to read more by Mundy soon, and if you’re a fan of good old-fashioned adventure yarns, I recommend his work.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, June 17, 1933

Nothing says "pulp" to me quite as much as ARGOSY. If it weren't for all those dang serials, it would be just about the perfect adventure pulp magazine! Take this issue, for example. You've got a colorful, dramatic cover by Paul Stahr, and inside are stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (a Whispering Sands yarn), Talbot Mundy, Theodore Roscoe, Donald Barr Chidsey (with his series character Nick Fisher), George F. Worts (part of a Peter the Brazen serial as by Loring Brent), Fred MacIsaac, Ralph Milne Farley, Cliff Farrell, and Armand Brigaud. To say that's an impressive line-up is quite an understatement! And ARGOSY did that week after week. Truly an iconic pulp. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, June 18, 1919

Here we have another of those self-referential covers: an issue of ADVENTURE with a guy sitting in front of a fireplace reading . . . an issue of ADVENTURE. The art, which I think is pretty good, is by an artist I've never heard of: Hibberd V.B. Kline (the V.B. stands for Van Buren). Is the premise a little cute? Yeah, but I think it works okay here. Inside the issue, there's no question about the authors: W.C. Tuttle, Gordon Young, Talbot Mundy, Gordon MacCreagh, J. Allan Dunn, and S.B.H. Hurst. That's a really strong bunch of writers.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Aces Magazine, May/June 1936

A short-lived pulp from Popular Publications, ALL ACES certainly had some good authors writing for it in this issue: Talbot Mundy, Murray Leinster, James B. Hendryx, and Dale Clark, along with a few others not familiar to me. That's not a particularly attractive cover, but I'll bet the stories are entertaining.