The Sword & Sorcery Anthology!

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology puts me in the mind of those wonderful collections of sword and sorcery stories by Lin Carter so many years ago.

It showcases quite a range of authors, including of course Robert E. Howard represented here by his outstanding "The Tower of the Elephant". Also from Weird Tales is a Jirel of Jory story by C.L. Moore ("Black God's Kiss"). There's a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story by Fritz Leiber ("The Unholy Grail") and a story by Poul Anderson ("The Tale of Hauk"). Michael Moorcock is represented by the Elric story "The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams".

Those stories I have though in other places, but what really got me to give this one a second look were a trio of stories from Whispers, a Kane story by Karl Edward Wagner, a story by David Drake, and mostly a sword and sorcery story by Ramsey Campbell written under the pseudonym of "Montgomery Comfort".

Throw in some newer stuff by the likes of Michael Swanwick and Gene Wolf, and you have a really nice range of talent represented in this book. It's not comprehensive, but nicely expansive. There's a real sense of a range of voices and styles.

The volume is really hurt significantly though by the almost complete lack of an editorial voice. There's a forward by David Drake, but nothing from the editors and no explanatory material between the stories either about the authors or the stories. These kinds of books need that context in my opinion and the lack of it here does hurt.

The cover for this one by Jean-Sebastien Rossbach is a keeper, a really nice image full of blood and thunder. That's a nice change for my tastes when fantasy covers and S&S covers in particular seem sometimes to eschew this kind of thing.

The original solicitations for this book said Jack Vance would be included, but he has no story in this collection. There's no explanation offered.

At fifteen bucks though this one is worth the effort to find.

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Echoes Of Valor!

Ken Kelly
Here's a late 80's and early 90's series which I only recently learned about. While we have an avalanche of Robert E. Howard material today, once it was much harder to get, especially raw Howard untouched by his later editors and modifiers.

Karl Edward Wagner was an editor dedicated to getting that material out. He did it first in the trio of volumes for Berkley books back in the later 70's and here he attempted it again by offering up in this debut volume the first publication of "The Black Stranger", at least as originally written by REH.

The full contents can be found here.

Sam Rakeland
Later volumes in the series focus on other great fantasy authors, especially C.L.Moore and Wade Manly Wellman.

Sam Rakeland
Doubtless if I did see these, I passed them by because of the cover art which seems a bit "punkish" for classic fantasy. There might've been a miscue here for the target audience.

The contents for volume two can be found and here and for volume three here.

Solid volumes, ones I might need to search for.

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Kelly's Heroes!

People of the Black Circle
The Hour of the Dragon
Red Nails
Lost Valley of Iskander
Black Canaan
Marchers of Valhalla
Skull Face
Son of the White Wolf
Sword of Shahrazar
For a moment in the late 70's Ken Kelly captured the field of fantasy cover illustration with his covers to a large number of Robert E. Howard's vintage heroes. His Conan covers for the Berkley editions remain some of my favorites images of the brawny barbarian. I have both the paperback and hardback versions of these, and they were the one source for raw REH until the relatively recent Ballantine editions.

Here is the art with the logos intact.










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