Reviews for Heroic fantasy

The average rating for Heroic fantasy based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-29 00:00:00 Jason Lynch This is an excellent collection, and one that made me keep asking "Who the hell is that?" followed by "Where the hell can I find more of that?" My to-read list now includes Adrian Cole's Voidal tales and E. C. Tubb's stories of Malkar, as well as A. E. Silas, F. Paul Wilson, and Don Walsh. The others--Charles Saunders, Tanith Lee's Cyrion stories, and so forth--were there already. (The Cyrion collection in particular, which I dug out of storage and dropped on the top of the pile.) Even the contributions by the editors themselves, usually the weakest of a collection, held their own. Really, all of these are gems, with the possible exception of "Sand Sister", Andre Norton's Witch World appendage. It never quite worked for me, with a tone that didn't speak to high adventure and a sluggish sort of pacing. H. Warner Munn's "The De Pertriche Ring" tended to the overdramatic and a bit too long getting to the obvious. The three commentaries focus on the technical matters of weaponry, armor, and heroism in an "On Thud and Blunder" sense. Their brevity provides only a taste of the subject matter, only enough to give a reader the sense of the problems in other writings. This appeared to be their intent: the commentaries and the introduction held heavy contempt for Clonan-style writing prevalent for the time period.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-01-30 00:00:00 Randy Lopez For me this is easily a five star book. Homerun. Reading this in 2020 it's very hard to imagine some of these fantastic authors were just getting started back when this book was published in 1979. The table of contents reads like a who's who of tried and true DAW published authors from the 70s and 80s. Everything is original to this anthology, and honestly, there are only a few stories I have encountered elsewhere. Norton's Witch World, Cole's Voidal, Lee's Cyrion, Saunder's Imaro, Schweitzer's Sir Julien, and Wellman's Kardios all have stories in this collection. E.C. Tubb has a story called Blood in the Mist that was perhaps my favorite. Never knew Tubb had penned S&S. The introduction to the story states that there were two other stories one published in Weird Tales and one in Witchcraft and Sorcery. I would really like to read those. Some folks on FB helped me to discover that two paperbacks were published about Malkar: Death God's Doom and The Sleeping City. Both are outrageously priced but Amazon offers them both in digital. The editors Gerald W. Page and hank Reinhardt also have stories in this collection and I enjoyed both. Several authors were new to me: Don Walsh, A. E. Silas, and F. Paul Wilson. I look forward to learning more about them. I feel like this collection is a must have for any S&S collection. Recommended!