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Post by deuce on Dec 23, 2016 21:33:52 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Dec 26, 2016 11:13:43 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Jan 6, 2017 19:59:44 GMT -5
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Post by almuric on Jan 7, 2017 11:50:08 GMT -5
Dwellers in the Mirage, by Abraham Merritt. Wow. It's not every day you read a book that blends Norse, Uigur and Native mythology into a lost race story. Leif Landgon and his Cherokee blood-brother James T. Eagles discover a volcanic valley in Alaska hidden behind a mirage. There Leif discovers that he is the reincarnation of Dwayanu, a pretty bad guy who has the power to summon the evil demon-god Khalk'ru. Along the way he falls in love with the beautiful good girl Evalie, but is also tempted by the equally beautiful bad girl Lur, the Wolf Witch.
It's a bit racy for the period. Leif and Evalie have sex before they get married. Later, when Leif becomes Dwayanu, he gets it on with Lur. Typical of a lot of early 20th century fantasy, there's some gestures in the direction of scientific explanations for the various phenomena which the reader can accept or reject.
They don't make 'em like this anymore. Some people call that progress. I call it a tragedy.
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Post by deuce on Jan 10, 2017 17:38:45 GMT -5
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Post by andys on Jan 10, 2017 19:10:22 GMT -5
Just finished Boy's Life, by Robert McCammon. I've been impressed by every book I've read so far by McCammon and this is the best one yet. Not a horror novel, but more of a fanciful take on an 11-year-old boy's experiences growing up in an early 60s Alabama town. There's a murder mystery but that's really not the point. Just a series of episodes that are all a pleasure to read.
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Post by deuce on Jan 10, 2017 22:49:29 GMT -5
Dwellers in the Mirage, by Abraham Merritt. Wow. It's not every day you read a book that blends Norse, Uigur and Native mythology into a lost race story. Leif Landgon and his Cherokee blood-brother James T. Eagles discover a volcanic valley in Alaska hidden behind a mirage. There Leif discovers that he is the reincarnation of Dwayanu, a pretty bad guy who has the power to summon the evil demon-god Khalk'ru. Along the way he falls in love with the beautiful good girl Evalie, but is also tempted by the equally beautiful bad girl Lur, the Wolf Witch. It's a bit racy for the period. Leif and Evalie have sex before they get married. Later, when Leif becomes Dwayanu, he gets it on with Lur. Typical of a lot of early 20th century fantasy, there's some gestures in the direction of scientific explanations for the various phenomena which the reader can accept or reject. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Some people call that progress. I call it a tragedy. Awesome novel.  Dwayanu is about the "damnedest bastard" you'd ever want to meet, but he's one hell of a barbarian king. Is it coincidence that DitM was serialized in Argosy right before REH created Conan? Morgan Holmes and I don't think so. Leigh Brackett used the same plot for Sword of Rhiannon. Dwellers in the Mirage is a foundational novel in the history of fantasy/S&S. I'll be firing up a Merritt thread before long.  |
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Post by darthgall on Jan 13, 2017 17:36:30 GMT -5
You know how sometimes the title of a work tells you everything you need to know about it?
Like "Snakes on a Plane"?
I'm currently enjoying "Dracula vs. Hitler" by Patrick sheane Duncan.
An aging van helsing, along with his Romanian-resistance daughter and johnathan harker's OSS son resurrect Dracula to fight nazis.
Mick
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Post by deuce on Jan 14, 2017 8:39:55 GMT -5
Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Ubervilles, by Kim Newman It's an interesting collection of short stories so far, and Colonel Moran makes for one hell of a memorable narrator. It's not quite on the level of Newman's Anno Dracula series, but still very good. I recently read several of Newman's "Seven Stars" tales. I like his style. I don't know if he's officially in the Wold Newton camp, but he's definitely in the ballpark. |
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Post by deuce on Jan 14, 2017 9:03:40 GMT -5
The Dragon Lord, by David Drake. This was David Drake's first novel. It was also very nearly a Cormac Mac Art pastiche, back in those waning days of the Sword and Sorcery boom when even a character REH barely wrote about could get his own series. But a change of plans and Cormac and Wulfhere became Mael and Starkad. This is a very unglamorous take on the Arthurian legend. This Arthur is a charismatic warmonger who wants to conquer the world with a dragon Merlin will create for him. While the plotting is very uneven and the story doesn't quite come together (Drake's plotting has never been his strongest point) there are some wonderfully evocative bits including an encounter with a revenant in a barrow so it's not a waste of time. It's minor Drake, but still worthwhile. I too enjoyed this tale. I actually found it better than several of the Andy Offut Cormac novels (except for the two that Keith Taylor worked on). It's better than any of the solo AJO Cormac novels in my personal opinion. That said, it definitely has its weak points that Almuric noted. I'm just glad Drake went his own way on this, because TDL veers even further from what REH laid down than what Offutt did, much of that apparently due to REH being historically "wrong". I'm a pretty big fan of Drake, but his pedantry is ironclad. It supersedes all. When he did that CMA pastiche for Baen, he had to make his Atlantis conform to Plato (a shallow reading of Plato, that is), even though REH obviously intended otherwise. SMH. |
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Post by deuce on Jan 14, 2017 9:07:59 GMT -5
Finally got my copies of The Invaders (aka The Golden Strangers) and Pagan Queen (aka Red Queen White Queen) by Henry Treece. This completes my collection of the 4 book Celtic cycle written by Treece in the Fifties. I wanted to read them in chronological order, so now I finally can. How did your Treece reading go, TDM? For you, I would've recommended reading his "Viking Trilogy" first. Then, if you dug that, moving on to the British and Greek stuff. |
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Post by KiramidHead on Jan 14, 2017 12:00:46 GMT -5
Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Ubervilles, by Kim Newman It's an interesting collection of short stories so far, and Colonel Moran makes for one hell of a memorable narrator. It's not quite on the level of Newman's Anno Dracula series, but still very good. I recently read several of Newman's "Seven Stars" tales. I like his style. I don't know if he's officially in the Wold Newton camp, but he's definitely in the ballpark. I believe he is, but I'm not sure. And there's a new Anno Dracula coming out this month, so I'll look forward to that. |
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Post by deuce on Jan 19, 2017 14:03:48 GMT -5
A pretty good list of the 200 best adventure novels of all time, which starts clear back in the 1800s. Several titles REH would've read: hilobrow.com/adventure/ |
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Post by deuce on Jan 26, 2017 16:33:39 GMT -5
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Post by KiramidHead on Jan 26, 2017 20:13:22 GMT -5
Currently reading The Book of Lost Tales 1. It's interesting to see Tolkien's early ideas for Middle-Earth. Also, my Middle-Earth collection is more or less complete, minus a couple of things I'm not hugely interested in and whatever Christopher Tolkien pulls out of his ass in the future:  |
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