Author Archives: Keith West

What I Read While Stuck in Airports

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I’ve been on the road for the last few days, traveling due to dayjobbery.  I’ve spent a lot of time in the air and in airports.  I had to make two connections to get where I was going and again to get home.  I took my Nook with me, loaded with stuff.  Unfortunately, you aren’t supposed to have the things on during taxiing, takeoff, and landing.  Something about interfering with the plane’s navigational system or something.  I’m not sure of the details. 

Anyhoo, before I left I bought and downloaded the Beneath Ceaseless Skies anthology.  This is a collection stories from the first year of the magazine.  I must confess to not being as familiar with the publication as I need to be.  That’s going to change.  I’m only about a third of the way through, but the stories are top notch.  Less sword and sorcery than I prefer, but still good high quality, well-written pieces.  Worth checking out, and for three bucks, you will get your money’s worth.  All proceeds go to the authors and artists.  Check it out, along with the magazine.  I’ll be posting about it more in the future.

In addition to reading a business book and the current issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I ended up getting a used paperback copy of David Drake’s Other Times Than Peace.  I pretty much only read this one on the way back while I couldn’t read the Nook, so I only got about 130 pages into it, finishing the first two stories.  Still, Drake does a good job of pulling you into a tale with only a few words.  One of the things I like best about his work is that he draws on ancient history.  He’s another author I need to read more of.

I still haven’t started the latest McDevitt, Echo, and since he’ll be at ConDFW next weekend, I need to get moving on that.  I haven’t had much time to blog lately, but I thought I would pass along some recommendations on what I’ve read lately.  Expect a report on ConDFW when I get back.  Until then, look for at least one more post later this week.

The Frost King, The Frost-Giant, and Their Daughters

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It’s been bitterly cold here on the South Plains of Texas for much of the last week.  Temperatures were near record lows for several days.  Just when it looked like things were going to warm up again, we got more snow Sunday.  And that made me think of “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, which made me think of “The Frost King’s Daughter”.  And I knew what the next post on this blog would be.

The tale (or tales, if you prefer) concerns the lone survivor of a battle in the frozen north.  Having just killed the only member of the opposing army left standing, he sees a beautiful young woman wearing only a gossamer veil walking among the dead.  She taunts him with her body, and he pursues hers.  Of course, this is a trap.  After a time, she calls her brothers forth, two ice giants, to kill the man.  Instead, he defeats them, captures the girl, and is about to ravish her when she calls on her father, Ymir.  The girls is transported into the sky in a blaze of blinding light that leaves the hero unconscious.  He is awakened by a band of his allies who were delayed by an ambush.  After he tells his story, one of the older men in the group tells the warrior he saw Ymir’s daughter Atali, who haunts battlefields and lures survivors to their deaths so that she might present their hearts to her father.  The old man claims to have seen her as a youth when he was too wounded to follow her.  Everyone thinks the old man had his brains addled by a sword stroke until the hero unclenches his fist to find a veil.

This pair of stories are essentially the same, only the names have changed.  “The Frost King’s Daughter” concerns Amra of Akbitana, while the “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” is an early Conan story that was rejected by Farnsworth Wright (more on that later) and wasn’t published until the August 1953 issue of Fantasy Fiction.  Unfortunately, that version was rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp.  It wasn’t until 1976 that Howard’s version saw print in Donald M. Grant’s Rogues in the House.  This was a hardback collectible volume, not a mass market edition.  “The Frost King’s Daughter”, on the other hand, was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan.  You probably couldn’t afford an original copy of that little fan publication, provided you could find one.  Fortunately, the entire run has been reprinted in facsimile (details on how to order are here.)

The first mass market publication of Howard’s original version of “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” wasn’t available until 1989, when both stories were printed side-by-side in Karl Edward Wagner’s Echoes of Valor II.  If you aren’t familiar with the series, it ran to three volumes (as far as I know; if there was a fourth I missed it).  Wagner, a fan and writer of sword and sorcery who deserves to be better remembered, compiled collections of rare heroic fiction.  While many of the stories Wagner selected have been reprinted in recent years, especially the Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore pieces, there are still some tales that haven’t seen the light of day since and make the volumes worth seeking out.

In his introduction, Wagner states that Howard wrote “The Frost King’s Daughter” first and that the Conan version, “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” was the rewrite.  How he knows this to be true, Wagner doesn’t exactly say.  He supports his case by saying that “The Phoenix on the Sword” was a rewrite of the Kull story “By This Axe I Rule” (documentably true), and that “Frost-Giant” was a rewrite of “Frost King”.  We know Howard would recycle stories if they didn’t sell, at times changing the names of major characters, and we also know that sometimes the details of his stories would change from one draft to the next.  Furthermore, there is evidence that Howard was still developing the character of Conan as well as the Hyborian Age for the first several Conan stories.  Patrice Louinet, in his essay “Hyborian Genesis” (The Coming of Conan), does a thorough job of showing this development.

And here we encounter a small problem.  Louinet suggests that Howard changed the title of the story and Conan’s name to Amra when he sent the story to The Fantasy Fan.  His evidence seems to be the publication date of “Frost King” as well as an unreferenced letter from Howard to Charles D. Hornig, editor of The Fantasy Fan.  Patrice Louinet is one of the leaders in the field of contemporary Howard scholarship.  Wagner was one of the foremost authorities of his day.  So who is correct?  Was “Frost King” the rewrite, or was “Frost-Giant”?

As far as their respective texts are concerned the stories are almost identical.  I compared them, and there was only one significant deviation I found.  This one:

“Far have I wandered, from Zingara to the Sea of Vilayet, in Stygia and Kush and the country of the Hyrkanians; but a woman like you I have never seen.”

So who do you think said this, Conan or Amra?  Based on the place names, which are the settings of other Conan stories, you would probably think Conan, right?

Well, you would be wrong.  Amra said this.  In the Conan version of the story (Frost-Giant), the wording is “Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen.”  Conan’s wanderings and the Hyborian geography are never mentioned.  The only reason that I can think of for Howard to add place names from the Conan stories to a rewrite of a Conan story in which he changes the name and nationality of the viewpoint character is to clue readers in that Amra is really Conan.  And since it had been established by the time “Gods of the North” AKA “The Frost King’s Daughter” was published in The Fantasy Fan that Amra was one of the names Conan was known by, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this was Howard’s motivation.  But why would he do this?  The only explanation I can come up with was that because Conan was a Weird Tales character, either Howard had an agreement with Farnsworth Wright not to try to sell a Conan story to another market (I’m unaware of any such agreement) or he felt that do sell a Conan story to another market would, in a sense, be dishonorable.  It was standard practice in the pulp days for an author’s character(s) to only appear in one magazine.Howard may have been abiding by that practice.

On the other hand, it could be that “Frost-Giant” is the rewrite.  The passage quoted above, the one with the place names, tends to disrupt the flow of the story.  Certainly, its prose is more purple than the same passage without the travelogue.  It could very well be, since as far as I know the exact composition date of either version of the story is unknown, that Howard was already working out the geography of the Hyborian kingdoms and simply hadn’t settled on a final name and nationality of his principle character.  I will be the first to admit that the evidence isn’t conclusive either way, but this is the interpretation I favor.  I’m sure if there’s information I’ve overlooked, Howard fandom will let me know about it.  Quickly.

There’s one other thing I want to address.  Wagner says Wright rejected “Frost-Giant” because it was too racy.  Considering the sexual imagery in some of C. L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories (another topic for another day), not to mention the sex implicit in some of the other Conan tales, I’m not sure I buy this line.  If Wright was that uptight, why did he publish some of those Margaret Brundage covers?  (I know, I know, racy covers on pulps had nothing to do with the contents.)  Wagner says Wright’s view of Conan was of “a noble barbarian out to perform deeds of chivalrous heroism.”  Again, Wagner doesn’t provide details to back this position up.  In fact, Wright’s rejection of the story, which Wagner quotes, simply says Wright didn’t care for the story and gives no reasons as to why he didn’t care for it.  The general consensus I’ve heard for years on this point was that Wright didn’t like the hero attempting to commit rape.

But is this what Conan/Amra really does?  In the interest of stirring up trouble taking a deeper interpretation of the story, let’s look closely at what happens, shall we?  Atali taunts Conan.  “Spreading her arms wide, she swayed before him, her golden head lolling sensuously, her scintillant eyes half shadowed beneath their long silken lashes.  ‘Am I not beautiful, oh man?’ ”  Sounds to me she’s trying to entice him to pursue her.  This is born out at the end of the story, when the old man Gorm tells Conan Atali lures men to their deaths.  Gorm also describes her as beautiful and naked.  Atali continues to taunt Conan, essentially daring him to follow her.  Conan’s reaction is described as a madness that sweeps away his pain and fatigue.  Howard makes the pursuit sound as though Conan were possessed.

Rather than trying to commit rape, I read the story as Conan being put under a spell of desire by Atali.  Only Conan is stronger than she bargains for.  When he kills her brothers, she realizes she can’t control him nor reverse the spell.  Otherwise, why would she have to call on Ymir for help?  Am I saying Atali was asking for it?  You bet.  Even a casual reading of the story would tend to show that was the case.  What I’m NOT saying is that every (or even any) attempted rape victim was asking for it, so please don’t read that into my remarks.  I don’t consider what Conan/Amra does here to be attempted rape because I don’t interpret his actions as being of his own free will.  This is a fictional story, a fantasy, in which an evil woman’s spell goes wrong and she can’t control the desires she has deliberately cultivated in a man, with the outcome being other than what she intended.  I don’t for a minute think that’s how the real world works, and in spite of some of Howard’s detractors, I don’t think Bob meant that here either.  I think he was telling an entertaining story in the best way he could with a character whose personality he was still developing and exploring.  And in that, he succeeded.

So, to sum up.  I think “Frost-Giant” is probably a rewrite of “Frost King”, and furthermore Conan has gotten a bad rap these many years, accused by some critics of attempting a crime of his own free will when in truth he had no choice about.  Those are my thoughts on this cold winter night.

E-books, Self Publishing, and the Blog That Kicked a Hornet’s Nest, Plus a Few Questions

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The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson
Hyperion, 228 p., $15.95

You’re probably wondering what a book on economics has to do with sword and sorcery, heroic fiction, and historical adventure?  Well, I’m going to tell you.  Everything.

Over at Dean Wesley Smith’s site, he’s been doing a number of blog posts on different topics.  One of them is a series on the New World of Publishing.  They’re fascinating, thought provoking, controversial, and well worth your time if you have any interest at all in writing.  I’m still reading through them, and more are being continually added, but one of the first deals with self-publishing. 

It was once a stigma to self publish your book, to the point that many considered it to be the kiss of death.  Conventional wisdom at numerous convention panels aimed at writer wanna-be’s said don’t do it.  Ever.  Or else A Real Publisher Will Never Take You Seriously.  Well, perhaps it wasn’t quite that extreme, but it was close at times. 

Now Mr. Smith, along with a number of other writers, are beginning to sing a different song.  One of the things I like about the comments to these posts is that a number of smart people don’t hesitate to speak up.  In one of them, Laura Resnick, daughter of science fiction author Mike Resnick, and a bestselling author in her own right, mentioned this book along with a followup one that I’m going to read next. 

This book is a major reason I was late in getting the previous post up. I couldn’t put it down.  Finally, I had to so I could finish The Heretic Kings.  I still haven’t written the essay on “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, the next in the series on Kull. 

The whole premise of the book is that in the 20th century, production and distribution of popular media (books, magazines, movies, music) was in the hands of a few people and/or corporations.  This lead to a front loaded filtering process whereby content was filtered preconsumer.  The result became a hit oriented business model in which the companies gamble on a small number of products every month, knowing that many or most wouldn’t recoup their costs and hoping that one or two would make enough to cover the losers.  This led to a fairly uniform culture catering to the lowest common denominator.  Niche interests and markets tended to be marginalized due to cost effectiveness concerns.

Since the advent of the internet, desktop publishing, and related technologies, such as iTunes, ereaders, file sharing software, etc., the market is moving away from hits and more toward niches.  Anderson’s argument isn’t that hits are going away (they aren’t), but that they are and will become less important than in the past.  More and more business will be done in what is known as the tail of the distribution, where niche markets for the first time can thrive, and those who cater to the niches can actually make a living without having to go through a corporate gatekeeper.  Instead, the gatekeeper will be the consumer, who through the use of technology (e.g, search engines, reader reviews, blogs) can find items (music, movies, books, etc.) that fit individual tastes.

Where this applies to publishing is that authors now have the power (if they recognize it and choose to use it) to publish their own books.  Indeed, many midlist authors are doing this with their out of print backlists.  But it’s not just authors who have been published by New York.  I followed links through several sites and blogs a little over a week ago, and I ended up on a site run by a young woman (20-something) who, after being rejected by the major publishers, simply decided to self publish electronically.  In something on the order of a year, she was able to quit her day job.  She also had foreign publishers knocking on her door asking about foreign rights.  Now she was writing teenage vampire angst type stuff, so I don’t know how well her experience would translate to sword and sorcery or historical fiction.

Much of the book content sold through some sort of electronic medium is not available in stores, even if a print copy from a major publisher exists.  My unscientific observation is that this is especially true for sword and sorcery, historical adventure, and any fantasy that isn’t a Tolkien clone, sensitive vampires, or steampunk.  I had to special order Scott Oden’s Lion of Cairo because my local Barnes and Noble didn’t carry it.  (Look for a review here sometime in the next couple of months.)  Borders’ announcement on Sunday that it was delaying payment for a second month just strengthens the arguments that brick-and-mortar stores may be in more danger than publishers.

The dicussions I’ve read have been lively, thought provoking, and often heated.  What Dean Wesley Smith and some others are essentially arguing is that now is the best time to be a writer.  While New York and traditional publishing won’t ever go away, the action is shifting to the author who treats writing as a business rather than art. because they are the ones who will have the best of both worlds.

A challenge Smith has set for himself is to write two stories a week and publish them electronically.  The most recent will be available for free on his web site and will remain up until the new story is finished.  These stories are published in all the main electronic formats and available for sale on his site as well as e-book outlets such as Amazon.  With two weeks off for vacation, Mr. Smith will have written 100 new stories this year if he completes the challenge.  Furthermore, they will be for sale bringing him income.

Now, for those of you still with me, here’s how this applies to the type of fiction readers of this blog want to read.  I see the possibility of an untapped source of sword and sorcery fiction and historical fiction..  This all sounds good in principle.  Writers of good adventure fiction could actually have careers without having to deal with sales numbers killing their books because their books will only be removed from the market when they, the writers, choose to remove them.  Reader reviews would guide potential readers to new authors.  Those who want to write this type of fiction could, and those who want to read it would have something to read, and what get published (and therefore read) would not be influenced by the marketing departments of New York conglomerate publishers.

Of course I could be completely off base with what I’ve been thinking.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  So I want to run a brief informal survey.  Please feel free to respond in the comments.

Would you be willing to buy a story, collection, or novel electronically if it was self published by an author with name recognition?

Would you buy a self published story, collection, or novel if the author were unfamiliar to you but had good reader reviews?

How much would you be willing to pay?  Assume a short story would sell for 99 cents, which is pretty much the floor imposed by the existing royalty structures of Amazon, B&N, etc., and go from there.

Would you be willing to buy a collection of essays or nonfiction?

I’d really like to hear from some of you, especially those who have been following this blog since the beginning or close to it.  What do you think?  Are we on the cusp of a potential explosion of good adventure fiction, or am I dreaming?

The Heretic Kings

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The Heretic Kings
in the Hawkwood and the Kings
Paul Kearney
Solaris, 702 p., $9.99

This volume takes up pretty much where Hawkwood’s Voyage left off.  Things go from bad to worse.  Hawkwood and what members of his crew have survived the voyage across the Great Western Ocean have found that there is indeed a continent out there, and it’s inhabited.  And the inhabitants aren’t friendly.

The Council of Kings splits, with three of the kings declaring support for the true Pontiff.  Declared heretics by the Church, they face assassination and civil war.  Abelelyn must make his way home through hostile seas, while the Church and grasping nobles try to seize the kingdom. 

Corfe has managed to get the true Pontiff safely to Torrunn.  Despised and viewed with scorn by the military fops who inhabit the capital, he catches the attention of the Queen Dowager, who sets him up with his own commmand.  Her son, King Lofantyr, resents her interference in what he sees as his decisions and sends Corfe out on a suicide mission with a group of barbarian galley slaves.

In the holy city of Charibon, two monks make a discovery that will literally tear their world apart.  If they can live long enough to reveal it.

And then there are those pesky werewolves…

This being the second volume of a pentology, things tend to drag a bit in places as Kearney sets up some broader story arcs.  Or that could be my perceptions.  I read most of the first volume, Hawkwood’s Voyage, while traveling.  This book I started the same week classes started.  This didn’t leave me much time for reading on top of the other things I had to deal with, like helping my wife with her job search.  Plus I got distracted by what will probably be the topic of the next post.  So it took me nearly two weeks to finish the bloody thing, something that isn’t typical for me.  So some the dragging was due to the stop and go nature of my reading it.

The characterization is as strong in this book as it was in the first, although most of the new characters introduced aren’t as fully fleshed out.  Part of this is because we’ve grown to know the continuing characters  so well, the new ones don’t have the same depth.  There are exceptions, of course.  The Queen Dowager, for all that she isn’t on stage very much, is especially complex, showing both ruthless and tender sides.

The structure is a little different as well.  It’s divided into three parts, with the first and third parts taking place in the Ramussian kingdoms, and the middle part concerning itself solely with what is happening to Hawkwood at the same time.  I rather preferred the format of the first book, where the settings rotated between chapters, with the ones focusing on Hawkwood intermixed with the others.  But that’s just my personal preference.

I also am a little puzzled with where Kearney is going to go with the next three books.  Some major plotlines are introduced and then resolved by the end of the book.  It would seem more logical to me to continue them out through at least one or two more volumes.  But there are enough new plot threads here that I’m sure there are plenty of surprises ahead in the three books to come.  Fortunately they’re sitting on the shelf in the other room.  I’m going to focus on some short fiction, and since I’m hopefully going to be attending ConDFW in a few weeks, reading Jack McDevitt’s latest novel since he’s one of the guests.  I intend to get back to the series within a month at the latest.  I still think this is some of the best fantasy I’ve read in quite a while.

Happy Belated Birthday C. L. Moore

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The last couple of days have been hectic, so I’m a little late in posting this, but yesterday marked the centennial of the birth of one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy authors of all time, Catherine L. Moore.

Although her writing was primarily collaborative after she eventually married fellow author Henry Kuttner, with whose works readers of this blog should be familiar, Ms. Moore was a major author in her own right.  In fact many critics and historians of the field consider her to have been the better writer of the pair.  Indeed, her work is more poetic and shows more emotional depth than Kuttner’s solo work. 

After Kuttner’s death, Moore wrote no more fantastic fiction.  I’m not sure why, although I’ve heard it was because her second husband didn’t approve of science fiction and fantasy.  Whether this is true or not, I can’t say.  I have difficulty believing the woman who gave us Jirel would ever go along with that kind of restriction.  Whatever the reason, as much as her “retirement” was a loss to the field, her influence is still being felt.

Her first published story, “Shambleau”, introduced Northwest Smith, a (superior) forerunner to Han Solo in the November 1933 issue of Weird Tales.  This was the first of a number of tales featuring the space adventurer, although to call them science fiction is a bit of a stretch at times due to the fantasy elements they often contain.

Moore’s next series character was Jirel of Joiry, the first warrior woman of sword and sorcery.  Jirel could give the men a run for their money in the fighting department, and usually did.  Both the Northwest Smith and the Jirel stories are in print, as are collections of her solo fiction and her collaborative work with Kuttner.  Given the versatility of her work, you should probably check out more than one volume just to get a good feel for Moore’s talent and range as a writer.

I plan to look more in depth at the Jirel and Northwest Smith stories here, but those posts are some time in the future.  Until then, check out these tributes by Ryan Harvey and C. S. E. Cooney.  Better yet, read some of C. L. Moore’s work as well. 

Happy Birthday, Bob

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Today marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of  Robert E. Howard, father of sword and sorcery.  Howard is most famous, of course, for creating the character of Conan, most often called the Barbarian.  If you only know Conan through movies, comics, and pastiches, well, pardner, you don’t know Conan.  And if Conan is the only way you know Robert E. Howard, well, you don’t know Howard very well, either. 

There are a number of tributes on the web today, and if you’re in the vicinity of Cross Plains (I wish), there’s a party.  If you happen to be among the Howard impaired, and only know him by reputation or through Conan, let me recommend you check out the posts by Howard Andrew Jones and Barbara Barrett over on the Black Gate website.  Jones’s is a more general tribute discussing the breadth of Howard’s fiction, while Barbara examines the poetry.  Both are good gateway drugs introductions to Howard’s work.  It’s an addiction worth having.

New Rogue Blades Entertainment E-Anthologies Announced

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After the week I’ve had, I was looking for something short and sweet to blog about tonight, wanting to wait until I was rested a little before tackling a longer post.  Fortunately, Rogue Blades Entertainment has come to my rescue.  (Thanks, Jason.)

To promote the forthcoming Clash of Steel anthology Assassins, Rogue Blades is publishing four e-anthologies consisting of four stories each.  These stories are different than those included in the print anthology, the cover of which is shown on the right.  Each e-anthology will sell for $3 and will contain between 15,000 and 18,000 words of sword and sorcery fiction.  Since the going price for a single short story in electronic format is 99 cents, that makes these collections a steal.  Or would that be steel?  Anyway, there will be one released a month for four months, starting in February.

You can get all the details here.

Employment Issues Resolved

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Well my wife has found new employment.  It looks like I will have time to do more blogging rather than helping her with her job search and looking for more ways to increase my income to make up for the shortfall.  I intend to try to post at least two new posts per week.  The next one will be within the next 48 if everything goes according to plan.

The Monarcharies of God: Hawkwood’s Voyage

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Hawkwood’s Voyage
in the Hawkwood and the Kings
Paul Kearney
Solaris, 702 p., $9.99

Over the last few days, I’ve been at a conference.  You can always tell when you’re at a conference of physicists.  There’s just something about them.  The long hair.  The no hair.  The facial hair.  The leg hair (on the women).  We just sort of know how to recognize each other.  While it wasn’t the best conference I’ve attended, it was far from the worst.  And the best part of it, at least in the short term, was the plane ride. 

No, not ’cause I got frisked by a good looking TSA agent.  Security was a breeze, surprisingly enough.  The best part was I read Hawkwood’s Voyage and made a dent in The Heretic Kings, the second book in The Monarchies of God pentology by Paul Kearney.  I must admit I’d never heard of the man until recently, when I came across a copy of one of his other books. 

Side note.  I managed to find a couple more of his books while I was at the conference in a nearby used book store.  If they’re as good as this one, I’ll be reading everything he wrote.

Hawkwood and the Kings collects the first two novels in the series.  There are a number of plot threads, and I’ll try to summarize the main ones here.  There was once a large empire which stretched over most of the continent, a continent that bears some resemblance to Europe on the map provided.  Then the empire fell apart as the different provinces rebelled.  The heart of the old empire is still an independent country (so to speak), but at the time of the book’s opening, it doesn’t really interact much with the rest of the continent.

The church is dominated by the Inceptine order, an order that bears a strong resemblance in many ways to the Jesuits.  There are other orders, but they’re kept in their place by the Inceptines.  One particular Inceptine, the Prelate of the kingdom of Hebrion, has started purges of any foreigner or Dweomer in the kingdom.  The Dweomer are those who have some innate magical ability.  Captain Richard Hawkwood, himself a foreigner, has agreed to take two ships loaded with Dweomer across the great Western Ocean in search of a mythical continent in which to found a colony.  The king of Hebrion, Abeleyn, is trying to curb the growing control of the Church of the Saint in his kingdom.  In the east, the Holy City of Aekir, home to the Pontiff of the Church, has fallen to the Merduks, invaders from the east who bear more than a pasing resemblance to Mongols.  The sole surviving soldier of the siege of Aekir, Ensign Corfe mourns the loss of his wife and everything else he loved at the hands of the Merduks.  The Pontiff is missing and presumed dead.  And the Prelate of Hebrion seeks the position of Pontiff for himself…

There’s a lot more than that or course.  I realized as I was reading why the suspense was so strong at times.  It was because the characters seemed like real people to me, and as a result I cared what happened to them.  There’s plenty of action and intrigue here to satisfy any fan of epic or heroic fantasy.  Kearney doesn’t shy away from the gritty details of combat or court life.  The battle scenes throb with passion, bloodlust, and fear.  I’ve not read much nautical fiction, something I intend to rectify, but the chapters that take place on Hawkwood’s vessel brought life on board a ship alive for me.  And showed how terrifying it can be to be at sea when something on board begins to hunt and there’s no place to go.

Hawkwood’s Voyage was first published in 1995, and if it had an edition here in the states, I missed it.  I won’t miss any of Kearney’s other fiction.  This one held my attention all the way through.  Usually when I finish a book, even one I’ve enjoyed immensely, I’m ready to move on and read something else, and by that I mean something different.  In this case I went straight into The Heretic Kings.  If you haven’t read Kearney, give him a try.  You’ll be glad you did.