So Jason M. Waltz has been asking me to reivew Neither Beg Nor Yield for, well, a long time. When he first asked, I wasn’t reviewing current works because I didn’t want to create a conflict of interest for myself by givng a less than positive review to an editor I might want to submit to.
I’ve since modified that policy.
I had dipped into this anthology, but I hadn’t read it straight through. So I decided to read it from the front cover to the back.
Neither Beg Nor Yeild is a hefty anthology devoted to “sowrd and sorcery with attitude”. Given the time contraints I have on my reading, I decided to break up the reivew into four parts. (There are twenty stories here, so four reviews covering five stories is what I’m going to do.) If I waited until I fiinished the book, I would have forgotten half the stories. I’m just going to give a brief description of the stories rather than plot details.
So here is the first of four reviews covering the first five tales in the book. The other reviews will be posted over the next mumblety-mumble months as I work the reading into my shcedule.
The first story is “Hunters and Prey” by C. L. Werner. It’s a tale of his samurai hero Shintaro Oba. I’ve read a couple of these stories before and have enjoyed them. In this one, Shintaro is hunting a spider demon while another samurai is hunting him.
William King has written some fantastic S&S tales about a number of heroes. Here he gives us the origin sotry of his hero Kormak in “Prince of Dragons”. I hand’t read any of the Kormak sotries before, but I’ll be looking for more of them.
When I think of sword and sorcery, I tend to think of lands that never were in an age undreamed of. But sword and sorcery doesn’t have to take place in an imaginary land, something Eric Turowski demonstrates in “Suspension in Silver”. Irons is ademon fighting biker, and his choice of weapon is a bike chain.
John C. Hocking introduces Creon in “soldier, Seeker, Slayer”, a tale of vengeance that is a punch to the gut.
Steve Dilks gives us “Harvest of the Blood-King”. Military fantasy is a perfect subgenre to blend with sword and sorcery. This tale of Dilks’ hero Bohun is an excellent example. Warring tribes and soldiers cuaght in the middle.
Those are the first five stories from Neither Beg Nor Yield. All solid sword and socery tales with attitude. Jason has done an excellent job so far in choosing high quality sword and sorcery fiction.
On to the next five stories.
