Where It Got Pretty Dark

Savage Heroes: Tales of Sorcery and Black Magic by Michel Parry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is another discard book I picked up when I was still teaching. I liked it *a little.*

*Just enough.*

This is a collection of sword and sorcery short stories, and it's a bit uneven. I suppose as far as the genre expectations go, it's right down the center. You've got stories by C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, David Drake, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and a few others of that type. And they're pretty typical of that group and this genre.

My problem is I guess I don't much like the genre, although I've tried. I remember in the '70s checking out a pair of books (maybe Flashing Swords 1 and 2?) that were sword and sorcery stories, as I learned from reading the introduction, and they were beautiful volumes. Brand new. Shiny. I'd never heard of the authors or the genre until then, but it looked like LotR, so I gave it a shot.

I didn't hate it. But I didn't get it. And that's kinda where I am now.

Some of these stories are clever and much of the writing--line by line, paragraph by paragraph--is really cool. But I just don't vibe with the dark, cruel, hero-free stories. Back in the day, I wanted to like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but I didn't. In this one, I wanted to like Jirel of Joiry, but nope. They're rakes and rogues (can a woman be a rake? I dunno), and they're interesting, but I don't care about them. As a result, I don't care about their stories.

Which makes me think about this scene from the movie version of Mansfield Park:

Susan Price : So, this Henry Crawford, what's he like?
Fanny Price : A rake. I think.
Susan Price : Oh, yes, please.
Fanny Price : They amuse more in literature than they do in life.
Susan Price : Yes, but they amuse.

(She says it with that knowing smile, which is very cute.)

I usually agree with Fanny, but here I don't. I'd say rogues don't necessarily amuse in literature, either. YMMV

Anyway, that was my problem here--lots of pretty bad guys doing bad things and maybe getting bad results. Yawn. When I did have sympathy for a character, they tended to come to grief. That's not fun. Avoiding this pitfall was the story "The Barrow Troll," by David Drake (whose novels I have enjoyed). I liked that one, including the ending. It's good enough to look up, so I won't spoil it, but it's satisfying and just.

TBH, I found the collection fairly entertaining, and I'm confident that sword and sorcery enthusiasts would like it more, but it isn't quite my thing. Or, it's just enough my thing to read a touch of it every once in a while.

In that case... [brushes hands] done.

View all my reviews