Joseph’s
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(group member since Oct 24, 2012)
Joseph’s
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from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.
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That's probably not the worst choice, TBH.
Thundarr the Barbarian! Although he's a bit of an edge case, I suppose. If I were ever to run an RPG, I'd be tempted to go for 1st edition Gamma World with a healthy admixture of 1st edition AD&D to recreate the setting.
W E wrote: "Off of a friends recommendation, I'm currently reading Jhereg by Steven Brust. I've seen it described as high fantasy but it reads like S & S so far.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..."
That's a great series I need to revisit one of these years.
Myself, I'm still on my Simon R. Green kick -- I just started Swords of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk and Fisher, which is theoretically (and maybe retroactively?) a sequel to Blue Moon Rising, but is set in a grubby fantasy city and the main characters (Hawk & Fisher) are part of the beleaguered City Watch. So far this one is also giving me more of an S&S feel than the previous Forest Kingdom books.
And finished Piranesi (which was a gem; and short -- might've been bigger than a novella, but it was at least on the low end of being a novel) and started Simon R. Green's Blue Moon Rising.
Clint wrote: "@Joseph, I enjoyed Piranesi very much"I'm also enjoying it quite a bit -- it almost feels like George MacDonald writing Gormenghast.
In light of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition release (which I won't get to play until after I finish my current game), I started Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn.
Oh, man! I had a flood myself -- well, it was back in 1993, I was off at grad school, but most of my stuff was in my room in Mom & Dad's basement; and they got a foot or two of water, which ruined the bottom couple shelves of all of the bookcases, and multiple comics longboxes. The biggest losses were probably all of my Traveller RPG books, and my autographed copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy omnibus (which I'll obviously never be able to replace now).
And did I mention I'm a couple of chapters into Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery? And that I'm liking it?
The Joy of Erudition wrote: "Could you link to that video, Joseph?"Sure!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAFub...
(Was a fascinating discussion from a great panel including a certain Brian Murphy ...)
Watching a Best of Sword & Sorcery YouTube video on the Goodman Games channel (from Bride of Cyclops Con) and the discussion reminds me of another of my S&S gateways: Roger Zelazny, specifically the Amber books and even moreso Jack of Shadows.
Yeah, Hobbit/LotR, Narnia and Lloyd Alexander's Prydain were hugely important, and I read every Tarzan book I could get my hands on.
This all happened a long, long time ago, but I kind of came to sword & sorcery via a combination of sword & planet (Barsoom!), Dungeons & Dragons (Appendix N and Dragon Magazine), and just reading every fantasy book I could get at the public library. My first "real" sword & sorcery was probably some combination of the Beastmaster movie, the Elric books and the first Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser book (the only one I owned for quite a few years). I knew of Conan, of course, but never got into the comics. My first exposure would've been Conan the Destroyer in the theater (I was too young to see Barbarian in theater, and Gygax' scathing review in Dragon Magazine was also kind of a turn-off), and I didn't start getting the Ace paperbacks until I was actually in college.Thundarr the Barbarian was also pretty formative.
The Joy of Erudition wrote: "That's the first time I've heard someone mention The Serpent. I have a copy here, waiting to be read. (The one with this cover.) 
"I got a wild hair and decided I needed the same specific editions that I remembered getting from the public library back in the day, so my covers all look like this:
Happily, I got the full set pretty cheaply -- 4 books from a seller on Abebooks and one from eBay.
Finished Xiccarph and started The Serpent, the first book in Jane Gaskell's Atlan series, which I might have last read in high school?(And both of those could probably also go in the Nostalgia discussion, come to think of it.)
Finished Moorcock's Corum trilogy and it might be my favorite thing of his. And I was today (well, yesterday) years old when I realized that in the third book, the inhabitants of Ynys Scaith, the last survivors of the Empire of Malibann, are, in fact, Melniboneans (or possibly versions of Melniboneans from a slightly different reality).
Had a busy night last night: Finished Corum - The Sword and the Stallion: The Eternal Champion, read both The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo (wonderful, wonderful, fairly short novellas), and started Xiccarph by Clark Ashton Smith.
Decided my nostalgia read would be Michael Moorcock's second Corum trilogy, beginning with The Bull and the Spear.(Although my original copies of both Corum trilogies were single-volume paperback omnibus editions -- the individual installments were tiny.)
