Well, after reading Flashing Swords #2, I picked up the other entry in the series of anthologies (there were five total) that I had (and that I bought at the same time ten years ago).
Again, this is a collection of sword-and-sorcery novellas by a small circle of writers from the time period with an introduction by Carter.
The stories include:
- “The Bagful of Dreams” by Jack Vance, a story of Cugel the Clever. Cugel is down on his luck, and he meets up with a wizard with a bagful of dreams on his way to impress a royal personage and win a prize. But Iolo and Cugel beset and try to best each other beforehand and before the Duke.
- “The Tupilak” by Poul Anderson is part of a series about human/merfolk hybrids seeking to find their vanished kind. They come to a cold land where colonists from abroad are suffering and are hounded by invaders from the north, and the merfolk intervene to try to save them.
- “Storm in a Bottle” by John Jakes, a Brak the Barbarian story which starts with Brak as a captive brought into a strange town under threat from a dark mage who might be leading barbarians in the hills against them. Brak breaks free and finds that the threat comes from closer to home.
- “Swords against the Marluk” by Katherine Kurtz which is part of the Deryni series. Apparently, it’s an event that the books mention but did not cover, and it’s how one new king defeated a magickal rival with magic of his own and a Deryni on his side. I didn’t get much out of it because I haven’t read the books.
- “The Lands Beyond The World” by Michael Moorcock wherein Elric finds himself in another world having traveled through a gate and having had some adventures there. He is on his way back when he encounters a woman in trouble, on the run from an ancient sorceror who wants to resurrect an old love in her, and Elric tries to protect her.
I liked the Cugel story; I might have read the Brak story in middle school or high school; and the Elric stories are growing on me. I don’t know that any of it will stick with me, but it was for the most part a pleasant passage of a couple of hours. The context-switching between the stories, with completely different rules and whatnot, was kind of difficult. Probably easier if one is more used to anthologies and definitely easier if you’re familiar with each story’s particular mythos from other works.
So will I pick up the other three books in the series? Well, if I see them at a book sale, perhaps, but I don’t think I’ll order them.
So will this conclude Brian J.’s year of sword-and-sorcery? Maybe not.