{"id":33012,"date":"2024-08-26T13:16:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T18:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=33012"},"modified":"2024-08-24T18:18:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T23:18:14","slug":"book-report-flashing-swords-4-barbarians-and-black-magicians-edited-by-lin-carter-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/26\/book-report-flashing-swords-4-barbarians-and-black-magicians-edited-by-lin-carter-1979\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians<\/i> edited by Lin Carter (1979)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/flashingswords4.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">Well, after reading <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/20\/book-report-flashing-swords-2-edited-by-lin-carter-1973\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Flashing Swords #2<\/a><\/em>, 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/05\/good-book-hunting-pumpkin-daze-2014\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">ten years ago<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The stories include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Bagful of Dreams&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Tupilak&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Storm in a Bottle&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Swords against the Marluk&#8221; by Katherine Kurtz which is part of the Deryni series.  Apparently, it&#8217;s an event that the books mention but did not cover, and it&#8217;s how one new king defeated a magickal rival with magic of his own and a Deryni on his side.  I didn&#8217;t get much out of it because I haven&#8217;t read the books.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Lands Beyond The World&#8221; 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;re familiar with each story&#8217;s particular mythos from other works.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll order them.<\/p>\n<p>So will this conclude Brian J.&#8217;s year of sword-and-sorcery?  Maybe not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33014,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33012\/revisions\/33014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}