I believe the John Maddox Roberts splurge has ended for a while with S.P.Q.R. IV: The Temple of the Muses. This is not because I’ve grown tired of his writing or the exploits of Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. I’ve simply finished all of Roberts’ books ready to hand. This seems like a good spot… Continue reading S.P.Q.R. IV The Temple of the Muses
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Writer of two-fisted fabulism.
The Queens of Land and Sea. Perpetual Cliffhanger.
The Queens of Land and Sea is the fifth — and, unfortunately, final — volume of John Maddox Roberts The Stormlands series. While one of the early chapters adds a trifle to the travelogue of Roberts’ distant future Earth, this book offers a great deal less world building than the previous four. It does open… Continue reading The Queens of Land and Sea. Perpetual Cliffhanger.
Yet More JMR
I appear to be in the midst of a John Maddox Roberts phase. This wasn’t intentional. I simply got caught up in the Stormlands series. Then, during a trip back to Portland and the obligatory visit to Powell’s Books, I picked up the second of his S.P.Q.R. novels. Not wanting to start with book two,… Continue reading Yet More JMR
The Steel Kings: Stormlands Book Four.
The Steel Kings. Cool title, and, not to bury the lede, a cool story. Book four begins almost as a book end to book three. This time Kairn, Hael’s second son is the protagonist, going on an adventure, meeting a woman. The travelogue continues, the exploration of John Maddox Robert’s post-apocalyptic North America, this time… Continue reading The Steel Kings: Stormlands Book Four.
Sword-and-Sorcery and Song and Dance: Steven Brust’s “Lyorn.”
Lyorn is the seventeenth installment in Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series. For some reason I’d believed this would the final book, as there are seventeen houses in the Cycle of his fictional universe, and one book title now corresponds to each individual house. I was, apparently, incorrect, as this novel does not tie up loose… Continue reading Sword-and-Sorcery and Song and Dance: Steven Brust’s “Lyorn.”
L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Glory That Was.”
My edition of The Glory That Was is dedicated to Isaac Asimov and boasts an introduction by Robert A. Heinlein. So right up front you have substantial implied attestations of quality. But I’ve learned not to set my sights too high, and tempered my expectations accordingly. I expected an L. Sprague de Camp short novel:… Continue reading L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Glory That Was.”
John Maddox Roberts “S.P.Q.R.” Ave!
I missed a great deal of excellent adventure fiction by failing to stumble across John Maddox Roberts during the last quarter of the twentieth century. I don’t know why our writing/reading paths did not cross: I was reading this stuff during the same period he was writing it, and his output was precisely in my… Continue reading John Maddox Roberts “S.P.Q.R.” Ave!
Lud-in-the-Mist
Lin Carter did readers a favor with his Adult Fantasy Series. It is unlikely I would have encountered Hope Mirrlees Lud-in-the-Mist without Ballantine’s unicorn head colophon. Lud-in-the-Mist belongs to that select group of tales set on the bounds of faerie, along with Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter and Tolkien’s Smith of Wooton Major.… Continue reading Lud-in-the-Mist