Quick Reviews: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

In the days when Rome was young, a forest populated by fantastic creatures stood near the Etruscan city of Sutrium. Lars Velcha, a nobleman of Sutrium, abducts a Water Sprite named Vel for his daughter Tanaquil to use as a slave. Tanaquil and Vel befriend Arnth, a wandering minstrel, and together contrive a plan to free the Water Sprite.

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Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: H. Rider Haggard

Haggard stands at the fountainhead and nexus of what I call "exotic adventure fiction." Such fiction moves beyond the sort of stories told up until that time--adventures of pirates, cowboys, swashbucklers, explorers and whatnot-- and adds something extra, something over the top, something truly exotic.

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Stephen Fabian and Robert E. Howard: Part Three

Robert E. Howard died on this date in 1936. Thinking about that tragic day eventually reminded me that I'd never followed up on my first two looks at Stephen Fabian's illustrations of Howard's works. Today, I'll attempt to make the argument that Fabian should be considered the greatest illustrator of Robert E. Howard's characters and yarns.

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Out of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith

Clark Ashton Smith, of course, was one of the mainstay writers of the old Weird Tales, with Howard and Lovecraft.  Smith was chiefly a poet, and also a sculptor, but after a breakdown in health, during the Depression, he wrote more than a hundred bizarre short stories (between 1929 and 1934) to pay his bills.  Like Howard, he contributed to Lovecraft’s famous Mythos.

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