# Sword & Sorcery recommendations



## Yora (Apr 14, 2018)

Let's see how many posts it takes until this turns into a discussion of how true Sword & Sorcery is officially defined. From past experience I make my estimate at 1.

I'm a fan of stories set in fantasy worlds in which highly capable protagonists are using cunning, courage, and skill with blades to face supernatural threats and brave eldritch places. My favorites are Conan, Kane, and The Witcher, and I can't help to have some admiration for Elric. In movies, Conan the Barbarian and Princess Mononoke are my favorites. In recent years I've been reading The Desert of Souls, which I quite liked (even though it's actually a historical setting with magic), The Copper Promise, which just couldn't really hook me, and Tome of the Undergates, which I thought was just awful.

Sword & Sorcery is a style that still seems to have lots of big fans, but nobody seems to be really doing it anymore. Still, any recommendations what I might give try?


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## Gurkhal (Apr 22, 2018)

I'd actually suggest hunting down some anthologies with short stories of Sword and Sorcery. The reason is that that way you can check out several authors and if you find some that you like, then you can check out their longer works. 

Without any deeper knowledge I could suggest these two, fairly old, anthologies that can still be bought from Amazon. I bought the second for my brother and he liked as fart as I know. I know that they are marketed as having all kinds of fantasies but I recall them being marketed, back in the day, as Sword & Sorcery. But then again my memory could be at fault here.

https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Swords-Daniel-Blackston/dp/097588400X

https://www.amazon.com/Sages-Swords...=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524387349&sr=1-2


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## Yora (Apr 22, 2018)

A few years back I read _Swords & Dark Magic_, _Sword & Mythos_, and _The Sword & Sorcery Anthology_. Really hated the first two and thought the third one merely passable. These editors have a rather unorthodox idea of what can pass as Sword & Sorcery in my opinion. Those stories that I liked where from the usual suspects. Robert Howard, Michael Moorcock, Karl Wagner, and Glen Cook.


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## Gurkhal (Apr 22, 2018)

Well, I guess I'm at my wits end then. Or you'll just have to go for old timers like the ones you mentioned. I know there are much good pre-Tolkien fantasy that gets a re-print from time to time so that's something you might focus on.


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## Steerpike (Apr 22, 2018)

CL Moore’s Jirel of Joiry stories.


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## Yora (Apr 22, 2018)

Black God's Kiss and Hellsgarde are both great stories that I very much recommend too. The other three not so much.


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## skip.knox (Apr 22, 2018)

Tanith Lee!


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## Mythopoet (Apr 23, 2018)

Well, I admit to not being totally certain what constitutes Sword and Sorcery myself. If you've read what you've mentioned above I assume you've read Fritz Leiber as well. Have you read The Dark World by Henry Kuttner? I liked that one a lot. I've seen Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword called S&S, I think. That's a great book. I think you could call The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny  S&S and I consider those essential fantasy reading. And of course there's the Dilvish the Damned stories culminated by the novel The Changing Land also by Zelazny which are very good.

I'm afraid that's all I can think of.


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## skip.knox (Apr 23, 2018)

Leiber and Zelazny, absolutely. I'd put Moorcock in the list. Maybe Joseph Malik. ;-)

But we really have made Yora's point. It's not that there's no S&S to read, but that there is very little S&S that is recent.


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## Yora (Apr 23, 2018)

I think the core essence of Sword & Sorcery is warriors going into the underworld or the domain of a sorcerer and facing supernatural threats, and that's more or less all of the story. Everything else is negotiable.

Any works by Tanith Lee that would be recommended as a start? I've heard of her a lot, but never read any of her works.


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## skip.knox (Apr 23, 2018)

The one that I first encountered is called Birthgrave.


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## Steerpike (Apr 23, 2018)

skip.knox said:


> The one that I first encountered is called Birthgrave.



That’s a good one. Everything I’ve read by her is good.


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## pmmg (Apr 23, 2018)

Howard actually wrote a few more than those, but I suspect you got Howard checked off already . Some others that to me all kind of seem Conan-esque, include Red Sonja, and Kane. Deathstalker, and Gor, I know a few fans who dabble in writing, heavily influenced by sword and sorcery (I think myself included), but they would not be published.


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## Gurkhal (Apr 24, 2018)

Here's something that I found. Not sure if its interesting or new for the OP but I give it here and you can have a look.

A magazine, which I think is still in business

Swords and Sorcery Magazine

A blogg that's devoted mostly to S&S as far as I can tell

Swords & Sorcery: a blog

A discussion about fantasy from a S&S fan

Black Gate  » Articles   » Why Swords & Sorcery?


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## Mythopoet (Apr 25, 2018)

Yora said:


> I think the core essence of Sword & Sorcery is warriors going into the underworld or the domain of a sorcerer and facing supernatural threats, and that's more or less all of the story. Everything else is negotiable.



To be honest, that's a pretty narrow definition. How many times can you really write a story about a warrior fighting a sorcerer before it gets old? I imagine that's probably why there's just not much Sword and Sorcery out there. There's not much demand for it and the genre has been well covered already.


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## skip.knox (Apr 25, 2018)

>How many times can you really write a story about a warrior fighting a sorcerer before it gets old?

About as many times as you can write a story about a detective solving a crime, a boy and a girl falling in and out of love, or a grizzled cop two days from retirement taking one last case.

It's not the story. It's the writer.


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## Steerpike (Apr 25, 2018)

Yes...actually S&S has made a bit of a comeback in recent years. For the newer stuff, a good place to start is with James Enge's Morlock Ambrosius stories. Maybe also the late Jay Lake's Green stories.


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## Graham J. Darling (Apr 28, 2018)

The "Imaro" series, by Charles Saunders.
The "Gor" series, by John Norman (the first 5 books--after that they're more S&M than S&S).
The "Thongor" series, by Lin Carter.
The "Brak the Barbarian" series, by John Jakes.
"The Tritonian Ring" and others by L. Sprague de Camp.
"The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth" and a few others by Lord Dunsany.
Some of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
"Jack the Giant-Killer" and a few other fairy tales. "St George and the Dragon" and a few other saint tales. Hercules and a few other classic myths.
I think what distinguishes S&S from other Fantasy is the lone hero, as opposed to the fellowship, like in Lord of the Rings or most Arthurian stories.
Terry Pratchett, of course, lampoons S&S tropes in his Discworld series.


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## Malik (Apr 29, 2018)

I'd be remiss to not throw Dragon's Trail in the mix. 

Got a hell of a sequel coming out soon, too.


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## Yora (Apr 30, 2018)

Another great maybe-Sword & Sorcery or proto-Sword & Sorcery are the Hyperborea stories by Clark Ashton Smith. I thought they are almost all really great. I also read his Zothique stories but didn't like any of those. They are lacking the adventure character that Hyperborea has.


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## X Equestris (Apr 30, 2018)

I'm not up on the modern novel scene, but I've seen a fair bit of S&S in short fiction markets.  Some of the stories in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the Sword & Sorceress anthology series (the editor has a bit broader definition of S&S than I'd usually accept, but many of the stories still qualify), Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (probably the highest quality market primarily focused on S&S type stories), the aforementioned Sword and Sorcery Magazine, and some of the content in Broadswords & Blasters.


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## J Q Kaiser (May 22, 2018)

Graham J. Darling said:


> The "Imaro" series, by Charles Saunders.
> The "Gor" series, by John Norman (the first 5 books--after that they're more S&M than S&S).
> The "Thongor" series, by Lin Carter.
> The "Brak the Barbarian" series, by John Jakes.
> ...



Thanks. There were a few of those, including Brak, that I never came across before today. I will be making some orders off Amazon today thanks to you. 

Best,
JQ Kaiser


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