Friday, January 20, 2017

Books read in 2017: No. 3 -- Echoes of Valor II

edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Started: Jan. 5
Finished: Jan. 20

Notes: Continuing my recent Sword & Sorcery readings, I now turn to this 1989 KEW collection of reprints. Included are notes about and these stories by Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Manly Wade Wellman, Ray Bradbury, and Leigh Brackett.

Mini review: This was a fun mix of stories, though I don't consider all of them winners. One fault, in my opinion, was starting off the book with a couple of Howard tales, as Howard's writing is so strong many of the others fall short in comparison. So, I would have put the Howard tales at the end. Wellman's story of Hok in the Stone Age (or possibly even earlier) was probably my next favorite of the lot here, though I didn't care much for Bradbury and Brackett's work on "Lorelei of the Red Mist." To add, not all these tales were Sword & Sorcery, with a few being Sword & Planet or a mixture of sub-genres.

1 comment:

Charles Gramlich said...

There's a third echoes of Valor as well. I liked 'em all pretty well. I actually really like the writing on Lorelie of the Red Mist. The story is not a great one.