As soon as I finished Ken Follett’s The Evening And The Morning, I dove headfirst into the final novel in his Kingsbridge series: A Column Of Fire. I’m glad I did—it might be the best one yet. A Column Of Fire stands out as markedly different from the rest of the Kingsbridge series. While The…
Hot on the heels of finishing Ken Follett’s World Without End, I devoured The Evening And The Morning, the gripping prequel to The Pillars of the Earth. The Evening And The Morning tells the tale of how the fictional town of Kingsbridge came to be. Many of the novels’ elements are similar to those in…
After months of exploring vintage fantasy, my pendulum has swung back 180-degrees to pure historical fiction, having just finished World Without End by Ken Follett. I’ve had this book since 2007, so reading it has been a long time coming. But I’m very glad I did. World Without End is the sequel to The Pillars…
Finally, with The Swords of Lankhmar, I’ve discovered a complete novel about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser instead of a collection of novellas and short stories! Apparently, this is the only novel Fritz Leiber ever wrote about his famous pair of rascally rogues, which makes this book unique among the series. And fortunately, it’s one…
Fritz Leiber’s stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have kept me coming back for more. So this week, I’m exploring Swords Against Wizardry. As soon as I finished the underwhelming Swords In The Mist, I dove into the fourth book in the series. More so than any of the books since Swords And Deviltry,…
My recent foray into the works of Fritz Leiber inspired me to re-read one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. So, this weekend I dove into Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné. I grew up on Elric. There was no hero more complex, more tragic, or more dangerous than he was. Elric is a…
My foray into the vintage fantasy of Fritz Leiber continues with Swords In The Mist. And while I’ve enjoyed my time with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, I found Swords In The Mist to be the weakest of the first three books in the series. Like the first two books, Swords In The Mist is…
Swords Against Death is not a novel but rather a collection of ten short stories that Lieber authored between 1939 and 1970 (most were written in the 1940s) about his famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Of all the titans of fantasy fiction I read growing up – Howard, Moorcock, Eddings, Tolkien – Fritz Leiber was not among them. I knew of his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, yet somehow I never got around to reading any of his books. But when I discovered earlier this year that…
Of all the books I read in 2019, Lost Gods by Brom was my favorite. It’s rather mind-blowing that it’s taken me a half-year to blog about it, but then again, basically everything that’s happened in 2020 has been a distraction from writing. But as they say, better late than never! Long before I discovered…
When the lockdown began in March and coronavirus coverage dominated the news, I felt oddly compelled to re-read one of several novels about a pandemic. I pulled two books off my shelf: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton and The Stand by Stephen King. I chose The Stand, and it reminded me why I’ve long…