Recommend some good sword & sorcery books

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Dumarest

Dumarest

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All I really have is the complete Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, a stack of enjoyable bastardizations perpetrated by L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter, and those Red Sonja novels by David C. Smith & Richard L. Tierney. I also have one Elric book and didn't care for the setting/premise, but might try it again. Aside from that, I don't think I have any fantasy books at all outside of Tolkien (which is not S&S anyway) since I've always been more of a sword & sandals, sword & planet, and sci fi reader when it came to fantasy/sci fi. So gimme your recommendations and, just as important, why.

(Also keep in mind I'm old school and don't go in for newfangled "genre deconstruction" crapola.)
 
If you can find them at a affordable price, I would recommend hunting down the various fantasy anthology series that were fairly prevalent back in the 70's and early 80's. Flashing Swords, Weird Tales, The Year's Best Fantasy Stories and various one-off collections edited by Lin Carter*, Swords Against Darkness by Andrew J. Offutt, Echoes Of Valor by Karl Edward Wagner, and Heroic Visions by Jessica Amanda Salmonson are all pretty safe bets. You can sample a wide array of various authors with any one book, and because they're short stories no one story overstays its welcome. As a bonus, I find S&S short fiction a better inspiration for D&D-type scenarios than modern doorstopper trilogies.

If you've never read any of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, they should probably be at the top of your list.

The Thieves' World shared-world anthologies are also good, if you don't mind your S&S getting pretty dark at times.

Finally, I'm a big Clark Ashton Smith fangirl. His stuff can be hard to find in print these days, but a lot of it is in public domain and available freely online. His three main fantasy short story cycles include Averoigne (a province in medieval France with much in the way of supernatural happenings), Hyperborea (prehistorical fantasy, and a main influence on REH's Hyboria), and Zothique (dying earth setting with lots of necromancy), as well as some Atlantis stuff that ties in somewhat loosely to the Hyperborea stories. He also wrote no small amount of Yog-Sothothery to tie in to Lovecraft's writings (he was a contemporary of REH and Lovecraft).

*Not a fan of Carter's own fiction or especially his Conan pastiches, but his work in curating other authors as an editor was excellent.
 
Tulpa Girl said:
If you've never read any of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, they should probably be at the top of your list.
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Hear! Hear!

Further, I’m going to recommend some of the fantasy works of Poul Anderson: not Three Hearts and Three Lions, which is a bit twee, but certainly The Broken Sword and The Merman’s Children.

Plus maybe Barry Hughart’s The Bridge of Birds.
 
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A third mention for Fritz Leiber’s Fahfrd & Gray Mouser. My Favorites.

If you didn’t like the Elric book you may not like these but I always liked Moorcocks books about Corum Jhaelen Irsei more. The Sword trilogy and The Silver Hand trilogy.
 
Can't say enough about Karl Edward Wagner's Kane: still kicking myself for not buying the omnibuses when they were under three figures (and the paperbacks are not much cheaper).

In print and available? Just listened to Joe Abercrombie's first trilogy--pretty brutal (violent but w/o George RR Martin's rape scenes)* but I did listen to all, and am moving on to his other books.


*Any Thomas Convenant fans here?
I find the Hansen's disease angle interesting, but even without the foundational act of violence
I still found little to engage me. Maybe it's better on the page, though I'm a big Scott Brick fan.
 
Henry Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis. This paperback also includes the two stories he wrote featuring Prince Raynor. Adrian Cole wrote new stories featuring Elak (now King of Atlantis), and a new edition is in the works that feature some additional stories to the ones in the original compilation he put out..

If you like Charles Saunders, check out Milton Davis. He's got his series Changa's Safari, and Meiji. He also edited the two Griots anthologies, which I believe also include some stories by Saunders. He's also written some books/stories set in Ki Khanga, which is also an rpg

Since you have Conan, I'd also suggest reading his Kull stories if you liked them. Not sure if you'd like it, but C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry might appeal to you.

Gardener Fox had 3 different Sword & Sorcery series: Kothar, Kyrik and Niall. He also created Crom, who appeared in 2 comic adventures. There's a couple of books featuring new Crom adventures written by two different authors, as that character is in the public domain now. I read the first Kothar book and the Crom comics. Crom is akin to Conan, while Kothar is similar, but he has a magic blade.

John Jakes had Brak the Barbarian.

There is a magazine called Savage Realms Monthly that features a variety of S&S authors. I've read 3 issues so far on kindle (it is available in print), and they lean very old school for most of the stories they feature
 
Fafhrd and the grey mouser would get my vote in a heartbeat. I’ll also recommend Zothique by Clark Ashton smith. If you think Howard is a bit obscure with language, and Lieber is even more creative, CAS will please you. First author that forced me to say if I don’t have to look up a word every page I’m a bit disappointed.
 
Fritz Leiber's definantly the next classic author to get.
Those Fathrd & Grey Mouser novellas were very Sword & Sorcery - I think I read that Leiber first coined the S&S term. His novella's were very different to what Howard wrote, yet they were absolutely instrumental establishing alot of tropes and flavour for Classic Fantasy, easily seen in D&D.
 
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Let me add another vote for everything that has been recommended - except Imaro, can't find those - and add an emphasis on Fritz Leiber and David Gemmell. His Druss stuff is Swords and Sorcery, as well as Skilgannon. I think I have them all, in various languages.

Michael Moorcock is also a good one, but I'd recommend his Runestaff series which also has the advantage of being on the cusp between S&S and S&P. I mean, they have flying machines, guns that kill with beams, and the line between sorcerer and wizard is thin at best...sounds familiar:grin:?
 
The Drenai novels by David Gemmell are fantastic and very much in the S&S silo, as are Joe Abercrombie's (also fantastic). Both are mentioned upstream so this is me giving them the thumbs up.
 
Joe Acrombie's The First Law trilogy is really great, one of the characters is very much a barbarian raider of the Howardian ilk.
Not sure if the entire series could be classified as Sword & Sorcery overall, but it certainly has elements of it at times, mixed in with grimdark and overall it's a great modern Classic Fantasy series.
 
Self Saboteur said:
If you didn’t like the Elric book you may not like these but I always liked Moorcocks books about Corum Jhaelen Irsei more. The Sword trilogy and The Silver Hand trilogy.
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I also like the Corum books, although the first trilogy much more than the second one.

Also, Moorcock wrote three planetary romance books known as the Michael Kane trilogy: City Of The Beast (aka Warriors Of Mars), Lord Of The Spiders (aka Blades Of Mars), and The Masters Of The Pit. Because they were very much a homage to Burroughs (and he wrote them under a pseudonym at the time), they don't have some of Moorcock's usual literary tics, and if nothing else are a lot less brooding and melancholy.

urbwar said:
Since you have Conan, I'd also suggest reading his Kull stories if you liked them.
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I usually wind up recommending the Solomon Kane stories. A lot of Howard's heroes are very similar in nature, but as a Puritan of the late 16th and early 17th century, Kane is juuuuust different enough in temperament to make the distinction worthwhile (although not quite so different as Kane himself would believe).
 
Tulpa Girl said:
I usually wind up recommending the Solomon Kane stories. A lot of Howard's heroes are very similar in nature, but as a Puritan of the late 16th and early 17th century, Kane is juuuuust different enough in temperament to make the distinction worthwhile (although not quite so different as Kane himself would believe).
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The hat can make the hero...
 
Tulpa Girl said:
If you can find them at a affordable price, I would recommend hunting down the various fantasy anthology series that were fairly prevalent back in the 70's and early 80's. Flashing Swords, Weird Tales, The Year's Best Fantasy Stories and various one-off collections edited by Lin Carter*, Swords Against Darkness by Andrew J. Offutt, Echoes Of Valor by Karl Edward Wagner, and Heroic Visions by Jessica Amanda Salmonson are all pretty safe bets. You can sample a wide array of various authors with any one book, and because they're short stories no one story overstays its welcome. As a bonus, I find S&S short fiction a better inspiration for D&D-type scenarios than modern doorstopper trilogies.

If you've never read any of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories, they should probably be at the top of your list.

The Thieves' World shared-world anthologies are also good, if you don't mind your S&S getting pretty dark at times.

Finally, I'm a big Clark Ashton Smith fangirl. His stuff can be hard to find in print these days, but a lot of it is in public domain and available freely online. His three main fantasy short story cycles include Averoigne (a province in medieval France with much in the way of supernatural happenings), Hyperborea (prehistorical fantasy, and a main influence on REH's Hyboria), and Zothique (dying earth setting with lots of necromancy), as well as some Atlantis stuff that ties in somewhat loosely to the Hyperborea stories. He also wrote no small amount of Yog-Sothothery to tie in to Lovecraft's writings (he was a contemporary of REH and Lovecraft).

*Not a fan of Carter's own fiction or especially his Conan pastiches, but his work in curating other authors as an editor was excellent.
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Everything Tulpa Girl Tulpa Girl posted basically sums up what I was going to post.

Edit: Now that I read all the posts... What they all said! (points above his post). Awesome list of books.
 
AsenRG said:
Let me add another vote for everything that has been recommended - except Imaro, can't find those - and add an emphasis on Fritz Leiber and David Gemmell. His Druss stuff is Swords and Sorcery, as well as Skilgannon. I think I have them all, in various languages.

Michael Moorcock is also a good one, but I'd recommend his Runestaff series which also has the advantage of being on the cusp between S&S and S&P. I mean, they have flying machines, guns that kill with beams, and the line between sorcerer and wizard is thin at best...sounds familiar:grin:?
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Allow me to cautiously recommend the 1st and 3rd Gor novels by John Norman (Tarnsman of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor). They are definitely Sword and Planet novels and are very clearly ripping off inspired by John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

The main selling point of the Gor novels is that they're bondage erotica (though the author denies that they're erotica). And there is a great deal of political and philosophical navel-gazing tied up with the BDSM, because Gor is strictly maledom/femsub and Norman likes to wax on at length about how happy this makes everybody because it's the Natural Order. And if that turns your crank, well, you might find the rest of the series enjoyable to a lesser or greater degree.

But the 1st and 3rd novels are mostly free of that sort of thing, and are therefore more accessible to a general audience. And for all his considerable faults as a writer (his sense of pacing is atrocious, and he never met an adverb he didn't like), Norman is a solid world-builder. He is very good at coming up with animals and sapient races that feel alien. Not in a plausible way, but in that John Carter, Warlord of Mars way. The way that hints at lost cities of ancient high-tech races now consumed by alien jungles.

I did a Let's Read thread over at TBP for the first two Gor novels and part of the third, and in the main people were surprised that they were actually decent sword-and-planet stories.
 
Afterburner said:
Allow me to cautiously recommend the 1st and 3rd Gor novels by John Norman (Tarnsman of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor). They are definitely Sword and Planet novels and are very clearly ripping off inspired by John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

The main selling point of the Gor novels is that they're bondage erotica (though the author denies that they're erotica). And there is a great deal of political and philosophical navel-gazing tied up with the BDSM, because Gor is strictly maledom/femsub and Norman likes to wax on at length about how happy this makes everybody because it's the Natural Order. And if that turns your crank, well, you might find the rest of the series enjoyable to a lesser or greater degree.

But the 1st and 3rd novels are mostly free of that sort of thing, and are therefore more accessible to a general audience. And for all his considerable faults as a writer (his sense of pacing is atrocious, and he never met an adverb he didn't like), Norman is a solid world-builder. He is very good at coming up with animals and sapient races that feel alien. Not in a plausible way, but in that John Carter, Warlord of Mars way. The way that hints at lost cities of ancient high-tech races now consumed by alien jungles.

I did a Let's Read thread over at TBP for the first two Gor novels and part of the third, and in the main people were surprised that they were actually decent sword-and-planet stories.
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I did a Let's Skim of Tales of Gor...which is actually a very decent d6 variant for Swords and Planet games. I'm that OTHER guy who appreciates Gor as a Swords and planet setting.
(Desborough himself is the third, which means that getting a party of such people together isn't quite impossible...just real tough).
 
Yup, first read the first nine Gor books back in high school. Really enjoyed them, over all they are definitely well done sword & sorcery books.
 
A lot of great rec's above but Karl Edward Wagner's Kane might be my favorite, and the fact that his books are out of print and only available at outrageous prices is...an outrage!
 
GildorJM said:
A lot of great rec's above but Karl Edward Wagner's Kane might be my favorite, and the fact that his books are out of print and only available at outrageous prices is...an outrage!
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Perhaps my sole (which makes it hurt that much more) regret of resisting FOMO and being cheap was passing up on those hardcover collections when they came out...
 
Mosker said:
Perhaps my sole (which makes it hurt that much more) regret of resisting FOMO and being cheap was passing up on those hardcover collections when they came out...
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Yeah, I get it. I actually only discovered Kane recently, so Kindle it was. :sad:
Hopefully someone will put out a nice edition before KEW passes into complete obscurity..such a great S&S and horror writer.
 
Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stuff, for sure. There are seven books in all, but only the 5th is a proper novel. The rest are collections of short stories and novellas.

These stories are remarkable for their worldbuilding. The world of Nehwon feels like a real, living, inhabited one. There are different lands and peoples. Our heroes are fallible, flawed men, but at their core, decent enough. They're not superheroes. There is a thread of humor that runs throughout the entire 7-book series. There is a sense of real passage of time. And, IMO, a proper resolution.

The main characters are what will either turn you on or put you off. Fafhrd is a hulking northern barbarian, who yearns for "civilization." The Gray Mouser is a small, city-born thief and aspiring magician. He is the deadliest swordsman ever to have lived, and, arguably, the more "evil" of the twain.

Their adventures aren't world-hangs-in-the-balance affairs. They're often small, simple adventures, sometimes centering around where the pair will sleep and what they will eat. Their fortunes, ebb and flow, and not just monetarily. Soemtimes they find themselves at odds with one another.

The stories were originally published between the 1930s and the 1980s, and boy is there a big difference between some of the earlier stories and some of the later ones. Especially with regard to explicitness. I view this as a feature, rather than a bug, YMMV.

I believe the stories were written and published in a non-chronological fashion. But the collected editions are supposed to present them in chronological order. To be honest, I found the 6th book in a thrift shop, and it was the one I read first. Had I read them in order, I may not have finished them. The're all good, in my opinion, except the first, which is just okay. But, taken as a whole, the series is great. Leiber's prose crackles with wit and humor, and he is equally deft at handling action, sex or humor.

I've always wanted my S&S books to read more like actual D&D adventures than high art, and Leiber really straddles that line expertly.
 
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Kindle it is, indeed:thumbsup:!
 
This author isn't strictly 'Sword & Sorcery' per say but I'd call his work Sword & Sorcery "adjacent".

For my money he captures much of the same vigor and spirit of Howards S&S writing, though no one alive truly emulates the great Texan Bards work IMO.

C.L. Werner
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C. L. Werner: books, biography, latest update

Follow C. L. Werner and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com's C. L. Werner Author Page.
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His 'Witchfinder' and 'Bruenor the Bounty Hunter' stories are good, as well as his stand alone novels.

Also the 'Malus the Darkblade' series by Dan Abnett are good pulpy stuff IMO. Werner also wrote a 6th book carrying on the series begun by Abnett!
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Abnett and Werner are my favorite 'Warhammer' authors, and as well liked as Abnett is, and I do like his stuff, I feel Werner's is better as it's closer to "pulp" writing than Abnett's.




.
 
Would Vance's The Dying Earth books and stories count? There are swords, there's a bunch of sorcery. They're foundational to fantasy rather than deconstructive. Maybe a little more psychedelic than REH, Lieber et al. Lots of picaresque adventures and weird stuff. Worth a read if you haven't somehow already indulged.
 
Korgoth said:
This author isn't strictly 'Sword & Sorcery' per say but I'd call his work Sword & Sorcery "adjacent".

For my money he captures much of the same vigor and spirit of Howards S&S writing, though no one alive truly emulates the great Texan Bards work IMO.

C.L. Werner
www.amazon.com

C. L. Werner: books, biography, latest update

Follow C. L. Werner and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com's C. L. Werner Author Page.
www.amazon.com

His 'Witchfinder' and 'Bruenor the Bounty Hunter' stories are good, as well as his stand alone novels.

Also the 'Malus the Darkblade' series by Dan Abnett are good pulpy stuff IMO. Werner also wrote a 6th book carrying on the series begun by Abnett!
Amazon product

Abnett and Werner are my favorite 'Warhammer' authors, and as well liked as Abnett is, and I do like his stuff, I feel Werner's is better as it's closer to "pulp" writing than Abnett's.




.
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I've read the Brunner books, and I'm working on the Witch Hunter books.

I don't know that I would call either of them "Sword and Sorcery", but yes, they are adjacent as you say. Brunner in particular is low-stakes dark fantasy where the primary color palette is mud, blood, and shit.

The first Gotrek and Felix book, Trollslayer, is a collection of short stories that would also fit this thread. Down-on-their-luck adventurers just trying to get by in a very hostile, very grimy world. The stories get a bit more grandiose as the books pile up, so I don't think they quite fit this thread. (I mean, they're good. They're just out of spec for the thread.) But that first collection of short stories is aces.
 
Karl Edward Wagner's Kane, Jack Vance's Dying Earth, and Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea stories.

Edit: I assume you have already read Howard's excellent Kull and Solomon Kane stories.
 
Lots of great suggestions so far! Here are a couple that haven't been mentioned yet:

The Nifft the Lean series by Michael Shea

The Bard series by Keith Taylor
 
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