The Sword & Sorcery Saga returns after a long break, and Daniel (@dungeondive) brings two very different books to the table.
First is Darrell Schweitzer’s Mask of the Sorcerer (1995). Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends is, in Daniel’s words, the best work of fantasy he has ever read, so this follow-up had a high bar to clear. It is a sorcery-first novel: a young man inherits his father’s power and finds it a curse, wandering through visions, dreams and the land of the dead. Daniel admits he nearly put it down during a slow first third. His reading group was split, and what kept him going was Schweitzer’s prose. Then a journey to a distant city makes all that mythology-building click, and the last two-thirds turn dark, violent and unexpectedly moving. He didn’t like it as much as We Are All Legends, but Schweitzer is now two for two.
Second is XNOO #1, a new sword-and-sorcery comic anthology from the publishers of The Black Sword Hack. It runs to almost 300 pages of short comics in wildly varied styles, plus essays on RPG history, Bronze Age sword-and-sorcery comics and forgotten fantasy classics. Daniel singles out the layout, which threads a Golden Age-style comic through the middle of an essay. His one complaint is the roughly $50 price for a softcover.
Pick up the video for a flip-through of the anthology and Daniel’s verdict on whether the Schweitzer slog pays off.
Have you ever pushed through a slow opening that turned into a favourite book? And are print anthologies like XNOO worth the premium price to you?