When I was 9, a rabid “Savage Sword of Conan” fan, I would run to the local comic shop and, even before the issue was done, begin forming a letter to the editor in my head. Every month. Nope, he needs a bigger sword. No sir, you never want to enter a tavern without a shield. I actually remember thinking: Oh come on. What kind of fool has a meal without his shield?... Conan's no fool.
Then I'd realize that they hadn't printed my last letter. What! Those crazy people.
I don't know that I ever "got" that people do not, generally, keep a sword with them at absolutely all times. I'm not entirely certain that I even got why the Conan novels didn't include an address for my suggestions. Nonetheless, I was hooked.
"Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
Oh, man. Good stuff.
Then, rummaging in one of Portland, Oregon's many used book store, I discovered something so fantastically amazing, so utterly, breathtakingly bizarre that I'm sure my 11 year old brain flipped inside my head. The world spun: There was a whole section of sword and sorcery books (conveniently placed nearby "Conan's novels") that did not star my favorite barbarian. They were called fantasy novels.
What in... THE HELL????
Where did all these come from?
My world was all at once rocked and expanded. And my love of old school fantasy carried on. When I was 29—in the work van. On the way to the construction site downtown. I'd be reading some kind of old sword and sorcery yarn like "The Black Company", just enjoying the hell out it.
And now at 39, I still do it. There’s something about that old school fantasy I can’t give up. Love Glen Cook. David Gemmell. Robert Howard. I may have read them with a smirk at fourteen years old, a sarcastic sense of nostalgia at twenty, but by age thirty I had quit making excuses. I loved it. Still do. Yea I read the “serious” stuff: Jonathon Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer winners... The greats. I even started to think of fantasy as a guilty pleasure and I was “relieved” when reviewers called Patrick Rothfuss’ “The Name of the Wind” a thoroughly adult meditation.
But then I thought. Hey. Hold on. Guilty pleasure. Innocent pleasure. Work-release pleasure. Who gives a damn. It’s a pleasure. Even that masterwork of speculative fiction, McCarthy’s “The Road” was bit a depressing for my taste. Dark, I like. But depressing is not what I’d call a pleasure. When, I would ask myself, is someone going to pick up a sword and stab a damn Moon Yeti?
And alas, *spoiler alert* McCarthy's “The Road” had no Moon Yetis.
But that’s cool. Because it was Cormac McCarthy Fantasy.
Which brings me to why I’m telling you all this: I want you to download a Thomas Head Fantasy. I think you'll get a kick out it. But at any rate, this ain’t your Moon Yeti fantasy. Or Pulitzer Prize fantasy. It’s something in between. Like I said, Thomas Head fantasy. I promise it’s totally adult without being brooding. Dark without being depressing. And, at turns, it's funny. Not silly funny. Or parady funny. You'll see what I mean. You'll get it. You’re gonna love Magnatius - an introspective swordmaster and tough old goat, so bleak he views hope as a fairy tale, one told by ghosts. Gamble - a zaftig, gluttonous nun. And Celli - a poet who gains his fame through intentionally bad prose. Not to mention the rest of the villians he has to cut down for lack of moon yetis.
I like to think of it as something the earth might one day spit into a bookstore.
A what?
Something between a moon yeti and a Pulitzer prize?... lol, whatver you wanna call it, thanks for having a read. Have a fantastic day, God bless you, and thank you for your time!
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