SLITHER THE BOOK BURGLAR has raided a lich library for rare scrolls, grimoires, codices, librams, and books, and, having returned to his shadowy winesoak in the seedy part of town, is ready to find a fence! Illustration provided by Gray Moth.
Library Lucre features short reviews of new sword and sorcery (less than 300 words). Contact us if you have a book you want to review or want us to review. -JRC
Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World, by Steve Dilks (Carnelian Press, 2020), paperback, 300 pages. Reviewed by Jason Ray Carney.
This is great, old school sword and sorcery in the 1970s, Lin Carter and Gardner F. Fox, vein. I was thinking about homebrewing beer while reading this: in homebrew contests, successful beer is judged "to style," i.e. the gold medal beers hew closely to the profile of the style judged, i.e. a gold medal "Dortmunder" lager, has, according to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines, this narrow flavor profile: "Grainy-sweet malt nor floral, spicy, or herbal hops dominate, but both are in good balance with a touch of malty sweetness." The gold medal Dortmunder lager isn't the one that is iconoclastic, that incorporates, say, banana pulp or cardamom pods. Instead, it is the one that the skillful brewer creates to satisfy the judge's very specific flavor expectations. In an analogous way, Gunthar: Warrior of the Lost World is "gold medal" sword and sorcery anthology, an artful execution of the genre's archetypical conventions, tropes, and distinctive diction (a true love letter to the genre). Nevertheless, there are a few compelling innovations, i.e. the prevalence of super science (perhaps a nod to KEW's Bloodstone?) as a kind of foil to sorcery, the incorporation of mutants, and the use of fever dream montage and vivid imagery; however, the joy of this anthology is not how it experiments with the genre but in how it gives a spark of vitality to a specific period of the genre again, i.e. the S&S of the 1970s. A collection of novellas, a standout was Lord of the Black Throne, specifically its phantasmagoric ending, a montage of sword and sorcery images that recalled psychedelic, blacklight-illumined velvet paintings of sorcerers and warriors battling at the end of time in cosmic depths, or the airbrush tableaus of eldritch skullduggery on 1970s custom vans. The cover art painting by Regis Moulton is great, and the rough-edged interior ink illustrations by Steve Lines perfectly harmonize with the stories. If you enjoy Thongor, Brak, and Kyrik, you will enjoy the adventures of Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World. Available on >Amazon<.
