Sword and Sorcery Vision Quest
About a week ago I decided to read all of my multi-author sword and sorcery anthologies in an attempt to better understand the genre with an eye toward building a Planet Stories compilation featuring an entertaining sampling thereof.
Because I am a persnickety fuss about this sort of thing, I plan to start with the oldest book first and work my way through all of the anthologies, posting my thoughts here. I've read several of these stories before, but I've also acquired a lot of these books over the past two years and haven't even cracked them. I'm trying to go into each one fresh, and see where my modern reading sense takes me (as opposed to what I might have thought was cool when I was 12).
By posting the list of my multi-author anthologies here I hope to show that this is a project of significant magnitude. Add to this that there are surely "must-have" collections I will acquire along the way, and you can see that this obsession will clearly lead to madness. It's certainly going to take me a while.
Here are the books, in order of publication. To retain my sanity I am drawing the line at 1985, since that's about the time I started paying serious attention to fantasy and it's as good a place as any. A couple of anthologies slip past this deadline on account of the fact that I already own them, but I don't want to make this any worse than it already is.
THE ANTHOLOGIES
THE FANTASTIC SWORDSMEN, L. Sprague de Camp (Ed.). Pyramid Books, May 1967.
THE YOUNG MAGICIANS, Lin Carter (Ed.), Ballantine Books, October 1969.
THE MIGHTY SWORDSMEN, Hans Stefan Santesson (Ed.), Lancer Books, 1970.
WARLOCKS AND WARRIORS, L. Sprague de Camp (Ed.), Putnam, 1970.
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD, Lin Carter (Ed.), Ballantine Books, September 1971.
SWORDSMEN AND SUPERMEN, Donald M. Grant (?), Centaur Press, 1972.
FLASHING SWORDS! #2, Lin Carter (Ed.), Dell, 1974.
SAVAGE HEROES: TALES OF MAGICAL FANTASY, Michel Parry (Ed.), Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1975.
LIN CARTER MASTER OF ADULT FANTASY PRESENTS THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY STORIES, Lin Carter (Ed.), DAW, 1975.
LIN CARTER PRESENTS THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY STORIES: 2, Lin Carter (Ed.), DAW, 1976.
SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS, Andrew J. Offutt (Ed.), Zebra Books, February 1977.
FLASHING SWORDS! #4: BARBARIANS AND BLACK MAGICIANS, Lin Carter (Ed.), Dell, 1977.
LIN CARTER PRESENTS THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY STORIES: 3, Lin Carter (Ed.), DAW, 1977.
SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS II, Andrew J. Offutt (Ed.), Zebra Books, September 1977.
SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III, Andrew J. Offutt (Ed.), Zebra Books, 1978.
HEROIC FANTASY, Gerald W. Page & Hank Reinhardt (Ed.), DAW, 1979.
THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY STORIES: 7, Arthur W. Saha (Ed.), DAW, 1981.
FLASHING SWORDS! #5: DEMONS AND DAGGERS, Lin Carter (Ed.), Dell, 1981.
ECHOES OF VALOR, Karl Edward Wagner (Ed.), Tor, 1987.
ECHOES OF VALOR II, Karl Edward Wagner (Ed.), Tor, 1989.
THE HUNT LIST
THE GHOUL KEEPERS, Leo Margulies (Ed.), Pyramid Books, 196?.
SWORDS AND SORCERY, L. Sprague de Camp (Ed.), Pyramid Books, 1963.
THE SPELL OF SEVEN, L. Sprague de Camp (Ed.), Pyramid Books, 1965.
THE MIGHTY BARBARIANS, Hans Stefan Santesson (Ed.), Lancer Books, 197?.
This week's vacation trip to Whistler, British Columbia gave me the opportunity to get started with the very first book on the list:
THE FANTASTIC SWORDSMEN
Edited by L. Sprague de Camp
Pyramid Books, May 1967
The oldest multi-author anthology in my collection came by way of Abe Books when I was tracking down all of Henry Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis stories for the 2007 Planet Stories edition. L. Sprague de Camp comes with a lot of baggage for me, as I am not a fan of his Robert E. Howard pastiches and I thought his Lovecraft biography (which I read as a teenager) seemed to contain a somewhat disrespectful approach to the subject and his work. But I've forgiven Lin Carter of greater sins for his wisdom and influence as an editor, so I am willing to give de Camp the benefit of the doubt.
The book's cover boasts adventures by Conan, Elak, Brak, and Elric, which is as fitting a place as any to start my journey. I've read most of Howard's canonical Conan stories in the last decade, but it's been years since I read Moorcock's Elric and I've always avoided Brak because the character's author, John Jakes, went on to write historical romances about the Civil War that were adapted into 1980s television miniseries featuring the likes of Patrick Swayzee and Jonathan Frakes. Unlike the obscure Elak of Atlantis, Brak seemed to me a brazen Conan ripoff in the mold of Gardner F. Fox's Kothar. Fun in its own way, but not what I'm looking for. With eager expectations and unexplored territory in sight, I plunged ahead.
De Camp's introduction, "Tellers of Tales," reads like the boilerplate 1960s apologia. Some sophisticated readers look down their nose at fantasy, but it's really ok to enjoy the sorts of stories with wizards and spells and stuff, & etc.. Invoking historical storytellers from the oral tradition to the modern age, de Camp stresses that the purpose of storytelling was to entertain, noting that the last century has seen authors' focus shift to "secondary aims" such as to "point out a moral, or teach a fact, or expound his faith or philosophy, or startle his hearers by some novel idea or trick, or exorcise his private demons by putting them into story form." With a swipe at James Joyce's indecipherable novel Ulysses, we're off to the races.
Interestingly, although the term "sword and sorcery" had been coined by Fritz Lieber 6 years prior to this anthology and de Camp edited a book with the same title for Pyramid 4 years prior to this one, de Camp does not use the phrase anywhere in the The Fantastic Swordsmen. Instead, the back cover terms the tales "heroic fantasy," a name that we'll see more of later.
The last paragraph of the book suggests that this is the third of a series of fantasy anthologies (ack!), the first being Swords and Sorcery (presumably), and the second being The Spell of Seven (again, presumably). A bit of web sleuthing has turned up that the fourth de Camp fantasy anthology in this series is Warlocks and Warriors, which I also picked up when tracking down all of the Elak stories last year.
Let's take a look at the stories.
BLACK LOTUS
by Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch famously wrote the novel that became the movie Psycho, and was a member of the Lovecraft Circle of influential pulp-era fantasists who kept up correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft. De Camp's introduction recalls that Bloch once said, of himself "Oh, I'm just an ordinary guy. I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar, on my desk."
Charming. In "Black Lotus" we have a young Bloch indulging in Dunsanian orientalism by way of Scheherazade. The story features a young prince in an empty castle looking out upon his deserted, fallen empire while indulging in the narcotic smoke and visions of the deadly black lotus. The tale contains an avalanche of imaginative descriptions of the fall of this empire and the drug euphoria of its isolated lord. He learns of the black lotus from the captured spellbooks of conquered empires, for example, so as far as atmospherics go the story is an excellent start for the anthology. Contrary to de Camp's admonition in the introduction, however, Bloch's whole story is draped over the skeleton of a "trick or novel idea" meant to startle the reader.
Lovecraft is brazenly indulgent with the "trick story" approach, and it gets predictable and repetitive even in the hands of one of the greatest masters to ever pen a fantasy story. In the hands of a 16-year-old Robert Bloch, the "surprise" ending is predictable four pages before the end of the story, so the reader just sort of goes along grudgingly for the ride, awaiting the obvious conclusion.
"Black Lotus" is an imaginative, lushly illustrated portrait of a kingdom at its nadir. As description, it excels. As a story that goes from beginning to middle to end, it's far from a masterpiece of fantasy.
THE FORTRESS UNVANQUISHABLE SAVE FOR SACNOTH
by Lord Dunsany
The fairytale whimsy of Lord Dunsany, an Anglo-Irish writer of the early 20th century, inspired numerous foundational fantasists such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Fletcher Pratt. Like all of Dunsany's fantasy tales, the ingeniously named "The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth" reads like a cross between a fancy prancy whimsy tale and standard heroic fantasy. The description is extremely lush, and the action tends toward the epic. Dunsany wrote all of his stories with a quill pen, and you can tell just by the way the words appear on the page.
At first I wanted to dismiss the story and its muffery puffery, but Dunsany writes with a mythic vocabulary that speaks to something primal in us all, like a ghost story told round a campfire or a child's fairytale play. The story of the Fortress Unvanquishable is a tale of a plague of nightmares coming from an evil castle ruled by a child of Satan. The fortress cannot be violated save by the magic sword Sacnoth, a blade that is not a blade but the only meltable portion of a great metal dragon. A lone hero faces the dragon, melts down its body to form the sword, and takes off toward the tower. He breaks into the tower, ascends its many treacherous steps, and has a swordfight with an evil lord capable of dodging a neck-slash by picking his head up off his shoulders. It's wild, Sleepy Hollow stuff, and it's utterly engrossing.
"The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth" is echoed in the "sword that is not a sword" Llyr in Henry Kuttner's The Dark World, and the mysterious tower that must be ascended is so common a theme in the genre that it appears thrice more in this anthology (in the Jakes, Moorcock, and Pascalis offerings) as well as in The Dark World, which I also re-read over the weekend.
Is this because Kuttner, de Camp, Moorcock, and Jakes were all inspired by Lord Dunsany or the Fortress Unvanquishable, or is it because Dunsany was but an early writer to capture the atmospherics of ascending a haunted tower? I'm not sure, but the way Dunsany writes, it's easy to believe he's at least partly responsible for many of sword and sorcery's mythic themes.
DRUMS OF TOMBALKU
by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp
Like many young fans of fantasy growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, my introduction to Conan the Barbarian came from an ongoing series of anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. Each featured (occasionally monkeyed with) Howard stories and a profusion of "pastiches" written by the editors, either finished from scraps of outlines Bob Howard had written down before he killed himself, adapted from other non-Conan Howard tales, or pulled straight from the editors' asses. Many of these stories were terrible imitations of genuine Howard, but even the pale imitation was enough to hook me as a kid. Conan is, in my view, the ultimate sword and sorcery character, and Robert E. Howard is the ultimate sword and sorcery writer.
Yes, one must pay respects to the likes of Dunsany (though I find myself as yet unwilling to delve deeply into de Camp and Carter's pet cause William Morris for fear of terminal boredom), and contemporaries like Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Lieber (who coined the term) must be acknowledged for their own demented genius, Howard represents the critical turning point in the genre. Whereas the work of Dunsany and others of his era are a sort of proto-sword and sorcery, Robert E. Howard's tales are pure sword and sorcery. No question about it. Those who followed him may have been influenced by Dunsany, or the Norse sagas, or Morris, or any number of earlier authors, but everyone who came after him was influenced by Robert E. Howard.
In recent years, Del Rey has released a must-own collection of Howard anthologies that attempts to restore the author's original intent, revert the 70-year creep of revisionist editing, and present pure Howard. The result is genius, a stampede of aggression and imagination that solidified the genre of sword and sorcery and that shames its many imitators, right up through the modern day. (The critical books in this new series, by the way, are The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan).
These days, public taste runs to the pure Howard strain of Conan, and the pastiches of de Camp and Carter (to say nothing of those by Robert Jordan, Andrew J. Offutt, or a host of others) have fallen into disfavor.
It's been a while since I've read any of the pastiches, having considered them beneath consideration since my early teens. Ironically much of my early love of the genre comes from these stories, but my modern sensibility tells me they are far inferior to Howard and not all that worthwhile. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle of this jumble of expectations, and I'm looking forward to delving into the situation with an open mind.
The first Conan pastiche on my sword and sorcery vision quest is "Drums of Tombalku," a 5-chapter novelette. According to de Camp's introduction, Glenn Lord (long-time caretaker of the Howard literary estate) discovered the story in manuscript form in the 1950s while going through a batch of Howard's papers. The unfinished work amounted to a draft of the first half of the story and a loose outline for the whole tale. De Camp added the title, tinkered a bit with punctuation, and wrote the second half of the story.
"Drums of Tombalku" takes place in the southern lands of the Hyborian kingdoms, and forms a sort of "15 years later" sequel to my very favorite Conan story, "Queen of the Black Coast". As such, references to Conan going by the name Amra, which he adopted in that story, bring back fond memories of the very best of Conan.
Interestingly, Conan only really appears in the second half of the story, and though he is referenced early in the tale in a bit of foreshadowing, one wonders if Howard's finished part featured his primary hero at all. Instead, most of the action of "Drums" centers on a wily fighter named Amalric, an Aquilonian outlaw who fought in a mercenary army with Conan only to become separated in the harsh desert. Amalric makes for a charming sword and sorcery protagonist, and is soon joined by the obligatory white woman in peril, this time in the form of a desert-nomad hostage called Lissa.
After a monstrously racist scene in which the (white) hero Amalric kills three black nomads to avoid their inevitable rape of the beautiful prisoner (pretty much because they are black, so it is bound to happen eventually), the story takes a distinct turn for the weird (or is that Weird?), as Lissa seems to be from an unknown desert city called Gazal, and her news of the outside world is some 900 years old.
Because this story is set in what amounts to a fantastic version of Dark Ages Africa, and because it was written by a 1930s farm boy from Texas, there is an awful lot of attention paid to the darkness of the various types of pseudo-Africans, with the darker-skinned characters generally being portrayed as more bestial and base than the half-breed types. Some of it is understandable trappings of the "deepest, darkest Africa" mood being evoked here, and some of it is fairly unadulterated racism. It is all, however, a sign of the times, and basically something you've got to expect when reading popular fiction from this era. It is what it is.
Amalric follows Lissa to Gazal, an isolated, decadent ruined city inhabited by furtive folk and unquiet ghosts of primitive gods. One such creature kidnaps Lissa for a spell until Amalric chases it down in an "ascend the tower" scene reminiscent of "The Fortress Unvanquisable Save for Sacnoth" and puts it to the sword. The story reaches a crescendo in this sequence, which ends with the hero and his woman fleeing the haunted city to the desert.
Were I to guess, this is where the original Howard manuscript ended, with everything else sounding as if it came from a follow-up act. In the rush to exploit Conan in the 60s and 70s, even stories that were not originally written as Conan stories were dressed up as such, and given the fact that Conan does not materially appear in the section Howard wrote it's easy to see how this might not have even been a Conan story at all. I have no evidence of this, mind you, but the focus of the story changes significantly at this point.
Not that it's horrible. Amalric and Lissa are beset upon by more black desert raiders, and when it seems as though all is lost, along comes Conan the Barbarian to save the day. Separated from Amalric and left for dead, Conan instead went to the near-mythic city of Tombalku, where one of the town's two kings happens to be an old buddy from "Queen of the Black Coast". The king makes Conan a general, and when things go bad and the other king and his witch-doctor go into revolt, Conan himself becomes a King of Tombalku.
This last bit seemed worrisome, as it lessened the impact of Howard's original fate for Conan, as King of Aquilonia, the greatest nation of the Hyborian Age. If he's already been a king before that point, doesn't it cheapen the overall effect?
In the de Camp section, what started as a thrilling weird fantasy tale turns into a talkfest about the local politics of the quasi-African city state. It's not that these elements are boring, but they do seem like a different story grafted onto the strong opening, and the overall effect is less than satisfying.
THE GIRL IN THE GEM
By John Jakes
I didn't expect much from this story. My sole experience to date with John Jakes's Brak the Barbarian comes from looking at old paperback covers in used bookstores and uniformly deciding not to buy. Everything about the character, from his appearance to his name to the way books about him were designed just screamed "Conan knock-off," a repetitive photocopy of a photocopy unworthy of serious attention.
Fortunately, Jakes surprised me with an enchanting, fast-paced adventure tale that hooks you from the very start. The first line goes like this: "The yellow-headed barbarian had been sleeping but a short and fitful time when the sinister troop of dwarfs stole down upon him." Unlike the somber bearded fellows of J. R. R. Tolkien, these dwarfs travel in little packs and leap from rooftop to rooftop, climbing walls like caffeinated insect swarms.
The little buggers also work exclusively for the local princess, who administers her star-crossed coastal city-state of Lesser Tyros in the dying days of her once-great father, the king. Centuries ago a staggering earthquake sunk the glittering towers of Great Tyros, and the present city is all that was not claimed by the sea so long ago. Recent tremors have damaged the city further, upsetting the seabed and exposing towers and courtyards trapped beneath the waves for hundreds of years.
On the verge of accepting the mantle of the kingdom, the princess coerces Brak into freeing the soul of her trapped younger sister, which lies in a gem above the old Great Tyros throne room, placed there by an evil sorcerer years ago. The princess comes off as a competent manipulator, and even though she completely plays Brak for a fool he is forced to grudgingly admit that she is a force to be reckoned with. And then, of course, there is kissing.
A word about Brak. He wears a lion-pelt loincloth and sandaled boots. He wears his blond hair in a braided ponytail. So he is totally not like Conan.
Brak dutifully ventures out to a partially submerged causeway and spends some time poking around the water-logged, resurfaced ancient city. Jakes handles the scene with appropriate vividness and lush description, and as mud oozes about the soggy paving stones of Great Tyros and a yellow, alien eye stares out from a darkened puddle, I begin to think that maybe I should not have discounted John Jakes so hastily.
A compelling battle between Brak and the owner of that yellow eye, a squidlike monstrosity known as Hellarms, follows, oozing with wince-inducing descriptions of sucker-mouths sloughing off Brak's exposed skin and shards of the shattered gem slicing cruel gashes in just about everything. By the time the battle is done you hardly notice that Jakes wraps up the story with a fun twist.
"The Girl in the Gem" includes the best battle in the entire book (fitting, as the fight graces the uncredited cover illustration), and marks an evolution in my opinion of John Jakes from a guy to avoid to someone to explore further. The first truly pleasant surprise of the anthology.
DRAGON MOON
By Henry Kuttner
The fourth and final tale in the saga of Elak of Atlantis, Henry Kuttner's post-Howard sword and sorcery series for Weird Tales, brings the character full circle, with new revelations about his noble past and the reappearance of old buddies like the jovial, oft-drunken sidekick Lycon and the druid Dalan.
I enjoyed the Elak stories so much I published an anthology of all of them last year. The book is called Elak of Atlantis, and you should buy it.
THE OTHER GODS
By H. P. Lovecraft
Everything I said above about Robert E. Howard being the pivotal writer of sword and sorcery applies to Howard Phillips Lovecraft in the macabre or "weird" vein of horror story. Without the stories of Lovecraft I wouldn't have half the passion I do for the unusual and uncomfortable in fiction, and discovery of his work is one of life's secret doors to new levels of weirdness. He is Edgar Allan Poe on opium. He is every bit an American literary triumph as Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce.
That said, "The Other Gods" isn't a very good story.
Here we have Lovecraft in full Dunsany mode, soaking in the overripe descriptions of his Dreamlands milieu. The story features the exploits of one Barzai the Wise, who attempts to ascend the forlorn mountain Hatheg-Kla, where the Gods of Earth sometimes take refuge. Barzai and his henchman Atal (who appears in two other Lovecraft tales) go to the top of the mountain. Barzai walks into the mist (Atal wisely stays back). Barzai screams. Barzai says "oops! They are not the Gods of Earth, but the Other Gods!!!1! AIEEEEEE!". The end.
Any Lovecraft story is worth reading for the description, mood, and audacity, but this one is little more than a trick ending attached to 4 pages of set-up.
Lovecraft gets a lot better than this, and the story is a dubious match for sword and sorcery. One wonders if it was included simply because Lovecraft sold books, because de Camp was especially enamored with him, or because it really is a good sword and sorcery tale and my (nebulous) definition is too tight. Either way, it's hardly Lovecraft's best and it is very nearly the weakest effort in the collection.
THE SINGING CITADEL
By Michael Moorcock
And then there is Michael Moorcock. Most famous for his unforgettable sword and sorcery anti-hero Elric of Melniboné, Moorcock spearheaded the 1960s New Wave of science fiction, penned hundreds of short novels and short stories, and kicked science fiction in the ass. His output is exceedingly uneven, much of it dashed off over weekends on brutal deadlines. But among his finer tales (and there are scores of them) can be found an irreverent, irascible genius that virtually shoves the standard tropes of whatever genre he's working in off the pedestal and into a glorious mess on the floor.
Elric is a deliberate reversal of Howard's Conan. Where Conan is a noble savage, Elric is a selfish cosmopolitan. Where Conan is brawny, Elric is a weakling. Were it not for the soul-sucking demon sword Stormbringer, Elric would be little match for his enemies. But with it and his cunning mind, he can rule the world and perhaps the multiverse (a concept Moorcock more or less invented, by the way).
"The Singing Citadel" stands so far superior to the other tales in The Fantastic Swordsmen that its inclusion almost seems unfair to the competition. The protagonists in Dunsany, Lovecraft, and Bloch's offerings are more archetype than character. Amalric, Conan, Brak, and Elak are capable adventurers, but we get little sense of their internal struggles, their weaknesses, their ambitions, and their fears (to say nothing of their personalities). They are serviceable methods by which to move the story forward, but their inherent character is often secondary in interest to the other characters and creatures they encounter in the course of their adventures.
Not so Elric. We see his arrogance and obsessions in full view, and he ends up more likable because of it. You're never sure when reading it if Elric is really a hero or a villain, but you definitely get into his mind and root for him to win, even if he does so by betraying someone he ought to love.
Second only to Conan, Elric of Melniboné is the greatest character of sword and sorcery, and "The Singing Citadel" is a classic story in his mythic cycle. Without a doubt it is the most enjoyable story in the anthology, and is worth tracking down. Fortunately, the story has been reprinted numerous times since 1967, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.
THE TOWER
By Luigi De Pascalis (Translated by L. Sprague de Camp)
L. Sprague de Camp was obviously a huge fan of Italian fan magazine writer Luigi De Pascalis, as he translated this story and wrote a breathless introduction that spends hundreds of words describing the background of De Pascalis's world, even though that background does not come into play in "The Tower" at all. The editor (and translator) closes with a note that "This is a story on two levels. The characters have symbolic as well as literal meanings. In order not to spoil the story by revealing its inner meaning in advance, I shall give Pascalis's explanation--but after the story."
What follows is 10 pages of nonsense about a knight named Urok visiting the bird-infested tower of a wizard, poking his nose where it doesn't belong, getting killed by an unseen monster behind a door, and manifesting as a bas-relief statue on the wall a la the Game of Rassilon in "The Five Doctors". The walls of the room outside the monster's lair bear nine such horrified sculptures, with a space for the 10th, which our hero inhabits after he is killed by the monster. But this is not the end, as the story begins again, just as it had on the first page, with a knight approaching a wizard's tower. Only this time, UROK IS THE WIZARD, AND THE WIZARD IS THE KNIGHT!
Pascalis follows up this shocker with the big thematic reveal promised by de Camp in the introduction: "The tower represents man. The wizard and the knight are instinct and reason in perpetual and alternating conflict. The monster is the human unconscious, which ever more rises into consciousness. The birds of prey, then, represent the obstacles against which reason must always struggle. In sum, I mean that during our lives, as like in the history of civilization, the conflict between the "Urok" and the "Hakon" within us repeats itself over and over. In describing the monster's cave, I speak of nine sculptured figures. After the knight is slain, there are ten. The tragedy has already happened on other occasions, and nobody knows how many more times it will repeat itself. Actually, the contrasting elements are the wizard and the knight. The two personages in the story, rendered practically immortal by the monster's will, are compelled to act out their alternating roles."
Mmm hmm. Whatever. This story was a complete waste of time, and (despite some overwrought but compelling description) it's easily the weakest effort of the lot.
FINAL ANALYSIS
De Camp's third sword and sorcery anthology provides a good overview of the genre from the writing of some of its earliest practitioners through to the modern times of 1967. In general, the newer stories seem to have more life in them, with Moorcock's offering "The Singing Citadel" being the star of the show. "The Fortress Unvanquishalble Save for Sacnoth" and "The Girl in the Gem" deserve further consideration, while "Dragon Moon" and "Drums of Tombalku" are solid representations of the genre if not exceptionally noteworthy. "Black Lotus" and "The Other Gods," on the other hand, are inferior offerings from authors with far better tales to offer, while "The Tower" is perhaps best forgotten.