A collection of sword and sorcery stories. Mostly written by dudes, and mostly uninspired or poorly written. They're all quite stylized: these are clearly authors who have either developed their authorial voices or are aping other, very distinct voices. I kinda enjoyed:Steven Erikson, "Goats of Glory": A pitiful village is excited by the approach of a ragtag band of soldiers, but fully expects them all to die when they announce they'll be sleeping in the nearby haunted ruins. The combat writing

Five riders, slumped in their saddles, rode five battered, beaten-down horses into a village.It almost has that signature beginning of a really bad joke, right?But then you see whose name is behind such beginning and you realize that, no matter the pun, this is anything but a joke. Goats of Glory is the first short story in Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery anthology by Jonathan Strahan. It's the story about five members of a company called Rams, company that i...

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery is an excellent new anthology of original short fantasy fiction, featuring an impressive mixture of established genre masters and newer, highly talented authors. The book’s introduction, by editors Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan, does an excellent job defining the sword & sorcery sub-genre and placing it in its historical context. This is an interesting read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the genre and doesn’t have a copy o...

I read only:1. Goats of Glory (Steven Erikson) because of the ultimate order. Yessir! ★★★☆☆2. In the stacks (Scott Lynch) and my visits to the library will never be the same. (Also, I want a pet vocabuvore). ★★★★★

Collection of fantasy stories from different authors, serving, in some cases as peeking hole into their vast literary worlds. Few stories were pretty good, some dark, some funny, some with interesting ideas. But majority is average, few even below average. Not great not terrible, pretty good read for public transport

Please note: this review will be updated as I read more stories from the anthology.So as I mentioned this is an anthology of short fantasy (presumably sword and sorcery, but you really have to stretch the definition) stories. While we are here let us give a tribute to the grandfather of the genre who is still the unsurpassed badass:The collection consists of the following:Goats of Glory by Steven Erikson.Five surviving soldiers came to a quiet backwater village to have a restful sleep. It turns

I've reviewed each section of this anthology on it's own merits, then gave my thoughts of the whole at the end.Introduction: Check Your Dark Lord at the Door by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan: An intro this anthology that purports (as the title suggests) that this is a collection of new Sword & Sorcery, with a mix some classics. A claim I found highly dubious, though commendable. Nonetheless with names like Moorcock, Cook, Erikson and Abercrombie amongst the list I was really looking forward to...

Years ago i used to love short story collections. I would consume them as fast as I could find them. I seem to have lost that love of them, but occasionally a story really does stand out. In this case though, I would say the stories are all likeable but not amazing. I bought the book because of my completionism tendencies and it contained a short story in the Malazan world. It was the story of the final five remnants of a mercenary group (the Rams) that we've never heard of leaving the site of t...

http://bookslifewine.com/swords-dark-...2.5 stars rounded down to 2 stars!I have to think about this one. My original read was compared to [older] readings of MZBs Sword & Sorceress anthology - which is how I was lead to Fantasy - and it was a let down in comparison.Now that all of my MZB reads have been tainted with the knowledge of what a horrible person she was, I want to say that the anthology should be free from her taint. She was not the author, she was the editor. I want to say that - whi...

A decidedly non-Tolkienesque collection of sorcery, swords and morally challenged heroes characters roughly moving through bleak, dreary landscapes and encountering death, violence and other sordid nastiness. This is MY kind of fantasy (i.e., the unkind variety). Within these unhallowed pages, you will find no hairy-footed hobbits smoking pipe-weed; no pompous, effeminate Elves residing in trees and baking bread; and no melancholy kings proclaiming in Shakespearean patois. You must look elsewher...

An outstanding, solid and consistent collection of short stories that utterly hits the spot when in need of fix sword and sorcery, and I desperately needed one! It also introduced me to some new authors I will certain explore more of! Highly, highly recommended! Goats of Glory by Steven Erikson ... Brilliant short story. Honestly, I enjoyed this more than some of his longer (much longer) work! A much diminished mercenary band, once known as The 'Rams' is devastated to the extent of now merely be...

At 517 pages, Swords & Dark Magic is quite a load, even as an anthology. I confess, there were a number of these that I grew impatient with and just skipped. I either didn't like the tone or approach, and/or felt that I'd been there and done that story-wise. It's interesting looking at the reviews for this book, since a number of reviewers, ones I really respect, are all over the place as far as what they like. So maybe this collection is more a success than I thought, since folks did find work

Overall rating: 3.1325 stars. No laughing. This was computed quite mathematically and stuff.☢ Friendly Warning: I bought this anthology becauseJust so you know.Okay, for those of you who have lives and don't have the time/can't be bothered to read the most fascinating reviews I painstakingly wrote for every bloody shrimping story in this anthology, here is the long and short of it:❣ You really really really want to read: ✔ Tides Elba by Glen Cook (view spoiler)[ DUH (hide spoiler)].✔ Goats of...

When the back of the cover says ‘Seventeen Original Tales of Sword and Sorcery penned by Masters Old and New’ and then goes on to mention Glen Cook and the Black Company, Michael Moorcock and Elric, Steven Erikson and Malazan, Gene Wolfe, Robert Silverberg and Majipoor, KJ Parker, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie and others, most readers would need little persuading to pick this one up.Furthermore, when the two editors are known as a couple of the best in the business currently, you would expect a h...

It wiggles around in the Sword and Sorcery label, fortunately sampling from both gritty/grimdark and from lighter fare. The entire collection is excellent, nonetheless.For my favorite, I'd have to name Scott Lynch's "In the Stacks", which posits a multiversal/multiworld fantasy, at the center of which is a straight take on the Unseen University and it's enormous, semi-sentient library. The protagonists' goal: return a book and get out alive. It was rich with invention and a bit of whimsy without...

Do not read or buy this book! No unless you want to read about body fluids including urine, pus, open sores, and feces. I was excited to hear this past spring that there would be a new sword-and-sorcery fiction anthology from the big press. I really enjoyed Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness and Page & Reinhardt’s Heroic Fantasy back in the day and was hoping this would be the start of a new era. The first warning sign was the cover. The cover painting for the trade paperback edition is jus...

This is copy 102 of 500 signed and numbered copies.

Overall a very solid anthology. Only two stories would I consider not worth my time - Silverberg's "Dark Times at the Midnight Market" and Willingham's "Thieves of Daring" - and some were very good."Goats of Glory," Steven Erikson. I'm an Erikson groupie so he'd have to stumble pretty badly to get a bad review from me. The story revolves around the moral compromises a village makes to survive, and the demon-fighting skills of Captain Skint and her company. Nothing profound but an entertaining st...

If you've read both Malazan and the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas this reads about halfway in between. The gore and macabre humor of B&KB but the soldier comraderie of Malazan. By far my favorite short story by Erikson.

I really enjoy sword and sorcery, and some of my favorite authors contributed to this anthology, so it's win all over.