These are exciting times to be Sword
& Sorcery fans! There are plenty of quality books, audiobooks, and
magazines being published to keep us entertained every month. My favourite of
the bunch in terms of magazines is Savage Realms Monthly. They deliver the
goods every single issue. The formula is simple: three old school S&S tales
by three authors with expertly done narration. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Book 19 kicks off with returning fan-favourite
author B. Harlan Crawford’s “A Consignment from Byblos”, featuring his barbarian
character Sygin as she gets mixed up with a caravan carrying a precious cargo and
its custodian, a demon tyrant. Crawford pens another engaging story once again.
Next up is David A. Riley’s “The Dark Priestdom” and this one alone is worth
the price of admission! It’s the longest of the three tales, running over an
hour, but it’s captivating from beginning to end. It tells the tale of a storyteller
who gets caught up in a con and winds up being accused of kidnapping a
princess. He’ll have help from a Northman to rescue the princess, but the path
will be fraught with peril. The third and final tale is Jeff Shelnutt’s “Terror
Beyond the Fjord”; that’s a title worthy of a classic Weird Tales story. And it’s
a real fun yarn at that, featuring the duo of Hanaa and Ulfgar whose banter is
always amusing. The pair find themselves captured on a ship facing even greater
dangers in the form of a monster and a sacrificial ritual. I really dug the Lovecraft
“horrors at sea” vibe of this tale. We also get short author interviews in
between tales as they tell us about their favourite Sword & Sorcery movies.
This is a segment I always enjoy listening to.
The audiobook version of SRM #19 has
a runtime of two hours and fifteen minutes. We get another terrific narration from
Moose Matson whose cadence is pitch-perfect and captures the nuances of the
material. He uses an array of different voices to differentiate the characters
and even employs special audio effects at times. It’s always a pleasure to
listen to him read for us. Book 8 should be just around the corner as we still
have a gap to fill until we reach Book 18 and then continue on with Book 20. For
those keeping track, so far, the following issues have been released on Audible:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 18, and 19. As usual, no prior issues are required reading,
so you can jump right in with any book and revel in awesome Sword & Sorcery
tales.
Rating: Five
stars out of five
Get Book 19 on Audible
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