Matt John as usual understanding the assignment. Brings to mind nothing so much as Molly Tanzer's Jirel (very complimentary) in that a golden age s&s character is updated for a modern audience by adding just a smidge of human interiority beyond the central conceit of the character. You don't need much! Where Tanzer added Thavin as Jirel's friend, John simply brings to the fore a relationship already there - the one between Cormac and Wulfhere. Their interactions speak of a shared history and mutual respect, in very adorable "what ho!" Viking-themed GI Joe guys dialogue.

Very amusing that Wulfhere Skull-splitter is introduced splitting skulls on the beach like a bored kid. Had a legit guffaw at Cormac claiming he was an expert at honking like a goose and then completely biffing it like Moe Szyslak doing barnyard animal noises.

John also threads the line between the supernatural and the grounded very well. What does the Dark Man statue do exactly? It's left in the middle, but the psychological effect on Gael, Dane, and Saxon is very real.

I'd be remiss not to mention how good John is at action as well, the biggest draw from the old Cormac REH stories is in full effect here.

Hey Titan, let this guy write more of these!

A writer posthumously becoming famous or, in Robert E. Howard's case, launching an entire subgenre tends to canonize the entirety of his work, no matter how raw or unpolished.

REH was a struggling guy all his life, trying to make ends meet selling pulp fiction, chasing trends and hoping this next one would hit big. One of his major passions was historical adventure fiction, and his invention of sword & sorcery wouldn't have come to pass if he had been more successful at that. If your pirate story don't sell, toss in a demon and a wizard as final bosses and you've upped your chances considerably!

Cormac Mac Art was such a guy who never sold, and the only reason we're talking about him now is because Conan did. Howard only finished two Cormac stories in his lifetime ("Swords of the Northern Coast" and "Night of the Wolf"), with a third ("Temple of Abomination") outlined and a fourth ("Tigers of the Sea") left without ending; this 90s collection from Baen Books also includes a wholly original David Drake novella, as well as a Drake-penned ending to "Tigers".

Yet another of REH's steely-eyed, black-maned self-inserts, Cormac is an Irish reiver aboard a Dane raider vessel who is super smart, super strong, super quick, you know the drill. I started with the pure uncut REH ones, "Swords" and "Wolf", and found them to be essentially the same story with some details switched out. Makes sense, he was probing the waters to see if a viking story would sell. Structure is essentially "Cormac is at a feast hall undercover, violence erupts when he's found out + he's gotta extract someone"; Howard an absolutely killer action writer, simply one of the best to ever do it.

The merely outlined "Temple" is the only one with supernatural elements, and it's good, atmospheric stuff for being unfinished. A real yarn-spinner, our Bob! See what I mean by adding some demons if your shit don't sell?

"Tigers of the Sea" is a wild goose chase across the Hebrides for a kidnapped princess, in which all the character drama and twists and reversals happen in the final 1k words penned by Drake. Lol, lmao, I dare say.

"The Land Beyond Sunset" (the full David Drake novella) finds Cormac and his buddy Wulfhere in ruined Atlantis after being zapped through a portal. This is definitely the one that leans hardest into fantasy, with dinosaurs and giant centipedes and life-draining staves. Good fun, but kinda sets a wrong tone by putting this one up front? This is definitely written by someone who came at it from a "the guy who wrote Conan wrote this so I better lean into the weirdness" angle.

Anyway, I just read this cuz that new Matthew John joint is a Cormac Mac Art tale and I wanted some context.

I am a philistine amongst Twin Peaks enjoyers for mostly shrugging at Fire Walk With Me, the prequel film released after the show's initial cancellation. I thought the original show implied all the things the film conveyed well enough!

Just so, The Urth of the New Sun is a book-length recounting of Severian's trials in bringing the New Sun to the dying world of Urth. Frankly, I thought the uncertainty of his being on the threshold of judgment that rounded out Citadel of the Autarch was a fine place to end it. He's gone beyond self-delusion and is going to face a higher authority.

Technically, in the first four books he's constantly jerked around by higher powers too, but it's really laid bare in this one. The veneer of the wandering swordsman adventure story is simply no longer here and we're treated to a cavalcade of mystical easter eggs. There's no tension anymore between the self-aggrandizing faux humility of Severian as a narrator and the slow reveal of what's really going on - but we're still stuck with his emotionally detached voice and perspective.

Kudos to Uncle Gene that it ain't unreadable, but call me a Silly Susan - I enjoy the semblance of "characters" with "emotions" in my "fictional prose"!