If you're looking for an introduction to Sword & Sorcery, this one is pretty solid. Not the best the genre has to offer, but a good overview and start.

David Drake's introduction does it no favors, and the editors included no connective tissue that would make this more than a haphazard pile of stories. This is a problem when you start with Robert E Howard, C L Moore, and Fritz Leiber--all heavily reprinted--and make an implicit historical progression.The find of this collection is the Dread Empire story with the long title. It reads like a fantasy rework of Shane from the perspective of the mysterious stranger, and has all the politics and geog...

19 stories featuring mighty thews and dark arts. Barbarians in mythical lands and knight-errants in medieval Europe clash against doughty warriors, figures from mythology, and sometimes entire armies. Both men and women swing swords and wield magic, sometimes for pay, sometimes for love, sometimes for hate, sometimes for vengeance, and sometimes just because. Dragons, trolls, and ghosts, plus blood, blood, and more blood.The true masters are represented here. Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Poul...

Some of these were fine, and the language of most was evocative. But the format meant that I didn't care about the characters or the plot, and in some cases, I plainly needed to know what was going on in the author's greater works in order to understand the included story.

A very solid collection that starts off strong (with stories by Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore and Fritz Leiber) and just keeps going. Mostly reprints but with two original stories -- a new Nifft the Lean tale by Michael Shea, and a new story by Michael Swanwick. Other authors include Michael Moorcock, Joanna Russ and Jane Yolen. Oh, and this promising young newcomer named George R.R. Martin. (The Martin piece I'm pretty sure ended up being incorporated into one of the Ice & Fire novels -- it's ab...

This would easily be a five star read if the editor had given some biographical information about the authors, the selected stories and their place in the history/evolution of Sword & Sorcery. Had this been done, this would be a great introduction to S&S. I’m a long time reader of S&S and I encountered gems I did not know existed. Regardless, this is a great collection of Sword & Sorcery, from classic to modern.

As with most anthologies and short story collections this was a mixed bag. Standouts for me included the stories by Charles R. Saunders, Glen Cook, Jane Yolen, Rachel Pollack and Michael Swanwick. There were another four or five stories that I enjoyed almost as much. As other reviewers have noted I wish the introduction focused a bit more on the various authors and had more of a general overview of this sub-genre. I'm not saying that the ramble of the introduction was bad, just that I wanted mor...

When I was younger I would go to the bookstore and I would be simply overwhelmed. The fantasy section was about as large as any big chain store section today. I didn't have the pedigree or knowledge that I have in my 40's. I was intimidated by all the titles I've never heard of before. My reading choices were based solely on cool covers or established series. (Star Trek, Predator, etc...) I really missed out.Not as powerful as Hartwell's Dark Descent, but very impressionable nonetheless. I added...

This is a collection of fine, classic stories. Unfortunately, as an anthology it totally fails because nothing is given any context, narrative or historical. Meant to present a primer of The Classic Sword & Sorcery stories, a beginner would be left wanting, not knowing that many of these stories are parts of greater arcs for their characters, referencing other stories, or continue elsewhere.

I enjoyed this anthology of short stories. Not every story was as good as other ones, But overall I enjoyed them.Sword and sorcery story telling is a lost art and it is difficult to find new material to read.

I don't normally read Anthologies because I like my fantasy in larger doses, but I have to give kudos to the group of editors for putting together a good sampling of authors and stories that flow very well from one to the other. I had the opportunity to read some authors that I had not previously read and found it very helpful to me. It gave me the chance to read some different styles of writing and solidified those styles that I found seamless and even those that I maybe did not particularly ca...

A truly fantastic anthology of sword & sorcery fiction!Most anthologies are pretty hit-or-miss affairs, but this felt like all hits. Some really great stuff here, including some authors I'm just now really discovering (e.g. Joanna Russ), some classic and some more recent, and even a scene from G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire that has since been immortalized on television.

A pretty good anthology collection, but as is typical, suffers from high highs and low lows.A few of the stories could stand to be shorter, others could stand to be a short novel of their own.

The Sword & Sorcery Anthology is a very ambitious title and, as many other reviewers before me have pointed out, this is a mixed bag and the lows probably outnumber the highs. Yet even the more cliché-ridden tales included have some value as entertainment and there are some true gems, including both classics of the genre and others that offer innovative approaches. Perhaps the most outstanding classic, old-school entry in this anthology is the opening tale, "The Tower of the Elephant" by Robert

So, sword and sorcery. Like the Special Air Service or the San Antonio Spurs, you expect things with the initials SAS to contain an assemblage of bad-asses. And yet to date I’ve chiefly known the most action-packed branch of the fantasy family tree for its indirect influence on stuff like the Diablo games and 300 films rather than for the written word.Thus, the inventively titled ‘The Sword & Sorcery Anthology’. I was intending soon to dive into some of these major fantasy series anyway (Conan,

A pretty great anthology showing the evolution of the genre over the decades. I'm not a short fiction person so there were a few stories that I couldn't finish. Overall it was really good and I'm eager to read more anthologies.Reviews at ReadingOverTheShoulder.com

This is an anthology of short sword and sorcery stories with some of them being very hard to qualify as such. If there was ever an anthology called mixed bag, this is the one. The quality of stories ranges from 'timeless classic' (5 stars) to 'why did I waste my time with it' (2 stars). It is also quite easy to predict the quality of a story without reading it using the following algorithm. Do you often hear about its author? Rate it 5 stars if so.Have you heard anything about the author at all?...

A lot of classic shorts that I have already read, but a few clunkers that ruined the whole book.

No pretension, just good fun story-telling. I'm tempted to read some more Conan books for fun.