Kyrik moved forward, knifeblade up to cut her bonds. The girl eyed him, then cried out. “I must tell you I am a witch. I have been put here by the people of a small fishing village as sacrifice to the demon that roams this part of the world.” “What do I care for demons?”
“You’d care about this one,” she told him darkly. “It slays and slays, it is like a mad thing, ravening here and there. They have even sent soldiers from Sokarjus to hunt it down and slay it.”
In the tradition of Conan! And a new tag on the blog, "flashing swords" for swords, sorcery, barbarians, and the days of high adventure!
Author Gardner F. Fox was a prolific master of the fantasy genre, as well as a titan of the comics industry responsible for many early tales of DC heroes like Batman and the Flash! Unfortunately, Kyrik represents the lesser of his sword and sorcery efforts, decidedly weaker than his well-reviewed Kothar series. Fox's full bibliography is available in ebook and vintage cover galleries at the handsomely curated website for the Gardner Francis Fox library:
One mark against poor Kyrik is that publisher Leisure Books didn't take much care with him - typos and misprints abound, as well as editing/continuity issues. On page 21, Kyrik's new companion Olvia remarks that the wizard Upanikol may share food with them if they can reach his tower. Unbeknownst to our heroes, Upanikol has just died in the middle of a dread ritual! Just later on page 27 however, Olvia is suddenly privy to the wizard's fate, saying they'll have an easy time finding food and shelter in the tower "since Upanikol died!" There's a fine line in pulp between the muscular prose of Robert E. Howard and the diffident recitations of his imitators, and Fox strays over that line a mite too often with Kyrik. Our poor barbarian boy has been trapped as a statue for millennia since his last adventure, only to bust out and rescue a mysterious witch-girl before getting wrapped up in the wizard Upanikol's unseemly machinations, alongside characters with names like Ammalauth-Vul and Harakan, monsters like the serpent Coroboran, plus other magically imprisoned warriors and haunts like the Boar's Tooth ... you know, all that kind of swords and sorcery stew, sometimes filling, sometimes a pale imitation of better memories. If you can dig lines like He rode a big roan stallion across the flatlands that lay south of the Hyakian Hills, you can roll with Kyrik.
It holds interest for the full 186 pages at least, and hopefully paid some bills for Fox. Kyrik can be read in full, absolutely free, at the Gardner Francis Fox library.
For mediocre barbarian thrills, Kyrik earns himself 2/4 stars.
Leisure Books, 1976
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