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| "What do you think these people are doing now that cigarette ads are il-legal?" |
IN THE TRADITION OF CONAN! Or more properly, in the tradition of the tradition after Conan, as Tark of the Tumbling Cliffs and Morned the Flea have more than a passing resemblance to Fritz Leiber's famous rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Author MacConnell does Leiber one better though, as Tark and the Flea lack any of the sentimental streak that plagued Leiber's friends from Lankhmar - they won't hesitate to spill some fiend's coiling bowels (one of MacConnell's favorite descriptions) or ram a rapier through his groin into his heart! It's this ruthlessness that sees Tark and the Flea arrested on the evening of the second day of the month of Meskadene in the quartz city of Sorne by the Shallow Sea, in a desperate ploy by the scheming caste of priests who run the city ... It seems the Golden Tide is drawing nearer, across the grasslands and over the mountains, and Sorne the Sweetly Foul is trapped between their advancing armies and the (not-so) deep blue sea. Tark and the Flea must ferry some VIPs to distant allies in the Silver Mountains, that these last holdouts of civilization on the Shallow Sea will stand together against the Golden Tide and their demigod leader the Great Kan. But of course, this journey will prove even more treacherous than our cynical heroes could imagine ...
I thought our mediocre hero Kyrik was ill-served by his hosts at Leisure Books, but they take the cake this time with Tark! There's scattered typos throughout the text but thankfully no editing/continuity issues like those that plagued Kyrik's bout with the Wizard's Sword (besides a single mention of the Flea's "watchful eyes" when our lustful little rogue has but one). The real crime is the back summary, which fills our heads with a bunch of stuff that's not even in the story: there's no coveted blue sapphire, no beasts of the Burning Wood, no giant fighting camel (!), and the villain's name is Akor-Ut, not "Akor-Lut," thank you very much! Akor-Ut is also a very proper general in the army of the Golden Tide and only an "usurper" in the most general sense of messing up everyone's pots and pans with his conquering - he's totally loyal to his master the Great Kan. The Tide, by the way, is one of MacConnell's crowning jewels of this story, a vicious, visceral force that mixes the obvious inspiration of the Mongol Horde with a weird fantasy strain: the Tide all have white hair "the color of dirty milk," and they ride giant golden spiders into battle! MacConnell gives us brief glimpses into their martial mythos and builds a solid, earthy foe out of this bizarre bunch. MacConnell is a pro at building these fantasy societies, giving us just enough mesmerizing details and broad strokes that feel true to carry us into the text, and the world he crafts for Tark is a strange one indeed, one step beyond a standard barbarian milieu but not quite a full High Fantasy landscape. It's dark and dangerous, and the unknown lurks behind every corner, over every hill, and under cover of night. People still build their lives as best they can, as farmers and traders and artisans, and we meet a broad swath of folk alongside Tark and the Flea. Some of them will die horribly, some mercifully quick, and some still might live.
Of the other subjects on the back cover that do appear in this story, the Princess of the Silver Mountains is one of the VIPs Tark and the Flea are escorting. The pirates make for an enjoyable diversion, but are dwarfed by the bizarre Caythians who rule a forbidden lagoon under an Amazonian dictatorship and feed captured pirates to their great god Oth ... a truly A+ monster in the annals of sword and sorcery, too good for me to even describe here and spoil. Much of the joy in this story is through MacConnell's seemingly endless imagination and ability to craft an immersive tale out of the building blocks of genre that are so often fumbled. This is all in a short 150 pages too, a length that achieves an epic scale while never feeling rushed. MacConnell can cram more set pieces and character work into 15 pages than many authors into 100, and our quick glimpses into Tark's past as someone whose home and family were ridden under by the Tide give him more pathos than your average Conan clone. MacConnell also really seems to relish his fighting scenes. It makes me suspect the author is working under a pseudonym, as this was his only credited work but reads as from a consummate professional.
The generic but serviceable cover art is by Scottish artist Ken Barr, no stranger to flashing swords and fantasy.
UK publisher Trojan also published an edition, with a cover by American illustrator Don Maitz which is a variant on art Maitz did for the fourth Flashing Swords! collection the same year of 1977. It's dynamic but has nothing much to do with the story, looking more like it belongs on a Moorcock work. Barr's piece at least matches the tone of the text.
For a tight, professional work of swords and sorcery, Tark and the Golden Tide earns a full 4/4 spilling coils of bloody bowels! Get Tarked!
Leisure Books, 1977
No, you get Tarked.
ReplyDeleteTrojan publishing is an interesting outfit, the one's I've found released by them all lack copyright details and they seemed to be republishing books published by low end UK publishers from the 1960s, one of which Badger Books was notorious for only having two authors who wrote everything under a bewildering number of psudonymns.
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