Stratofanatic's Emporium

Last week -- September 1st, to be exact -- saw a  very  successful conference completed, " New Perspectives on Alliteration in Poetry and Cultural History ." Many of the  Forgotten Ground Regained   crew were there, including Paul Deane, who reviewed his recent researches into the Modern Revival, plus Joe Hoffman, a digital humanities guy who also studies Tolkien. As an example of his work, he just posted his conference paper, " The Hunt for Alliterative Melody " (it's very readable), plus a more general  conference report . For yours truly, in honor of my book,  Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival ,  which came out in paperback last week, I presented my new discovery: i.e, we've been reading one of Tolkien's alliterative poems wrongly for the last 70 years. Since my article's still out for review, mum's the word, but keep your eyes peeled. But before getting to Tolkien's honorary membership in the Icelandic Literary Societ...

So I'm going through several old 1980s fantasy novels, primarily from Del Rey Books (DRB), and wanted to jot down thoughts on a few. Here, we'll be tackling three different books: one surprisingly good, one surprisingly real  good, and one terrible awful bad  book that could have used a few more rewrites. 1983 Del Rey Edition So which is which? For that, my friends, read on. The Surprisingly Good Katherine Kurtz, High Deryni (1973). Okay, this one's cheating slightly: Kurtz was discovered by Betty Ballantine, not Lester del Rey. But he inherited Kurtz, and her line of non-mythopoeic high fantasy certainly aligned with his editorial tastes. For my part, I wasn't quite sure what to expect with High Deryni . Back as a kid, I read either  Camber of Culdi (1976) or Saint Camber (1978), but it didn't leave much impression. Later, I remember Kurtz being politely criticized for her pedestrian prose by Ursula K. Le Guin in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" .... and ex...