He set aside the archaic prose flourishes of all those authors, instead drawing on hardboiled fiction to give his stories a contemporary feel. No matter how callous their heroes, they were ultimately still cut from recognizable heroic cloth.Ĭook introduced something new. Both Moorcock and Wagner were rooted in the foundations of swords & sorcery laid by Robert E. I had read some gritty fantasy previously - Michael Moorcock and Karl Edward Wagner in particular had published some pretty dark stories in the 1960s and 70s - but it was all written in the old familiar fantasy style. When my friend Carl lent me his copy of The Black Company back in 1984 I didn’t know what was about to hit me. As soon as I opened The Black Company last May, I knew I was back home among a band of brothers I’d first met and come to love over thirty years ago.
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