Summer of Sword and Sorcery: Week 5

This week's menu includes the remainder of the 1979 anthology Thieve's World (one story, "Shadowspawn" by Andrew Offut, got covered separately a while back,  "Sentences of Death" and "The Face of Chaos" I posted on last week), and R.E.H.'s "Hour of the Dragon".  And I guess I'll start with Conan.

"Hour of the Dragon" is the only novel-length Conan Howard ever wrote (albeit a short one by today's blockbuster standards), but in the end its basically a fairly typical Conan tale set during his reign as king of Aquilonia; in fact, the plot is almost identical to the story "The Scarlet Citadel", which basically tells the same tale in 1/5 the space.  Nevertheless "Hour" is a good, hairy-chested read, but I ultimately found myself wanting to fast-forward through the clandestine meetings of the nefarious usurpers and the large military battles (albeit Howard does a good job describing them).  No, "Hour"s best moments are small ones, such as the resurrection of evil wizard Xatltotun and the latter's confrontation with a helpless (not for long!) Conan, and Conan's later encounter with the wolf-familiared witch Zelata, who I'd like to have seen more of.  "Hour" is a fun read but it doesn't rank with my favorite Conan stories.

As for  Thieves' World, well I first read it when it was fairly new and was quite impressed with it.  I'm still fairly impressed with it, though I sure as hell get it a lot more now than I did at 14/15, when things like love and sex and politics were more concepts than experiences.  Some surprising changes in my perception of the stories.  Poul Anderson's "Gate of the Flying Knives", one of the ones I'd most looked forward to, let me down a bit.  Jamie the Red and Cappen Varra seem like good characters who could have used a bit more mileage, and a confrontation with the serpent-like sikkintairs seemed mostly anticlimactic, and though its certainly well-written, I found something in Anderson's prose kept sort of kicking me out of the story.  Odd.  Joe Haldeman's "Blood Brothers" was tasty but slightly confusing - am I dumb or did I not get the point of innkeeper One-Thumb's secret?  I really enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Secret of the Blue Star", with its (as usual for Bradley) issues of gender and sexuality, and the fact that it's the most "magical" i.e. fantastical of the stories.  I was also impressed with editor Robert L. Asprin's "The Price of Doing Business", a tale involving the sinister and corrupt Jubal.  Partly because I came prepared not to like it.  I've not read much of Asprin but those tiresome Myth books started to get on my nerves with their silly, smirking titles (to be fair, I've never read them).  Perhap I've been unfair to Asprin.  Finally, the story I found most compelling was "Myrtis" by newcomer Christine DeWees, described as a "kindly white-haired grandmother".  It seems her only other published appearance was a co-write with CJ Cherryh in an Elfquest anthology some years later.  A damn shame - DeWees' story outshines the big names, and makes what could have been a minor character into one of the best in the series.