Itβs an ancient rule with many inconsistencies.
Unfortunately, I was in the 34% that didn't.
A lot of the "sword and sorcery" lists I see give me a lot of novels about stuff I wouldn't consider S&S. Novels where the hero's sword kind of takes precedence over the hero, novels where the focus is really more on espionage and subterfuge than violence, novels where the hero is a dragon breeder instead of a warrior.
I just want some stuff that's more similar to something REH would write, but it's super hard to find anything that really captures it for me. I was unimpressed by any of Carter or de Camp's attempts to pastiche him, although I found that John Maddox Roberts wrote very entertaining novels (shame there are only 8)
Finding stuff outside of Howard's writing and directly licensed pastiches can be hard. I really enjoyed Charles Saunders' Imaro series even though by the end that was pretty unquestionably high fantasy. I liked Dariel Quiougue's Sword of the Four Winds a decent bit. I really liked Scott Oden's Men of Bronze which is one of very few novels that legitimately feels like something in the same genre of Conan while being completely unrelated. I've started two or three other books by Oden but they didn't impress me as much.
A couple tales from fifties Light Sci-fi magazines have entertained me. The Tharn dualogy by Howard Browne entertained me, but after looking through some of the old magazines it came from I discoveredthat those two stories contained pretty much every story element and trope you would ever find in fifties caveman stories.
ES Kraay's the Olympian: A Tale of Ancient Hellas is historical fiction but feels way more like a Howard story than a lot of the stories people say are in the same "sword and sorcery" genre.
So what am I looking for?
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Strong protagonist. Literally strong (probably) but somebody whose personality can drive the story.
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Mundane protagonist. Or at least borderline mundane. You could argue the appeal from a humanist angle, from just being interested in martial arts and their portrayal in text, from a verisimilitude angle...but I just am not looking for a book about a wizard or (worse) a half-demon with fire powers that allow him to instantly kill everybody in his setting
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Focus on fighting. I've been recommended Master Li and Number Ten Ox when looking for Sword and Sorcery. Those are good books but they are about solving mysteries and exploring bizarre mystical problems. When I ask for Sword and Sorcery, I am looking for something about some kind of savage killer.
Anyway,
... keep reading on reddit β‘
