Warrior of Vengeance 1: Sorcerer's Blood

Howdy you Triumphant Adventure Seekers! 

So, one of the pillars of the writing philosophy is that "if you want to write, you've got to read".  This way you develop a sense other writer's styles and influence your own; get a sense of what's been done, or at least attempted; maybe even get a sense of how other writers handle mood and atmosphere and other boring technical stuff.

Now, I've read several books, both for entertainment and scholarly reasons, but the simple fact is that I have a wide collection of books, magazines, and pdfs that I have accumulated but not got around to reading yet.  Bottom line is:  I don't think I read enough.  Well, I'm trying to remedy that!

I'm trying to manage my time better...we'll see how it turns out...and one of the changes I'm trying to implement is to read more often.  My goal is to spend my weeks working more diligently and spending most of my weekends reading.  Still trying to iron out some kinks, but I have successfully started!

This weekend I read Warrior of Vengeance #1:  Sorcerer's Blood by Ross Anton Coe.  I found this and Book #2 Trails of Peril together on eBay during one of my online searches for sword-n-sorcery and sword-n-planet books from the 60's, 70's, and 80's.  These were both published in 1982, apparently, by Pinnacle Publishing, and promised a third book which seems to have never been produced.

I can find no other works by Ross Anton Coe, but according to the copyright page the story is copyrighted to Ron Renauld, which makes me wonder of Coe is just a pen name.  Ron Renauld wrote several media tie-in novels like the A-Team and Airwolf (I didn't even know there were novels of these properties!), and ghost-written multiple Executioner books as well.

A web-search has these books come up at various online stores, but they can be found on the old standbys:  Amazon and eBay, prices may vary.

There Are Spoilers ahead!

There is a Conan-style little preamble, explaining the continent is shaped vaguely like a condor's head and was thus named after the Condor-God Dorban.  Some people tried to break off into their own countries but were brought back into the fold of the Sorcerer-King, who resides in the capital city of Cothe.  Then, Time passes...

We meet our hero, Nuroc, at the age of twelve.  He is suppose to be a shepherd, but we never see any sheep.  However, he spied a wolf slinking through the brush and is stalking it to protect the sheep.  He slays the wolf, and just in time because...

This happens to be the night of a double-eclipse.  The two moons are going to get covered by the world's shadow, and this a moment of great significance.  He takes the wolf's carcass to offer to the Condor God as a sacrifice but before he can...

A massive rock shifts revealing a cavern and a stream of horsemen pour out and ride away through the countryside.  Nuroc recognizes them as Sorcerers from Cothe but does not know why they are riding away.  The eclipse happens and catastrophe occurs!  The ground shakes!  Tidal waves wash over the lands!  A tidal wave reaches Nuroc and washes him through the cave that the Sorcerers came out of!

He finds himself deposited in some sub-basement beneath the city of Cothe, specifically beneath a place called the Obelisk.  I don't recall any actual desciption of what it looks like, but I imagined something not unlike the Washington Monument, mostly because it was hollow and you could climb stairs to different tiers inside of it.  Apparently this is where the Sorcerers learn magic, from runes carved on the inner walls.  The higher up you climb, you find stronger magic spells inscribed.

Here, he finds his parents, who are servants to the current Sorcerer-King Talmon-Khash...who is also here!  It turns out that some upstart mid-tier sorcerer named Augage wants to use higher level spells to imprison the Condor-God Dorban, kill Talmon-Khash and usurp the kingdom, so he gathered some other sorcerers to his cause and they split, he tried to conduct his ritual out in the wild and miscast the spells, causing the cataclysm!

By some miracle, the capital city of Cothe was untouched by the cataclysm, and the peasants decided the sorcerers did it on purpose and marched in to kill all the sorcerers.  

Talmon-Khash cuts open his wrist and extracts some blood, which he magically infuses into Nuroc and his parents so they can carry his blood and he will "live-on" in some sense until they can defeat Augage.  Talmon-Khash then sends them to escape while he casts magic to preserve the Obelisk and the magical knowledge and treasure within.

So Nuroc and his parents escape with the help of a loyal sorcerer named Inkemisa and his daughter Myrania, who Nuroc has the hots for.  They know that having failed the spell and inciting riot, that Augage will flee to a western land where he will eventually unite the barbarian tribes under his rule and eventually come back to try again.

The only real problem I had with the book was:  if they know this, why don't they just go after him now before he can raise an army?  I don't get it.  They don't go after him.  Of course, it is never explained what sort of servants Nuroc's parents are.  I guess valets and maids and shepherd boys make lousy medieval commandoes.

Once again, Time passes...and we rejoin our five years later...

Nuroc is now seventeen.  He and his parents went north to the town of Weshi, where he and his Dad work in a local mine.  That is...until the raiders show to kill his family, leaving only him alive to carry on their destiny and duty to the Sorcerer-King!  He fights with raiders, dodges condors, sharks, giant centipede monsters and zombies!  He gains and loses allies, finds his girlfriend Myrania working for a shady pimp who travels up and down the river...

Of course, his adventures lead him back to Cothe, where he reunites with Myrania and has a showdown with Augage in the Obelisk, where the renegade sorcerer once more tries to capture the Condor-God Dorban and usurp his immortality, or something, so he can conquer all the known lands!  Bwah-ha-ha!

It was pretty cheesy stuff, but it was a decent plot that moved along pretty well in my opinion.  It was easy to read and the world was developed enough to tell the story.  There was a little cosmology, and a little religion (we're only told about the Condor-God Dorban, but I got the feeling there were others, unnamed).  All in all, it was an entertaining way to spend a weekend!  If you like  light, fun fantasy adventure then you would probably like this, and I recommend you give it a try if you can track it down!

My Theoretically Assessed Speculation:

Thumbs up!  It moved along, it was fun to read, sparked a few inspirational ideas, and kinda made me want to get writing.  I found it entertaining!

Have you ever read this book?  If so, what did you think of it?  Feel free to leave a comment below!  Otherwise, I'll see ya next time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

Howdy you Truly Adventurous Souls! 

So, the other day, I was looking through some old video tapes and I found (among several other things) my copy of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.  Then I thought, "Hey!  That's adventure!  I should talk about it on the blog!"  So...I am!

The movie came out in 1985, but I never saw it until it got on HBO.  I must have been about twelve, and I had no idea who Remo Williams was.  For that matter, I had no idea who Fred Ward or Joel Grey were, either.  But I knew Wilford Brimley!  He was the only guy in the movie I recognized!

Anyway, Remo Williams was a New Jersey cop at the beginning of the film, and he was selected by a top-secret government organization to be their new recruit.  The first thing they did was fake his death, then they gave him reconstructive surgery (mostly shaving off his mustache) and informed him he had been recruited and given a new name:  Remo Williams.

The organization was CURE (I don't remember what the acronym was for), and seemed to be a three-man operation led by Wilford Brimley as Dr. Harold Smith, who implied that they were some kind of government institution.  So, they wanted Remo to be trained up to be an assassin, so they give him to an old Korean named Chiun who was to teach Remo the ways of Sinanju, kind of philosophy and a style of martial arts.  

I was kinda fascinated by the Sinanju training sequences.  The idea was that the human body was capable of so much more than we use it for.  Like...the way they say we only use a small percentage of our brain, but could do fancy telepathy and telekinetic powers if we could learn to use the rest of our brains.  Except, this was the whole body.  With Sinanju training and discipline, you were supposed to be able to do all sorts of fantastic Jackie Chan-type acrobatics and tings that seemed superhuman.

However, Remo is a typical American slob, and is very skeptical, but is impressed with the few uncanny moves Chiun has displayed and wants to learn because...it was just too cool.

On top of all this, there is a shady military arms dealer--an evil 80s business tycoon--who is fleecing the government for funds to build new weapons for the armed forces and only supplying shoddy equipment that blows up in the hands of our soldiers.  He had a sham weapons satellite that was rigged to blow up before anyone could get close enough to tell it was a phony.  This guy needs to be taken out, but whenever his stuff comes under investigation he gets away scott free and some underling gets all the blame.

This is a job for CURE, and they want to send Remo, their newest assassin, to eliminate him.

It was a nifty little flick when it came out, entertaining enough to occupy a couple of hours.  Fred Ward from the the first two Tremors movies played Remo.  Joel Grey played Chiun.  Wilford Brimley, as I said, was Harold Smith, the head of CURE.  And nowadays I recognize Kate Mulgrew, but I don't like her in anything since she stole Billy Crystal's novel in Throw Momma From the Train. 

It wasn't until years later that I found out it was based upon a series of books called "The Destroyer" by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.  Apparently a line of men's adventure novels akin to The Executioner.  I tracked some down, but I've only read one so far...and that was some years ago now.  I don't remember what the plot actually was.  I remember a Chinese lady with a big coat who kept stealing essential like toilet paper and carrying them in her coat.  And Remo fighting some guys from a karate school.  I think they ended up in China and he got the Sword of Sinanju...why was it in China instad of Korea?  Maybe I remember wrong.

Anyway, the movie is kinda neat, although I've read some opinions online that suggest the books are better.  Hey, big surprise, right?  I'll have to read a few more books and watch the movie again to see if I feel the same way.

I also read that the movie folks wanted this to become a big franchise to rival stuff like James Bond.  In fact, he was supposed to the blue-collar James Bond.  So they hired a writer who wrote a couple of James Bond movies, and a director who directed a couple James Bond movies...but in the end, it just didn't become what they hoped for.  Sad, really.  I would have watched more of them. 

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Hollywood was trying to reboot the series.  I mean, seems like they try that with everything, doesn't it?

Well, I guess that's all for now.  See ya next time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell