This post is brought to you by Blades & Alchemy by Jack Mackenzie. This is the second volume in the collected Sirtago & Poet series along with Blades & Abominations. This popular series of Sword & Sorcery tales makes the perfect introduction for today’s post. This is because Jack Mackenzie tells these stories with both zest and a sense of humor. This is not your grandfather’s thud & blunder. Thankfully, Jack has collected them in two books (so far, three is on the way!) so you can enjoy them anytime.
This is a retro-review. The book is The Druid Stone (1967) by Simon Majors who was actually S&S superstar, Gardner F. Fox. The Paperback Library cover reeks of the late 1960s occult fetish that embraced everything from The Bermuda Triangle to witchcraft. And if that kinda thing isn’t your bag, don’t worry about it. Because this book is really two books: a tale of modern occultism and a hidden Sword & Sorcery saga. Still not interested? Oh, you should be.
The Druid Stone is a layer cake with the opening slice being the tale of Brian Creoghan, a man-of-action who has ended up in the sleepy new Hampshire hills. He falls in with Ugony MacArt and his beautiful sister, Moira. Ugony is an occultist with a radical idea, that all mythology and religion is based on actual doorways to another dimension called Dis. He believes that Brian has some kind of connection to Dis and with the Druid Stone, he can travel there by astral projection. The stone is kept in a special room filled with violent religion dioramas and arcane materials.
Brian agrees to try and transitions to Dis, taking up an astral spot inside a famous warrior named Kalgorrn. Enter the Sword & Sorcery element. Kal and his lady love, the sorceress Red Fann, find themselves released from a terrible spell that trapped their souls in a book. Free, they plan how they will regard their true freedom from the warlock lord, Thaisakor. It is Thaisakor who imprisoned their souls with the help of the wizard Afgorkon. To escape, the pair must face off against a crowd of liches then the freezing cold space entity, Sthloo. Kalgorrn, with Fann’s help, regains his magic sword, Shadowmaker, from a lake of shoggothian slime.
Fann realizes that Thasaikor wants to open the remaining doorways to Earth. To stop this, she and Kalgorrn will have to go to each portal and close it magically. She has help in the form of a shining necklace that is a link to Omborion, Kalgorrn’s wizard father. (His mother was an Earth woman, possibly the reason he is connected to Brian Creoghan.) Omborion is no longer human but an immortal light in another dimension. Still, he can help a lot by supplying magic and advice. The duo kill some soldiers so Fann can close the first doorway.
We reluctantly cut back to Brian Creoghan to discover that the local farmers are upset because someone has burned two cats in a basket. This turns out to be Ugony MacArt who thought he needed the mystic energy of a sacrifice. Turns out Brian doesn’t need any such mojo. The farmers also blame Ugony for the death of a local girl. Hatred is building for the trio in the lone farm house on Lost Pond Road.
Touching the stone again, Brian becomes Kalgorrn a second time. He and Fann now are on their way to free Kalgorrn’s followers, which were turned into animals and plants after the defeat of his army because of the soul-sucking spell. To do this, Kalgorrn will have to kill Afgorkon. With the wizard’s death, all his magic will fail. The barbarian takes a magic boat to Afgorkon’s island and meets the sorcerer. Kalgorrn bears Fann’s shining necklace that houses the power of Omborion. After a desperate fight he kills Afgorkon and leaves the island before it blows up. Returning to the mainland, he is greeted by his many warriors friends, including Walkon, Hemon, Swartus, Yarthune, Brill and Yargol.
Another jump back to our world to see the farmers plotting to attack the MacArt farmhouse on Halloween. The same night that Ugony plans to send Brian back to Dis for a final visit. Brian returns for the taking of Thaisakor’s keep and to kill the wizards standing against Kalgorrn’s band of heroes. The lord of Lankkha sends weird, shapeless demons at them, and it looks like the good guys will lose. We switch back to Earth where Brian is on the verge of death and the farmers have set the house on fire. All appears to be lost. Ugony MacArt sacrifices himself to the farmers, who shoot him down, while Moira escapes with Brian out the back.
Back in Dis, Omborion saves the day by enchanting all the heroes’ weapons. They cut away the demon and Kal and Thaisakor finally have their duel, with Brian Creoghan allowing the real Kalgorrn’s soul to take over. Kalgorrn wins through better swordsmanship and Thaisakor’s plan to open the doorways has failed. The two worlds will be forever severed. Brian Creoghan and Moira MacArt marry and all evidence of sorcery is burned up in the farmhouse fire.
Now let’s be honest here. Gardner F. Fox did not invent tales of this ilk, the portal Fantasy where a man from our world is paired with a brawny hero in another dimension. (He did find a way to sell one such tale at a time when no one really did these anymore.) I instantly thought of “Lorelei of the Red Mist” (Planet Stories, Summer 1946) by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury. That tale too has some pretty obvious references like the anti-hero’s name, Conan. Fox uses Sthloo, an obvious reworking of Cthulhu. Fox did a similar thing with Marvel Premiere #6 (January 1972), N’Gabthoth, the Shambler From the Sea. GFF was obviously a Lovecraft fan.
But there are even older examples such as Nictzin Dyalhis’s “The Sapphire Goddess” (Weird Tales, February 1934) with its man pulled from our world to return as king in another. (Just think about that date. Leigh Brackett was nineteen and Ray Bradbury only fourteen.) And there was also Edmond Hamilton’s Kaldar stories including “Kaldar, World of Antares” (Magic Carpet, April 1933), “Snake-Men of Kaldar” (Magic Carpet, October 1933) and “The Great Brain of Kaldar” (Weird Tales, December 1935) all in an Edgar Rice Burroughs sauce. And there was also A. Merritt who did it even earlier in 1917 with “Through the Dragon Glass” (All-Story Weekly, November 24, 1917) and reprinted in Fantastic Novels, September 1940. You get the point, this is not new in 1967. Despite the history, Fox makes it entertaining though, backing up his occult ideas with piles of collaborating research, which is another kind of fun than the sword-swinging stuff.
Looking at Fox’s bibliography, I see he wrote this one after his two Sword & Planet classics, Warrior of Llarn (1964) and Thief of Llarn (1966) but two years before his first Kothar tales in 1969. Maybe Kalgarrn got the S&S juices flowing? Kalgarrn and Kothar are certainly men cut from the same blood red cloth, being descendants of Conan of Cimmeria. The modern elements are not necessary in his Kothar and Kyrik novels of the 1970s.
Conclusion
This is the perfect book for September. Let me explain. For me, the summer with its sunshine is the best time to read Fantasy novels. Frodo and Sam on the Dead Marshes, or King Kull standing against a room full of Serpent Men. I think it has to do with my reading The Sword of Shanara in my sun-dappled backyard and listening to the music of Yes as a teenager. Summer is Fantasy. My favorite time of year is the Autumn, when reading turns to darker material. The more Gothic the better with ghost stories, werewolf tales, etc. The Druid Stone sits right between these two genres as does September between August and October. Gardner F. Fox has provided a nice dollop of both the esoteric and the heroic. There are so few book that girdle both seasons. Well done, “Simon Majors”, well done.
Be sure to check out what these others thought of this novel. (Now that I have finished my review, I too can see what they thought….)
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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