Collects five occult tales about Kane, red-haired and left-handed mighty being: "Reflections for the Winter of My Soul" (1973) "Misericorde" (1983) "The Other One" (1977) "Sing a Last Song of Valdese" (1976) "Raven's Eyrie" (1977)
Karl Edward Wagner (12 December 1945 – 13 October 1994) was an American writer, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. His disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into Whose Hands". He described his world view as nihilistic, anarchistic and absurdist, and claimed, not entirely seriously, to be related to "an opera composer named Richard". Wagner also admired the cinema of Sam Peckinpah, stating "I worship the film The Wild Bunch".
I love the Kane books by Karl Edward Wagner, but I was tempted to rate this final volume even lower : three of the best novellas already published in the previous volumes are gathered here with two shortish stories, so 80 % of the collection is recycled material and it just doesn't feel right to call this the sixth book of Kane. It's more like one of those "Best of ..." albums of popstars that pick of few hits and then put in a couple of new songs that didn't make it on the original release so they could make another sell with minimal effort. The fans will buy it anyway, and it might even tempt some new listeners / readers to take the plunge.
So, even if I was dissapointed to find almost nothing new in the final Kane book, I would still recommend it to new readers. All the six volumes can be read out of order, so it doesn't matter if you start at the end or at the middle. Fans of the darker brand of Sword & Sorcery mixed with horror a la Robert E Howard and of the flowery literary style of Fritz Leiber or Jack Vance should feel in familiar territory.
Right now a top five of sword and sorcery for me would be :
- Conan - Robert E Howard - Cugel - Jack Vance - Fafhrd & Grey Mouser - Fritz Leiber - Kane - Karl Edward Wagner - Tempus - Thieves World
next anti-hero to check out that might break into the list is Elric of Melnibone. I read only one of his books in the early 90's and I remember I liked it a lot.
Not as strong as, and having some overlap with, Wagner's Night Winds collection. All solid stories, though I am hard pressed to pick favorites. Perhaps it would be the last story, The Other One, which shows a surprisingly sentimental side to Kane, but is also the shortest of the bunch and ends rather abruptly. Certainly recommended for Kane enthusiasts, but not the best place to start for newcomers.
This is an excellent collection of Kane stories & hard to come by. Two of the stories, "MISERICORDE" & "THE OTHER ONE" were new to me. They're not included in any other collection that I know of & I have most of Wagner's books.
REFLECTIONS FOR THE WINTER OF MY SOUL - Also the first story in Death Angel's Shadow. This happens right after Dark Crusade. Kane is pursued into a snow bound castle where a werewolf stalks the inhabitants. Just who the wolf is & who will survive is up for grabs.
MISERICORDE - new to me & a great story with Kane at his brutal best. An assassin for hire, Kane faces a great challenge against an impregnable fortress & great magic.
THE OTHER ONE - also new to me. Kane reveals his 'softer' side in his care for a girl. Told as a campfire story, the ending is not really unexpected, but no less brutal for all that.
SING A LAST SONG OF VALDESE - also in Night Winds. Kane meets a girl on the road & becomes part of strange & eerie meeting.
RAVEN’S EYRIE - also in Night Winds. On the night of the Demon Lord's moon, a badly wounded Kane takes refuge in an inn he sacked years before & becomes embroiled in a dangerous situation that quickly spirals out of everyone's control.
I admit annoyance about at least the Gateway / Orion edition (and possibly all the editions), which shamelessly duplicates several stories from other collections. It would take some effort to figure out which ones, if any, are unique.
Of these, I'd still peg "Misericorde" as the winner. Kane obviously outclasses his opponents, but watching him work is still hugely entertaining, especially his urbane detachment and his desire to alleviate the ennui of existence with these interesting and artistic diversions. And when you think it's finished, it's really not.
Wagner struggles with dialog. I can see how he is trying to adapt or translate the uncultured words of rough men into a corresponding modern vernacular, but the language used is too specifically a late 20th century urban American. This rips apart the timelessness of language that most fantasy goes for, and it sometimes isn't even used consistently within a single story.
Kane is at his best--that's a relative term; he is repeatedly proven to be a thoroughly awful person--when his refinement and education come into play. Not just in "Misericorde", where he is thoroughly in the heads of his opponents, but in knowing the ancient language in "Reflections..." or in the sudden understanding of circumstances in "Sing a Last Song of Valdese" or in the anthropological musings of "The Other One", where he insufficiently researched his target.
Well then. I guess that's about it. I've read all the Kane stories. Loved every bit of them. I'm so sad there's no more. Kane is the best. Much better than Wagner's horror fiction. I've read all of Wagner's Kane and all of his horror fiction but there still is a bit more to finish up with. So I'll head in that direction and I'll no doubt start re-reading the Kane books again. Darkness Weaves is calling my name.
Fantasy just doesn't get any better than Wagner's Kane. It's pretty much perfect.
It's rare that we get exactly what we want. Or, at least, for me it is! The times when stories exceed my expectations are few, but here we have Kane, the Mystic Swordsman, whose few tales in this collection I devoured like candy. And it's the best heroic fantasy-type-candy that I have encountered. Everything feels "just right" here. The stories are dark and gruesome, yet somehow fun and adventurous at the same time. Kane is a unique superhuman who knows his world very well, and it's great watching everyone else try to catch up to him. Sometimes they do get the best of him, but Kane does sensible things: he works with what he has and he's patient. Immortality will teach you to take those approaches, I guess. I can't wait to read the rest of the Kane stories. Leave it to a guy from East Tennessee to come up with some rockin' fantasy, the likes of which you are not likely to encounter this side of the Hyborian Age.
A couple of the stories here were also in Night Winds. The stories new to me were very good, especially the first one concerning a certain castle and werewolf. Good stuff.
It is not easy to rate, or review, a book like this now. This is old-school sword & sorcery, iron thews and all, combined with flat-out horror. The first part of that equation is problematic in today's climate: There is no denying that huge swaths of the subgenre are, at best, sexist, and Wagner knowingly wrote along these lines. However, he also crafted some of the best S&S put to paper, up there with Howard himself (Wagner also wrote novels starring REH characters Conan and Solomon Caine). The prose is, especially in the earlier works, hammy and overblown in delightful ways that throw back to the category's pulp roots. The style becomes subtler and more refined in the later stories, but rarely loses that pulpy feel. Wagner was capable of sophisticated prose, but he saw no need of it here. The stories, too, are fairly simple, with few surprising twists, but are still satisfying. The character of Kane is a complicated issue: He is the protagonist of most of these stories, but is in no way a hero. He's a bad man, a murderer, thief, and rapist. He has something resembling a code, though it is hardly a moral one. For most authors, Kane would be a villain, and not even a complex one. Wagner, however, pits Kane against foes just as vile and often less disciplined. He also raises interesting issues rarely dealt with in "anti-hero" narratives, specifically the evils influenced by the character's own actions. No punches are pulled here; Wagner knows violence and hate beget more of the same, and uses that knowledge to both further and comment upon the narrative. All that said, if you just want stories of a muscle-bound murder-hobo doing exciting things, you're in the right place. There are evil spells, undying vengeance, dark spirits, and gruesome violence here, all delivered with bloody cheer. This is fun stuff; all the deeper stuff is there if you want it, but you can just have a good time, too. Look, I liked this, and will be reading more of the series, but I won't pretend this is an enlightened series. Mileage will vary, but you will know very quickly where you stand.
Am I rating this too harshly? Assigning a GoodReads rating to this book has made me question again just what I should be basing my judgement on. Superficially, this is a non-question. The pop-up GoodReads guidelines when you hover over those stars for the most part deal with emotional engagement ('did not like it', 'liked it', 'really liked it'). That should make rating things pretty easy. My difficulty here is in judging whether I use those stars to reflect my feelings about the stories, the prose, or the book.
Often, those three attributes will be so closely entwined that it would be unprofitable to even try and unpick them. Here though, it's impossible not to. The prose and the storytelling are of a standard that I've come to expect from Karl Edward Wagner - adequate, or slightly better than average, and imaginative and tightly paced, respectively. The book though...
This was the last of Wagner's Kane books to be published and I can only conclude from that that the author had already tired of his creation. He lived for another fifteen years without returning to Kane in his writing. Did his publisher insist on issuing this in order to capitalise on demand? It's short, at less than 150 pages. Despite that and although it slots roughly into the middle of the somewhat confused Kane chronology three of the five short stories contained had previously been published in other volumes.
Sing a Last Song of Valdese and Raven's Eyrie were both in Night Winds. Reflections for the Winter of My Soul was a part of the first published Kane short story collection Death Angel's Shadow (which slots into that tenuous chronology somewhere after this). So, the stories themselves are good - perhaps three or four stars on the meter. The book though? I feel misled and ripped off. I definitely 'did not like' that feeling. That's one star.
This is old-school swords and sorcery in all the best ways. It has that classic feel: dark, supernatural, violent and creepy, like an old castle ruin. This is a collection of stories about Kane, a fabulous character, larger than life, but also enigmatic and not always predictable. The writing style is rich and interesting. These stories are well told, full of twists and turns. I'm looking forward to reading the books.
Classic Kane. Solid collection of short novellas about Kane. Several are especially gripping. I enjoyed it very much. Again, the prose are dense enough to invite skimming, but resist it. This is very good writing.
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul” (1973) ✭✭✭✭✭ “Sing a Last Song of Valdese” (1977) ✭✭✭✭½ “Raven’s Eyrie” (1977) ✭✭✭✭½ “Misericorde” (1983) ✭✭✭✭ “The Other One” (1977) ✭✭✭✭
Half of this collection is duplicated in NIGHT WINDS, but the new novella and short stories maintain the quality of Wagner's other short Kane works. Sword and sorcery mixed with highly effective horror, this series puts today's "grimdark" genre to shame.
This was my first foray into the Kane stories so I went with a smaller selection. I get the feeling the novel length tales tackle more interesting subject matter but also have to realize that within the specifically defined categories of this collection it was the shorter, rather than the longer tales which struck me. Particularly 'Misericorde'and even the slight 'The Other One' where to me the big hits rather than the somewhat meandering 'Raven's Eire' or the largely (I found) boring 'Reflections for the Winter of my Soul.'
I do think the premise is fascinating and would be open to reading more later, but it hardly grabbed me the way Conan or Cugel the Clever did from the get go.
Kane is a brutal, scarlet-maned barbarian that defied fate by murdering the god that created him. He’s an immortal bastard doomed to wander a bleak apocalyptic world full of criminals, demons and horrifying elder gods. Death stalks him everywhere he goes and he never knows a moment of peace. Armed with twin blades, forbidden sorcery and the dark heart of a mad warrior, Kane conquers and destroys anything that dares to stand in the way of him getting whatever he desires.
If Conan the Barbarian had an edgy goth big brother, his name would be Kane. Kane shares the hotblooded spirit, the lust for danger and conquest, the unparalleled skill for battle as Conan, but he kicks it up a few notches by being extremely intelligent, unlawful, immortal, cruel and possesses a knack for evil sorceries which Conan would definitely not be a fan of. The world he lives in also feels like a much more scary and bloody version of Hyboria. It’s pure gothic horror and lovecraftian nightmare territory. Fans of Dark Souls will feel right at home.
While the action, adventure and world is filled with tons of gritty fun, it manages to be quite creative and original compared to many other sword and sorcery series that begin to feel repetitive after running for too long. Kane constantly keeps things fresh by branching out into areas of exploration such as entire stories dedicated to discussing advanced literature, art, philosophy, history, race, religion, politics, nature, society, human morality and many other topics that stand out from the brutal cutthroat action sequences, bloodthirsty demons and chaotic sorcery the genre is typically known for. This gives the characters more depth and creates a melancholy yet immersive atmosphere that many other sword and sorcery books don’t often capture.
Every Kane tale is a stand-alone story and Kane himself transcends time which means you can read the series in any order you wish without feeling lost or uninformed. The series is a great blend of bloody awesome action, dark humor, philosophical musings and Moorcockian wizardry.
***
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This is a collection of five stories about the immortal swordsman Kane. The last two stories were new to me, the other three I read in previous collections. I like all the stories but it was disappointing to only get two new ones.
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul” from Death Angel’s Shadow (5/5)
This story takes place soon after the novel Dark Crusade. On the run from Sataki cult members during a blizzard, Kane finds shelter with a group at a mountain castle. A problem with wolves turns into something much worse. I loved the mix of horror and mystery in this story.
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese” from Night Winds (5/5)
Travelers at an isolated inn discuss some legends, including one about the mysterious Kane. Short and sweet with a chilling ending.
“Raven’s Eyrie” from Night Winds (4/5)
Kane and his bandit group are being hunted by mercenaries. They seek refuge at a mountain inn. Besides the mercenaries that are hunting them and someone at the inn from Kane’s past, they also have to contend with a supernatural threat. Nice gothic elements.
“Misericorde” (5/5)
A woman seeking revenge and a stolen crown hires Kane. He infiltrates a fortress guarded by four very dangerous individuals. I liked how Kane dealt with each individual and like a lot of Wagner’s stories, the ending was great.
“The Other One” (4/5)
Mercenaries break for camp at the ruins of an old city, the reasons for its destruction lost to time. They ask for a story and their leader tells them the story of the city. Well done even though I saw the ending coming.
rating is for the short story “misericorde” only. wagner’s writing style and use of dialogue are very engaging, but i was annoyed by what seemed like weird gaps in the story. kane is hired to take four people’s lives, but it’s unclear how he actually does so until the very end of the story. and immediately after that reveal, yet another death is left unclear. however, this might just have been a problem with the text on the pdf version i was reading for class.
although i didn’t find the character of kane particularly compelling in the story, i would be interested in reading more of his stories in the future to see if my opinion changes.
Ranks with the best sword and sorcery, with an disturbing, complex, fascinating antihero in the true sense, along with vivid action, imagery, fleshed out supporting characters, and plot twists to burn. I look forward to devouring the rest of this series.
The book of Kane is very well written, and I strongly recommend it to any one who enjoys books by Robert E. Howard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Kane is an anti hero who lives by his own rules, like Conan the Barbarian.
Love Wagner's Kane, every book is a dark pleasure. Beautifully written. Kane is a wonderful creation and the complexity of his character makes every adventure a real S&S treasure. Cannot recommend enough.
Really good, and collects some of the more melancholy Kane stories - he's really not happy about being immortal - and some good structurally-clever pieces.