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Crossbones & Crosses: An Anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure
Pirates & Crusaders, ahoy! Hoist your banners, unsheathe your blades, kiss your crosses, and search for booty across the seas and the sands! More of the age of steel than shot and no fantastical elements, this is a lineup of the strongest of swashbuckling historical adventures. Gritty, dangerous, and bloody tales of the past, realistic without being nihilistic. The anthology kicks off with a rousing foreword by swashbuckling and sword-and-sorcery guru Howard Andrew Jones. This is followed by 3 sections of 7 tales each of pirates and crusaders, and 3 tales combining the two. Sections contain stories by current bestselling authors, up-and-coming authors, and classic tales from 1910. Epic verse and song round out each section of historical action. There's never been anything like this. It's a massive tome of piratical and crusading adventure you'll be delighted to read!
Daniel Amatiello
Jennifer Rachel Baumer
Eadwine Brown
W.D. Clifton
Hermann Contractus of Reichenau
Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N.
David R. Downing
Jeff Draper
Teel James Glenn
Juleigh Howard-Hobson
Howard Andrew Jones
L.E.L.
Kate Martin
KT Morley
Alex Ness
Henry Ram
Daniel R. Robichaud
J. Stewart
Kate Dickinson Sweetser
Keith Taylor
Carl Walmsley
C.L. Werner
Daniel Amatiello
Jennifer Rachel Baumer
Eadwine Brown
W.D. Clifton
Hermann Contractus of Reichenau
Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N.
David R. Downing
Jeff Draper
Teel James Glenn
Juleigh Howard-Hobson
Howard Andrew Jones
L.E.L.
Kate Martin
KT Morley
Alex Ness
Henry Ram
Daniel R. Robichaud
J. Stewart
Kate Dickinson Sweetser
Keith Taylor
Carl Walmsley
C.L. Werner
280 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2019
4 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Jason M. Waltz
37 books74 followersI edited and published numerous heroic titles under Rogue Blades as both RBE, a micro publisher of heroic adventure fiction, and RBF, a nonprofit literary publisher of explorations of the heroic. If you enjoy hard-hitting, fast-paced tales of ringing steel and dark magics found in the battles of lore and myth, updated and written for the modern reader, you should check them out.
Personally, I also write heroic tales. Jason M (with and without that pesky period) are one and the same. Jason M Waltz enjoys sharing tales of heroes who are willing to step into the gap...sometimes to fill it, sometimes to make it wider.
Personally, I also write heroic tales. Jason M (with and without that pesky period) are one and the same. Jason M Waltz enjoys sharing tales of heroes who are willing to step into the gap...sometimes to fill it, sometimes to make it wider.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 3, 2019
“Crossbones and Crosses” is an anthology of adventure stories about pirates and crusaders mixed with a sprinkling of poems. Some stories are about pirates, others about crusaders and still others a combination of the two. In all there are twenty-two stories and four poems.
Some stories were written over a century ago and consequently read differently than the more modern style of the other writers. They are “Barbarossa, King of the Corsairs” and “Stephen and Nicholas: Boy Crusaders.” The attention to lavish historical detail and emphasis on minute description in these two seem particularly good.
Most of the other stories are more graphic, violent, fast-paced and plot-driven, with plenty of excitement, slashing, gutting, hacking and scheming. They are also largely free of any nihilistic undertones, which I can appreciate.
“Devils from the Sea,” by C.L. Werner, presents a broader take on crusaders and pirates in a medieval Japanese setting. The fighting scenes are convincing and carefully worded. At times I found it a little difficult to keep track of all the different Japanese names and remember who was who, but it was still a first-rate plot.
“Black Widow,” by David. R. Downing, gives readers an old-fashioned pirate story with a surprising touch of fantasy. I liked that the Nile River was used as the setting, lending a more mysterious atmosphere to the story.
“The Red Sisterhood,” by Teel James Glenn, introduces readers to two female pirates who actually existed in history. They fight with ferocious abandon as they attempt to rescue their children from wild Indians in an early American setting.
“La Malediction de Mort,” by Juleigh Howard, is an impressive and eerie tale about a pirate ship and crew that have been cursed. The captain desperately seeks to lift the curse from his doomed vessel.
“The Nilos Conclave,” by Daniel Amatiello, is an exciting pirate story about Mediterranean pirates and Byzantines. The female pirate knows her trade; as a skilled fighter and strong-willed leader, she battles against overwhelming odds and betrayal in an effort to free imprisoned members of her crew. There seems to be a modern tendency-- and this story is an example of it-- to depict females as capable of fighting as well as or (usually) better than males, which I think would have been extremely rare in any period in history. In fact, there are no less than a half-dozen skilled female fighters in this anthology.
“Waegu,” by Jennifer Rachel Baumer, relies on a different sort of setting for a pirate story. Bloodthirsty Japanese pirates raid a Korean coastal village and take the peasants away as slaves. To complicate matters, the leader's second in command finds himself drawn to one of the female slaves.
“The Shadow of Faith,” by K. T. Morley, is a fast-paced story about crusaders and pirates involving a religious order of knights. The captain of the ship is a woman who agrees to rescue one of the knights from prison and make him the new governor of the city.
“Sea Wolf,” by Eadwine Brown, depicts the conflict between Muslim pirates and Frankish crusaders. There is a captive Frankish woman who fights so well that she becomes the captain of the pirate Muslim ship afterwards. The fighting scenes are extremely well described and realistic.
“Seven Blades to One,” by Henry Ram, is about the capture of a crusader ship by North African corsairs. On board the ship is a beautiful Frankish noblewoman destined for a rich Muslim’s harem. A sympathetic corsair attempts to rescue her, pitting his lone blade against seven others.
“The Stars Shine, the Blood Rains,” by Jeff Draper, tells us a story about a holy relic that must be retrieved and a heinous crime that must be punished. Amid much violence and evil plotting, Conrad, the knight, attempts to accomplish both tasks.
“Deus Vult Ea or God Wills Her,” by Kate Martin, is a story about a nurse who tends the wounded during a crusade and her religiously fanatical cousin, who becomes the city leader after the death of her husband. As a side plot there is a search for the Holy Grail.
“Penitence,” by Carl Walmsley, depicts a determined crusader who moves heaven and earth to recover a holy relic stolen from him. He teams up with a reluctant thief against the machinations of a scheming baron.
“Death Comes to Ascalon,” by J. Stewart, opens with Fatimids attacking Frankish pilgrims and a lay nun being kidnapped by a powerful vizier. Most of the action takes place in or around the besieged city of Ascalon. The hero is Hospitaller Sergeant Osmond Haraldson, who contrives to outwit and outmanoeuvre his arch enemy the vizier as he attempts to rescue the nun.
“Jehenne’s Righteous Torch,” by Daniel R. Robichaud, presents us with another story about boy crusaders. This time an ex-crusader girl, who was formerly a slave of the Moslems before escaping her captors, appears in Marseille disguised as a boy. There she puts her fighting skills to good use as she helps prevent other children from being tricked and shipped to Tunisia as slaves.
“Stain of Blood,” by Keith Taylor, is about a knight who happens to be the lover of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and fights in a tournament in Antioch. The tournament scenes are presented with colourful realism in all their violence and goriness against a backdrop of exciting court intrigue.
Some stories were written over a century ago and consequently read differently than the more modern style of the other writers. They are “Barbarossa, King of the Corsairs” and “Stephen and Nicholas: Boy Crusaders.” The attention to lavish historical detail and emphasis on minute description in these two seem particularly good.
Most of the other stories are more graphic, violent, fast-paced and plot-driven, with plenty of excitement, slashing, gutting, hacking and scheming. They are also largely free of any nihilistic undertones, which I can appreciate.
“Devils from the Sea,” by C.L. Werner, presents a broader take on crusaders and pirates in a medieval Japanese setting. The fighting scenes are convincing and carefully worded. At times I found it a little difficult to keep track of all the different Japanese names and remember who was who, but it was still a first-rate plot.
“Black Widow,” by David. R. Downing, gives readers an old-fashioned pirate story with a surprising touch of fantasy. I liked that the Nile River was used as the setting, lending a more mysterious atmosphere to the story.
“The Red Sisterhood,” by Teel James Glenn, introduces readers to two female pirates who actually existed in history. They fight with ferocious abandon as they attempt to rescue their children from wild Indians in an early American setting.
“La Malediction de Mort,” by Juleigh Howard, is an impressive and eerie tale about a pirate ship and crew that have been cursed. The captain desperately seeks to lift the curse from his doomed vessel.
“The Nilos Conclave,” by Daniel Amatiello, is an exciting pirate story about Mediterranean pirates and Byzantines. The female pirate knows her trade; as a skilled fighter and strong-willed leader, she battles against overwhelming odds and betrayal in an effort to free imprisoned members of her crew. There seems to be a modern tendency-- and this story is an example of it-- to depict females as capable of fighting as well as or (usually) better than males, which I think would have been extremely rare in any period in history. In fact, there are no less than a half-dozen skilled female fighters in this anthology.
“Waegu,” by Jennifer Rachel Baumer, relies on a different sort of setting for a pirate story. Bloodthirsty Japanese pirates raid a Korean coastal village and take the peasants away as slaves. To complicate matters, the leader's second in command finds himself drawn to one of the female slaves.
“The Shadow of Faith,” by K. T. Morley, is a fast-paced story about crusaders and pirates involving a religious order of knights. The captain of the ship is a woman who agrees to rescue one of the knights from prison and make him the new governor of the city.
“Sea Wolf,” by Eadwine Brown, depicts the conflict between Muslim pirates and Frankish crusaders. There is a captive Frankish woman who fights so well that she becomes the captain of the pirate Muslim ship afterwards. The fighting scenes are extremely well described and realistic.
“Seven Blades to One,” by Henry Ram, is about the capture of a crusader ship by North African corsairs. On board the ship is a beautiful Frankish noblewoman destined for a rich Muslim’s harem. A sympathetic corsair attempts to rescue her, pitting his lone blade against seven others.
“The Stars Shine, the Blood Rains,” by Jeff Draper, tells us a story about a holy relic that must be retrieved and a heinous crime that must be punished. Amid much violence and evil plotting, Conrad, the knight, attempts to accomplish both tasks.
“Deus Vult Ea or God Wills Her,” by Kate Martin, is a story about a nurse who tends the wounded during a crusade and her religiously fanatical cousin, who becomes the city leader after the death of her husband. As a side plot there is a search for the Holy Grail.
“Penitence,” by Carl Walmsley, depicts a determined crusader who moves heaven and earth to recover a holy relic stolen from him. He teams up with a reluctant thief against the machinations of a scheming baron.
“Death Comes to Ascalon,” by J. Stewart, opens with Fatimids attacking Frankish pilgrims and a lay nun being kidnapped by a powerful vizier. Most of the action takes place in or around the besieged city of Ascalon. The hero is Hospitaller Sergeant Osmond Haraldson, who contrives to outwit and outmanoeuvre his arch enemy the vizier as he attempts to rescue the nun.
“Jehenne’s Righteous Torch,” by Daniel R. Robichaud, presents us with another story about boy crusaders. This time an ex-crusader girl, who was formerly a slave of the Moslems before escaping her captors, appears in Marseille disguised as a boy. There she puts her fighting skills to good use as she helps prevent other children from being tricked and shipped to Tunisia as slaves.
“Stain of Blood,” by Keith Taylor, is about a knight who happens to be the lover of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and fights in a tournament in Antioch. The tournament scenes are presented with colourful realism in all their violence and goriness against a backdrop of exciting court intrigue.
June 10, 2019
‘Crossbones and Crosses’ is an atypical collection of historical fiction rather than fantasy from Jason Waltz’ Rogue Blades press . Having said this, fantasy hovers close to some of the stories, such as C.L.Werner’s ‘Devils from the Sea’ with the protagonist’s suggestively named ‘Demon Killer’ sword. (Albeit it should be said here that Werner knows his weapons and how to wield them in narrative.) There are hints of the supernatural in several of the stories, such as Howard-Hobson’s ‘La Malediction de Mort’ where a favourable wind is obtained (perhaps?) by blood. But such are the times of these fictions, that superstition or belief in the numinous is naturally part of the milieu. Horror, also, is certainly present, as in David R. Downing’s tale, and the source of that horror is borderline fantasy but fully over that border into the gothic.
Characterization in these stories might be broad and functional in the service of driving plot as in Teel James Glen’s and Jeff Draper’s tales or more nuanced as in KT Morley’s deftly dual-viewpointed romp, or the interaction between the two main characters in Carl Walmsley’s crusader tale.
But the (albeit essential and enhancing) tail of characterization should never be allowed to wag the sea-dog of action-adventure, and there’s a salt-sea freshness and vitality to the prose and plotting of the pirate stories, carrying occasional cliché (particularly in dialogue) before it – and what’s a cliché but a cutlass that’s proved its worth? Colourless speech would be a worse fault. And to give danegeld where it’s due, the language employed by these scribes by and large avoids the damaging modernizing excesses of some fantasy. (And there’re some nifty ships’ names!)
Speaking of the archetypal pirate blade, when Errol Flynn yelled ‘It’s Cutlasses now, men’ to his crew, you knew there’d be little blood overtly spilt. Not so in this anthology. Times have changed. In any case prose was never quite as squeamish as film used to be in the golden age of the celluloid swashbucklers, and the violence depicted here, though never gratuitous, is more visceral than that faced by Flynn or Lancaster. The same can be said of the Crusader stories, though as far as I recall this place and time(s) didn’t produce the wealth of silver screen products.
Historical adventure fiction can bear a greater weight of fact and detail, but like a naginata the weight must be wielded with balance, the wielder needing the skill to judge that balance. These writers have that skill, that judgment to call a dromond a dromond and trust the reader to get the idea with the aid of a fair storytelling wind of context and without a becalming paragraph of essay.
The piracy stories seem of a higher quality on the whole (though Keith Taylor’s crusader piece is unsurprisingly one of the best in the whole collection, given his immense writing experience and stature) perhaps reflecting that this setting has more scope for both stylish sword and wordplay? Or maybe the crusader paradigm is simply more grim per se... It also might be that, although Waltz includes a thoughtfully varied set of milieus within the anthology’s parameters, the two sets of stories, particularly the crusader tales, might have benefited from being interweaved rather than positioned as two sections? Nothing to stop the ‘adventurous’ reader from pursuing the ‘action’ of reading these tales in a different order than they’re printed. In either case this is a collection of satisfying overall strength.
Characterization in these stories might be broad and functional in the service of driving plot as in Teel James Glen’s and Jeff Draper’s tales or more nuanced as in KT Morley’s deftly dual-viewpointed romp, or the interaction between the two main characters in Carl Walmsley’s crusader tale.
But the (albeit essential and enhancing) tail of characterization should never be allowed to wag the sea-dog of action-adventure, and there’s a salt-sea freshness and vitality to the prose and plotting of the pirate stories, carrying occasional cliché (particularly in dialogue) before it – and what’s a cliché but a cutlass that’s proved its worth? Colourless speech would be a worse fault. And to give danegeld where it’s due, the language employed by these scribes by and large avoids the damaging modernizing excesses of some fantasy. (And there’re some nifty ships’ names!)
Speaking of the archetypal pirate blade, when Errol Flynn yelled ‘It’s Cutlasses now, men’ to his crew, you knew there’d be little blood overtly spilt. Not so in this anthology. Times have changed. In any case prose was never quite as squeamish as film used to be in the golden age of the celluloid swashbucklers, and the violence depicted here, though never gratuitous, is more visceral than that faced by Flynn or Lancaster. The same can be said of the Crusader stories, though as far as I recall this place and time(s) didn’t produce the wealth of silver screen products.
Historical adventure fiction can bear a greater weight of fact and detail, but like a naginata the weight must be wielded with balance, the wielder needing the skill to judge that balance. These writers have that skill, that judgment to call a dromond a dromond and trust the reader to get the idea with the aid of a fair storytelling wind of context and without a becalming paragraph of essay.
The piracy stories seem of a higher quality on the whole (though Keith Taylor’s crusader piece is unsurprisingly one of the best in the whole collection, given his immense writing experience and stature) perhaps reflecting that this setting has more scope for both stylish sword and wordplay? Or maybe the crusader paradigm is simply more grim per se... It also might be that, although Waltz includes a thoughtfully varied set of milieus within the anthology’s parameters, the two sets of stories, particularly the crusader tales, might have benefited from being interweaved rather than positioned as two sections? Nothing to stop the ‘adventurous’ reader from pursuing the ‘action’ of reading these tales in a different order than they’re printed. In either case this is a collection of satisfying overall strength.
Read
June 15, 2019Reading Crossbones & Crosses is like attending an old-fashion Saturday morning at the movies, with a multi-featured marquee.
With a forward by Howard Andrew Jones, this anthology edited by Jason M. Waltz features a buffet of some of the finest stories in the adventure genre by some of its best authors. Too numerous to mention all authors by name (there are approximately twenty-five stories and pieces of poetry), there is certain to be a reader’s favorite among them.
Whether you like pirates or crusaders, warriors or rogues—with a couple of stories combining all for good measure—you’ll enjoy this compendium of swashbuckling tales set in the golden days when magic, adventure, and bravery met, combined, and entertwined. There’s something for any reader who loves a tale in which the hero or heroine wields a sword.
This anthology was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review. No remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.
With a forward by Howard Andrew Jones, this anthology edited by Jason M. Waltz features a buffet of some of the finest stories in the adventure genre by some of its best authors. Too numerous to mention all authors by name (there are approximately twenty-five stories and pieces of poetry), there is certain to be a reader’s favorite among them.
Whether you like pirates or crusaders, warriors or rogues—with a couple of stories combining all for good measure—you’ll enjoy this compendium of swashbuckling tales set in the golden days when magic, adventure, and bravery met, combined, and entertwined. There’s something for any reader who loves a tale in which the hero or heroine wields a sword.
This anthology was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review. No remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.
August 28, 2019
Crossbones & Crosses, edited by Jason M Waltz, is an intriguing anthology filled with swashbuckling rogues, treachery, blood-lust-adventures, pirates, and sheer bedlam. The collection offers a comprehensive and varied sampling of memorable tales, each told through a myriad of compelling, larger than life personalities. Many of the characters transverse the pages of history, while others are the sole creative creation of their writers. The blend adds to the reading enjoyment immensely.
This anthology includes poetry and stories which vary in length, but no matter the scope, each leaves a memorable impact.
This anthology includes poetry and stories which vary in length, but no matter the scope, each leaves a memorable impact.
June 6, 2019
Exciting, well-written adventure stories with gripping plots. This is a quality anthology from top to bottom.
September 1, 2019
Thsi book is filled with stories that are both riveting and well written. I recommend this anthology to anyone who likes adventure.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews