Storm Season

Thieves' World #4

by Robert Lynn Asprin (Editor)

1st edition paperback, vg++

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction, Sword and Sorcery

Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1982

About the author

Robert (Lynn) Asprin was born in 1946. While he wrote some stand alone novels such as The Cold Cash War, Tambu, and The Bug Wars and also the Duncan & Mallory Illustrated stories, Bob is best known for his series fantasy, such as the Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve, the Phule's Company novels, and the Time Scout novels written with Linda Evans. He also edited the groundbreaking Thieves' World anthology series with Lynn Abbey. Other collaborations include License Invoked (set in the French Quarter of New Orleans) and several Myth Adventures novels, all written with Jody Lynn Nye.

Bob's final solo work was a contemporary fantasy series called Dragons, again set in New Orleans.

Bob passed away suddenly on May 22, 2008. He is survived by his daughter and son, his mother and his sister.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Storm Season was the fourth Thieves' World and departs somewhat from the format of individual stories with a shared-world setting from the previous volumes. There are six stories included, all from authors and characters from prior books, and it has more of a mosaic novel feel with a single situation with which the characters deal, the conflict of Jubal and Tempus. Asprin contributes an introductory piece and an epilog (which is something of a cliff-hanger), as well as a good story, Exercise in Pain. I also enjoyed Steel by Lynn Abbey and A Fugitive Art by Diana L. Paxson. Downwind by C.J. Cherryh was a bit too long, and I didn't care for Wizard Weather by Janet Morris. My favorite was andrew j. offutt's Hanse story, Godson, which did a lot to tie some of the threads from the others together as well as advancing Hanse's terrific journey. The feel of the book moves from a sword and sorcery extravaganza to a darker wizards-at-war showcase, but it's still an enjoyable fantasy romp.

[Jim Kuenzli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another nice anthology collection in the Thieves’ World series. I am really enjoying these. This series brought me in touch with Lynn Abbey’s work, and she doesn’t disappoint. Offutt, Cherryh, Robert Asprin, and Janet Morris all have good stories in this installment. Diana Paxson also has a nice little story here, too.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Storm Season edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey
Book Four of Thieves World
Tantor audio
Narrated by Jonathan Johns

Many of the same authors have returned and many of the same characters continue to lead the way. The entire lot are just trying to survive another day in Sanctuary. Each story furthers the overall story. The climax has epic proportions. In fact, the epilogue of the book leaves us at a crossroads. A cliffhanger is you will. Making me eager to seek out the next book right away.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the main characters now fully established -more or less - we see the stories become more combined, more organized, around central events. Things are happening in the whole of the Ranken Empire, of which Sanctuary is the ass-end. Wars are brewing, trade is disrupted, and their own gods have deserted them. What does this mean for the thieves of the world, more of the same really, more people to loot, more misery to cause. We open with a nearly dead Jubal, whose powerbase has been destroyed by the near-immortal Tempus and his mercenary band The Stepsons. Move onto Ischande, who I thought was a one-shot character- and the dealings in the power vacuum left open by Jubal's near destruction, moving onto Shadowspawn being pulled in several directions at once and ending with a mysterious fleet arriving at the shores of Sanctuary.

For the most part a decent read, despite some of the text being a little overwritten. I had only wished that the books contained a mini-glossary at the beginning of each volumes, giving a little overview of each character. That way it would be easier to keep up each new figure.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book and its companions back in the 1980s.

The idea of a Shared World apparently started at one of the many scifi conventions that were popular in the 1980s. It was a novel concept. There had always been anthologies - short stories or novellas written by authors from the same genre writing about the same Theme. But there had never been anthologies based on the same Fantasy World.

Thieves World is a world: " a city of outlaws and adventurers in a world of war and wizardry, peopled with colorful characters". What made these books work was the authors' characters all wandered in and out of the same taverns, encountered the same corruption, and once in awhile authors' borrowed one anothers characters for their story. It was clever. It worked.

I need to confess, I am an avid reader. However, short stories HAVE not and ARE not my favorite writing format. As a rule, I am usually wanting more character development, more information than what a short story can give. But Thieves' World worked and worked well. I do not recall any other short stories I enjoyed more.

The editors went on to publish 12 books. I personally stopped reading at about book 6. The concept started getting tired and the books were not as clever and exciting to me after #6. But seeing this being offered as a ebook is getting me excited again. I just might revisit Thieves World.

[Brian Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storm Season was incredibly uneven. It appears that editor, Robert Asprin, is trying to drive a narrative through short stories. In doing so, he’s asking his writers to contort their narrative in ways that don’t work in the short story form.

There are a couple gems in the book. Asprin’s introduction and Godson are wonderful fantasy. Steel was a serviceable story. But the rest just tried too hard to drive a unified story and that was not the original, stated purpose of Thieves’ World.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Series suffers from power inflation

[Shaitarn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating somewhere between 2.5 and 3 stars.

Personal preference always comes into play when reviewing a book, and it definitely does in my review for this, the fourth Thieves World anthology. Earlier in the series, and certainly in the first book, these were a collection of nice, competently told short stories, possibly a little dark (they're set in a city of villains and thieves, after all) but not grim at all. In this book it's as though a memo went around the contributing writers: we're having a new force arriving, so finish up your last stand-alone tales and get ready for war!

If these stories struggling to feature a more coherent narrative, being considerably grimmer and more dedicated to war and fighting, you may well really enjoy the new direction the novels seem about to take. Sadly I don't. You see - I read novels that are full of fantasy war and fighting, and while I like them, I liked these anthologies being full of thieves and people from the lower end of the scale rather than the usual warrior heroes and antiheroes.

Anyway, this book consists of 6 stories with an introduction and epilogue. The overarching plot of the volume is the ongoing feud between Jubal, the ex-gladiator and crimelord and the Stepsons - Tempus' mercenary band. While I quite enjoyed Robert Asprin's Exercise in Pain, I honestly just found the rest of the stories to be in the 'okay but nothing special' category. Even the usually reliably unreliable Hanse 'Shadowspawn' had a rather disappointing story in Godson (far too overpowered). The worst of the bunch was Wizard Weather by Janet Morris, featuring the constantly annoying Tempus. I'm aware some readers probably love him, but I loathe him and hope he falls into this world's version of a snow-plough to recreate the infamous scene from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

I'm probably going to continue this series until book 10 (I still need to find a copy of book 11);hopefully it'll pick up. If you are a new reader who prefers more lighthearted stories, you may want to bail after book 3.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still working my way through the series. As usual I'm breaking it down:

"Exercise in Pain": Picking up where Jubal took an arrow to the knee (s), his loyal lieutenant brings him to a sorcerer-healer who offers a quick--yet excruciating--recovery. As you'd expect of Jubal, he tries to further cheat and fucks himself over some. 4/5*

"Downwind": Mradhon Vis, still haunted by Ischade and holed up at Mama Becho's, hits up Hawkmasks Mor-am and Moria for work. Krrf junkie Mor-am gets pinched by the beggar king and they try to rescue him. I didn't know wtf was going on half the time. First appearance of Haught. 2/5*

"A Fugitive Art": Lalo is back, using his enchanted hands to paint a bunch of toadies from the empire so the prince's advisor can find out who's crooked and how. Unfortunately one of them gets wise to it. I like the "little people" of Sanctuary. 4/5*

"Steel": Walegrin comes back to Sanctuary with Enlibar ore to be forged into legendary swords, intending to join the fighting up north. But it seems he has another destiny. I like Walegrin (despite being a male chauvinist) and Illyra stories (or maybe just Lynn Abbey). 5/5*

"Wizard Weather": Wizard/maybe god? ("Lord of Dreams" will always make me think of The Sandman) comes to Sanctuary all pissed off after Cime tried to shank him right before he was to marry "Storm Daughter" demigoddess Jihan. 4/5*

"Godson": Hanse gets called on by the gods of Ilsig to drive out Vashanka. Is Hanse semi-divine? 5/5*

Oooh and coming to throw their wrench in, the Beysib fleet arrives in Sanctuary...
... But that's the next book.

[Raymond Rugg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fourth book of the Thieves’ World anthologies contains only six stories, compared to the eight in the first book and the seven each in the second and third collections, and it actually feels shorter as one reads it. All six stories are by authors who have written previously for the series.

In his Editor’s Note, Asprin warns the reader of a change to be found in book four. “While in the earlier volumes I have tried to keep the stories in the order in which they occur, this has proved to be impossible in Storm Season … Rather than try to cut and splice the stories into a smooth chronology, I’ve left it to the reader to understand what is happening and construct his/her mental timeline as necessary.” I have commented on and approved of some of Asprin’s previous editorial decisions, but in this case, I think the book might have been better served by cutting and splicing.

Much of Storm Season pertains to the conflict between Asprin’s gladiator/crime lord Jubal and Morris’ Tempus, and the other stories work to move this plotline along, while telling their own tales. Offutt, as usual, steals the show with a Shadowspawn story, and he ties together some of the loose strands of the shared narrative. At the end of Storm Season, the reader can look back and say, “Oh, that’s what was going on there. Now I get it!”

[Garth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent little book. R.L. Asprin's little backwater town in what has been described as "The anus of the Rankan Empire" named Sanctuary, colloquially known as Thieve's World is about as unique to the fantasy genre as Terry Pratchett's Disc World series. It was the first time that groups of professional writers collectively wrote characters which interacted with each other in the same place. Back in the 80's when I was still in school I read every one of these voraciously as they came out. I'm glad to see they've aged better than I have. The only complaint I have is that the stories have differed somehow from the beginning like someone trying to drive the narrative whereas the earlier volumes had a slipshod roughness to them that I thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe that's the Left-Wing Liberal Anarchist in me but it is my opinion which are like parts of the lower gastrointestinal track that everyone, including the Rankan Empire possess...

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s all Tempus’s fault, the bastard.

Thieves’ World started off as a worms-eye-view concept, showing the colorful lives of people stuck in a backwater of a decadent empire. Even the ruler was there because his brother didn’t want him around to get any ideas about the throne. No one wanted to be in Sanctuary. Although the slow centering of the city was probably inevitable, the arrival of literal god’s-avatar, superpowered, immortal Tempus basically required all the other characters to level up, and by book four, for example, one character has gone from being a fun, interesting, but mostly-unremarkable pickpocket to a literal demigod slaying a god in single hand to hand combat. The stories are still fun, if uneven, don’t get me wrong! The shift in tone is even a plus at times, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s fascinating to see how inevitable the slide into Important is.

[Chris Sudall · Rating 4 out of 5]

More fantasy goodness with book 4. Once again we have a cover with something that didn't happen in the book, but maybe that's the plan.
As always, a collection of short stories, this time we catch up on Jubal's travails, take a trip downwind, toe find out what his former hawk masks are doing, catch up with the cursed painter, bring ina new character with some mythical steel, try to make head or tail Janet Morris' tortured prose on wizard assassination and end on Hanse changing his stripes.
It's all good stuff, although I really wish Morris would try and write sensibly, and I'll return for book five soon.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consistently maintain that the Thieves' World books would have made Appendix N if they had come out just a few years earlier, or if Gygax had ever revised the list. There is some great swords & sorcery stuff here, a lot of which would be labeled "grimdark" if it came out today. I love the whole series. This may not be the best volume in the series, but it's some great stuff. Working on re-reading volumes 1-6 (which I already had in my collection and had read before) in preparation to reading volumes 7-12 (which I acquired in February 2019 for the first time).

[Iain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unlike prior members of the series, I found this book really hard to finish. The last two stories, which amount to a third of the book's length, were painfully awkward. Again Morris' run-on sentences and verbosity obfuscate important developments in Thieve's World, and Offutt's piece, was awkward while fundamentally changing a core character.

In the end, I'm not sure I'll read on, despite having another 8 books of the series. This book's editting really left a lot to be desired.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It had been decades since I last read this. And yet, so much of it feels so familiar. Sanctuary still lives just as vividly in my head as when I was a kid. The only story I really didn't care for was the last one by Andrew J. Offutt. Not sure if it's just it not being that great, or knowing the things I do now about the author.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sanctuary is a setting I really dig, but some authors use it well, and some authors do not. Thus, while it’s probably more of a 3.5, entry #4 in this series gets a middling score. Read the prose of Asprin, but skim (or even skip) the prose of Offutt.

[Alex Budris · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a cliffhanger of an ending like that, there's no time to write a silly review... Quick, onto number five!

PS: The last story contains an epic battle between gods in an alternate dimension. Enough said.

[Komble III · Rating 4 out of 5]

ბევრი შედუოსპანი და ცოტა არასაჭირო ზედმეტი პერსონაჟები

კარგი მიმართულება არის აღებული განვითარებისთვის <3

[Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong entry in the series. The final story, "Godson" by Andrew J. Offutt, totally rocks.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good stories here. All the authors are foreshadowing the next phase of Sanctuary's history. The stories tie in with each other better than they have in the other books.

[Kendal · Rating 4 out of 5]

We need a character list, and a Return of the King-type appendix.

[Dixie Bowman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wasn't the book I read but it had the same name: Storm Season by Jan Dawson.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters and setting are established. Now they come together and somethings big await.

[Jack Doud · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with this anthology series isn't just that the stories are confusing but that they're boring. When I can even figure out who they're talking about, what with characters having multiple names and referencing events from stories 2 books back that I read years previously, the stories being described just aren't that interesting. Every character is an asshole, all the men are misogynist jerks, no stakes matter to anyone and half the stories end with literal deus ex machina.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a more nuanced review, see the electronic omnibus.

Exercise in Pain- Robert Lynn Asprin – Jubal is mostly an offstage presence except for this intro Downwind- C. J. Cherryh- Brings us a view of a part of Sanctuary that the rest of the city avoids. A Fugitive Art- Diana L. Paxson Steel-Lynn Abbey spins a tale of weapon tech and desperation with Wallegrin, the half brother of the half S’danzo mystic.
Wizard Weather- Janet Morris continues fleshing out the Stepsons attempts to hold control or maybe just to survive. The use of the Sacred Band and their practice of pairs is both old fashioned and ahead of its time in regard to sexuality.
Godson- Andrew J. Offutt as mentioned spins an interesting next level for Hanse, the Shadowspawn here.

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things really start moving forward for the series in Storm Season. All of the stories (except Diana Paxton's A Fugitive Art) concern major events in Thieves' World and advance several overarching plots: the fallout stemming from the destruction Jubal's estate and the ascendency of the Stepsons in Sanctuary (Exercise in Pain, Downwind); Walegrin's return to the city of his birth with Enlibar steel (Steel); Tempus' sister Cime's continuing campaign against the Mageguild (Wizard Weather), and the conflict between the gods of Islig and Ranke (Godson). We also get our first hard information about the "war in the north" that was been threatening for the last two books. And just who are these mysterious ships? In general, I don't feel like there weren't any "duds" in this collection, although some I liked better than others. Cherryh's story seemed to move better than in Shadows of Sanctuary, as did Lynn Abbey's, although Vis and Walegrin frequently come across as bitter MRA dudes. Weirdly enough, though, I disliked Tempus less in Wizard Weather than in his earlier stories. And while I enjoyed the newest Hanse tale, Offutt was really going overboard with repeating clever phrases from previous installments - Yes, that was good before, but let it go!

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth Thieves' World volume seems to have a surer editorial hand. Albeit that the stories could not be placed in perfect chronological order, this time around there’s an overarching theme to the book: the imminent invasion of Sanctuary by sea and the how the townsfolk prepare. The stories are a good lot overall.

Asprin’s “Exercise In Pain” brings Jubal back from being crippled at the hands of Tempus, but with a price; Lalo, the painter who can see souls, returns to fight for his life in Paxson’s “A Fugitive Art;” Offut’s “Godson” transforms his Shadowspawn from swaggering street rat to confident warrior and confidant of the gods, and makes it work. I didn’t like Cherryh’s too opaque “Downwind,” a confused take of Jubal's remnants feuding with Stepsons and spying on one another; and Janet Morris’ “Wizard Weather” is, as usual for her, a bit much (lord of dreams, some avatar in beautiful woman form, that Cime character... zzz). Still, I think the series is finally starting, after three books of scene-setting, to take off.

[Carlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth Thieves’ World anthology of fantasy short stories set in Sanctuary, a conquered city in decline at the edge of the Rankan empire. This is a reread and I am enjoying the different points of view as much as 38 years ago, accepting a certain unevenness of tone with each story written by a different author, but marvelling at the depth of back story with recurring characters.
This is a transitional book, after the significant events in Shadows of Sanctuary, but interestingly takes forward the stories of Tempus (a Rankan soldier, blessed/cursed by their gods), Shadowspawn (a native Ilsigi thief) and Jubal (a slave merchant and unofficial power in Sanctuary), as well as them having meaningful cameo roles in the other stories. The final stories, Wizard Weather and Godson, brings the stories of Tempus and Shadowspawn to a conclusion of sorts, whilst the epilogue serves as notice of the changes to come in the next anthology.

[Greg (adds 2 TBR list daily) Hersom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been rereading this series via Audible books as they've been coming available.
I'm not sure it's the book itself or the narrator, but I had a hard time staying interested, which was disappointing. Especially after having so enjoyed the first three books in this series.
I did like Diana L. Paxon's story, A Fugative Art. Lalo the Limner - a down and out painter who is given a sorcerous ability- wasn't one of my favorite charcters the first time I read this over 30 years ago, but this time around I'm really enjoying his misadventures.
I am going to continue with an audio re-read of Thieves' World. Out of a 12 book series, there's always gonna be a book or two that doesn't stand as well as the others. Plus, this is a very unigue fantasy series.
Thieves' World is not only a lot of fun, but I'm also enjoying the nostolgic appeal of 80's fantasy.