Jesse’s Reviews > Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures > Status Update

“Mistress of Death”

This is the last Dark Agnes story. We get one of Howard’s conclusions where the first draft accelerates into a synopsis and this story is headed full bore into the weird, with a resurrected necromancer and a dark tomb with a hole leading to a subterranean nightmare and, uh, a nude woman on a stone slab, because of course she is.

“The Sign of the Sickle”

This is basically a first draft of the “Timur-Lang” poem and, really, the brevity of the final version feels way more polished than this longer, I think “original” version.

“Untitled Fragment”

The previous recap undoubtedly is presented in order to put this fragment in a better context. This the story of Galdan Khan’s last stand against the Muslim onslaught… so maybe I misread what was going on in that recap o.O This would be one of the collection’s most recently based stories, pegged in 1697.

“Recap of Harold Lamb’s “The Wolf Chaser””

Lamb is one of the authors who Howard took his cues from, both in his prose and in his subject matter. This is a recap of something within one of Lamb’s novellas and has the sort of curious language of a folk tale or oral history, describing a man named Hu-Go’s last stand against the Mongolian hordes.

“Untitled Fragment”

This is a sketch of any cosmopolitan city in the Middle East that is slouching purposefully toward a slave auction. There isn’t any real indication of where it might go from here, but history tells us that Howard’s heroes generally do not begin the story as slaves unless they immediately break free from bondage.

“Untitled Fragment”

Idk, this extract has a Scotsman making his case to join a band of what appear to be Spaniards in Outremer—Palestine specifically. It both starts and ends in nowhere.

“Untitled Fragment (The Slave-Princess)”

This is a longform treatment of the prior synopsis. Zuleika is a pitiful character, a princess who has been brought low through three years of slavery. Howard has great ideas and a compelling narrative, but he doesn’t let the interpersonal conflicts breathe to give the not-quite-romance between Amory and Zuleika some weight.

“Untitled Synopsis (The Slave-Princess)”

This would have been a Cormac Fitzgeoffrey story that makes him out to be even more contemptible, rescuing a dancing girl and then plotting with his buddy Amory to pass her off as the daughter of the Sheikh, Anastasia-style. But, wait! It turns out she really IS the daughter of the sheikh, Anastasia-style!! Fitzgeoffrey is gloomy, Fitzgeoffrey is bleak…

“The Road of the Eagles”

More middle-east intrigue, this time the heroic force composed of Cossacks attempting to avenge the death of their leader against a Corsair. Kurds, Armenians, Turks, uh, and a Persian dancing girl with ARYAN ANCESTRAL BLOOD :flex:

This story’s philosophical focus is an ethnic essentialism that ascribes Muslims a certain fatality that hinders them from nigh-impossible aspirations.

“The Shadow of the Vulture”

This story is mostly about the Ottoman siege of Vienna in the early 1500s. BUT, we have two main characters: a himbo lush named Gottfried who fought the Sultan a year before and who had his eternal enmity, and the discovered RED SONJA who is a madcap woman warrior who, like Agnes, has no time for anyone’s bullshit but watches out for Gottfried.