We Are All Legends [Paperback]

Darrell Schweitzer (Author), L. Sprague De Camp (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the 1970s, the heyday of swords and sorcery, a deluge of bad heroic fantasy flooded the market; as a result, since the early '80s, hardly any swords-and-sorcery books have been published outside the Conan the Barbarian series, the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's feminist Sword and Sorceress anthology series. The derivative '70s swords and sorcery deserved to be washed away, but some worthwhile works disappeared as well. Two lost series that deserved far better are Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books and Darrell Schweitzer's Sir Julian stories. Both series are well written and intelligent, and they share an even rarer trait: the dark, brooding sensibility that helped make Robert E. Howard's sometimes purple (and always scarlet) Conan stories so popular and memorable.

Now the Wildside Press has reprinted We Are All Legends, the long-unavailable collection of 13 linked stories about Sir Julian, the Crusader damned by God after a night spent with a Satanic witch. Julian roams Europe and the East, and strange lands not found on any map, seeking to escape his fate. In "The Lady of the Fountain," Julian's encounter with a lamia may destroy both the knight and his closest companion. In "The Veiled Pool of Mistorak," Faerie lords send Julian on a grim quest to find a city that exists no more and a man doomed ever to live. In "The One Who Spoke with the Owls," the penniless knight accepts a job before learning its terms and wakes to discover he has been hired to slay a pagan witch. "The Castle of Kites and Crows" presents a vision of cosmic reality that will chill the soul of anyone raised in a Christian faith. While the first-person narration occasionally makes Julian sound more self-absorbed than accursed, We Are All Legends is a fine entertainment that merits the attention of fantasy and horror fans. --Cynthia Ward

Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Borgo Press (December 1, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880448831
• ISBN-13: 978-1880448830
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Rewarding Journey Through Hell and Beyond, January 7, 2012

By 

Seth E Lindberg (Cincinnati, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: We Are All Legends (Paperback)

We Are All Legends is a must-read for fans of doomed protagonists (Karl Wagner's Kane, Michael Moorcock's Elric, David Gemmell's Druss, etc.). It is Sword and Sorcery for the adult crowd. Darrell Schweitzer tapped into his extensive weird fiction expertise to craft this great string of tales. It is gritty, poetic, and intellectually rewarding. We Are All Legends mixes the horrific atmosphere of H.P. Lovecraft, with the story telling action of R. E. Howard, with the emotive style of C.A. Smith.

Select quotes of his writing best communicate the motivations of Julian, a warrior jaded by the crusades who is cursed by evil forces. An apostate, shunning the god who shunned him. Julian is a selfish man, as the character reveals in the story Divers Hands : "I had many times longed for death. But then the familiar terror came... After death--damnation, the eternal torments I could escape only for a brief time while I lived. Like all men, I am ultimately selfish. I would sacrifice the whole world to escape Hell even for a short while. I could kill myself only on a sudden, saving impulse swifter than thought. If I reasoned what was right, just, and the moral thing to do, I would forget all about rightness, justice, and morality, and be paralyzed."

What kind of atmosphere will readers experience? Just read this dose from The Riddle of the Horn: "The trees of earth, those which were solid and not phantasms of the snow, thinned out as I left the forest and moved into open country once again. It was foolish for me to do so, but as soon as they were out of sight--and they were almost at once--all directions looked the same and the only real thing was the agony of cold and of further motion. The wind stung my face with renewed fury, sweeping long and far over rolling hills and fields, no longer broken or held back by ancient trunks. I was without destination, like a corpse bobbing on an endless sea."

And what horrors will the reader face? Not your typical demons, but indescribable evil. From the story The Unknown God Cried Out : "When the man came within the circle of the firelight, I could see that he had no face, and thus no mouth, and that was why he did not speak. In the place of a face there was a black oval, not a mask, not a burnt sore, but an absolute, limitless void sinking into his head in all defiance of perspective and dimensions. I feared if I looked at it too long I would be drawn into it, out of the universe altogether..."

In summary, We Are All Legends is a gateway to Hell and beyond. As I read it I felt that rewarding anxiety of "really" experiencing the unknown, running through meticulously constructed dioramas that only a sorcerer like Schweitzer could conjure. Great fun.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, arguably obscure sword and sorcery tales!, October 21, 2008

By 

Caleb Courtney (Weaver, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Are All Legends (Paperback)

This book contains the tales of Sir Julian the Apostate, a doomed and brooding knight who is attempting to avoid his fate. These stories are chock full of hidden symbolism and meaning. This is perhaps most comparable to the dark fantasy works of Karl Edward Wagner and Michael Shea, particularly Shea's In Yana, the Undying.