Darkness Weaves

Darkness Weaves is the first of Karl Edward Wagner's sword-and-sorcery books about the immortal anti-hero Red Kane. It is set in a bygone age of Earth with political geography and religious cults that are entirely sui generis, as far as I was able to tell. The setting and plot have supernatural features with science-fictional elements. I was fortunate to snag a copy of the Warner Books first complete edition with the Frank Frazetta cover art, albeit in less than pristine condition.

Although Wagner edited the Berkeley Putnam authorized edition of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories a few years after writing Darkness Weaves and then wrote the excellent Conan pastiche The Road of Kings, Kane is no Conan knock-off. He does have Conan's show more puissance in combat and some of the hardness of the royal Conan of Hour of the Dragon, but the humane stoicism of Conan is entirely absent. Kane has the sort of bleak psychopathy that would be inevitable after centuries of slaughtering people, and anyone he meets can tell.

Kane does still have a capacity for both cheer and sourness, and in this story, he even has a pal. The assassin Arbas serves a sidekick function similar to that played by Moonglum in Moorcock's Elric tales. The novel is structured around Kane's opportunistic alliance with an evil sorceress, and it features multiple large naval battles along with royal intrigues.

Wagner's prose is up to the task. His storytelling subverts customary fairytale/fantasy expectations on several counts, not least the moral valence of the protagonist, but also the unjust desserts of various other characters. I am definitely interested in the further volumes of Red Kane. show less

Kane, immortal wanderer returns to the place where he and his sea faring pirates wreaked havoc several centuries ago. Summoned by a witch seeking revenge on an island Empire he leads new navy – but Kane would not be Kane if there wasn’t some cloak-and-dagger action around. Finally he confronts the witch only to find that she has very powerful allies – creatures that have lived on Earth when it was completely covered in oceans.

Recommended.

This one is one of the real Kane tales of dark Horror. An evil queen uses Kane to wreck her insane revenge on the world through her control of another long forgotten pre-human science. Of Course, Kane has other plans. . .

Sword and sorcery at it's best. Kane is not a good guy!

It's Kane! What more of a review do you need?

F/SF