Modern swords & sorcery

Has there been any fantasy fiction written in the swords & sorcery style in the past, say, 30 years? Stuff with action, violence, and treasure? Or is it all just ponderous Tolkienian epics?

Veeky Forums pls

Genre's dead, Jim.

>howard spent years and years, decades being an OCD faggot writing wheel of time books ad nauseam instead of CONAN OF CIMMERIA! in the age of hyborea

What. Howard didn't write Wheel of Time, that's a different Robert

Nah, Wheel of Time for whatever reason was really popular and set the tone for the genre since then. It marks the point where fantasy began its slow death.

Thankfully there's still lots of great older stuff.

Joe Abercrombie, maybe?

Although Jordan did write a few Conans.

I'll look into it

So the Elric books go: Elric of Melniboné -> The Fortress of the Pearl -> The Sailor on the Seas of Fate?

Does Fortress of the Pearl pick up in the chaos realm where he went at the end of the first book, or is there a timeskip?

what. i hope you're not being serious.

As I recall, he ends up going to the Young Kingdoms at the end of the first book.

Fortress of the Pearl picks up with Elric's first adventure in the Young Kingdoms. It's good, with lots of weird, very Moorcockian mindfuckery and evocative characters and environments. There's little real chronology in the Elric books though. You can read them chronologically, but each is written as a stand alone.

>As I recall, he ends up going to the Young Kingdoms at the end of the first book.
He goes to the Young Kingdoms, but at the very end, Yyrkoon opens a portal to the realm of Limbo, where the runeblades are, Elric follows and gets Stormbringer, and meets the Red Archer

What's The Black Company like?

David Gemmell would probably be up your alley.

Berserk

Came in to recommend Gemmell.

Nasty, brutish, but not short.
It's excellent.

What makes a work pulpy swords and sorcery vs dry "high" fantasy? I don't actually know the distinction.

Read Conan and you'll know.

Read through

youtu.be/JzuoJVr3IAo

...

I didn't see your post when that thread was alive. This seems like a decent place to assume you'll blow through.

When D&D first came out, the three class options were Fighting Man, Magic-User, and Cleric.

Magic-Users were people who used magic. Fighting Men were everyone else.
Clerics were a late addition to the (but still before the first publication) that were sort of like a combination of the two other classes.


Supplement I added Monks, Supplement II added Paladins and Thieves, and Supplement III added... Druids, IIRC?
The Thieves are especially notorious for being a last minute addition.
They're loosely based on houserules some guy phoned Gygax about like a week before he sent his manuscript for printing.

Climbing, sneaking, picking locks, etc. were just general activities any adventure was assumed to know how to do until Thieves were added.

This Crooked Way by James Enge

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I'm sure it's out there, but it's the exception rather than the rule. The overwhelming majority is indeed
>ponderous Tolkienian epics?
or now, thanks to GRRM
>ponderous deconstructions of the ponderous Tolkenian epic.

I am writing one currently. You just wait.

does it have cat girls?

There isn't one. It's just a new label neckbeards can use to say why THEIR favorite old stories are good, but all those icky new stories are automatically bad.

Harry Turtledove.

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Thirding this. Best to start with Legend, although you can start (almost) anywhere.

Good summary.

Fourth-ing this recommendation.

>Magic is always Evil and degenerate
>Civilization is always degenerate and Evil
>The Gods don't care about your struggle, only that you struggle
>Philosophy is the purview of wizards and nerds, kill them
>Become King by your own hand, or drown in your own blood
>If it wouldn't end up on a heavy metal album cover, it's not worth doing

this

>Civilization is always degenerate and Evil
But what if I want to have a struggling, wizard-slaying metal paladin as the heroin? Civilization and order lovers can be S&S too.

>Paladin
You really don't understand Swords and Sorcery.