Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

One of the big problems with fantasy and epic fantasy is cookie cutter syndrome. If you read epic fantasy you know exactly what I mean. Take any hundred epic fantasy books, switch the names of the characters and the creatures and you can’t tell them apart. Write eight door-stoppers in a series and voila! you got yourself an epic fantasy main stream profit machine. You can almost hear Joseph Campbell and JRR clucking at the lack of real originality.

And this is something that I lament about often. But this rut is something we as readers, and me in particular, afflict on ourselves.  Yet it isn’t wholly true. There are some really wonderful  ”not so typical” fantasy books out there. And Curse of the Lyrestone is one of these books. Let me explain why.

I am a moderatey big guy. six foot two, two hundred plus pounds; martial artist and ex military. From that you can probably guess what kind of epic fantasy I read! Yup, for me, when a Dark lord rears his ugly head and wants to ruin a beautiful world I am reaching for my axe and heading straight for his lair. Gather up some brave men and let’s go! Battles along the way? Darn Right! And a lot of them! Battle scars? Bah! Mere flesh wounds!

Now this takes me to the book Curse of the Lyrestone and the story of Ainsley who is a ten year old she-elf. Her parents are killed and she is burdened with a piece of the lyrestone that is strapped to her wrist. The lyrestone drains all magic from an elf so it can be controlled and sold into slavery. And this is what happens to Ainsley; she is drained of her magic and sold into slavery. But this is only where the story begins.

Now, knowing what you know about me, and what I like, you can see why it took me several weeks to get around to giving this book a try. It just isn’t what I usually read.

But… once I started reading it I literally couldn’t put it down. It is downright remarkable. I found myself very much empathizing with Ainsley and her plight and this book turned into one of those books that I dreaded finishing. You know how that goes. As you get toward the end of a book that is just so good you start to slow down so you can savor it. You spread out the readings so you can remain in the remarkable world a bit longer.

I don’t know how the author (Susan Carpenter) did it but she cast a spell on me and I found myself oft glancing down at my wrist to see if maybe she had secretly attached a lyrestone to me!

The book is flawlessly written and has received the editors choice award from the publisher (iUniverse). If you are looking for some really great fantasy that is not so typical then I highly recommend you give this book a try. It is available at:

 Amazon.com Curse of the Lyrestone: A Kingdom of Zhavahn Novel

Or at the publisher iUniverse:Curse of the Lyrestone

Visit the authors book site at curseofthelyrestone.com

Popularity: 23% [?]

I am currently in the process of starting a new community that focuses on the Medieval Realm. The portal for the site is at: http://www.stormthecastle.net But don’t visit it yet. It is currently under development. Although you may want to hop over and bookmark it! Or just take a peek.

If you are into knights, castles, Role Playing, Larping, Renaissance Faires or anything in this whole realm you might want to hop on over to the forum and sign up. It is going to be a lot of fun and this is your chance to get in early. We have a lot of things planned! You can meet other people that love medieval stuff, learn about what is happening and keep up on the medieval world.

If you have an organization or group that is in the genre this is going to be a great place to meet like minded people and get word out about what you do.

Take a minute to cruise on over to the forum and sign up so I can keep you posted about what is happening. Things are going to go real quick with this.

Stormthecastle.net Forum signup

Popularity: 18% [?]

Pole Axe

I recently had a long discussion with a friend about medieval weapons and the topic came around to pole axes. It got to the point where we were laughing so hard I thought one of us was going to have a heart attack!

Anyway, the basic concept of a poleaxe is similar to any other poleweapon. You take a hand weapon and you put it on the end of a pole. 

The nice thing about pole weapons is that they enable you to extend your reach in combat, and in particular, they enable you to reach up and attack, or dismount an enemy on horseback.

But if you give some thought to the poleaxe you have to wonder what they were thinking. The effectiveness of a hand axe is in the slicing motion - you take a nice swing and let the curved blade do its work. But if you mount the axe on the end of a pole how are you going to take a nice swing?  If the pole is ten feet long you have to wind up and then swing it! How long is this going to take? half an hour? Do you tell your opponent, wielding an ordinary sword, to wait a minute while you wind up for your poleaxe swing?

I can see it now. It’s practically a monty python sketch in the making.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun with it. We envisioned a middle ages kingdom that rose to quick fortune and fame but for some reason they all took to using the poleaxe and well, in their first big battle they were all wiped out by a small army carrying daggers and clubs. We envisioned thousands of them on the battlefield all trying to swing their enormous poleaxes and never getting a swing completed!

Well, The poleaxe does seem to be a rather peculiar weapon but I am sure it was very useful in it’s time, and it did have a certain amount of use and popularity. It’s just all in good fun!

Popularity: 22% [?]