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

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

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!

Swords, weapons, armor, and all the accotrements that go with this genre of interest are fun to learn about, collect and read about. But, it is important to always realize that these things were, at one time, very serious business.

Today is memorial day and it is important that we think about and thank all the modern day knights of our world of today. The weapons may have changed but the code has remained practically the same for the last several hundred years.

This formulation we have of freedom and the fact that we need to sometimes take up arms to defend it is an important one. I believe it is one of the single most important developments in our history.

We say, as a people “We are free, and we don’t want to fight. But if we have to we will because we cherish our freedom.”

Pretty much as simple as that. And this has come down to us from many many knights, and men-at-arms, over the course of centuries, who believed the same things. We owe a debt of gratitude to them. So the next time you pick up a sword or a mace, axe, shield, helmet, pick, hammer, or halberd take a moment to reflect on what that item really means - it has power.

Here is an interesting little tidbit that ties the knights of the past with the knights of the present.

I am a veteran and in the service we would often talk tactics, drilling, psychology and well all kinds of military things. And in these conversations or meetings the name Baron Carl von Clausewitz would often come up. He was born in 1780 and was a Prussian soldier, scholar and writer. He lived in a tumultuous time and no doubt saw many changes in the military world as we transitioned from the ways of castles and kings to the ways of generals and armies.

Anyway, the story about The Baron was that early on in America’s history we had no military. And the founders of the country looked to him to help us establish a legitimate military force which he did. And many of what he established still remains with our military today.

You see? There is a thread that comes to us from the times of the middle ages and the renaissance. Those knights had an effect on what we do, how we live and what we think.

Here is a quote from his very famous book called “On War” which I have owned for many years.

On the difficulty of separating perception from judgment

“All Thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws the line, where the premises stop which are the result of cognition - where judgment begins. There art begins.”

This blog is one part of a very large selection of websites and blogs that I run on a daily basis and one of the challenges I find is making the time to update all the stuff! That’s where you come in.

Have any ideas about what you would like to see on this blog? Want more gamer stuff? Want more weapon stuff? Knights? Middle Ages? Movies? Post me a comment or send me an email.

Better yet, want to write an article about something in the medieval world? I would love to post it to this blog.

Also, while on the subject of submitting stuff to my websites I always have the need for new content on my other sites and in particular here is a list; check out the sites and see if you would like to contribute.

Fantasy art school - To this site you can submit your artwork or your short tutorials on how to do fantasy art

Epic fantasy site - Want to write something about the genre of epic fantasy? This is the #1 epic fantasy site on the web.

Fantasy Guides - This site is devoted to guides that help people find and enjoy all aspects of fantasy from favorite authors to websites. Want to write a guide about your favorite fantasy subject?

Self Published a fantasy book? I have a section on one of my websites where I spotlight self published books. Send me the info and I will be glad to add your book. Self Published fantasy books

Here is a chance to get your creative work some exposure. Some of my sites do extraordinarily well and get a lot of daily traffic.

send me an email or post a comment - Be glad to help you.