Scan barcode
ketutar's review against another edition
5.0
Wow! Talk about Marysue :-D
Agnes de Chastillon, Agnes de la Fére... did Robert choose the name deliberately to attach Agnes to Athos? :-D
This is a wonderful swashbuckling adventure with the sword woman, worth 10 men with her sword. It starts with her killing her fiance on the altar and running away from her village and dastardly father. Then she meets Etienne Villiers (Alexandre Dumas' George Villiers was the Duke of Buckingham :-D), and they start traveling together, but Etienne then sells her to another guy, and we have a fantastic scene of Agnes storming the room, throwing a knife at the buyer killing him instantly, and then beating Etienne up so badly he almost dies.
I imagine she's like 16 or so, because she mentions she wasn't yet a woman, and she was forced to be married :-D I don't think her age was ever mentioned. Or time. They throw around invented names and things like that, but I think it's kind of Three Musketeers fan fiction, so probably somewhere there in time :-D
And it continues like that :-D The first time she holds a sword, she kills half a dozen seasoned villains. :-D
I mean, I am totally giddy about this book - or collection of short stories, what it really is. It's 3 or 4 short stories, 3 written by Howard, and 1-2 (I'm not quite sure how many those are, because they are just continuation of the 3rd story), about 100 pages, so it's really not a book, but anyway, I just want to laugh all the time.
Absolutely fabulous :-D
Agnes de Chastillon, Agnes de la Fére... did Robert choose the name deliberately to attach Agnes to Athos? :-D
This is a wonderful swashbuckling adventure with the sword woman, worth 10 men with her sword. It starts with her killing her fiance on the altar and running away from her village and dastardly father. Then she meets Etienne Villiers (Alexandre Dumas' George Villiers was the Duke of Buckingham :-D), and they start traveling together, but Etienne then sells her to another guy, and we have a fantastic scene of Agnes storming the room, throwing a knife at the buyer killing him instantly, and then beating Etienne up so badly he almost dies.
I imagine she's like 16 or so, because she mentions she wasn't yet a woman, and she was forced to be married :-D I don't think her age was ever mentioned. Or time. They throw around invented names and things like that, but I think it's kind of Three Musketeers fan fiction, so probably somewhere there in time :-D
And it continues like that :-D The first time she holds a sword, she kills half a dozen seasoned villains. :-D
I mean, I am totally giddy about this book - or collection of short stories, what it really is. It's 3 or 4 short stories, 3 written by Howard, and 1-2 (I'm not quite sure how many those are, because they are just continuation of the 3rd story), about 100 pages, so it's really not a book, but anyway, I just want to laugh all the time.
Absolutely fabulous :-D
kirkreads's review against another edition
4.0
My latest Robert E. Howard book is Sword Woman. The Three Dark Agnes stories are fun. The third one was completed by Gerald W. Page long after Howard's death. The last two are unfinished manuscripts. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two stories. The tales are full of swashbuckling action and pull no punches on the violence. Agnes de Chastillon is a great character. The third Dark Agnes story has a bit of supernatural in it that her tales do better without. The final story in the book is a fragment of a Turlough O'Brien story.
I had a great deal of fun reading these yarns.
I had a great deal of fun reading these yarns.
moirwyn's review against another edition
4.0
This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2015/07/06/the-sword-woman-by-robert-e-howard/
A few months ago, I came across the collection The Sword Woman at a used bookstore. I saved it for summertime to read while at the pool, because I knew it wouldn’t require that much concentration or thinking. However, I knew I’d love it, because pulp is my guilty pleasure. I enjoy trashy action stories featuring half-naked heroes and heroines who always manage to beat up the bad guy and save the day. Robert E. Howard is considered to be one of the gold standards for pulpy SF/F, and The Sword Woman does not disappoint.
The Sword Woman is a perfect example of the kind of pulp I love, and yet also a bit of an outlier, because most of the stories in the collection feature a strong female lead (I wish there was more pulp fiction starring badass heroines, but I’ll take what I can get). Dark Agnes begins her story as a young woman who is about to be forced into an arranged marriage by her abusive family. Her sister, wanting to save her from her own fate, gives Agnes a dagger, expecting her to use it to take her life before the ceremony. Instead, Agnes stabs her fiance, runs away, and has adventures. And when someone underestimates her or tries to stop her from living her life the way she chooses, she stabs them too. That’s about as complex as her character gets, and yet she remains awesome, and you can’t help but root for her as she battles highwaymen and necromancers.
My only complaint about The Sword Woman is that I wished that the last two stories weren’t a part of the book, because they didn’t seem to fit. Instead of featuring Dark Agnes, they were completely random stories by completely random people, and the last story in the book was unfinished. I get that this was collection was published posthumously and that’s why the last two stories were included, but I felt like they weren’t ready for publication, and the book didn’t give you any context for them in the intro/cover art/contents. So when I got to them, I kept waiting for Agnes to show up, and was a bit bummed out that she didn’t. Even so, I get that it was 1977 and so you couldn’t really split things up into separate e-books, and instead had to go with a general length that publishers thought that people would buy.
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/2015/07/06/the-sword-woman-by-robert-e-howard/
A few months ago, I came across the collection The Sword Woman at a used bookstore. I saved it for summertime to read while at the pool, because I knew it wouldn’t require that much concentration or thinking. However, I knew I’d love it, because pulp is my guilty pleasure. I enjoy trashy action stories featuring half-naked heroes and heroines who always manage to beat up the bad guy and save the day. Robert E. Howard is considered to be one of the gold standards for pulpy SF/F, and The Sword Woman does not disappoint.
The Sword Woman is a perfect example of the kind of pulp I love, and yet also a bit of an outlier, because most of the stories in the collection feature a strong female lead (I wish there was more pulp fiction starring badass heroines, but I’ll take what I can get). Dark Agnes begins her story as a young woman who is about to be forced into an arranged marriage by her abusive family. Her sister, wanting to save her from her own fate, gives Agnes a dagger, expecting her to use it to take her life before the ceremony. Instead, Agnes stabs her fiance, runs away, and has adventures. And when someone underestimates her or tries to stop her from living her life the way she chooses, she stabs them too. That’s about as complex as her character gets, and yet she remains awesome, and you can’t help but root for her as she battles highwaymen and necromancers.
My only complaint about The Sword Woman is that I wished that the last two stories weren’t a part of the book, because they didn’t seem to fit. Instead of featuring Dark Agnes, they were completely random stories by completely random people, and the last story in the book was unfinished. I get that this was collection was published posthumously and that’s why the last two stories were included, but I felt like they weren’t ready for publication, and the book didn’t give you any context for them in the intro/cover art/contents. So when I got to them, I kept waiting for Agnes to show up, and was a bit bummed out that she didn’t. Even so, I get that it was 1977 and so you couldn’t really split things up into separate e-books, and instead had to go with a general length that publishers thought that people would buy.
ladyofways's review
4.0
Much like Leigh Brackett, I'm disappointed to find out that these three (or two and a half) stories are all that we get of Agnes. I appreciate her rage, her refusal to submit, and her sheer bloody-mindedness.
The fragments tacked on at the end threw me a bit, being unfinished and entirely unrelated, but they are fun snippets of Howard prose (shading towards racism, unfortunately, with all the "Aryan destiny" and inherent racial enmities).
A good read for Howard fans, especially women, giving us a chance to see a different hand holding the sword.
The fragments tacked on at the end threw me a bit, being unfinished and entirely unrelated, but they are fun snippets of Howard prose (shading towards racism, unfortunately, with all the "Aryan destiny" and inherent racial enmities).
A good read for Howard fans, especially women, giving us a chance to see a different hand holding the sword.
More...