It's rare to find a truly great sword and sorcery novel, one that sticks rigidly to the genre but expands things to novel length without compromising the inherently personal nature of the stakes. Michael Shea already wrote a classic in Nifft the Lean, as superb a collection of S&S novellas as any out there, but he surpasses himself in The Mines of Behemoth, a truly staggering achievement of fantasy by any standards you care to rate.

Like The Fishing of the Demon Sea, this one takes place primarily in the primary subworld, a nightmarish landscape straight out the mind of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, and Hieronymus Bosch. Shea's a fantastic world builder at the worst of times, but he adds an added layer of complexity with the addition of the Behemoths, an intricate society of something like giant ants that feeds off the subworld's denizens as the humans (in their puny way) feed off them.

Following an offer to get a defunct behemoth mine up and running again, Nifft and his longterm friend Barnar, soon find themselves on an impromptu treasure hunt in the very subworld itself (of which the mines are but one of many entrances). Needless to say, this goes horribly wrong due to the greed and boundless ambition of Nifft, who soon takes it upon himself to obtain a magic elixir that enables anyone who takes it to assume monstrous size.

There's a lot more to the story than that, of course, but one of the pleasures of reading Shea is the constant inventiveness he hits you with page after page. Get this if you at all enjoy literate and adventurous fantasy fiction.

( )

It's rare to find a truly great sword and sorcery novel, one that sticks rigidly to the genre but expands things to novel length without compromising the inherently personal nature of the stakes. Michael Shea already wrote a classic in Nifft the Lean, as superb a collection of S&S novellas as any out there, but he surpasses himself in The Mines of Behemoth, a truly staggering achievement of fantasy by any standards you care to rate.

Like The Fishing of the Demon Sea, this one takes place primarily in the primary subworld, a nightmarish landscape straight out the mind of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, and Hieronymus Bosch. Shea's a fantastic world builder at the worst of times, but he adds an added layer of complexity with the addition of the Behemoths, an intricate society of something like giant ants that feeds off the subworld's denizens as the humans (in their puny way) feed off them.

Following an offer to get a defunct behemoth mine up and running again, Nifft and his longterm friend Barnar, soon find themselves on an impromptu treasure hunt in the very subworld itself (of which the mines are but one of many entrances). Needless to say, this goes horribly wrong due to the greed and boundless ambition of Nifft, who soon takes it upon himself to obtain a magic elixir that enables anyone who takes it to assume monstrous size.

There's a lot more to the story than that, of course, but one of the pleasures of reading Shea is the constant inventiveness he hits you with page after page. Get this if you at all enjoy literate and adventurous fantasy fiction.

( )