Robert E. Howard’s Conan
stories are some the most low-quality material ever to find the light of day in
publishing. His imagination capturing something,
however, the brawny Cimmerian helped spawn the sword & sorcery sub-genre,
and the myriad of stories (low quality and otherwise) that have appeared since. And they keep appearing. One of the latest is Kai Ashante Wilson’s Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (2015). A full indication that sword & sorcery
has matured significantly in the century since Conan, Howard would roll in the grave if he knew of Wilson’ tale.
The Captain and his crew of mercenaries have been hired to
guard a merchant caravan on its long journey to the city of Olorum. Danger and peril awaiting at every step,
their trek takes them through deserts and cities, and the mysterious jungles of
the Wildeeps. Indefatigable, the Captain
runs at the head of the caravan by day, fights mock battles with his crew by
evening, and stands guard by night. Seemingly
impenetrable in person, interacting with him is difficult, something the crew’s
sorcerer, a foreigner named Demane, has trouble with. But cooperation between the two is necessary
if the caravan is to arrive at its destination.
Beset by bandits, enduring the scorn of the merchants, and dealing with the
exigencies of life on the road, the Captain, Demane, and the rest of the crew must
work together if they are to survive the trek and the Wildeeps.
The roots of Sorcerer
of the Wildeeps run deep. Clearly a
take on Conan the Barbarian, its
lands are wild, and filled with outlaws and fanged creatures. The stone-walled cities are rough, but a
welcome break from the road—their bordellos, watering holes, and other entertainments
offering respite for the weary traveler.
And always on the fringes of local legend, mysteries of magic and
treasure await the brave hero with sword at ready. But where Howard’s stories are limited to
this outlay, Wilson adds an entirely new dynamic to the milieu. Sorcerer
of the Wildeeps digs beneath the detached masculine façade of strength and intelligence
to render its central character human. For
his personal struggles with direction, history, and inner-self, Demane is far more
intimate a warrior than Conan.
Sorcerer of the
Wildeeps is a very male story. But
where this means courage, strength, power, dominance, codes of honor, etc. in
most sword & sorcery, Wilson opts to swim in different (and refreshing)
thematic waters. Repressed male emotion,
African American masculinity (and its associations with violence),
homo-eroticism and phobia in an all-male group, unrequited love, male bonding, and
other less discussed aspects of manhood in s&s bubble beneath the story of
Demane. His tale following a rather
traditional arc in terms of plot, the foundation material to which it is pinned
is anything-but.
The prose, while occasionally affected, cuts like a
knife. Unlike Robert E. Howard, Wilson
understands the craft of writing (but does need to learn how to consistently
close out chapters). The fighting and
violence are rendered in visceral terms, even as the interaction of the
mercenaries, Demane’s personal struggles, and the setting take on hues of
realism with equal grit. The cherry on
top, however, may be the voices captured among the crew of mercenaries. Like Wilson’s superb novelette “The Devil in
America,” there are demotics that strongly echo facets of African American
culture in the US. While some readers
may be turned off by intrusions of ghetto slang, as infrequent as they are, it’s
quite possible, even preferable to view Wilson’s inclusion of these voices as
not only direct address to a specific audience, but also a style variation
wholly complementary to setting and character map.
In the end, Sorcerer
of the Wildeeps is a novel intelligently utilizing the central tropes of
sword & sorcery to tell a deeper story of a man and the plight of a band of
brothers, all in a singularly African American tone that fills out and redresses
the whole for both examination and enjoyment.
Published by Tor.com, plot is naturally key to the novel. But Wilson nevertheless finds plenty of time
for character development and exploration of themes rarely, if ever, addressed
in genre fiction. “The Devil in America”
remains Wilson’s more ambitious work, but for sure Sorcerer is not your grandpappy’s Conan. In fact, it opens doors to such question as:
is Sorcerer of the Wildeeps the next Neveryon? Is Wilson becoming this generation’s Samuel
Delany?
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