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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Hum. I don't think that I would compare Son of the Black Sword with Conan. It reminded me a lot more of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series in tone. I read it as an ebook and thought the first book was ok, I'm having trouble getting into the House of Assassins, but that might be more of a mood thing. I really liked Corriea's other stuff, the Monster Hunter Series and the Grimnoir Chronicles, plus some of his indie stuff. I have the audiobook in my to be listened to stack, which is getting pretty darn large now since I haven't been doing much driving since mid March.
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I wasn't remembering The Book of the New Sun very clearly, so I glanced over the wiki page, and yeah, wow, there are a lot of plot parallels. Still, I don't think Black Sword takes itself nearly as seriously as New Sun. The tone to me was just slightly camp, which was part of what brought Conan to mind, along with the stylized violence, and particularly the one-man-melee-army trope. It may well be that Tim Gerard Reynolds' reading imparted some of the camp aspect and also some of the appeal.
For better or worse, my quarantine has gone very free-form the last couple of weeks, and there definitely have been times where I just lay in bed or on the couch and sleepily listened to a book for 2-3 hours, if the book was holding my interest. I'll also turn them on just here and there - turning it on during a bathroom break turns into a 40-60min session while I do a little housework or grab some food. Right now I have a really engaging ebook (last book of S.M. Stirling's Nantuckett series) and a not so engaging audiobook, so it's more likely to be a reading jag on the couch or the balcony.