Enter the Book of Eibon, a spell book written by the Hyperborean wizard Eibon and translated by a handful of scholars - all manuscripts of which have been hidden or lost. If the Reich gets their hands on a copy, they could theoretically turn the tides of war in their favor. So, the Ahnenerbe send out teams from both the Black Sun and Nachtwölfe.
Unfortunately for Nachtwölfe, the Black Sun wants all the glory - and, well, to unleash the Valley of the Black Sun into this world. To further this end, they have let slip the current location of the Nachtwölfe team that's searching for the Book to... well... what the heck... The Inglourious Basterds. Bear with me here, this is alternate WW2 and there's nothing saying there wasn't a savage band of American soldiers scalping Nazis...
On top of Aldo "The Apache" Raine and the boys the adventure features a sojourn to Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne, one of the best fantasy settings in literature.
1 comment:
Seeing as how this post is about Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne tales, I’d like to recommend another group of books written in a French fantasy vein by Leslie Barringer, set in medieval France, but one greatly altered politically from what we know. It centers in an area that we would perceive as a fragmented nation of France due to an intact Merovingian Dynasty and a kingdom of Neustria set in the 14th century. The three books of the Neustrian Cycle are, Gerfalcon, Joris of the Rock, and Shy Leopardess.
Now these books might considered to be Young Adult in scope as they are all coming of age tales, but they are as gritty as The Hunger Games in brutality and personal courage. For old-fashioned swords & sorcery types of the pulp genre, these books might disappoint some readers as there is no classical magic and no monsters other than the human ones. Still, I’ll recommend them for discriminating readers who have a dash of interest in something different in the alternate history genre.
Here in the US, the books are most often encountered in used book shops as published by the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library of the late 1970s. Although out of print, they are nonetheless available as eBooks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Barringer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_Forgotten_Fantasy_Library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerfalcon_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_of_the_Rock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Leopardess
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