I’ve just bought a great sword & sorcery book, ‘Heart of Vengeance and Other Tales of Azatlan’ by Gregroy D. Mele. (Technically it should be spelt ‘Azatlán’ but the publisher decided to keep the accent off the cover.) This book of various stories is highly recommended if you are seeking something different from the usual fantasy read.
 
I’ve mentioned these stories by Greg Mele before and added links on previous posts to some tales  available to read for free on Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. The stories remind me of those by my two favourite Howards, Robert E Howard and Howard Andrew Jones. Yes! That good!
 
Set on a pseudo-Mesoamerica where the conquistadors were pseudo-Minoans, it is a world where warriors used weapons of stone or bronze depending on culture or wealth. Azatlán is an analogue of the Aztec Empire, and descendants of the invaders rule it with an expansionist, xenophobic outlook. Despite this as many years have passed, they have adopted much of the culture of the ‘people of the corn’.
 
This volume is hopefully the first others to follow. My favourite character that Mele has written about, Sarrumos the pirate, doesn’t feature in this anthology, so I am crossing my fingers that he gets a volume to himself at a later date. This current volume features stories of an occult detective and his bodyguard, tales of a spirit healer and a priest of the Lord of Death (CAS and Karl Wagner flavoured), and standalone stories in a REH tradition of sword slinging adventurers.
 
Why not read this story, to see if you like Mele’s style and world building:
 
https://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/?p=4353

And yes, reading this book is making me think of running a game of the further adventures of Xochi from Garnett’s free scenario ‘Sky-Serpent of Tletzlan’. I ran seven fun follow-ups to Sky-Serpent in 2013-14, and although it’s a different setting where the invaders have steel swords and muskets, it scratches a similar itch (until I get my own Azatlán game going!)


 

Last edited by Gruntfuttock (Yesterday 10:23 am)