Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows (The Adventures of Nanok Book 1)
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Nanok, wandering swordsman of the Iron Wastes, makes a deal with the Wizard King Midar to steal the mighty Sunsword from the Tower of Sorrows, lair of the dreaded sorcerer, Draaa'kon the Bleak. Pursued by Draaa'kon and his horde of cauldron-born mutant henchmen, Nanok discovers stealing the enchanted sword is just the beginning. Though victorious against Draaa'kon's bloodth Nanok, wandering swordsman of the Iron Wastes, makes a deal with the Wizard King Midar to steal the mighty Sunsword from the Tower of Sorrows, lair of the dreaded sorcerer, Draaa'kon the Bleak. Though victorious against Draaa'kon's bloodthirsty minions, Nanok is blasted senseless by sorcery and sent tumbling from a high ocean cliff.
Washed ashore in a distant cove, Nanok is aided by a mysterious wilderness warrior who has his own reasons for seeing Draaa'kon defeated. Swearing vengeance against his enemy, Nanok returns once more to the Tower of Sorrows, determined to lay waste to everyone and everything within. Battling fearsome troll-kin, brutal guardsmen, and a monstrous horror conjured through the darkest of magics, Nanok must learn the powerful secret of the Sunsword if he is going to have any hope of emerging victorious from the Tower of Sorrows Kindle Edition , 55 pages.
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Nanok and The Tower of Sorrows , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Nanok and The Tower of Sorrows. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Sep 14, Sean McLachlan rated it liked it Shelves: This novella is by Jack Badelaire, better known for his excellent Commando series of war novels.
Here the author takes on a different subject--old school pulp fantasy in the vein of Robert E. There are far, far too many Conan pastiches circulating these days, but fortunately Badelaire takes a lighthearted approach. There are lots of jokes and pratfalls mixed in with Badelaire's signature fight scenes. I especially enjoyed all the references to fantasy fiction and movies. In his adventures This novella is by Jack Badelaire, better known for his excellent Commando series of war novels. There could have been more, though. No reference to The Barbarians or Willow?
I would have loved seeing mighty-thewed Nanok cleaving Willow's head in with his massive sword. Anyway, this is a fun little read, nothing Earth shattering, nothing you'll be tempted to read again, but an amusing way to spend an hour or so. If you want something meatier, check out his Commando books. Those are more serious, and seriously good. May 05, Charles rated it really liked it Shelves: The writing is intentionally over the top and I think it works.
I got some pretty good laughs and there were some pretty cool characterizations and descriptions as well. A nice combination of humor and adventure.
The Post Modern Pulp Blog: Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows - Eighteen Months Later
Feb 06, Richard rated it liked it. This is a straight forward over the top sword and sorcery yarn. A good way to kill an afternoon, but you take very little away with you upon completion.
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Very cheesy so don't take it seriously. While the character seems similar to Conan, I really don't see the similarity of this character to any others I've heard it compared to. Anyways I just thought it was so-so.
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Mar 23, Jeff rated it really liked it Shelves: A combined homage and send up to the swords and sorcery genre. Several laugh out loud points, but otherwise a simple plot and writing that occasionally gets in the way of the story. All in all, a fun quick romp through an older style of story where things were so much more direct. Jul 27, Barry rated it liked it Shelves: I know you're right about the mountains of poorly-written drivel the good stuff gets buried under. I guess there's more and more free stuff available all the time, too. I have people on Facebook come to me now and then who want to write a book, asking me for advice and such.
I have to bite my tongue because they can hardly put an intelligible sentence together It is uplifting to hear how well your other fiction is selling, though. While I've not yet read this story myself, I think that the problem is the market itself. Namely, the fantasy market is just so thoroughly saturated with fantasy stories revolving around evil wizards and steel thewed warriors that it just gets lost in the crowd.
Even if the quality is top notch, it still has trouble distinguishing itself in any way, which is a great pity. Don't get me wrong, the formula itself is great, a time tested method that works darned well, it's just getting lost in all the others that are crammed in the genre. This is only a theory, and it's entirely possible that I'm wrong though. If I might make a suggestion, the simple formula here might distinguish itself better if put in a different scenario.
One of the things that fascinated me about Robert E. Howard's The Tower of the Elephant is that it is literally the only fantasy story I've ever seen that had an extraterrestrial in it. Granted, it doesn't do a bunch of alien things, but it was utterly fascinating and added a great deal of depth to the world that he developed. Perhaps having Nanok do a little mixed genre escapade would spice things up? I'm not saying you pull a Beast Master 2, but this may be a case where risk is justified.
Nanok and The Tower of Sorrows (The Adventures of Nanok #1)
I hope that things pick up with Nanok and that my words are of some use! Austen, I think you're spot-on. Especially when you mix humor into it, because people's tastes very wildly I've seen everything from Nanok being just the right balance of humor to eye-rollingly awful, so who knows. Funny you should mention your solution - making the stories definitely more oddball might actually help.
Click the Cover to View on Amazon Back in the early spring of , I began working on a pulpy "Sword and Sorcery" short story involving a stereotypical barbarian swordsman duking it out against an evil wizard and his diabolical henchmen. I'm a fan of not only Robert E. Howard's Conan, but the various "iron-thewed barbarians" that came much later, mostly in the late 60's through the 80's, created by authors who'd grown up reading Conan stories and wanted to pen stories of a similar vein. Of course, as well by this time Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was published, and while Hyboria is about as far from Middle Earth as you can get, I'm sure publishers were desperate to find anything they could slap a "fantasy" label on and throw at readers.
As well, after the Dungeons and Dragons phenomenon began to take off, and in the early 80's Marvel comics also begain publishing Conan comics, and of course, there was the Schwarzenegger Conan movies, which although often reviled by Howard purists, were some of the better 80's fantasy fare, if you ask me.
So, this whole heterogeneous, multimedia soup stock of books, comics, games, artwork, movies, and hell, even barbarian-themed metal music helped me to brew up a short story that eventually became Nanok and the Tower of Sorrows. The premise is pretty simple: Midar, the Wizard King of the city-state of Urgh, hires Nanok - thief and barbarian swordsman of the Iron Wastes - to steal the Sunsword from Draaa'kon the Bleak, evil sorcerer and ruler of a dark citadel known as the Tower of Sorrows.
Nanok steals the magical blade, only to be chased by Draaa'kon and his horde of vat-grown mutants. A battle ensues, and Nanok is apparently slain by Draaa'kon's dark magic, but he is saved by the power of the Sunsword. Nanok washes ashore miles away and with the help of a mysterious hermit, Nanok eventually returns to the Tower, and battles his way up through the citadel until he at last confronts Draaa'kon at the top of the Tower, just as the sorcerer conjures his deadliest ally I've probably given away a couple hundred copies in KDP Select promotions, but compared to my other works, even my other short stories, it seems like I can barely give the story away.
In fact, after the first month, I had a three month period of time when I didn't sell a single copy of the story, period. I've sold maybe half a dozen print copies, which is a little surprising, but I don't know how many of those were purchases made because the buyer didn't realize how short the story actually was. It's hard to pin down where exactly I went wrong with Nanok. My original cover was no gem , but it could have been worse, and sales certainly haven't spiked since I began selling the title with its new cover.
I've had almost no returns, so I'm not sure if people are just reading the sample and not liking what they see, or if they even get that far.
I've played around with the product description copy several times as well, but there doesn't seem to be anything that really sells the story. And yet, those folks who read Nanok, seem to like it. There've been ample opportunities to tear it to shreds on Amazon, yet all my reviews are pretty solid. The worst review of the story I received on Goodreads, which said it was okay but "was a little like an SNL skit that went on too long", which I suppose is a fair criticism if the sense of humor in the story doesn't completely align with your own. Poking around the internet, I even found a short but positive review on a German-language Conan forum.
I'm using Google to translate this page, but here goes: