Anyone got any really interesting ones? Good or bad? I've finished reading 'the mongoliad', which is about Europeans fighting mongol hordes in the 14th century. There where some badly written fighting scenes, so I was surprised when I read that they'd had the authors train with with some western MA guys for a while whilst writing the book. It still reads like someone describing something they don't understand from the point of view of a character who is supposed to understand it. I can't quote directly as I've given away my copy but there were sentences like this 'the hero grabbed the villain and put his arms into a complicated lock.' The reason I think this is terribly written is that if the hero managed to do it in combat then it's not complicated to him. The whole scene was like this - awestruck and over-complex description of stuff that would be quite simple to a trained character. I think a better version would be something like 'the hero managed to grab the champion's sword arm and desperately twisted it, putting ever ounce of strength into the turn.' Also, there was enough useless description to make the fights boring; for example, instead of just saying 'the villain stood ready, pointing his spear at the hero' it was massively drawn out like 'the villain had all his weight on his back foot and held his spear completely parallel to the ground. he was using a reverse grip and had his chin slightly angled down. he then shifted his weight to his front foot and began to use his waist to circle the spear...'
IIRC the author Trevanian write some reasonable descriptions, as did Lustbader, on occasion. There was a book called Oni also...but I'm not sure who the author was. Memory fail
I always thought RE Howard hit the right balance between detail and extrapolation. I know what a low outward parry is. Doesn't mean I want to read about one. I'm happy enough knowing Conan swept the opponent's blade aside and cleft him in two. I can provide the rest.
I just finished the 3rd book of this (read the first two pretty recently too). I actually really liked the way the fight scenes were written. Super detailed stuff. From what I read, the group of guys who wrote it trained western MA for years, and that was the inspiration to do the books. I think the gladiatorial fight between Zug and Haakon was one of the best fight scenes I have ever read. I've also recently read Diaries of a Dwarven Rifleman - which is co-written by Michael "Tinker" Pearce and his wife. I liked it as well, and to me it has some cool fight scenes - but granted a lot of shooting, sniper type stuff and less sword fighting.
