Robin Marx's Writing Repository

This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on August 15, 2026.

Cormac Mac Art: Isle of Swords

By Matthew John – Titan Books – July 28, 2026

Review by Robin Marx

As Isle of Swords begins, Gaelic reaver Cormac Mac Art awakens on the shore of a corpse-strewn beach, greeted by the sound of his Danish comrade Wulfere (appropriately nicknamed the “Skull-splitter”) braining shipwrecked Saxons with a rock. The two are the only survivors of a raiding crew swept away along with their Saxon foemen by a rogue wave during a bloody boarding action. Upon realizing that they have washed up on their original destination, the Isle of Swords, rumored to house a lost trove of Roman gold guarded by hostile Pictish tribesfolk, the pair elect to press on with the search for the treasure despite the overwhelming odds against them. In addition to brutal Saxons and baleful Picts, before long Cormac and Wulfere encounter menacing sorcery and the uncanny influence of a tribal icon called the Dark Man.

Cormac Mac Art: Isle of Swords is part of Titan Books’ HEROIC LEGENDS line of digital short stories featuring the characters of Weird Tales veteran pulp author and Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard. While Conan himself has inevitably received the lion’s share of attention given his name recognition, HEROIC LEGENDS has also allowed modern authors to revive some of the lesser-known heroes from Howard’s body of work. Cormac Mac Art is one such character, having only appeared in a pair of finished stories and two further incomplete fragments, none of which were published during Howard’s lifetime. Indeed, Cormac Mac Art remains somewhat of a Howard “deep cut” character even today, with only a handful of pastiche fiction and comic appearances. Despite being the 24th installment in the line, Isle of Swords is the first HEROIC LEGENDS story dedicated to Cormac.

While this is (occasional Grimdark Magazine contributor) Matthew John’s first piece involving Cormac Mac Art, he is no stranger to the realms of Robert E. Howard and Sword & Sorcery fantasy in general. In addition to extensive work on Monolith Board Games’ Conan tabletop and roleplaying games, John has penned stories starring the barbarian for The Savage Sword of Conan. Readers familiar with his previous fiction, either through his Conan work or To Walk on Worlds, have a good idea of what to expect from Cormac Mac Art: Isle of Swords: muscular, kinetic prose and bone-crunching violence. John keeps the pace brisk and the bodies dropping. Unlike John’s previous work, however, the supernatural elements of the story are kept low-key; eerie, but with an air of plausible deniability about them. While readers accustomed to Conan and King Kull may miss the lack of fireworks and monsters, this restraint is wholly appropriate for Cormac Mac Art, whose original exploits as related by Howard (barring one) were grounded historical adventures. On the other hand, the true identity of the Dark Man is a fun Easter egg sure to be appreciated by fans of Howard’s more sorcery-infused stories.

Cormac Mac Art: Isle of Swords is a fast-paced and gritty adventure involving one of Robert E. Howard’s more underutilized characters. Readers in the mood for monsters and magical mayhem are better directed to other entries in the HEROIC LEGENDS line, but grimdark fans in particular are likely to appreciate the mud-caked melees and dirty tactics Matthew John delivers.

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This review is a Writing Repository original.

Seers in a Broken Season

By Jonathan Olfert – Old Moon Publishing – October 31, 2026 (tentative)

Review by Robin Marx

Ice blankets a once tropical land and Walks-like-a-Rockslide, wooly mammoth warrior of the Blue Ochre People, travels in search of warmer climes and more abundant sources of food. Upon discovering slaughtered whale remains at a small human encampment, he is enraged by the perceived murder of noble cetacean Deep People by vermin-like hominids and immediately rampages through the settlement. Killing the boldest humans with trampling feet and quartz blades attached to his tusks, Walks-like-a-Rockslide scatters the survivors and helps himself to their campfires and clean drinking water. Before long, however, a larger tribe of human whalers advances into the region, bringing with them more threatening weaponry and a sorcerer with uncanny powers. Through magical means, sporadic communication between Walks-like-a-Rockslide and the whalers' sorcerer is established. The mammoth and the humans enter a tentative truce, as both parties want the same thing: food and continued survival. Walks-like-a-Rockslide is abundantly aware that—in the eyes of the humans—he could easily be reclassified from ally to sustenance, but the sorcerer convinces the skeptical mammoth that the humans' more pressing concern is a massive shark lurking just offshore, incessantly harrying their whaling boats. Can their fragile detente survive mutual mistrust, increasing desperation, specters from the past, and dark sorcery?

Marketed as a Stone and Sorcery novella, Seers in a Broken Season is a work of paleofiction set in the early stages of an Ice Age. It's the longest work to date in what author Jonathan Olfert calls the “Broken Season” cycle of stories, an allusion to the collapsing climate. Walks-like-a-Rockslide first debuted in the fifth issue of Old Moon Quarterly, with a subsequent appearance in Issue #8. While Seers in a Broken Season occasionally references events from these earlier short stories (particularly Issue #5's “Together Under the Wing”), but familiarity with them is not essential to enjoy the present novella.

Walks-like-a-Rockslide is a character like no other. While Stone Age stories are not unknown (Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard's first published work was “Spear and Fang,” a Cro-Magnon versus Neanderthal adventure appearing in Weird Tales in 1925), rarely do readers have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a pachyderm. Walks-like-a-Rockslide's physique and capabilities are far separated from the human realm, and present different challenges. His strength and endurance far exceed those of a human, but even a nimble trunk has limitations when it comes to fine manipulation. His eyesight is poor, a fact exacerbated by the previous loss of one eye. Beyond the physical domain, the differences in mindset between mammoth and human are intriguing. The reader understands that the humans are desperately clinging to life in a rapidly deteriorating world, but to Walks-like-a-Rockslide their lives are barely worthy of notice. Miniscule in both stature and importance. Mammoths and their cousins the whales are People, while humans are irritations unworthy of pronouns beyond “it.” “Who counts as a person?” is a central theme running throughout the novella.

The setting of the Broken Season is likewise fascinating. Readers recognize it as a burgeoning Ice Age, but the inhabitants have no idea what is occurring or if the world will ever recover. The apocalypse is well underway, and desperation and distrust are endemic. The Ice Age presented is also a distinctly haunted epoch. In addition to (largely unexplained) ghostly birds, Walks-like-a-Rockslide is repeatedly visited by spectral mammoths, his grandmother (a powerful sorcerer and former matriarch of the Blue Ochre People) chief among them. The bleak terrain and ever-present memento mori lend a unique atmosphere to the narrative.

The core of the story has an almost Spaghetti Western feel. A stranger comes to town, upsetting the established order. Resources are scarce, alliances are continuously formed and discarded, and violence is sudden. Every stranger is a potential threat to be measured up. But even though they're both constantly squinting, Walks-like-a-Rockslide is far less self-possessed and stoic than Clint Eastwood's various gunslingers. The wooly warrior is moody, tempestuous, and frequently sullen. His stage of life as a mammoth beyond “young” is unclear, but in human terms he reads like a teenage boy; powerful and approaching his prime but not yet as confident and decisive a hero as Conan the Cimmerian.

While there is no shortage of reflective moments, Seers in a Broken Season also delivers a considerable amount of action. Kaiju movie fans will doubtless be thrilled by the titanic mammoth versus Megalodon melee, but all the violence throughout the story is visceral and imbued with palpable weight and momentum. Wounds count. They reopen with further exertion. Walks-like-a-Rockslide can't rely on a friendly healer to apply a nonspecific-but-narratively-convenient herbal poultice or frequently even tend to his own wounds with his trunk. Olfert makes it clear that every encounter carries risks, and accumulated injuries up the ante for every further skirmish.

Seers in a Broken Season benefits from both a fascinating protagonist and an intriguing setting, and it feels like both Walks-like-a-Rockslide and the age of the Broken Season retain a great deal of future storytelling potential. Sorcery and violent action abound, but the narrative doesn't neglect atmosphere and the emotional aspect of Walks-like-a-Rockslide's journey. A new bar has been set for Stone and Sorcery adventure.

As of the time of this posting, Seers in a Broken Season is being crowdfunded via a (currently 200% funded) Backerkit campaign. Digital (ePub and PDF) formats are planned, along with a mass-market paperback edition. For completists, bundles are provided that include Seers in a Broken Season along with Walks-like-a-Rockslide's two Old Moon Quarterly appearances. The novella's release is tentatively scheduled for Q4 2026.

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