HYPERBOREA / Henry Treece?

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/17/2014 1:56 pm

Does anyone know this author? I just picked up The Green Man.

Cover:
[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PSHlC59PL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg[/img]
which is pretty cool!

The tagline is "Swords, sorcery, and savagery in King Arthur's time," though I think "time" should have an extra set of inverted commas!

The PW blurb on the cover promises "a bloody, furious tale colored by barbaric pagan rites." While the Houston Chronicle, Beaumont (Tex.) Journal, Davenport (Iowa) Times, and Anniston (Ala.) Star all liked it the New York Times itself calls it (in a fit of capitalization that probably had the editors flushed and heady for a month) "A Virtuoso Performance Of Myth-Remaking . . . Drenched In Musk And Gore." So, there's that!

Anyone know it?

**Posted by Ghul** 4/17/2014 7:14 pm

I don't know it. But I'd like to.

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/17/2014 8:14 pm

I'm trying to think of what it is in Arthurian legend that could produce so much musk . . . the Questing Beast? . . . Lancelot?!

**Posted by Crisippo** 4/18/2014 5:04 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
I'm trying to think of what it is in Arthurian legend that could produce so much musk . . . the Questing Beast? . . . Lancelot?!

I would say Lancelot...

Echoing Ghul; i don't know the book or the author either. But i would love to, so i hope some of the esteemed gentlemen on this forum knows something. I found it was available through Amazon, so i just might get it from seeing the cover.

Last edited by Crisippo (4/18/2014 5:05 am)

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/18/2014 7:50 am

From the Author's Note:

"This story is prompted by the assurance of authority that the meek shall inherit the earth. It is based on a text by Saxo Grammaticus entitled Amelth's Revenge, an edition of which was reprinted in 1961 by the Press Department of the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Christiansborg.

"Saxo Grammaticus, the first to write this story, was a shadowy assistant priest, secretary to the Archbishop of Lund and founder of Copenhagen, who died about 1220. Amelth's Revenge is but a portion of Saxo's great chronicle, the Gesta Danorium or The Exploits of the Danes, in the course of which he told a story about as old as mankind, although he pinned it to a northern prince who may have lived roughly about the time of King Arthur."

**Posted by Maezar** 4/19/2014 8:16 pm

His other books look interesting too.
[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41MYPN5PCEL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg[/img] [img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51zigUGlX7L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg[/img]

And this one about Boudicca!

**Posted by Maezar** 4/19/2014 8:18 pm

And this one with an introduction by Michael Moorcock

The Golden Strangers treece

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/19/2014 10:42 pm

Between softball (and drinking) last night and AS&SH (and drinking) all day today, I'm only on page 15, but it's pretty good so far. Beowulf comes off like a prat!

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/21/2014 8:46 am

By the way, another dozen or so pages have revealed that this is the source material for Hamlet. So this is a restoration to pagan/Danish roots.