Journey to Mesharra, Book 3 of the Ro-Lan series by Mike Sirota (Zebra Books, 1980). Artist uncredited

Mike Sirota (1946-) has written quite a lot of books in SF and Fantasy, including some Sword & Planet novels. He’s still writing and is currently working on a comedy/Sci-fi series.

I first encountered Sirota’s work in a book called Berbora, which I’d call Sword & Sorcery rather than S&P. Somewhat later, I found his five book Dannus series, so named after the main character. They are definitely S&P and are listed below.

[Click the images for larger versions.]

I have all five but have only read the first four. All were published by Manor Books in 1978.

1. The Prisoner of Reglathium
2. The Conquerors of Reglathium
3. The Caves of Reglathium
4. Dark Straits of Reglathium
5. The Slaves of Reglathium

Manor books also published a second Berbora book, Flight From Berbora, and there was mention of a trilogy.

Berbora and Berbora #2 (Manor Books, June 1978). Covers by Hinck

Only the two appeared, both also in 1978. No cover artist is listed but there’s a signature on the covers. It looks like “Hinck,” but when I tried to look that name up I found a bunch of artists with that last name. This appears to be the same artist who did all the Dannus covers.

I was recently able to get in touch with Mike Sirota and ask him a few questions about his work. He graciously provided me with some updated details.

The revised and retitled Dannus series from Atoris Press (2015-16). Cover artist uncredited

He extensively revised the Dannus series in the 2000s and it was republished in four books by Atoris Press. The new titles are:

Warlord of Maldrinium (containing the first two Dannus books)
Caves of Maldrinium
Dark Seas of Maldrinium
Slaves of Maldrinium

He also revised and republished the Berbora books under the titles The Sword of Tyron (2012) and The Quest of Tyron (2013), from Atoris Press. All these titles are available on Amazon as paperbacks and ebooks. His later books include the 4-volume Ro-Lan fantasy series from Zebra Books.

Volumes 1 & 2 in the Ro-Lan series: Master of Boranga (September 1980) and
The Shrouded Walls of Boranga (October 1980), from Zebra Books. Covers by Luis Bermejo

I enjoyed both the Dannus and Berbora books, although they had some faults. Mike Sirota indicated to me that these were his first books, written in 1977 and 78, and at the time he was writing about a book a month, which is awfully fast.

It’s also clear that Manor Books did a poor job of editing on these works, leaving quite a few misspellings and typos. I’ve seen the same errors in other Manor Books published around this time.

Sirota has won several writing awards and has taught writing, as well as working as an editor and a journalist. He recommends that folks read the rereleased versions of these novels.

His webpage address is: mikesirota.com.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was a look at Hok the Mighty by Manly Wade Wellman.