The Sword & Sorcery of Robert Holdstock: The Berserker Series
A series that I wanted but had a difficult time getting was the Berserker series by Chris Carlsen. There are three books, all from Sphere Books, published in 1977, 1977, & 1979 respectively. I finally got the last one and just finished reading it. The series is:
1. Shadow of the Wolf (August 1977)
2. The Bull Chief (October 1977)
3. The Horned Warrior (1979)
ISFDB lists Melvyn Grant as the cover artist on #1 and 3, and I’m pretty sure book 2 is by him as well. These books are pot boiling, action pulp style Sword & Sorcery novels, and it was quite a surprise when I found out Chris Carlsen was really Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009).
I’d read Holdstock’s breakthrough novel, Mythago Wood (1984), which led to a series called the Ryhope Wood series. I enjoyed Mythago, although not enough to make me read the sequels. The prose was certainly very nice, a big plus for me, but it was fairly skimpy on action and adventure. So, to find out Holdstock had written the blood and gore Berserker series raised an eyebrow. (Turns out he also wrote other pulpish S&S works under yet another name, but that’s a future post.)
The series begins with a young Viking warrior named Harald Swiftaxe returning home from his first campaign. He finds a village of his people destroyed and a wounded “Berserker” left behind. Berserkers were a real thing in Viking history, devotees of the god Odin, although here they are presented as literally possessed by the spirit of the bear, which makes them nearly impervious to fire and steel. With some help, Harald kills the Berserk and then blasphemes Odin. Bad move.
When Harald reaches his father’s steading, he finds other Berserkers there, and after he brags about killing the Berserk he calls down on himself the Berserker curse. In his first rage, he murders friends and rapes the young woman he’d planned to marry. I’m not a naïve reader of this type of fiction but the brutality startled me. Harald loses all qualities as a sympathetic character. Later, Harald regains some human sensibilities, although he can still be taken over by the Berserk and kill anyone nearby. But now, in calmer moments, he seeks to break the curse, and this quest continues through the next two books. I won’t tell you whether he succeeds or not.
Holdstock’s strengths in these books don’t lie in plotting. The story moves Harald from one bloody battle to another, with interludes where he regrets actions brought about by the curse. I’d guess Holdstock wrote them pretty fast. There are places where they could have been improved. The strengths are that the tales never let grass grow. The action is always moving, and it’s bloody and extremely gory. The prose is very well done with quite a few moments of poetry. S&S aficionados are likely to approve.
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a look at The Conan novels of John Maddox Roberts. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.
I first read these in high school but it wasn’t until years later that I learned that Robert Holdstock was the author. I have the omnibus on my shelf but the original novels are difficult to find.
I am inclined to think it was his publishers who wanted a pseudonym because there were so different from his Mythago Wood and Merlin Codex books.
The Berserker books were published earlier than Mythago wood or the Merlin stuff. 1977 to 79. So they were fairly early in his career. during the 70s, publishers were looking for this kind of stuff and often used a “house” name for it, meaning a name they determined. Ken Bulmer wrote several different series under these kinds of names. Manning Norvil for one. That means you’re probably right, the publisher’s wanted that specific name, but not because of the Mythago book. The publishers likely wanted something suggesting strength and power and that was fairly easy to remember. Chris Carlsen with the Hard “K” sounds fits those characteristics better than Robert Holdstock. At least, that’s my suspicion.
This is my jam. I need to find these.
they’re worth the read