A few years back, I bought an artbook, showing off fantasy illustrations by the great Boris Vallejo. One of the paintings really captured my imagination, and that was titled "Nubian Warrior":
(I put the black bar over some side boob I bet Google Ads would complain about, you can easily find the uncensored version looking for yourself online)
Now, the reason it stimulated me so much was the idea of Sword & Sorcery based on black African cultures and myths. I really hadn't encountered a lot of fantasy fiction based on such concepts. Most of the genre is based on European myths, there is some based on ancient Egyptian culture (mostly European and Euro-American horror fiction), with the closest maybe being the Arabian fairy tales and legends like Aladin or Sinbad.
So, I did some research, knowing Boris probably did the painting as a commissioned illustration. I'm still not a hundred percent sure about it, but I think now that it was most likely done for a series of African-based Sword & Sorcery stories around the hero Imaro, written by Charles R. Saunders. From what I found out in my research, this was exactly the kind of fiction I had imagined from the painting. Saunders was a black American writer and fantasy fan and enthusiast of African history and cultures, who created the character of Imaro and his world of Nyumbani in response to the racist stereotypes of black people used in fantasy fiction like Tarzan or Conan. Originally written as short stories published in fanzines of the 1970s, Saunders collected five of the stories for publishing as a novel simply titled "Imaro" for DAW Books in 1981, followed by two sequels, "The Quest for Cush" and "The Trail of Bohu".
Now, my enthusiasm got a big damper when I realized the books are out of print. Even a new edition of the first two novels from 2009 is only available through the secondary market. Now, for E-Book enthusiasts, the series is available in that form. Personally, I never really got into E-Books, and currently don't even have a portable device on which to read them on.
Recently, I finally found an afordable copy of the 2009 version of the first novel:
and this week started reading it. And thus far, this is an amazing read. Saunders not only is capable of presenting his world in a fascinating way, but is also quite talented as to creating suspense and action prose. So much so that I'm now even more on the hunt for the other books in the series, as well as keeping an eye out for any other stories Saunders has written. And I'm kind of wondering why this series isn't a bigger deal. And I kind of decided I needed to spread the word, because this totally deserves to be a bigger deal.
At least, in its niche, Saunders has inspired a new subgenre of Sword & Soul fiction. Sadly, Saunders passed away last year.
