Roger Taylor


Let me tell you something. When you're an avid reader and have a great collection of books, moving is a major pain in the ass. I'm now into well over fifty boxes of books, with more to go. The locker at my new apartment is filled to the brim with boxes full of novels.

Anyway, while packing away those books a few days back, I came across my Roger Taylor books. The man is a British fantasy author whose novels used to be published by Headline during the late 80s and early 90s. The books sported very nice covers, and I was a big fan of the author for many years. Sadly, Roger Taylor completely disappeared in the late 90s.

Does anyone know what happened to him? I don't believe he was ever published in the USA, but his novels were widely available in the UK and the Commonwealth. Anybody else have fond memories of Taylor's books? Now that I've discovered that his novels are available in eBook and paperback formats from Mushroom eBooks, I might give some of them another go to see if they have aged well.

Here's a list of Roger Taylor's novels, including links to extracts for each work:

The Chronicles of Hawklan

- The Call of the Sword (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt
- The Fall of Fyorlund (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt
- The Waking of Orthlund (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt
- Into Narsindal (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Dream Finder (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Farnor (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Valderen (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Whistler (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Ibryen (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Arash-Felloren (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

Caddoran (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

The Return of the Sword (Canada, USA, Europe) Excerpt

14 commentaires:

Kyle Freese said...

He seems to be more or less okay. Apparently he's still alive, but not publishing any more books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Taylor_%28author%29

wassr said...

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/t/roger-taylor/

Marc said...

OMG! The Call of the Sword's cover was cropped to become the cover to Summoning's Minas Morgul CD, from 1995! What a weird thing to recognize, I know, but I had always assumed the image on the CD came from some Middle Earth-related product, since Summoning's music is ambient Black Metal with lyrics and themes taken from Tolkien's works. I'm a huge Summoning fan, fwiw.

See an example here http://www.metal-archives.com/release.php?id=87

buddyt said...

A lot of his books are still available in print from The Book Depository. All those you mention plus:

Dream Finder
Farnor
Caddoran
Arash-Felloren
Ibryen

They all go for under $5 which includes shipping.

Neville T

Kerry said...

I remember the books and their lovely covers. I know I had at least the first one, but I've got a feeling I didn't finish it for some reason. All the same, I'm very tempted to go and check out those ebooks. (I need more books like I need a hole in the head right now, but that probably won't stop me.)

Anonymous said...

For those with a Kindle, these books are available in the US as ebooks at amazon.com (free chapter samples available, too).

Anonymous said...

The cover for "call of the sword" was also used as a box cover for a computer game called "Ishar, legend of the fortress".

Funny thing, I used to play that game as a kid, and all these years I never knew there was a book with the same cover...

Angelo said...

The image of the first book is the image of an old RPG videogame, called Ishar! Was Roger Taylor involved or one of them stole the image? :)

The Fantasizer said...

I love the covers!

locusmortiis said...

The books look intruiging, might give them a go.

And the covers are far better than the typical "bloke in a cloak" covers which seem to plague many books at the moment.

Cecrow said...

I made similar inquiries elsewhere about Michael Scott Rohan, another author who 'disappeared'. A few weeks later the man himself responded, telling us he retired from the rat race of publishing and to look after his health. Maybe it's a similar case here, just grew tired of the whole thing and decided it was enough.

Roughscotsman said...

I picked these up in my local library about 17 years ago and I remember loving them at the time but I remember nothing about them except maybe a bird name Gavor. Will have to try and hunt them down. Great find!!

Renai LeMay said...

hey Pat,

I did an interview with Roger in October 2009 -- you can find it here:

http://www.keepingthedoor.com/2009/10/08/hawklans-roger-taylor-an-interview/

In short, he's not up to much at the moment; I got the impression he's not actively writing.

Cheers,

Renai LeMay
Editor, Keeping the Door

roger taylor said...

Hi. Just came across your page. My thanks to everyone for the kind words. 'The Return of the Sword' effectively rounded off the previous eleven books and also coincided with other things happening in my life and with Headline changing from being a smallish publisher to being a mega book selling company interested only in 'dead certs'. Fortunately Mushroom took up the books so they are alive and well, and they (mushroom) are about to publish 'The Keep'. It's another fantasy, but nothing like the others, and, to be honest, rather strange.
I've also now got my book 'Aikido - more than a martial art' out in a Kindle version. *That* was an interesting experience,

Best wishes

Roger Taylor