Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #63, February 2025

“The Fountain of Hatteos” by Gregory Mele

“The Deliverance of Benrimmon” by Stephen Coney

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

In “The Fountain of Hatteos” by Gregory Mele, the hero and his companions set out to find the place mentioned in the title before an evil sorcerer can make use of its immense power for himself. Along the way, they face a gigantic serpent who offers cryptic information in exchange for freedom, and are buried alive under a mountain of rubble.

This is an action-packed yarn, firmly in the tradition of pulp sword-and-sorcery fiction. The fact that the setting is similar, in some ways, to ancient Mesoamerica adds a bit of originality. The villain’s ironic fate is appropriately gruesome.

The narrator of “The Deliverance of Benrimmon” by Stephen Coney seeks out an oracle in an attempt to understand why all previous omens have offered contradictory predictions. The gods, speaking through the seer, send him on a quest to dip a weapon in the blood of a supernatural being. This task is dangerous enough, but he must also defeat a gigantic worm-like creature that has brought chaos to the land.

Once again, we have a traditional fantasy adventure with plenty of battles and feats of derring-do. The most novel aspect of the plot involves the hero entering the body of the creature and fighting it from within.

Victoria Silverwolf notes the similarity between the serpent and the worm in these stories.