I’m pretty sure I recced this to you; sorry to hear that it wasn’t to your liking. I suspect that neither would the books be.

(And then there are the circumstances of fellow Howard hero Turlough O’ Brien’s birth: his people, according to tribal custom, tossed him newborn into a snowbank to test his fitness to live. I’m ashamed of the amount of time it took to occur to me that this obstetrical practice—which I’ve not found anywhere in anthropology—was thought up by an only child and childless bachelor living in a warm climate.)