The Champion of Garathorm by Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock is steadily becoming one of my favorite Sword & Sorcery writers. His stories are not only full of awesome characters but he also spends lots of time building a world that is fascinating and full of imaginative creatures. If you enjoy this genre, you will most certainly love his books.
The Champion of Garathorm begins where Count Brass left off. Dorian Hawkmoon is having an extremely hard time coping with the death of his wife Yisselda. He has descended into madness, playing out in miniature the battle that caused her demise. He plays the battle out over and over with different actions to see if he could have prevented her death.
Dorian believes that she is alive in another time or dimension. He feels her presence. He becomes convinced that he can find her and bring her back to his world. This is where things get interesting.
Dorian is visited by Katinka van Bak, a badass woman with sword fighting skill to rival kings. He convinces her to help him find Yisselda and the two leave on a quest that will change Dorian forever.
The rest of the book is filled with deception, intrigue and brutal battles. Much of the book takes place on the island continent of Garathorm. It is a beautiful place full of trees and buildings made of ebony, ivory, and hardwoods (some now extinct). I found this continent fascinating and want to know more, more, more...
This story also contained something that is rare in Sword & Sorcery fiction...women warriors. These were not your typical storied women that let the men do the fighting while they cower in a stable or end up getting overpowered by the males and have to be saved. These women were champions. These women were every bit as powerful as the men. It was refreshing.
Here is one of my favorite excerpts regarding some of these women:

     Though she now bled from a dozen minor cuts and grazes, Ilian was tireless. She unhorsed one rider with a blow of her buckler and in the same movement swept her sword round to take a green-furred dwarf through the roof of his gaping mouth so that the point ran deep into his brain. As the dwarf fell, Ilian twisted the sword from his corpse in time to parry an axe which had been thrown at her by a warrior in purple armour whose pointed steel teeth clashed as he tried to draw back his arm to thrust at her with the lance he held in his other hand. Ilian leaned out in her saddle and sliced the hand from the wrist so that fist and spear dropped to the ground. The stump, spouting blood, continued the motion of casting the spear and only then did the warrior with the steel teeth realise what had happened to him and he moaned. But Ilian was riding past him, to where one of her girl warriors stood over the corpse of her dead vayna desperately trying to ward off the blows of three men with reptilian skins (but who were otherwise dressed dissimilarly) who were determined to slay her. Ilian clove the skull of one reptile man, smashed another unconscious so that he fell backward across his horse's rump, and pierced the heart of the last, clearing a way for the girl who darted her a quick smile of gratitude before picking up her flame-lance and running for an open doorway.
     And then Ilian was in the square with a score of her warriors at her back and she called out jubilantly:
     'We are through!'
     Men on foot came running from every house then, those who had not taken part in the cavalry charge, and soon Ilian was surrounded again.
     And soon Ilian was laughing again, as life after life was extinguished by her sparkling sword.

As this is the second book in the Chronicles of Castle Brass series, you'll want to read the first story, Count Brass, before starting this one. You really should though...it's an amazing story.