Review: Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author - Willard M. Oliver

I never get tired of reading about Robert E. Howard and his work. I’ve read several biographies and books about his writings and countless articles on those subjects. So I am definitely the target audience for ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR, the massive new REH biography by Willard M. Oliver published by the University of North Texas Press in hardcover and e-book editions. (It doesn’t hurt that I’m a graduate of UNT, or as it was known when I went there, North Texas State University.)

I really enjoyed the other biographies I read, even the deeply flawed DARK VALLEY DESTINY by L. Sprague de Camp, Catherine Crook de Camp, and Jane Whittington Griffin. It was the first real REH bio, and a friend of mine helped the de Camps with the research. Plus we didn’t really know at the time about much of the stuff they got wrong or misinterpreted. Anyway, before I wander off in the weeds . . .

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR will likely be considered the definitive REH biography from now on, since it’s exhaustively researched, extensively footnoted, and brings together in one place all the information that’s available about Howard’s life, plus adding some things that I’ve never come across before in nearly 60 years of being a Howard fan. Academically, I just don’t see how anybody could ever top this volume.

However, I’m not an academic. I’m a guy who likes Howard’s yarns and have ever since I spotted the Lancer edition of CONAN THE USURPER in Barber’s Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth lo, those many years ago. And I feel a strong kinship toward Howard dating back to the moment I opened that paperback with its purple-edged pages and read in L. Sprague de Camp’s introduction that Howard was from Cross Plains, Texas—a town I’d heard of all my life because both sides of my family come from the same general area in west central Texas. I mean, here was a guy from a little town in Texas who forged a career as a writer when everything seemed stacked against him, and that was exactly what I wanted to do!

So what I look for in a biography of Robert E. Howard is a sense of who he was, what he did, how and why he did it (as much as it’s possible to figure out the why), and the same feeling I get when I stand in the Howard House in Cross Plains and look into that tiny room where Bob lived and worked . . . and this new book delivers on that. It delivers on that magnificently, in prose that’s clear, straightforward, sometimes poignant, and very compelling.

I haven’t been to Cross Plains for Howard Days in a number of years and I’ve never met or been in contact with Will Oliver, so I say this not as a friend of his but as a long-time reader and fan of Howard’s work.

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS AUTHOR is the best book I’ve read this year. For Howard fans, I give it my highest recommendation.

Review: Celtic Adventures - D.M. Ritzlin, ed.

My ancestry is mostly British (which I assume includes some Scots, too) and Irish, so I’ve always had a fondness for Celtic heroes. The latest collection from DMR Books, CELTIC ADVENTURES, offers a fine assortment of such heroes, too.

After an informative and entertaining introduction by Deuce Richardson, the book opens with the poem “The Druids” by Kenneth Morris, an author whose name is familiar to me, but I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by him until now. It’s an atmospheric poem that does a good job of setting the stage.

“The Devil’s Dagger” by the well-regarded writing team of Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur and Farnham Bishop is set in 13^th Century Scotland and finds a young soldier trying to solve the seemingly impossible murder of one of the King’s officials. If he doesn’t, the father of the girl he’s fallen in love with will be executed for the crime. There’s some great action in this one including a lengthy swordfight that covers a lot of ground in the castle where the majority of the story takes place. I really like the way Brodeur and Bishop wrote. This is the first thing I’ve read by them, although I have a copy of their acclaimed novel IN THE GRIP OF THE MINOTAUR and need to get around to reading it. “The Devil’s Dagger” first appeared in the September 3, 1918 issue of ADVENTURE.

One of Robert E. Howard’s many Celtic heroes was Conan the Reaver, an Irish pirate who shared the same name as a certain Cimmerian. “People of the Dark”, from the June 1932 issue of STRANGE TALES OF MYSTERY AND TERROR, is actually one of Howard’s “past lives” yarns, in which a modern-day man bent on murder takes a fall in a cave, knocks himself out, and winds up reliving a break-neck adventure that happened to one of his ancestors (the above-mentioned Conan the Reaver). It’s a great story, too, full of action as Conan and a couple of companions battle a genuinely creepy race of little people who live underground (another common element in Howard’s work). I had read this one several times before, but it had been a while so I thoroughly enjoyed it all over again.

“The Harping of Cravetheen” is by-lined Fiona MacLeod, which was actually a pseudonym for William Sharp, another author unfamiliar to me. It appeared originally in a collection called THE SIN-EATER, published in 1895. It’s a very well-written tale about romance, a young woman forced to marry a man she doesn’t want to, feuding families, infidelity, and violent death, along with a supernatural element and some harp music. I think. To be honest, half the time I wasn’t sure what was going on in this one. It’s worth reading for the sheer beauty of the language, but it wasn’t really to my taste, either.

“A Claymore for the Clan” is by Donald Barr Chidsey, one of my favorite pulp authors, and appeared originally in the July 1948 issue of ADVENTURE. Told from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy, it’s another tale of blood feuds and desperate sword battles. Chidsey, equally at home with hardboiled contemporary crime yarns and fast-paced swashbucklers like this one, is always worth reading, and this story barrels along in very entertaining fashion.

Clyde Irvine’s story “The Horror in the Glen” first appeared in the April 1940 issue of WEIRD TALES. A Scottish warrior avenges the murder of his family by a rival clan, but not before being banished for seven years to a supernatural realm and acquiring eldritch powers. This is another well-written story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Irvine’s name wasn’t familiar to me, so I looked him up and found that he published 18 stories during the early Forties, most of them adventure yarns in JUNGLE STORIES. I’ll have to keep an eye out for his work.

The highlight of this collection (other than REH) is “Grana, Queen of Battle” by John Barnett. This was published as a complete novel in the October 11, 1913 issue of THE CAVALIER, but it’s actually a series of six linked short stories about a beautiful female pirate in Ireland during the Elizabethan era. Grana can handle a sword when she needs to, but she usually outwits her opponents. After inheriting a castle and ships from her father, a famous pirate, she deals with mutinies, English tax collectors, treacherous Spaniards, and rival pirates. Finally, she’s captured by the English and sentenced to hang. This leads to a smashing climax that manages to be very satisfying while still hitting a slightly bittersweet note. I don’t know anything about John Barnett, but this is a terrific yarn.

This volume concludes with a poem by Robert E. Howard, “Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhi Mar Or”. I don’t know what that translates to, but the poem itself is dramatic and strikes an excellent ending note to this collection.

CELTIC ADVENTURES is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon, with an excellent cover by Jim FitzPatrick, and I give it a high recommendation if you’re a fan of fine adventure stories. Up above, I mentioned that my ancestry is mostly British, but the part that’s not? That’s Scandinavian, so naturally, I like Viking tales, too! And DMR Books just happens to have published a book called VIKING ADVENTURES, as well as a four-volume collection of Arthur D. Howden-Smith’s famous pulp series about Swain the Viking, so I have a pretty good idea about some of the books I’m going to be reading in the reasonably near future . . .

Review: Swords of the Crags - Fred Blosser

After reading Fred Blosser’s sword and sorcery novella SWORDS OF PLUNDER recently, I was in the mood to dive back into more of his work. I picked his collection SWORDS OF THE CRAGS.

This volume collects six stories that might have been the sort of thing Robert E. Howard wrote for the Spicy pulps in the mid-Thirties. The title story, “Swords of the Crags”, is set in Peshawar, India, and in the Khyber Hills. The protagonist is Pike Braxton, an American adventurer and former gunfighter from Texas who functions as a sort of unofficial secret agent for the British. When a beautiful young American heiress gets caught up in the schemes of a sinister Russian agent, Pike has to rescue her and recover some vital information. Seems fairly straightforward, if dangerous, but then Pike and the beautiful blonde find themselves confronting an otherworldly menace. This fast-moving tale is like placing Howard’s El Borak in a SPICY ADVENTURE STORIES plot, with a dash of Lovecraft thrown in. It’s well-written, works very well, and races along to a satisfactory conclusion. I really enjoyed it. (And it puts me in mind of Howard’s comments in a letter to Lovecraft where he suggested that Lovecraft should try to crack the Spicy market. He could use a pseudonym, Howard says, and just write up a fictionalization of one of his own “sex adventures”. Just the thought of Lovecraft’s reaction when he read that suggestion always makes me chuckle.)

In “Alleys of Terror”, the scene shifts to Shanghai and the protagonist is Ridge Braxton, Pike’s younger brother who’s just as fast with his guns and fists. The beautiful Eurasian pirate and smuggler Olga Zukor is framed for murder. The victim held the key to a deadly conspiracy Ridge is investigating, so he and Olga have to team up to untangle the mess even though they dislike and distrust each other at first.

Ridge Braxton returns to his West Texas stomping grounds in “Witch of Snakebit Creek”, a creepy contemporary Western that reminds me a bit of Howard’s “Old Garfield’s Heart” and “For the Love of Barbara Allen” although it turns out to be a very different kind of story. This is actually more of a mystery yarn with a nice late twist.

“The Girl From Hell’s Half Acre” finds another two-fisted, fast-shooting Texan adventurer, Esau Reynolds (a very Howardian name) turning detective as he tries to find a wealthy man’s missing daughter, who’s a beautiful blonde, of course. The trail leads Reynolds to the waterfront area of an unnamed city, where he clashes with—and beds—the beautiful queenpin of the area’s criminal underworld. This story, reminiscent of some of Howard’s Steve Harrison yarns, moves like the proverbial wind and is very entertaining.

“Sin’s Sanctuary” is another El Borak-like tale, with a heaping helping of Talbot Mundy influence, as an American adventurer infiltrates a hidden monastery in Tibet in search of a missing Englishman. He’s helped by a beautiful woman, of course, and they encounter unexpected danger inside the walls of the monastery. This is a really well-written and exciting story.

“Scarlet Lust” is a direct sequel to SWORDS OF PLUNDER and finds Cronn, the northern barbarian, out to steal a fabulous gem which he hopes will help him win the throne of one of the countries in his world. He gets some help, of course, from a beautiful woman. These are Conan pastiches, in a way, there’s no denying that, and they’re also better than most of the official Conan pastiches that have been published in the past few years. Like John C. Hocking, Scott Oden, and Chuck Dixon, Blosser understands the character and the setting. I don’t know if there are more of these Cronn stories, but if there are, I definitely want to read them. And if there aren’t, well, maybe Blosser will write some.

Blosser rounds out this collection with five articles about Howard’s efforts to crack the Spicy and Weird Menace markets, the spicier Conan yarns, and the influence of Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy on Howard’s work. As always with Blosser’s work, these essays are informative, entertaining, and well worth a Howard fan’s time.

Overall, SWORDS OF THE CRAGS is an excellent volume and a lot of fun to read. While it’s true that the main influence on these stories is Robert E.Howard, I found them reminiscent of E. Hoffmann Price, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Talbot Mundy, as well. Also, in Blosser’s stories the spicy bits are considerably spicier than what authors could get away with in the Thirties. They’re not overly graphic, but those scenes don’t fade out as quickly as the ones in the pulps did. So while they’re definitely Howardian, don’t mistake these tales for pale imitations. They stand on their own, and they’re well worth reading. SWORDS OF THE CRAGS is available on Amazon in a paperback edition, and an e-book edition containing the first three stories and the first two articles is available as well.

Review: Swords of Plunder - Fred Blosser

Fred Blosser is one of my favorite scholars of Robert E. Howard’s life and work. I’ve been enjoying his informative and entertaining articles about REH for decades. As it turns out, when it comes to writing fiction, he’s pretty darned good at spinning yarns himself. The latest thing I’ve read by him is a sword and sorcery novella called SWORDS OF PLUNDER, which is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.

This story finds a barbarian warrior from the north, who’s in command of a pirate ship, coming across two old rivals, a beautiful blond female pirate and a red-bearded brigand who has come close to crossing swords with our hero several times in the past. The barbarian pulls the two of them from the sea, where they’re clinging to some wreckage from a sunken ship. They have an intriguing tale to tell, too, about a fabulous treasure hidden on a lost island, and only the blonde knows how to get there. So the three of them form an uneasy partnership to go after the loot, but of course, when they reach their destination they find more danger waiting for them than they expected.

The barbarian’s name is Cronn, by the way, and I know what you’re thinking. I would have been, too, if I hadn’t happened to know that SWORDS OF PLUNDER is based on unused parts of an outline Blosser wrote for THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN many years ago, during the era in which I first encountered his work. As he explains in a very entertaining and informative afterword to this story, he was writing articles about Robert E. Howard for SSOC when editor Roy Thomas asked him to plot some of the new stories featuring the Cimmerian. This story grew out of one of those outlines, with the serial numbers filed off, as they say.

And it’s a really good yarn, too, no matter what the protagonist is called. Well-written, fast-moving, with plenty of action and some genuinely creepy scenes where our heroes have to face deadly perils in a cave on a lost island. This is pure pulp done the way I like it. I give SWORDS OF PLUNDER a high recommendation and plan to read more by Fred Blosser very soon.

Review: Sixgun Vixens of the Terror Trail - Fred Blosser

I’m not sure how I missed this one when it came out last fall. Fred Blosser is an old friend, a fan and scholar of Robert E. Howard, and a fine writer. And that title! Well, that’s just pure pulp goodness and I am always the target audience for that.

Howard’s novella “The Vultures of Wahpeton” is one of my top three favorite stories by him. (The other two are “Beyond the Black River” and “Wild Water”, in case anyone is interested.) The protagonist of “The Vultures of Wahpeton” is gunfighting Texan Steve Corcoran. The protagonist of “Sixgun Vixens of the Terror Trail” is gunfighting Texan Steve Cochran. At least one of the characters in this story believes them to be one and the same, that Cochran is simply the notorious Steve Corcoran going by another name. Blosser doesn’t resolve that one way or the other, but I’d say the evidence is pretty strong that Cochran is really Corcoran.

But it doesn’t really matter. Cochran and a companion, a Papago Indian, set out into the harsh landscape of Arizona in search of a fortune in silver that’s supposed to be hidden in a lost and abandoned mission where a massacre took place a couple of hundred years earlier. They run into trouble almost right away, an ambush that proves deadly. Then things are complicated by the arrival of two beautiful young women who hate each other but are attracted to Cochran—or maybe they just want to get their hands on that silver, too.

Pursued by Apaches and bandits, Cochran finally arrives at the so-called Black Mission, only to discover another surprise waiting for him there, and this is the most dangerous and strangest of all. It’s fitting that a story written mostly in homage to Robert E. Howard would have a little H.P. Lovecraft influence, too.

Blosser really nails the pulpish tone of this story with its fast pace, frequent gritty action, and a few spicy scenes with the so-called sixgun vixens. It’s just great fun from start to finish. Then, as a bonus for REH fans, Blosser wraps things up with an entertaining essay about Howard’s Western fiction. If you’re a Howard fan or just enjoy a fine Western adventure yarn, I give “Sixgun Vixens of the Terror Trail” a high recommendation. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions.

The Savage Sword of Conan #3 - Frank Tieri, Patrick Zircher, John C. Hocking, et al.

THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #3 opens with a long Conan story called “Wolves of the Tundra” written by Frank Tieri and drawn by Cary Nord. I’ve seen Nord’s work before and liked it, and his black-and-white art in this tale, while not as lush as his color work, is quite good and very effective. However, after reading a few pages of the story, Tieri’s script takes a turn that came really close to making me say, “Nope,” and not finishing it. In order for the plot to work, the reader has to accept something that I just couldn’t. To say more would be to venture too far into spoiler territory. Despite that, I actually did read the whole story, and while it never worked for me, I have to admit that the ending did give me a little chuckle. I didn’t care for this story, but as they say, your mileage may vary.

Next up is an excerpt from John C. Hocking’s CONAN: CITY OF THE DEAD, followed by an excellent autobiographical essay by Hocking detailing the background of the two novels in that collection. I’ll read anything Hocking wants to write featuring Conan, or anything else, for that matter. His work is always top-notch.

There’s a nice Howardian poem by Jim Zub with a good illustration, then the conclusion of Patrick Zircher’s three-part Solomon Kane story. The wrap-up of this yarn is just as good as the previous two installments. It’s a very satisfying conclusion to a fine tale.

A short, wordless Conan yarn with story and art by Alan Quah concludes this issue. The art is good, the story wry and entertaining. I don’t know anything about Quah, but he’s done a pretty good job with this one and I’d read more by him.

Despite my complaints about the main story, I enjoyed reading this issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN and I think most Howard fans would, too. I’m looking forward to the next issue.

The Savage Sword of Conan #2 - Jim Zub, Richard Pace, Patrick Zircher

For a while there, I was reading all the new Conan comics from Titan, as well as the new prose stories, and I read and enjoyed the first issue of the new SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN. Then I kind of just stopped. Not intentionally. I just wandered away as I have a tendency of doing. But it’s time to get caught up on them again, so I started with the second issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN.

Most of the pages are taken up by a long Conan yarn called “Leaving the Garden” written by Jim Zub with artwork by Richard Pace. It begins with a badly wounded Conan waking up after having been buried alive following a battle. Naturally, he doesn’t stay underground. A flashback establishes that he was traveling with a merchant caravan ambushed by inhuman attackers. The rest of the story deals with him recovering and seeking vengeance for what happened to his companions.

This is a good story with plenty of action broken up by the occasional poignant moment. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Jim Zub so far. My only complaint about this script is that “Leaving the Garden”, while it fits, isn’t the sort of dramatic title I’ve come to expect on a Conan story. I also have to say that the artwork isn’t to my taste at all. I suspect it’s the kind of art that either resonates with a reader or it doesn’t. It didn’t in my case.

This issue also features the second installment of a Solomon Kane serial written and drawn by Patrick Zircher, an adventure that finds Kane battling a supernatural menace in his native England. Art and script are superb on this story. So far it’s one of the best Solomon Kane comics stories I’ve read.

Despite the reservations mentioned above, there’s enough to like about this issue of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN that I don’t hesitate to give it a strong recommendation for Conan and Robert E. Howard fans. It’s available in both print and digital editions.

Conan: City of the Dead - John C. Hocking

CONAN: CITY OF THE DEAD is a new collection available in both hardback and e-book editions that reprints John C. Hocking's original Conan novel, CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS, and is the first publication of his sequel CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE. More than ten years ago, I read and reviewed the first of those novels, and then a while after that, I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy of the second. I thought I would revisit slightly updated versions of both of these reviews today.

From August 30, 2013: As a long-time reader and fan of Robert E. Howard's work, a former member of REHupa, and somebody who has written introductions for several volumes of Howard stories, you might expect me to be a strict purist, somebody who doesn't like pastiches featuring Howard's characters and doesn't think such things should be written. Ah, but that would be rather hypocritical of me, considering how the majority of my career has been spent writing about other people's characters, including my own Howard pastiche (the El Borak story "Wolves of the Mountain" in CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE).

So, as with most things, I come down pretty much in the middle on this issue. I have no philosophical objections to pastiches, it's just that most of the ones I've read based on Howard's work aren't very good.

For years, though, I've been meaning to read John C. Hocking's novel CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS, which has a pretty favorable reputation even among Howard's most devoted fans. I believe it was Morgan Holmes who first told me that Hocking's book is the best of the Conan pastiches published by Tor. I should have gotten around to it long before now, especially since the author comments from time to time on this very blog. All I can say is that I'm sorry for my procrastination on several levels, the most important of which is that it kept me from reading an excellent novel until now.

CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS is a rare thing, a fantasy novel with a strongly realistic tone to it. Sure, there's plenty of swordplay and sorcery, but the tale revolves around a powerful, highly addictive drug, the sort of plot element you might find in a hardboiled crime novel. It's been said that Howard merged a hardboiled voice with horror fiction to create sword-and-sorcery, and Hocking understands that even though he doesn't try to imitate Howard's style. He spins this yarn in brisk, action-packed prose with occasional touches of creepiness and dark humor. Conan, aligned with one of the sorcerers warring over the potent powder known as the Emerald Lotus, is the most admirable character in the novel, and we know what a bad-ass he is.

At the same time, Hocking gives us the sort of spectacle you expect to find in epic heroic fantasy, especially in scenes like the description of sorcerer Ethram-Fal's stronghold in the badlands of ancient Stygia. And speaking of badlands, there are hints of the Western here, too, in the battles between Conan and his enemies in rugged terrain that might well be Monument Valley, Utah. All of it leads up to an apocalyptic and very satisfying climax.

As it turns out, CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS is one of the most purely entertaining books I've read all year. Hocking knows his stuff and knows how to tell a fine story.

From August 5, 2019: John C. Hocking is the author of CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS, a novel which is widely regarded as the best of the Conan pastiches published by Tor in the Eighties and Nineties. I finally got around to reading it several years ago and agree that it’s easily the best of those pastiches. 

In CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE, Conan is recruited to be part of a small mercenary force headed to the isolated mountain city of Dulcine, which is rumored to have been wiped out by a mysterious plague. But rumors also say that there’s a fortune waiting to be had in Dulcine’s treasure vaults, and an ambitious prince has his eye on that loot. In order to get his hands on it, he hires not only Conan and several other hard-nosed soldiers but also a sorcerer who had something to do with the plague that wiped out the city. Conan hates and distrusts sorcery, of course, but the magic conjured up by this mage Adrastus is the only thing that can get the treasure seekers safely in and out of their destination.

Well, of course, lots of stuff goes wrong. The plague hasn’t wiped out everybody in Dulcine, but the people who are left have been transformed into crazed, bloodthirsty semblances of their former selves. Even worse, a creepy figure who’s actually the living personification of the plague is wandering around the castle where the treasure is supposed to be. Conan and his companions are in constant danger not only from this living plague but also from treachery within their own ranks. Not all of them will make it out alive . . .

Hocking doesn’t try to slavishly imitate Robert E. Howard’s style, although there are Howardian touches to the prose here and there. Instead, he tells the story in his own voice, with well-drawn characters, a head-long pace, and plenty of epic action scenes. I think this is the best approach to pastiche, producing a novel that’s recognizably a Conan tale, steeped in the background and setting Howard created, but in the author’s own distinctive style. Hocking has given us another fine novel, and I certainly hope it won’t be the last. I really enjoyed CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE and give it a very high recommendation.

Bêlit: Shipwrecked - V. Castro

BÊLIT: SHIPWRECKED is the latest entry in the series of Robert E. Howard pastiches published as e-books by Titan Books. Not surprisingly, it’s a prequel to Howard’s story “Queen on the Black Coast” and takes place before Conan meets the pirate Bêlit and becomes part of her crew sailing on the ship Tigress. In SHIPWRECKED, Bêlit is already a fierce, well-known pirate, but not even she can turn aside a terrible storm that damages her ship and casts it, her, and her crew ashore on what appears at first to be a rather idyllic island.

But of course, dangers lurk in the jungles and behind the waterfalls of this scenic location, and not everyone will get off the island alive.

I’d never heard of the author of this story, who’s credited as V. Castro, but according to the note at the end, she’s written several well-regarded horror novels. SHIPWRECKED has some strong horror overtones as well. The writing is good all the way through this story, and Bêlit is a strong protagonist, but for some reason this tale never really connected with me. Bêlit is a little too unsympathetic for my taste. I kept reminding myself that she’s a pirate; she’s not necessarily supposed to be sympathetic. But it didn’t quite work, and neither did the somewhat graphic sex, which seemed out of place in a Howard pastiche. Howard’s stories sometimes had plenty of sex implied in them, but when you were writing for the pulp market, most such things had to be implied and there was a limit to what you could put on the page. I realize this isn’t the pulp era anymore, but my approach to pastiches is that they should be written as if you writing for the same markets as the original author. Does that make sense?

But as always, that’s just me. Despite my complaints, I found SHIPWRECKED to be entertaining for the most part and I’m glad Titan is doing this series even though some of the stories don’t quite hit the mark for me.

Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance - Scott Oden

I’ve been looking forward to this one, and I’ll say right up front that Scott Oden’s THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE, the latest entry in the new series of Robert E. Howard-related short fiction, did not disappoint. At all.

This novella is a direct sequel to Howard’s story “The Devil in Iron”, so, figuring my memory might need some refreshing, I took this opportunity to reread that yarn for the first time in a while. I wouldn’t put it in the very top rank of Conan stories, but it’s a really solid tale and ends with one of my favorite lines from a Howard story (or anybody’s story, for that matter): Conan says to Octavia, the beautiful blonde he’s rescued from the evil Jehungir Agha’s seraglio, "I'll burn Khawarizm for a torch to light your way to my tent."

THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE opens three months later in Khawarizm, where an advisor to the late Jehungir Agha makes a deal with a group of mystical assassins to kill Conan and avenge the ruler slain by Conan. Unknown to him, Conan is making plans to carry out the promise he made at the end of the previous story and conquer the city. To do that, he plans to broker a truce between the Kozaks, the wild raiders of the steppes he currently leads, and the Red Brotherhood, his piratical former allies who sail the Vilayet Sea. (It occurs to me that if you’re not familiar with Howard’s work, you don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about.)

These elements come together in what is the most Howardian Conan pastiche I’ve ever read. Oden captures the deft blend of deception and double-crosses that Howard often made use of in his stories. He nails not only Conan’s character but his physical description as well. One of the previous authors in this series described Conan as “hulking”. Well, no. Howard usually compares him to a wolf and emphasizes his speed and cunning as much as his strength. And Oden’s prose really reads like it could have been published in WEIRD TALES or some other pulp in the Thirties. It’s full of action and color and flows beautifully.

THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE joins John Hocking’s BLACK STARLIGHT as the real highlights of this new series. I’d love to see both Oden and Hocking writing full-length Conan novels on a regular basis. I don’t know if that will ever come about, but if it does, I’ll be a regular customer, I can tell you that. In the meantime, if you’re a Howard fan I give my highest recommendation to THE SHADOW OF VENGEANCE. It’s just flat-out great.  

Solomon Kane: The Hound of God - Jonathan Maberry

SOLOMON KANE: THE HOUND OF GOD by Jonathan Maberry is the latest e-book in the Heroic Legends series of stories based on characters created by Robert E. Howard. As it begins, the Puritan adventurer/avenger Solomon Kane is traveling through Germany when he finds the remains of a whole village of farmers slaughtered by a band of brigands. If the tracks the villains left can be believed, they’re being led by a werewolf! Kane sets out to track down the monster and his henchmen, of course . . . but things don’t work out exactly the way he expects. The plot twist that Maberry springs is a good one, very effective even if it’s not entirely unexpected. The writing is good for the most part, and Solomon Kane rings true to Howard’s character. Maberry does something at the end that’s a fairly common technique, but it happens to be one that I don’t care for. Despite that, I enjoyed the story overall and would be happy to read more Solomon Kane stories by Maberry.

Conan: Black Starlight

Having read John C. Hocking’s two Conan novels, CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE (both of which are soon to be published in an omnibus volume, by the way), I expected to like his novella BLACK STARLIGHT, the second in Titan Books’ new series of short fiction based on Robert E. Howard’s characters. I was not disappointed in the least.

BLACK STARLIGHT is a sequel to CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and finds Conan traveling with three companions: a powerful sorceress, her mute Khitan bodyguard/lover, and a beautiful, knife-throwing scribe. They arrived at a bordertown on the river Styx, intending to cross from Stygia to Shem, but the place turns out to be a ghost town full of dangers, and to survive they have to penetrate a powerful enemy’s stronghold on some cliffs overlooking the Styx.

Hocking’s Conan yarns always feature numerous supernatural menaces, and that’s certainly true in BLACK STARLIGHT. Several different kinds of evil, necromantic creatures threaten the Cimmerian and his friends, and the action scenes as Conan battles to survive are excellent. The sorcerous stuff is genuinely creepy, as well, providing a blend of adventure and horror that works really well. I raced through this novella and really enjoyed it.

BLACK STARLIGHT was serialized previously in one of the Conan comic book series, but since I wasn’t keeping up with the comics at that time, I vaguely knew of its existence but never read it. I’m glad Titan Books has brought it back and published it in stand-alone form. Not surprisingly, it’s one of the best Conan pastiches I’ve read. Available now and highly recommended.

Conan: Caravan of the Damned

CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED is the second Conan novel by veteran author Chuck Dixon, based solely on the stories by Robert E. Howard that appeared in the pulp WEIRD TALES. I’m not going to get into the convoluted legal and copyright issues surrounding the character. Those are for somebody else to figure it out. My interest is in whether or not this is a good Conan yarn, and the answer (with a minor reservation or two) is a resounding yes.

This tale takes place during the time of Conan’s life when he’s leading a band of desert bandits and raiders. They attack a caravan and discover that its camels are carrying not only a small fortune in gold and gems but also a beautiful young woman, one of the daughters of Turan’s King Yildiz, who is promised in marriage to the son of a neighboring king. The girl and her escort were supposed to rendezvous with a party sent out by her future father-in-law.

Of course, Conan realizes he now has a hostage who may be worth a considerable amount of ransom, but only if he can get away from the rest of the girl’s escort, which was trailing behind the caravan. And so the chase is on through the desert. Not surprisingly, it will wind up in some strange and dangerous places.

Dixon does a lot of things right in this novel. It’s relatively short, which means the prose is stripped down and fast-paced, as it would have been if the story had been done as a three-part serial for WEIRD TALES. The characterization is good throughout, from Conan’s allies and enemies to the young hostage everybody is after. The desert setting is superb. There’s plenty of action, and it’s handled well for the most part. I like the cover and the interior illustrations, too. (More books, especially adventure novels, need interior illustrations.)

That brings us to those minor reservations mentioned above. The opening chapter of his novel is extremely violent, more Piccadilly Cowboys than WEIRD TALES, and some of Conan’s actions, even though they’re not out of character, are presented in a pretty brutal fashion. This isn’t a major complaint, just something I noticed, and at least Conan doesn’t come across as mean and petty, as he did in one of the other pastiches I read recently.

My other quibble is that I would have liked to know more about the supernatural menace that crops up late in the book. A lot of back-story would have bogged down the flow of this yarn, and I don’t want that, but a few more lines about the danger facing Conan and his companions might have worked well.

Overall, though, I had a really good time reading CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED. Clearly, Dixon has a very good grasp of the character and can write Howardian action scenes with the best of them. Both of his Conan novels so far have been great fun and get a high recommendation from me as long as you’re not opposed to the idea of pastiches. You can get a trade paperback/e-book combo directly from the publisher.

It’s funny, I went for a long time without reading any Robert E. Howard pastiches, and now suddenly it seems like I’m reading a bunch of them, both comics and prose. I’m enjoying them, too, and I look forward to seeing what turns up next.

Conan: Lord of the Mount - Stephen Graham Jones

CONAN: LORD OF THE MOUNT by Stephen Graham Jones is the first in a new series of short stories and novellas based on characters created by Robert E. Howard, written by various hands and published by Titan Books. I avoided reading any reviews of it after it was published earlier this week until I’d had a chance to read it myself, but I couldn’t help but be aware that the reaction to it has been somewhat mixed.

The story starts out with Conan waking up after a battle, apparently the only survivor from the force he was aligned with, falling in with a lotus addict who’s driving a small group of cows to market, getting sidetracked to a deserted castle where a man-eating beast supposedly lives, and battling said beast. That’s the extent of the plot.

I had never read anything by Stephen Graham Jones and was only vaguely familiar with his name, knowing him to be an author of horror novels. Not necessarily somebody I’d think of as writing a Conan pastiche. I don’t doubt that he likes the character and is a fan of Robert E. Howard’s work, but to be honest, for a couple of reasons I think he misses the mark in LORD OF THE MOUNT.

The first reason is the pacing. The story is slow to develop with the first half just meandering along, not much happening except that Jones does lay the groundwork for some plot developments that come along later. He does so without any of the characters actually doing anything other than talking, though. Howard didn’t always start his stories with action, but there’s always something happening in an REH yarn, some sense of movement and suspense. I didn’t find any of that in the opening scenes of LORD OF THE MOUNT.

The other problem I have with this story is that I think Jones doesn’t quite have Conan’s character down. I can’t provide specifics without getting into spoiler territory, but during the battle with the monster there’s one moment when Conan does something that seems totally out of character for him, and in the end of the story he comes across to me as wantonly, unnecessarily cruel. Not that he wouldn’t have gotten his revenge on someone who wronged him, but the way he goes about it doesn’t ring true to me.

Now that I think about it, I believe the nature of the threat Conan faces could have been developed a bit more, too.

All that said, the battle is quite good for the most part, and except for those two moments that jumped out at me, Conan’s dialogue works fairly well. Jones’s description of the abandoned castle is excellent, and the pace does pick up nicely in the second half of the story. LORD OF THE MOUNT isn’t terrible, by any means, but it’s not really to my taste, either. If you want to check it out and form your own opinion—and if you’re a Howard fan, you probably should—it’s available as an e-book on Amazon.

Overall, I’m pleased that Titan Books is launching this series of new stories based on Howard’s characters. I’m an REH purist in that I think his original work should be available and not tampered with by modern-day editing. When I first became involved in Howard fandom nearly thirty years ago, very little of Howard’s work was in print, and none of his Conan stories were available in new editions. In fact, they were being suppressed by various corporate entities. This has changed over the years, of course. Just about everything Howard wrote can be found now in textually accurate editions. I have no objection to pastiches in general. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to take that stance, considering how many millions of words I’ve written using characters, settings, and situations created by other authors. So I’m fine with Howard pastiches and will continue to read the ones that interest me.

Conan the Barbarian #2: Bound in Black Stone, Part 2 - Jim Zub and Rob de la Torre

I've read the second issue of the new CONAN THE BARBARIAN comic book and continue to be very impressed. This is Part 2 of the storyline "Bound in Black Stone", which finds Conan, still a relatively young mercenary and adventurer, and his companion, the Pictish female scout Brissa, on the run from and battling a horde of undead warriors flooding north from Aquilonia into Cimmeria.

Jim Zub's script is very good, striking a perfect balance between dialogue and captions. I'm no expert on modern comics, as I've said many times, but my impression is that captions are somewhat frowned upon by many of today's writers. That makes Zub's effective use of them very refreshing to me. I grew up reading Stan Lee, remember, and Stan wrote great captions. So did most of the other comics scripters of the Sixties and Seventies.

Rob de la Torre's art continues to be fantastic. His storytelling and attention to detail are excellent. Like Zub's writing, de la Torre's art really fits this character.

If I have one quibble, it's a very minor one. The necessity to write story arcs that can be reprinted in trade paperbacks sometimes leads to a slower pace than I like. So far this hasn't been a real problem in this series, but I do feel that the story could move along just a little faster. But that feeling hasn't detracted from my enjoyment, and based on the three issues I've read so far (I read the Free Comic Book Day prequel but didn't blog about it), I give CONAN THE BARBARIAN a very high recommendation directed at long-time fans and newcomers alike. I read the digital edition of the second issue, and I've already pre-ordered the third issue.

Red Sonja: The Ballad of the Red Goddess - Roy Thomas, Esteban Maroto, and Santi Casas

Back in my comic book reading days, I was never a big fan of the character Red Sonja. Not really a Robert E. Howard character but more Howard-adjacent, let's say, she was very loosely based on the character Red Sonya in Howard's historical adventure yarn "The Shadow of the Vulture". So in reality she was actually created by scripter Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith, with her visual appearance being revamped early on by artist Esteban Maroto. Mind you, these are not bad things. Roy Thomas is one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and Maroto and Windsor-Smith are top-notch artists. But when Red Sonja got her own book, I read it only sporadically, and although I had copies of all six novels by David C. Smith and Richard Tierney that featured the character, I never got around to reading them before they were lost in the Fire of '08. These days copies of the novels tend to be pretty expensive, so I've never replaced them.

All that said, when I came across a digital version of the graphic novel RED SONJA: THE BALLAD OF THE RED GODDESS available on Kindle Unlimited, I didn't hesitate to download and read it. Maybe it was time to reevaluate the character, I told myself. And with a script by Roy Thomas and art by Esteban Maroto, the two guys who basically came up with the character, it seemed like a good bet whether it turned me into a Red Sonja fan or not.

The jury is still out on that, but I really enjoyed this graphic novel done originally for a Spanish publisher several years ago. Thomas's script is an origin story with a framing sequence. It covers ground that has been covered to a certain extent in previous stories but fleshes it out in an enjoyable fashion. The tale even provides a reasonable explanation for the infamous chain-mail bikini the character wears, over and above the idea of appealing to horny male comic book readers in the Seventies. (Hey! I resemble that remark!) The action is good, Sonja is a likable character, and while this doesn't break any new ground, it's a perfectly acceptable sword-and-sorcery yarn that entertained me quite a bit. Maroto's art is very good (I've always liked his work) and the art in the framing sequence by Santi Casas is good as well.

There are e-book editions of other Red Sonja collections that reprint the original comics run from the Seventies. Might be time to check them out, too.

The Death's Head Tavern: A Solomon Kane Story - Nancy A. Collins

I’ve been aware of Nancy A. Collins and her work for many years, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by her until now. She was a member of REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, for a while (as was I), and she recently rewrote and expanded a Solomon Kane short story she wrote originally for her REHupa ’zine. THE DEATH’S HEAD TAVERN: A SOLOMON KANE STORY is now available as an e-book with a good cover on Amazon.

The story finds Howard’s Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane stopping at an isolated tavern at the edge of a Scottish moor. As we all know, nothing good ever happens on a moor. (“They were the footprints, Mr. Holmes, of a gigantic hound!”) The tavern’s only other customers are a traveling merchant and his beautiful daughter. Kane is looking for a former comrade-in-arms who disappeared in the area while searching for his missing brother. With two men missing, something sinister is definitely going on, and in a night of violence, fire, and gruesome death, Kane discovers what it is.

Collins does a fine job of capturing Howard’s character and the story moves right along at a very nice pace. The action scenes are excellent. One thing I really like is the way Collins ties this Solomon Kane yarn in with another of Howard’s series. You’ll have to read it to find out which one, but it works really well. There’s a reference to another literary property not by Howard that I appreciated, too.

THE DEATH’S HEAD TAVERN is just a good story, a Front Porch Yarn, and I enjoyed it a lot. If Collins wants to wrote more Solomon Kane stories, I’ll read them, that’s for sure.

The Siege of the Black Citadel - Chuck Dixon

I remember reading and enjoying Chuck Dixon’s Conan stories in the black-and-white comic magazine THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN more than 30 years ago. At the time it never occurred to me that one day Dixon and I would be friends and that I’d even have the privilege of editing a few of his books. He remains one of my favorite writers.

THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL is the first of what I hope will be numerous Conan novels by Dixon. As the story opens, Conan is part of a mercenary company fighting on the side of the rebels in a civil war in the country of Koth. The rebel forces have laid siege to the fortress known as the Black Citadel, which controls a river that’s vital to both sides in the war. Charged with finding a way to infiltrate the fortress, Conan accidentally discovers the secret of a great fortune hidden inside the citadel. At that point, THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL becomes something of a sword-and-sorcery heist novel, as Conan and several of his comrades scheme to use the upcoming battle to cover their theft of the hidden fortune. Unfortunately for them and a number of other people, there’s a sorcerer inside the fortress who is able to breach the wall between worlds and bring over a bloodthirsty beast that may tip the odds in the defenders’ favor.

While I consider myself a Robert E. Howard purist for the most part, I’m not opposed to the idea of pastiches, especially in a work such as this which is based only on the Conan stories that appeared in WEIRD TALES, as is made clear in a note inside the book. Because of that, Dixon gives us a Conan who is true to Howard’s original creation and acts, talks, and thinks in authentic ways for Conan. The writing style also does a good job of approximating Howard’s prose. I’m not sure any writer can sound exactly like another writer, but a talented pro can come close and Dixon does so in this book.

It also helps that THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL is a short novel, the kind that could have been serialized in WEIRD TALES in three parts. I think this is the best length for sword-and-sorcery yarns, in general, although I’ve certainly read some longer ones that are quite good. But the shorter length means that the tale has to move and not get bogged down, and I’m happy to report that THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL races right along in fine fashion.

I had a great time reading this novel. If you’re a Robert E. Howard fan, maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t, depending on how you feel about pastiches. If you’re a fan of Conan in all the various forms, I can’t help but think you’ll enjoy the book a lot. It’s available as a trade paperback on Amazon or from the publisher. As for myself, I’m looking forward to Chuck Dixon’s next novel about the Cimmerian.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: The Magic Carpet Magazine, July 1933

This pulp also contains a Robert E. Howard story, his historical novelette "The Lion of Tiberias". But also behind that J. Allen St. John cover, you'll find a superb novella by H. Bedford-Jones, "Pearls From Macao" (which Tom Roberts reprinted as an early entry in his Black Dog Books line, many years ago, the edition I read and remember fondly), as well as stories by E. Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, Warren Hastings Miller, and Geoffrey Vace, who was actually Hugh B. Cave's brother Geoffrey. This is just a spectacular issue of THE MAGIC CARPET MAGAZINE, a great example of why the pulps were so wonderful, and if you want to read it for yourself, Adventure House has reprinted the whole thing. High recommended.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, July 1937

Since Robert E. Howard Days is going on in Cross Plains this weekend, I thought it appropriate to post the cover of one of the Western pulps in which Howard's work appeared. In this case it's the July 1937 issue of COWBOY STORIES, which includes Howard's Buckner J. Grimes story "Knife-River Prodigal". This is one of the stories that sold after Howard's death and appeared almost exactly a year later. I don't know the cover artist, but it's certainly a great example of how red and yellow dominated Western pulp covers. Also in this issue are Samuel Taylor, Bruce Douglas, W.D. Hoffman, and an author billed as Chief Henry Red Eagle, with a story called "Wampum Swamp 'Em", which makes me think it's probably not a serious examination of Indian life in the Old West.