This is the third in the 10-volume set collecting the work of Robert Howard for Weird magazine, covering work from 1931 to 1932, after Howard has cemented his friendship with Lovecraft and even starts writing his own Mythos tales, two obvious ones of which are collected here. One of them, the Black Stone, is quite good. Howard uses the first person narrative to great effect telling only what he wants us to know and being very careful to leave out details whenever he wishes. This allows the horror to build, no pun intended, and gives a good balance of descriptive work versus reader imagination. The second reads more like a traditional ghost story, and does not hold up nearly as well.It's very obvious that Lovecraft is influencing Howard here, though I'm not entirely sure it's for the better. Howard tries to link all his stories up in some way, referencing them to each other with links to the Picts and other mentions. He even raises King Kull from the dead to lead a desperate stand against the Roman legions. Instead of feeling like world building, it feels a bit forced. Since Howard mostly writes the same type of character, whether it's loner Solomon Kane, outsiders Kull and Conan, or even his Irish outcast, Turlogh, the references tend to trip over each other.Though his writing style is getting better here--the turns of phrase are craftier, for instance--there is a feeling that he's writing off a template sometimes. Hero finds himself against rediculous odds and gets saved by the supernatural is the theme of almost every story in this book. Read separately, it's less of an issue, but together in a collection, they fall apart just a bit. I thought Howard did a better job of keeping the stories different in the first few published works. Solomon Kane may be the one who suffers most here. Gone are his conflicts between religion and his actions, replaced by just going out and righting wrongs. It makes him far less interesting as a character, and I hope that if I see him again in book 4, that he's back to looking inward again.We also get the first Conan story, though it's a first-person reality flashback that's really not about the Conan we know and love. He's more a passive figure fighting blindly, and he's more modern in timeframe as well. Conan is not a good first-person character, and I am glad that changed when he was redone shortly after this.There are quite a few racial remarks as we go along, which do make me wince. However, it seems this is more Howard trying to distance his rather shaky heroes away from the evil of their foes, because even the white characters he doesn't want you to care about get painted with negative racial traits. Apparently, Howard was an equal-opportunity racial basher, when he needed to be.Despite all that, this is still fun reading. Howard's playing with reality in several stories, flashing characters back and forth through time, though the first, featuring Kull, is the most engaging. He also is starting to form Conan, though he's not here just yet, in his disdain for organized groups and corrupt officials. (The Gods of Bal-Sagoth, while a Torlogh tale, could easily be set as a Conan story, and I think, were I writing for Dark Horse, I would do so.) I found the mythos references fun, and I think the idea of playing with the unknown Horror, which we see several times, is a nice touch.Even at his less-than-best, Howard's gift for writing shines through the pulpy subjects and occasional need to be stereotypical in his writing. Given how much he had to produce, it's no wonder sometimes he felt the need to use a bit of formulaic work in terms of the plot. I still maintain that Howard may be the best writer of the pulp era, and that there's a lot to read in him that could stand up against the modern fantasy that comes after him. in fact, I think Howard would come off better than a lot of the paperback novels written today, given that he writes in a crisp style that doesn't wander off the point. Take this for example: "Time and space exist not. There was no past and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All thing that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire *now*, Man is forever at the center of what we call time and space. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today--which is like the dreams of ghosts!"It's passages such as that, which are frequent in Howard, that keep me coming back. That's great wrtiting, not dime novel drivel, which I tend to think Howard gets shoveled into, simply because of his genre. He, like his heroes, manages to be just a bit better than those around him, and sometimes can be a lot better, given the right inspiration. This is not where to start your Howard experience, but I am glad for the reprinting, and look forward to more. (Library, 12/07)Trebby's Take: Recommended, but not quite as good as the first volume.
This REH collection features many of his more polished stories, so they flow better than some of his fragments and pastiches. Many of these tales were Conan comic book adaptations (1980's) and this was the first time I'd read some of them in print, so rediscovering them was fun. Like meeting an old school friend 20 years later.Best new discoveries: 'The Haunter of the Ring,' and 'The Cairn on the Headland.' Both feature non-Conan characters and more contemporary settings (1920's-30's), which gives them almost a Lovecraftian feel. Very groovy.I didn't care much for the poetry pieces, however - dark, vengeful writings that didn't seem (in my opinion) to fit the rest of the book.Four stars because I'm an REH nerd and I like reading about impossible fights and beautiful princesses and deus ex machina endings. Thank God for escapist literature!
