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Unabashed pulp fiction that doesn't fail to entertain.
Still the best. Timeless.
Pretty good if you read with an awareness of racism, sexism, and masculine ideals.
The thing in the crypt [**]The tower of the elephant [**]The hall of the dead [***]The god in the bowl [***]Rogues in the house [***]The hand of Nergal [***]The city of skulls [**]
First time reading any of the Conan books. I liked it. Maybe because they're short stories, or because they were written so long ago, I kept getting the feeling like I was sitting around a campfire listening to someone tell a story -- instead of being inserted into the story as if I were there. Something kind of auditory/oral about them.Conan is described as having a thick alien accent. This made me wonder if the decision to not dub over Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice acting was a conscious decis...
Some relatively pure Howard Conan stories mixed with pastiches. 2 and a half stars.
This book is a copy I bought secondhand many years ago and only decided to start it (finally!) when I participated in a group Conan read in the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" forum at Goodreads.The book opens with L. Sprague de Camp’s introduction and a letter written in 1936 by Robert E. Howard to P. S. Miller, which explains his conception of Conan. This is followed by Howard’s ‘The Hyborian Age – part I’, an essay outlining the origins and broad historical sweep of Conan’s wor...
This collection of short stories is the perfect place to start for readers new to Conan. Not only does the book provide bite sized morals of the violent sword and sorcery the long running fantastical protagonist is renowned for, but it also introduces all the key elements outside of the core themes prominent in the larger forms of fiction; monsters, magicians, thievery, the undead, friendship, deceit, and battles a-plenty. I must admit that I've not read many Conan stories so my praise for this
Aaaaah...Conan!I struggled with my star rating for Conan because, despite any mitigating factors, I really love the character of Conan, particularly in the hands of his progenitor, Robert E. Howard.Howard had a fiercely creative mind and a burning work ethic that enabled him to crank out some of the most amazing pulp heroes and anti-heroes, including Kull, El Borak, Solomon Kane, the humorous Breckinridge Ellis, and, of course, Conan before taking his own life at thirty years old.It is an impres...
I read all of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales about two years ago and was surprised by how grim, badass and engaging they were. I was expecting them to be super corny, yet they were shockingly deep, amoral and exciting given the time they were written. After being impressed with Conan's original run, I thought it would be interesting to read some stories penned by other authors. While this collection does include some of Howard's stories that I've already read, there were quite a few fra...
This is the first volume of Lancer's editions of the Conan saga. L. Sprague de Camp, with the help of Lin Carter, expanded Howard's original Conan stories and edited them into chronological sequence in a twelve-volume series in the late 1960's, and the controversy has never quite died off completely. Many people believe that only Howard's original versions of the complete stories are acceptable, and many believe that the Lancer series with the original Frazetta covers are canon, and then there a...
I was a teenage barbarian. I grew up in a world of might and magic, sword and sorcery. I learned at an early age what violence could accomplish, and that nothing gets you out of danger as effectively as brute force. I lost my parents at a very young age and wandered the land, living off of whatever I could salvage and slaying those who stood in my way, be they man or beast. It was a time of uncertainty. It was a time of evil. It was a time of adventure. suarezart
Based on a recommendation from my dad, I first read this series when I was eleven. I was pretty much sold as soon as I saw the cover paintings by Frank Frazetta. So, I decided I would re-read all 12 books to see if my general impressions had changed at all since then. Here’s some observations about the 7 stories that appear in book 1.The Thing in the CryptAs a kid, I only had a vague notion about why three different authors were credited on the cover. Over the years, I think I tried to block out...
I read Robert Howard’s Conan something on a whim. That probably means that at the time I had something really important to do that I really didn’t want to do. However, let’s pretend that I had been wondering what the book would be like, having seen some of the films when I was younger during the age when Arnold Schwarzenegger was an object of my masculine admiration as I made my way up the foothills to the Land of Men. But still, reading the book as a man, would such a series of stories involvin...
I had several series of fantasy books that I read with friends and loved when I was a young teen. As I re-read some of these authors in my thirties I am sorely disappointed at their quality. Piers Anthony and Terry Brooks come to mind (although I do still like Magic Kingdom for Sale despite its faults). I have been lugging the original 12 Conan books with me back and forth across the country for 20 years now and decided it was time to actually read them again--put them to the test, as it were. A...
Crom! I'm finished already. A great book and series of books for boys from 12 to 18. It's really hard to tell between Howard's stuff and De Camp's & Carter's. My advice: don't bother. This is "CONAN"!, not literature, Dog!
This UK Sphere edition only credits Howard as the author, and it's only on the table of contents page that they admit that half the tales are at least half written by de Camp, some with Lin Carter. The complete Conan stories, “Tower of the Elephant”, “The God in the Bowl”, and “Rogues in the House” are all classics of their kind. This was actually my first time through “The God in the Bowl”, which is sort of like a Conan box-episode, and it worked pretty well for all that. “The Hand of Nergal
The first of the little white books series. Fantastic stuff. Howard had a way with words that made everything sound so much more . . . daunting. . . so much more heroic. . . so much more brooding. The man was a poet.The Hyborian Age - Alternate history that shows the reader just how much imagination, fueled by history, Howard put into these stories. You see the historic inspiration for the various peoples, rooted in history and using some information that wasn't available at the time, but wasn't...
Robert E. Howard's famous barbarian hero journeys among the nations of the Hyborian Age in this anthology of stories, seeking his fortune and reveling in bloody adventure. I devoured several of these anthologies back when I was in junior high school and was pleasantly surprised to see how well they hold up now. His prose is muscular and direct, his characters brutal and equally direct, as befits the world in which they live. I was surprised that Conan is actually a secondary character in some of...
Surprisingly fresh, entertaining, and even tender at moments. I guess having seen just clips from the Arnold movie, I expected a campy cheeseball -- but now I can understand why Conan has endured as a literary figure. With one exception the stories don't even contain objectionable racial epithets, which is pretty amazing considering they were largely written in the 1930s.The best of these stories combine every genre of pulp fiction known at the time: Westerns, detective, science fiction, horror,...