Bran Mak Morn: The Last King [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

Robert E. Howard (Author), Gary Gianni (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001

Forgetting the arts of war after one thousand years of peace, the members of the Nameless Tribe are driven from their home by Celt invaders, and their only hope lies in the brave Pict champion and king Bran Mak Morn.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Wandering Star; Limited edition edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0953425355
• ISBN-13: 978-0953425358
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,811,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some of Howard's formative work, some excellent, September 18, 2000

By 

Christopher Griffen "Commitment to mediocrity!" (Pleasanton, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bran Mak Morn (Mass Market Paperback)

Robert E. Howard is largely credited with having invented the "sword & sorcery" brand of fantasy literature. And deservedly so. His fantasy stories resonate with a stygian darkness and masculine energy that few have been able to duplicate since.

Many of the Bran Mak Morn stories published in this edition are a bit in the formative stages of Howard's development as an author, or at least they seemed that way to me. Maybe he was just fighting a deadline on some of them. However, many of these stories are excellent, particularly "Worms of the Earth" and "The Dark Man."

Bran is a different hero from most of Howard's barbarians. He's the evolved member of a dying race, the Picts. While the Picts are doomed to become extinct as a race and there's a sense they know it, they refuse to go down without a fight, doing battle with the Roman legions to the bitter end. Bran embodies this fighting spirit in all the tales contained within.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The weakest of Howards well-known characters., June 7, 1999

By 

Dan Pritchett (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bran Mak Morn (Mass Market Paperback)

A long time fan of Conan and Kull, I enjoyed reading these seven anthologies. The way Howard mixes history with fiction in his depiction of the Picts is truly amazing, but the truth is he only wrote three Bran Mak Morn short stories. The rest of the book are stories about other characters, and one (by far the best story in the book) should really have been in the Kull anthology. It is a story Howard had a lot of fun with in which he brings many of his characters together. Nevertheless, I cannot bring myself to say it is a poor book, Howard would never let me forget it when we meet in Valhalla.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Howardian Gem, October 21, 2002

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bran Mak Morn (Mass Market Paperback)

You gotta love these Robert E. Howard books! The grandfather of testosterone drenched fantasy stories hits another homerun with this cycle of Bran Mak Morn tales offered in one volume. It is really too bad the other Baen volumes of Howard's works are out of print because this is excellent entertainment.

Like Howard's other superhuman heroes, Conan and Kull, Bran Mak Morn is tough as nails and doesn't take you-know-what from anybody. The stories are set in the distant past (although not as distant as Conan or some of Howard's other tales), in the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. Bran is the last pure blood king of the Picts, an ancient people overwhelmed by numerous invasions during the ages. Howard takes liberal license with the real history, creating a mystical people with links to Atlantis and Lemuria. Bran is fighting for the survival of his people in a world populated by Lovecraftian monsters, sorcerers, Roman soldiers, enemy tribes, Vikings, and other assorted evils.

In "The Lost Race," a wandering Briton stumbles on a bandit leader and his evil minions. After fleeing from the thieves, he stumbles into a cave containing the remnants of the Pictish tribes, presided over by Bran Mak Morn. It is here we are introduced to Morn and discover how his tribe fell into misfortune.

"Men of the Shadows" is narrated by a Roman soldier lost in enemy territory after his fellow soldiers died in combat. His eventual meeting with Bran Mak Morn is no surprise, but serves to fill in details about the travels of the Picts through the ancient world. Some freaky sorcery and the usual Howardian sense of doom run throughout this tale.

"Kings of the Night" is a combat tale that reminds me of Howard's story on the Battle of Clontarf in "Eons of the Night." The Picts are assembling for a battle to prevent an invasion by the Roman army. Bran Mak Morn has some trouble persuading some Vikings to fight for him until a king comes to lead the Vikings into battle. Where this king comes from and how he gets there is enormous fun, as is the gory battle with the Roman invaders.

"Worms of the Earth" absolutely reeks of Lovecraft. In this story, Bran Mak Morn swears revenge on a sadistic Roman governor. In order to carry out his oath, Morn seeks the help of the worms of the earth, a race of humans pushed underground eons ago by the Picts. Something happened to these humans during their years underground, a sickening transformation that makes them a fearsome presence.

"The Dark Man" is the story of Turlogh Dubh, a survivor of Clontarf whose exile from his clan leads him on endless journeys through forbidding lands. When a gang of Vikings kidnaps a beautiful Irish princess, Dubh hunts them down with the help of a strange icon found in the hands of a dead Pict. After a bloody battle with the Vikings, Dubh meets the Picts and learns about the fate of Bran Mak Morn.

The final story, "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth," is a further adventure of Turlogh Dubh. Dubh is captured by Viking pirates, one of who is Athelstane, a survivor of the battle in "The Dark Man." After the Viking ship crashes, Athelstane and Dubh join forces to topple the king of Bal-Sagoth. This king is a puppet of a sorcerer who spends his free time creating weird hybrids in an underground cave. Predictably, everything quickly degenerates into an epic battle where bodies topple by the boatload.

Robert Howard is a hard act to follow. It really is a pity he committed suicide at a young age, thereby robbing the genre of countless tales that would have elevated his reputation even higher than it is today. Somebody really out to reprint the other volumes in this series. Selling them would be a piece of cake.