Customer Reviews

Robert E. Howard's Weird Works Volume 1: Shadow Kingdoms (Weird Works of Robert E. Howard)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This lil' item is just one more attempt by the folks at Wildside Press to go to the trough one more time with the same material. First they came out with a hardbound edition of this title- fine, it was a fair addition to the number of Robert E. Howard releases that seem to be coming out of the woodwork these days. However (big however) this book, like several in this series, had a number of errors in the texts. Then came the trade paperback: same errors and even some layout problems. Several books into the series the publishers then decided to change cover artists (god only knows why) and therefore reissued it with new cover art as well as re-typeset to increase the page count (which was quite low in the original. I would also hope this was done to correct at least some of the errors). Now in this latest testament to Murphy's law they've released it as a regular sized paperback with (drumroll) three of the stories missing! Including one mentioned on the back cover!
Now I must state clearly that I am a definite Howard fan, I have a huge collection of editions of his works as well as a not-small collection of his stuff from the pulps (including Weird Tales). It's important that his work remain in print. It is equally important that the people reprinting it actually get it right!

Approach anything from this publisher with care.

SHADOW KINGDOMS is the first volume of the Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, presenting all of Howard's work for the pulp magazine Weird Tales meticulously restored to its original magazine texts. Edited by Paul Herman. Introduction by Mark Finn. Cover by Stephen Fabian.

This volume contains:

Two-Gun Musketeer: Robert E. Howard's Weird Tales, by Mark Finn
Spear and Fang
In the Forest of Villefère
Wolfshead
The Lost Race
The Song of the Bats
The Ride of Falume
The Riders of Babylon
The Dream Snake
The Hyena
Remembrance
Sea Curse
The Gates of Nineveh
Red Shadows
The Harp of Alfred
Easter Island
Skulls in the Stars
Crete
Moon Mockery
Rattle of Bones
Forbidden Magic
The Shadow Kingdom
The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune
The Moor Ghost
Red Thunder

I was sorely disappointed with this softcover book edition. It states on the back cover, for instance, that this is "the first volume of The Wierd Works of Robert E. Howard" and that it has "meticulously restored to its original texts" the stories within. Further that "This volume begins with Spear and Fang, Howards first professional fiction sale, and condludes with Red Thunder, a gripping sword and sorcery tale." Spear and Fang appear NOWHERE in this book and while Red Thunder is in the book, it does not "conclude" with it.

In my opinion, leaving OUT Howard's first professional fiction sale and NOT concluding with Red Thunder (BOTH AS ADVERTISED ON THE BACK COVER) doesn't speak well of the "meticulous" alledged restoration alluded to.

While containing almost two dozen Howard pieces, I somehow doubt the dedication, attention to detail and/or the "expertise" of the publisher as to authenticity or accuracy that should be a hallmark of a series of this sort. Don't waste your money.

Highest praise to Wildsidepress for giving us this beautiful edition of early Robert E. Howard stories and poems. The publishers even included the first stories of Solomon Kane and King Kull, which adds further value to "Shadow Kingdoms". As the stories/poems are collected in chronological order, you can get a good impression of the progress of Howard's writing skills. A short introduction gives further interesting information. Recommended reading for everybody interested in Howard's lesser known works (yes - he wrote much more than "Conan"). Hopefully Amazon will also sell the rest of this 10 Volume set. In my case I cannot wait for "Volume 3 - People of the Dark" to be published.

This collection, containing Howard's earlier weird stories, starts off with a bang: "Spear and Fang", the first tale, is very good, and there are no duds thereafter; every story or poem in the book is worth reading. The original Solomon Kane and King Kull tales are here, and they are most interesting. The dustjacket art by Stephen Fabian is gorgeous and creepy; I hope to see his artwork on the covers of every volume in this set.

The weird works series collects Howard's stories in a nice set of hardback books, putting them in order of publication. I'm assuming readers looking at this are familiar with Robert Howard's works, and are just seeing this series as a nice way to have all of them in one set rather then spread across many other collections of magazines and decayed paperbacks. With that in mind, the books are well done. The paper is nice, the binding seems fine. There are infrequent typos in the text, perhaps 2-3 per book.

If you are not familiar with these stories - they are excellent action stories of fantasy around older civilizations or the remnants of those civilizations as they hide in the world today.

Some people may question the price of the books given that they are not very long, but I think it is well worth it. Trying to punish the publisher by not buying them on principle (as one reviewer suggests) is ridiculous. That mindset leads to not having these old stories republished at all, we are going to pay a premium for this sort of book because the market is small.

I purchased this book assuming I was getting 'Wildside Press' book, but what I actually got was the 'Cosmos book'. Same cover art and title, but different selection of stories from what people have mentioned in the reviews. The Book I got contained

"The Lost Race"
"The Song of the Bats" (poem)
"The Ride of Falume" (poem)
"The Riders of Babylon" (poem)
"The Dream Snake"
"The Hyena"
"The Gates of Nineveh" (poem)
"Red Shadows"
"The Harp of Alfred" (poem)
"Easter Island" (poem)
"Skulls in the Stars"
"Crete" (poem)
"Moon Mockery" (poem)
"Rattle of Bones"
"Forbidden Magic" (poem)
"The Shadow Kingdom"
"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune"
"The Moor Ghost" (poem)
"Red Thunder" (poem)
"Skull-Face"
"Dead Man's Hate" (poem)
"The Fearsome Touch of Death"
"The Voice of El-Lil"

It's a good selection, but was missing some of the stories I expected to get, but that's my problems not Amazons. I enjoyed the book and think it was good value for the money.

Shadow Kingdoms is volume one of Wildside Press's series of ten books collecting "The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard," namely Howard's stories as published in the magazine Weird Tales, in chronological order. Audio publisher Audio Realms has taken a selection of the stories in that volume and produced an unabridged recording of its own, also called Shadow Kingdoms.

Though they're not the first ones presented, I began with the three stories of my favorite character, Solomon Kane, featured in this collection. "Red Shadows" introduces Howard's 17th-century Puritan hero. Avenging the death of a young woman, Kane travels for years to find Le Loup ("the wolf"), meeting "good juju man" N'Longa -- who later plays a larger role in Kane's life -- for the first time. Howard doesn't shy away from the action here, putting Kane in peril no less than three times.

I've experienced "Red Shadows" multiple times, in print and audio, and it never loses its power to entertain. Both Kane and Le Loup are indelible characters, and the action sets up Kane admirably well for his later stories.

In "Rattle of Bones," Kane and Gaston L'Armon enter a tavern for the night and discover there's a good reason it's called "The Cleft Skull." This story and "Skulls in the Stars" have suspense, death, and insanity portrayed with skill, and they really show Howard at his best. In some ways, Solomon Kane reminds me of the Western hero: stoic and strong and operating under a strict moral code of his own devising. The Kane stories offer the same kind of entertainment provided by modern Western series like The Trailsman and The Gunsmith: a sole hero who comes in, solves a problem, and travels off again, ready for another adventure.

"The Lost Race" is one of the earliest of Howard's Weird Tales publications, from 1927. Howard's appreciation of the history of the Pict race was already long-standing. In this tale, a fellow named Cororuc happens upon some dwarfish folk ("small dark people") and gets mixed up in an age-old revenge. Written when its author was only 18, it has a tangential relationship to his stories of Bran Mak Morn (though the Pict king himself is not mentioned).

"The Dream Snake" stands out as a particularly well-done pure horror story in the classic told-by-the-campfire vein. That is, its ending is entirely predictable and, in fact, inevitable from the beginning. But Howard's portrait of a man in the grip of an intense lifelong fear (from a horrific recurring dream) is utterly believable. A well-performed reading of "The Dream Snake" could be the highlight of any Halloween night storytelling session.

"The Hyena" is a high-energy adventure tale set in Africa and involving the antagonism between a fetish man and an American rancher. The American is kind of dumb -- I guess he's never read this kind of "twist" ending before -- but this doesn't ruin the tense showdown.

"The Shadow Kingdom" is the first featuring Kull from Atlantis, usurping king of Valusia. Kull meets his own attempted usurpers in the Serpent Men, a fascinating race of snake-headed individuals who deal in mesmerism and shape-shifting. Kull has to struggle with his own doubts to maintain the throne. Many consider this story to be the beginning of the sword-and-sorcery genre ("Red Shadows" also has its supporters for that title), with the main difference being the latter's use of a realistic setting (Kull lives around 100,000 years B.C.). Though similar in many ways to the later character of Conan the Cimmerian (the first Conan story was a rewritten Kull story), I find Kull superior due to his tendency toward deeper thinking.

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" finds Kull in a melancholy mood. His friend Brule the spear-slayer suggests a night on the town, but that does not appeal. Later, a blonde with "violet eyes" recommends a visit to Tuzun Thune, a wizard who shows Kull his hall of mirrors. Kull sits before one often, expostulating on which Kull is the real one. Sounds like Kull didn't take his meds. After such a heroic turn in "The Shadow Kingdom," this story may disappoint some. But perhaps it was merely the author's way of putting a little of himself in his work, given Howard's own notorious bouts with depression. It certainly seems like being king isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"The Voice of El Lil" was actually published in Weird Tales's sister publication Oriental Stories, and it's actually from volume two of the Weird Works series, The Moon of Skulls and doesn't appear in the print version of Shadow Kingdoms at all. Why this was done is rather confusing, but the story itself is one of Howard's rousing "lost race" stories. It starts out slow but shows many facets by the end.

All in all, Shadow Kingdoms is highly entertaining listening. Audio Realms seems to have picked the most exciting stories of the bunch and given them to the narrators best suited for them. (Usually, single-author collections have a single reader.) I look forward to their future recordings in this series.

The few people that knock this book of REH are subjective. Robert E. Howard (1906-1936)was and still is the greatest adventure story teller wordsmith of all time!

Any time you can get one of his books please do. It's non stop action, terror, adventure, and more!

Two of my favorite stories are The Dream Snake, Weird Tales, Feb 1928 and The Hyena, Weird Tales, Mar 1928. Red Shadows is superb, too; This is about Solomon Kane who hunts a wolf named Le Loup. There's some excellent poetry.

Must read books of REH are: The Last of the Trunk, The Never Ending Story, and all Weird Works by Paul Herman, Blood & Thunder, The Life & Art of REH, by Mark Finn, Selected Letters of REH Vol 1-3 and Poetry by Rob Roehm, One Who Walked Alone by Novelyne Ellis, The Black Stranger, Lord Samarcand, Two Gun Bob, The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph by Don Herron. Two of my all time favorites of REH are Beyond The Black River about Picts and Red Nails. Check out the REH Foundation and Forum!

An eclectic collection, with a supernatural theme, and encludes a good chunk of Solomon Kane and some fine Kull, as well as some poetry, which I haven't mentioned, that is a general thing for the 'Weird Works', having poetry, etc.

Weird Works 1 : Spear and Fang - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : In the Forest of Villefere - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : Wolfshead - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : The Lost Race - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : The Dream Snake - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : The Hyena - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : Sea Curse - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : Red Shadows - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : Skulls in the Stars - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : Rattle of Bones - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : The Shadow Kingdom - Robert E. Howard
Weird Works 1 : The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune - Robert E. Howard

Young pretty Cro-Magnon are still young and pretty to Neandertals who fancy some sex and violence.

2.5 out of 5


Choose carefully when you kill a werewolf.

2.5 out of 5


Hanging around Spanish noble types is bad for your health. This time, it took a while to work out whether this gentleman Was Don Leopard, or Don Lupin. The latter was the case, and causes quite a few problems.

3.5 out of 5


There are still some strange old Picts around, it appears.

2.5 out of 5


Scary snooze leaves sleeper smooshed.

2 out of 5


Shapeshifter of the not so high class variety.

3 out of 5


A group of local seamen and basically criminals, and when they cause the death of a girl, a woman curses them, quite impressively :-



"I curse you by sea and by land, by earth and by air, by the demons of the swamplands, the fiends of the forest and the goblins of the hills! And you"--her lean finger stabbed at Lie-lip Canool and he started backward, his face paling--"you shall be the death of John Kulrek and he shall be the death of you! You shall bring John Kulrek to the doors of hell and John Kulrek shall bring you to the gallows-tree! I set the seal of death upon your brow, John Kulrek! You shall live in terror and die in horror far out upon the cold grey sea! But the sea that took the soul of innocence to her bosom shall not take you, but shall fling forth your vile carcass to the sands!"

This is what she causes them to run into :-

"From the hell of lost craft Satan sent a ship of bygone ages!"

Needless to say, not good for them.

3 out of 5


Kane comes across Le Loup twice in his life, once after he comes across
a dying girl, one of his kills, and once at the temple of the Black
God. He leaves him mortality challenged, and watches as his underling,
Gulka the gorilla slayer finds a ape who is more than a match for him.

3.5 out of 5


Kane is tracking, and being hunted by a swamp fiend, and realises when fighting it:

"For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand."

He finds the man that created the fiend, and adds the man to its list of victims, to appease it.

3.5 out of 5


In which Kane enters the Cleft Skull tavern, and finds that is most definitely lives up to its name.

3 out of 5


There is evil treachery afoot in the time of Atlantis, the serpent priests are stirring, and a cunning old king brings them to the attention of a somewhat restless Kull. More pity them. With a stalwart Pictish spear-slayer at his side, he wreaks bloody havoc among them, and vows to take the war to them. No-one else would ever have copied this plot later on, would they?

4 out of 5


Introspection and philosophy are not cures for what ails a bored warrior-King. Neither are wizardly mirrors or Lovecraftian elder races.

Thankfully, the stout, pragmatic Spear-Slayer is there to remind him.

4 out of 5