The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
by Robert E. Howard
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Book Summary Information
Author: Robert E. HowardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-28
ISBN: 0345490207
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Del Rey
Book Reviews of The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Book Review: A last! A big book of REH horror!
Summary: 5 Stars
Here, at last, is a hefty trade edition containing the bulk of Robert E. Howard's horror stories. Best known as an author of heroic fantasy, Howard was also a most able practitioner in the horror genre. The stories assembled here have heretofore been scattered about in a number of mass market paperbacks over the last forty years--two or three stories here, a half dozen or so there. It is indeed a blessing to get them all between two covers in a quality edition. Here is a volume that belongs in the core collection of every serious horror enthusiast.
Howard's horror stories fall roughly into several categories based on theme and setting. There are those with a regional southwestern setting ("The Horror from the Mound," "Old Garfield's Heart") as well as others set in the haunted piney woods region of the deep South ("Pigeons from Hell," "Black Canaan"). Memorable stories with a Celtic backdrop include "The Cairn on the Headland" and "Dermod's Bane." We also find tales of the horrid "little people" that abound in Celtic lore. Stories utilizing Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos include the memorable "The Black Stone" and adventures of occult researchers Conrad and Kirowan. Sometimes these categories overlap: "The Valley of the Lost" is a little people story with a US southwestern setting, for example.
Howard enthusiasts will debate, as we are wont to do, some of the inclusions and omissions to this volume. "Worms of the Earth" has already appeared in TWO other Del Rey Howard volumes. But then it is arguably Howard's finest story, and I dare say as good as any story written. It deserves to be as well known as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Dunwich Horror." I wish I could get as excited over "Rattle of Bones," however.
STORIES I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE SEEN INCLUDED: "The Hyena" was the first horror story Howard sold to Weird Tales (the first horror story he sold anywhere, for that matter). It forshadows the controversial "Black Canaan" in the sense that supernatural horrors reflect racial and sexual tensions. "The Moon of Zembabwei" and "Black Hound of Death" are two good "piney woods" stories that were left out, but the "piney woods" story is still well represented here. "Black Wind Blowing" was one of Howard's contributions to the "weird menace" or "shudder" pulps; the plot is outlandish, but the atmosphere of horror and impending doom is impressive. "The People of the Black Coast" is Howard's most Lovecraftian tale in some respects. Note that I said "Lovecraftian", NOT "Cthuloid." There's no Von Juntz, no Nameless Cults, none of the Mythos trappings, just a stark depiction of hapless humans as the prey of utterly alien but superior beings. "The People of the Black Coast is as much science fiction as horror, but then so is Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."
I thought the books illustrations were very nice, and as always Rusty Burke provides an informative introduction. In a world where contemporary horror is presently dominated by chicks' overheated erotic fantasies about their imaginary vampire boyfriends, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard is like a Godsend.
Summary of The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Here are Howard?s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions. Some of Howard?s best-known characters?Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them?roam the forbidding locales of the author?s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.The collection includes Howard?s masterpiece ?Pigeons from Hell,? which Stephen King calls ?one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,? a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation?and into the maw of its fatal secret. In ?Black Canaan? even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers?and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare ?Worms of the Earth? and ?The Cairn on the Headland,? Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world?s great masters of the macabre.
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