Of all the seminal Fantasy works, there are certain authors that are named as setting the standard. Before Tolkien, there was Robert E. Howard, whose epic tales have entertained readers for over eighty years.

Here, to tie in to the latest impending film (starring Jason Momoa) we have what I will describe as a Conan primer. It’s not ‘the Complete Conan’ of twenty-one stories (you’d need the lovely Gollancz leather bound Black Library edition for that), but instead a select grouping of eight novell More...

"Conan" is an anthology of the original stories by Robert E. Howard, although it is by no means an exhaustive compilation. Tragically, Howard committed suicide in his early 30's before he could add to his body of work. For fans of "Conan the Barbarian", this anthology establishes the foundation of the "sword and sorcery" genre we have come to associate with Conan, as well as the terms and verbage. Mighty "thews", "rude" huts, don't you just love it! Howard also gives a brief history of how the H More...

A collection of classic Conan tales, repackaged with a new jacket to tie-in to the new movie coming out. This edition includes:

The Tower of the Elephant (pg 1)
Rogues in the House (pg 27)
The Frost-Giant's Daughter (pg 54)
Queen of the Black Coast (pg 63)
A Witch Shall Be Born (pg 95)
The People of the Black Circle (pg 141)
Red Nails (pg 226)
Beyond the Black River (pg 212)
The Hyborian Age (pg 372)
Cimmeria (verse) (pg 397)

and, to be honest, I'd be more inclined to give the book 1.5 stars (except GR doe More...

I was prepared to not like this book when I picked it up. I expected the sexism of the 1930s and have probably seen way too much cover art featuring scantily clad women with unrealistic figures! I'm glad that I overcame my prejudices and plunged in. The cover art on this edition didn't do Conan any favours--it is not at all the way that I imagined him. I was pleasantly surprised by how active the women in the stories were--there was a little bit of swooning, but usually they were participating m More...

Crossposted from my blog...

Let me start of these musings by saying that I am one hundred percent not the target audience for Conan the Barbarian by which I mean to say, I am not a fifteen-year-old boy circa 1935. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let me begin with a story.

I was twenty-five years old and sitting in my mother’s sunroom while she puttered around watering her plants. Out of nowhere, she asked me, “Do you do drugs?”

Up until this point, I had been playing a matching game on h More...

The plots aren't suspenseful, but the world Robert E. Howard creates in these stories is well fleshed out through the use of great language mastery. The characters have degrees of development, and can vary from categorically evil to being motivated by circumstances. Written before the works of Tolkien and other masters of the fantasy genre, these are great stories for those who want to enjoy a primeval fantasy world in which life, although definitely not easier, is simpler.

As far as I am aware, More...

Picked this up because it was a cheap collection of many of Howard's Conan stories. I've since gotten the much more thorough and accurate Del Ray collection (though only the first volume), which I suggest highly. This edition doesn't include any of the stories De Camp altered and finished, publishing them under Howard's name posthumously, so one need not worry about bowdlerization or other tampering.

Curiously, this edition was published in Thailand, which is likely cheaper, but I wonder if they More...

It's nice to see a complete compilation like this. It would have gotten 5 stars if the publisher had spent a little more time looking for typos and had hired a cover artist who had a passing familiarity with human anatomy. Seriously, Conan looks like his shoulders are hunched way too far forward and I don't know what the heck is going on with his feet.

When I started reading this book I hoped that it would have an aspect to it that was like the Tarzan books, well written and interesting despite what you might think upon first glance. Unfortunately it was exactly what it seemed like on first glance. It was pure pulp fiction, and once I allowed myself to enjoy its pulpishness, I liked it a little better.

As with other works of this era I was not surprised to find quite a bit of racism in the book. I also expected the misogyny. What surprised me More...

I have read these stories over and over. Great way to spend a morning. Turned on to Conan when I was 12yrs old and have every story written by Robert E. Howard and every book written by others in tribute to his characters. Always fun to re-read.

This shit is great, if you're willing to look past his over-use of the word "ejaculated". It was kind of awesome to, on occasion, think "wow, this was written in the 30s" and I imagine it was pretty nasty for those days - lots of tits and stabbing and the like. Pretty fun.

Interesting to read (some) of the story that spawned the movies and cartoons that fueled a part of my adolescence. I would have never bet after seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Momoah's performances that Robert Howard could be so litterate. I'm also surprised that even though Conan is obbiously every inch the muscled hero the movies made him out to be, he was rarely the main character and most stories are told from the point of view of someone who saved/kidnapped or otherwise influenced by More...

The classic Conan tales. A unavoidable read for the sword & sorcery background.

Prior to reading this collection I was only familiar with the Conan of the movies and the Conan the Adventurer cartoon from the early 90’s. Robert E Howard’s Conan is a very different character, and a much more interesting and complex one at that. I’m glad I took the time to delve into the original Conan, in spite of the terrible cover art.

The tales are pulpy, and generally short, and are remarkably similar to Vance’s Dying Earth in tone if not style. While Vance tends toward more grandiose lang More...

Meh.

classic pulp fantasy!

"You know that you wrapped a towel around your waist and took a stick out to the yard to conquer the dogs the first time you ever saw Conan the Barbarian! Everybody did!" -Scotty D.

If everybody that saw the movie had also read the book then them poor dogs wouldn't have stood a chance!

You have to accept certain things to get through this - mostly about WHEN it was written. Otherwise the sexism and racism will really grate.

Regardless, if you accept this for what it is, it is a good read.

Thanks to Robert E. Howard's intricately complex world of Hyboria, we have the best Sword and Sorcery fantasy yet written. More adult than J.K. Rowling, more gritty than J.R.R. Tolkien, and more mature than Terry Goodkind.