Warning: Delving into this one too deeply may lead to REH overload. Here we find that when Howard crosses into Howard all of the peculiarities of his writing style are greatly intensified-both all that is good and all that is bad-making the contents of this book almost too intense to read, except in short snippets. I could not stand more than two or three stories in a single sitting.

One thing this collestion makes clear is that Howard's particular style of purple prose is best suited for the genre he created, that peculiar mix of fantasy, adventure and horror that came to be called swords & sorcery. In other settings it a bit much. He's at his best writing of an adventure in some fantasy realm half Arabian Nights, half Lovecraft. At that the man was simply brilliant. Anywhere else his prose is trying to fit ten pounds of content into an eight pound story. It does not fit. (And sometimes is a four letter word that rhymes with fit.) The farther he got from the real world the better he got. Sadly, good horror is too often best when presented in a setting very close to the real world.

I offer the caution that some of these stories reflect social attitudes not acceptable today. The man was a product of his times, and in reading his failings seem to be born more of ignorance than spite. In some was it makes REH all the more fascinating, that such an imagination could have sprung up in an otherwise un-notable small town in Depression era Texas.