Jesse’s Reviews > Kull: Exile of Atlantis > Status Update
Jesse
is on page 183 of 317
“By This Axe I Rule!”
Notable as the story that was retooled for the first Conan tale. Kull is tired of bureaucratic red tape of civilization, as these laws—particularly dogmatic marriage laws—continue to dog his rule. Meanwhile, there is a plot to assassinate him, by dissatisfied nobles and one idealistic poet. These two stories actually tie together pretty well for the finish.
— Aug 14, 2025 07:47AM
Notable as the story that was retooled for the first Conan tale. Kull is tired of bureaucratic red tape of civilization, as these laws—particularly dogmatic marriage laws—continue to dog his rule. Meanwhile, there is a plot to assassinate him, by dissatisfied nobles and one idealistic poet. These two stories actually tie together pretty well for the finish.
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Jesse
is on page 287 of 317
“The King and the Oak (Draft)”
This poem draft has a unique opening stanza which instantly makes it more worthwhile an inclusion than either of the previous two drafts. Thanks, Del Ray!
— Aug 14, 2025 03:04PM
This poem draft has a unique opening stanza which instantly makes it more worthwhile an inclusion than either of the previous two drafts. Thanks, Del Ray!
Jesse
is on page 283 of 317
“Delcardes’ Cat”
Blah. Largely identical draft of “The Cat and the Skull”. Something to pad out the page count, I guess. Some of the names were still being changed around, as Howard was want to do.
— Aug 14, 2025 02:52PM
Blah. Largely identical draft of “The Cat and the Skull”. Something to pad out the page count, I guess. Some of the names were still being changed around, as Howard was want to do.
Jesse
is on page 263 of 317
“The Shadow Kingdom (Draft)”
Some of the drafts that I’ve seen in these collections offered some in-uteri difference that illuminated the creative process as far as the development of some of the ideas. This one, not so much. It’s been polished a bit, I think, but the vast majority of the prose is pretty much the same.
— Aug 14, 2025 02:33PM
Some of the drafts that I’ve seen in these collections offered some in-uteri difference that illuminated the creative process as far as the development of some of the ideas. This one, not so much. It’s been polished a bit, I think, but the vast majority of the prose is pretty much the same.
Jesse
is on page 259 of 317
“The “Am-Ra of the Ta-An” Fragments”
These are included to give a better context to the first story of this collection. Kull was a side-character who quickly outclassed the MC of the story, Am-Ra. Am-Ra was originally conceived as something like a cave-man living in the stone ages. There is still an element of the fantastic in the fragment that describes the setting, but no hint of Atlantis or Lemuria.
— Aug 14, 2025 02:09PM
These are included to give a better context to the first story of this collection. Kull was a side-character who quickly outclassed the MC of the story, Am-Ra. Am-Ra was originally conceived as something like a cave-man living in the stone ages. There is still an element of the fantastic in the fragment that describes the setting, but no hint of Atlantis or Lemuria.
Jesse
is on page 249 of 317
“Kings of the Night”
Historical fantasy where the peoples of non-Roman England are resisting a Roman incursion. They have a group of Norsemen, too, but their new leader won’t fight without a King who doesn’t belong to the Gaels, the Celts, or the Picts. Well, Wulfhere gets the king that he asked for, with King Kull jumping 100,000 years into the future in order to bail out his best bud’s direct descendant.
— Aug 14, 2025 01:48PM
Historical fantasy where the peoples of non-Roman England are resisting a Roman incursion. They have a group of Norsemen, too, but their new leader won’t fight without a King who doesn’t belong to the Gaels, the Celts, or the Picts. Well, Wulfhere gets the king that he asked for, with King Kull jumping 100,000 years into the future in order to bail out his best bud’s direct descendant.
Jesse
is on page 217 of 317
“The King and the Oak”
A short poem about Kull having a nightmare that is something along the lines of Ozymandias, except more about how nature (and specifically plant life) will conquer the Earth again. It feels like an epitaph for the Kull character, much as Howard wrote one for Solomon Kane depicting his return to his ancestral home, though there’s one more story left.
— Aug 14, 2025 09:03AM
A short poem about Kull having a nightmare that is something along the lines of Ozymandias, except more about how nature (and specifically plant life) will conquer the Earth again. It feels like an epitaph for the Kull character, much as Howard wrote one for Solomon Kane depicting his return to his ancestral home, though there’s one more story left.
Jesse
is on page 213 of 317
“Swords of the Purple Kingdom”
Another political assassination plot. Howard crams together some of his previously unpublished Kull elements together to create an emotional story to pair with Kull’s personal peril. It is absolutely no surprise to anyone who reads this who the traitor is, if only due to the economy of characters. Delcartes gets a chance to shine, here, helping to save Kull.
— Aug 14, 2025 08:51AM
Another political assassination plot. Howard crams together some of his previously unpublished Kull elements together to create an emotional story to pair with Kull’s personal peril. It is absolutely no surprise to anyone who reads this who the traitor is, if only due to the economy of characters. Delcartes gets a chance to shine, here, helping to save Kull.
Jesse
is on page 157 of 317
“Untitled Fragment”
This almost cold starts out like Kull and Brule are playing Dungeons and Dragons before Brule starts to talk about That One Time I Killed a Wizard, outlining some aspects of Pict life that better define them as somewhat akin to Native Americans. Plus, some insufferable “the aristocracy of the Man” born ruler stuff. There’s no indication of where this was going.
— Aug 13, 2025 02:11PM
This almost cold starts out like Kull and Brule are playing Dungeons and Dragons before Brule starts to talk about That One Time I Killed a Wizard, outlining some aspects of Pict life that better define them as somewhat akin to Native Americans. Plus, some insufferable “the aristocracy of the Man” born ruler stuff. There’s no indication of where this was going.
Jesse
is on page 153 of 317
“The Black City (Unfinished Fragment)”
Barely a start. Kull has relocated court to some mountainous pleasure-palace, but there’s something rotten in the land below them. Notable for the insinuation that the dead Pict who kicks this off was gay (“Grogar never looked at any woman—even of his own race”). Then again, it could just be that this era of Howardarians is almost notoriously celibate.
— Aug 13, 2025 01:49PM
Barely a start. Kull has relocated court to some mountainous pleasure-palace, but there’s something rotten in the land below them. Notable for the insinuation that the dead Pict who kicks this off was gay (“Grogar never looked at any woman—even of his own race”). Then again, it could just be that this era of Howardarians is almost notoriously celibate.
Jesse
is on page 147 of 317
“The Curse of the Golden Skull”
Another sketch where Kull is only named. Some Lemurian necromancer is dying from a sword wound that Kull gave him. He spends like an entire page and a half laying out curses, invoking—among other things—Shuma-Gorath, trying to find some way that he can get vengeance on humanity. Some 40,000 years later, in the modern age, he gets his dying wish.
— Aug 13, 2025 01:37PM
Another sketch where Kull is only named. Some Lemurian necromancer is dying from a sword wound that Kull gave him. He spends like an entire page and a half laying out curses, invoking—among other things—Shuma-Gorath, trying to find some way that he can get vengeance on humanity. Some 40,000 years later, in the modern age, he gets his dying wish.
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Aug 14, 2025 07:50AM
The romance angle: a nobleman wants to marry a slave girl who he is in love with, but the law forbids it. Kull goes walking in the woods to ease his mind and runs into the girl in question, listening to her troubles before revealing that he is the King, though she almost dies from terminal embarrassment. She conveniently overhears the assassination plot and tells her boyfriend, who comes to Kull’s aid in the nick of time. Kull decides, heck, he got the throne by smashing faces! If laws are in the way of what he wants to do, then he’ll smash them, too, which he literally does as the marriage law is engraved on a stone tablet.
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The Genesis of Hyboria essay talks about the psychodrama inherent in this story, as the Kull character is basically being retired here with this assassination attempt, the concept having even more fuel when the story was changed for the Conan character.
There is also a sense of Howard’s philosophical conflict between civilization—which he regarded as inherently trending toward decadence—and barbarism, which he regarded as inevitably slashing and burning decadent civilizations.
