Saturday, April 25, 2009

Kull: Exile of Atlantis

I love Robert E. Howard. I'm a big fan of Conan. I hadn't read any of the stories in a long time and decided to buff out my collection of books with Howard's name on them. So I did a little search on Amazon and found a LOT of stuff.

Well, I knew that Howard had written some westerns and other stories, but was really only interested in Conan (I thought). I got a good book that is a definitive collection of Conan stories in the order they were published. I'll be reviewing that one soon.

I also found this book of Kull and a couple of other books that I only vaguely was aware existed. Since they are all from the same publisher in the same series of Howard books with his stories in the original (unedited, uncommented) forms, I decided to get others as well.

Boy am I glad I did. Kull is every bit as cool as Conan. In fact, I'm glad Howard didn't do too much with Conan as king, because it would have just been a ripoff of Kull anyway. Kull was Howard's first popular character, by the way, and Conan was actually a construct of Kull--Howard needed a new character and he had some unpublished Kull stories that didn't quite fit the Kull personality, so they became Conan.

This book contains every story of Kull the Exile from Atlantis (aka "Kull the Conqueror" aka "Kull the King"). They're awesome! With his Pict friends, his ignorance of kingly fashion and ways, and his unabashed curiosity and lack of fear set him apart.

Very awesome and I highly recommend you read these. Even if you think you've already read everything Robert E. Howard. Expect to see more books from Howard's collected stories getting reviewed here, I have several now...

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