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The Savage Tales of Solomon Kaneby Robert E. Howard |
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With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century?he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan wasn?t the first archetypal
adventurer to spring from Howard?s fertile imagination.
?He was . . . a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan. . . . A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things. . . . Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect?he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane.?
Collected in this volume, lavishly illustrated by award-winning artist Gary Gianni, are all of the stories and poems that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan, Solomon Kane. Together they constitute a sprawling epic of weird fantasy adventure that stretches from sixteenth-century England to remote African jungles where no white man has set foot. Here are shudder-inducing tales of vengeful ghosts and bloodthirsty demons, of dark sorceries wielded by evil men and women, all opposed by a grim avenger armed with a fanatic?s faith and a warrior?s savage heart.
This edition also features exclusive story fragments, a biography of Howard by scholar Rusty Burke, and ?In Memoriam,? H. P. Lovecraft?s moving tribute to his friend and fellow literary genius.
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Complete and Unapologetic -  |
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane Review |
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In the harsh glare of 21st Century enlightenment, Robert E. Howard has done himself no favors. Racism, sexism, anarchism, and religious intolerance abound in his works. Still, I find that they inspire in spite of these elements, not because of them. Howard was a product of his time and place as much as the characters he created. In death, he need not apologize for his literary ignorance, and his fans should feel no need to justify their appreciation for his work.
This volume contains the entirety of his Solomon Kane canon, so there's a fair share of story fragments and synopses. Still, the stories he completed more than make up for it. Yes, they're hokey and formulaic, but the emotion found in those words place them somewhere between Lovecraft's florid prose and the wall-to-wall action of his Conan work. There's an inherent melancholy and tragedy that runs through the stories, painting Solomon Kane as a flawed hero in a world that is moving on without him. He will not survive the coming period of enlightenment any more than the lost savage cities of Africa that he helps destroy. This self-awareness is what takes Solomon Kane beyond fanfic or adolescent wish fulfillment, and, to court blasphemy, makes him a stronger character than Conan. If you enjoy Stephen King's Roland from The Dark Tower series of books and comics, this is surely an inspiration to ol' Steve. If you like Conan but wish he had more depth, this is for you. Just lament that once you reach the end, there is no more. Oh, and while I'm notoriously gentle with books, I had no issues whatsoever with the binding despite taking it back and forth to work to read on my lunch break. I've never been a fan of the cellophane treatment that starts to peel away from the edges of these sorts of covers, but that's a problem that plagues many softcover books on my shelf from a variety of publishers, and hardly worthy of docking a star for. It still reads just fine. |
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Tales so alive, you almost have to check yourself for wounds - |
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane Review |
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Dressed in black with the tall slouch-hat typical of Puritan fashion, and armed with sword, flint-locks, and, later, an ancient carved staff, Solomon Kane stalks the 16th century world from the remote reaches of Europe to the bloody decks of the high seas, and into the deepest, darkest African jungles. Whether it be a witch-cursed monstrosity, hell-spawned vampire, mutant throw-back, or just a wicked wretch of humankind, Solomon Kane will fight with equal determination and enthusiasm to see good triumph.
Robert E. Howard's tales are so alive, you almost have to check yourself for wounds. Between the lines broods an ancient feeling of melancholy that lends such realism to the writing. And the beautiful, sweeping illustrations in this book by the award-winning artist Gary Gianni bring that classical story-telling feel to the fore-front. As with all of Howard's heroes, Solomon Kane is larger-than-life, fearless, and inherited of an ancestral fighting prowess and unconquerable spirit. But Kane's adventures are the product of his fanatical obsession to root-out and destroy evil in any form. He seeks no personal reward -- only claims to do the will of God. However, despite his staunch Puritan faith, his inner demons are almost as dark as those he combats. He is a man of violence, filled with a wander-lust to seek out what he judges as evil with a determination and recklessness that is psychotic. What makes Solomon Kane so endearing to read is, on one hand, Solomon Kane is the archetypal swash-buckler -- much like a character from a Robert Louis Stevenson adventure story. On the other hand (probably the left because left-handedness was once thought to be of the Devil), Kane is as foreboding as what he faces -- most often horrors as nightmarish as anything Edgar Allen Poe ever created. Reading these stories in this format is like a journey back to my childhood -- when the jungles of an old Tarzan movie were more real than anything documented on the National Geographic channel, and when a horror-comic hidden in a text book at school would make me too scared to sleep that night. It reminded me of when I was too young to be allowed to read such violent and terrifying tales but did so anyway because I knew therein were hidden truths of adventures still left in this world that my parents didn't want me to know about. |
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Well done -  |
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane Review |
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In many ways, Solomon Kane is R E Howard's most intriguing character. As dark and conflicted as his creator and as brilliantly conceived as one could hope, Solomon Kane leaps off the page in the stories and poems presented in this collection. As with the previous editions, the editors make no changes to Howard's work aside from cleaning up typos and deleting all pastiche material. As for the quality of the stories themselves, while all are readable, some are simply outstanding. Red Shadows (originally titled by Howard Solomon Kane but later retitled by him upon submission to Weird Tales) and Wings in the Night are the standouts here. Each shows Howard's puritan fanatic at his most vengeful, and each displays mistakes made by the protagonist, giving him a more human, identifiable feel. As an added bonus, the duel at the end of Red Shadows is simply breathtaking. All of the other stories, while not as accomplished as these two, are well worth the read. As is well known by connoisseurs of his work, Howard was an accomplished poet as well as a brilliant prose writer, and this shows both in the lengthy poems centering on Solomon (of which, Solomon Kane's Homecoming is the moody best) and in the shorter poems he appended to some of the stories. Adding to this wealth of riches is H P Lovecraft's In Memoriam, written shortly after howard's untimely suicide, as well as brilliant artwork capturing strikingly Howard's vision of 16th Century Europe and Africa. Unfortunately for some unaccountable reason, the editors did not see fit to provide us with an essay placing Solomon Kane in context of Howard's broader work or detailing to us the various physical, emotional, and economic situations that caused Howard to write his characters in certain ways as they have done with all the other collections in this series. For that reason alone, I can't give the book five stars. Still, for all the above reasons, this is a phenomenal read anyone willing to give it a try should enjoy. |
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Blood and Thunder! - |
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane Review |
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It is often lamented (esp. by the senior citizens) that "good-old" things of the past are not to be found nowadays, since the taste has gone to "dogs"! I do not belong to that age-group, but after reading works of R.E.Howard I am finding everything else, esp. the so-called "saga"-s/"chronicles"/"epics" that have flooded the fantasy market with their herculean size and very high percentage of broodings & ponderings, absolutely stale. It is true that these works may not be politically correct as per the prevalent norms, but they are very high on entertainment quotient, for which purpose they had been written and they are read. The narratives are swiftly paced, the characters are drawn in bold strokes of white and (mostly) black with magnanimous splashes of red, and the descriptions are absolutely breathtaking. I don't know exactly how Howard had developed his vocabulary and syntactical style, but every time I read any of his works (esp. those concerning Solomon Kane) I am amazed anew as to why nobody else could ever attain the height that he scaled again-and-again. Dear readers, please give yourself a break from the masochistic pleasures of reading the works of the present-day pretenders, and read the originals. They will blow your mind!
The only reason for which I deducted a star was because I had expected Del Ray to append the portions written by Ray Bradbury et.al. to complete the fragments left behind by Howard, and that expectation was not fulfilled. If you are not having any such expectations, then buy this book and give yourself a 5-star treat! |
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the good pilgrim - |
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane Review |
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Howard's Kane stories are much like his Kull or Conan... in short perfect for any Howard fan |
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