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Ghor, Kin Slayer: The Saga of Genseric's Fifth Born Son
The opening chapter is by Robert E. Howard, with followups by such writers as Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph Payne Brenna, Richard L. Tierney, Michael Moorcock, Charles Saunders, Andrew Offutt, Manly Wade Wellman, Darrell Schweitzer, A. E. Van Vogt, Brian Lumley, Frank Belknap Long, Adrian Cole, Ramsey Campbell, H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard A. Lupoff.
176 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1997
40 people want to read
About the author
Robert E. Howard
2,982 books2,645 followersRobert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."
He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.
—Wikipedia
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.
—Wikipedia
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 23, 2013
Ghor Kinslayer – A Weird Sampling of Legendary Authors
The author line-up for this series is beyond incredible (see below recopied book description), and the idea for developing one of R.E.Howard's unfinished tales ... just awesome! But the delivery was just so-so. Actually, the first few tales had me hooked. Then I came upon Michael Moorcock's contribution and couldn't get over his over-the-top, misogynistic introduction of the female Shanara. I was really disappointed in this, since it poisoned the tone of the subsequent chapters…and I had expected more professionalism and better style from the creator of Elric (in which he better balanced violence/weirdness/machismo). But the collection serves as a great sampling of legendary authors. Get it for historical interest if nothing else.
AvailabilityAmazon has used hardcopies. It is still available “new” from the publisher, Necropress.com directly for ~$8USD. Here is the description:
The author line-up for this series is beyond incredible (see below recopied book description), and the idea for developing one of R.E.Howard's unfinished tales ... just awesome! But the delivery was just so-so. Actually, the first few tales had me hooked. Then I came upon Michael Moorcock's contribution and couldn't get over his over-the-top, misogynistic introduction of the female Shanara. I was really disappointed in this, since it poisoned the tone of the subsequent chapters…and I had expected more professionalism and better style from the creator of Elric (in which he better balanced violence/weirdness/machismo). But the collection serves as a great sampling of legendary authors. Get it for historical interest if nothing else.
AvailabilityAmazon has used hardcopies. It is still available “new” from the publisher, Necropress.com directly for ~$8USD. Here is the description:
Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph Payne Brennan, Richard L. Tierney, Michael Moorcock, Charles R. Saunders, andrew j. offutt, Manly Wade Wellman, Darrell Schweitzer, A. E. Van Vogt, Brian Lumley, Frank Belknap Long, Adrian Cole, Ramsey Campbell, H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Richard A. Lupoff: Ghor, Kin-Slayer: The Saga of Genseric's Fifth-Born Son, A Necronomicon Press Trade Paperback, 176 pp., $8.95
Seventeen leading fantasy authors ...
One epic novel of heroic fantasy ...
Only Robert E. Howard could have begun it ... left by his parents to die, and subsequently raised by wolves, Ghor becomes the mightiest warrior of his time, driven by a boundless desire to revenge his abandonment.
Decades later, this unfinished tale by the creator of Conan sees completion by sixteen of the top fantasy authors of our time, each bringing with them their own unique style and vision to the adventures of Ghor, Kin-Slayer. The reader will not only be guided through a rousing adventure of heroic fantasy, but discover intriguing elements of weird fiction, with even a touch of H. P. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" thrown in for good measure.
Available [at Necropress.com] for the first time in its complete form, Ghor, Kin-Slayer is the rare opportunity to read a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between Robert E. Howard and the finest fantasy authors of the past several decade.
March 17, 2015
More of a 3.5, but I'll bump it up because it really was an extraordinary collaboration of talent & a really neat way to write a novel over several decades. Some contributions were great like Karl Edward Wagner's. Others not so much, but all were readable. Highly recommended for any REH fan.
July 29, 2014
If people don't know the story behind this book, a magazine in the 70s decided that they would have authors finish a tale of which REH wrote a single chapter back in the day. This book is all of the 'chapters' from the magazine compiled into a single book.
The writers, as you can see from the cover photo, were/are an impressive lot. Some of my favorites: Wagner, Moorcock, Wellman, Lumley, Long, and Campbell, contributed to the effort.
The story is based around a prototypical REH barbarian, named Ghor, who is bent on revenge against pretty much everyone he meets. He battles his way across Hyboria, from Nemedia to Stygia....
Overall, the book seemed uneven. With the various writing styles and meanderings, I had a hard time retaining excitment throughout it. Since it was published month to month, I got the feeling each author tried to wrap up their 'short story' in each chapter.
I don't want to give too much away, but the authors tried to include references to just about every Conan locale and REH character (Conan, Kull, etc.). They also tried to mix and include the pantheon of the Conan books with HP Lovecraft's mythos. The good (order) versus evil (chaos) versus neutral (Gaia?) was fair to middling in effect, I thought.
I thought the book was a somewhat unique idea, but a meeting between all the authors to discuss the basic framework of the overall story would have helped.
The writers, as you can see from the cover photo, were/are an impressive lot. Some of my favorites: Wagner, Moorcock, Wellman, Lumley, Long, and Campbell, contributed to the effort.
The story is based around a prototypical REH barbarian, named Ghor, who is bent on revenge against pretty much everyone he meets. He battles his way across Hyboria, from Nemedia to Stygia....
Overall, the book seemed uneven. With the various writing styles and meanderings, I had a hard time retaining excitment throughout it. Since it was published month to month, I got the feeling each author tried to wrap up their 'short story' in each chapter.
I don't want to give too much away, but the authors tried to include references to just about every Conan locale and REH character (Conan, Kull, etc.). They also tried to mix and include the pantheon of the Conan books with HP Lovecraft's mythos. The good (order) versus evil (chaos) versus neutral (Gaia?) was fair to middling in effect, I thought.
I thought the book was a somewhat unique idea, but a meeting between all the authors to discuss the basic framework of the overall story would have helped.
January 19, 2020
A fascinating premise: a short introduction to an abandoned story by Robert E. Howard is completed by the whos-who of 1970s Weird Fiction in serialized form. In the sense of an historical curiosity it is fascinating, as a novel...
Firstly, I Howard's contribution is so slight ~ a prologue in which a sad, lonely modern man, James Allison, recalls a past life as Ghor, Fifth Son of Genseric, the progenitor of the legends of Romulus and Remus and many other heroic figures ~ that it is hard to say the others are finishing his work. Indeed, if anything, the real set-up for the story comes from the first following entry, by the legendary Karl Edward Wagner, who matches Howard's writing style and grim tone, and clearly sets the tale in the Hyborian Age. The story if further shaped in the master's image by Richard Tierney (in my opinion the most under-appreciated and 'Howardian' author out there) and the fantastic Charles Saunders (creator of 'sword & soul' with his 'Nyumbani' tales), who makes it clear this is not the age of Conan, but that dark time at the end of Howard's "Hyborian Age" essay when the "shining kingdoms" of the world are swallowed in a wave of barbarism and destruction.
It's a brilliant choice of direction from the set-up Wagner and Tierney have given him, and is also a "course-correction" from the simply awful chapter by the famed Michael Moorcock, whose entry comes out of left-field, makes the already hard-to-like Ghor simply unpalatable, and shows zero interest in maintaining the feel of Howard's Hyborian Age setting. In fact, the Moorcock entry is astoundingly bad, almost reading like a deliberate sabotage (and considering his penchant for being an 'infant terrible' towards legendary authors, perhaps it was). Anyway, Saunders nearly saves the day and then, the usually on-target Darrell Schweizter appears at the midpoint and introduces several plot elements that take the train veering wildly, and sets up Brian Lumley (as was his want with anything Lovecraftian) to take it completely off the rails.
As a modern allusion, Schweitzer and Lumley are the Rian Johnson to Wagner-Tierney-Saunder's JJ Abrams; the former looking to show their clever auctourship while the latter trying to build something that is an homage to its predecessor. The resulting chapters are of varying quality and the narrative surprisingly coherent, but it is quite definitely no longer a story in the vein of Howard, nor despite the names, is it in any way inhabiting his world. A far-closer comparison would be Lumley's Primal Lands stories: sweeping fantasy in which things like Lovecraft's alien gods are window-dressing, monsters to fight, and powers to invoke. The shark isn't just jumped, it's jumped with the literary motorcycle in reverse.
It falls to Marion Zimmer Bradley, an author whose work I generally despise, to pull together a coherent conclusion, and to my shock she does. She can't change what has gone before, but the tone and its sad, mournful conclusion, clearly harkens back to the set-up provided by Howard and Wagner, and is fitting with the feel of the Norse sagas the tale is meant to emulate. Sadly, Richard Lupoff then adds an epilogue, that transforms the nearly silent narrator so completely, and introduces irrelevant and ludicrous details about James Allison's present that suggests he never read the Howard piece at all. It's a wretched ending to an already problematic narrative.
As a writer, I found the project fascinating; as a reader and devoted fan of REH and Weird fiction, I found this short book both fun and frustrating to read. If I was neither of those things, I do not think it would be worth the investment of time.
Firstly, I Howard's contribution is so slight ~ a prologue in which a sad, lonely modern man, James Allison, recalls a past life as Ghor, Fifth Son of Genseric, the progenitor of the legends of Romulus and Remus and many other heroic figures ~ that it is hard to say the others are finishing his work. Indeed, if anything, the real set-up for the story comes from the first following entry, by the legendary Karl Edward Wagner, who matches Howard's writing style and grim tone, and clearly sets the tale in the Hyborian Age. The story if further shaped in the master's image by Richard Tierney (in my opinion the most under-appreciated and 'Howardian' author out there) and the fantastic Charles Saunders (creator of 'sword & soul' with his 'Nyumbani' tales), who makes it clear this is not the age of Conan, but that dark time at the end of Howard's "Hyborian Age" essay when the "shining kingdoms" of the world are swallowed in a wave of barbarism and destruction.
It's a brilliant choice of direction from the set-up Wagner and Tierney have given him, and is also a "course-correction" from the simply awful chapter by the famed Michael Moorcock, whose entry comes out of left-field, makes the already hard-to-like Ghor simply unpalatable, and shows zero interest in maintaining the feel of Howard's Hyborian Age setting. In fact, the Moorcock entry is astoundingly bad, almost reading like a deliberate sabotage (and considering his penchant for being an 'infant terrible' towards legendary authors, perhaps it was). Anyway, Saunders nearly saves the day and then, the usually on-target Darrell Schweizter appears at the midpoint and introduces several plot elements that take the train veering wildly, and sets up Brian Lumley (as was his want with anything Lovecraftian) to take it completely off the rails.
As a modern allusion, Schweitzer and Lumley are the Rian Johnson to Wagner-Tierney-Saunder's JJ Abrams; the former looking to show their clever auctourship while the latter trying to build something that is an homage to its predecessor. The resulting chapters are of varying quality and the narrative surprisingly coherent, but it is quite definitely no longer a story in the vein of Howard, nor despite the names, is it in any way inhabiting his world. A far-closer comparison would be Lumley's Primal Lands stories: sweeping fantasy in which things like Lovecraft's alien gods are window-dressing, monsters to fight, and powers to invoke. The shark isn't just jumped, it's jumped with the literary motorcycle in reverse.
It falls to Marion Zimmer Bradley, an author whose work I generally despise, to pull together a coherent conclusion, and to my shock she does. She can't change what has gone before, but the tone and its sad, mournful conclusion, clearly harkens back to the set-up provided by Howard and Wagner, and is fitting with the feel of the Norse sagas the tale is meant to emulate. Sadly, Richard Lupoff then adds an epilogue, that transforms the nearly silent narrator so completely, and introduces irrelevant and ludicrous details about James Allison's present that suggests he never read the Howard piece at all. It's a wretched ending to an already problematic narrative.
As a writer, I found the project fascinating; as a reader and devoted fan of REH and Weird fiction, I found this short book both fun and frustrating to read. If I was neither of those things, I do not think it would be worth the investment of time.
January 4, 2009
This is an interesting but badly flawed book. It's flawed because it was written in a round-robin style by some 17 authors, each of whom wrote a chapter that built upon the previous author's chapter. It does have a loose form and an ending, but the most intersting thing about it is the individual chapters.
The opening chapter is by Robert E. Howard, with followups by such writers as Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph Payne Brenna, Richard L. Tierney, Michael Moorcock, Charles Saunders, Andrew Offutt, Manly Wade Wellman, Darrell Schweitzer, A. E. Van Vogt, Brian Lumley, Frank Belknap Long, ADrian Cole, Ramsey Campbell, H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard A. Lupoff.
The opening chapter is by Robert E. Howard, with followups by such writers as Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph Payne Brenna, Richard L. Tierney, Michael Moorcock, Charles Saunders, Andrew Offutt, Manly Wade Wellman, Darrell Schweitzer, A. E. Van Vogt, Brian Lumley, Frank Belknap Long, ADrian Cole, Ramsey Campbell, H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard A. Lupoff.
March 4, 2018
This novel should be everything that is good in modern sci-fi/fantasy, instead it's the most amazing disgraceful reason why no one should ever get into the genres. Robert E. Howard's chapter is great, and had me hooked. I almost wish this story stayed only as his first chapter and was never "finished" by other folks.
For people who don't know the story behind this novel, they took an unfinished idea by REH and asked many big name authors of the time to each write a chapter and finish the story. Jumping immediately from what Howard wrote to the next author, Karl Edward Wagner, is beyond grating and unfortunately that's a trend that's not going to stop. After finishing each chapter I felt like i needed a break just to recover from how little effort into a story I just witnessed and prepare for seeing it again with a different take.
Eventually, it becomes clear that there never was a meeting to discuss the general idea for the story. Each author just has their episodic adventure they want to put out there and have wrapped up and give the next author the impossible task of making a finished story go on. If this only affected the structure of the story, I guess that would be one thing albeit the big thing that shouldn't be messed with, but eventually it becomes to feel like each author only wrote the entry before them until the purpose of what Ghor was and his relationship to a character introduced in that first chapter by Howard is completely misunderstood by all. On top of that, the break between Charles Saunders' chapter and Offut's was particularly distasteful, with Offut seeming to take pleasure in completely undoing everything Saunders did just before.
Now, I understand this was all supposed to be published monthly in a magazine, and each author surely had other things to attend to, and honestly I went into this expecting hot garbage, but I wasn't ready to feel insulted. One thing I'm increasingly noticing among folks in my social circles are how many people claim to be fantasy fans but don't actually know much about the genre and haven't done much digging into it. The settings can just be cool and there's something appealing about weapon combat. I was hoping against hope that this book would be a good starting point for people like that, who would actually like to begin digging. These are big names working towards the same goal, it should be exciting and worth it! Instead, I'm more tempted to give this to my old gym teacher with a shrug and be like "yeah, you were right. At least dodgeball is real."
At the end of the day, I am glad I read this. It is a neat little piece of history that I can't resist making a central point of my collection, but *phew* is it boring and do I have a difficult time recommending it. To learn that everyone makes hiccups in their careers, definitely check this out. Aw nice, i figured out how to do it.
All in all I give Ghor, Kin Slayer: The Saga of Geneseric's Fifth Born Son one Bullshit silver or actually probably bronze (different authors say different material) Mechanical Sword/Arrow Arm that a man who is supposed to be fighting against the very idea of Civilization uses and never questions the fact he's using a product of it as a main weapon out of 17- one for each guest author.
Also, c'mon can we all agree Michael Moorcock is the worst yet? He deserves it.
For people who don't know the story behind this novel, they took an unfinished idea by REH and asked many big name authors of the time to each write a chapter and finish the story. Jumping immediately from what Howard wrote to the next author, Karl Edward Wagner, is beyond grating and unfortunately that's a trend that's not going to stop. After finishing each chapter I felt like i needed a break just to recover from how little effort into a story I just witnessed and prepare for seeing it again with a different take.
Eventually, it becomes clear that there never was a meeting to discuss the general idea for the story. Each author just has their episodic adventure they want to put out there and have wrapped up and give the next author the impossible task of making a finished story go on. If this only affected the structure of the story, I guess that would be one thing albeit the big thing that shouldn't be messed with, but eventually it becomes to feel like each author only wrote the entry before them until the purpose of what Ghor was and his relationship to a character introduced in that first chapter by Howard is completely misunderstood by all. On top of that, the break between Charles Saunders' chapter and Offut's was particularly distasteful, with Offut seeming to take pleasure in completely undoing everything Saunders did just before.
Now, I understand this was all supposed to be published monthly in a magazine, and each author surely had other things to attend to, and honestly I went into this expecting hot garbage, but I wasn't ready to feel insulted. One thing I'm increasingly noticing among folks in my social circles are how many people claim to be fantasy fans but don't actually know much about the genre and haven't done much digging into it. The settings can just be cool and there's something appealing about weapon combat. I was hoping against hope that this book would be a good starting point for people like that, who would actually like to begin digging. These are big names working towards the same goal, it should be exciting and worth it! Instead, I'm more tempted to give this to my old gym teacher with a shrug and be like "yeah, you were right. At least dodgeball is real."
At the end of the day, I am glad I read this. It is a neat little piece of history that I can't resist making a central point of my collection, but *phew* is it boring and do I have a difficult time recommending it. To learn that everyone makes hiccups in their careers, definitely check this out. Aw nice, i figured out how to do it.
All in all I give Ghor, Kin Slayer: The Saga of Geneseric's Fifth Born Son one Bullshit silver or actually probably bronze (different authors say different material) Mechanical Sword/Arrow Arm that a man who is supposed to be fighting against the very idea of Civilization uses and never questions the fact he's using a product of it as a main weapon out of 17- one for each guest author.
Also, c'mon can we all agree Michael Moorcock is the worst yet? He deserves it.
January 15, 2025
A can't miss concept - that really doesn't hit the mark
Robert Howard left dozens of unfinished stories behind him in his brief life. Many of them have been completely by other writers but only one of them, as far as I know, was handled by a roster of no less than sixteen established authors. And this round-robin approach might not have been the best way to showcase the uniqueness and the gravitas of a character like Ghor. Mind you, this isn't a bad REH pastiche but it's not all that memorable either. Unfortunately the gimmick of have all those famous fantasy writers contribute to this work overshadows both the novel's prehistoric setting and the protagonist. Which is why this one is really only recommended for fans of the seventeen authors.
Robert Howard left dozens of unfinished stories behind him in his brief life. Many of them have been completely by other writers but only one of them, as far as I know, was handled by a roster of no less than sixteen established authors. And this round-robin approach might not have been the best way to showcase the uniqueness and the gravitas of a character like Ghor. Mind you, this isn't a bad REH pastiche but it's not all that memorable either. Unfortunately the gimmick of have all those famous fantasy writers contribute to this work overshadows both the novel's prehistoric setting and the protagonist. Which is why this one is really only recommended for fans of the seventeen authors.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews