I figli della notte - Racconti dell'orrore - Vol. 1

by Robert E. Howard, Laura Serra (Translator)

Foreste maledette, esseri con la testa di lupo, serpenti che appaiono nei sogni e la Cosa che salì dal profondo... Ma anche uomini che combattono il male con la spada, perché quando i demoni prendono forma terrena e sciamano nel mondo, possono essere fermati con la forza dei migliori. In questo ricco volume, il primo di due, i racconti horror di Robert E. Howard sono accompagnati dalle leggende dei tempi più remoti, gli stessi in cui affondano le radici del folklore. Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn e altri personaggi dell'universo nero di Howard si battono contro il soprannaturale, mentre negli ottimi racconti "regionali" la scena è oggi, nel Southwest dei deserti o tra le acque delle paludi, dove i discendenti degli schiavi praticano ancora il voodoo. Una galleria sanguigna e sanguinosa come il suo autore, il bardo di Cross Plains.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction

222 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2014

About the author

Robert 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.

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a truly dreadful story of interwar racial fantasy and of blood lust, in the same vein as 'The Little People', that would leave a bad taste in the mouth if it was not for the saving grace of having the 'hero' clearly turn out to be as mad as a hatter.

This creates a nice irony. The unutterable tedium of the ethnic theorising and pseudo-history and the nutty story line about a man going into his ancestral past because of a knock on the head and slaughtering dwarfish little yellow people with slant eyes only becomes tolerable in the final pages.

Which leaves us with a conundrum. Is Howard being ironic in which case this is a work of literary genius? Or is he not? In which case he is proving himself an utter fool. I decided he was being ironic - possibly without justification - and, being a nice guy, gave him an extra star for that.

But be warned that, to get to the punch line and decide yourself, you will have to wade through some arrant and tiresome nonsense which only becomes tolerable in retrospect if it is ironic and offers the mentality of Himmler at the expense of the prejudices of its 1931 'Weird Tales' audience.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 What a freaking disappointment. I was actually hoping for a vampire story, and what I got was a weird racist diatribe with a silly premise of being knocked back into a distance past followed by slaughter and mayhem. The only interesting thing is the ending, but it is not worth wading through the rest of it to get to. Audible edition, narrated by Robertson Dean.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 1 out of 5]

This story is the equivalent of listening to your grandpa go on a long-winded racist tirade about how nasty and evil other races and cultures are. Definitely not Howard’s best material.

[Tracey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have honestly never read a more blatantly racist story against Asians, full of white supremacy tirades about "pure" blood lines and how naturally "royal" and glorious Aryans are.

[Mark Tallen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is nowhere near to the usual standard of fiction & storytelling quality that I've so far experienced from reading Robert E. Howard stories.

[Michael Potts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ooof, this was a big nothing. Weirdly racial and nothing.

I love Howard but the only redeeming factor in this story is the general premise. Weirdly slow and boring for him, like it was written by someone else.

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this as part of “The Horror Megapack” which is a collection of short stories because that’s what I was in the mood to read - what a disappointment this short story was…

[Timothy McGowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More action than any other of the Cthulhu mythos that I’ve read thus far. Amazing addition of adding the red mist to add a layer to rage madness

[Filbi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Straight up Nazi shit.

[Forked Radish · Rating 3 out of 5]

A trifle Nazish.

[Per · Rating 1 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607...

A couple of books mentioned in this short story...

long rows of books which ranged from the Mandrake Press edition of Boccaccio to a Missale Romanum

...Boccaccio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovann...) is known for The Decameron, Missale Romanum is The Roman Missal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_M...)...

You'll find there a number of delectable dishes—Machen, Poe, Blackwood, Maturin—look, there's a rare feast—Horrid Mysteries, by the Marquis of Grosse—the real Eighteenth Century edition.

...The Horrid Mysteries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horrid_...) subtitled "A Story From the German Of The Marquis Of Grosse" is a translation by Peter Will of the German Gothic novel Der Genius by Carl Grosse -- mistaking the hero of the tale for the author...

But look there, [...] sandwiched between that nightmare of Huysmans', and Walpole's Castle of Otranto—Von Junzt's Nameless Cults. There's a book to keep you awake at night!

...Castle of Otranto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cas...) is authentic, but, Nameless Cults is where things start getting interesting. Just as H. P. Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon -- later used by other authors like Robert E. Howard -- this is the first mention of Von Juntz's Nameless Cults (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unaussp...) -- which in turn will be used by H. P. Lovecraft and other authors.

If you will scan various works of certain great poets you may find double meanings. Men have stumbled onto cosmic secrets in the past and given a hint of them to the world in cryptic words. Do you remember Von Junzt's hints of 'a city in the waste'? What do you think of Flecker's line:

'Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose
But with no scarlet to her leaf—and from whose heart no perfume flows.'

Men may stumble upon secret things, but Von Junzt dipped deep into forbidden mysteries. He was one of the few men, for instance, who could read the Necronomicon in the original Greek translation.

The quote from James Elroy Flecker comes from his poem Gates of Damascus, available here: http://www.public-domain-poetry.com/j...