The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

by Robert E. Howard

Here are Robert E. Howard’s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions.

Some of Howard’s best-known characters—Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them—roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.

The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Classics, Pulp

562 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 29, 2008

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

[Zain · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Originator!

Yes, H.P. Lovecraft is considered the father of the mythos, but have you ever heard of Robert E. Howard? Nope. Well, guess what? It was he who helped create the very same mythos that Lovecraft is known for.

Inside this book is a collection of short stories from Robert E. Howard, with many of the different tropes of the famous Gods and Goddesses of the mythology.

Many times l felt as though I was reading a story written by Lovecraft, himself.

And, like Lovecraft, Howard was a virulent racial bigot, who believed in white supremacy. He happily used terms like “darky,” “primitive people,” and the N-word was used about a thousand times.

But he was a true horror writer, despite his bigotry, his stories are very scary. So for those of you who are fans of the mythos and love horror, you may want to check out his work. Just be aware, he can be racially offensive.

And for those of you who uphold his views on white supremacy, you’ll probably love this book, too/s

Four stars. 💫💫💫💫

[Peter Topside · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was an interesting read. None of the stories jumped out at me, but all were worth going through. I just felt they were all either way too short or way too long. But needless to say, you'll find creatures ranging from demons to ghosts to werewolves and everything between. So any old school horror fans will definitely enjoy this collection. I would agree with some of the other reviewers when I'd recommend reading this over an extended period and not binging it. And how could I forget, the illustrations were downright awesome!

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Half of these stories were seriously scary, the other half straight up pulp. And by pulp, I mean shit like a house being haunted by the invisible ghost of a gorilla that escaped from the circus. Oh, and said invisible ghost still casts a goddamn shadow. Shit like that. I’m honestly not sure which kind I liked more.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I vacillated constantly between 3 and 4 stars for this book. When it's good it's great. Howard can spin terror to a hair fine thread that like the "monomolecular" wire in some Science fiction stories can cut straight through. Unfortunately all the stories in this volume don't quite make it to that level. But, I believe that the fright out weighs the "slight".

I own collections of Conan, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn...so some of the stories here aren't new to me. I will probably try to run this book down and add it to my collection. I took it out of the library twice and there are usually people waiting on it. This is a book to be picked up now and again and savored, not read through quickly and taken back.

In these pages you'll meet reptilian horrors, lycanthropes, demonic terrors and...humans, possibly the worst of the lot. Evils from out of time and alternate dimensions death and worse than death creep through the entire tome.

Yes there are a few negatives, a few stories that don't measure up (or poems). At first I was a little afraid we'd quickly O.D. on werewolves as the first 2 tales take us down that road, but not to worry...things quickly get weirder (more weird?).

But, mostly the book is packed with the kind of frights you're/we're probably looking for. We see mentions of dark and evil books, ones we're aware of (if we've read others, like Lovecraft) and a couple of Howard's own imagining. We find stories of evil and even redemption...so, four stars.

WARNING: By the way. This is a collections from the 1930s so there are a couple of non-PC words used including a couple of times the "milder" of the older racial terms is used. Not a good thing, but a product of its time. Just wanted anyone who chooses to read it not to be surprised.

[H. P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up, John Kane, the grey night’s falling;
The sun’s sunk in blood and the fog comes crawling;
From hillside to hill the grey wolves are calling;
Will ye come, will ye come, John Kane?

Tor’s Conan pastiches was no way to step away from Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories. I enjoyed them—the Robert Jordan and John Maddox Roberts pastiches, at least—but I need a bit more of the real thing before moving on. And with Halloween around the corner? Del Rey’s collection The Horror of Robert E. Howard was the perfect hair of the dog.

I don’t know that The Horror of Robert E. Howard is the best introduction to Howard. Conan remains well known and relevant for a reason. And, of course, Solomon Kane has his partisans. I really want to get to the Bran Mak Morn stories, and I have a collection of Howard’s Breckinridge Elkins stories. But The Horror of Robert E. Howard might be the best volume to pick up after your first introduction to Robert E. Howard.

If you don’t start with Solomon Kane, here is an introduction to the Puritan crusader. Howard’s occult detectives Conrad and Kirowan make multiple appearances. Howard was also a very fine poet, and a number of his poems are included. The stories tend toward the short end of the scale; this is an ideal book to pick up in the evening after each day of work as All Hallows’ Eve approaches, the bite of the coming winter begins to infiltrate the autumn air, and the onset of darkness encroaches a little further each night.

You can see H.P. Lovecraft’s influence over Howard in these stories, as you would expect. Both in the Conrad and Kirowan stories and the multiple stories set in the seaside Faring Town. But this is Howard. He prefers his heroes and heroines to be heavy on agency. The book is filled with characters who things like, “Somehow, I will slay the man who kills me, though my corpse climb up forty fathoms of ocean to do it.”

And if a suspected witch needs to lay down a curse? She isn’t going with some mealy-mouthed, half-hearted curse. No, she is going to curse with gusto:

“‘The curse of the Foul Fiend upon you, John Kulrek!’ she screamed. ‘The curse of God rest upon your vile soul throughout eternity! May you gaze on sights that shall sear the eyes of you and scorch the soul of you! May you die a bloody death and writhe in hell’s flames for a million and a million and yet a million years! I curse you by sea and by land, by earth and by air, by the demons of the oceans and the demons of the swamplands, the fiends of the forest and the goblins of the hills! And you’ – her lean finger stabbed at Lie-lip Canool and he started backward, his face paling – ‘you shall be the death of John Kulrek and he shall be the death of you! You shall bring John Kulrek to the doors of hell and John Kulrek shall bring you to the gallows-tree! I set the seal of death upon your brow, John Kulrek! You shall live in terror and die in horror far out upon the cold gray sea! But the sea that took the soul of innocence to her bosom shall not take you, but shall fling forth your vile carcass to the sands! Aye, John Kulrek’ – and she spoke with such a terrible intensity that the drunken mockery on the man’s face changed to one of swinish stupidity – ‘the sea roars for the victim it will not keep! There is snow upon the hills, John Kulrek, and ere it melts your corpse will lie at my feet. And I shall spit upon it and be content.’”

Now that is a curse! (From the Sea Curse.)

Howard isn’t just writing Lovecraftian fiction, mind you. There are werewolves and vampires and ghosts (oh my!). Howard puts his own spin on each. His take on werewolves and his take on vampires are worth lifting for contemporary works. They are certainly more interesting than much of the contemporary canon (especially for werewolves, who have been underserved). But there is also plenty of room to flesh them out further.

The ghost stories are a good reminder that Howard was as inspired or more by Texas folklore as by Lovecraft. These stories, in particular, remind me of those that I grew up with. (And remind me that Weird Tales also published stuff like the Silver John stories.) The Dream Snake and The Shadow of the Beast would fit in some of the volumes off my shelves (and my parents’ shelves before that, and my grandparents’ shelves before that). The only anomaly being that one features a giant snake and one the ghost of an ape. Because this is Howard, after all.

There are two Solomon Kane stories in the selection I read—Rattle of Bones and The Hills of the Dead. I am a big fan of both, so I see the collected Solomon Kane stories in my near future. The Hills of the Dead provides the image for the cover art.

Some themes reoccur. One in particular that struck me was a deep sibling love for a sister (philia, nor eros, this isn’t GRRM we’re talking about here). Howard touches on it in The Little People and returns to it in Dermod’s Bane. Howard was an only child, and you get the sense he regretted not having a sibling. It doesn’t stop him from writing powerfully and poignantly on the subject.

In case you’re wondering who Howard’s horror influences are, he gives us a pretty good clue when a character identifies Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu, Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and Machen’s Black Seal as master horror tales. (And in Howard’s world, erudite men don’t blush at serious discussion of horror in the salon.)

A character called Conan of the reavers appears in the (excellent) People of the Dark. Howard would use that name again. Delenda Est and The Cairn of the Headland are historical, supernatural horror, and each has a nice twist to it that really leverages the history. There are two stories in particular from this chunk of the book that are worth discussing: Worms of the Earth and The Valley of the Lost.

Worms of the Earth is my first Bran Mak Morn tale. Before picking this collection up for a little HallowRead, my intuition was to go from Conan to Bran Mak Morn. It was a good intuition, though. Bran Mak Morn is a Pict king during the twilight of his people, fighting the encroachment of the Roman Empire. I always loved Howard’s depiction of the Picts in his Conan stories. Bran Mak Morn is no Conan, though. He is more normal in stature, and distinctly wolfish. Where Conan might have lashed out immediately when a Roman governor crucified his countryman (if he even cared that it was one of his countrymen), Bran Mak Morn coldly plots revenge. And to get it, he goes straight to dabbling in the black arts, negotiating with a degenerate, fae race dwelling underground to strike at his foes.

“‘Bran, there are weapons too foul to use, even against Rome!’

Bran barked short and sharp as a jackal.

‘Ha! There are no weapons I would not use against Rome! My back is at the wall. By the blood of the fiends, has Rome fought me fair? Bah! I am a barbarian king with a wolfskin mantle and an iron crown, fighting with my handful of bows and broken pikes against the queen of the world. What have I? The heather hills, the wattle huts, the spears of my shock-headed tribesmen! And I fight Rome – with her armored legions, her broad fertile plains and rich seas – her mountains and her rivers and her gleaming cities – her wealth, her steel, her gold, her mastery and her wrath. By steel and fire I will fight her – and by subtlety and treachery – by the thorn in the foot, the adder in the path, the venom in the cup, the dagger in the dark; aye,’ his voice sank somberly, ‘and by the worms of the earth.’”

I’ve seen Howard crowned the king and inventor of the Weird Western, and after reading The Valley of the Lost, I know why. The Valley of the Lost is just about a perfect story in every way (although the prose is a little pedestrian for Howard). The structure, the tension, the payoff, the twists, the worldbuilding. Howard does a phenomenal twist on the zombie. Again, if you’re looking for new ideas about old monsters, Howard riffed on all the big ones. And none of them sparkle. Howard again features a degenerate race grown stunted in their pursuit of wickedness, their glory and millennia of evil behind them. All against the backdrop of the red Texas sun, leather-skinned cowboys, and bloody red Texas feuds. It is a very personal story, both in how it ends, the setting, and lines like this:

“John Reynolds was a man of the outlands and the waste places. He had never seen the great cities of the world. But he knew that nowhere in the world today such a city reared up to the sky.”

Robert E. Howard never got very far from Crossplains, Texas, but imagined things that nowhere in the world had anyone quite imagined just the same.

The weird westerns are highlights. There are three in the last third of the book—The Man on the Ground, Old Garfield’s Heart, and The Dead Remember—and all three are tremendous yarns. Howard was just much better when he was playing in his sandbox instead of in Lovecraft’s. This section of the book also contains a pretty good barbarian, sword and sorcery story, The House of Arabu. This section also contains a story, The Hoofed Thing, that, like his Conan story Beyond the Black River, gives a prominent role to a heroic dog.


I saw a blogger characterize Black Canaan as “the most racist short story I have ever read, but also one of the most effective short stories.” As to the first assertion, I can’t agree, even if I only look at stories from this collection. The racial politics are baked into the story, but that will be true of any story set in the rural Deep South in the decades after the Civil War, at least if it is written with any realism. The surface level stuff like social structure and language isn’t jarring.

Much more jarring is the language that Howard uses in some of the earlier stories in the collection—language more likely to reflect Howard’s own views. We see this language even where Howard shows some sympathy toward the African-American character, such as in The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux. It is very in your face. (Although when Howard describes Ace Jessel’s opponent as “the very spirit of the morass of barbarism from which mankind has so tortuously climbed,” we know Howard had complex views towards barbarians.)

But the really troubling attitude comes up in some of his other stories, particularly The Children of the Night. The racism of The Children of the Night isn’t the visceral racism of the rural South, but the erudite racism of well-educated 19th century American sophisticates. The story opens Kirowan, Conrad, and four others casually discussing skull formation. Pseudo-science like phrenology would power the eugenics movement and be welcomed with open arms by the Progressive movement. Progressive hero Oliver Wendell Holmes would write what might be the most shocking statement ever laid down in a Supreme Court opinion when he rationalized that “three generations of imbeciles is enough” in giving a constitutional ok to forced sterilization of “mental defectives.” We’ve largely memory-holed it, but these were mainstream views—at least among our would-be aristocrats—until the horrors of the Third Reich put a spotlight on the natural end of that particular road.

Howard, then, shows not just the prejudices of his geography but also those of his intellectual class.

As to the latter assertion, I wholeheartedly agree that Black Canaan is tremendously effective. It’s one of the longer stories in the collection, but I blew through it and it felt like quite a short story. Howard is masterful at slowly ratcheting up the tension throughout the story. As the blogger noted, the role of race in the story makes it more effective as horror, not less, and the entire thing is delightfully creepy.

So now that I’m done, how does Robert E. Howard’s horror measure up? The first question to ask: measure up to what? I am woefully under read in horror. I would take Robert E. Howard over the Stephen King I’ve read. But I haven’t read Edgar Alan Poe since high school, and I haven’t read H.P. Lovecraft at all. I read The Turning of the Screw a few years ago, and it bored me to tears.

I’m hardly the best judge of horror. It has never grabbed me as a genre. But I did love these stories. I particularly loved Howard’s weird westerns, and introductions to Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn have me excited to grab those collections. None of these alone will supplant Conan for me (yet), but this collection shows Howard undeniably had serious range as a writer.

As with their other Howard collections, the good people at Del Rey packed The Horror of Robert E. Howard with original art.

[Nicolai Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert E. Howard was a core writer of the Lovecraft circle. Depending on how you approach that, of course, but he had been om my reading list for a long time because I heard he wrote some awesome sword and sorcery-stuff, weird western and Cthulhu mythos-related horror. According to the introduction by Howard scholar Rusty Burke, Howard can actually be said to have created that subgenre sword and sorcery, which blends elements of heroic adventure and horror. He also wrote the first weird western story (“The Horror from the Mound”).

In any case, as you will see from my ratings, my judgement is that the quality of his writing is highly uneven. I rated 10 stories/poems five stars, while I rated 15 of them two stars. I also rated 1 story one star and for the first time in my life, I DNFed not just one, but three short stories. They were insufferable for various reasons. I think it’s safe to say that I enjoyed all of my three stars, so based on that and the 14 four stars, I did enjoy this collection on the whole.

It’s the biggest collection of short stories and poems I’ve ever read, actually, and it took me quite a while to get through it all. I truly wish I could give it more than three stars, but even adding five stars for both the illustrations and introduction, the average still came out three.

Before I critique Howard’s writing, I must point out that the illustrations made by Greg Staples were excellent. They made the entire reading experience that much better, and I wish I had some of them in large prints and framed on my wall (even though they sometimes spoiled the twist or ending of a story, oops!).

Of the writers in the Lovecraft circle, I can safely say that I am very familiar with Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (my next on the list are August Derleth and Robert Bloch). I think Howard is the weakest prose stylist of the three. Compared to Smith in particular, he lacks imagination, style, flair and emotional depth. And he’s not as visionary or ambitious as Lovecraft. I think it’s fair to say that he’s the most accessible of the three: Oftentimes his stories are plot driven, containing the bare minimum of story elements to keep you interested. Sometimes, I think there’s too much telling and too little showing (I don’t mind telling at all. I think it could work quite well to do a lot of telling, in fact, but it needs to be done with care and there should be a balance). Many of his ideas are cool, but underdeveloped. He’s definitely rough around the edges.

If anything, though, his stories tend to be easy reads and very entertaining. If you are just starting out with weird fiction, he’s a decent starting point. At the same time, he definitely had the ability to impress me with his prose and atmosphere and pacing, making me nervously turn the pages or make my heart beat faster (“People of the Dark” especially).

I also think he needs to be commended for experimenting with tropes and trying out different things. I already mentioned sword and sorcery and weird western, but there’s also his interest in taking tropes of the horror genre and do something new with them. Like the vampire, the zombie or the ghost. My favorite of these is “The Hills of the Dead”, where the infamous Solomon Kane, alongside the sorcerer N’Longa, fights an army of the undead (they might be vampires or they might be zombies). You could say he also had a non-traditional approach to horror.

But the difference between Howard and Lovecraft, for instance, was, according to Burke, that “Howard was by nature and adventure writer, and his concerns were human, not cosmic”. Also, “where Lovecraft’s characters frequently are driven to madness by what they have seen, Howard’s will more frequently be provoked into action”.

At the same time, he tended to emulate Lovecraft (or Arthur Machen), and I agree with Burke that sometimes this becomes quite apparent. Oftentimes too, Howard loves to come back to the motif of an ancient race, and more often than not, this takes on an egregiously racist tone.

Yup, it needs to be said in my review, because it was an issue for me. In general, I think it’s perfectly okay to write about racism or use racism as a central conflict to move a story forward or to have racist characters – in order to explore racism or process it or challenge it or as way of scaring the reader. But the story needs to be good too, so, to me, you can’t just be racist for the hell of it. That’s just silly and unnecessary. And I felt like many of Howard’s stories were racist in a way that were quite uncomfortable – the N-word infested “Black Canaan” being the worst offender. Howard just seemed to be incredibly obsessed with race, genealogy, inherent or hereditary traits (blood being the operative word – like “of X blood”). And the idea that people look a certain way because of their lineage, people feel and behave a certain way because of where they are from and who their ancestors are. Stuff like that. Howard can be very one-track-minded, and that’s why tend to get stories that are about a race who have been living underground or similar things. It’s all just generally quite racist. Especially towards black people. Eventually, it becomes grating and annoying.

But like I said, racism or racist characters usually don’t make me this uncomfortable. Offensive, prejudice, judgmental or taboo subjects can still be used to make great stories. I still enjoyed some of the stories here despite the racist perspectives, so, I definitely think it could work in various ways, and Howard were capable of writing good stories regardless. Lovecraft used xenophobia to great effect, for instance (I actually haven’t found his stories to be that uncomfortable, really. They work because of the xenophobia!) I also agree with Burke that Howard did have “considerable sympathy with the downtrodden” in his stories.

And finally, I enjoyed most of his poetry too. They are pure horror poems, and I think that’s pretty cool. I love how he rhymes, the rhythm and how he creates a haunting atmosphere, emphatic drive and narratives with a twist that keeps you on your toes. He seemed to be having a lot of fun writing poetry, and I had a lot of fun reading them. “The Dweller in Dark Valley” is my favorite.

Here are my ratings for each story and poem + some memorable quotes.

Stats:

★/DNF = 4
★★ = 15
★★★ = 17
★★★★ = 14
★★★★★ = 12

Ratings:

Illustrations - ★★★★★
Introduction - ★★★★★

In the Forest of Villefere - ★★★
A Song of the Werewolf Folk - ★★★

Wolfshead - ★★

“Now this is the truth: that if a werewolf is slain in the half-form of a man, its ghost will haunt its slayer through eternity. But if it is slain as a wolf, hell gapes to receive it. The true werewolf is not (as many think) a man who may take the form of a wolf, but a wolf who takes the form of a man!” (19)

Up, John Kane! - ★★★★
Remembrance - ★★
The Dream Snake - ★★
Sea Curse - ★★★
The Moor Ghost - ★★★★
Moon Mockery - ★★★
The Little People - ★★★
Dead Man's Hate - ★★★★
The Tavern - ★★
Rattle of Bones - ★★★★
The Fear that Follows - ★★★★★
The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux - ★★★★
Casonetto's Last Song - ★★★

The Touch of Death - ★★★★★

Adam Farrel in his life had been simply a churlish but harmless man; now he was a terror, a monster, a fiend lurking in the shadow of fear, ready to leap in mankind with talons dipped deep in death and insanity. (78)

What was man but a wailing infant, lost in the night and beset by frightful things from the black abysses and the terrible unknown voids of space and time? (79)

Out of the Deep - ★★★
A Legend of Faring Town - ★★
Restless Waters - ★★★
The Shadow of the Beast - ★★★
The Dead Slaver's Tale - ★★
Dermod's Bane - ★★★★

The Hills of the Dead - ★★★★★

Deep in Kane stirred the spirit of the crusader, the fire of the zealot – the fanatic who devotes his life to battling the powers of darkness. (119)

Dig Me No Grave - ★★★★
The Song of a Mad Minstrel - ★★
The Children of the Night - ★★
Musings - ★★★★★
The Black Stone - ★★★★★
The Thing on the Roof - ★★★★
The Dweller in Dark Valley - ★★★★★
The Horror from the Mound - ★★★
A Dull Sound as of Knocking - ★★★★
The People of the Dark - ★★★★★
Delenda Est - ★
The Cairn on the Headland - ★★★
Worms of the Earth - DNF
The Symbol - ★★★★★

The Valley of the Lost - ★★★★★

The dead man lay at his feet in the thick darkness and faintly to his ears came that unbearably sweet, unbearably evil echo, like devil-drums beating faint and far in the dim caverns of Hell. (276)

And in the darkness a faint light began. It throbbed as the drums throbbed, waning and waxing in time to their pulsing, but it grew slowly, casting a weird glow that was more like green than any color Reynolds had ever seen, but was not really green, nor any other sane or earthly color. Reynolds approached it. It widened. It cast a shimmering radiance over the smooth stone floor, illuminating fantastic mosaics. It cast its sheen high in the hovering shadows, but he could see no roof. Now he stood bathed in its weird glow, so that his flesh looked like a dead man’s. (276-277)

And if such beings as the Old People existed, what other horror might not lurk beneath the visible surface of the universe? (288)

The Hoofed Thing - ★★★★

The with grim sacrifices and ancient rituals, I drew it across the gulfs. (300)

The Noseless Horror - ★★

The Dwellers Under the Tombs - ★★★

Spawn of the black pits of madness and eternal night! Crawling obscenities seething in the slime of the earth’s unguessed deeps–the ultimate horror of retrogression–the nadir of human degeneration–good God, their ancestors were men! (336)

An Open Window - ★★

The House of Arabu - ★★★★

She caught his wrist with fingers like velvet-padded steel, crying something in a strange inhuman tongue. Instantly the moon-lit sky and plain were blotted out in a rush of icy blackness. There was a sensation of hurtling through a void of intolerable coldness, a roaring in the Argive's ears as of titan winds. Then his feet struck solid ground; stability followed that chaotic instant, that had been like the instant of dissolution that joins or separates two states of being, alike in stability, but in kind more alien than day and night. Pyrrhas knew that in that instant he had crossed an unimaginable gulf, and that he stood on shores never before touched by living human feet. (353)

The Man on the Ground - ★★
Old Garfield's Heart - ★★★★
Kelly the Conjure Man - ★★
Black Canaan - DNF
To a Woman - ★★
One Who Comes at Eventide - ★★★
The Haunter of the Ring - ★★★
Pigeons from Hell - ★★
The Dead Remember - ★★

The Fire of Asshurbanipal - ★★★

God! thought Steve, what a barbaric scene!—bound captives on the dust-heaped floor, wild warriors clustered about, gripping their weapons, the raw acrid scent of blood and burnt powder still fouling the air, corpses strewn in a horrid welter of blood, brains and entrails—and on the dais, the hawk-faced shaykh, oblivious to all except the evil crimson glow in the skeleton fingers that rested on the marble throne. (473)

Fragment - ★★★★★
Which Will Scarcely Be Understood - ★★★★

Miscellanea

Golnar the Ape - ★★★★
Spectres in the Dark - DNF
The House - ★★★
Untitled Fragment - ★★★

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, there's an elephant in the room, so let's just deal with that first. Robert E. Howard lived, and wrote, in rural Texas in the 1920s and 1930s, so some of his racial and gender portrayals are ... well ... not great. Not actively vicious, necessarily, but containing some very unfortunate stereotypes and the occasional cringe-worthy use of dialect. All of which is amplified by the fact that most of the stories take place in contemporary settings, and many are first-person narrated by people who are, well, products of their time. "Black Canaan", while quite effective as a horror story, and "Kelly the Conjure-Man" are probably the worst offenders in that regard.

So now that we've got that out of the way ... As per the title, these are all horror stories of one stripe or another; mostly with contemporary settings (rural Texas or Louisiana in the 1920s, plus one haunted boxing ring), but also with some historical settings -- a fair number of "gothic" tales on the moors of the British Isles, one or two Westerns (an era which, at the time of Howard's writing, was much less removed than it is now), and a few medieval or even ancient stories. Some of Howard's recurring characters make appearances -- Bran Mak Morn in "Worms of the Earth" and Solomon Kane in "The Hills of the Dead". Many of the stories are short -- just a few pages with a final line in italics because of the unutterable horror and surprise! -- but in a few he was able to stretch out at a bit more length -- the aforementioned "Black Canaan" and "Pigeons from Hell" (possibly the best story in the book?) in particular.

The book also includes a healthy assortment of Howard's poetry, and closes with a handful of fragments of varying degrees of length & polish.

I have to say that personally I kind of prefer Howard when he's being more historical or writing sword & sorcery. My favorite new-to-me story in this book was probably "The House of Arabu", a horror story set in ancient Sumeria.

Definitely worth checking out -- I still really enjoy Howard's prose style -- despite the caveats above. Probaby closer to a 3.5 than a 3, if only GR allowed half-stars ...

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narrated by Robertson Dean



Description: Here are Howard’s greatest horror tales, all in their original, definitive versions. Some of Howard’s best-known characters–Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and sailor Steve Costigan among them–roam the forbidding locales of the author’s fevered imagination, from the swamps and bayous of the Deep South to the fiend-haunted woods outside Paris to remote jungles in Africa.

The collection includes Howard’s masterpiece “Pigeons from Hell,” which Stephen King calls “one of the finest horror stories of [the twentieth] century,” a tale of two travelers who stumble upon the ruins of a Southern plantation–and into the maw of its fatal secret. In “Black Canaan” even the best warrior has little chance of taking down the evil voodoo man with unholy powers–and none at all against his wily mistress, the diabolical High Priestess of Damballah. In these and other lavishly illustrated classics, such as the revenge nightmare “Worms of the Earth” and “The Cairn on the Headland,” Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world’s great masters of the macabre.

Under a couple of the titles I have left a link, which gives you this entire book online for free.

In the Forest of Villefère
A Song of Werewolf Folk
Wolfshead
Up John Kane!
Remembrance
The Dream Snake
Sea Ghost
The Moor Ghost
Moon Mockery
The Little People
Dead Man's Hate
The Tavern
Rattle of Bones
The Fear That Follows
The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux
Cassonetto's Last Song
The Touch of Death
Out of the Deep
A Legend of Faring Town
Restless Waters
The Shadow of the Beast
The Dead Slaver's Tale
Dermod's Bane
The Hills of the Dead
Dig Me No Grave
The Song of a Mad Minster
The Children of the Night
Musings The Black Stone
The Thing on the Roof
The Dweller in Dark Valley
The Horror from the Mo
A Dull Sound as of Knock
People of the Dark
Delenda Est
The Cairn on the Headland
Worms of the Earth
...Four
The Symbol
The Valley of the Lost
The Hoofed Thing
The Noiseless Terror
The Dweller Under The
An Open Window
Whether the Cavern
The Man on the Ground
Old Garfield's Ghost
Kelly the Conjure-Man
Black Canaan
My Agitation
To A Woman
One Who Comes at Eventite
The Haunter of the Ring
Pigeons From Hell
The Snake's Bro
The Dead Remember
The Fire of Asshurbanipal
Spectres in the Dark
The House

From wiki: Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.



Halloween 2015 reads:

#1: 3* Nobody True by James Herbert: fraudio
#2: 4* The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard: fraudio
#3: 1* Brain Child by John Saul: fraudio
#4: 3* Domain (Rats #3) by James Herbert: fraudio
#5: 3* The Mourning Vessels by Peter Luther: paperback
#6: 2* The Doom of the Great City: ebook short-story
#7: 5* Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury: fraudio
#8: 5* The Dead Zone by Stephen King: fraudio
#9: TR The Chalice: hardback
#10: TR Seven Gothic Tales: ebook
#11: TR Tales of Men and Ghosts
#12: 2* Shattered by Dean Koontz: fraudio
#13: 5*The Dunwich Horror: ebook

[Jon Von · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have three salient points regarding this book: length, quality and racism. It’s certainly a value because you get so much with this book. For an author who died so young Howard was not only shockingly prolific, but held a pretty high standard of his work. Due to the chronological nature of the collection, you can actually see his writing improve, and the author trying different things (genres, etc). Another thing is the incredible amount of Lovecraft influence. Off the top of my head I’d say half the book is an alternative take of the Lovecraftian universe, when the author was still alive at the time. But where, in the other author’s stories, people go mad and try to escape the psychological horror, Howard is all about rolling up your sleeves and punching the shit out if it. It’s actually quite liberating, nearly every story has a macho protagonist whose not going to take an guff from no cosmic monster. And when Howard gets into the manly action and tough guy dialogue, it’s really fun to have such a unique take on the old horror tales.

Predictably, the stories go the more sword and sorcery route on occasion. Did I mention this was a huge book? Conan appeared as some point, cosmic horror is mixed with fantasy adventure a little bit, people fight lizard monsters in a tense cave battle. There are a few weird west stories, some with Solomon Kane that have a unique flavor and are very fine examples of cowboy horror. Some of the later stories approach a more mysterious, literary style that make me think the author was growing in his abilities before his untimely end.

And lastly, the racism. Wow! It is shocking at first. Ultimately I found the book pretty instructive about the mentality of white Americans pre-civil rights (pre-WWII!). The idea seems to be of different races being REALLY different races, like white people are humans and people of color are goblins, or orcs, or something. In fact, I’d never really given much thought to the inherent racial dynamics of fantasy races and now I think, maybe some of that stuff is weird too. Black people feature prominently in a lot of stories as caricatures that, if this were released today, could only be regarded as satirical. And if I ever see the world “oriental” used that way, it’ll be much too soon (barf). There were moments where something stupidly racist would happen and I’d just go wtf and laugh, but it’s important to remember that with was how a lot of people saw race in those days. The women of color are represented pretty wildly, but it’s no secret Howard had a fear-of-women thing going on and this turned into a natural outlet. As the stories go on, the writing seems to become more self aware and use the stereotypes less. It’s interesting that as a Texan, Howard shows a surprising respect for the native and Hispanic people; so it makes me think it’s the impossibly distant foreignness of African voodoo and “oriental mysticism” that has captured his imagination. Because it’s not so much malicious as ignorant, and there are times when he seems to admire the animal vitality of his stereotypes, that it often seems kind of innocent, like people of color are these mysterious and powerful aliens to be feared and admired. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt anyway, to think the author might have sung a different song if he’d made it to the fifties.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Robert E. Howard you'll surely love this massive collection of his short horror stories. I read some review that said there isn't much horror in them. Well, there is a lot of action, something Howard was always a master of, but there is certainly horror if your definition of that term is broad. Howard's horror spans the gaps between ghosts, werewolves, ancient haunted tombs, eerie pine lands, and many more. There's a lot of Lovecraftian elements here, and lots of eerie western scenarios. Dig me No Grave, Old Garfield's Heart, The Black Stone, The Thing on the Roof, are all wonderful tales. Pigeons from Hell is Howard's best horror piece, to my way of thinking. And it certainly creeped the hell out of me.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of horror stories by Robert E. Howard. I had read the majority of these before, but there were a couple I had not read and I enjoyed reading some for a second or even third time.
I particularly like REH's stories that have an historical setting, such as "Worms of the Earth," set in Roman Britain, featuring the heroic Pict, Bran Mak Morn. "The Cairn on the Headland" is perhaps my favorite in this collection. Although it's set in Howard's contemporary time period, there is a connection to the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 in Ireland, a bloody battle between the Irish and the Norsemen.
Howard also wrote great stories set in the West and some of those are among my favorites, such as "Old Garfield's Heart" and "The Man on the Ground."

[Wayne Barrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

I grew up reading Howards work and loved his sword and sorcery tales, but this collection of horror stories didn't thrill me. Maybe if I was still 12.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning: Delving into this one too deeply may lead to REH overload. Here we find that when Howard crosses into Howard all of the peculiarities of his writing style are greatly intensified-both all that is good and all that is bad-making the contents of this book almost too intense to read, except in short snippets. I could not stand more than two or three stories in a single sitting.

One thing this collestion makes clear is that Howard's particular style of purple prose is best suited for the genre he created, that peculiar mix of fantasy, adventure and horror that came to be called swords & sorcery. In other settings it a bit much. He's at his best writing of an adventure in some fantasy realm half Arabian Nights, half Lovecraft. At that the man was simply brilliant. Anywhere else his prose is trying to fit ten pounds of content into an eight pound story. It does not fit. (And sometimes is a four letter word that rhymes with fit.) The farther he got from the real world the better he got. Sadly, good horror is too often best when presented in a setting very close to the real world.

I offer the caution that some of these stories reflect social attitudes not acceptable today. The man was a product of his times, and in reading his failings seem to be born more of ignorance than spite. In some was it makes REH all the more fascinating, that such an imagination could have sprung up in an otherwise un-notable small town in Depression era Texas.

[Peregrine 12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars from this Robert E Howard fan.

This is the collection I'd been waiting for. REH's horror stories are my favorite of all his works and this book brought many of them together. Also: The artwork in this book is fantastic. The illustrations by Greg Staples really helped set the atmosphere - dark, foreboding, and eerie.

Howard wrote to sell his stories to the pulp genre of the time, so many of the plots are nearly identical. But not all of them.

I won't go into my favorites in this collection, but the one thing that did surprise me and left me wanting more were the bits in the Miscellanea chapter at the end. 'Golnor the Ape' and 'Spectres in the Dark' were so different in kind from all of the finished tales that I only had to wonder whether he wrote these late in his career (before his death at age 30).

'Golnor' offered a limited, first person perspective that did not seem to be written in Howard's own voice, as so many of his first-person stories are. 'Spectres' was outright creepy. Keeping in mind that this was written (I'm guessing) in the early 30's - this tale was very Stephen King-ish long before King was born.

Again, I can only lament REH's passing. I wish he'd had more time to mature as a writer and produce and finish his many and varied creations.

[Little Timmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent selection or Robert E. Howard's horror stories. You get both the more famous of his characters, like Solomon Kane and many of the more obscure ones too. These are the original unedited stories as Howard wrote them. No one writes action horror like Howard. Highly recommend

[Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη · Rating 5 out of 5]

Πρώτο βιβλίο του χρόνου και είναι σκέτη απόλαυση!
Δεν είναι πως δεν είχε τις αδυναμίες του ο θείος Μπομπ, αλλά πέρασα 24 ώρες απίστευτης διασκέδασης. Η ανάγνωση από τον Ρόμπερτσον ήταν υποδειγματική, ακόμα και τα ποιήματα είχαν τη νοστιμιά τους. Τα τρία τέσσερα ανολοκλήρωτα κείμενα που είχε στο τέλος, με ρίξαν στα πατώματα. Το ξέρατε εσείς ότι υπάρχει origin του Τζάστιν Τζέφρις, και ξεκάθαρη συσχέτιση Μυθολογίας Κθούλου, σύγχρονης εποχής και Κονανοκοσμοπλασίας;

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Horror Stories of Robert E Howard
Narrated by Robertson Dean
Tantor audio

I have this book upon a shelf with all of the other Del Rey editions, but who knows when I’ll ever get around to reading them? So I found the audiobook on Spotify and began listening to it during my daily commute. What a massive book this is!

Several of Howard’s better known protagonists make appearances in this collection. Such as Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane.

I enjoyed the introduction by Rusty Burke it was very informative.

My only complaint is self-made. I listened to the book exclusively from start to finish. This made the repetitive themes very redundant. I would recommend picking at the work a little at a time to avoid inundating yourself and becoming bored. I especially grew weary of Howard elucidating the origin of many races and the decline of some into subhuman monsters.

A smorgasbord of hair raising tales in which the protagonist often stands firm against the nightmare in the dark. I heartily recommend this collection.

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pulpy Horror Just Beneath and Within Us
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (2008) features at least 20 poems and 35 stories (including a few unfinished ones) written for pulp magazines in the 1920s and 30s. Howard's horror displays his energetic and wide-ranging imagination, being set in various genres, including historical, western, adventure, boxing, and Lovecraftian horror, in various locales, including Texas, New England, France, Ireland, and Africa, and in various eras, from ancient times through the 20th century. He imagined many kinds of horrible supernatural phenomena, including werewolves, witches, ghosts, zombies, vampires, animated skeletons, and tentacular toad gods; possession, curses, sorcery, and demonology; and haunted portraits, dangerous books, soul-snatching opera records, and divine heart transplants.

The collection is uneven. Among the stronger stories are "Rattle of Bones" (in which Solomon Kane meets a notorious brigand, a deranged inn keeper, and a sorcerer's skeleton), "The Horror from the Mound" (in which an ancient vampire invades the western genre), "Worms of the Earth" (in which devolved, serpentine "little people" play a key roll in a Pictish revenge plot against Roman occupiers), "The Hoofed Thing" (in which pets and people go missing after a reclusive researcher moves into the neighborhood), "Black Canaan" (in which sexy skull dances and scary zombie magic make the white ruling class nervous in the swampy south), and "Pigeons from Hell" (in which Howard achieves an American gothic masterpiece with an interesting play on race and place).

Although Howard's ideas about racial identity, purity, and ranking are repugnant, he also wrote stories in which a brutal, racist cowboy gets his just deserts or in which the white Puritan Solomon Kane and his African juju blood brother team up to fight vampire zombies.

Because Howard's horror loses potency once the horrible being or secret or artifact is described or revealed or used, the unfinished miscellanea that conclude the collection are among its strongest pieces. In "The House," for example, the narrator investigates what happened to the half-mad poet Justin Geoffrey when he was a boy to make him so different from his normal family and concludes that it has to do with the locked house featured in an ominous painting by a strange artist.

Robertson Dean does a great job reading everything in the audiobook, wielding his deep and rich voice so as to endow the horror with gravitas and believability (perhaps more than the text will really bear).

Although Howard's characters usually stumble upon things that tear asunder the thin veneer of civilization or the fragile veil of reality, plunging them into "nameless horror" and black abysses, often the most horrible things in his stories are human beings, being greedy, treacherous, vengeful, and violent. Though his stories are rarely really scary, many are morbidly fascinating, and the best transcend their pulp origins and attain a macabre grandeur and a disturbing depth.

[Sushi (寿司) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purtroppo possiedo solo il primo volume in paperback. Il secondo volume lo prenderò sul Kindle. Avrei preferito sul Kobo ma non c'è. 《--- Poi l'ho trovato ma ormai l'avevo già preso per il Kindle.

Finalmente un Urania Horror degno del suo nome. Per quelli che hanno letto il mio commento su quella storia italiana infilata in quello schifo di Dagon (non Lovecraft) in cui dico che vampiri, maghi etc non sono horror è vero ancora penso la stessa cosa. Per me sono fantasy ma è l'ambientazione anche. Mentre in quel raccontino stava meglio un etichettatura action-fantasy e non action-horror qui l'horror è proprio di casa. Quindi si, le creature di Robert E. Howard possono anche appartenere al mondo horror. Volevo solo specificare.

Una cosa invece che mi sarebbe piaciuta sarebbe stato avere le poesie anche in inglese. Sono sicuramente modificate per avere le rime in italiano. Non abbasseranno il voto perchè purtroppo fa parte delle regole di traduzione. Probabilmente era in rima e in rima doveva rimanere in traduzione. È il mio studio delle lingue che me lo fa desiderare.

[Tom Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an outstanding book, and a fine introduction to Howard for anyone who is thinking of investigating his work. Though Howard is most often noted for being the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and, in truth, the entire sword & sorcery genre, he was also a talented writer of horror tales. I was drawn in by Howard's language. His characters live in a world of rediscovered long-lost races of people, of quests, of adventure, greed, doom, mystery and terror. Interesting as well was the number of times genres were mixed: cowboys and vampires, gothic with sword & sorcery, and, of course, the obvious influence of his correspondent friend and supporter, Lovecraft.

If you are a fan of early dark fiction, I suggest you take a look at this one.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection by a master story-teller.

[Sadie · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Howard is focused on the story, he's amazing. He can make you feel chills of creeping horror when he puts his mind to it. He can make you see and feel what it is he's writing about. But that isn't to say you'll be getting a lot of that out of him. He was a prolific author, and the stories in this collection range from amazing to downright boring. Worth reading at least once, because when he's good, he's really good.

A topic that got rather old, to me, was his insistence on writing about race, particularly how superior he felt the Aryan race was. I know, it was the 20's and 30's, but that's hardly an excuse for his constantly bringing it up, particularly when it had no bearing whatsoever with the story. He brought it up so often, in so many stories, that it was headache-inducing from how often I rolled my eyes.

He's a great author, just not all the time.

[Clint]

Howard is famous for his Sword & Sorcery yarns, but for me he truly shines with Horror. This collection is my favorite volume of the recent “un-fucked with” Howard collections.

When I am asked, “what is your favorite REH story?”, without hesitation I answer “Pigeons from Hell”. It is included here amongst some of his more famous Bran Mak Morn stories and Solomon Kane stories.

I can not say every story here is a gem, but many are. Yes, there is some racism “of the day” and no, I will not attempt to justify it, doing so only ignores it which solves nothing. It is a fine collection of tales, and is well illustrated.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty awesome. Some of the first person "I found this ancient tome and yaddia yaddia" Lovecraft pastiches were a little heavy handed and got old after awhile, but I loved the other stuff - especially the weird western stuff, and Solomon Kane. Can't wait for my Solomon Kane collection to get here...

[Austin Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through this hefty tome collecting the majority of Robert E. Howard's short horror stories. Sadly, there weren't any I fully loved and gave 5⭐ to, but most were solid, with only a couple of weaker ones I didn't care for much at all.

Some of the stories in here are ones I've read before in other collections. Some of them I decided to reread to refresh my memory.
I would say my top favorites in this book are:
Hills of the Dead
The Hoofed Thing
The Black Stone
Pigeons From Hell
and The Dwellers Under the Tomb

But I could list like half the contents of the book as honorable mentions, really. Robert E. Howard is a fantastic author and is pretty consistent with his work - but when it comes to horror he just doesn't seem to hit the highs of his peers such as H.P. Lovecraft. I think Howard's writing really shines more in the fantasy / sword and sorcery tales than in horror. Still, I would recommend giving this one a read!

3.5⭐

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fine collection of short stories from Robert E. Howard accompanied by some truly amazing artwork by Greg Staples. As I always do with these Del Rey collections, I read one story per week (with a few exceptions when I couldn’t resist the urge to read just one more) and thus it has taken me five full months to get through the collection. No doubt I will go into withdrawal now until I start the next set.

There are 60 items within, counting stories, poems, and unfinished fragments. There are, of course, horror elements in all 60 but the range of “horror” is quite vast. We are treated to everything from traditional supernatural tales, to occult horror, to psychological scares. Occasionally we encounter characters we’ve come across before, including Solomon Kane and Steve Costigan but for the most part these are all unique, stand-alone stories that demonstrate the amazing versatility of this gifted writer. There is even a story that ties in to HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos (not surprising given the pair’s well-known long-term correspondence).

No doubt I will return to these stories from time to time, just like my other REH collections. They never seem to get old.

[Mark Tallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 * This is overall an excellent collection of stories. The way that they have been collected is to be applauded as well as they appear in order as REH wrote them. There are gems in this book and it has been a pleasure to read them. My appreciation for Robert E.Howard continues to just grow and grow. Considering his short life & only 12 years of writing (at least from.a publication perspective), its staggering how much he wrote and the high quality attained for much of it. I firmly believe REH was ahead of his time. His prose is extraordinary in parts, just beautiful writing. I highly recommend this book, dipping in and out of it as I did, is my advice to potential readers. A final word or two, are these the very best stories that he wrote? No, not all of them, but some of them are in his top tier of stories. Like all collections, readers will enjoy some stories more than others.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert E. Howard has attained eternal fame (alas, same can't be said about his fortune) thanks to his works involving the Cimmerian, the Puritan, the King et.al. But he had also written some superb pieces of atmospheric horror. In these days of political correctness, much of such writing has acquired a taint. But if you can manage to overlook all those racist attitude etc., you come across top class writing resulting in a thickening sense of dread and a slow desperation.
No, you wouldn't be afraid, especially after seeing how horrific the real world is. But you are bound to enjoy these classic works, including some very fine poems.
Recommended, indeed.

[Lexi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Characters are vivid and real, and the storyline is completely racist. I understand the need for the publisher to warn of the racism at the beginning of the book but to make “excuses” for Robert E. Howard is problematic.

Excusing this racist man, Howard by saying by the standards of Howard's time and place--the 1920 and '30s South and Southwest--his racism wasn't that unusual. That’s utter BS. Doesn’t matter if racism was common place; it was and is still unacceptable.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag - some stories were effectively creepy, but some were just ok. A huge collection, as it contains absolutely eveything labelled Horror by this author - including poems and unfinished stories. A must for real fans, but others might want to browse it to find stories that appeal to them.