The Solomon Kane Omnibus

Solomon Kane

by Robert E. Howard

Contains: Skulls in the Stars, The Footfalls Within, The Moon of Skulls, The Hills of the Dead,Wings in the Night, Rattle of Bones, Red Shadows

Genres: Fantasy

182 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2010

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

[Attela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alla fine lo stile e i temi cari a Howard sono quelli; chi ha apprezzato Conan apprezzerà anche Solomon Kane e viceversa.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solomon Kane is a wandering Puritan that delivers justice with blade and blunderbuss. He roams the grim wilderness of the 15th century where supernatural danger and haunted ruins lurk in every corner. Vengeful ghosts, bloodthirsty demons, dark sorcerers; the mad avenger Kane challenges them all armed with a fanatic’s faith and a warrior’s savage heart.

Dark, violent and adventurous stories. The atmosphere is chilling, the fast-paced bloody action is constantly exciting and the fiends are grotesque. Wings in the Night and Skulls in the Stars were my favorites of the bunch, they best showed how morally flawed Kane is as a character and the horrors of the world he lives in. They best revealed the grim antihero hiding beneath his facade of being a holy man. The dark fantasy prose and thunderous action scenes were on par with Conan, but the stories and world building weren't quite on the same level as the tales of the barbarian hero.

I didn’t like how heavily a lot of the “horror and mystery” in this series of tales relied on outdated racist themes. I understand this series was written during a different era and I expect there to be themes like that, but when the entire plot of some of the stories rely entirely on misinformed racial prejudice and cultural ignorance, it makes them hard to enjoy. Some Conan stories have similar issues, but not nearly as many or on the same level. There are some cringeworthy moments that anyone who's read Lovecraft will feel familiar with. If nothing else, it’s worth reading for the cool action scenes, awesome gothic scenery and gruesome monsters.

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