Others say...

"Conan is the man!"
This is great stuff, utterly action-packed! Howard has a wonderful sense of words, and--though he makes the occasional error in cognate reuse (e.g., "the courier coursed down the corridor")--he describes people, places, and events in jaw-dropping detail. You can faint from the splendor of the fabulously wealthy cities and places he word-paints ('limns', to use a favorite term of his). I could do without the all-too-frequent brutally detailed battle scenes, indicating precisely which archers and pikemen were positioned where and whose horse slipped in whose blood. Just when you're about to lose interest, rest assured that a ferocious dragon or wacky gorilla-monster lurks around the next corner. Oh, and there's some very good black magical humor, e.g., when one wizard, in the guise of an eagle, makes off with the head of a second wizard, whose headless body runs after him, muttering curses. You've got to admit that that's imaginative. I witthold my sixth star because of the uneven nature of some of the stories: indeed, the earlier tales seem to flow better than the later ones (n.b. that Conan's character chronology is unrelated to Howard's authorship chronology). Also, the dialogue occasionally seems silly or stinted: it's hard to believe that a barbarian--even though we know he's thoughtful and good-hearted--would engage in such lengthy monologues (all but monologues, I should say) while supposedly "conversing" with other characters. His words sound like what one would write, not like what one--a barbarian, moreover--would say. But never mind these nickety-pickety nitpicks: this is great, great stuff. After enjoying these, you may want to look into the other volumes (but of course!) and Howard's other works: Bran Mak Morn, Kull, and Solomon Kane. The last of these has adventures such as battling voodoo demons in darkest Africa, chasing vampire queens into forgotten cities, and engaging in swordplay with the enchanted skeletons of murdered sorcerers. Aah! That's the ticket!

"Better than the movie"
I've read thousands of books and there are few writers that can compare to Robert E. Howard. He is probably not the inventor of sword and sorcery, that credit probably belongs to Homer or someone else before the dawn of time, but he surely belongs to the honor roll of fiction writers. Although, he wrote for pulp mazazines in the thirties and each story is a tale unto itself, the character of Conan manages to bind each tale into one story of epic proportions. I believe he can be compared favorably to J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert in his ability to weave entertaining fiction in a completely imaginary world and age. I envy you if you are reading his stories for the very first time. If, like me, you are reading these stories again after a very long time, you're still in for a treat.

"Super Reader"
Conquering Sword of Conan : Red Nails - Robert E. Howard
Conquering Sword of Conan : The Black Stranger - Robert E. Howard
Conquering Sword of Conan : Beyond the Black River - Robert E. Howard
Conquering Sword of Conan : Queen of the Black Coast - Robert E. Howard
Conquering Sword of Conan : Jewels of Gwahlur - Robert E. Howard


Download Conan - Red Nails

Conan is travelling, finds a dead woman, and then encounters Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. After trading some insults, they have the misfortune to stumble across a dragon.

Then they have fun in an abandoned city full of crazed warriors, two evil leering royals, and a third undeed type one. Capture, slayage, all the great stuff in this tale of a fantastic partnership.

5 out of 5



A tale of three brigands, that starts slow, and then rip-roars along. With multiple pirates, you know there has to be a treasure map. This time, to the Treasure of Tranicos.

Add in a mystical demon warrior, a bunch of raiding Picts, a couple of sieges, three pirates that can't trust each other, a beautiful woman, and Conan, and all hell will break loose.

4 out of 5



Conan is working around a fort on the border of Aquilonia, when many tribes of Picts, united by the wizard Zogar Sag, combine to attack.

Conan takes out a scouting party to see what goes on, but they are ambushed, and most captured and killed, except one man, that he rescues. The wizard summons beasts by virtue of the powers of an old god, whom Conan is familiar with. With the help of an old dog, Slasher, Conan and his companion try and get the settlers to safety, while the fort is overrun.

Zogar Sag makes a mistake when he sends a fleshly avatar to try and destroy Conan. The barbarian kills the avatar, which destroys the wizard, and the Pictish invasion is over.



4.5 out of 5



One of the classic Conan stories. The barbarian goes a-reavin', and finds another of the rare women that can match him. Belit has fire, and presence, and command, but again, it does not end well. Highly recommended.

4.5 out of 5



To quote Mr. Howard - "Conan was basically a direct-actionist. Such subtlety as he possessed had been acquired through contact with the more devious races."

For military reasons, Conan has to get the Teeth of Gwahlur from their hiding place in a mystic castle before his political and military opposition.

He decides he can get the girl Muriela to run the same scam she tried on him, on some others. The only problem is that the real goddess Yelaya shows up! Then it is time to scarper, sharpish.

4.5 out of 5


In other words, a top notch selection of Conan adventuring.



"Robert's Final Realization of Conan!"
The Servants of Bit-Yakin- In exemplary Wierd Tales Robert E. style, this one starts with Conan almost inexplicably scaling the side wall of an ancient city in a place we've never heard of. The barbarian has come to this place through information gleaned on adventures that Robert never told us about, as though the author had some Hyborean Silmarillion stashed somewhere that the recyclers have never found.

It's an excellent story that may have equal claim to several genres; horror, fantasy, sword and sorcery, and maybe even prehistoric fiction. Howard had an uncanny knowledge of those days when ice age species still survived in remote places, and had incredible insight into theorizing what it must have been like in the days when civilization vied with barbarism. What's interesting to me is that we're finding out these days that civilization is alot older than we think, but in Howard's day anything older than 3000 BC was considered prehistoric. Conan's era was around 9000 BC, with embellishments from many other eras in different places where civilization was replacing barbarism. Certainly, we now know, there would have been ancient deserted structures at this time, maybe even with remnants of antedeluvian archaic homo sapien living therein. Certainly Jericho had walls before Conan's time, and both cro-magnon and the southeast asian hominid dubbed "the hobbit" lived at least up until 10,000 BC. But how did Howard know it? How did his imagination describe so vividly and personally how life must have been in those brutal and barbaric times?

Beyond The Black River- WOW! This is probably Howard's most memorable Conan tale, told from the perspective of a hardy and valiant but lesser man who's lot in life is to travel and fight with Conan for a spell. Through this frontiersman's eyes, we understand Conan as a character perhaps better than we ever have before. The illustration of the Balthas's last charge, dog at side, flashes in my mind when I think of this tale.
"He was a man," said Conan "I drink to his shade, and to the shade of the dog, who knew no fear."

The Black Stranger is a pirate tale and frontier yarn that is among Howard's most developed plot structures, characterization, and writing skill.

The Man-Eaters of Zamboula melds fantasy and horror like only Robert E. can, a wicked tale of treachery and ancient necromancy.


Red Nails is definitely one of the greatest of the Conan stories. Again Howard shows uncanny preternatural knowledge, with an ancient city very much like some of the stranger ones excavated in the middle east, and a realistic dragon more like Megalania Prisca than Saphira and her influences.



In the appendix, Wolves Beyond the Border is a special rare treat.

Enjoy and enjoy again the genious of Robert E!

J. Lyon Layden
The Other Side of Yore


"Greatness doesn't fade with time"
I have been reading the works of Robert E. Howard for half a century and in all that time never has his prose failed to amaze me in it's richness, its intensity, and it's unfailing ability to take me from the world around me to the worlds that Howard created with such unfailing verve and passion.
In this series of books we at last can read Howard unpolluted by the editorial persversion of those who wished to make a better time frame for the stories, or who thought the readers of heroic fantasy were not capable of ignoring such inanities as a misspelled word, or a small glitch in the temporal continuity of a characters life, or a kingdoms identity.
I won't bore the reader here with a rehashing of Howard's brief but prodigiously creative life. Nor will I rave about the fact the he single handedly created a whole genre. I will simply say, as an author, as an artist, as an image maker, I have yet in my now long life and as an officianado of the so called sword and sorcery genre, ever seen his equal. Not Burroughs, nor Kline nor Leiber, not Bradbury, nor any other author that I have discovered in my unending search for great fantasy reading materials has ever created prose that with such pure and unimpeded energy throws the reader into a fictional environ so alive with the sights, sounds, smells and the beingness of worlds that existed in one mind. Howard's unique ability to put you into his worlds always raises the unanswerable question; if he had lived to a more mature age, would he have grown and expanded his incredible gift to write works of greater depth and meaning? Well, that question will only be answered when all of us who live on this plane, and those worthy of it, meet Howard on the Eylisian fields, amongst the other mighty warriors who did walk this world. I have no doubt that if the gods are just, that somewhere in that realm across the river styx there lives a warrior who once wote those tales, and who now, with all those other warriors who conquered and created empires, fights battles each day, and with the coming dawn, all those who were slain on that field the day before awake to grog and a linsome lass to prepare them to fight that glorious and unending contest once again. There I think you will find him, forever what he was, a warrior, filled with a lust for life and adventure. Look to the front of the lines and there you will find him with sword and buckler hewing and roaring his joy of life.