A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (first of the Barsoom / John Carter series)

Former Confederate captain John Carter, left with no means of income after the war, heads to Arizona and strikes a quartz mine. Trying to rescue his partner from Apaches, Carter takes a wrong turn and comes to a cave, in which he finds a large room, where he is overthrown by a paralytic gas. With a supreme effort, he attempts to move his muscles, but instead his spirit/soul/whatever leaves his body, and he thus exits the cave completely naked. Staring out at the night sky, Carter sees the planet Mars and feels called to by the god of war. He reaches out his arms, senses cold and darkness, and opens his eyes "upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars."

If you can get past that extreme leap of faith, the rest of A Princess of Mars is pretty easy to stomach. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs (author also of the numerous Tarzan stories) peoples his debut novel (expanded from the short story "Under the Moons of Mars" and serialized in All-Story before being published as a novel in 1919) with characters that are easy to identify with, though they happen to be green-skinned Martians. Though I had long heard of the stories, I was first intrigued to try this one due to its being listed in the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns, which stated that it falls firmly into the subcategory of Space Western (the same category under which Star Wars falls).

It was primarily this, but also the fact that I had enjoyed Tarzan when I read it so long ago, that led me to seek it out — preferably in audio, through which I do most of my literary experimentation. I found the Books In Motion audio at the library. Jack Sondericker reads A Princess of Mars from the perspective of time, much as the early part of the novel suggests. His voice is that of an man much older than the protagonist, leading a semblance of retrospective realism to this fantastic tale. (The Librivox audio is also a solid interpretation, with Mark Nelson offering a professional-quality reading that can be downloaded for free.)

Because of the lighter gravity of Mars ("Barsoom" to the locals), Carter finds himself a superman among his new neighbors, able to leap 30 feet in the air and 100 feet away when threatened. The early chapters of A Princess of Mars are mostly given to writing of the expository sort, involving Carter's observations of the strange details of Martian life, peppered throughout with feats of his prowess, which impresses the seemingly unemotional Martians in the only way important to them. Carter even becomes a chieftain of the Tharks after defeating one of them.

I don't usually get into books filled with made-up names and long descriptions of the differences between Earth and whatever planet the story happens to be set on, but Burroughs manages to make it interesting through sheer imagination, with just enough things not so different to balance the very different. A Princess of Mars is such a mythic success at this, it is impossible not to get involved in the exploits of John Carter and the female prisoner he comes across, who looks very different from the green-skinned Martians and who turns out to be Dejah Thoris, red-skinned princess of Helium.

The rest of the book involves the duo's escape from Thark, as they fall for each other, get separated, then reunited, and eventually make a go of it. The ending would be a downer if I didn't know that there are numerous sequels, the first of which is The Gods of Mars. But if you're looking for a full reading experience, with plenty of action, adventure, and even romance, you'd do well to pick up a copy of A Princess of Mars.

Crimson Shadows: The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume One (edited by Rusty Burke, illustrated by Jim and Ruth Keegan)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2009. Reprinted with permission.

Robert E. Howard wrote short stories during the heyday of the pulp era, mostly for Weird Tales, from 1924 until his death by suicide in 1936 at age 30. Howard wrote in various genres, but he is now best known for his stories popularizing the fantasy subgenre "sword and sorcery," and especially the Cimmerian hero popularly known as Conan the Barbarian. His range of talent, however, is becoming better known, as pulp-era fiction regains a modern readership. Subterranean Press and Del Rey Books are doing their part to keep Howard's name in front of book-buyers with, respectively, their limited-edition hardcover and affordable trade-paperback collections of his work. Crimson Shadows: The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume One is the first of two "best of" retrospectives.

Compiler and editor Rusty Burke has done a great job selecting 16 stories and 12 poems that offer an idea of the range of Howard's output. Helping him in his selection was a poll of Robert E. Howard fans; 19 of the top 25 vote-getters are included. Everything from sword and sorcery to adventure to horror, from crime to boxing to Westerns, is showcased here. This does give the collection a scattered feel sometimes, but what holds them all together is the quality of the author's writing.

Both versions of Crimson Shadows are illustrated by Jim and Ruth Keegan. I find their art serviceable but too static for Howard's active prose. It probably would have been good enough had I not first read The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Greg Staples. His art in that collection is so emotionally and physically realistic, often seeming to glower or move on the page, that it makes the Keegans' work pale in comparison. Rarely do the couple choose to depict action scenes, and when they do, the positions feel posed, where Staples seems to catch his subjects in mid-motion.

For Keegan devotees, however, the Subterranean Press limited edition hardcover is a must have. It is not only signed by the artists but also has four new color plates (one of which also serves as new cover art) not included in the Del Rey trade paperback.

Opening the collection is "The Shadow Kingdom," featuring Kull from Atlantis, usurping king of Valusia. Kull meets his own attempted usurpers in the Serpent Men, a fascinating race of snake-headed individuals who deal in mesmerism and shape-shifting. Kull has to struggle with his own doubts to maintain the throne. Though similar in many ways to the later character of Conan (the first Conan story was a rewritten Kull story), I find Kull superior due to his tendency toward deeper thinking. (He appears twice more in this collection.)

"Red Shadows" introduces Howard's 17th-century Puritan hero Solomon Kane. Avenging the death of a young woman, Kane travels for years to find Le Loup ("the wolf"), meeting "good juju man" N'Longa — who later plays a larger role in Kane's life — for the first time. Howard doesn't shy away from the action here, putting Kane in peril no less than three times. Many consider this the beginning of the sword-and-sorcery genre — "The Shadow Kingdom" also has its supporters for that title — with the main difference being this one's use of a realistic setting (Kull lives around 100,000 years B.C.). I've experienced "Red Shadows" multiple times, in print and audio, and it never loses its power to entertain. Both Kane and Le Loup are indelible characters, and the action sets up Kane admirably well for his later stories. (The poem "One Black Stain," also included here, has Kane stand up to Francis Drake in the face of an execution.)

In "The Dark Man," Turlogh Dubh goes to save a girl from his family though his family no longer recognizes him. This story is a terrific adventure with a surprise that connects it to another Howard stalwart, Pict king Bran Mak Morn. "Kings of the Night" brings Bran and Kull together through an ancient lineage. A wizard conjures Kull up from the ancient past when Bran's potential fighters ask for "a king, neither Pict, Gael, nor Briton" to lead them against the invading Romans. This is truly one of the great battle stories, with realism, history, and myth blended in ideal measure.

Sailor Steve Costigan is confronted with the prospect of a dog fight involving Costigan's best pal Mike, a bull dog,in "The Fightin'est Pair." This story, one of Howard's famous boxing yarns, showcases in a surprisingly sensitive manner, without getting blubbery, the love of a man (who talks with his fists) for his dog. Those wondering if Howard had a more romantic side need only read "For the Love of Barbara Allen," a story of love across time, told in the style of a Southern folktale. I was so surprised at how moving it was, that it just may be a new favorite.

An unexpected highlight of this collection is a selection of Howard's Lovecraftian horror. H.P. Lovecraft was Howard's friend and mentor, and they corresponded by mail for years. Howard's confidence is astonishing, as he boldly makes his own additions to the Lovecraft canon (Von Junzt's Nameless Cults, poet Justin Geoffrey) that have become as much a part of the Mythos as Lovecraft's own works. But even as he adds to another author's world, he remains firmly in Robert E. Howard territory, and these tales are just as enjoyable with no prior appreciation for such "Yog-Sothothery" (what Lovecraft called the practice of Mythos-sharing, which he supported).

Having long been enthralled by tales of rare books and their supernatural effects on unassuming readers, I was deeply engaged by "The Black Stone," especially by the fact of its tangential relationship to "Worms of the Earth" (wherein Pict king Bran Mak Morn searches for the same Black Stone). Read together, they immerse the reader in a fascinating otherworld in a way that would be impossible encountering the pieces individually.

As you may surmise from the title, "Lord of the Dead" is less a mystery than an adventure tale, though it is up to oversized detective Steve Harrison to figure out why someone who died 30 years ago is trying to kill him right now. The confrontation with Erlik Khan was reminiscent of The Mask of Fu Manchu, but I'm still interested in reading more about this "big dick" (as the narration refers to him) because, unless I miss my guess, Harrison is the first detective to so deftly use an ancient axe against his enemies.

Though many Howard fans are bound to be appalled, I must state here that his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, is vastly overrated. I've read around half a dozen of the author's Conan stories and, apart from Howard's wonderful way with words, have found little to impress. Conan seems rather uncomplicated when compared to Solomon Kane or Bran Mak Morn, and Howard seems to run off at the pen writing of the barbarian in a way not seen in his other, more tightly written tales. (By far the longest, these two stories alone take up just under one-quarter of the book's 500 pages.) The result is I consistently found my mind wandering during "The People of the Black Circle" and "Beyond the Black River," something that never happens with his other work. Since I had not read these two before — and since they are considered the best of the best, so to speak — I was more than willing to let them convert me. But they did little but confirm my belief that Conan, while a source of great pleasure for many, is simply not for me.

But the Cimmerian has been popular from the beginning, and perhaps with good reason. Howard himself stated in a letter to Lovecraft that "his supernatural adventures aside — he is the most realistic character I ever evolved... he seemed to step full-grown into my consciousness when I wrote the first yarn of the series." So, Howard may have continued to write Conan's adventures if not for the convergence of two things: his steadily growing interest in the facts and legends of the West, and a steadily growing sum of money owed to him by Weird Tales. Both combined in such a way that Howard write primarily Westerns until his death.

"The Valley of the Worm" distinguishes itself from a plethora of sword-fighting stories by virtue of its unexpected conclusion. In most other ways, it is merely average Robert E. Howard, though any story that features the beheading of a giant snake (another mythos link?) is OK in my book. "The Grey God Passes" is the story of heroic Conn the kern and his role in the historic Battle of Clontarf. It contains a full-fledged epic story in just 30 pages.

"Hawk in the Hills" is the second of the five El Borak (Arabic for "the swift") tales published during Howard's lifetime. And the man who was born Francis X. Gordon is certainly fleet of foot, finger, and faculties, but he also talks too much, which often slows down the action in an otherwise fine story. This Texas gunfighter transplanted to the Middle East (Howard reportedly created the character when he was ten) gives the author the opportunity to write a Western character who confronts the same kind of exotic villains his other heroes did.

Breckinridge Elkins, Howard's most popular Western character by far, intends to bring a pretty schoolteacher from nearby Chawed Ear to Bear Creek by whatever means necessary in "Sharp's Gun Serenade" ("Bear Creek is goin' to have culture if I have to wade fetlock deep in gore to pervide it"). This was the last of the Elkins stories, and it is told, like the rest, in a "tall tale" style peppered with low-brow humor and Howard's deft touch with dialect.

Not only does Howard write gripping tales, but he also uses the English language with a skill I've not yet seen in genre fiction. His vocabulary range is immensely impressive, and I've never seen so many semi-colons all in one place — and used with such skill. Howard picks his words with a master's touch, making unconventional choices that still retain easy readability, like in selection from "Beyond the Black River": "A heavy chopping crunch sounded behind the leaves. The bushes were shaken violently, and simultaneously with the sound, an arrow arched erratically from among them and vanished among the trees along the trail."

Not difficult language, by any means — merely the right word for the purpose. One never gets the sense that such and such a word was "good enough," but that only the perfect one would do to set the proper mood. Yet his descriptive narrative style flows smoothly even as it speaks poetically.

Readers who tend to eschew modern poetry need not skip Howard's verse. There's a lot here to appreciate. It is written in an older style that any student of literature will find familiar. This makes it highly approachable. "The Song of a Mad Minstrel" seems to be sung by a demonic entity. It is filled with Howard's wonderfully specific word choices, like "There were crimson gulfs unplumbed, there were black wings over a sea; / There were pits where mad things drummed, and foaming blasphemy." The selection of "The Dust Dance" included is particularly effective in illustrating the epic span of man, as told by one of the first. "The Tide" has much the same effect as "For the Love of Barbara Allen." And that's just three of the dozen poems that act as palate cleansers of a sort to Crimson Shadows. Interspersed throughout, they only add to the total effect.

For the Howard completists, the editors have included an exhaustive rundown of how the versions of the pieces published in Crimson Shadows: The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume One are different from their original sources, from the placement of commas to the cleaning up of misspellings and further. I was for some reason enthralled by this information, mostly because it shows that Burke and company are fans and scholars who want nothing more than to present Howard in the best possible light. Their choice to use en-dashes instead of em-dashes throughout is mildly irritating, but the text is otherwise nearly pristine. Other extras include a foreword from the Keegans, an introduction and a short bio of Howard from editor Burke, and Charles Hoffman's "Robert E. Howard: Twentieth Century Mythmaker."

As a final note, I would just like to mention that, before being introduced to the work of Robert E. Howard, I was under the impression that fantasy was a tired genre with nothing to offer me. Also, short stories held no appeal. These two perceptions were turned on their ears upon entering Howard's world. After only one book, The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, I was an instant enthusiast, and Crimson Shadows has given me all the more reason to remain that way. It confirms my opinion (formed by the Horror Stories) that Robert E. Howard was a Great Writer and one who deserves to be reevaluated by those who feel that men who do their best communicating with swords, guns, and large fists are not to be taken seriously. This collection strongly suggests otherwise.

Shadow Kingdoms: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume One (audio book read by Charles McKibben, Bob Souer, Bob Barnes, and Brian Holsapple)

Shadow Kingdoms is volume one of Wildside Press's series of ten books collecting "The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard," namely Howard's stories as published in the magazine Weird Tales, in chronological order. Audio publisher Audio Realms has taken a selection of the stories in that volume and produced an unabridged recording of its own, also called Shadow Kingdoms.

Though they're not the first ones presented, I began with the three stories of my favorite character, Solomon Kane, featured in this collection. "Red Shadows" introduces Howard's 17th-century Puritan hero. Avenging the death of a young woman, Kane travels for years to find Le Loup ("the wolf"), meeting "good juju man" N'Longa — who later plays a larger role in Kane's life — for the first time. Howard doesn't shy away from the action here, putting Kane in peril no less than three times.

I've experienced "Red Shadows" multiple times, in print and audio, and it never loses its power to entertain. Both Kane and Le Loup are indelible characters, and the action sets up Kane admirably well for his later stories.

In "Rattle of Bones," Kane and Gaston L'Armon enter a tavern for the night and discover there's a good reason it's called "The Cleft Skull." This story and "Skulls in the Stars" have suspense, death, and insanity portrayed with skill, and they really show Howard at his best. In some ways, Solomon Kane reminds me of the Western hero: stoic and strong and operating under a strict moral code of his own devising. The Kane stories offer the same kind of entertainment provided by modern Western series like The Trailsman and The Gunsmith: a sole hero who comes in, solves a problem, and travels off again, ready for another adventure.

"The Lost Race" is one of the earliest of Howard's Weird Tales publications, from 1927. Howard's appreciation of the history of the Pict race was already long-standing. In this tale, a fellow named Cororuc happens upon some dwarfish folk ("small dark people") and gets mixed up in an age-old revenge. Written when its author was only 18, it has a tangential relationship to his stories of Bran Mak Morn (though the Pict king himself is not mentioned).

"The Dream Snake" stands out as a particularly well-done pure horror story in the classic told-by-the-campfire vein. That is, its ending is entirely predictable and, in fact, inevitable from the beginning. But Howard's portrait of a man in the grip of an intense lifelong fear (from a horrific recurring dream) is utterly believable. A well-performed reading of "The Dream Snake" could be the highlight of any Halloween night storytelling session.

"The Hyena" is a high-energy adventure tale set in Africa and involving the antagonism between a fetish man and an American rancher. The American is kind of dumb — I guess he's never read this kind of "twist" ending before — but this doesn't ruin the tense showdown.

"The Shadow Kingdom" is the first featuring Kull from Atlantis, usurping king of Valusia. Kull meets his own attempted usurpers in the Serpent Men, a fascinating race of snake-headed individuals who deal in mesmerism and shape-shifting. Kull has to struggle with his own doubts to maintain the throne. Many consider this story to be the beginning of the sword-and-sorcery genre ("Red Shadows" also has its supporters for that title), with the main difference being the latter's use of a realistic setting (Kull lives around 100,000 years B.C.). Though similar in many ways to the later character of Conan the Cimmerian (the first Conan story was a rewritten Kull story), I find Kull superior due to his tendency toward deeper thinking.

"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" finds Kull in a melancholy mood. His friend Brule the spear-slayer suggests a night on the town, but that does not appeal. Later, a blonde with "violet eyes" recommends a visit to Tuzun Thune, a wizard who shows Kull his hall of mirrors. Kull sits before one often, expostulating on which Kull is the real one. Sounds like Kull didn't take his meds. After such a heroic turn in "The Shadow Kingdom," this story may disappoint some. But perhaps it was merely the author's way of putting a little of himself in his work, given Howard's own notorious bouts with depression. It certainly seems like being king isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"The Voice of El Lil" was actually published in Weird Tales's sister publication Oriental Stories, and it's actually from volume two of the Weird Works series, The Moon of Skulls and doesn't appear in the print version of Shadow Kingdoms at all. Why this was done is rather confusing, but the story itself is one of Howard's rousing "lost race" stories. It starts out slow but shows many facets by the end.

All in all, Shadow Kingdoms is highly entertaining listening. Audio Realms seems to have picked the most exciting stories of the bunch and given them to the narrators best suited for them. (Usually, single-author collections have a single reader.) I look forward to their future recordings in this series.

Spanish Adventure Novel Quote of the Day (from Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte)

"The story I am going to tell you must have taken place around sixteen hundred and ­twenty-­something ... in which the captain not only came close to losing the ­patched-­up hide he had managed to save in Flanders, and in battling Turkish and Barbary corsairs, but also made himself a pair of enemies who would harass him for the rest of his life.... It was also the year in which I fell in love like a bawling calf, then and forever, with Angélica de Alquézar, who was as perverse and wicked as only Evil in the form of a blonde eleven- or ­twelve-­year-­old girl can be."

— from Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte
(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)