Sword & sorcery, two Irish authors, a book on writing, and a comic book this month.
The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard (Berkley Medallion, 1977)
After his enemies use an ancient sorcerer to depose him, King Conan fights to regain his throne. Howard revisits ideas from earlier stories in this novel-length Conan tale and I think he does so effectively. I liked the episodic nature and the large cast of characters, as an older, more mature Conan travels across Hyboria encountering past allies and foes. The chapters set in Stygia were a favorite. On the other hand, there were quite a lot of chance encounters and Conan got knocked out a lot. While I don’t think this is Howard’s best Conan tale it was still a great read.
The Berkley Medallion edition includes a foreword and afterword by Karl Edward Wagner that gives interesting details about the history of Howard’s only novel-length work.
The Bloody Crown of Conan by Robert E. Howard (Del Rey, 2004)
This collects three long Conan tales by Robert E. Howard, two novellas and The Hour of the Dragon, the only novel-length story he ever completed, along with numerous illustrations by Gary Gianni. I like all the illustrators of the Howard Del Rey collections, but Gianni is my favorite. His pen and ink illustrations really remind me of pulp magazines.
Gardens of Evil: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 6 (Wildside Press, 2015)
This is the sixth volume of a series that collects the fiction and poetry of Robert E. Howard as it originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine. This volume (Kindle version) has six short stories and one poem. Four of the stories are Conan the Barbarian stories, three of which are fantastic. Full review here:
We Learn by Writing: Gardens of Fear: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 6
The Canterville Ghost, The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde (Penguin Classics, (2010)
This is a collection of Oscar Wilde’s three short story collections.
The Happy Prince and Other Stories is a collection of five stories for children first published in 1888. The stories are filled with metaphor and allegory exploring themes of responsibility, compassion, and self-sacrifice. They’re not very subtle and while they may have been written for children, there’s plenty of humor, irony, and satire of the absurd for adults to appreciate. My favorite of the three collections.
A House of Pomegranates is a collection of four dark fairy tales first published in 1891. The stories explore themes of class, greed, cruelty, and love. All the stories have beautiful prose, but I thought “The Star Child” was too heavy handed, as was the ending of “The Young King.” On the other hand, “The Birthday of the Infanta'' was a dark gem and I loved “The Fisherman and his Soul,” a deep story that asks questions about love and the soul. I was still thinking about it after finishing it.
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories is a collection first published in 1891 originally consisting of four stories. A fifth story, “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” was added to later editions. It’s not included in this Penguin collection but it’s in the Kindle edition I have. “Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime” and “The Sphinx Without a Secret” are semi-humorous mysteries, “The Model Millionaire” is a quick humorous story, and “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” is a mystery about the person that Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to. As with most of Wilde’s work, the stories include irony and satire. My favorite is “The Canterville Ghost,” a gothic ghost story that starts out hilarious but then becomes quite touching.
Dubliners by James Joyce (Penguin Classics, 2014)
Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories about Irish middle-class life at the turn of the century, first published in 1914. The stories focus on moments in characters' lives that sometimes lead to some form of self-realization. I loved the prose at times, especially the description of characters. While I enjoyed most of the stories, it took a little extra work. First, I had to refer to the appendix quite often as the stories include a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary and slang. Second, after I finished each story, I read a summary online. This helped me to understand a lot of symbolism that hadn’t been clear to me. Overall, it was worth the effort. The stories are filled with linguistic richness, and some were deeply moving leaving a strong impression on me.
Two quotes from Colum McCann’s introduction will give you an idea of what the stories are like:
“The triumph of Dubliners is that most of the main characters — and by default, then, the reader — achieve an epiphany. The epiphany is often ambiguous, or faintly suggested. We must work to step into it.”
“The stories in Dubliners, with their sudden endings, their lack of dramatic resolution, their frequent repetitions, call on us, as readers, to constantly evaluate our own everyday lives.”
Non-fiction
Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg (Vintage, 2013)
While there are a few useful ideas about sentence brevity and the writing process, most of the book consists of overly Zen-like advice which I didn’t find helpful, didn’t make sense to me, or got contradicted in later passages. There’s also quite a lot of repetition. It didn’t help that the book is written in the form of poem-like stanzas that take their time getting to the point. It all became tedious very quickly.
Comics
The Savage Sword of Conan #1 (Titan Comics, 2024)
A nice package marred by what I thought was awkward art in the lead story. Full review here:
We Learn by Writing: The Savage Sword of Conan #1 from Titan Comics
That's it for March. I'm currently reading The Fisherman, a horror novel by John Langan. It has a Lovecraftian vibe to it which I'm enjoying so far.
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