/lit/ - Literature

Wolfshead

>>19579170
whats it about? it have one of his major characters in it?

>>19579168
Solomon Kane

>>19579168
Solomon Kane

>>19579168
Solomon Kane needs more trans-POC representation.

I'll start with some of howard's more well known characters that are collected in del ray paperbacks
>solomon kane
16th century swashbuckling puritan witchslayer and vanquisher of all evils who roams around europe and africa to atone for his sins of a previous life of a rapacious pirate
>bran mak morn
the last pureblooded pictish king of a dying race, one of the most tragic of howard's characters because he knows that his people are fading from the earth. if you have to read one bran mak morn story read worms of the earth
>el borak
high adventure amongst the warring tribes of afghanistan, if you like indiana jones or king solomons mines you'll like el borak
Then you have his other characters and his other tales. many of these can be found as individual stories in the del ray paperbacks themselves or can be found in older collections of his work
>James Allison
Jack-London influenced tales about a cripple who is able to travel through time and experience the lives of his ancestors, all involve blood and battle and death and 20th century aryan racial science. as far as i'm aware none of these are collected in a single paperback so you'll have to look around. i recommend the valley of the worm and the marchers of valhalla
>cormac mac art
An irish pirate, Cormac mac art and his danish buddy wulfhere travel around dark ages britain and fight and loot and generally do as they please. the relationship between cormac and wulfhere are kind of like a buddy cop movie or a proto-fafhrd and the grey mouser (if fafhrd and the mouser were rapacious reavers and raiders)
>Cormac Fitzgeoffrey
Hiberno Norman warrior who travels around the middle east looking for adventure and gold.
>Turlough O'Brien
Irish outcast and reaver travels around viking era britain. very similar to the cormac mac art tales and have some connections with the bran mak morn tales additionally
This is just a brief taste of howard and his characters. i haven't even covered his more comic characters like breckenride elkins and sailor steve costigan, nor his other historical fiction and fantasy stories which are great. practically anything written by howard is worth reading. you do eventually start to notice the tropes that howard uses. The protagonist either being a black haired, blue eyed gael or an aryan, barbarism being superior to civilisation, "pantherlike thews", but those are all part of the charm. you'll notice that some of the stories and characters reference others in some way. Bran mak morn appears as a wooden statue in a turlogh o'brien story, and howard's love for the picts is prominent because they feature in almost all of his stories set around ireland or scotland.

>>19579207
>>19579240
Why Solomon Kane? Not disagreeing just curious

>>19579356
All of these sound awesome. I honestly am beginning to think Howard is my favorite author. Don't know why, maybe it's just the adventure aspect but I really enjoy his writing even if his characters start to run together. Even his side characters in some of his stories/fragments, like the guy in a fragment from the Conan stories that has run from a mercenary army he and Conan were in and winds up in a desert city fighting some monster

Looking Solomon Kane is the way to go but el borak and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey interest me

>>19579396
I beat the same path with you, moved on to Solomon Kane, next. Wasn't disappointed, that's why.

I also added some Bran Mak Morn stories in between as well.

>>19579471
Kings of the night was good so I wanna read bran at some point. I'm just worried it won't be quite as good as conan/kull due to things being less strange since it's recent history

>>19579168
>No fantasy I've read comes close to his stuff
I feel you anon. Everyone has already recommended the best places to go with Howard so you might try Edward Rice Burroughs who was another pulp writer that inspired Howard. I plan on reading more of him when I get through all of Howard's stuff, myself.

>>19579499
He wrote John Carter and Tarzan wrote? I've been meaning to read some of his stuff too. Guess I shouldn't be surprised he inspired howard

>>19579168
>>19579499
If you'd like more Sword and Sorcery stuff I quite liked the Red Sonja series by David Smith and Richard Tierney. Not as good as Howard's prose but they seem to capture the fantasy world he created pretty well.

>>19579520
Yeah, he's the one. I read a little bit of A Princess of Mars and it was excellent, even from the few paragraphs I checked out.

>>19579589
I'm gonna have to read it. I suspect Disney didn't do it justice

>>19579523
I'm really wondering if any of the writers that continue Howard's work can match him.
Seems like everything I read about Conan pastiche is, it's bad to decent, but it's not Howard