My Top Five Reads of 2015

Last year, I looked back at my top five reads in 2014 and as it was a pretty fun experience to relive some of the highlights of that year, I see no reason not to try the same thing again. It was not easy this time either, since there were quite a few books that I had given the same ratings, but one must be ruthless sometimes and make decisions.

Review: Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon adaptation by Timothy Truman, Thomas Giorello and Jose Villarrubia

Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon is one of his most impressive tales of Conan the Cimmerian in his later life as the king of Aquilonia. It has been reinterpreted in comic form before, but the latest adaptation by Timothy Truman, Tomas Giorello and Jose Villarruba published by Dark Horse is undoubtedly the definitive edition of the tale in comic form - and it even improves upon some aspects of the original.

My Susiveri novella published in the Portti magazine 3/15

Last year, my werewolf novella Susiveri (Wolfblood) received accolades on the biggest and oldest SF/Fantasy story competition in Finland, organised by the Tampere Science Fiction Society. I wrote about the prize in my blog at the time and you can find the original article here. Now, the novella has been published in the latest Portti magazine (3/15) and I'm very happy to share with you a look at the illustration that goes with the story.

Review: The Whole Wide World (1996)

Robert E. Howard was a troubled author and many have heard of how he shot himself soon after his mother died - stopping only to write a final poem on the way to his car and the gun he kept there. Scholars have long tried to understand what kind of a man Howard really was, but one point of view comes from the woman who knew him close to the end of his career. In late 1980's, fifty years after Robert E. Howard's death, Novalyne Price wrote a memoir based on her diary, One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years. Based on this, Michael Scott Myers wrote a screenplay and Dan Ireland directed the film, The Whole Wide World.

Review: Wolfshead by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard was a prolific writer perhaps best known for his Conan the Cimmerian and Solomon Kane stories, but he wrote a lot of other stories as well, including westerns and horror stories. In the Forest of Villefère and Wolfshead are his two short stories dealing with werewolves, first published in Weird Tales in 1925 and 1926. They were therefore written in a time when werewolf stories were still in their infancy and manage to take a refreshing look at the genre and steer away from the kinds of tropes that more modern stories tend to be riddled with. Although Howard never specifically sets the stories at any particular time period, it can be assumed from the references to rapiers, arquebusiers and slave trade that they are set in the 16th century.

Review: Sword of Skelos by Andrew J. Offutt

Andrew J. Offutt wrote three Conan stories that are often praised as the best Conan stories not written by Robert E. Howard. Having read Robert Jordan's adequate but not memorable entries into the saga of Conan, I have been reluctant to pick up any of the stories from other authors. However, when I realised that Offutt had written the original story for one of my favourite non-REH Savage Sword of Conan comics - Sword of Skelos - I simply had to take a closer look.

Comics Adaptations of Robert E. Howard's Queen of the Black Coast

Robert E. Howard's Queen of the Black Coast is one of his most memorable stories and it has - deservedly - been adapted several times, most famously by both Marvel and Dark Horse in their Conan comics. Both of them attempt to extend the story from the original: instead of a single quick short story, they add to it and attempt to show how influential it was to Conan's character. They both also moved the story in Conan's chronology so that it takes place in his youth. Howard's original told a story that spanned a long time of Conan's life in mere four chapters, so this attempt to expand upon it is very welcome. A third adaptation was made by Petri Hiltunen, a Finnish comic artist.

The approaches the adaptations took are very different. I'll use this chance to provide an overall look of all of them and will then continue to give the reasons why I think one of them is a far more successful retelling than the others.

Review: Black Vulmea's Vengeance by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is best known for his Conan Cimmerian and Solomon Kane stories, but he was an astoundingly prolific writer and visited many genres from Westerns to... pirates! Black Vulmea's vengeance & Other Tales of Pirates is a collection of three pirate stories: "Swords of the Red Brotherhood", "Black Vulmea's Vengeance" and "The Isle of Pirates' Doom".

Novelisation of the Conan the Barbarian (2011) movie

After seeing the movie - a clear flop as a Conan movie, but a decent action flick in its own right - I wished to read the novelisation. I was perhaps driven to the novel by morbid curiosity, but I also wanted to see if it would fix at least some plot holes and failed characterisation that we saw in the movie. Stackpole was familiar to me from his previous Star Wars novels, so I hoped for more than I would have from a completely unknown name. The following may contain some spoilers to those who have not seen the movie yet.

Conan the Cimmerian vs Conan the Barbarian

I have here an original quote from Robert E. Howard's story and its interpretation on the big screen in the latest Conan the Barbarian film. What I aim to point out is that the screenwriters sometimes miss a lot of the roots of the character when they just pick the coolest bit of a bigger whole.