The Bloody Crown of Conan

I picked up this book when Amazon had it on sale on the recommendation by someone that it would change my mind about the series. I suppose I probably got my money's worth from it, although it took me over a year to finish the task. For I found that for every inspired bit of description Howard would put in, and I don't think any other book I read this last year had anywhere close to this many, there would be some bit of unpleasant racial judgment, some piece of misogyny, or some just plain bad storytelling that would make me put it down for a long time despite my desire to get it over with. It is the splendid quotable passages that increase my rating from two stars to three, and I really think I'd be just as happy if I came across a list of quotes including just these and didn't have to sit through the tales.

This was another one of those books where I was getting close to the end wondering what was going to happen in the last fifteen percent of the reading when the story would end. There was no table of contents to indicate that I had actually picked up a novel length work "The Hour of the Dragon" along with two separate short pieces "The People of the Black Circle," and "A Witch Shall Be Born." This last one I thought was superior to the novel in some ways (although still high in misogyny). It didn't have the long and mostly pointless speeches packed with imaginary place names of, it had just as many epic battle scenes, and it didn't send Conan offstage for long stretches while other characters, of whom I did not care, would talk about what he might or might not be doing. It also had this one bit of description which should give a prospective reader a feeling for whether they might like this kind of literature or not:

"But the monster seemed to be watching Valerius and the girl. Squeezing its vast, unstable bulk through the door, it bounded toward him, as he ran down the steps. He felt it looming behind him, a giant shadowy thing, like the travesty of nature cut out of the heart of night, a black shapelessness in which only the staring eyes and gleaming fangs were distinct."

The e-book I bought says "Annotated" and I thought there were going to be footnotes or something throughout, which it didn't have. There was a short description of the author's career at the end, though, so maybe that's what the person assembling the volume meant.