One thing that is definitely striking about the world of Kull is just how beautiful everything is. I wish I knew what Lapis Luzilli actually looks like because the architects of Valusia use it for everything. The three kingdoms are depicted as being so rich in mineral wealth that one might suspect that if they had Dairy Queens at the time you could probably get your twisty cone coated in rubies, emeralds, or sapphires. Yum....

I kid of course, but only because I love. Howard basically has one main character, the manly ethos typified by his most famous character Conan the Barbarian. Bran Mak Mor is Conan in the Roman Empire. Solomon Kane is Conan during Puritan times. And Kull is Conan during what Plato called the Golden Age – the earliest of times, as well as the best of times for all of mankind. Kull doesn't brood so much as Conan and genuinely seems happier (although not entirely happy) being on the throne. Strangely his personality almost seems like that of Superman, as if at any moment he might don cape and tights and go zooming about the kingdom, righting its wrongs and taking pleasure in a job well done. Howard seems to enjoy throwing Kull in the role of reluctant match-maker, not necessarily pairing young couples together but playing a role that ultimately influences the marriage of a young man and woman. Is he Plato's Philosopher King? Kull certainly does the most introspection of all Howard's characters. In “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” it almost becomes the death of him (possibly the best story in the collection too – one rule of Howard, beware of anyone whose name starts with a T and contains a U as its primary vowel).

About the stories. Crom be damned, do not read “The Altar and the Scorpion” Ho! Ho! This is one of the worst things that the man has ever written. It should be stricken from the canon as a serious mistake, possibly the after-effects of some bad chili or a nasty case of tendinitis. Otherwise, the stories all do quite well, tending towards the strange and surreal – more so than the typical Conan story. “The Striking of the Gong” stands out as the strangest of the strange, with Kull valiantly fighting against – nah, I won't ruin it for you, but you'll never guess the one thing the big man truly fears.

The fragments at the end might have been better left out, especially the Black City, which seems terribly unpolished and embarrassingly rough. The last fragment contained, however, is interesting if only because it begins with Kull and his buddies sitting around a table playing a game that involves moving small miniature statues of wizards and warriors about, battling each other, perhaps with some kind of storyline implied. Could this possibly be Dungeons & Dragons a mere forty years before its time? The mind reels at the possibilities and implications.

The collection ends with an epilogue containing the broad sweep of history that joins the Age of Kull with the Age of Conan. While it desperately yearns for a map to help explain itself, it is of interest – especially to Conan fans – to learn that the Cimmerians are the ancestors of the Atlanteans, and that their immortal enemies the Picts were their allies during the time of Kull. Howard has both tribes of men devolving into apes and then re-evolving back to become men. Very strange indeed.

All in all, this is not the greatest REH collection ever put together, but it is a fun collection containing looser and more creative writing than REH is often given credit for. At the very least it is far better than can be expected from a “Volume II.”

For the record, when a character in my novel raises up her axe and pronounces, “By This Axe I Rule!” - I actually wrote that line without knowing that REH had written a short story called just that. Accidentally stumbling across this factoid on the internet is what prompted me to buy the book, just to see what the story entailed. Thankfully, it has absolutely nothing else in common with what I had written. Phew!