Red Nails by Robert E. Howard, Fiction, Fantasy

By Robert E. Howard and Robert Ervin Howard

Book Overview

A novella, it was originally serialized in Weird Tales magazine from July to October 1936. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan encountering a lost city in which the degenerate inhabitants are proactively resigned to their own destruction.

One of the strangest stories ever written -- the tale of a barbarian adventurer, a woman pirate and a weird roofed city inhabited by the most peculiar race of men ever spawned That was the Weird Tales editor's original terse blurb for this story's magazine publication. (There was another, longer less coherent, but it wouldn't fit here on the back cover.) Death Decay Red Nails really is something special. It's classic Conan Conan lovers consider Red Nails to be one of the best, and you know, they make a point.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1606645471
• ISBN13: 9781606645475
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Aegypan
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Super Reader

Conan is travelling, finds a dead woman, and then encounters Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. After trading some insults, they have the misfortune to stumble across a dragon. Then they have fun in an abandoned city full of crazed warriors, two evil, leering royals, and a third undead type one. Capture, bondage, slayage, all the great stuff in this tale of a fantastic partnership.

A great introduction to Howard's "Conan" character

Take a trip into our barbaric past, when the white race did not question the necessity of manifest destiny or the need to subdue non- whites by violence, and women existed as chattel and threat to male dominance. This collection of stories is not politically correct, and hopefully readers' enjoyment will contend with their discomfort at Howard's obvious racism and sexism. Readers should know that Howard was destroyed by the very system he so faithfully represents in his stories; he committed suicide during the Great Depression due to his distressed economic situation. For a blunt representation of the mind set that led to the internment camps, the Tuskegee medical experiments, and Hiroshima/ Nagasaki, this anthology is unsurpassed. Sword and sorcery/fantasy fans may wish that these stories are "simple, escapist fun", but there never is such a thing.

A very good read !!

One the very first fantasy novels I read, I am interested in finding an available copy. Am also searching for a copy of "The Hour of the Dragon", by Howard as well.