Ghor, Kin-Slayer

Robert E. Howard, et al.

Necronomicon Press, 1997

Reviewed by John Hocking

Back in 1977 the small press magazine Fantasy Crossroads took a fragment by Robert E. Howard and used it as the first chapter of a round-robin novel that ended up featuring some of the most notable authors of fantasy alive at the time. The magazine folded before the entire project could be published and this volume, from the admirable Necronomicon Press, brought it all together more than two decades after the fact.

Only the devout need apply. One reads with amazement as the plot swerves about like a drunk driver looking for a clear stretch of road. With no outline to work from, each author picking up where the last left off, it's easy to understand why this would be a disjointed novel, but it's worse than that. Knowing how it was created, it's next to impossible to read any chapter without putting oneself into the shoes of the author set to write the next one. It's plain that some of the authors are team players, while others most certainly are not.

Howard's original fragment introduces another incarnation for his James Allison character, this one a Hyborian Age Vanir cast into the snows at birth because of a twisted leg, and raised by wolves. The Icelandic saga feel of these first few pages is promising, but Karl Edward Wagner's second chapter is a wonder. Full of drama and darkness, Wagner's chapter turns Ghor into a demonic Gothic anti-hero, more beast than man, and driven to slake an overwhelming thirst for vengeance upon the parents who have forsaken him. Wagner carefully introduces several brothers for Ghor and ends his chapter on a fine dramatic flourish that sets Ghor up for a promising vendetta.

In the next chapter Joseph Payne Brennan, Weird Tales author and macabre poet, picks up Wagner's plot threads and neatly lops them all off, having Ghor simply find his family and kill every last one of them. End of chapter. Poor Richard Tierney must write the next one and, incidentally, create a whole new plot for the novel.

And so it goes. Particularly good chapters are rare, though Andrew Offutt and Ramsey Campbell do well. The prize must go to Marion Zimmer Bradley, who somehow manages to tie up all the loose ends in the second-to-last chapter, reverting to the grim, saga-style of the first two chapters, and actually wringing unexpected pathos from Ghor's fate. Many chapters are no credit to the book or the authors who wrote them.

Enthusiasts will find this book irresistible, (I certainly did), but it's a literary curiosity that even the hard core fan may have trouble getting through.