Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Almuric (Planet Stories # 7)

Almuric is almost exactly what you'd expect from a "sword and planet" adventure written by Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) and serialized in the pulp magazines of the 1930s.  The hero, an earthman named Esau Cairn, gets teleported to a savage planet called Almuric in the course of just a couple of pages, and spends the rest of the book proving his worth to one group of natives before leading them in war against another (much more evil!) group in order to rescue his cardboard-personality love interest.  I'm making it sound worse than it is, as it's a straightforward, enjoyable romp that can be completed in a couple of hours.  It's very much a product of its time (and has the thoughtless sexism and racism to prove it), but it's a good example of what the genre had to offer.

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