The Hour of the Dragon

Robert E. Howard

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473398016
• Print ISBN:
  9781473323230

This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in 1935 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Hour of the Dragon' is a story about a conspiracy to depose Conan as King of Aquilonia. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South. At fifteen Howard began to read the pulp magazines of the day, and to write more seriously. The December 1922 issue of his high school newspaper featured two of his stories, 'Golden Hope Christmas' and 'West is West'. In 1924 he sold his first piece - a short caveman tale titled 'Spear and Fang' - for $16 to the not-yet-famous Weird Tales magazine. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, was a barbarian-turned-King during the Hyborian Age, a mythical period of some 12,000 years ago. Conan featured in seventeen Weird Tales stories between 1933 and 1936 which is why Howard is now regarded as having spawned the 'sword and sorcery' genre. The Conan stories have since been adapted many times, most famously in the series of films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Table of contents

• The Hour of the Dragon
• Robert E. Howard
• Chapter 1: O Sleeper, Awake!
• Chapter 2: The Black Wind Blows
• Chapter 3: The Cliffs Reel
• Chapter 4: “From What Hell Have You Crawled?”
• Chapter 5: The Haunter of the Pits
• Chapter 6: The Thrust of a Knife
• Chapter 7: The Rending of the Veil
• Chapter 8: Dying Embers
• Chapter 9: “It Is the King or His Ghost!”
• Chapter 10: A Coin from Acheron
• Chapter 11: Swords of the South
• Chapter 12: The Fang of the Dragon
• Chapter 13: “A Ghost Out of the Past”
• Chapter 14: The Black Hand of Set
• Chapter 15: The Return of the Corsair
• Chapter 16: Black-Walled Khemi
• Chapter 17: “He Has Slain the Sacred Son of Set!”
• Chapter 18: “I Am the Woman Who Never Died”
• Chapter 19: In the Hall of the Dead
• Chapter 20: Out of the Dust Shall Acheron Arise
• Chapter 21: Drums of Peril
• Chapter 22: The Road to Acheron