Robert E. Howard 35 min read

Deep in the Arabian desert, two adventurers seek a legendary lost city and a fabulous jewel, the Fire of Asshurbanipal, guarded, they will learn, by an ancient and monstrous horror.

Robert E. Howard's 1936 Weird Tales story is a rousing adventure-horror tale. Vivid, driven, superbly told. Read it for a posthumous Howard gem blending desert adventure with cosmic dread, a cursed gem, a dead city, and a lurking evil, told with the muscular action and brooding atmosphere that made the creator of Conan a master of the pulps.

In its time

Published in 1936, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

35 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

J. Allen St. John