E. Hoffmann Price & Otis Adelbert Kline 51 min read

Trapped in a moonlit alley by a crescent of drawn blades, Rankin snaps his empty .45 at the henna-bearded chief closing in, the desperate opening of a swashbuckling Oriental adventure.

Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price's 1930 story is a rousing adventure-fantasy. Vivid, exotic, superbly told. Read it for a dashing collaboration between two masters of the exotic pulp, swordplay, treachery, and derring-do in a colorful Eastern setting, in the swashbuckling, atmospheric style that made both writers favorites of the Oriental-adventure and weird-fiction magazines.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Hugh Rankin