Red Shadows

MP3 Audio CD. Written and published in 1928 in the pulp magazine entitled Weird Tales, Red Shadows is the very first short story by Robert Ervin Howard to feature Solomon Kane, the somber-looking Puritan whose only goal in life is to vanquish evil, no matter what form it takes.

Red Shadows starts in Paris, with Kane finding a girl on the verge of death after she was attacked by a some brigands led by the notorious Le Loup. Though Kane has never met the girl before, he swears to avenge her death and tracks the mastermind behind the gang who becomes Kane?s arch enemy from that moment onwards, a notorious criminal called Le Loup through France to Africa. He follows his prey on land and sea, he doesn?t lose the trail for a second, not even in the thick African jungle. During his bloody journey, Kane encounters a savage African tribe and the story gets spiced up not only with bloody fights, but with lots of supernatural elements as well. The forces beyond palpable reality are, of course, on Kane?s side, helping him win the battle against villains.

Solomon Kane is a true pulp hero featured in many of Howard?s stories, but what made the author really famous is his stories centering around Conan the Barbarian. However, both Solomon Kane stories and the novellas that feature Conan are written in Howard?s easy to recognize style, with the stories woven with the same audacity. There is a considerable amount of violence in all stories by Howard, but the descriptions of the bloody conflicts are more romanticized than realistic ? even though the reader has very vivid descriptions of the pain the opposing parties cause each other, the accounts never become horror stories, they are never excessively scary and they remain story telling tools all the way.