Today, there are probably few people who are unfamiliar with the character of Conan the Barbarian. Even if they haven’t read a single book about him, they are likely to remember the iconic image of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger portraying the character. However, in the Soviet Union, the author of the Conan series (and many other works), Robert E. Howard, was virtually unknown until 1989. Although Howard himself didn’t write a large number of works, several of his characters became cult figures, Conan being the foremost among them. The series about this hero, which many other authors have continued, now includes not just dozens but hundreds of stories.
Personally, I first encountered Robert E. Howard’s work back in the distant year of 1990, when the Minsk publishing house Eridan released a collection of the author’s works titled The Hour of the Dragon.
A year earlier, in Krasnoyarsk, a thin booklet of just 52 pages had been published, containing two of Howard’s short stories translated by Alexander Bushkov under one cover. Eridan, in its full-length book, used both of these stories in the same translation. The Eridan collection included works about various characters, including the titular novel about Conan the Barbarian. However, one of the stories translated by Bushkov was Wings in the Night, featuring a protagonist named Solomon Kane. At the time, this character didn’t leave much of an impression on me. The story was the only one about him in the collection, and for a 13-year-old, his image clearly paled in comparison to the ruthless, muscular barbarian Conan. It was read and forgotten, in short. Two years later, the same Eridan began publishing a four-volume collection of Robert E. Howard’s works, but even in this, Solomon Kane appeared in only two stories—Wings in the Night and Red Shadows. You’ll agree, that’s hardly enough to develop any strong feelings for the character.
And so, I would have forgotten about this character for many years, if not for the release of the movie Solomon Kane in 2009, with James Purefoy in the lead role. Yes, it was mentioned that the film was based on Robert E. Howard’s series, but what drew me in more was the image of the main character himself. The film didn’t perform particularly well at the box office and didn’t win over audiences, but I quite liked it. Not so much for the plot itself, but for the style and the story of a man who transformed from the leader of ruthless killers into a defender of the weak. And the film had plenty of mysticism, too.
It was then that I became seriously interested in the original character, deciding to finally read what Howard himself had written about him. But for some reason—I can’t quite remember why—it didn’t work out. I read one or two stories at the time and then fell into another years-long gap. Finally, this year, I returned to the series. Especially since, around the same time the film was released, the entire Solomon Kane series had been translated into Russian by Maria Semyonova, the author of the widely acclaimed Wolfhound. For the first time, all of Howard’s works about Solomon Kane were published in a single book, even including the unfinished pieces.
All the works in the book are arranged in chronological order based on the events in Kane’s life (where such sequencing was possible), mirroring a similar English-language edition. This raised questions for many readers as to why A. Zhikaryentsev was credited as the compiler if the book was simply an exact copy of the complete original edition. Nonetheless, the book truly reads as a cohesive series, as some of the stories reference events from previous ones.
So, who is Solomon Kane? The author describes him rather sparingly. He is an Englishman of the late 16th century, a Puritan, and a master swordsman, who is constantly drawn to the road of adventure. Yet he isn’t interested in adventure for its own sake; he simply follows where his heart leads him and cannot stand by when the downtrodden or mistreated suffer, sometimes dedicating months or even years to seeking justice. And he does all this not for reward, but for the sake of fairness. Along the way, he frequently encounters mystical or mythical events, which do not deter him but rather spur him on.
After familiarizing yourself with the entire series, you realize that the film was indeed only “based” on Howard’s series. The issue isn’t that the screenwriters invented a new mystical story about Solomon Kane—they fundamentally changed the character’s image and backstory. As I mentioned earlier, in the film, he starts out as a general of a dark army, the embodiment of the Devil himself. They kill indiscriminately, capturing cities and slaughtering women and children. Mercy is entirely foreign to them. Later, however, Kane turns to the side of light and attempts to atone for his sins, dedicating himself to helping those he previously overlooked or deemed unworthy of life.
The original character is quite different. Yes, there’s a somewhat murky backstory involving pirates with whom Solomon Kane was once associated, but he himself put an end to it when their buccaneering actions began to clash with his worldview. Otherwise, he’s simply a convinced fanatic-altruist: he helps because he helps, and he fights because he fights. Something drives him forward, whether it’s God or something else—it doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that he has a purpose in life, and there’s no need to philosophize about it.
And overall, it’s perfectly fine when the characters in a book and their on-screen adaptations don’t match. However, the book did not live up to my expectations. The warning signs were there from the very first stories, and as I read on, my opinion only solidified. Still, I wanted to finish the book to the end so as not to form an opinion based on fragments. After years of wanting to read the series in its entirety, abandoning it halfway through felt like betraying a long-standing fixation.
So, what went wrong? At first, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the writing style. I can’t say whether this was the fault of the original text or the translation. I didn’t feel like comparing them, but throughout the reading, the prose came across as pompous. When there weren’t enough actions to reveal the characters, the author resorted to high-flown language and the hero’s musings to demonstrate how selfless and “good versus evil” he was.
I didn’t mind the unfinished works. Many of them were later completed by other writers, sometimes based on Howard’s notes, sometimes by inventing their own conclusions. But in this book, all the stories were left exactly as Robert E. Howard had written them, meaning that unfinished works simply end abruptly, right in the middle of the narrative. That didn’t bother me, though—it’s just the way it is, even if the story feels unresolved.
What truly annoyed me was the “convenient coincidences” in many events. Take the story The Right Hand of Doom, for instance. Here, Solomon himself does almost nothing; he’s merely a witness to mystical events, and nothing depends on him except for being in the right place at the right time to observe the unnecessary. But many other stories undermine the image of a great swordsman and warrior, because they’re riddled with plot conveniences. The protagonist advances along his chosen path and survives not because of his skills, but purely because of dumb luck. For example, he fights a ghostly spirit, unable to grab hold of it (because it’s incorporeal), but then somehow (perhaps through sheer self-belief) manages to scare it off. Or worse. Let me summarize the sequence of events in one story without naming it.
He approaches some black tribesmen, comes face to face with them, and starts fighting on the edge of a cliff. Falls off the cliff into an abyss—but conveniently lands on a small ledge not far from the edge. And, as luck would have it, this ledge has a secret passage leading directly to where he was headed. Captured and taken for execution—right next to the secret door he knew about. Stumbles into another chamber by chance, where a dying former priest spills the entire plan. Turns the wrong way—only to run into a tribesman holding his own pistol, which the tribesman doesn’t know how to use. Needs to get through a crowd of tribesmen—just in time, they’re overcome by madness. An earthquake occurs—he runs in the right direction, and the bridge collapses not under him but right behind him.
And this is just one story. Don’t you think that’s an awful lot of luck? And it’s like this in almost every piece.
Still, not all stories suffer from this. Wings in the Night, the very first Solomon Kane story published in Russian and the first one I read back in 1990, is genuinely good. The enemies are interesting, Solomon doesn’t rely on blind luck, and the integration of myths into the narrative is well-executed. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of truly good stories like this.
So, my long-standing goal has been achieved, and I can check it off the list, but in the end, I’m left deeply disappointed. This is one of those rare cases where a poorly-rated film adaptation turns out to be more engaging and superior to the original material.
My rating: 2/5
