In most of the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard, we get to see only little slivers at a time of his self-created fictional world, the "Hyborian Age." It is in "The Hour of the Dragon" that we finally get to see a much more expansive presentation of his unique world-building efforts, thanks to REH having a novel-length story with which to work. To the dismay of many fans, REH only wrote this one novel featuring the Hyborian Age. What with the British publisher failing on him, and REH being reduced to selling it to Weird Tales, with whom he had become disenchanted, there simply was no incentive for REH to write any more Conan novels. It is with the subsequent publication of REH's essay "The Hyborian Age" that fans everywhere finally got to see the full extent of that world, and all the myriad details that REH had created with his own proto-history of mankind. Given all the possibilities for stories that lay therein, it is no wonder so many people through the years have wanted to fill in additional stories of that Age. The only problem, of course, is that very few authors have the poetic and storytelling skills of Howard. Still, it is a sweet siren song that will no doubt continue to lead fans and professionals alike to the rocky shoals of Pastiche. So enjoy this, REH's sole rendition of a Hyborian Age novel, accompanied by the background text he used to guide himself. Note: the novel's text has been carefully restored to be as it was first published. That includes the famously "missing" Chapter 20. Whether REH meant to go back and add it later, or it was simply a numbering error that REH and the editors at Weird Tales failed to catch, we will likely never know.
