I love the way Howard writes his characters, they are intelligent warriors. He writes thinking men with a strong fighting spirit. They can often be drawn into a bloodlust, but it is typically when all else fails.

Here we have a collection of Howard's Pict, Bran Mak Morn; only, the title character doesn't appear as much as you would think. The first tale is more the tragic history of the Picts, followed by the appearance of Bran through the eyes of a Roman. It's not until "Worms of the Earth" that Bran becomes the protagonist of the story as he seeks revenge on a Roman who has sentenced one of Bran's people to death. This leads Bran to seek out the horrors of the Great Old Ones.

The final two stories focus on another character entirely, Black Turlough O'Brien. The first of these involves O'Brien getting some supernatural help from the long-dead Bran (or so it seems as O'Brien finds a statue of Bran which seems to offer him some protection throughout the tale). The second doesn't seem to have any connection to Bran or the Picts, but it does include O'Brien meeting a character from the previous adventure and the two of them witnessing the end of a whole civilization.

All the stories in this collection are great examples of Howard's epic storytelling, but I wish there had been more direct focus on Bran Mak Morn, being that it is his book. Of course, seeing as how this collection wasn't put together until long after Howard's death, not much can be done about it. Bran wasn't one of his regular characters like Conan or Solomon Kane. ( )

An anthology of five Stories of very inaccurate Picts. Well, there hadn't been much research on them that had percolated out to Texas, so he hung some barbarian stories on them. Good on a slow night. ( )