eBook by Francesco Dimitri
Cover by Alex Horley (aka Alessandro Orlandelli)
Illustrations by Patrick Zircher?
From Titan Books, Heroic Signatures & Conan Properties International LLC
Spoilers! Spoilers!
The hills of Zalgara, cloud river, a small riparian village appears out of thin air.
King Kull the Conqueror and Brule the Spear-Slayer meet with village chief Elspeth Thrace. They spend the night exploring the novel village.
The stars in the firmament start swirling.
Kull and Brule spot a future, possible version/reflection of Kull as an elderly man with a woman. The old couple explodes into water, showering Kull.
Kull and Brule see an older Kull stuffing his face... obese, angry, sad and alone. The vision turns into mist.
Kull and Brule witness an alternate rendition of Kull's past, they see a young Kull and his girlfriend Elpis, dead, murdered by five thieves.
Kull vividly recalls that, as a youth, he had killed all five of the robbers and that Elpis had survived the attack.
Kull and Brule deposit the two cadavers in the waters of Atlantis.
Kull and Brule watch as an even younger version of Kull tries to sacrifice an even younger version of Elpis. Kull tries to kill his "wet behind the ears" self but the Spear-Slayer stops him just in time.
Brule utters the strange phrase: "Ka nama kaa lajerama", it makes Elspeth Thrace turn into her true self... an ELDER monster.
Elspeth transforms the villagers into grisly beings of the ELDER UNIVERSE (recently seen in Conan: Scourge of the Serpent #2).
Kull knocks Elspeth out and the village and everything else turns into water and mist.
Elspeth comes clean that she's a high priestess who can control reality, that she was exiled by human wizards to a realm beyond space & time and that she was able to escape when time seeped through her prison.
Elspeth wanted to reshape Kull's reality into something more pleasing and her first step to achieve her goal was to get rid of Kull by tricking the King of Valusia into liquidating himself in the past.
What I did like:
Valka (god) mentioned.
Alex Horley's Mike Ploog homage cover!
Always great to see the beings of the ELDER UNIVERSE from The Shadow Kingdom (1929).
A "The Terminator (1984)" homage.
A "Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)" homage.
What I did not like:
Map illustrator Francesca Baerald is not credited. Not cool!
Elspeth Thrace is an ELDER "monster"... I wanted Francesco to be more specific.
The editor is not doing his job.
Francesco forgets that Robert E. Howard's Kull has never known the love of women.
Elspeth Thrace confesses that she DOES NOT really control reality, that she is only an illusionist.
Kull enters the Atlantean sea that he's already swimming in.
The story reads like an unpolished first draft.
I give it a 7.5/10. After years of waiting, fans of Kull of Atlantis can finally dive into a cool new short story! Oh, and TITAN BOOKS, don't forget, we still need a Heroic Legends Series version of CONAN: UNCONQUERED by Scott Oden!
