I’ve been reading the US edition which contains the stories ‘The Phoenix on the Sword’, ‘The People of the Black Circle’, ‘The Tower of the Elephant’, ‘Queen of the Black Coast’, ‘Red Nails’ and ‘Rogues in the House’. That doesn’t bother me, I’d rather have the real deal than a rehash of the movie and the stories in this collection are (for the most part) proof of that preference. Howard so it’s an obvious move then for them to cash in on the release of the movie by dipping into the archives and finding some stories to go into a new collection. Gollancz and Del Rey seem to share the rights to certain stories from Robert E. What we’ve got here instead is a collection of five stories that ‘inspired the movie’ and that had me excited all of a sudden. I was pleasantly surprised then, and more than a little relieved, to find out that ‘Conan the Barbarian’ isn’t a movie tie-in at all. My ‘movie tie-in’ reading includes the original ‘Conan the Barbarian’, another book that didn’t quite match up to the film, so you can understand where I’m coming from here! With this previous track record in movie novelizations I’ve got to admit that I winced a little when a copy of ‘Conan the Barbarian’ came through the door. Vinge’s ‘Ladyhawke’, a book that has a lot more depth to it than the film and no annoying disco soundtrack that gets in your head when it really has no business being there. If you were wondering, that book was Joan D. I’m not saying anything bad about movie novelizations per se, all I’m saying is that I’ve only ever read one where the book was better than the film.

Ladyhawke joan d vinge