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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prince of Happiness" data-source="post: 1803145" data-attributes="member: 19819">I second "The Coming of Conan the Barbarian." There are other collections in the series that are not out yet.My second suggestion would be to scour used book vendors and find the old Ace (or was it DAW?) paperback series. A word of note on those: These books contain most of the original Howard stories, but they were re-arranged in a chronological order by L. Sprague deCamp and Lin Carter. In addition, those two, plus some other writers also re-wrote stories that Howard wrote for other characters into Conan stories, extrapolated from Howard's timelines and wrote other stories for Conan, and turned Howard story fragments and outlines into full stories that may or may not have reflected Howard's intentions with the character. Some are good, others are not, your mileage may vary.Things to bear in mind about the Hyborian Age: It is a more romantic, more violent, and more overall magical funhouse mirror of our own history. Cossacks, knights, Arab nomads, India straight from the Vedas mingle with ancient Egyptians, Vikings, Romans, Celtic tribesmen, Assyrians, and so on. What most of them have going for them to bind them all together is steel and the copious spilling of blood. It's realistic and larger-than-life at the same time.</blockquote>