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| | The Chants of Old Heroes, Singing in our Ears by Steve Tompkins |
 | | They had faded like smoke—the battlements, the crenellated towers, the great bronze gates, the velvets, the gold, the ivory, and the dark-haired women, and the men with their shaven skulls. |
| | Xapur is an isle full of noises, which prompts speculation that Howard is echoing Prospero (after whom the Brule-replacement in “Phoenix” may have been named) in Act Four of The Tempest: |
| | The arrival of this book means that Conan is no longer an albatross around the neck of Howard’s literary afterlife, but a phoenix like that traced by Epemitreus on a usurper’s blade, a phoenix capable of soaring up into the empyrean of timeless classic status. |
| www.rehupa.com /tompkins_chants_of_heroes.htm (5044 words) |
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