Strong Sauce Blog

Background
The setting is that of Howard’s Solomon Kane stories, tales that straddle the 1500s and 1600s and trace the progress of Solomon Kane, a wandering Puritan pilgrim who sets out into the world to right wrongs and to fight evil. It is a continent spanning series of adventure tales with a great deal of confrontation of cannibals, ancient horrors, dark magicians and strange, savage creatures. As with Conan Howard’s dislike of civilisation comes through and Kane, while he exhibits many of the characteristics of Howard’s other heroes, is a bit more cunning and less of a brute.

Naturally, being a product of its time, Solomon Kane’s stories are quite horrendously racist and sexist but, quite frankly, that’s part of the ‘charm’ and we have to make allowances for the period in which the stories were written. I don’t intend to dwell on this subject too long because I don’t think it is terribly worthwhile to get into a tizz over when we’re talking about fantasy fiction that was a product of its time. Suffice to say if this sort of thing upsets you and you can’t either adapt to the setting, or adapt the setting to your personal morality then a) get a life and b) don’t buy this book until you do.

Kane’s wandering span the continents and take in forgotten and forbidden places. The time period is one of colonial expansion by the European powers and the ‘civilising’ of the new world, of Africa and of The East. At this point in time though there are still mysteries and the edges of the map still have ‘here be dragons’ written upon them and this exploration and fighting of ancient evil provides rich possibilities for adventure.