“El Borak and Other Desert Adventures”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Tim Bradstreet and Jim & Ruth Keegan

 

592 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345505453

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; El Borak and Other Desert Adventures, illustrated by Tim Bradstreet and Jim & Ruth Keegan, was the tenth volume to be published and contained the stories Blood of the Gods, The Daughter of Erlik Khan, The Fire of Asshurbanipal (original version), Gold from Tatary, Hawk of the Hills, Son of the White Wolf, Sons of the Hawk, Swords of Shahrazar, Swords of the Hills, Three-Bladed Doom (long version), Three-Bladed Doom (short version) and The Trail of the Blood-Stained God.

As you no-doubt are well aware by now, Dear Reader, Robert E. Howard was more than just the creator of Conan, Solomon Kane and the like; his characters are legion and his stories are numerous, and all fit into a mere 30-year life span. Shame. One of these fascinating but lesser-known characters of which I speak was one Francis Xavier Gordon – that would be the “El Borak” of the title (Arabic for “The Swift”) – a Texan gunfighter from El Paso who travelled the world before settling in Afghanistan where his heroic derring-do became legend. While El Borak mostly spends his time keeping peace between the many warring tribes of Afghanistan (boy, does THAT sound familiar), more often than not through his Texan cunning, that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining tales, so FXG must resort to violence to keep the peace (read that as many times as you need to). The bulk of the book features the seven El Borak stories (thus explaining his name on the cover) while the other tales within feature Kirby O’Donnell and Steve Clarney. Although not totally dissimilar to El Borak (in that he’s not an overweight clerk working in the colonial office), Kirby O’Donnell is still his own man and battles a bloodstained path through Gold From Tatary, Swords Of Shabrazar and The Trail Of The Blood-Stained God; Steve Clarney, meanwhile, is allotted just one story, the original version of The Fire of Asshurbanipal (a second, non-fantasy version of the story also exists).

That leaves El Borak’s tales, and lordy what tales they are. In the introduction by Steve Tompkins, Francis Xavier Gordon, though living, thriving and surviving in the mountains of Afghanistan is, in fact, a Western gunfighter of the Untamed Frontier, said frontier being the desserts of the old Middle East rather than of the New World. Like all Real American Heroes, El Borak is as wily and clever as the natives he battles and, like every Howardian hero worth his mettle, he’s possessed of incredible stamina, enormous courage and the great strength of those mighty muscles (O’Donnell and Clarney are no slouches, either). As I think I have stated before in these reviews, one wonders why some characters launch into the stratosphere of literary popularity while others are ejected and fall to earth. Conan and the other, more popular characters Howard created deserve their places in the sun, but so too does Francis Xavier Gordon, dammit. A hard charging Texan who spreads American derring-do about the place without a damn given to local attitudes – El Borak was and is a rare bird who deserves his tales to be told to all. But in El Borak and Other Desert Adventures Del Rey have done their level best to once-more bring to light this most interesting and deserving of characters.