Don't buy this book. I picked it up a month or two ago, and was excited to read it, so I bumped it up somewhat in the list of "books to read" so I'd get to it faster.
A big part of the reason that I got it was that it contained his novella "Skull Face." I'd read this before as an ebook, but I wanted a real copy of it. It was about half a dozen stories in, and the longest in this collection by far. Because I'd read it as an ebook three or four years or so ago, and because I'd discussed it in relation to my Atlantean homebrew race in my Dark Fantasy X fantasy setting, there were certain details about the story that I remembered in particular. Details that... as I finished the story, I was shocked to find were not present.
I went and looked at the Amazon reviews and found that indeed, my memory was not faulty. This is very poorly done. If you're going to expurgate the stories, at least say so, so people like me who don't want your chopped up garbage masquerading as the original tales don't throw money after them. For whatever it's worth, I just added my 1-star review on Amazon. But I'll put it here, (where only I'll ever see it, but whatever...)
Do not buy this book. Find another collection instead. The Dell Rey horror story collection is probably better. I was specifically looking for a hard copy of Skull Face, so I'll have to look elsewhere, but not here. Blegh.
If this would come back in print, that'd be fascinating. I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. I've also read Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, and frankly, I thought it was pretty interesting. I liked REH's fantasy take on the idea, but I had no idea that he'd written several Yellow Peril and Weird Menace.
That said... my disappointment in the book I'm reading right now is almost so great that I feel compelled to stop reading it, and go find the stories that I want to read online somewhere, given their public domain status. But I do want to have hard copies. I don't trust the ephemeral nature of online books, or even Kindle books, where an update you didn't ask for can be pushed to your book at any time. I've never even heard of most of these stories, and nobody in REH retrospectives seems to mention them.
I suspect that "Skull Face" is the best of them, which is why it's actually been reprinted a few times now, and I suspect that a lot of modern people are embarrassed the whole Yellow Peril genre. Ironically, it seems more topical now than it did when it was first popular, although the screeching harpies that make up our elite caste will double down on their hatred of anyone who mentions it, no doubt.
Skull-Face
The Noseless Horror
The Brazen Peacock
Black John’s Vengeance
Talons in the Dark
The Hand of the Black Goddess
Sons of Hate
Moon of Zambebwei
Black Hound of Death
The Devils of Dark Lake
Guests of the Hoodoo Room
Black Wind Blowing
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