As stated in the title, this is a guest review by John Bullard.

A Cowboy in Carpathia
Teel James Glenn
paperback $9.99
ebook $2,99

I found out about this book, A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure by Teel James Glenn, from a post on “The Swords of Robert E. Howard” bulletin board, in the thread on books or stories with Howard as a protagonist (Howard as Protagonist | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) . It sounded interesting enough to check out, so I bought a copy and read it. I will breakdown my review into two parts: the story on its merits, and how it handles Robert E. Howard.

A Brief Synopsis

Glenn has Robert E. Howard decide not to kill himself as his mother is dying, and instead go off and travel the world to see the sites and people that he’s only read about. After a minor stop in New York City, Howard travels to England, where he makes a friendship with another real-life person that I won’t spoil the identity of, who introduces Howard to the Harker family, Jonathon and Mina, and their son Quincy and daughter Gwendolyn. Howard has some action-packed episodes with the Harkers before continuing on to Europe, where he gets caught up in the fight against the resurrected Count Dracula and saving his new gal, Gwendolyn, leading to a grand finale.

Now for reviewing the story from two stances: on its merits, and on how it handles Howard.

The Story

The book is a fine example of the “New Pulp” genre. Glenn has done a great job of writing a fast-paced story that ends each chapter with enough of either a cliff-hanger or interesting plot development point that I was drawn to keep reading to find out what happens next. Glenn writes in the style of the average pulp writer of the 1930’s. The action scenes are well thought out, which may be due to Glenn having a career as a fight coordinator and stuntman for films and plays which would allow him to visualize the action and properly describe what is going on to help the reader easily picture it in his head. Any romantic interludes are kept chaste in a “G” rating way, and I could easily see this story as being published in a weird menace or weird horror pulp of the 1930’s. The story did win the 2021 award for Best Pulp Novel¹. The structure and pacing of the story gave me the feeling at times, like I was reading a good attempt at someone trying to emulate Edgar Rice Burroughs in one of his tales of adventure.

As to Glenn’s handling of the character of Dracula, he does a very good job. He definitely continues from the incidents that Stoker wrote in his great tale, and expands upon them very well. I was satisfied with his take on the Count, and at times felt that Glenn did well on melding in elements of the great Sean Connery-James Bond films of the Sixties into the plot, oddly enough. Sadly, I feel that I can’t give you a better idea of what happens in the book, as I really don’t want to spoil any wonderful surprises and story plot points for you before you read the book.

The Handling of Howard

This is the main problem I had with the book. Due to my love of Howard, and having read all of his biographies, as well as edited the new editions of his Collected Letters for the REH Foundation Press, I have a little knowledge of the man. Therefore, Glenn’s handling of Howard would at times throw me right out of the story with the mistakes and choices Glenn made in creating his vision of Howard.

Let me first state that in general, I liked Glenn’s portrayal of Howard’s character in the book. It felt close enough to what his friends and acquaintances said of him, and of what Howard wrote about himself in his letters to generally satisfy me. Glenn wonderfully uses some of Howard’s quotes about himself and his philosophy from some of his letters as Howard’s dialogue or interior thoughts to help explain his thinking and actions to the other characters and the reader.

The big problems for me, which I assumed were choices Glenn made to help portray his vision of Howard, seemed to be influenced by L. Sprague De Camp’s discredited biographical conception and portrayal of Howard. I was talking with Howard scholar Will Oliver about this in an email², and we both got this notion from our reading of the book. I can tell Glenn did some great research of Howard for his use of the letters and suggesting in his Post Script to readers interested in Howard’s life to read Mark Finn’s wonderful biography, Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, that Glenn would have known better than to make these mistakes, so I can only conclude they were deliberate for the story he wanted to write.

As I have previously said, each time I would hit one of these, it had the effect of the old, classic trope of  fingernails dragged across a chalkboard on me. I would stop with a muttered “That’s not true”, then shake it off, and go back to reading the book. I particularly had a hard time with Glenn’s decision to constantly have Howard refer to H.P. Lovecraft by a familiar name that there is no evidence Howard would have used throughout the book.

I was also jarred by Glenn’s attempt to have Howard talk “Texan” during the first third of the book. Having spent most of my life in Texas, and having family and friends from the parts of Texas where there is still the noticeable “Texan Twang” and way of using language, as well as being old enough to have been around folks who were born and lived during Howard’s lifetime, I’ve never heard “Texan” like Glenn writes it. Thankfully, Glenn stops using it about a third of the way through, and Howard then only occasionally uses more appropriate Texan language. In general, I will have to say that the more you know about Howard’s life, the more you may get periodically thrown out of your enjoyment of the story with these problematic points as they occur in the story.

Finally, I do want to greatly commend Glenn again for using his training as a stuntman/choreographer to add the nice, correct ways of having Howard think and use his training and experiences as a boxer in Howard’s fight scenes with various attackers throughout the book. Very nicely done! You get into what Howard may have thought or strategized during his pick-up boxing matches at various gyms and at the Cross Plains Icehouse before he had to quit due to his writing career exploding!

Final Thoughts

So, what did I think of the book? Would I recommend it to someone looking for a pulpy story to read? Would I recommend it to a Howard fan? On the first two questions, I would say that I enjoyed the book very much as a nice, fun read in the pulp style. It also was a fun continuation of the story of Count Dracula, and as I hinted at, adds an aspect of making him a Bondian villain that is completely satisfying. So, yes, if the subject matter interests you, then get the book and read it.

As to the third question, I still enjoyed the book even though I had problems with some character/historical points/traits of Glenn’s portrayal of Howard. While momentarily taking me out of the story (except for his continued use of Howard’s pet name for Lovecraft-that drove me nuts!!!!), I was able to enjoy the book and I am actually hoping that Glenn decides to continue the adventures of Bob Howard, Adventurer!

Notes

1. Review: A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure by Teel James Glenn — DMR Books
2. Private emails with Will Oliver, Dec. 27, and Dec. 28, 2021.

John Bullard is a retired attorney who lives in Texas, and has updated The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard for The Robert E Howard Foundation Press, which will soon be available for purchase. He became a life-long Howard fan upon reading his first Howard story in an anthology of horror stories in 1974. While working on the Letters, he started seeing the subject matter of this post and has written it up for the education and edification of other Howard-ophiles. John is currently working on several projects for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.