Elak of Atlantis
core collection 1985 Elak of Atlantis
Record
| First published | 1985 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | collection |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.54 (217 ratings, collected 2026-10-12) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781626813656 |
Synopsis
When Robert E. Howard died in 1936, other writers stepped into the gap he left in Weird Tales, and Henry Kuttner's answer was Elak: a wandering swordsman of royal blood with no wish to rule, adventuring across an antediluvian Atlantis of sorcery, sunken cities and older, Lovecraftian powers. This collection gathers the four Elak stories in their order of magazine publication. In Thunder in the Dawn the fat, formidable druid Dalan draws the reluctant prince into a war to save Atlantis; in The Spawn of Dagon, the shortest and sharpest, Elak and his perpetually drunk companion Lycon take what looks like a simple commission to assassinate a sorcerer; Beyond the Phoenix and Dragon Moon carry Elak toward the throne he has fled, with Dalan returning in the last. A founding text in the evolution of sword and sorcery.
Where it sits
- Universe: Elak of Atlantis
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Henry Kuttner
Notes
- The collection of Kuttner's four Elak stories (Weird Tales, 1938-1941): first collected by Gryphon Books in 1985 with two Prince Raynor tales; the 2014 Diversion Books edition, whose ISBN is recorded, contains the four Elak stories alone. The reader rating is the work-level figure across its editions.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within Elak of Atlantis (standalone work): position 5 of 5: previous Dragon Moon (1941)
Sources
- Open Road Media / Diversion Books (publisher)
- Santa Clarita Public Library catalogue (Diversion edition)
- Risingshadow (publisher description)
- Robin Marx (review)
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.