The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

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Solomon Kane

#5543.79 of 664 ranked universes · full ranking

Books 7 books Status Complete 1928–1932 Reading commitment High Robert E. Howard Last reviewed 2026-08-11

Overview

Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane (1928–1932), a grim Puritan swordsman wandering a broadly real-world 16th/17th-century Africa and Europe: Howard's other sword-and-sorcery universe alongside Conan the Barbarian, and the character most often credited as a direct forerunner of the Conan stories that followed a few years later. Core Canon is the 7 stories Howard sold to and saw published in Weird Tales during his own lifetime; a body of posthumous fragments, completions by other hands, and poems exists but is deliberately not registered, pending a dedicated future research pass.

Sword & sorcery · For Adult

Core Canon: Reading Order (7 works) counts toward ranking

The Solomon Kane Stories Robert E. Howard

WorkYearCanonRating
Cover of Red ShadowsRed Shadows1928core3.56 (378 ratings)
Cover of Skulls in the StarsSkulls in the Stars1929core3.85 (363 ratings)
Cover of Rattle of BonesRattle of Bones1929core3.54 (243 ratings)
Cover of The Moon of SkullsThe Moon of Skulls1930core3.91 (358 ratings)
Cover of The Hills of the DeadThe Hills of the Dead1930core3.94 (239 ratings)
Cover of The Footfalls WithinThe Footfalls Within1931core3.66 (87 ratings)
Cover of Wings in the NightWings in the Night1932core4.04 (204 ratings)

Core = the 7 Solomon Kane stories Howard himself sold to and saw published in Weird Tales during his lifetime (Aug 1928 - Jul 1932) -- a bibliography independently and unanimously corroborated across 4 sources (reh.world's per-story pages, Black Gate's 'Vintage Treasures' column, Dark Worlds Quarterly's Weird Tales-adaptations article, and Wikipedia), with no disagreement on titles or issue dates. Expanded Canon is deliberately NOT registered: the posthumous Kane material is genuinely tangled in a way the lifetime stories are not -- 'The Right Hand of Doom' and 'Blades of the Brotherhood' (Red Shadows collection, 1968) are usually described as complete Howard manuscripts left unsold rather than fragments, but 'Blades of the Brotherhood' has its own bibliographic wrinkle (it derives from a 1929 Kane draft, 'The Blue Flame of Vengeance,' that Howard himself later reworked in 1932 with a different, non-Kane protagonist -- which of the two texts the posthumous editors actually published under which title is not yet cleanly confirmed here); 'The Castle of the Devil', 'Hawk of Basti', and 'The Children of Asshur' are Howard fragments completed by Ramsey Campbell (with a published note on where Howard's text ends and Campbell's begins, per the same completer-credit convention as Conan's Expanded Canon) but were not individually re-verified; 'Death's Black Riders' is an unfinished Howard fragment with two DIFFERENT, mutually independent completions by two different writers (Fred Blosser, 1984; C.J. Henderson, 2002) with no single canonical text; and 3 Solomon Kane poems ('The One Black Stain', 'The Return of Sir Richard Grenville', 'Solomon Kane's Homecoming') have no matching work-type category in this project's schema (no 'poem' value exists). None of this affects the Core admission above, which rests on a clean, independently corroborated bibliography -- but Expanded is left for a dedicated future pass rather than guessed at. No contemporary genre awards exist for any of the 7 Core stories (Howard died in 1936, 17 years before the Hugo Award began, exactly as already documented for Conan the Barbarian) -- their absence is expected and unremarkable for a pulp-era body of work from this period, not a quality signal one way or the other.

Quick answers

Why is it ranked #554?

Ranked #554 of 664 ranked universes.

How the ranking works →

Why explore this universe?

Rated · 7 books · Complete · 2k ratings · Ranks #554 overall

Good choice if you want a long-running sword-and-sorcery universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.

Reading order

Publication order (7 Core Canon books)

  1. Red Shadows (1928)
  2. Rattle of Bones (1929)
  3. Skulls in the Stars (1929)
  4. The Hills of the Dead (1930)
  5. The Moon of Skulls (1930)
  6. The Footfalls Within (1931)
  7. Wings in the Night (1932)

Awards (verified)

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Suggestions computed from what Solomon Kane and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.

Official resources

Research details

Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.79 across 1,872 ratings on 7 Core Canon books. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.

How do we know this?

Admission: Solomon Kane admitted: Core Canon = the 7 lifetime-published Weird Tales stories; Expanded Canon deliberately deferred accepted 2026-08-11

Sources: (see source tier definitions)

Related universes: see the Related universes section above.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-13

Rule: Core = the 7 lifetime-published Weird Tales stories (Aug 1928 – Jul 1932), independently corroborated across 4 sources with no disagreement on titles or dates, registered as one series (The Solomon Kane Stories, per the same sequence-series pattern used for the Conan stories). Expanded Canon (posthumous fragments, Ramsey Campbell completions, competing completions of an unfinished fragment, and 3 poems with no matching work-type category in this project’s schema) is explicitly deferred, not excluded; a future pass may register some or all of it once individually re-verified.

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