Imagine A PRINCESS OF MARS, but written by Conan creator Robert E. Howard, and this book is pretty much what you would get. Howard tells the tale of an Earthman mysteriously conveyed to a savage, low-technology world where he must rescue damsels and survive by his sword and brutish strength.
I much prefer Edgar Rice Burroughs for this sort of thing. Burroughs wrote much earlier, and his vivid tales have a higher sense of romance and chivalry and sweeping prose of a sort no one writes today, making things more fun. When John Carter describes his undying love for Deja Thoris, or his willingness to die to save her, well, he really emotes.
Howard, on the other hand, writes the same sort of thing without the romanticism, and in terse prose. I guess, for me, if you are going to write a tale full of swords and monsters and beautiful women and brutish warriors then, well … go full gusto.
I have read much better stuff from Howard and count myself as a fan, but this one is definitely not among his best.
I have seen claims that ALMURIC was either an unfinished tale dusted off and embellished by Howard’s agent, or else written entirely by the agent after Howard’s death. I do not know enough to comment on such claims, other than to say the prose and storytelling in ALMURIC seem pale when compared to, say, “The Tower of the Elephant.”
Swords Against Boredom 