I’m normally not very susceptible to advertising. It’s very rare that I’ll see an ad and want to rush out and buy the product. However, this very thing happened recently, and it was all the more unusual because the ad in question was from 70 years ago.

While perusing scans of old pulps at the Luminist Archives, an ad in a 1951 issue of Imagination really grabbed my attention. “The Most Exciting Book Since Merritt’s Moon Pool”, the ad declared. “An original, never-before-published science-fantasy novel of the calibre of the great classics of Merritt, Taine, Wells… told with the gripping realism and brilliance of another Poe!” Well, damn, who wouldn’t want to read that?

The book being advertised was Kinsmen of the Dragon by Stanley Mullen. I was completely unfamiliar with both the title and the author. A bit of research revealed that this book had never been reprinted since its publication in 1951, which explains why it’s so little-known today. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its obscurity, good condition copies are pricey, usually going for over $50, and signed copies are much more.

Coincidentally, not long after I saw the ad, G.W. Thomas shared a post about the book on his site Dark Worlds. He’d seen the same ad I did, and had a similar reaction. In his post he quoted reviews of the book by Forrest J. Ackerman (who praised it), as well as Damon Knight and James Blish (who both trashed it). Considering Knight and Blish detested A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, their opinions clearly are not worthy of respect. Do you think someone who says “Most of Merritt bores me to tears; so do Howard and Lovecraft” should be taken seriously? If anything, their hatred for Kinsmen of the Dragon made me want to read it even more.

After a bit of searching, I had the good fortune to discover a poor condition copy, reasonably priced at $15. It was missing the dust jacket (featuring colorful Hannes Bok artwork), but I just wanted to read the book. And now that I have, I am pleased to report that Knight and Blish were dead wrong as usual.

Kinsmen of the Dragon begins with the narrator, Eric Joyce, meeting in London with physicist Sir Rodney Dering, a colleague of his recently-deceased uncle. Dering tells Joyce that his uncle’s death, caused by exposure to radiation, was no accident. He believes the culprit is a man named Franchard, the leader of an “eerie and sinister group of modern scientific wizards who call themselves Kinsmen of the Dragon.” Joyce agrees to help Dering investigate this nefarious cult of apparent devil worshipers and prevent their schemes from coming to fruition. It is discovered that the Kinsmen come from a parallel dimension, and Franchard’s goal is nothing less than domination of both worlds. The heroes, assisted by the British government, stage an expedition to the other world, which they learn is where many myths and legends originated (such as the Celtic underworld Annwyn, Atlantis, sirens, and more). Throughout the book there are many bloody confrontations between the heroes and the Kinsmen, which finally culminate with Joyce interrupting Franchard’s dark ritual of sacrifice to the demon Ytal.

I wouldn’t call Kinsmen of the Dragon a flawless masterpiece, but it was certainly exciting, imaginative, and fast-paced. The ad states the book is 116,000 words, but considering how fast I tore through it, I would have guessed it was no more than 2/3rds that amount. I believe any fan of A. Merritt would enjoy it. (I’m sure numerous comparisons could be made between Kinsmen and Merritt’s Creep, Shadow!, but it’s been several years since I last read the latter.) It’s unfortunate that print copies are so hard to come by, but at least a digital version is available.