Together with People of the Black Circle, Beyond the Black River, is Howard's best novella. The Conan character and setting gave Howard a chance to write in various action genres: pirate, oriental, horror, and frontier. Beyond the Black River is essentially Howard rewriting Last of the Mohicans to include the supernatural horrific element he was renowned for.

There has been speculation that the Balthus character represents Howard patterning a character after himself and inserting himself in the story. The details about the dog Balthus adopts seem to bear this out. Rural figures such as Howard and L'Amour [a contemporary] are often most convincing when writing about beloved pets, particularly the attachment of man and dog as in L'Amour's Hondo.

The reader gets to see Conan in his natural primal element. Conan works as a leader, a thief, a pirate, a mercenary, a king, but he really works as a savage in a wilderness environment. The first chapter, Conan Looses his Axe, is an excellent study in wilderness colonization.

"I never planted wheat and never will so long as there are other harvests to be reaped with the sword."

In many ways I suppose that this anti-imperialistic chapter echoes many a meeting between a Special ops soldier in postmodern American operations and a newly deployed soldier. Conan Looses his Axe translates the knowledge of frontier conditions that was still understood by people of Howard's time who had relatives who had been there. The next 50 years of obfuscating liberal scholarship until the publication of War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley ‘The Pain Of Being Human’ permitted the modern mind to concoct a fantasy of primitive life from whole cloth. Howard knew better. By the end of the first chapter the main points in the 'barbarism versus civilization' argument once had between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, which has just been joined by postmodern thinkers on masculinity, are made here.