Review: Lethal Consignment by Shaun Hamill

by Gary Romeo

“Lethal Consignment” by Shaun Hamill is the newest Heroic Legends Conan e-book. Shaun Hamill lives in north Texas, so he is a neighbor of mine. Perhaps he’ll make it to Howard Days on June 7th in Cross Plains. At only $1.99 Mr. Hamill’s consignment writing of this Conan short story isn’t lethal.

This story takes place before “The Tower of the Elephant.” Conan is a young barbarian new to civilization. In this story his inclination seems to be for honest work. Perhaps his experience in this story is what pushed him to be a thief? If Mr. Hamill had played that angle up, it would have been a more meaningful story. Conan is described in the paragraph below.

This is a very short story, only six chapters. Hamill’s writing is straight forward and simple. Conan takes employment as a “sellsword.” I’ve come across this word a lot in recent fantasy stories. It’s descriptive of the job, I suppose. Conan is in Kordava, the capital of Zingara and in need of employment. Flavio de Palma the Bold, first mate of the “Fortune’s Dawn” hires Conan to help fight off any pirates that may attack their ship on the way to Aquilonia. This story has Conan aware of Aquilonia but no mention is made of Venarium and Conan’s role in that skirmish.

Conan takes the consignment. Captain Bertoldo stays in his quarters. Conan interacts mainly with Leonidus, another “sellsword.” Conan’s spider-sense is aroused by the small number of crewmen for such a sizeable ship. Eventually the ship is attacked by some sort of demon and a crewman is murdered. His body is ordered to be tossed overboard.

A new crew member is hired. Conan tries to talk about these events with a crewman promoted because of the death. But the man is secretive. The story starts to resemble “The Last Voyage of the Dementer.” But in a non-sensical way. This ship stops along the journey without any desertions or clammer from the sailors, who we know from various other genre stories, are always a superstitious lot. Mind control is hinted at later, but I thought this set up to be weak. Leonidus seems to be in control of himself but is reluctant to talk as everyone else. Which seems highly unrealistic to my thinking.

I don’t want to provide further spoilers. Suffice to say, Conan wins in the end and destroys the evil thing aboard the ship and is alone in the water by story’s end. I’ve read better (and worse) Conan comic book adventures. There is some cleverness in the story, but the behavior of the crew did not seem realistic to me. Men observing a shrinking crew would not stay aboard such a vessel. It is looking more and more like really good Conan short story writers are hard for Titan Books to find. Along with giving more consignments to Scott Oden and John Hocking they should pick up Jason Waltz’s Neither Beg Nor Yield and start hiring those writers.