Conan the Buccaneer, Lancer Books, 1971 was the 11th and last book published in the Lancer Conan Series. It is the 6th book chronologically. It is dedicated: “To the greatest living creator of swordplay-and-sorcery, J. R. R. Tolkien.”
There was a two year gap between Conan of Cimmeria, Lancer Books, 1969 and this book published in 1971. In that two year period several significant things occurred. The second volume of collected articles from the Sword & Sorcery fanzine, Amra, was published as The Conan Swordbook, Mirage Press, 1969. De Camp published his fifth and last historical novel, The Golden Wind, Doubleday, 1969. In 1970, Pyramid Books published The Reluctant Shaman, calling de Camp “fantasy’s reigning monarch” on the inside front cover. Also that year de Camp’s fourth Sword & Sorcery anthology, Warlocks and Warriors, was published in hardcover (and later as paperback). Lin Carter was continuing his work as series editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. His Thongor series was still going strong with the publication of Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus, Berkley Medallion, 1970. And most importantly Conan the Barbarian from Marvel Comics (first issue, cover dated October 1970) was soaring in popularity.
Sword & Sorcery was at it’s peak! Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter were all easily found in any bookstore. Conan had successfully entered into a new decade but the world was changing…
The 70s became a rough period for Conan. Lancer Books would soon go bankrupt. A civil war would break out between Sprague de Camp and Glenn Lord (literary executor for REH) dividing the Conan community into ridiculously opposing factions. Amra would soon cease publishing and Frank Frazetta would end his relationship with Conan. While Conan successfully moved to Ace Books, times were a changing. Carter, in his introduction, alludes to seventies strife but is hopeful of the future.
Despite Carter’s optimism, Sword & Sorcery, was changing. Soon Conan clones would be replaced by Tolkien clones. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series would end in 1974. And even though Conan stayed the course culminating in the hugely successful Conan the Barbarian film in 1982, nothing would really ever be the same.
Besides the core series of twelve books, there was the Bantam Conan series of six books. They were uneven in quality despite the series being written by experienced and successful authors. The unnumbered seventh volume in the Bantam series was the de Camp/Carter movie novelization. The Tor Conan series that appeared from 1982 – 2002 were often a mishmash of movie Conan and REH/pastiche Conan. As with any series product some were better than others. But “purists” decried the pastiches and eventually their popularity waned.
Conan is in a state of flux at the moment. Viable in MMOG and RPG gaming but lingering in potential film development. Barely hanging on in comics and vacant in book publishing. Hopefully “purists” and “non purists” will unite in supporting the announced Conan publishing venture, Perilous Worlds, if they eventually start publishing new Conan works. Conan will live forever as long as new adventures are written.
Marvel Comics adapted Conan the Buccaneer in The Savage Sword of Conan #40 -43.
Anyway, onward…it’s time to talk about this novel-length Conan adventure….
This book doesn’t have the usual excerpt from “A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career.” This story closely follows the events from “The Pool of the Black One.” Conan is now Captain Conan of The Wastrel. He has been commissioned as a Buccaneer of Zingara. What became of Sancha, the woman Conan acquired at the end of the previous story? Maybe Crom knows, but I’m not asking.
Conan is described as ” a tall man, almost a giant, of enormously powerful build. The dark, scarred face under the battered sailor’s hat was clean-shaven, and the heavy, sun-bronzed features were framed by a square cut mane of course black hair. The deep-set eyes under the massive black brows were blue.” Conan swears by the deity Mannanan again (he did so previously in “The Slithering Shadow). Apparently Cimmerians aren’t as monotheistic as was implied by Conan in “Queen of the Black Coast.”
The novel starts when the young buxom princess, Chabela, has a nightmare and seeks the guidance of her god, Mitra, Lord of Light. (This is similar to Yasmina in “The People of the Black Circle.”) By casting divination rods she is told to sail to her brother’s home. Meanwhile, the duke of Kordava is in league with Captain Zarono. Zarono is in league with a Stygian wizard named Menkara. Duke Villagro is trying to get Chabela to marry him using the Stygian’s mind control magic and become king of Zingara. Menkara’s magic is not strong enough and Menkara says they need the help of Thoth-Amon.
Villagro agrees to tear down the temples of Mitra and institute Set worship if Thoth -Amon will help him. Now, of course, this is a ridiculous bargain guaranteed to cause civil strife but apparently Villagro is desperate and not thinking clearly or thinks he can renege later. So Zarono is now on his way to intercept the princess’s ship before she can reach her brother and then plans to travel to Stygia to seek the help of Thoth-Amon. Meanwhile, Ninus, a priest of Mitra is on his way to sell Conan a treasure map. and sees Menkara, they recognize each other and Menkara stabs Ninus. Ninus, still alive but wounded, tells Conan that Menkara and Zarono stole the map. Conan thinks Zarono is after treasure and Conan sets sail to pursue Zarono.
All in all, it is a pretty clever set up for the novel. Each ship having adventures until the final confrontation where Conan prevails.
The only thing in the novel that I really disliked was Sigurd’s many curses: “By the breasts of Ishtar and the belly of Dagon!,” “Aye, by Lir’s fish-tail and Thor’s hammer!,” “By Frigga’s teats and Shaitan’s fiery member!” and (Scottish?) dialect, “Here, lass, did I be startling you? Fry my guts, I meant no harm. How came ye to this gods-forsaken place at the world’s edge?” Probably intended as humor, it just annoys me (but not enough to say it ruined the novel.)
Conan crosses over into Cthulhu Mythos territory when Tsathoggua is mentioned in the novel.
Thoth-Amon is used to good effect. Some REH fans dislike the way de Camp and Carter used Thoth-Amon as a reoccurring villain. But it proved a popular idea. Dark Horse Comics when adapting Conan to comic books eschewed all other de Camp/Carter ideas but kept Thoth-Amon as the main villain, even giving him a mini-series comic book at one point.
Juma the Kushite (from “The City of the Skulls”) returns. Call me a woketard liberal but I like seeing a brave intelligent black supporting character in Conan adventures. It is a necessary counterpoint for stories like “The Vale of Lost Women,” “The Snout in the Dark,” and “Drums of Tombalku.” De Camp and Carter even hit you over the head at one point having Sigurd say to Conan, “I never thought much of the blacks before. They’ve always seemed to me a pack of superstitious, childish savages. But your friend Juma opened my eyes. He’s a real leader, even as you are yourself are. Aye, there’s heroes and there’s scuts in every folk and nation.” A bit corny for modern times but that was progress in 1971.
Queen Nzinga of the Amazons was also an admirable leader and warrior. Her fault lies in the male chauvinism of the writers. De Camp and Carter made her an unreasonably jealous female. A reviewer of the novel suggested Edgar Rice Burroughs’ La of Opar as D & C’s inspiration. De Camp wrote a letter to correct that.
The Book of Skelos has a starring role in this story. This book has been previously mentioned in “Black Colossus,” “The Devil in Iron,” “People of the Black Circle,” and “Pool of the Black One.” I plan to write up something about the various mentions someday.
Quibbles aside, I enjoyed Conan the Buccaneer as a whole. The hate that exists for it seems way out of proportion to what it actually is. It is a speedy and entertaining adventure that, although dated by today’s standards, helped bridge Conan into the 20th Century.
Note: This review was written back in 2003 when the book was first published. I tried to do a more formal review and submitted this for publication to a leftist magazine. It was rejected.
Stolen Land
CONAN OF VENARIUM By Harry Turtledove A Tor Book, New York, NY July 2003
A new Conan book has hit the shelves. The seemingly never-ending adventures of this barbaric hero begin anew. Conan of Cimmeria, for those unaware, began life during the depression era in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Conan didn’t achieve pop culture fame until about 30 years after his creator’s self inflicted demise though. A best selling paperback book series, Marvel Comics, and a movie featuring Arnold Schwarznegger as a muscle bound ersatz version of the barbarian cemented a pop-culture image of Conan as throwaway fantasy entertainment. Readers of the original stories by Robert E. Howard know that Howard’s Conan stories amount to more than that though. Conan reflected the depression and the myriad political contradictions of those times in manifest ways. The original stories are artifacts worth rediscovering.
Popular science fiction author Harry Turtledove is doing just that. He bases this new novel on a paragraph in one of Robert E. Howard’s best Conan stories, “Beyond the Black River.” In this story Conan is a scout for an invading imperialist country called Aquilonia (think Rome or the USA). The Aquilonians are seeking to steal land from the Picts (think of Rome’s conquest of Britain or the United States conquest of the American West). In the set up to this tale, Conan opines, “This colonization business is mad, anyway. There’s plenty of good land east of the Bossonian marches. If the Aquilonians would cut up some of the big estates of their barons, and plant wheat where now only deer are hunted, they wouldn’t have to cross the border and take the land of the Picts away from them.” Conan later says, “They tried to colonize the southern marches of Cimmeria: destroyed a few small clans, built a fort-town, Venarium.” It is explained that Venarium was lost by the Aquilonians in a great slaughter. “I was one of the horde that swarmed over the hills,” says Conan proudly.
Turtledove takes this idea from “Beyond the Black River” and creates a novel around it, a novel about imperialist conquest and the hatreds that burn on the fuel of stolen land. At the very least Conan of Venarium makes the reader think about the ramifications of being occupied and being the occupiers.
Turtledove opens the novel by introducing some of the Aquilonian invaders. Vulth and Granth are stereotypical griping foot soldiers. Vulth is a little class conscious and snipes about the Aquilonian aristocrats using them as frontline fodder. Most of the men are nervous about facing their wild-eyed barbaric foes. The justification for the invasion is Cimmerian raids on border towns and farms.
Conan and his family are introduced. Turtledove has Conan’s family mirror the family of Conan’s creator. Robert E. Howard had a strained relationship with his father (a small-town doctor) and committed suicide when his mother went into a coma after a lingering illness. Conan’s father, Mordec is the village blacksmith and Conan’s mother, Verina is suffering with a lingering illness. Conan and his village have become aware of the invading army. Conan and his family are united in their hatred of the invaders. However Mordec thinks Conan too young to engage in battle although Conan is anxious to fight. Mordec savagely beats the boy into submission.
The Cimmerians make a rash effort to force the Aquilonians back and lose. They burn with desire for revenge but know they are beaten for now. An uneasy occupation develops. Some Cimmerians cooperate, most don’t. Granth thinks about the Cimmerians, “Those roaring, bellowing barbarians who kept coming, kept killing despite wounds that would have slain a civilized man on the instant were enough to chill the blood.”
Conan pursues his own boyhood adventures of hunting and honing his developing warrior skills. The original Conan stories by Howard always held a supernatural element hence their placement in Weird Tales. Howard was writing fantasy, not historical fiction, and in the best Conan stories the supernatural element was essential to the tale but in some of the stories the fantasy element was merely a sidebar. Turtledove’s tale is primarily about opposing peoples and the fight over land, a realistic situation, and Turtledove in this case possibly rightly has the supernatural element occur in Conan’s sidebar adventures. Conan first weird encounter is with a giant snake and then later with a flying demon. Both are a little cliché but a Conan tale traditionally requires a bit of a supernatural element.
Time passes and settlers come in to farm the land under the Aquilonian army’s protection. Conan encounters a settler named Melcer. Conan has learned a little bit of the man’s language and confronts him speaking broken Aquilonian, “Not your land. You go home.” The man insists on peace, Conan replies, “No peace. You go, then peace.”
Conan is his wanderings throughout the forest encounters a lone Aquilonian soldier. Conan laughs at the man’s hunting technique and the Aquilonian is enraged and attempts to kill Conan. Conan aptly defends himself and kills the man. He has to hide the body to avoid a mass punishment being meted out to his tribe.
In the tradition of simplistic Hollywood movies Turtledove has the head commander of the Aquilonian army, Count Stercus, be a sexual degenerate. Apparently just being the head of an invading army that tramples on the rights of the native people isn’t quite villainous enough, or just maybe it is too villainous. The sexual degeneracy is good camouflage for making the villain just unrecognizable enough for those whom might see some of their own country’s history reflected in the villain’s deeds. Deliberately challenging your audience isn’t good for profits. Count Stercus’ predilection for young girls is only a partial catalyst for the Aquilonian army’s retreat though. Turtledove, realistically, has the Cimmerians hate the invaders from day one regardless of Count Stercus’ sexual urges.
Turtledove is at his best when he juxtaposes Cimmerian attitudes with Aquilonian ones as in this bit of dialog between a soldier and Conan’s father:
“You haven’t got noblemen in Cimmeria, have you?”
“We have clan chiefs, but a man is a chief because of what he has done, not because of what his great-great-grandfather did.”
“I thought so. That explains it. […] If you know who’s on top right away from the start, you don’t need to fight about it all the time.”
That made more sense than Mordec wished it did.
Eventually the southern Cimmerians gather enough of an alliance with their northern brothers to succeed in chasing the invaders back to their border. Turtledove has the Cimmerians engage in savage violence and bloodletting. You can almost sympathize with the settlers who simply wanted land to farm and did not reckon with the savage fury of a people that they thought their army had broken.
Primarily the novel is meant to entertain the reader with a tale of swords and revenge in a forgotten age. Turtledove is no Chomsky analyzing the politics of empire. He does an evenhanded job telling the story of the occupied and the occupiers though. Turtledove in the final analysis does not have the righteous indignation about the modern world that Robert E. Howard did. Howard’s best Conan stories are hardly leftist screeds but they do have critical things to say about modern issues. “The Tower of the Elephant” can be read as dealing with animal rights, “The God in the Bowl” is very much an anti-police brutality tale, but sadly “Rogues in the House” reflects Howard’s ultimately cynical views about things political. So Turtledove is true to his source in that regard. Still, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for those interested in depression era fiction to give Robert E. Howard and Conan a try.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
Sean A. Moore (April 20, 1964 – February 23, 1998) was an American fantasy and science fiction writer, and computer programmer. His primary significance as a writer is for his three pastiche novels featuring Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery hero Conan and for his work on the screenplay of the movie Kull the Conqueror, and novelization of the same film.
Moore was a resident of Boulder, Colorado, where he worked in the field of computer programming in a number of different capacities, including programmer, systems operations specialist, and writer of computer games. He was employed as a programmer by Aspen Systems, Inc. He was also a designer of board games. His hobbies included playing computer games and fencing.
Moore died in a car crash in Boulder. He was survived by his wife. Services were held five days after his death in Denver.
Conan the Hunter – Sean Moore – January 1994
Didn’t care that much for this one. I liked Sean Moore’s previous Conan novels better. This one starts out fine with Conan buying a bracelet without knowing it belonged to a murdered princess. Conan is caught by the local police with the bracelet (intentionally framed) and now Conan has to prove himself innocent of the crime (and exact some justice). There is also an evil witch, a few monsters, a talking spider, and a pretty damn magical priest of Mitra. The novel takes over 200 pages to tell a 100 page story. Conan gets hurt a lot but recovers remarkably fast. There is a bar fight near the end that Conan almost loses. I didn’t mind that Conan was not quite as strong as his foe but Conan was the first to pull out a weapon. Realistic but a little out of character I think. I might have missed something here as I was getting bored but I don’t think so. The guy wasn’t magically or even particularly evil. Just a big dumb brute. Conan resorting to a weapon first bothered me. Some hocus-pocus at the very end. Readable but not worth rereading.
Conan and the Shaman’s Curse – Sean Moore – January 1996
This book is listed on Amazon for $919.00. Crazy. I guess I’m lucky to own it. I liked the two other books I read by Sean Moore (Conan and the Grim Grey God and the Kull Movie book). This one not so much. Moore is a fine enough writer, his prose is straight-forward and he does action and characterization well but this one is kinda odd. Conan is cursed in the first chapter to be a were-ape. Conan is then captured and faces hopeless odds. Full moon though. Conan the Were-Ape kills everybody and he even eats a few.
Conan ends up on an island of near-giants. Not Stumbo the Giant size (this ain’t a Steve Perry book) but a little taller than Yao Ming or Manute Bol. Conan helps them fight murderous birds. I was waiting for Conan to turn into the were-ape and eat beaucoup bird-legs with hot sauce while boinking giant babes. He does the boinking but the were-ape never returns and the curse is lifted in a don’t blink way at the end of the book.
Conan and The Grim Grey God – Sean Moore – November 1996
Conan and the Grim Grey God by Sean Moore is a character laden story with lots of twists and turns. Thoth Amon has a sizable role and references are made to The God in the Bowl. Conan might be too much the super-barbarian here (he fights an undead army single handed at the end) but the prose and plot are REH-like. Some things bothered me at the end. Thoth giving up a little too easy, and Jade joining Conan in pirating after an unexplained figuring out of a cure for her poisoning. But all in all a decent entertainment. I had read Moore’s novelization of the Kull movie and enjoyed that as well. Sadly, Sean Moore died in a car wreck. He was a good S&S writer.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
John C. Hocking (born 1960) is an American fantasy writer, the author of a Conan novel published by Tor Books and a number of short stories. One of his stories, “The Face in the Sea”, won the 2009 Harper’s Pen Award for Sword and Sorcery fiction.
According to Hocking, he wrote his Conan novel Conan and the Emerald Lotus out of dissatisfaction with the Conan novels being published in the early 1990s, “trying to put into the story all the things I thought were missing from Conan pastiche at that time.” After taking three years to write it, he was proud enough of the result that he “didn’t want to just drop it into a drawer ….[s]o I sent out a handful of letters, and L. Sprague de Camp responded …that if I sent him my book he’d look it over. He liked it a lot and LOTUS was published.”After its success he spent two years writing a second Conan novel, Conan and the Living Plague, under contract with Conan Properties, which was “sufficiently pleased with the book that they wanted to use it to attract a new publisher for Conan and try to break into hardcover.” Publication of it and a third Conan novel Hocking had started were canceled due to a change in ownership of Conan Properties.
Hocking has since published a number of fantasy stories, most forming a series featuring the original character Brand the Viking.
Conan and the Emerald Lotus – John Hocking – November 1995
I know John Hocking is a fan favorite and all-around nice guy (he once emailed me a nice note about a REH article I did) so I’m glad I mostly enjoyed this book. It has a great set-up. A wizard hooks two other wizards on his version of Hyborian Heroin. He plans to make drug addicts of various wizards and control them as their supplier. Trouble is like Tony Montana he dips into his own supply (and the supply is a plant from the Little Shop of Horrors.) Conan gets involved when one wizard hires him to steal more drugs from the other wizard. Nice set-up but the middle drags quite a bit IMHO. Hocking’s Conan is smart and not a super-barbarian even though he gets conked on the head a lot without apparent brain damage. The ending is nice but maybe Conan did get a little brain damage because instead of making the female wizard go Cold Turkey he gives her more drugs!
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
Roland James Green (born September 2, 1944) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. He has written as Roland Green and Roland J. Green; and had 28 books in the Richard Blade series published under the pen name Jeffrey Lord.
Green was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 1944. A resident of Michigan since 1947, he was graduated from Ypsilanti High School in Ypsilanti in 1962. He received a B. A. from Oberlin College in 1966 in Political Science, then moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago from which he received an MA in International Politics in 1968. While there, he became active in science fiction fandom and in the Society for Creative Anachronism (under the persona “Roland de Tour Gris”). He married fellow writer Frieda A. Murray in 1975; their one daughter Violette Y. Green was born in 1984.
Green has worked as a full-time writer and reviewer most of the time since he sold his first novel, Wandor’s Ride, in 1973. While his earliest published novels were the “Wandor” swordand sorcery series, Green’s most prominent works are his military action adventures of the future, including the Starcruiser Shenandoah series, the Peace Company series, and Voyage to Eneh (2003). He has also written a number of Conan novels published by Tor Books and has co-authored several novels as well. He pseudonymously wrote all but one of the Richard Blade series books from number 9 up to the end of the series.
Roland Green wrote seven Conan novels.
Conan the Valiant – Roland Green – October 1988
I haven’t liked some plot points and characterizations in the other books I read and there was definite padding in them but this was the first one I had difficulty finishing. Green uses a lot of weird similes i.e. “Only iron will kept him from spewing like a woman newly with child” and “the muscles jumping like mice under a blanket.” I didn’t study the text enough to give examples but it seems repetitive sometimes describing a scene in two paragraphs when only one was enough.
Oh well. This book could have been called Conan the Horny. He beds 3 women at the same time in the first chapter and just about every other chapter ends with Conan getting ready to fornicate. There is a side adventure where Conan rescues someone’s fiancee from a bandit tribe and Conan has sex with her too. (Which seems a bit shitty since the woman’s betrothed help save them in a previous skirmish.) Conan just can’t keep it in is his pants in this book.
The main plot is two wizards, one male and one female, fighting over a pair of twin jewels. The male wizard is creating “The Transformed” to take over the world. The female wants to stop him. The novel is filled with multiple characters and the narrative switches from Conan, Bora (a heroic villager fighting the transformed), the male wizard, and later a friend of Bora’s. None of the different viewpoints are suspenseful. Conan wins, the female wizard turns on him, and she gets killed in an avalanche. Some of the side stories are wound up. Maybe my fault for reading so many in so short of time but I’d say this one was weak.
Conan the Guardian – Roland Green – January 1991
I’ll be honest. I don’t know if this was a good book or not. It was a serious adventure. The main plot is that Argos is composed of trading houses that compete against each other. OK. It’s more legal capitalism than gangster rivalry. One of the subtexts of the novel is that civilization has lots of rules and that Argos “has ten laws where [other places] have one, but the laws are still what the men who rule say they are.” But if this was supposed to be a socioeconomic look at the Hyborian Age it failed to my way of thinking.
The House of Akimos doesn’t follow the rules and intrigues against the House of Damaos and the House of Lokhri. There is a little suspense and mystery at first but Green’s writing style is not a favorite of mine. I prefer a straight forward almost YA prose. Green tries to be too fancy I think. I get bored and start glazing over the words.
Conan sleeps with the ladies of both houses and a slave. Livia is the head of Damaos. Her suitor is of the House of Lokhri. He is a smart bookish type and pines over Livia. Conan knows this and sleeps with Livia anyway. It becomes part of the plot in a somewhat interesting way but the suitor accepts it too graciously to my way of thinking.
The supernatural menaces are easily disposed off. Nothing really exciting happens in this novel. It is a serious adventure though and Conan behaves like Conan I think. I just can’t get past Green’s style. Some might like this book even though I didn’t.
Conan the Relentless – Roland Green – April 1992
If I had been a Tor editor and the only Conan manuscript I had in front of me was this book I would have accepted it. It is a fairly straight-forward adventure. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. Roland Green was a fair pasticher of Robert Jordan. He followed his formula: have a lot of characters, a villain, an erstwhile ally for Conan, and a babe for Conan to fornicate with. Roland figures the way to improve the formula is to have three babes for Conan instead on one.
As I said before Roland Green’s style is not a favorite of mine. His variations on the word wit don’t bother me but I find my mind wandering as I read him. He is good when it comes to dialog to move the story forward and his fight scenes are okay but in between something gets lost for me. Conan plays a soldier here and the barbaric side is not too visible.
Conan and the Gods of the Mountain – Roland Green – May 1993
This book follows “Red Nails” in the Tor chronology. Roland Green’s style is somewhat better this time around but it is an uninteresting story. Conan and Valeria are trying to find their way home and end up in an underground cave/structure for about half the book. Once they get out they meet a tribe fighting a war. Conan and Valeria prove themselves in some contests. Once that is done there is a final battle that never grabbed me. The emphasis and drama of this book should have been mostly on Valeria. We know Conan will survive for more adventures but putting Valeria in a life or death situation might have generated some suspense. Green seems more interested in getting them to finally have sex.
Conan at the Demon’s Gate – Roland Green – November 1994
Somebody at TOR or CPI must have thought Roland Green was a decent writer. His books probably sold as well as the others and I even read a few positive reviews of his Conan novels on Amazon. But I really don’t care for Roland Green.
There is an unneeded prologue that take place in the reign of Conn (aka Conan the Second). Conn’s army finds a statue of Conan in a Pictish cave. Big mystery, yeah, so now the reader knows this book is going to tell us the why of that.
Despite the prologue the story is almost interesting at first. Conan is trying to get over the death of Belit and is wandering around the Black Kingdoms. Conan has to battle a monster and save a woman and the Bamulas reluctantly accept him as an ally because of his fighting skill.
There is tension, and Green handles this well, it is not racial, although there is a bit of that, it is mainly macho alpha dog type tension. It starts making for an interesting story but Green blows it.
The Demon Gate appears and they are whisked off to Pictland. The guy giving Conan grief gets killed and the novel just drags on without pleasure after this.
There is an interlude about halfway that goes back to Conn’s reign and a new narrator takes over for no real good reason. Now in Pictland, Conan and the Bamulas meet a wizard and his daughter and get caught up in their plot and try to find their way home.
Needless to say it all works out. The mystery of the Conan statue is explained and the epilogue takes us back to Conn’s reign where we get a whiff of “wink at the camera” type magic from the Conan statue. Also there is a character who is Conan’s illegitimate son. As if any one who has read Roland Green’s Conan doesn’t know Conan can’t keep it in his pants.
Conan and the Mists of Doom – Roland Green – August 1995
Not much to recommend here. Barely got through this one. I’d say this was the worst of the series. Conan is Conan but it is a slogging tale. I prefer Conan tales where he is working alone or with a limited few. Here he is the head of some bandits and also working with a Turanian Captain he met in a previous adventure. The novel alternates between Conan’s story and the Lady of the Mist story. They meet up at the end in a “I didn’t care” finale. Conan has competition for the female and loses out to his second in command. That is the only interesting twist in this book.
Conan and The Death Lord of Thanza – Roland Green – January 1997
I read my first Roland Green pastiche. Not as bad as I feared or as good as I hoped. It was a comic-booky tale of the Cimmerian. The author mentioned previous adventures, I guess assuring the reader that this is that same Conan you know and love. He did a checklist book: hot babe for Conan to fornicate with, evil sorcery stuff, sword fights, a hollywood-ish spectacular finish. I like the skeleton army fairly well (funny in parts), the setup with Conan joining the Thanza rangers was believable, the relationships Conan builds with his men, the love interest, etc. was all decent. Didn’t like: the flying mountain and everyone surviving a crash into a swampy lake, Conan’s “it’s not you” breakup letter, and the oddball dream sequence at the very end. But all in all I found it enjoyable enough.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
Leonard Paul Carpenter is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction. He writes as Leonard Carpenter and Leonard P. Carpenter. Carpenter was born in 1948 in Chicago, but aside from a year in West Texas in childhood has lived most of his life in California. He married Cheryl Lynn Chrisman on October 10, 1970 in Alameda, California. They attended UC Berkeley, from which they both graduated, and had two daughters and a son. The Carpenters lived in Santa Maria, California from 1975 to 2003, and continued to reside on the California Central Coast thereafter. Cheryl, a schoolteacher, retired in 2013 and died January 24, 2014 after a year-long fight with cancer. Since her death Carpenter has traveled and worked on book projects.
Carpenter wrote eleven Conan novels. He is a close second favorite. Conan the Great and Conan the Hero are standouts.
Conan the Renegade – Leonard Carpenter – April 1986
This one felt like a bonafide Conan adventure. Conan leads a mercenary army to overcome an evil prince and his sorcerer. The action is good. The sorcerer’s first act of creating knife like hail was actually pretty chilling. I was in a hailstorm once and I could sort of relate. The firefog created by the sorcerer was a letdown but a whirling dervish of swords had potential. Princess Yasmela makes a return appearance. The political alliances Conan makes are all realistic and the novel almost has an historical fiction feel.
Of course the presence of magic causes that to be fleeting. There is a band of female mercenaries that Conan sleeps with rather unrealistically. (He is the only male they allow this privilege.) It all eventually leads to a final battle full of action. The ending is ruined a bit by a deus ex machina. The wizard is killed by a rock dinosaur thingy that slumbers in the hills until disturbed by magic. Other than that this is a pretty decent read.
Conan the Raider – Leonard Carpenter – October 1986
The first third of this book is very good. Conan joins up with a band of grave robbers and thrills ensue. There are those “Indiana Jones” and “Tomb Raider” things we’ve seen before but Carpenter does a Howardian job of describing them and it culminates in awakening a crocodile/human hybrid race. The band escapes and if the book ended there I’d say this was the best pastiche so far. But we are only a third of the way.
The middle section has a lot of padding that had me getting a little bored. A Shemite King is under the influence of a Stygian Prophet who wants the King to build a big tomb. Conan gets forced on the work crew and learns enough about the architecture to plan robbing it after the King is laid to rest with his wealth. There is some interesting social commentary about exploitation of the masses that I liked but it was not overdone.
The wizard’s plan and Conan’s team heist execution got a little murky to me but it finally results in awakening the dead. The town folk and Conan rally to battle and defeat the zombie/mummies. Conan kills the wizard in a rather cool way. The wizard has the power to melt weapons. As Conan’s sword heats up, he cools it in water, still steaming and glowing red hot he disembowels the wizard. I enjoyed that. Even with the padding in the middle and a somewhat rushed ending this one is worth reading.
Conan the Warlord – Leonard Carpenter – March 1988
I liked this one. A Nemedian Baron married a Cimmerian woman and had two children. A boy and a girl. The boy looks a bit like Conan. Before you groan outright consider that REH did state the Hyborian races all had distinct racial characteristics. Cimmerians have black hair, Vanir have red hair, etc. I didn’t find it beyond the pale that the Baron’s boy could resemble Conan a bit if he took after his Cimmerian mother. This isn’t a Tarzan/Esteban Miranda thing! They just look enough alike to fool people that might have only heard a description of or briefly seen the Baron’s son.
Anyway, onward… Conan is hired by the father to impersonate his son at public occasions to fool would be assassins. Conan learns there are rebellious forces, a rising snake cult, and general sadism and possibly incestuous craziness with the son and daughter of the Baron. Leonard Carpenter throws in some slightly populist politics along the way. The rich basically suck. Rebels can compromise and suck. There is a great side chapter where another Baron uses the fear of the rising snake cult to slaughter some innocent dissidents who are just trying to avoid tariffs and fees. Conan learns the perfidy of civilization quickly.
The plot proceeds with the boy and his father getting killed, the rebels winning and forming a coalition government, and Conan assuming the boy’s identity leading troops to fight the snake cult. Some decent weirdness but Conan kills the ringleader way too easily and the snake people instantly collapse. Yeah. OK. Lazy stuff. Points lost there. By now everybody knows Conan is Conan and the coalition government behaves like any political party and schemes to oust the outsider barbarian who might do actual good for people. Conan escapes and goes on to new adventures. I give credit to Carpenter for throwing in a little political allegory. REH did that in Rogues in the House. This is a worthy pastiche.
Conan the Hero – Leonard Carpenter – February 1989
I’ve heard of military science fiction, the first third of this book could be military fantasy. Conan and Juma (from de Camp and Carter’s The City of Skulls) are channeling Gustav Hasford’s The Short Timers (the basis for Full Metal Jacket) and fighting a Hyborian version of the Vietnam War. Kinda gimmicky, kinda cool. Anyway there is a lot of frenetic action until the middle section where Conan gets forcefully hooked on drugs. This section slogs with fever dreams and some weird-ass metaphysical stuff about elephants. The novel whips back into shape when Conan and Juma are brought to the capital of Turan as heroes. Conan meets Jane Fonda, there is a food fight, the tree from The King and the Oak strangles scores of people and the king decides Vietnam is a bad war and wants peace. Conan returns to ‘Nam and learns he had been sleeping with Ho Chi Mihn’s daughter.
Conan the Great – Leonard Carpenter – April 1989
I think Leonard Carpenter was really trying here. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp. This novel is quite heavy at times but falls on its own weight by the end. This is a novel of King Conan. I always preferred the non-king stories. King Conan and Prospero always reminded me of King Leonardo and True-Blue Odie working together to stop Biggy Rat and Itchy Brother from usurping the throne. I understand this is the only King Conan Tor novel so that preference of mine must be shared by more than a few.
The novel begins well. Conan has just fought a battle and comes across a surviving dwarf. Yes, he is quite like Otli (from the TV show at first.) Seemingly a downturn for the reader but it gets better. Delvyn (the dwarf) starts questioning Conan and basically asks “… to what end?” He knows of Conan’s rise from barbaric obscurity to King of Aquilonia and we as readers know Conan has had enough pluck and luck along the way to be seemingly favored by the gods. Delvyn easily plays on Conan’s middle age crisis and sets him off to conqueror the world. Conan is not all that admirable here. He cheats right in front of Zenobia, starts getting a god-complex (lets face it, he IS practically Superman), and isn’t that great a Dad. Carpenter plays with the “Superman” idea briefly having Conan affect a meek secret identity during a trip!
Conan has a worthy foe in King Amiro though. Conan hears Amiro has placed Yasmela (from REH’s Black Colossus) in prison. Conan goes off to rescue her and finds out Amiro is her son. We all know what revelation is gonna happen by the end of the novel, don’t we?
The novel has lots of padding and forced weirdness but at its core it does have some weighty ideas. What should the reader think of Conan’s rise to King? And, yeah, “to what end” is a worthy question. The novel gets subtlety anti-war in describing the effect the ambitions of these Kings put on regular folk. The pomp and pageantry as boys leave for glory and return as maimed vets and dead heroes.
Eventually the novel has to conform to its duty to be entertaining sword and sorcery so an evil god is disposed of and war is averted with the revelation that Amiro is Conan’s son (huuuge surprise!). All ends well. I admire Carpenter for really trying here. I wished I liked it more. But it wasn’t just “mere” entertainment. A worthy read.
Conan the Outcast – Leonard Carpenter – April 1991
This was sort of an odd duck. I mostly liked it. A city called Sark is having a bad time of it. Mostly drought. The king gets the evil idea of sending a radiated god to the city of Qjara under the pretense of uniting the cities but in reality creating a holocaust/sacrifice to Sark’s god.
Conan ventures to Qjara on his way to Shadizar and gets involved with the cities’ royal family when he helps man the gates and repels an attack. Conan butts heads with Zaius (not an orangutan but a belligerent temple fighter) who is betrothed to the princess. Conan responds in kind (both guys act a little like immature dickheads). Later Zaius walks in on Conan making out with the princess. There is a challenge and as a reader I was getting interested in the outcome since the princess implored Conan not to kill him.
Conan ponders just maiming the guy but is not sure if he’ll be able too as the guy is pretty buff and as good with the sword as Conan. They get into the ring together and Zaius in a great display of swordsmanship cuts off his own head intentionally. (Yep, not kidding!)
Conan instead of just being WTF quiet starts laughing out loud. It was a dick move and the royal family really under reacts and just declares Conan an outcast.
Conan leaves the city and meets up with the caravan bringing in the radiated god to Qjara. The god-bearers are all wasting away with radiation sickness. Conan contemplates a little about crazy religions, suicide, and just why the heck he let himself get involved with this.
There is a fairly effective scene where Conan sees the ruins of a city and notices images of people’s shadows burned into the rock. Reminding the reader of Hiroshima.
It all wraps up when Conan returns to Qjara in the service of the Sark caravan. They reluctantly allow him back as they want this alliance with Sark to work. But the princess and the citizens of Qjara realize this new male god meant to marry their female god is evil AF and Conan dons magic armor he found in that dead city and sets everything aright. There is a nice little epilogue that I won’t spoil since I’ve spoiled too much already. All in all, not great, but not bad either.
Conan the Savage – Leonard Carpenter – November 1992
Leonard Carpenter really tried to do thoughtful Conan. He never completely satisfies me but I like him most of the way and I respect him for trying. This book is not a typical Conan novel. It tells two stories. Conan’s disgust for civilization and a young girl’s rise to queen-ship with a devil doll.
After story after story of Conan being jailed it makes sense he might want to stay away from civilization for a while. At first he is pretty much Jeremiah Johnson, eking out a solitary existence. Later he meets up with primitive savages and finds them to his liking. They even teach him things.
In the other half of the book, the young girl who had a traumatic early life is increasingly becoming aware of her doll’s powers. It is very creepy at first. The girl and her doll are somewhat sympathetic in the beginning (getting revenge on bad folk) but the evil becomes manifest in wicked revenge.
Eventually the two stories converge. Along the way there is good entertainment, thoughtful commentary, and a wish by me that it was all a little sharper.
All in all I enjoyed this one. It is certainly not great entertainment like Conan the Rogue but like Carpenter’s Conan the Great and his Conan the Hero, he is really trying to play with the genre and make it a deeper experience.
The ending was rushed. This one actually could have been better as a trilogy. The young girl/devil dolls transition to pure evil was rushed. Conan’s revenge was rushed. And there could have been another book acclimating Conan back to civilization. Lots of ideas/themes in this book. Probably the only one I would have like expanded.
Conan of the Red Brotherhood – Leonard Carpenter – February 1993
This one featured Conan as Amra the Pirate. Conan’s crew is always giving him grief. His girlfriend, Olivia (from Shadows in the Moonlight), doesn’t like the pirate life and deserts him later in the book. There is a lusty band of female pirates but Conan has to go through dangerous foreplay to bed their leader. Lots of murderous centipedes big and small. Pirating the Vilayet Sea is not a whole lot of fun!
King Yildiz and his son are looking for ways to crush the pirates and come up with the idea to hold a contest to figure out the best way to crush them.
There is an aside on the graft inherent in military contracts that is certainly true today. The contest results in one guy designing a steamboat. The Hyborian Age has too many anachronisms already so even though it is kind of interesting and a bit clever I didn’t really like it. Another guy tries a sort of paddle-boat. The wizard uses a giant centipede.
Conan is on the defensive throughout most of this book. Hard to see why he likes this career. It all makes for a serviceable adventure but I think it is a weaker Carpenter effort.
Conan: Scourge of the Bloody Coast – Leonard Carpenter – April 1994
This is a competent enough novel but it loses steam after the first half of the story. This is a sequel to Carpenter’s Conan and the Red Brotherhood. The first half is about a treasure search and it held my interest. The treasure is lost when a storm brews (caused by Crotalus, an evil wizard) and Conan is stranded in Hyrkania. Conan returns to his pirate stronghold and works on a plan to get the Hyrkanians and the Turanians to go to war with each other so he can end up being stronger in the aftermath. He had made an agreement with the Hyrkanians and they made a deal with Crotalus, so Conan is back allied with the wizard who betrayed him. It’s a decent setup for a good second half but it mainly just becomes a big naval battle that never excited me. Part of the problem is that every reader knows Conan’s plan to establish a pirate kingdom isn’t his destiny. This is obviously a filler novel that isn’t really adding anything unique to the series.
Conan the Gladiator – Leonard Carpenter – January 1995
I didn’t dislike this one even though it has LOTS of weaknesses. First off, the main plot bothers me. Conan joins a circus (not so bad) and they are invited to Luxor to perform. Instead of doing their normal circus act they are tricked into fighting for their lives against wild beasts and bandits (again, not so bad.) Conan, instead of swearing vengeance against this treacherous set up, decides it was all good clean fun and him and the circus performers all become gladiators (sooooo bad!)
Carpenter’s easy to read prose kept me reading it and it did get better. I liked the explanation that Stygia allowed this cosmopolitan type city to exist to facilitate trade and some needed contact with the rest of the Hyborian World. It made sense, sort of like the way middle America tolerates Hollywood. It’s mostly antithetical to middle American values but nevertheless it entertains and is a valuable export and a glamorous face that hides some of our ugliness.
The city’s tyrant boss built aqueducts and other modern things as a byproduct of the prosperous games. In one section he gives a little speech that has a lot of truth to it. He explains how the heavy action oriented games excite the people and how the riches and rewards have a secularizing effect making the population less religious and more willing to leave small towns and seek reward in the city. There is a minor character that does exactly that. He arrived with Conan’s circus but his criminal entrepreneur skills make him a contender in this city.
There is a scene where Conan sees the caretakers of the dead gladiators mummify the bodies and Conan is appalled. The man explains how this process helps him learn useful information about how the human body works. When a dying gladiator is brought in the man has Conan perform CPR type moves and the man stitches up wounds and saves his life. Conan had hit his head earlier and passes out. Some have cited this as Conan fainting at the sight of blood. Maybe… I prefer to see it as a result of his earlier head blow and this new knowledge making him dizzy.
If Carpenter had developed these ideas about civilization’s secularizing and brutality contrasted with the increase in knowledge and better living standards then we might have had a very interesting Conan novel. But, alas, Carpenter fails to develop it further and ends the novel by wrecking the circus maximus in a colossal ship battle gone haywire and Conan survives for the next adventure.
Conan Lord of the Black River – Leonard Carpenter – April 1996
This one is pretty dull. It shouldn’t be. It has a decent premise. Conan is asked to lead an expedition to the headwaters of the River Styx to find a rare silver lotus flower. The story features characters from “Hawks Over Shem.” A princess who is most likely Conan’s daughter (although the Queen denies it and Conan doesn’t ask questions) has fallen into a coma due to a sorceress’s evil plan. Conan must find the flower to cure her. I have liked several of Leonard Carpenter’s pastiches but not this one. Maybe he was told to write like Roland Green! It isn’t terrible and it flowed well at first but it never got exciting or interesting despite all the troubles during the trip. For completists only I think.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
Steve Perry is a native of the Deep South. His residences have included Louisiana, California, Washington and Oregon. Prior to working full-time as a freelance writer, he worked as a swimming instructor, lifeguard, assembler of toys, clerk in a hotel gift shop and car rental agency, aluminum salesman, martial art instructor, private detective, and nurse. His wife is Dianne Waller, a Port of Portland executive. They have two children and five grandsons. One of their children is science fiction author S. D. Perry. He is a practitioner of the martial art Silat,lat, which inspired him to create the fictional martial arts Sumito and Teras Kasi, both of which are essentially fictionalized versions of Silat.
Steve Perry wrote five Conan novels. None are typical Conan adventures. Most are pretty wacky. Some fun, some not.
Conan the Fearless – Steve Perry – February 1986
I was slightly entertained by this throwaway adventure. A wizard is collecting children that embody the elements, y’know like water, and earth, wind and fire. He doesn’t want to create a r&b rock band though. He wants to rule the world. It is all rather formulaic and has been done better before but it has its quirks. To add some spice to the book there is a nymphomaniac witch that wants Conan’s heart to power her sex doll’s erection, a were-panther that fails at pleasing the witch, and a good wizard to save the day with Conan’s help. It is a not absolutely terrible book even though I’m sure more than a few will say it is. It is akin to a less than good issue of the Conan comic. You read it on the bus and go to work. It passed the time.
Conan the Defiant – Steve Perry – October 1987
Sometimes a TV series will have a few good episodes in a roll, then they decide to do a funny episode and it’s OK but you hope they get back on track next week. Sorta like when Star Trek: The Next Generation did a holodeck episode. Usually they were a bit silly, playing dress up, etc. but they entertained usually. Steve Perry’s books seem like holodeck simulations to me. Someone is playing Conan and they do some Conan like things but it all seems a little silly. This book features Conan having three-way sex with one of the participants being a female zombie. There is an evil wizard, a magic gem, some beasties, and a few thrills. But it ain’t really Conan.
Conan the Indomitable – Steve Perry – October 1989
I can’t say this is Conan the Worst since I have over 30 more to read but it has to rank near the bottom. It is appropriate that such a low point in the series has its action occur underground. There is a bad wizard, another insatiable witch, a hermaphrodite, a man cursed to insult people, cyclops creatures, white worms, talking bats, and web spinning plants. The hermaphrodite is actually a cursed man and woman that loved each other and were made whole by a wizard. The character is played for shock value and referred to as “it” throughout the novel. (The character is not given a dominate female or male personality but “it” certainly doesn’t feel woke.) The author pulls things out of figurative hats to keep the plot going. They need a boat? Conan kills a big whale type fish that floats. The wizard needs to fly? She has a spell for that. Conan is in unknown danger? Conan finds a mind reading jewel 5 minutes before imperiled. But what really stretches belief is when the insatiable witch fornicates with Conan to drain his essence and Conan outlasts her by thinking of ice and snow. I’m not kidding…
Conan the Freelance – Steve Perry – February 1990
My parents bought me Harvey Comics as a child. My favorite character was Hot Stuff. The typical Hot Stuff story usually had him venturing to some fairyland where the inhabitants played tricks on him until he got so mad he pulled out his trident and burnt somebody’s ass. I loved Hot Stuff.
This book is a Hot Stuff adventure. Conan goes to the land of The Tree People where he accidentally consumes magic mushrooms. Conan trips that Crom is egging him for a fight and leaps out of the tree and would have fell to his death but the tree people had tied a rope around him before the mushrooms did their stuff.
In the next village are Lizard People and Fish People. A Wizard lives nearby and is working on a spell to be made whole. He was cursed to be a smoky mist for the rest of his life. The tree people have a talisman he needs that they call the seed.
All this results in a three-way chase when the fish people steal the “seed” and the lizard people chase the fish people and the tree people chase the fish people who stole the item.
It is honestly funny a lot of the time. The Queen Lizard looks like a bald blue skinned Petra Verkiak so Conan sleeps with her. Cheen, of the tree people, is cute so Conan sleeps with her as well.
The secondary characters are all pretty funny and likable in their evil ways. Steve Perry is best with the secondary characters. All the parties eventually converge at the Wizard’s castle and it is funny and exciting like a Hot Stuff adventure for the marginally grown up. The Wizard is made whole just in time for Conan to chop him up.
The good feeling is ruined though when Cheen saves Hot Stuff and the gang by almost literally clicking her heels and chanting there is no place like home. It ain’t much like Conan but if you liked Harvey Comics you might not totally hate this one.
Conan the Formidable – Steve Perry – November 1990
This was the most un-Howardian Conan pastiche yet. Giants, green dwarfs, a 4 armed guy, and a cat-woman all dwelling in the Hyborian World. What nonsense! I liked this one the best so far! Read it in one sitting and have no complaints. It was not anything like a typical Conan adventure and that made it unique. It hung together and moved very fast. I’m not comfortable with giants and dwarfs living in a swamp just outside of Shadizar anymore than I was with tiny antmen in Africa but ERB made it work and Steve Perry did too.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
John Maddox Roberts is an American author of science fiction and fantasy novels, including historical fiction such as the SPQR series and Hannibal’s Children. John Maddox Roberts was born in Ohio and was raised in Texas, California, New Mexico. He has lived in various places in the United States as well as in Scotland, England and Mexico.] He was kicked out of college in 1967 and joined the Army. He was in the US Army 1967–70, and did a tour in Vietnam. After he returned, he became a Green Beret. He lives with his wife in Estancia, New Mexico.
John Maddox Roberts (JMR) wrote eight Conan novels. His novels are among the best in my opinion.
Conan the Valorious – John Maddox Roberts – September 1985
This one is sort of like a mediocre Thanksgiving meal at a friend’s house. You’re thankful for the effort but you have eaten better in the past. It starts with Conan making a promise to deliver a package to Cimmeria without knowing all the details. His defenses should have been up since he was talking to a Stygian babe but he needed coin at the moment. She says he has to deliver a magical flask to Crom’s home and chant a spell. Hmm… not much to worry about in that, huh? But Conan says a promise is a promise.
Conan ends a war in the Border Kingdoms along the way by choking an enormous bull with his bare hands. Way too super-barbarian here but it’s only two chapters. Also Conan gets a new sword, runs across Mako from the movie, and the reader gets a testosterone injection from reading about burly Cimmerians, Vanir, and Aesir. Thoth Amon plays a small part. The Stygian babe and another wizard have found a verse from the Book of Skelos and have to read the poetry in Crom’s home for some unexplained reason (or for a reason I missed). Conan kills the male wizard with a magic sword he picked up along the way and the Stygian babe was tricked by Thoth into leaving out a verse and fails to accomplish anything. Crom rises from his throne and stomps out the problems created.
It sounds worse than it reads. Silliest moment? Conan uses a snowball as a pillow and his Cimmerian kin say he has gone soft.
Conan the Champion – John Maddox Roberts – April 1987
I thought this book a little weaker than the previous ones I read. I didn’t hate it but a few things bugged me. In the middle section Conan and a wizard are whisked away to a hooky-spooky spirit world. A demon confronts them and begins an incantation. Conan is about to split the demon in half but the wizard blasts the demon instead. He tells Conan to have killed the demon in the middle of his incantation would be a bad thing to do. (Yet that is what HE DID, albeit without a sword!) Later Conan is captured by these evil Elvish types. They arrange a challenging gauntlet for Conan to run through. Conan avoids their trap (unexplained or I missed it) somehow and kills them. One tries an incantation and Conan kills him disregarding the previous advice. Nothing happens except the guy dies. They were portrayed as vicious little bastards so I welcomed their slaughter but things didn’t completely add up in this section. The novel gets back on track though. Conan is involved in a Northern Barbarian skirmish that is quite a bit “Games of Thrones” like. Pretty decent but very predictable at this point.
Conan the Marauder – John Maddox Roberts – January 1988
No nonsense in this one. Quite serious. Conan doesn’t get laid, behaves like an excellent soldier, and has help in saving the day. The story is only OK though. Conan is captured but proves his battle mettle and is made a general in a Genghis Khan like horde. There is a scheming female and an evil wizard. Their plan is to mesmerize the horde and it’s leader and then attack Turan with the wizard becoming ruler and then using the horde to conquer the world. Lots of weapons play and instruction in various scenes. Some lessons on battle tactics. I can see military guys liking this book. Coincidence plays it’s part quite often in moving the action forward but that is standard in most action novels. Some humor with a would be hero-poet. All in all not bad. It just didn’t have much sense of wonder, nothing really stands out.
Conan the Bold – John Maddox Roberts – April 1989
This one was an extremely fast read. Even at 282 pages it never really bogged down. The writing was REH like at times but this was mostly Milius’ Conan. The story was a reworking of the movie for the most part. Slavers try their hand at capturing Cimmerians and fail miserably but the Cimmerian family is slaughtered and Conan sets out for revenge. Along the way Conan meets Valeria, oops I mean Kalya. She is out for revenge as well and they team up to seek their righteous vengeance. There is a pit-fight scene with Conan and Kalya expertly killing folk. There is a longish chase with detours but it never gets boring. Conan meets up with circus performers and learns knife throwing. The villain is a charismatic psychopath who could rule the world if he accepts his destiny. He’d rather pillage for the fun of it rather than be the servant of ancient evil. Conan and Kalya eventually catch up to the villain and Kalya is killed after getting her revenge on a particular guy. Conan faces the main villain and there is a good fight. Conan almost loses but, y’know, that knife throwing lesson wasn’t in the story for nothing. This one has a few faults but just as I was thinking about them the author came up with a decent workaround. I enjoyed this one. If you can get past the idea that all pastiche is bad then maybe try this one out.
Conan the Rogue – John Maddox Roberts – November 1991
Yeah, the general consensus is correct. This is a good one. At 304 pages it is also a long one (possibly the longest) and it never bogs down. I was anxious to get to the end, not from boredom, but to see how all the different plot-lines were going to converge.
Conan goes to a rough and lawless town filled with warring gangs (the basic plot of Dashiel Hammet’s Red Harvest and its numerous film copycats) and pits them against each other. There is also an evil magic artifact that numerous parties are searching for. Conan ones up everybody quite believably (his infiltration into a religious cult and quick recovery from a beating stretched my credulity though, but I forgive both) and does several good deeds as well.
Conan is homophobic about his employer but the employer gets the last laugh in one scene. So the woke-minded shouldn’t hate. All in all this is a good pastiche and I think REH himself would have approved. If you’re a pastiche hater this one might change your mind, at least a bit.
Conan and the Treasure of Python – John Maddox Roberts – November 1993
Another winner from JMR. Roberts basically turns Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines into a Conan adventure…. and it works! Stays exciting from beginning to end. Breezed through this one. Conan is the alpha dog among a fine cast of characters. Apes, Lovecraftian monsters, lost Acheronian treasure, warring tribes. This one has it all. I’m getting mad remembering all those people who told me the Tor Conans weren’t worth reading. This is S&S at it’s most entertaining.
Conan and the Manhunters – John Maddox Roberts – October 1994
Another good adventure from John Maddox Roberts. JMR was the most consistently entertaining of the TOR authors. This book has some wild stuff (levitated treasure hurtling across the desert), some old hat stuff (the old resurrect the evil god plot), and has some comic book stuff (a meeting of all the powerful wizards with a Thoth Amon cameo), but it all works and makes for an entertaining story. Considering JMR has reworked classics like Red Harvest and King Solomon’s Mine, I was sort of expecting this to be a reworking of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when I read the blurb about efficient and dangerous manhunters giving Conan the chase of his life. But the similarity ended there. This novel moves very fast for the most part and only bogged a little at the end. JMR should receive his due someday as a great S&S writer. The Conan pastiches helped keep S&S going in the 90s. Even though there were some clunkers several books in the series were quite good. I think a reevaluation of their benefit to the genre is in order.
Conan and the Amazon – John Maddox Roberts – April 1995
This was a letdown. JMR wasn’t at his best with this one. It is a serviceable adventure but seems overly padded. It is a bit like REH’s The Slithering Shadow in that Conan and his erstwhile paramour end up in a lost city where the leaders lust after them and when they are injured there is a magic elixir to fix them right up. Conan even makes the same type of joke about him being irresistible to the opposite sex.
The book features several wizards and Conan and the Amazon have to do a lot of fighting and suffering before finally getting to the lost city and the climax of the book.
A readable book but not an engrossing one. It is not the worst of the series but the weakest one by JMR.
First some general info about the author from Wikipedia:
James Oliver Rigney Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), better known by his pen name Robert Jordan was an American author of epic fantasy. He is known best for his series the Wheel of Time (finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death) which comprises 14 books and a prequel novel. He is one of several writers to have written original Conan the Barbarian novels; his are considered some of the best of the non-Robert E. Howard efforts by fans. Jordan also published historical fiction using the pseudonym Reagan O’Neal, a western as Jackson O’Reilly, and dance criticism as Chang Lung. Jordan claimed to have ghostwritten an “international thriller” that is still believed to have been written by someone else.
Robert Jordan wrote seven Conan novels. I wish I had read them as they originally came out but I didn’t. I was under the influence of REH purists at the time and avoided these Tor Books for decades. I didn’t read these books in any kind of order and the reviews will reflect that. Nevertheless I think they will provide some insight into the books. I’m putting them in published order now but they weren’t read that way. These reviews were originally posted in helter skelter order on various Robert E. Howard Facebook pages and sometimes on Amazon or Goodreads. I’m posting them here so there can be a central online place to refer to them.
Conan the Invincible – Robert Jordan – June 1982
I don’t think you can really evaluate Robert Jordan’s Conan without evaluating Robert Jordan. Clearly Jordan learned his craft on these books and his eventual rise into one of fantasy’s most popular authors (the “Wheel of Time” series) cannot be ignored.
Obviously Jordan has talent and a knack for pleasing his audience.
Jordan came along at a good point in Conan publishing. The movie had been a huge hit and Jordan’s military pedigree gave him gravitas with new fans. He and Conan were perfect for each other on paper. And it all worked for a while. Jordan’s books sold well, they were repackaged several times, and he remains one of the few Conan pastiche authors still available on Amazon’s Kindle.
To criticize him seems almost “sour grapes.” His “Wheel of Time” series has been more successful than the Conan series as a whole and that irks a bit. Nevertheless I’d honestly say this first book is only semi-sweet. I’m not going to rehash the entire plot. This book takes place in the Conan the Thief period, it features serpent men, a Red Sonja type named Karela, evil wizards, and has many twists and turns. Karela is realistic in a crazy girlfriend kind of way and her fate at the end of this book is amusing.
Jordan is clever with his plotting and handles multiple characters in an effortless way. He doesn’t try for a Howardian style (maybe at times, but not slavishly) and that is arguably what new sword and sorcery fans wanted in 1982. Some of Jordan’s concepts crept into the Conan live action TV series and even the cartoons. His books were very popular and he overshadowed REH at times.
I find it hard to give this book a real critique. Jordan’s Conan was a product of the times. The movie’s success and High Fantasy being the dominant seller on bookshelves created new Conan fans and Jordan very much pleased them. Any criticism is irreverent. You can’t argue with success.
Conan the Defender – Robert Jordan – December 1982
This was a pretty decent adventure. Hordo and Karela, from Conan the Invincible, also return. Conan is in Belverus and revolution is brewing. Jordan doesn’t give too many specifics. Belverus has bad luck mostly. Drought causes them to import costly grain and the King has no decent income tax system so money is tight. Inflation rules the day and city services are practically non-existent. The common people are getting fed up and murmurs of an insurrection are brewing. Some nobles are planning to overthrow the government and youthful revolutionaries write manifestos. Conan joins with the youthful revolutionaries to get free wine and lodging.
But mainly because, lets face it, hippie chicks are cute.
Conan never takes their cause to heart and realizes with all the trouble about he can organize a small army of mercenaries and make some coin. Things do not go as planned of course. Jordan keeps the action moving and provides a surprise or two along the way. I liked this one pretty much. Conan the Invincible is probably more Howardian but this book has better realized characters and breezy dialog making it a touch more interesting to me.
Conan the Unconquered – Robert Jordan – April 1983
I could do a review detailing every twist and turn of this novel and it would still be “spoiler free.” You can see every little surprise a mile off. Sure, the young girl is a princess. Sure, that supposedly magic stick is actually really magic. Sure, Conan faces impossible odds and wins.
But, y’know what?, it doesn’t matter because it works!
I found this to be a breezy entertaining adventure. It copies a lot from the first film: a cult of doom, rich youth duped into giving up their possessions, and a witch who demands sex from Conan (yeah, I know “Worms of the Earth.”)
Originality doesn’t matter. Jordan puts it all together in entertaining fashion. It drags a bit toward the end and Jasbit is more annoying than cute but these are quibbles. I read this one in 2 days with nary a break between chapters. I liked it quite a bit.
Conan the Triumphant – Robert Jordan – October 1983
This book has an easy to follow plot. Conan finds a discarded evil god at a yard sale. The statue has a big penis and Conan buys it as a joke gift for a randy friend. Meanwhile political intrigue is afoot in Ophir and an evil sorceress wants to resurrect the big penis evil god.
All these things collide eventually and an entertaining story follows. Lot of fights, twists and turns, and amusing dialogue.
The women in this book fight over Conan. They wonder who has the roundest bottom and best boobs. The women in Jordan’s books seem like “reality TV stars” to me at times. They are petty vicious jealous pretty little things.
In a twist some English Professor might want to study: the evil god is misogynistic yet a woman is resurrecting him. Conan is chivalrous, in that he protects woman, but he clearly thinks of women as mainly sex objects. I don’t have the intellectual background to examine all these mixed messages. I’m just a typical mixed up guy and I was simply entertained.
Conan the Magnificent – Robert Jordan – May 1984
I’m probably over generalizing but I think the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie brought in a new type of Conan fan. One more physically fit and military minded. Obviously the bodybuilders admired Arnold Schwarzenegger and paperbacks were still easily available at PX stores at military bases and the popularity of the movie had them buying the books.
Robert Jordan was a decorated soldier and he seemed to get Conan’s appeal to that audience. Conan was always a good soldier and a physically fit man and he always appealed to the women in the stories. Nevertheless I think Jordan added even more oomph to that. His Conan is clearly a military strategic thinker and the babe count increased in these books and they were always attracted to his physicality.
Jordan is content to have two women falling for Conan in this book. (Roland Green later upped the ante with Conan juggling 3 – 4 women as a matter of course.) The plot is simple. Conan is attracted to a female thief and follows (stalks really) her to her new employer, a rich noblewoman hunting a dragon.
The story moves along at a fast pace and is entertaining. This is really a potboiler novel. Nothing great but entertaining enough for me to read it in a short time. Good characters, good fights, nothing too challenging. The actions of the women in this book don’t ring true to me but I’m a short guy that women tolerate much more than adore, so what do I know? The new Conan readers probably found it more believable.
Conan the Destroyer – Robert Jordan – July 1984
This book is, of course, the novelization of the film. I read this one years ago and didn’t reread it as thoroughly as I probably should have. I enjoyed it years ago but rushed through it this go around.
The book pretty much mirrors the movie. Jordan adds good exposition and more dialogue. He turns it into a more “R” rated version. Conan has his way with both Taramis and Jehnna.
Jordan made the book feel more like an actual Conan adventure and less like a comic book. I’d say he improved on the film. It is not that much different than Jordan’s previous books. His style is present and he keeps it moving along. It really tries to feel like the same Conan as the other books despite having a slight stranglehold to adhere to the movies.
The biggest concession to adhere to the books is having Conan drink a potion of forgetfulness at the end. That way the Valeria of the movies need never be referenced again.
Conan the Victorious – Robert Jordan – November 1984
This is a well-written solid Conan adventure. Lots of intrigue and a fairly complicated plot. Conan is mistaken for an assassin and gets poisoned in a fight. He has to go Vendhya to find out just what is going on and to find a cure. Meanwhile a wizard is trying to resurrect a dead king and take over the world. Lots of complications occur on the trip: attractive women are met and there are sword fights aplenty. Not everyone is who they say they are including Conan who goes by the name Patil to purposely seek out unknown foes.
By the end of the novel the bad guys get their comeuppance and secrets are revealed. Even though I really can’t fault Jordan, he writes well and everything moves forward at a fast enough pace, overall the novel is kind of bland. There is nothing really new here. It just seems like competent filler for the most part.
Andy Offutt wrote (among other things) 3 Conan novels. The 3 books are reviewed here. First a brief introduction about the author:
From Wikipedia: Andrew Jefferson Offutt V (August 16, 1934 – April 30, 2013) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He wrote as Andrew J. Offutt, A. J. Offutt, and Andy Offutt. His normal byline, andrew j. offutt, has all his name in lower-case letters. He also wrote erotica under seventeen different pseudonyms, principally John Cleve, John Denis, Jeff Morehead, and Turk Winter. He is the father of novelist Chris Offutt and professor Jeff Offutt.
Conan and the Sorcerer – Andrew J. Offutt – October 1978
This is an illustrated novella. It reads fast and the illustrations make it all seem like a “Savage Sword of Conan” comic. The illos by Esteban Maroto are gorgeous at times (especially the female lead) but don’t always strictly follow the text (there is more nudity in the illos than in the actual book.)
Offutt copies the opening of REH’s “The Tower of the Elephant” to set the mood. He plays with the names and how they sound in an amusing way. Conan says he is from “Cimmeria,” the person hearing says “Symria.”
Offutt has a fondness for big words. I was able to figure out a meaning to continue reading but I really don’t know the meaning of tetanic, exanimate, purulent, and adyton. And that was all in just two paragraphs!
There is humor. Conan calls his horse, “horse”, until he drinks too much water, then its “water-hog.” Conan meets a spirit/wizard who barely listens to Conan, calling him “Coner” then “Conum.”
The story itself is decent. This is the Conan as thief period. Young Conan is clever enough and learning all the time. Conan is forced to go on an adventure when Hisarr Zul (yeah, the name of the wizard used in the TV show) steals his soul. Conan kills the wizard by the end of the story but now still has to restore his soul. The story continues in Conan the Mercenary. It’s all a bit corny but it was entertaining.
Conan the Mercenary – Andrew J. Offutt – January 1981
Another short novel or novella by Mr. Offutt. This resolves the cliffhanger of the last book. Conan retrieves his soul from the Queen of Khauran. There is actual suspense in this scene. It really seemed as if something was going to happen to endanger Conan’s soul. All is resolved but another issue is there to trouble Conan.
Khauran will be familiar to those REH fans who remember “A Witch Shall be Born.” This book cleverly has Conan meeting a 6 year old Queen Taramis. Conan thinks of her as a “pre-girl” (what is Conan thinking?) and as a brat (without any real reason to think that is so). All this was a little troubling to me. I just read on without trying to overthink it.
Parts of this book are very clever. Before Conan’s soul was transferred back to him he saw Sergianus, who is the Queen’s would be paramour, in a different form. Later when talking to friends at a bar about Khauran and its history he has a flash of inspiration. He gets one man to write a description of a person seen years ago who wore the same medallion as Sergianus and the other to write a description of the Baron of Korveka. The descriptions match. Conan realizes Sergianus (although appearing much younger) is Sabanimus, the Baron of Korveka.
Other parts are kind of corny. Conan impersonates an illusionist in the finale and gets the villain to reveal himself rather lamely. But killing the villain would have revealed the plot anyway so Conan did have a backup plan if the disguise didn’t work but the novel doesn’t explicitly state that as the backup plan.
The illustrations match the text fairly well. There is a scene with Conan’s 15 year old lover (Conan is 17 in this story) drugging him. The illo is of a much older looking topless woman. Thankfully.
The Sword of Skelos – Andrew J. Offutt – May 1979
This book completes Offutt’s Conan trilogy. It was interesting enough (a slight bog in the middle) and the finale was weak. Conan had been carrying around “the Eye of Erlik” for three books and the jewel did nothing.
The conflict in this book was with the cruel satrap of Zamboula named Akter Khan and his wizard Zafra. Conan delivers the Eye to the Khan but is quickly betrayed due to Zafra’s influence. Zafra created killer swords that would slay on their own. Near the end of the book Zafra commands one of the sword to kill Conan but Conan runs away and locks the sword in the room with Zafra. Apparently the sword is indiscriminate in who it slays once commanded to slay.
The second sword is also weakly dismissed as a threat.
Eventually the satrap is dethroned thanks to Conan. Conan vows to forget he was ever in Zamboula. A too easy fix to avoid continuity issues with REH’s “Shadows in Zamboula” (aka “The Man-Eaters of Zamboula.”)
There were a few other things I didn’t like about this book.
The worst was a scene with Conan rescuing his lover Isparana from torture. It is implied that her torturer raped her. She is thankful that Conan killed her abuser. “They had done a lot more than merely use me, you know.”
Conan is aware that she has a history of using sex to survive and stupidly thinks: “Perhaps she had contrived to gain some enjoyment of it; he hoped so. He was glad he was male, and never had to make such a statement about “merely” being used.”
I was uncomfortable with this scene. The trauma of rape is treated way too lightly. I’m not too sure of the timeline but Conan even at this young age has to be aware of what can happen to males in prison.
All in all, I’d say Offutt could write a decent story but he definitely needed a strong editor to challenge him. He seems to rush some things and stretch out others. I liked the first two books in this trilogy but this conclusion is disappointing.
spraguedecampfan 