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This story has increasingly become a thorn in my side. Not because of anything in the actual text of "The Slithering Shadow," but because of a single line in "The Devil in Iron." "Her sleep was too deep to be natural. He decided that she must be an addict of some drug, perhaps like the black lotus of Xuthal."  "Slithering Shadow" is Conan's first brush with Xuthal, but if "The Devil in Iron" mentions it, then it must take place prior to "Devil in Iron." But when can this story take place? For a while, I was looking at my Hyborian Age map and noticed that Conan goes right past the city of Xuthal after "The Vale of Lost Women," so I thought maybe I would place it there. However, Conan is a commander in the military of Shem in "Slithering Shadow." Because Conan is rising through the ranks in the armies of Shem in "Hawks Over Shem" and doesn't really become a commander until "Black Colossus," I feel like this needs to take place after both of those stories. But Conan has a falling out with Princess Yasmela during "Shadows in the Dark" immediately following "Colossus," so this story can't immediately follow that pair. In fact, he ends "Shadows in the Dark" on the coast of the western sea, completely abandoning Shem's sovereign. It seems somewhat unlikely that he would be immediately welcomed back by Shem with open arms. I also thought that perhaps Conan had just heard of Xuthal on his travels so that maybe he would be familiar with the "black lotus of Xuthal." But that doesn't seem possible as Conan seems totally unfamiliar with the city or name of Xuthal when he arrives and he's even more confused when Thalis the Stygian describes the black lotus and its effects. "Much of the time these people lie in sleep. Their dream-life is as important—and to them as real—as their waking life. You have heard of the black lotus? In certain pits of the city it grows. Through the ages they have cultivated it, until, instead of death, its juice induces dreams, gorgeous and fantastic. In these dreams they spend most of their time. Their lives are vague, erratic, and without plan. They dream, they wake, drink, love, eat and dream again. They seldom finish anything they begin, but leave it half completed and sink back again into the slumber of the black lotus." "You have heard of the black lotus?" No, dude. No, Conan clearly hasn't. I also had the option of ignoring the line in "Devil in Iron" that mentions Xuthal and merely chalking it up to a goof on Howard's part- a chronology pieced together after the fact that was never designed to fit completely. But that's not as fun. Plus, I think I've found a way that works for all the stories mentioned above. Originally, I moved "Devil in Iron" way up in my continuity, because I felt like it made much more sense for Conan to have both of his adventures on islands in the Vilayet Sea in one section, but I think I'm going to have to change that.  Instead, I'm going to leave "The Devil in Iron" in its traditional placement, following "The Star of Khorala" and preceding The Flame Knife. I think I'll slot "Slithering Shadow" and "Drums of Tombalku" (as they are a pair) right before "Devil in Iron." This way, Conan has an adventure in Ophir in "The Star of Khorala." Then, according to the text, he's going to have one of his brief, bullshit returns to Cimmeria that never go anywhere or amount to anything. I figure after "Star," he goes south again, enlists with the Shemetish army, and goes south to Stygia for "Slithering Shadow" and "Drums of Tombalku." Following this stint with the military, he heads east again to Vilayet. If you head over to the "Chronology" page, you can see that I've updated my chronology document to reflect this. I've kept the old ones there too to show my process, but now the top one reflects this change. I don't know about you, but I like getting into really nerdy shit like this. As far as the story goes... This one's fine. Just fine. It's a pretty standard Conan story. I've read a fair chunk of mediocre Conan stories at this point: "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "A Witch Shall Be Born," "The Hand of Nergal." Honestly, they would never get terrible if it were somehow impossible to ignore the horrific racism of the worst ones. But I really like what Howard Andrew Jones says of "Xuthal of the Dusk" over on his site where he re-read all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories about a decade ago: "Sure, 'Xuthal' isn't one of the great Conan stories, but I happen to think it's one of the best of the lesser ones." I've been keeping track of the Howard-penned Conan stories as I read and I've been ranking them, so I'm inclined to disagree (When I'm all done with the chronology, I'll post my rankings). I'd say this is toward the bottom of the pack.  "The Slithering Shadow," or "Xuthal of the Dusk" as it was originally titled by Howard, is certainly a step up from "Drums of Tombalku," which I just read last time. Once again, that one is essentially a direct sequel to this story, so I should have read this one first. But the two stories are so similar, as I noted in that post, that they're almost impossible to not compare. "Tombalku" edges out "Xuthal" in terms of its description of the creepy lost city they find, the female companion is a lot cooler in "Tombalku," and the description of the evil god that terrorizes the city is probably a little more horrifying in "Tombalku," but the rest I have to give to "Xuthal." The setup, while interesting in "Tombalku," is a little stronger here due to the absolute bleakness of it. Both stories have a pair that's been separated from others and is totally cooked out in the desert, but Conan offering the last of the water to Natala so that she can die without being thirsty is pretty hardcore. The weird ancient city on the edge of the desert that each pair goes to is cool, but Xuthal's living-dead drugged out population, totally addicted to the all-consuming dreams of the black lotus is a little more interesting than the out-of-time people of Gazal. Though, it's mostly because Howard does more with it in the story.
"[Howard] had completed the Conan story Xuthal of the Dusk, which has justly been considered a precursor of sorts to 'Red Nails.' The arrival of Conan and a woman in a city cut off from the rest of the Hyborian world, in which they have to face an evil woman and decadent inhabitants, is the basic framework common to both stories. Xuthal of the Dusk is a rather inferior Conan tale, probably because Howard was not yet an accomplished enough writer to give it the treatment he felt it deserved. The heroine was insipid and the story was clearly exploitative. However, Howard commented to Clark Ashton Smith that 'it really isn’t as exclusively devoted to sword-slashing as the announcement might seem to imply.'" There's nothing wrong with "Xuthal" / "Slithering Shadow," but it isn't one of the most memorable. I guess I should probably count it against the story that I really have almost nothing to say about this one outside of continuity stuff, but I had a good time reading it.
Conan is commanding armies for Koth right now, still growing in his skills of military leadership. After five consecutive stories written by just REH or Howard and de Camp, we're going back to de Camp and Carter for the next one: "The Gem in the Tower." I read that one in comic form fairly recently and thought it was alright, so I'm ready to head even further west as we slowly approach Conan's kingship. ★★★☆☆
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 What does a story being just a draft mean for a Robert E. Howard piece? I'm tempted to say "not much," seeing as at least one story was published after just one draft ("Rogues in the House") and several others only went through two to three drafts ("The God in the Bowl," "Red Nails"). Quite a few of his stories existed only as drafts until later writers finished them, so why does it matter that "Drums of Tombalku" is always noted to only be a draft? Well, for one, because its draftiness is pretty interesting. In fact, while this story isn't the best of the Hyborian bunch, I found it much more interesting than I originally thought it would be. Unlike some of Howard's other drafts which are really just plans or synopses, this story functions as a complete, if short, entry in the canon. It is printed along with other Conan stories, though there is a "finished" version from L. Sprague de Camp out there. I'd like to focus on the Howard version for this. "Drums of Tombalku" is a peculiar story. It was an abandoned attempt at Howard writing a full-length novel that also re-used names and ideas that had been bouncing around in Howard's mind seemingly for a long time. "Tombalku" almost doesn't feature Conan at all: he's mentioned briefly by the lead character in the beginning and then he appears for a deus ex machina ending just a few pages before the end of the story. The main character, an Aquilonian named Amalric, comes across a girl in the desert. He saves her, is shown to her creepy oasis home city which seems to be about 900 years behind the times, and comes across the god oppressing them. The description is engaging and the mystery of why her town seems so out of touch is pretty creepy. Additionally, the god in the red tower in Gazal is a pretty horrifying image, and it makes for some fun times as Amalric and Lissa flee the city on horseback while being pursued by what feel very similar to Nazgul from Lord of the Rings. Conan rescues Amalric and Lissa and is recognized by his "Amra, the Lion" name from his buccaneering days, which is a cool callback. Speaking of fun, I am choosing to believe that the two kings at the end of the story are a gay couple ruling the nation together. I'm choosing to believe that the same way I'm choosing to ignore some of the racism in this story because I'm tired of writing about it. I will say that it's a little more easily ignored than some past stories, and I love that the Conan wiki says that the story was bowdlerized when it came out. Gotta love when someone uses the term "bowdlerized."  I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea why I read this story prior to "Xuthal of the Dusk" AKA "The Slithering Shadow." Basically every Conan chronology puts this one after it, so I'm not sure why I read it first. I must've just made a mistake when filling out my original chronology document. Anyway, it absolutely should be read after "Xuthal." We have a couple of interesting contextual clues about when it takes place- Stygia is at war with the countries surrounding it, and Conan has explicitly come from those battles, so it has to take place afterword. However. "Drums" reads very much like a draft of "Xuthal," with very similarly-named characters (Amalric and Almuric), both feature a greenish, ancient, lost city in the Stygian desert, both cities are populated by essentially the walking dead, both cities are terrorized by an evil god, and both stories feature a manly man and a frail, young woman, so I honestly believe that this story should be treated as apocryphal. Much like "The Devil in Iron" and "Iron Shadows in the Moon," this story is so reflective of "Xuthal" that it feels like only one of them should count. Conan is quickly working his way back west as he's headed for the western coast of the continent eventually. He's still gaining allegiances through his effective command. This could place the story nicely after our other recent stories, so while I would probably remove the story from the chronology if I was being really serious, it would fit right here acceptably. The biggest problem though is that this story works almost as a two-parter with "Xuthal of the Dusk," and I'm pretty sure we have to move "Xuthal," so it's probably going to have to be moved earlier in the chronology.   1. Coming west from Zamboula, Conan arrives in Ianthe, Ophir. He is hoping to return the Star of Khorala to the queen for a hefty finder's fee.
2. Fleeing Ianthe from Count Rigello, Conan, Garus, and Marala go southwest. I've placed this point here because we get just a few clues about where they go to- the Count says that the only direction she would flee would be southwest, toward her homeland, and we are told that Theringo Castle is on a river which acts as the border between Ophir and Aquilonia. 3. I know most put "The Devil in Iron" at this point, but I actually think "The Devil in Iron" belongs much earlier in the chronology, alongside "Iron Shadows in the Moon." If it's here, then Conan is moving back to the Vilayet Sea to the island of Xapur. However, I'm keeping this map in line with the chronology I'm building here. Instead, Conan moves south to Iranistan where he continues to work with kozaki fighters. He begins The Flame Knife by escaping the city of Anshan. To get there, I'm assuming Conan would avoid Stygia to go through the more hospitable land of Shem, and he doesn't seem to have ever been in the mountains of Drujistan before, so I think he's going around them, south. 4. Conan goes to the city of Yanaidar in The Flame Knife in the Illbars Mountains over the border in Drujistan. 5. After spending several months with a group of Afghuli hillmen, Conan goes to Peshkhauri to offer the ransom for seven of his soldiers, but he ends up kidnapping the new queen of Vendhya, at the beginning of "The People of the Black Circle." 6. Conan takes her west, into the mountains. They're explictly in the Yimsha Mountains the whole time.  "The People of the Black Circle" is a great choice to follow The Flame Knife. It does just about everything better in a way that really throws into sharp relief how good it is. I liked The Flame Knife, but "The People of the Black Circle" is superior in just about every way, and is definitely a top-five Conan story so far. The two stories feel a bit like a pair, not only because they follow one another in continuity, but they've got similarities throughout. They're both much longer than most Conan short stories, they're both about fighting wizards deep in the mountains, they both have a damsel for Conan to rescue, and they both take place in countries to which Conan is totally unfamiliar. But, "Black Circle" is about ten pages shorter, rendering it a lot tighter on action, the mountain setting and evil wizards are both stronger in this one, Conan's companion is far more interesting, and there's much more that's done with the cultural setting. Technically speaking, Conan's long kozaki period is over, as this story makes several references to him having been a kozak raider in the past. However, that's very much an in-universe nitpick, because Conan is essentially doing the same thing as he was during that section of his life: leading bands of raiders, winning their allegiances, and causing trouble for the lords and ladies of whatever land he happens to be in. Perhaps this period (so far comprising Flame Knife and "Black Circle") should be called "Commander Conan?" We don't get a ton from "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" on this one, just: "The Vendhyan episode. Conan rises quickly to chieftainship of the Afghulis, who understand the language of the sword, and may be nearly 34 when he goes back to his kozaks." It does state that after this, he goes back to the kozaks to fight in some wars for Shem in the grasslands of Kush, which makes sense to put "The Slithering Shadow" and "Drums of Tombalku" after this story. I've still got my issue of why Conan references Xuthal in "The Devil in Iron," though... "The People of the Black Circle" starts promisingly enough. The king of Vendhya dies, effectively giving his sister Yasmina the throne. Furtively arriving at a nearby city, Yasmina is kidnapped by Conan in order to use her as a ransom to get back seven of his soldiers. We've got these three parties in conflict- the Vendhyan government, who want their new queen back. Conan, who wants his seven soldiers back, and the opportunistic pair of the wizard Khemsa and his girlfriend Gitara trying to usurp control. This web becomes further complicated when Conan's Afghuli tribesmen decide that he's betrayed them, becoming enemies. These competing allegiances make for a much more tightly-plotted Conan story than most, with really clear stakes from all sides and a constantly-shifting status quo, with friends becoming enemies and enemies becoming reluctant allies.  Oh look, it's the banner that's been at the top of this website the whole time. Conan fights the Master of Yimsha with the orb full of pomegranates in the background. This one was done by the immortal artist Ken Kelly. As the story progresses, it becomes necessary for Conan to head to the mountain fortress of Yimsha in order to deal with the titular wizards clad in black robes, and the story really shifts into high gear at this point. While most Conan stories are only about 30-some-odd pages long, the last 35 pages of this 90-ish page tale are one pedal-to-the-metal action setpiece after another, analogous in my mind to how Mad Max: Fury Road feels like one 90-minute car chase that seldom lets up. Through the mountain passes of the Himelian Mountains, to the pyramidic keep of Yimsha, past magical bombs and evil clouds and shape-shifting hawks into the lions den of the most powerful wizards Conan has ever fought... this thing fucking rules. I'd argue that Howard is truly at the top of his game here. In January 1934, when he was writing this story, he was also trying to get his work published in England for the first time, and having received a rejection letter for a short story collection, he felt it necessary to write a novel. He began and then abandoned several attempts at this novel, but in the meantime, banged out "The People of the Black Circle," perhaps as proof to himself that he could spin a long yarn, and for my money, he totally proved that he could. It seems like Farnsworth Wright agreed with me, because "Black Circle" was serialized in Weird Tales just a few months after it was accepted by the mag (for a whopping $250) and graced the cover. The story is epic in scope and far more thematically rich than many pulps.  The background radiation permeating every Conan story is a simmering conflict between the simple, barbaric lifestyle of Conan and the corrupt, complicated lifestyle of those in civilization, and it's clear that Howard prefers Conan's perspective. He doesn't usually actually do a ton with this, other than gesturing in his plots to Conan's lifestyle as if to say "Yeah, but isn't this more straightforward?" [Hey, this is Dan writing a few weeks from now. I'd like to say that after reading "Red Nails" and "Beyond the Black River," there absolutely are some stories who are going to do a ton with this.] However, "Black Circle" shows the corruption in society at the hands of the wizards in Yimsha, taking time to depict rulers and priests are mostly just pawns to power-hungry string-pullers. In this case, paranoia is the right emotion to feel, as the people in charge of Turan and Vendhya, at the very least, are at the mercy of magicians. Much to our delight, we get to see these magicians use magic more (and more creatively) than just about ever before in the Hyborian Age. It's not just the wizards that define the themes in this story, but also the Devi Yasmina. For once, Conan's female companion (though she is still absolutely a damsel in distress) is interesting and fun to spend time with. She's a fair ruler who genuinely cares for her people, but she's also a pampered aristocrat who is woefully ill-prepared for life with Conan, away from the comforts of high society. However, she grows into the role, signified by Conan's reaction to her change of clothes into those of a commoner at one point in the story. While Yasmina's not really suited to a life of adventure, she clearly grows to enjoy quite a bit of it. When, at the end of the story, she says that she must return to her kingdom and do her duty as queen, her and Conan have a dialogue that shows how restrictive and stuffy that life is. "'But I can not!' [Yasmina] objected. 'You must not hold me---' Yasmina is a lot of fun, though she never quite rises out of the damsel in distress role.
  The Flame Knife is the last of four Conanless Robert E. Howard stories in our chronology that L. Sprague de Camp took from the trunk and recast to the Hyborian Age following Howard's death. The Kirby O'Donnell story The Curse of the Crimson God became "The Blood-Stained God," the Ivan Sablianka story (later) known as "The Way of the Swords" became "The Road of the Eagles," and the Diego de Guzman story "Hawks Over Egypt" became "Hawks Over Shem." One of Robert E. Howard's other adventure characters was an adventurous Texan named Francis Xavier Gordon who went by the nickname of El Borak ("The Swift" in Arabic). There were five El Borak stories published in adventure magazines between 1934 and 1936, but Three-Bladed Doom, which Howard wrote some time in 1934, was not one of them. According to REH World, there are two versions of Three-Bladed Doom (plus a lost 12-page treatment), one's about twice as long as the other, and between the two of them, this story was rejected by the magazines Adventure, Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, New Mystery Adventures, Top-Notch, Dime Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, Short Stories, Sun, and Adventure Novels. Sitting unpublished in the 1950s, de Camp turned the story into a Conan tale and it was published in Tales of Conan in 1955. I'm not sure if it's a knock against Howard or just the genre conventions of the time, but I do find it a little funny that Howard's stories were so similar that you can change some names and slot a fantasy element in and BAM, new Conan story. Though El Borak is described as a slight, skinny guy rather than the hulking mass that Conan is (I can't tell you how many times I've read the phrase "corded muscles"). El Borak has been showing up in the current Conan comic event "Battle of the Black Stone," so I've actually been getting to see some unedited El Borak recently.
I really love reading Gary Romeo's writing about Conan over on Sprague de Camp Fan, and it seems like I like these posthumous de Camp edits of Conan stories a lot better than he does. He classifies "Blood-Stained God," "Hawks Over Shem," and "Road of the Eagles" as "serviceable but mediocre" and says that The Flame Knife is "almost good." I completely agree with him that "Hawks Over Shem" is pretty mediocre, but I really dig the rest, and I'd probably say "Blood-Stained God" is the best of them, followed by "Eagles" and Flame Knife. Those who have been reading this chronology know that I'm a huge sucker for things like haunted canyons and abandoned ruins. Luckily, The Flame Knife has both in spades.  This novella is by far the longest Conan story I've read for the chronology, sitting at whopping 100 pages when they usually comprise about 35 or 40 pages each. I can't tell if The Flame Knife feels more epic in scope than other stories or if it's just that I've been completely inundated with back-to-school stuff and I had to stretch my reading of the story over four different nights. It's probably the latter, because there are tons of great action scenes in this story, even if it only takes place over the course of a few days. Conan begins in Anshan, Iranistan but quickly flees the king's court while an assassination attempt is made by a uniquely-shaped flame knife. This sends Conan and his compatriot Tubal into the Ilbars Mountains and on into the country of Drujistan, which I don't think we've ever spent time in. Our adventure takes us to bandit hideouts, haunted canyons, the ancient ruins of Yanaidar, and has lots of solid fight scenes, which really buoy its extended length. We see the return of Conan's old foe Olgerd Vladislav, having recovered after the events of "A Witch Shall Be Born." Fun fact: we get to see Vladislav's next moves in the Savage Sword story "Mirror of the Manticore" in issue 58. Olgerd Vladislav is an excellent foil to Conan- described similarly as very strong and with steely gray eyes to contrast Conan's firey blue ones. He, like Conan, leads bands of loyal outlaws, and his major downfall is that he feels like he's always just a little more evil than Conan. While Conan is fair, can have a laugh, and recognizes game when he sees it, Olgerd is more selfish and will happily lay down the lives of others to save his own. It works to have him as this story's antagonist and it anchors it in Conan's larger mythos as well. Additionally, the "desert man of Pathenia:" the man-like ferocious ape creature that Conan fights in a canyon is implied to be a genetic cousin of the mountain apes further west in the mountains that we encountered in "The People of the Summit." The setting of The Flame Knife is particularly good. I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but there's something oddly, I don't know- cozy- about a fortress tucked away in the mountains where our story takes place. As I didn't pick up Three-Bladed Doom to read alongside this one (and I can't find it on the web- copyright probably hasn't lapsed like many Conan stories) I'm not sure how much credit to dole out to Howard or de Camp for crafting the excellent settings of the mountains of Iranistan and Drujistan. I loved spending time around the endless webs of canyons and gulches, made ever-more-dangerous through modification by mountain-dwellers through the centuries, hidden rock wall passages, and secret grappling hook latches.
Okay, I think I'm in the minority about this story on two fronts:
 "The Devil in Iron," another of the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, has Conan on the Vilayet Sea, doing much the same thing that he did in "Iron Shadows in the Moon." It was first published in Weird Tales in August of 1934. In this one, there are more lost cities and more strange magic, with another female companion who's not much good in combat, but I actually think this story does most of that better than "Iron Shadows." Let's focus on continuity, though, because this is the first time in my chronology that I'm arguing for a major revision of one story's placement. Specifically, I think this story needs to move earlier in the chronology: after "Shadows in the Dark" and before "Iron Shadows in the Moon." That's seven placements up. Let me explain why. There's nothing in the continuity that makes this story need to take place later. It's not like Conan mentions the time he was chief of the zuagirs or anything. Many of the stories are very helpful when Conan will say something out loud like, in "Beyond the Black River," Conan spouts: "I've seen all the great cities of the Hyborians, the Shemites, the Stygians, and the Hyrkanians. I've roamed in the unknown countries south of the black kingdoms of Kush, and east of the Sea of Vilayet. I've been a mercenary captain, a corsair, a kozak, a penniless vagabond, a general—hell, I've been everything except a king of a civilized country, and I may be that, before I die." That story needs to take place much later in his career. By my count its list of Conan's occupations references at least
For those reasons, it's almost universally agreed upon that Conan's time in the Pictish Wilderness in stories like "Beyond the Black River" takes place late in his life, right before his kingship. We don't get anything that illuminating, but we get a few continuity clues in "The Devil In Iron.". King Yezdigerd is mentioned, so that means it definitely has to take place after a story like "The Hand of Nergal," during which King Yildiz is still ruler. "Yezdigerd, king of Turan, was the mightiest monarch in the world. In his palace in the great port city of Aghrapur was heaped the plunder of empires. His fleets of purple-sailed war galleys had made Vilayet an Hyrkanian lake."  I'd also like to note that there's no reason it can't take place prior to "Iron Shadows in the Moon." When Conan is introduced in the story, rescuing Olivia, he is already a kozak. His enemy Shah Amurath recognizes him as one right away. 'Kozak!' ejaculated Shah Amurath, recoiling. 'I did not know a dog of you escaped! I thought you all lay stiff on the steppe, by Ilbars River.' I looked to "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" for their thoughts on the story's placement, and literally all we get there is this: "The height of the second kozak episode. Somewhere about 32 or 33, he makes the kozaks a real threat to King Yezdigerd, before feeling the urge to be off and riding south to Vendhya."  One of the things that I've thought was most compelling about the orders of certain chronologies is making logical movements across the map. As the Joe Marek chronology puts it, he's trying to avoid forcing Conan into a "mad dash" around the Hyborian world. I think that makes a lot of sense, so it seems weird to me that Conan might randomly end up, once again, in the middle of the Vilayet Sea. It seems more likely to me that he had both of these adventures on the islands of the Vilayet close together in time.
However, I've got a problem. Conan mentions "the black lotus of Xuthal," something that comes up in "The Slithering Shadow," also known as "Xuthal of the Dusk," which is five stories in the future from this one. I'm not sure how things are going to have to be reordered after that. I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The descriptions of the city of Dagon and the strange magicks that reside there are pretty fun in this story, more fun than they are in "Iron Shadows in the Moon." Conan's initial creep though the city is probably the strongest part of the narrative. From reading other Conan bloggers and historians, it seems that most people really don't dig this story, but I found it to be pretty decent. In my rankings, it's in the middle of the pack. Quite a few people seem to say that this is the weakest of Howard's original stories, but it just feels leagues better to me than stuff like "Iron Shadows in the Moon" and "The Slithering Shadow," in fact, I'd probably say it's just a little worse than "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." That feels controversial. Roy Thomas adapted this one into Savage Sword 15 with art by John Buscema. Coming up next in the chronology is "The Flame Knife," which features Conan going south to kingdoms we have yet to explore!  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nyberg's alright! "The Star of Khorala" is a delightful Conan adventure, written by Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp in 1978 for Conan the Swordsman. In terms of continuity, "The Star of Khorala" is one of the several Conan stories that was written as a direct sequel to another- in this case, it follows "Shadows in Zamboula." Conan picked up the gem of the title toward the end of the last story and has decided to see if he can fetch a ransom for it by returning it to the queen of Ophir, Marala. In Conan the Wanderer, where I've been reading many of these stories, it starts "The Devil in Iron" by saying that it's not known whether the Star ever made it back to Ophir or if it was plucked off of Conan, so perhaps Nyberg and de Camp felt that this was a perfect place to fill in some history. You see the same thing in "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career," with Miller and Clark saying: "Whether Conan reached Ophir and redeemed his gem, or lost it to some thief along the road, there is no record. In any case, the proceeds cannot have lasted him long."  Fortunately for us, nothing goes quite as planned for the Cimmerian, and it results in a really fun adventure. The queen is being held against her will in the western tower of the palace against her will. In order to get her out, Conan enlists a fun cast of supporting characters, including the queen's friend and doctor, Khafrates, and a retired thief named Torgrio. Uniquely, the tower is too sheer for even the Hyborian Age climbing world champ Conan to scale, so he uses Torgrio's "dragon's feet," which are claw-like devices that help him dig into the wall. They're able to free the queen, but are hunted down by the evil Rigello and the armies of Ophir. Now, the Star of Khorala is said to allow the wearer to strongly influence the will of those of the opposite sex around them, but, in a twist, Marala reveals that it's actually a much more noble charm that's put on the ring: when a good person wears it, they will be able to rally other good folk to their cause. It ultimately allows Conan, Marala, and guard captain Garus to fend off a huge number of pursuers in an ancient castle, aided by the ghosts of generations of men who fought in good faith for Ophir. It's a great scene that reminds me of Lord of the Rings! Nyberg and de Camp spin a few excellent lines in this story that really stood out. I quite liked some of their descriptions while in Ophir: "The young evening wore a wreath of rosy clouds in honor of the coming night."  And there's a hilarious little moment when Conan, through the aid of the Dragon's Feet, bursts through the tower window into the room in which Marala has been held. "Conan!... You burst in here like a bull in one of the legendary porcelain shops of Khitai!" That's just an excellent in-universe way to say Conan was "like a bull in a china shop" (an accusation levied at me by my mom more than once when I was a kid).
Conan is still in what I'm thinking of as his "kozaki period," wandering the deserts, leading bands of raiders, and seeking fortune. The problem I have with the end of this story is that Conan says he's going to go off to Cimmeria again after this tale ends. de Camp's prologue for "The Devil in Iron" says that upon returning to Cimmeria, old friends of his are dead and village life is dull. I just hate these period, off-screen trips to his homeland. They seem to occur extremely randomly, they never have any plot relevance, and they're all the same: Conan goes "Fuck this place; it's boring and I'm out of here." I suppose there may be adventures to be had in Cimmeria, but many of Conan's best stories seem to me the ones where he is in a totally foreign land. We're back to the Vilayet Sea following this story, but I've got some doubts about its placement in the chronology. ★★★★☆ This map takes us from one shadow to another- "Shadows in the Dark" through "Shadows in Zamboula." That was not at all intentional.  1. "Shadows in the Dark" begins in Khoraja's capital of the same name. Conan travels around Khorshemish in Koth for plot reasons.
2. Conan and his compatriots rescue King Khossus in Ianthe, Ophir. Realizing that one of his party is a traitor, he makes the journey to Messantia with just himself and the king. 3. Conan leaves Khossus in Messantia, stealing most of his gold pretty hilariously in the process. He puts the king on a ship and then jumps back to shore as it pulls away. Curiously, he travels an extremely far distance over land between this story and the next, which seems odd. I feel like that's a huge distance to cover, especially since it's said that Conan's about 30 and is only "about 31" in "Black Tears," but I'm not sure if there's a better placement for any of these stories. I know the William Galen Gray chronology puts "The Road of Kings after "Shadows in the Dark," but I don't know if that story ends closer to Turan, because the net says it's mostly a pirate story and I haven't done much research into it. 4. "Shadows in the Moonlight" picks up very, very far away on the Vilayet Sea, with Conan going to a nameless isle of iron statues. He leaves it at the end of the story and sails away with the Red Brotherhood. 5. Conan arrives on the coast of the Vilayet with the Red Brotherhood at the beginning of "The Road of the Eagles." They enter the nearby mountain range and attack a castle near the Yuetshi village. 6. "A Witch Shall Be Born" takes place almost entirely in Khauran or outside of it. 7. "Black Tears," about a year after "A Witch Shall Be Born," takes place in the desert and specifically the area known as the Red Waste. Conan goes to the desert city of Akhlat and the story ends with him leaving there. The line between Khauran and this really shouldn't be a straight line since the prologues states, "After the events narrated in "A Witch Shall Be Born", Conan leads his band of Zuagirs eastward to raid the cities and caravans of the Turanians" but I'm not going to muck up the map with a bunch of squiggles that represent nearly a year. 8. "Shadows in Zamboula" takes place in Zamboula. Conan is there about a week, with the story taking place over the course of one night.  At the beginning of "Shadows in Zamboula," Conan has been in the desert city of Zamboula for about a week and has gambled or drank away any money he had. A fellow Zaugir raider tells him that the inn Conan has chosen to sleep at is cursed: people check in, but they're never seen again after that and their belongings are sold in nearby shops. A real "Hotel California" situation. Conan, of course, doesn't find a new inn at which to stay. He goes to the house of Aman Baksh, the allegedly cursed inn, and is shown to his room, which is pretty plush for the price he paid. Satisfied that the windows are secure and the door is locked, he drifts off to sleep, but not before noting that he's a little bit more perturbed by the raider's story than he had been in the daylight. Of course, he's awakened to a would-be assailant (who's gotten in because of a secret latch outside his door!) that Conan is able to fend off. Because of the whole "Man-Eater" title, I was initially kind of excited. I was reminded of the quests in Fallout: New Vegas revolving around the White Glove Society and the Ultra-Luxe casino, with the weirdo, ultra-rich cannibals. That's where the fun ends, though. Whereas many Conan stories are about the battle of civilization vs. barbarism, this is a story of white vs. black. It is without a doubt one of Howard's most racially-driven stories. The way Robert E. Howard chooses to characterize everyone in this story emphasizes racial traits mostly tied to skin color, and uses them to emphasize morality. The lines of good vs. evil and us vs. them are delineated along racial and ethnic ones. Let's begin with Conan himself. His racial features instantly set him apart from those in his surroundings in the opening paragraphs. He is described as, "the giant Cimmerian with his black brows, broad chest, and powerful limbs." Like usual, his blue eyes are highlighted: "His blue eyes and alien features distinguished him from the Eastern swarms, and the straight sword at his hip added point to the racial difference." While Conan is always described as being very tan, I think it's important to note that he's been "burned" or "burnished" brown in the sun and pains are always taken to designate him as white. That sets him apart from most others in Zamboula. Let's look at the city of Zamboula next. This desert-nestled trading city is described as a sort of mutt- a mongrel, an unsavory mixing of races that betray Howard's feelings about race. As noted in the previous quote, it is populated not by people, but by "swarms." Lines like these are illustrative: "They were Pelishtim, squat, hook-nosed, with blue-black beards sweeping their mailed breasts—mercenaries hired for work the ruling Turanians considered beneath themselves, and no less hated by the mongrel population for that reason... "Nay, in this accursed city which Stygians built and which Hyrkanians rule—where white, brown and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds—who can tell who is a man, and who a demon in disguise?" Divisions in Zamboula are drawn not by competing interests- say, government regulations vs. traders- but by racial lines, with Stygians hiding in the shadows, believing the city to be rightfully theirs, and men from Darfar being forced into slavery. At the end of the narrative, Conan demands a horse at a stable late at night, banging on the door from the outside. He takes this opportunity to assert his whiteness to the caretaker. "'I open no gates at this time of night,' grumbled the horse-trader. There seem to be two possible conclusions to this remark: that white citizens of Zamboula are or should be afforded special social privileges, or that Conan is in danger because he is a lone white man in a city peopled by many Black men. Both things suck. But Howard's descriptions of Black men are the most troubling. He takes every opportunity to describe the Black men of this story as misshapen, guttural, stupid, sluggish, ape-like, cannibalistic, cultish, and subhuman. You get the sense that he feels very strongly that the enslaved state the men are in this story is their natural manner of being. "In a widening crack of starlit sky he saw framed a great black bulk, broad, stooping shoulders and a misshapen head blocked out against the stars." "The fellow's kinky wool was built up into horn-like spindles with twigs and dried mud. This barbaric coiffure had given the head its misshapen appearance in the starlight. Provided with a clue to the riddle, Conan pushed back the thick red lips, and grunted as he stared down at teeth filed to points." "Lying in wait, beneath a dark arch—black men, like great, hulking apes!" While there are periodic characters of color in Conan stories who are not villains, as well as villains who are not characters of color, Howard always takes special care to denigrate Black villains. It's not necessarily that they're Black because they're evil, but they're evil because they're Black. The leader of the man-eaters of Zamboula, Baal-Pteor, while he seems to also be a Black man, is instead described as "brown," granting him immunity from the existence that Howard seems to think Black skin condemns a person to. "This man was naked except for a loin-cloth and high-strapped sandals. He was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and inflection." Baal-Pteor is noticeably contrasted to his environment, which is described as being entirely made of white or light-colored reflective materials. "He was looking into a broad, square chamber, somewhat more clearly lighted than the corridor. Its walls were of white marble, the floor of ivory, the ceiling of fretted silver. He saw divans of rich satin, gold-worked footstools of ivory, a disk-shaped table of some massive, metal-like substance." Also troubling is Conan's rescue of "Zabibi," really Nafertari in disguise (yeah, I'll spoil this piece of shit story), in that his whiteness seems to not only mark him as completely safe for a white woman to be around, but also grants him unfettered access to her body. While Zabibi has just escaped hostile men, Conan helps himself to wrapping himself around her waist and she is calmed like magic. "Admiration burned in his fierce eyes as he looked down on her splendid bosom and her lithe limbs, which still quivered from fright and exertion. He passed an arm around her flexible waist and said, reassuringly: 'Stop shaking, wench; you're safe enough.' Conan goes onto freely run his hands all over her body, to which she gives no protest. I'm not saying I'm holding Conan to a modern standard of "enthusiastic consent," I'm trying to point out that while Black men represent a serious threat to her, a white man such as Conan represents safety, desire, and stability. I'm not even reading into subtext here, this is just the fucking text of the story.  "Shadows in Zamboula" is truly tainted by the way Robert E. Howard seethes with racist vitriol in nearly every description afterword. He imbues every corner of this story with dripping, contemptuous racial hatred. Howard others the Jewish-coded characters as "hook-nosed" and always described their beards as not only black in color, but "blue-black," for some weird reason. He's even weirdly off-putting about the race of white characters in this story. As he did in "The Vale of Lost Women," he also writes Conan worse than normal, passing all his prejudices onto the Cimmerian. It's really disappointing. Whenever I have to write about a story like this, I think to myself, "Would it somehow be better if the other aspects of the story were better?" But that always seems to be a fruitless endeavor to me. The only reason why I'm asking that question is because I'm a white guy and it's me who's being portrayed as the hero in this story, not the villain. It feels really patronizing for me to ask someone who isn't white, "Yeah, but the villain was pretty good, wasn't he? Can't you look past the vile racism?" So for me, it doesn't matter at all that Baal-Pteor is a physical match for Conan. I hear that sometimes trotted out as a redeeming factor of this story, but I'll pass. Much has been written about Howard's cruel views on other human beings, thankfully challenged by his girlfriend, who was a teacher. In regards to this story, some people have said that they feel it's better because Howard only considers some Black folks to match the descriptions I wrote above. Some internet Conan fans, ones I have enjoyed reading and using as research for this blog before, have bafflingly not even mentioned it at all (one page says "Robert E. Howard was really on top of his game" with this one and that it was "[their] kind of Conan story, highly recommended." Fuuuuuck that). I genuinely wish I had something productive or very thoughtful to add to this story that is a regrettable relic of it's time. Maybe one day I will. The cover of Savage Sword 14 for Roy Thomas's adaption is pretty good, I suppose. Norem never misses, even if the story is dogshit. "The Star of Khorala" is up next and is thankfully much better. ★☆☆☆☆
 "Black Tears," written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, is a direct sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born." It first appeared in Conan the Wanderer in 1968. Much of the time, the chronological cues we get about where a story takes place in Conan's life are limited to the little prologues that de Camp and Carter write. Those precede the story and set it in time (with the exception of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," which I disagreed with them on their placement). They can be helpful. Sometimes within a story, we get a vague listing of the things Conan has done in his life up to that point. However, the actual body text of "Black Tears" sets it about a year after "Witch." "For years now, this outlaw band had harried and looted towns and trading posts and caravan stations along the borders of Turan--first under that black-hearted Zaporoskan rogue, Olgerd Vladislav; then, a little more than a year ago, by his successor, Conan."  If Conan is commanding something within a story, I happen to like the stories in which he's commanding outlaw bands or pirates as opposed to large, well-funded armies. It seems to suit his character a little better seeing as he has a distaste for "civilized" society. Honestly, that distaste has a tendency to come and go as Conan really seems to enjoy wine and women in a palace, at least for a while before he tires of it. Either way, it's more fun to root for the rogueish underdog than someone commanding a military force. In the prologue of this story, it says that Conan is about 31 years old and is at the height of his physical powers. He's spent his time recently raiding the Turanian countryside (which I think is rather interesting, going from two years as a celebrated asset of the Turanian army to a total thorn in their side). Overall, "Black Tears" is alright. I rated it pretty high when I initially read it, but looking back, I think that's partially just because "Witch" was somewhat of a bummer. It is, though, paced much, much better than "A Witch Shall Be Born," which made it fly by with a lot breezier of a pace than its direct predecessor. It's interesting that the previous story had so many Biblical ties (which I didn't write about since I didn't really have anything to add- there are other writers and bloggers out there who've said quite a bit about "Witch's" Biblical stuff if you're interested) and this story has Conan wandering the desert like another mythical figure who happened to get crucified, just in the opposite order). When he stumbles into Akhlat in the Red Waste and Enosh there tells him that they feed people to the gorgon to suck their life-force out, I was pretty horrified. According to Gary Romeo over at Sprague de Camp Fan, the prose of this one should mostly be credited to Lin Carter rather than de Camp, as a letter between the collaborating authors would show. The gorgon was fun. I only recently learned what a gorgon was when I watched the Hammer horror film The Gorgon a couple of months ago. I'm a big Hammer guy. Anyway, the descriptions of the human forest of stone in the gorgon's chamber were pretty excellent.
 Like a lot of people, it was art that initially drew me to Conan the Barbarian. There are so many incredible artists who have worked on Conan for the last 90 years that he's been done in dozens of styles and mediums. There have been specific scenes from his best-known stories reproduced on canvas and originals that evoke the spirit of our favorite Cimmerian. I wanted to spend some time appreciating those artists who have brought him to life in such meaningful ways. I love Conan art, but I'm not an art critic or much of an artist by any stretch of the imagination, so I enlisted my twin brother Jake to help me out here. Jake's actually an artist and a professional designer, so I wanted to see what he thought about various Conan artists and was hoping he'd let me know if I was talking out of my ass. Much of this will be about cover artists of Savage Sword of Conan, and while there is frequently incredible interior art in Conan comics (Barry Windsor-Smith, Ernie Chan, Sal and John Buscema, and Val Mayerik, just to name a few), I want to focus on the paintings and covers that draw us to those stories. Frank Frazetta
Earl Norem
Boris Vallejo
Margaret Brundage
Neal Adams
Bob Larkin
Nestor Redondo
Joe Jusko
David Mattingly
Joe Chiodo
Bill Sienkiewicz
Vladimir Nenov
Ken Kelly
While we were talking about Kelly's work, Jake made a little graphic to highlight how much of Kelly's paintings are essentially negative space. He drained the color out of everything except the foreground in the collage below. He says that he feels Conan is usually in-your-face, but Kelly is so much more restrained, putting him off-center in the frame and including a little more narrative in his work since he's giving you more to look at.  When Savage Sword switches title fonts at issue 207, I think it's a huge travesty. So many of the works of the artists above look amazing right beneath the vicious SAVAGE SWORD text and the big, blocky CONAN. I'm not a huge fan of the logo they've been using on the 2024 Titan run, but it's better than the last 30 issues of volume 1's cover.
If you've made it this far, thanks for checking out these great artists with us! Go follow my brother on social media if you want to check out his work- he does great albums, concert posters, photography, and just little fun designs that he comes up with.
 According to the Conan Wiki, "A Witch Shall Be Born" was banged out by Robert E. Howard in just a couple of days. That's not necessarily a bad thing; I loved the one-draft "Rogues in the House." But while writing "A Witch Shall Be Born," Howard's novel, The Hour of the Dragon, wasn't headed for Weird Tales and "The People of the Black Circle" was already scheduled for the August issue. So editor Farnsworth Wright didn't have any new Conan adventures on his desk, and he wanted something to put into the publishing pipeline. When Howard sent "Witch" off to Wright, he said it was Howard's best Conan story yet and it made the cover of the December Weird Tales. Gotta disagree with you there, Mr. Wright. Like, "A Witch Shall Be Born" is fine, but definitely not a top-ranking Conan story. This story follows "The Road of the Eagles," at least according to de Camp's introduction in Conan the Freebooter, and I think it makes sense. Conan is in his kozaki period as a sort of outlaw raider, and this is the third story of that section, following "Iron Shadows in the Moon" and "The Road of the Eagles." He's traveled a long way, moving east, and has once again gained everyone's respect through his fighting ability. I feel like we've reached quite the pattern here that whenever Conan joins up with a new group of people, he quickly becomes their leader because he's the most shrewd, cool-headed, physically-capable of all of them. He takes command of the zuagir raiders from Olgerd Vladislav in this story, and will spend about a year amongst the zuagirs if "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" is accurate. Olgerd is a decent villain, and while Howard didn't do too much with the guy, it seems that many other authors liked working with the character, because he's the source of several stories in Savage Sword that try to explain what happened to him after this tale. They all contradict each other immensely. We open in Khauran.  The opening dialogue between Queen Taramis and her evil twin sister Salome is fun and actually has room to breathe. It takes up a lot more ink than most dialogue scenes Howard wrote. I'm an identical twin and I like this one, not just because one of our favorite college professors dubbed me the evil twin and calls me that to this day, but because it's quite the saga for a Howard dialogue scene. Following this opening is one of the most iconic scenes in all of the Conan canon, the tree of death, which has Conan crucified on a wooden X in the desert. Yes, as everyone agrees, this scene absolutely rips and there's a reason why it's so well-known and why it made it into the movie. The rest of the story never really comes together, though. Salome is being evil, Conan usurps Olgerd Vladislav, they take the city and rescue Taramis. I'm far from the first person to point out how awkward and somewhat jarring it is to have the story interrupted by a Nemedian scholar to just sort of tell us about the decline of Khauran under Salome's rule, even if it is Howard trying something new. Conan crucifying Constantius at the end is a decent end to the story, as Conan rejects the role of royal counselor from Taramis and returns to the desert. "A Witch Shall Be Born" might actually be more interesting in what it says about Howard than the adventures contained within. According to Patrice Louinet's "Hyborian Genesis" essay, "Witch" is something of a victory lap for REH: "Conan, in A Witch Shall Be Born, is becoming a superhuman character. Howard was growing extremely confident with his creation as testifies the structure of the tale. We are here miles away from pulp formula: Conan—the protagonist—gives life to the entire story by being present in only two chapters. It is tempting to draw a parallel between Conan and what Howard thought he was achieving with the Conan series: The Texan knew he had a winner and that he could get away with almost everything, even not having the lead character in the story except in the central chapters.
 "The Road of the Eagles" is one of the four Conanless Robert E. Howard stories that L. Sprague de Camp pulled from Howard's fragments and plans in the early 50s and preceded to inject Conan into. It's the only one of the four that kept it's original title. Sort of. The original version, a story set in Turkey at the end of the 16th century, was actually sold for publishing during Howard's lifetime, but the magazine went out of business before the pages went public so it was effectively still an unpublished story. de Camp added Conan to its plot and some little vampire-goblin fellas for the climax and it appeared as "Conan, Man of Destiny" (tremendously awful title) in the December 1955 Fantastic Universe issue. When it was republished in Conan the Freebooter, it got its original title back. In 1979, Howard's original story (without Conan) was published and was re-christened The Way of the Swords, which is not as completelyfuckingterrible as "Man of Destiny" but is still pretty bad. de Camp did a good job with this one. Despite there being too much of an exposition dump in the first few pages, "Eagles" is a seriously thrilling story. Conan and his Red Brotherhood pirates are in the mountains by the sea and attack a castle that has been carved out of sheer rock into a mountainside. There is a secret-passageway backroad to the castle, which leads to a single door in the side of the wall, and the way there is filled danger. Seeing the Turanians tie a rope to the door and shimmy over chasms to get to the only opening to the castle is just awesome, I can't think of a better word for it. Once the action begins, the story never stops rolling. I get the feeling that I like "The Road of the Eagles" way more than most Conan fans, but I'll go to bat for this story. Of the ratings I've been doing in this chronology, it's the first time I wish I could give out half-stars, because I'd love to give it four and a half. It's definitely not quite on par with classics like "The Tower of the Elephant," but I think it's probably my favorite of the stories that were contributed to by more than just Howard (pastiches and re-edits included). The story isn't deep and it doesn't represent any kind of leap forward for Conan's character; it's just action setpiece after action setpiece. Conan taking his sword in his teeth in order to scurry up the wall of the crypt rules.  "As he reached the wall, Conan dropped his buckler, took his sword in his teeth, sprang high in the air, and caught the lower sill of one of the cells in the third tier above the floor, a cell that had already discharged its occupant. With simian agility the Cimmerian mountaineer went up the wall, using the cell openings as hand and foot-holds." I first read this story in the pages of Savage Sword and I think Roy Thomas's version might ultimately be the superior version. The ending is a little too swift, with Conan heading off to Khauran for "A Witch Shall Be Born," which is a classic that I'm excited to re-read. There aren't a ton of markers that place this story firmly in chronology other than the fact that Conan is with the Red Brotherhood and the fact that he's on the Vilayet Sea. I think that where most other Conan chroniclers have put it, after "Iron Shadows in the Moon" and prior to "A Witch Shall Be Born," makes sense. Now, if you look over at our "Chronology" page, you'll see that this is the first story in our "Conan the Barbarian" section, having completed "The Coming of Conan." I'm totally ripping off this labeling convention from the Joe Marek chronology, which is pretty close to mine. That was mostly just to break it up into slightly more digestible fragments (speaking of fragments, I think I'm at the halfway point!), but I don't think it's the best way to divide Conan's career. The way that makes the most sense to me is to divide by the section of Conan's life, because most of them have fit into a clear era so far.
 What's in a name, or rather, a title? In my opinion, quite a bit. I wrote briefly when we read "The Lair of the Ice Worm" how that title gave too much away from the story. I gave "The Castle of Terror" a pass, but "Shadows in the Moonlight" confuses me. "Iron Shadows in the Moon," Robert E. Howard's original title for this Conan story, is a fucking banger of a title. It alludes to some of the more exciting aspects of the story (both the black iron statues in the ruins and the gigantic ancient creature who chases Conan and Olivia several times) while also sounding cryptic and interesting. Are the iron shadows being caused by the moon? Are they being cast onto the moon from something on Earth? It's a great title. That's why I find it really lame that between submission and publication time, this story's title was changed and ultimately appeared in the April 1934 edition of Weird Tales as "Shadows in the Moonlight." This isn't the worst title of all time or anything, but it's certainly a step down from the original and feels much more generic. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that the story directly preceding this one in the chronology has almost the same title, "Shadows in the Dark." In fact, there are lots of repetitive titles in this series. There are shadows in the dark, in the moonlight, in Zamboula, in the skull. There are lots of black things: coasts, colossuses, tears, circles, ones in pools, rivers sphinxes. There are red nails, citadels of scarlet, moons of blood, gods with crimson stains... Anyway, Howard penned this story along with two others in November or December 1932, so this is one of the original batch of Conan stories that he pumped out in his first year of the Hyborian Age.
The setting of this story is fun, albeit unoriginal. Conan has traveled really far offscreen between the last story and this. He's gone from the port of Messantia in Argos all the way to the Vilayet Sea, close to where he spent most of his days as a Turanian mercenary. The story explicitly tells us that Conan spent some time with raiders impartially plundering Koth, Zamora and Turan between then and now. According to the L. Sprague de Camp introduction in the reprinted version of this story, Conan should be about 30, which makes sense to me. We spend most of this story on an island in the middle of the sea, complete with an ancient ruin untouched for centuries. Those ruins and the black, iron statues in them are tied for the best aspect of the story, I would say. After selling "Black Colossus" to Weird Tales, Howard apparently decided that quality and strong characters were not essential for convincing Farnsworth Wright to buy your story (odd that it's that story that told him that seeing as "Black Colossus" is one of his best) as he banged out this story, "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "The Pool of the Black One" in the next months. Still, this tale has some really fun characterization that I guess Howard just lucked into. Conan's spat with a group of pirates is entertaining and nearly laugh-out-loud funny. They bicker like teenagers and Conan is forced to recount their idiocy: "Crom, what a day it has been! Such haggling and wrangling I never heard. I'm nearly deaf. Aratus wished to cut out my heart, and Ivanos refused, to spite Aratus, whom he hates. All day long they snarled and spat at one another, and the crew quickly grew too drunk to vote either way—"  He later makes them beg to get back on their ship, all the while making him captain of them. You can practically hear the ass-kissing as they climb aboard. "Shadows in the Moonlight" moves fairly quick and the fact that Howard holds off on revealing the monsters for quite some time gives it a solid sense of tension and mystery. Conan ends the story by sailing off into the Vilayet Sea with Olivia on his arm. Olivia says she'll fallow him the world over, but I have a feeling she'll be yesterday's news by the time we see him again. This story feels about as stock as some of its characters- it's far from a bad time, but far from the best either. Up next is "The Road of the Eagles," which I absolutely loved when I read the Roy Thomas Savage Sword adaption, but I've never picked up the original! ★★☆☆☆   What's this? Returning characters in a Conan story? For once, we get to see the characters from a previous story come back for a second round! At least for a little while. And there's a lot of fun to be had in this daring rescue of a king from the dungeons of a foreign city. Following the events of "Black Colossus," Conan is still living a relatively cushy life in Khoraja and has ascended to the post of general of the army. He appears to have been here some months, if not a year, because his continuing romance with princess Yasmela has had time to run its course and begin to sour. Honestly, his relationship with Yasmela in this pair of stories seems much more tender and human than his whirlwind romance with Bêlit back in "Queen of the Black Coast." We also see the return of a minor character, Taurus, though not the thief named Taurus from "The Tower of the Elephant."  There's not really much art from "Shadows in the Dark," so I thought I would share this AWESOME piece by u/zamonianbolton over on Reddit Conan and the advisors to Yasmela are hoping to avoid a power struggle in the absence of King Khossus, so Conan makes a play to rescue him from the city of Ianthe in central Ophir. Accompanying Conan are the lockpicking master thief Fronto and the fortune-telling Rhazes, who is more skilled in magic than he originally lets on. They feel much like a classic D&D party: your fighter, your rogue, and your sorcerer, each with their own skills and hang-ups. I always love when Conan is forced to work with people he can't entirely trust, and this little band fits the bill well. Fronto is a muttering weirdo with grievances and debts aplenty, while Rhazes seems to be almost too skilled at getting what he wants. Conan can't really relax around either of them, but their time together is fun in that Rhazes is really annoying to Conan. King Khossus's rescue from the dungeons of Ianthe are a fun episode, and I was confused when it was complete with still about three pages to go in the story. It has one of my favorite endings to a Conan tale so far: fed up with Yasmela and the oblivious, privileged assholery of Khossus, Conan decideds to abandon the King. They have secured a ship home and a large sum of money, which Khossus has told Conan to carry as it doesn't befit a king to carry so many gold coins. Conan sticks his hand into the bag and grabs a handful of coins, shoves them in Khossus's hands, and says, "Here. You'll need these to get home," as he jumps back to the dock from the ship, which is rapidly pulling away. He considers the rest to be his payment and bids Khossus to tell Yasmela good bye for him. It's a hilarious ending that perfectly befits Conan.  I really enjoyed this story. The adventure is exciting and there are a few twists and turns along the way. The characterization is spot on and keeps the mood up throughout, something that I wish more stories would lean into. I really appreciate when Conan stories are funny, as I spoke of about "Rogues in the House," and there's quite a bit of good humor here.
Conan takes a pretty circuitous route in this story, going from Khoraja around Khorshemish (for reasons I don't want to spoil) to the city of Ianthe. We leave him in Messantia, the port city of Argos that we've been to before. ★★★★☆ |
AuthorHey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order. 
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