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With The Unsung Sword of Conan, I'm trying to highlight under-appreciated works in the Conan canon.  Okay, I'm kind of cheating a little bit with this one. This issue isn't some diamond in the rough that nobody's read or discussed, but it's got a great story (behind it as well as between the pages). L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter published "The Thing in the Crypt" in the paperback collection Conan in 1967. Outside of the speculation that it probably originated as a draft of a future Thongor story, it was a wholly original little jaunt published alongside some other excellent early-life Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and a few acceptable de Camp / Carter pastiches. "The Thing in the Crypt," is, for my money at least, a seriously top-of-the-pile Conan pastiche. It's brisk, creepy, thematically consistent with Howard, and a whole lot of fun to read. Six years after it came out, Roy Thomas was writing Conan the Barbarian for Marvel Comics and had convinced Glenn Lord of the Howard estate to let him adapt a couple of REH tales into the comic series. He was working on obtaining the rights of some others- Lin Carter had allowed it for "The Hand of Nergal" a few issues prior, but de Camp wasn't so sure. Thomas wanted to depict "Thing in the Crypt" as a flashback episode to take place between Conan #2 and #3, which is a little odd seeing as he considered the story to be a "lesser" de Camp story. When writing about the story, he didn't even seem that interested in it. As de Camp dragged his feet, Roy said, "Fuck it." He decided to create his own crypt story that would replace "The Thing in the Crypt" for the Marvel continuity. When wondering what he should have Conan fight in the ancient tomb to differentiate his new version from the de Camp story, his wife Jean suggested, "Why don't you have him fight his own shadow?" Roy ran with that idea and ended up creating "The Shadow on the Tomb!" for Conan the Barbarian #31.  In the de Camp / Carter original, Conan is fleeing from Hyberborean slavers (and wolves, to boot) and ducks into a crevice in a wall to escape. What he finds is an ancient crypt and a mummified warrior who comes to life when a magical sword is removed from his lap. He ends up burning the decayed thing to dust. Roy added a frame narrative to keep his story in continuity- while fighting alongside the Turanians, Conan and several other soldiers are trapped in a cave, which causes him to think back to his younger days. In the past, still in the frozen north, Conan fights a bear and ends up tumbling into a hole, which kills the bear and breaks his sword. Another sword reveals itself to him, this one complete with a skull-adorned hilt and a strange inscription that Conan admits probably says not to disturb it. Ignoring the potential warning, he removes the blade, which causes his shadow to spring to life and fight against him. He's able to dispatch his shadow after just two pages of combat, using fire to dispel any shadows, much the same as the original story, and then it's back to his Turanian days. Conan wonders if the blade had been enchanted or cursed and what would've happened if he'd ended up keeping it. At the end of the issue, we see that very same sword tumble out of the hand of one of Conan's victims. I guess he made the smart choice after all. And did I mention that gorgeous Gil Kane cover, inked by John Romita?  Sal Buscema "The Shadow on the Tomb!" is fun, but a little sillier than the original. I think Roy's choice to connect the story to his current continuity via the frame narrative was a great choice- it feels less random and it's more unique than just having Conan fuck up by activating a curse and then run his ass out of there. It helps make it less of an adaptation and more of an original yarn. And then just five years later, Marvel Comics had a new contract with L. Sprague de Camp that allowed them to adapt any of the Conan pastiches they wanted. For some reason, Roy decided to revisit "The Thing in the Crypt" instead of any of the other pastiches in the library. It worked out from the perspective of the Marvel office- John Buscema was out on vacation, so they needed a "filler" episode as they did from time to time. But instead of reprinting an old story, Roy enlisted Big John's little brother, Sal Buscema, to go back to the crypt. Sal is, at times, indistinguishable from his his brother anyway. Within the continuity of the book, it made no sense for them to adapt this story here- the end of Conan and Bêlit's adventures were heating up and they were about to attempt a coup in the city of Asgalun, but instead, we looked backward 7 years and returned to some of Conan's earliest adventures.  Roy and Sal had an entirely self-inflicted problem on their hands now: what to do with the fact that they now had two nearly identical stories in which a young Conan, fleeing enemies in the frozen north, disturbs a cursed tomb by moving a magical sword and then has to do battle with a sentry? They decided to go with the simplest, and probably least-elegant solution. Both stories would be canonical to the Marvel continuity. They added some caption boxes at the beginning noting that issue #92 would take place between Conan #2 and #3, and then added a caption at the end saying that Conan probably lost this magical sword, leaving him open to needing another just a few days later. Whatever, man. Like the prose story it's based on, Conan the Barbarian #92 opens with the young Cimmerian running at full speed from a pack of ravenous wolves. While it's a great opening, I think the most interesting thing about page one is that the credits read that the issue is by "Roy Thomas & Ernie Chan," with a special guest penciller, Sal Buscema. I don't think I've ever seen the inker elevated to the spot next to the writer where the penciller usually is. Conan quickly dives into the titular crypt where the wolves apparently dare not to tread... instead, they just whimper outside of it. And here's the moment that originally made me think, "Maybe I need to blog about this issue:" the following pages are completely monochrome, with only black outlines and blue coloring, to simulate darkness. Roy, and perhaps the Marvel staff in general, called these "knockout panels." When I first read that, I thought it meant that they were meant to knock the socks off the reader since they're such a departure from usual coloring. But I think it's far more likely that they got that name because they're so quick and easy for the colorist to "knock out." Anyway, colorist George Roussos deserves his flowers.  Conan gropes around in the dark for a bit before making a fire. When he does, the yellows, reds, and browns of his skin, his helmet, and the campfire seem so beautifully vivid after two pages of knockout blue. We're then hit with the splash page revealing the crypt's Thing, wearing a helmet not unlike our hero's. Conan recoils and lets out a "Crom's devils!" The "sunken sockets" of the skeletal figures eyes "burn" against Conan. This shit fucking rules, dude. When the Thing comes alive and attacks Conan, we keep our focus on its eyeless gaze as Conan hacks at its arms, legs, temples, etc. The narration asks my favorite question from the original: "How do you kill a thing that is already dead?"  As Conan's campfire rages, the backgrounds have shifted from blue to magenta, and as Conan flips the sentry into the fire, the panels are filled with a red-orange glow that engulfs the page and I'm hoping that George Roussos got a raise or something. He worked as an inker in addition to a colorist and worked with all the greats like Jack Kirby, so I'm sure he wouldn't even remember this issue if I could ask him about it today (he died in 2000). In the final panels, Conan is bathed in a red and yellow that looks incredible, like a sunset, as he steps away from the crypt. It's a gorgeous ending to a gorgeous comic. Clumsily, Roy's final caption box stutters out, "Yeah, um, I know it's weird, but Conan was soon captured by a second group of Hyperborean slavers and had a very similar experience, but this time with a shadow! Please do not invent trade paperbacks so that these stories are never republished and easily compared." At least, that's how I think it went. I didn't go back and check.  Roy Thomas didn't love "The Thing in the Crypt," but ended up adapting it twice. In terms of pop culture representation, it may be the most-often depicted non-REH Conan story. It also inspired a scene in the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It appeared again in the live action Conan the Adventurer TV show. And just about every sword and sorcery fan noticed the parallels between this and the "mound dweller" scene in Robert Eggers's The Northman. Because of all of those, I think it's fair to say that there's something about the story that really resonates with readers. When Conan the Barbarian returned to its regularly-scheduled programming in issue #93, it would be careening toward the end of the Conan & Bêlit saga that he had been writing for 40 issues. It was its last grasp at greatness before Roy left. 
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 Critic Chuck Klosterman has this great bit in an exhaustive piece about KISS where he reviews every single album they ever put out, in a paragraph or so each. When he gets to their solo albums after Double Platinum and before Dynasty, he gives each one a lukewarmly-positive review. Ace's is "about as vintage as any of these jokers are gonna get from here on out." Gene's has a lot of guest stars on it. Paul's probably should've charted better if not for weird, off-putting song titles. And then there's Peter's album. All Klosterman says is, "This record was released by Peter Criss in 1978." That's kind of how it felt to find something to say about the new Conan novel, Spawn of the Serpent God. I don't want to be too much of a dick about it. The book is not bad by any means. It just kind of ran through me. I read it over the course of three nights, and to its credit, it is certainly a breezy, quick read. But it just didn't really sick to me at all. Spawn of the Serpent God is ostensibly a light sequel to "The Tower of the Elephant" and sort-of prequel to Conan and the Spider God, referencing events and characters from both, but not in a slavish way where you'll be lost if you haven't read one of them (but let's be real- you've read "Tower of the Elephant" a bunch of times, haven't you?). It also bills itself as a tie-in to the "Scourge of the Serpent" comic series coming out right now, but doesn't really do that in a meaningful way. Tim Waggoner said in a blog post that all Titan asked of him was to include Set and ancient serpent men in the story. Conan, just shy of 19 and thieving in Zamora, is currently partnered with the Zamorian thief Valja, and they're painting the town red. The whiz-bang opening in which they try to steal an idol from a temple of Ishtar is a pretty great start to things! Eventually, the two of them team up with a pair of mystics to try to take down a Stygian sorcerer who's set up shop in the ruins of Yara's tower.  There's eventually a time skip of about 15 years, moving ahead to Conan's 33rd year and reuniting of most of the principle characters. Valja and the villain Shengis are fun. I would certainly hope they would be, since Conan disappears from the narrative entirely for nearly sixty pages right in the middle of the book. The magical mountain fortress Ravenhold is pretty cool, but certainly doesn't feel very "Conan-y" to me. Oh well, it's fun. There are a couple of light themes through the book about gender, sexuality, and the duality of good vs. evil. Tim Waggoner's characters all feel very flawed and very human, which is welcomed. I really try not to review anything on this blog unless I feel like have something new to say about it, and for this novel, I just never really found the angle. I'm inclined to agree with Gary Romeo's review over at SpraguedeCampFan. He said, "Someone, someday, might recapture the original magic. But for now, I’m mostly entertained. A night reading instead of watching Netflix." Entertaining enough, and yeah, better than doomscrolling for a night. Those Titan books sure do all look good together, though.  I haven't picked up the other Titan release, Blood of the Serpent yet, but for the four with the silhouette covers that I do own, here's my ranking. Far and away the best of them is City of the Dead, followed by Cult of the Obsidian Moon, Spawn of the Serpent God, and then in a distant fourth place is Songs of the Slain.
 I will stop short of saying that Robert E. Howard was obsessed with the idea of ancestral memory, but I will at least say that he was preoccupied by it. The concept of reincarnation, and the reincarnated being able to in some way perceive their past lives through the veil of time, should be familiar-enough to Conan fans. The very first Conan work, the poem "Cimmeria" begins with the words, "I remember," implying a truth in it passed down through the blood of generations. Even earlier than that, ancestral memory was the key plot point in Howard's "People of the Dark," published in the June 1932 issue of Strange Tales. Even just on the Contents page, it advertises a tale ripped "out of the past." As would-be murderer John O'Brien of the present takes a blow to the head, he accesses a past life from hundreds of years ago. Now, this story's "Conan of the Reavers" is not considered by modern consensus to be entirely the same character as Conan of Cimmeria (despite Conan also being characterize as a "reaver" in the Nemedian Chronicles), but they bear great similarities. In addition to the above-mentioned poem and story, Howard would use the concept as the key plot conceit in his James Allison stories, which featured a somewhat fictionalized version of himself remembering his past lives. Of these past lives as a stint as Hunwulf, the Aesir raider living in Conan's Hyborian Age.  A comic book representation of James Allison Within the James Allison stories, Allison speaks of himself as one and the same as these former incarnations while he narrates their adventures: "I recognize his kinship with the entity now called James Allison. Kinship? Say rather oneness. I am he; he is I." The first James Allison story Howard penned was "The Valley of the Worm," published in the February 1934 issue of Weird Tales, and it was very well-received. The rest weren't so lucky. The only other one that would see publication during Howard's life was "The Garden of Fear," but it wouldn't be in the pages of WT. Instead, editor Farnsworth Wright passed on it, so Howard handed it to the magazine Marvel Tales for free. "The Garden of Fear" is a pretty good, brief Hyborian Age-set story. In it, Hunwulf of the Aesir sees his ladyfriend Gudrun kidnapped by a black, winged creature and taken to an ancient tower surrounded by carniverous flowers. It's romantic in a way, but only in the way that Weird Tales stories frequently position hulky dudes to save damsels. There's some cool world-building, and the page count flies by. If you haven't read it, but are thinking about reading this book, you probably should (it won't take you long) but the whole thing is also recapped by Hunwulf to Conan within Cult of the Obsidian Moon's pages.  There are a handful of James Allison stories, but only those scant two were completed or published during Howard's lifetime. James Allison appears in the Conan comic event "Battle of the Black Stone" from last year, and is the framing device in the novel Conan: Cult of the Obsidian Moon, released about the same time. The framing device presents this Conan story as one of James Allison's remembered tales which is being submitted to the fictional magazine Anomalous Adventures, a fun little send-up to Weird Tales. Both the comic event and the novel follow in the tradition of smashing Howard elements together, combining the characters into classic team-up. "Battle of the Black Stone" puts all of Howard's best-known characters into a type of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen across time: Solomon Kane, El Borak, Conrad and Kirowan, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, etc. Obsidian Moon, which is subtitled "A Black Stone Novel," has Conan encounter Hunwulf and Gudrun of "The Garden of Fear." It also postulates that the winged creature who stole Gudrun in her original story was also related to the creature that killed Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast." Conan and the Aesir couple become fast friends and Conan is goaded into training their son in combat. Of course, it's not long before things go sideways and send the adults after a cadre of kidnapped village children, all taken mysteriously by winged men.  In the novel, Conan is recognized as a pirate, lately of the Black Coast, and is even named Amra by a character early on. Elsewhere Conan refers to the plots of "The Tower of the Elephant," "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," and "Rogues of the House," by mentioning an elephant god and a giant spider, a snowy woman who disappeared from under his hands, and an ape-man dressed as a priest. There are several places that this novel could go, chronologically. Many stories seem to be set some time in Conan's early-to-mid career as a mercenary, mostly in Shem. It fits in nicely alongside John C. Hocking's Conan work, so it probably belongs right before "Hawks Over Shem" and "Black Colossus." There's quite a bit to enjoy in Cult of the Obsidian Moon. The couple of Hunwulf and Gudrun are really likeable, but would definitely qualify as a Gary Stu and a Mary Sue, respectively. The novel puts Conan in proximity to children, which is kind of unique for a Conan story, so we see how he interacts with Hunwulf and Gudrun's son, Bjorn. And I'm always down for a cult of zealots and a lost city. There's a fair bit that I think will turn off longtime Conan readers, too. The Conan of Cult of the Obsidian Moon makes me think of the cover of Savage Sword #36's cover by Earl Norem: square-jawed and mostly clean-cut, this is Conan at his absolute most friendly and superheroic. He's perhaps a bit too good with kids, instantly winning young friends effortlessly as he goes. It's also much more of a fantasy novel than a sword-and-sorcery story. There's magic abound and it's noticeably less dark than some Conan fare.  I found it a little odd that the titular Obsidian Moon cult isn't even mentioned until 189 pages into a 286 page novel. It's not a deal-breaker, I was just sitting there wondering why it was called that for at least half of the book. Additionally, I'm not trying to nitpick too much, but if James Allison's genetic memories are supposedly of the life of Hunwulf, why is Conan the point of view character? It makes less sense the more I think about it. The novel isn't strongly connected to the comic event at all; you could read both without ever knowing the other title exists and you'd lose nothing (which I think is a plus- complicated reading orders are a scam), but the connections basically make for little Easter eggs if you've read both. I'm not trying to dissuade you from checking out Obsidian Moon. It was pretty decent. I'm left wondering if I found it at the right time- I spent a bunch of a weekend at a campground near Buford, Wyoming reading it while people drank ale and engaged in mock combat since my wife is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Out of Titan Books' recent Conan novels (I'm starting to think of them as the "silhouette cover set"), it's easily the middle of the pack. It doesn't reach the excellent heights of John Hocking's City of the Dead work, but it easily clears the more recent Songs of the Slain. I wouldn't mind seeing more crossovers between Howard properties, which we may see soon enough with what's happening in the pages of Savage Sword these days! ★★★☆☆   On April 16th, 2015, I did something that I never thought that I would do. I stopped the class I was teaching to show the kids a new YouTube video. I was teaching a science fiction literature class to middle school students and with a glance at my iPhone realized I had about five texts asking some version of, "Did you see the video yet?" There was a new Star Wars movie trailer. I stopped what the kids were doing, pulled up the trailer for the newly titled Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens and we all watched together. I'm not kidding you- a tear welled up in my eye as the fanfare blasted out of my sub-par public school computer speakers and the Millennium Falcon ripped through the sky once again. An 8th grader muttered "hoooly shit." I let it go. I marked this moment with my students (hilariously, thinking about it now) with the same gravity that I had marked the Queen dying a few years ago. It seemed so far away from the night we all went to our local mall movie theaters and cheered wildly during the opening of The Revenge of the Sith, because, after all, that was supposed to be the last Star Wars movie. The second "long gap" was over and we were now primed to enjoy what was the true end to the Star Wars story... right? I wonder if sword-and-sorcery fans had that same feeling as they loped past their local book store in 1955 to see Tales of Conan, a brand new Conan the Cimmerian hardcover, sitting in the display window (I wasn't around in 1955, so I don't actually know if a Conan book would've ever made the display window. Pulp's always been pretty frowned upon, right?). They'd seen the posthumous publication of two old stories, sure, but a whole new book? Robert E. Howard had been dead for nearly twenty years, but somehow, like Xaltotun from the crypt, he had been resurrected to contribute to four new Conan stories. Well, not really.  After Howard's suicide in 1936, most of his unpublished stories and fragments sat in some for or another in a trunk that, in 1951, was shared with science fiction and fantasy writer L. Sprague de Camp. Trunk steward Marty Greenberg gave de Camp the manuscripts in '51 and two years later suggested that de Camp revise some of the stories to add Conan to them. de Camp has always maintained that it was an easy-enough job: change the names of the settings, a few of the characters, and add something supernatural. The stories in published in Tales of Conan are now 70 years old as of 2025, and they would certainly not be the last. L. Sprague de Camp is wildly controversial amongst heroic fantasy readers; if you drop into any blog comment section or Reddit thread about him, you'll see the argument. And it gets heated from time to time. Some folks call him a vulture: a moderate talent who happened to strike gold just by being in the right place at the right time. They'll say he mined Howard's work for his own glory and benefit. The other side will say that he's an accomplished science fiction writer in his own right who stewarded Conan between Howard's death and his resurgence in the 1960s. Honestly, I think they're both kind of right. I would argue that the stories in Tales of Conan, "The Blood-Stained God," "Hawks Over Shem," "The Road of the Eagles," and "The Flame-Knife," are actually pretty good. "Eagles" and "Flame-Knife" especially are killer reads. They've got the adventuresome Howard flash that good Conan stories have. I know those statements are going to ruffle some feathers, but if you read those stories with only a focus on the text, they're pretty solid sword-and-sorcery tales. Of course, most of the credit for that probably goes to Howard himself, who wrote the meat of those tales.  Just two years after Tales, those same readers might have been once again loping past their local bookshop only to have the misfortune of coming across The Return of Conan, the first wholly original pastiche starring Conan to be published. Of the more than 70 Conan prose stories I've read, it's one of the absolute worst. Swedish writer and Conan fan Bjorn Nyberg teamed with L. Sprague de Camp to produce some seriously inessential fantasy dreck. At its best, it just re-heats Howard's nachos. At worst, it fundamentally misunderstands what makes Conan good. Two books in and the batting average of the Conan pastiche ballclub was down to .500. de Camp and his protégé Lin Carter returned throughout the sixties and seventies to continue adding their own spin on the Conan library. I honestly think a lot of them are good. "The Thing in the Crypt," Conan and the Spider God, "The Star of Khorala," and several more are definitely worth a try, at least. Bantam Books published a few more (I'd say four of them are worth reading). Tor then tagged in to publish an eye-watering forty-three new Conan novels, very few of which feel much like Howard's world at all. I've read two of those, but they go down like seltzer waters: just not a lot of flavor of any kind. I've never blogged about them because, even worse than the Conan pastiches I hate (Conan the Liberator, all of the Conan of Aquilonia stories), they don't make me feel anything at all. For the last three years, Titan Books has taken over and given the pen to exciting fantasy and sci-fi authors, publishing some really good short stories in ebook form and some pretty decent novels. This is all completely ignoring fifty years of comics and movies, too. It seems like the best course of action with Conan pastiche today is to read some online reviews from reviewers you trust. You take some, you leave some.  As I look at the media landscape, I can't help but feel like the spirit of Conan pastiche is all over the place in 2025. The Star Wars franchise finished that aforementioned trilogy, but the stuff keeps coming. They dragged Ewan McGregor back, they produced roughly one and a half good TV shows, and they seem to be really confused as to whether or not Daisy Ridley should return as Rey. Some way, somehow, they even got the grumpiest man in Hollywood and the biggest Han Solo hater of all time, Harrison Ford, to bring his growly voice back to a galaxy far, far away. Elsewhere in Hollywood, the corpse of the Jurassic Park series continues to shamble through summer cinemas every couple of years, each one more pointless than the last. But weirdly enough, narrative in film and print are not the only places where it feels like those in charge of your media are "pulling a de Camp." Johnny Cash died over twenty years ago, but we've gotten a couple of polished, re-worked albums from out of his catalogue (I guess he was right- ain't no grave really can hold his body down). Producers have re-arranged his work to produce records like Songwriter, an almost-ghoulishly titled record in which Cash's vocals have been nestled into entirely new recordings written thirty years after the original sessions. Cash might be the songwriter, but he sure didn't get to have a say in anything else on the album. The Beatles did the same thing in 2023, using AI to isolate John Lennon's vocal parts to "Now and Then" to churn out a "new" Beatles song featuring performances by John and George, both dead for decades.  You may have even noticed what hilarious Youtuber and musician Pat Finnerty has dubbed "The Fuckin' Songs," a collection of pop hits that absolutely refuse to die. The charts have been filled with interpolations of well-worn classics like "Isn't She Lovely?" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in soulless, cash-grabby bullshit. I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to not feel a little cynical as you look around and see that today's risk-averse media companies want to just endlessly recycle the old hits. They slap a quick coat of paint on them, be they your favorite childhood movies, the songs you liked it high school, or the books you read in the back of the library. It's happened enough times that it feels like we're just Weekend-At-Bernie's-ing our own youth. With the way intellectual property rights work, it's probably only going to get worse. Creative industries, comics especially, do everything they can to make sure the rights to your favorite stories are owned by media conglomerates instead of their writers. Am I happy that we now have 70 years of additional stories featuring my favorite barbarian? Honestly? Yeah, I am. I'll go on as many adventures as I can with the big guy. Am I going to buy new Titan books and comic series? A bunch of them, most assuredly. I'm part of the problem. But when I see that nearly all of the entertainment industry is following de Camp's model where they take what works and put it on the assembly line, I feel cynical. It makes me want to side with the de Camp naysayers: maybe Conan should've stayed in the Depression. I guess Conan pastiche would've happened by now if it hadn't started in 1955. L. Sprague de Camp and Conan pastiche aren't really unique, they just happened to get started early.
 Welcome back to another episode of "John C. Hocking Kicks Ass." I just finished Conan and the Living Plague, and I know I'm late to the party since it came out around this time last year, but I don't feel that bad about it since Living Plague just won Mr. Hocking the Costigan Award for creative writing at this summer's Howard Days festival. He and his work deserve it- we've got another excellent Conan novel from him here. Following Conan and the Emerald Lotus and "Black Starlight," Conan is still in Shem, selling his sword to make some coin. Due to his obvious skill, he's roped into being a part of a unit that is tasked with breaking into the plague-ridden city of Dulcine to steal its treasure which is, presumably, just sitting there for the taking since everyone's too afraid to approach the deadly walls. In an interview over on BlackGate, they describe it as feeling like a heist novel, which is an apt description. How do you get past an enemy army and into the walls of a city ravaged by a deadly virus? Well, creatively. I don't need to spoil it for you. Eventually, we do get into the city, there's some eldritch-flavored magic, and basically the zombies from 28 Days Later, but they've got swords. While I wouldn't call them horror stories, Hocking's Conan work always leans toward the horrific.  Like Emerald Lotus and de Camp & Carter's "Shadows in the Dark" before it, Living Plague makes great use of a supporting cast with which to surround Conan. There's the friendly and unshakable soldier, Shamtare. The extremely likeable young buck of an archer, Pezur. The up-to-something sorcerer Adrastus. The quiet and deadly Balthano. And prince Eoreck, who is a total fucking prick and so much fun to see contrasted with the rest of the cast, who are actual men of action. Giving Conan a compelling supporting cast has always made the stakes of the story more personal and interesting. Not only is his characterization stellar, but Hocking is gifted in directing action sequences that pace his work effectively. In the beginning, I found myself comparing it to Conan the Magnificent, a Robert Jordan novel I read a few months back (and haven't blogged about because I could think of nothing interesting to say about it). In the first third of Magnificent, there's this overlong scene of Conan in a mercenary camp one-upping the other soldiers. The scene isn't that interesting to begin with, but it drags and drags, leaving me thinking, "Robert E. Howard would never stay in one place for this long, let alone this locale. Let's get a move on!" Living Plague starts somewhat similarly- Prince Eoreck is looking for a few men to demonstrate their strength, including Conan. But whereas Jordan had Conan predictably splitting his own arrows for an interminable length of pages, Hocking presents a more unique test of skill that's a blast to read and then moves on quickly to the adventure.  Let me give you one more example of some propulsive action that makes the book well-worth a read. I make notes in a Google Doc while I read stories for this blog, and at the halfway point in the book, I wrote down a scene I wanted to remember to talk about, and found myself describing it like this: Conan and crew get cornered by the plague zombies in an alleyway, they climb some crates into a window, they jump out onto another roof, and Conan lights an inferno to keep the zombies at bay. I looked at this sequence of events and was astounded with the fact that I had described pretty much exactly what happened, but in the novel, it's a thrilling survival scene that was nipping at my heels the whole time. It was my favorite scene in the book and literally a heart-pounder. Hocking does so much with a very simple setup. Every time I read or watch a story with zombies in it, one of my favorite pastimes is figuring what the zombies mean to the writer at that point in time, because zombies always mean something. In Night of the Living Dead is was those standing in the way of the racial progress of the 60s. In Dawn of the Dead, they were the consumer of the 70s. In 28 Days Later, they were the threat of terrorism. In The Last of Us, they reek of climate catastrophe. I don't care to share my ideas here, since I was so far off interpreting aspects of Emerald Lotus the first time. I know he has no interest in writing a politically relevant story, but I feel like they come from somewhere. Maybe I'd bring it up if I got to talk to Mr. Hocking about it. I did get some Covid flashbacks when the central cast was donning masks to protect themselves from plague and the wizard was covering himself in oil that wards off the plague... I couldn't help but think about my parents wiping down their groceries with Clorox wipes. Then I found out that Hocking wrote this in 1996 and just felt like he got things depressingly right. Hocking tells excellent Conan stories in a way that feels like they have all the right Weird Tales elements but aren't slavishly recreating REH's style or anything. Notably, his villains and sorcerers are usually pretty likeable; they're certainly more human than Thoth-Amon or the Black Seers of Yimsha. Hocking is particular in how he depicts the desire for power as a devastating plague or a consuming addiction.
Hocking has said once or twice that he's outlined some more Conan stuff: something up in Asgard and Vanaheim, something titled "Conan in the City of Pain." I really, really hope we don't have to wait 20 years to see his next batch. And if he puts out something that's not Conan-related, I'll be first in line at the book store! ★★★★☆ Yeah, Thongor's a different barbarian, technically. This is the first time I've written something not exclusively about Conan on this blog. Sometimes it's fun to look into Conan's descendants: other characters with the epithet "...the Barbarian!"  This first printing is the copy I have. There's this thing I like to tell my students when I'm teaching writing: stealing is good. Sometimes students get a little silly with this- last year, some students tried to make "Stealing is good" their class yearbook quote, but most of the time it goes over well. Here's what I mean by that. Plagiarism is bad, but stealing is good. When you're just starting out, "stealing" from our influences is how you develop your own creative skills. I'm sure if you've ever tried your hand at creative writing, you looked back at your draft later and realized you were just ripping off your favorite authors, even if you weren't conscious of it. When I started writing songs with my first band when I was 17, I was completely and totally just ripping off Green Day, Blink-182, and the Misfits, even though I wasn't necessarily trying to. Heck, this blog basically started with me aping Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" concept but with Conan stories. But I think this is a very important part of someone's development as a writer or artist or musician. When you see a turn of phrase you like from your favorite author, steal it. When you are stuck while writing a song, ask yourself, "How would [musician I really admire] write this?" That's how you become better. Ultimately, you get to a point where you've sort of developed your own voice and you're chasing your own ideas, and you don't have to steal anymore, you just have your influences that you're standing on.  I get the sense that when Lin Carter was writing The Wizard of Lemuria, later retitled Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria, he was kind of still in the stealing phase. That doesn't mean this 1965 novel, which was Carter's first, is terrible or anything, but it does seem that he's wearing his influences on his sleeve a little bit too much. Thongor is a powerful barbarian character in a fictional past set several thousand years ago who, in The Wizard of Lemuria, meets Sharajsha of Zaar and attempts to stop an even older race of Dragon Kings from recapturing the earth in a hostile takeover. It's certainly a serviceable-enough sword and sorcery story. Carter wouldn't help write any Conan material until about two years after The Wizard of Lemuria would hit shelves, but Carter was obviously a Conan fan already. I kept track of all the suspiciously-similar elements while reading, mostly for my own amusement.
 Now having read The Wizard of Lemuria, it makes a lot of sense that Carter was easily able to uproot his story "Black Moonlight" and turn it into the Conan tale "The Gem in the Tower" so easily. I've been digging into Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series recently. In spring I read A Princess of Mars and I'm currently working my way through the second title, The Gods of Mars. It's almost impressive how much The Wizard of Lemuria reads like a John Carter story that Lin Carter shoehorned Conan into. Heck, there are a couple of lines in The Gods of Mars that seem lifted wholesale into Thongor's. John Carter at one point narrates in a moment of desperation, "To think, with me, is to act." Likewise, "For Thongor, to conceive of a plan was to attempt it." I just happened to read those two lines on the same exact day and got deja vu. Lin Carter writes a hell of a lot like Burroughs- a lot more than he writes like Robert E. Howard, and that's something that separates his work a little more from Conan.  I'm not here to make an hbomberguy-style plagiarism argument or anything (remember, I said up top that I think stealing can be good). I do think it's interesting how Carter developed as a writer. I noted in a couple of my blog posts while creating my Conan chronology that I get the sense that Carter was a better plotter than his Conan writing partner, L. Sprague de Camp, but de Camp was a much better prose writer. He could construct a sentence far better than Carter seemed to be able to do. It seems to me like he got quite a bit better between this novel and when he started writing the Cimmerian. I mean, I really enjoy "Legions of the Dead," "The Thing in the Crypt," "Shadows in the Dark," Conan the Buccaneer, and Conan of the Isles.
It seems like I'm fairly in line with the common opinion that Thongor is fine. Any time I've read reviews for The Wizard of Lemuria, people seem to shrug their shoulders, note the clear influence of Howard and Burroughs, and move on. I really enjoy Fletcher Vrendenburgh's breakdown of the Thongor books over on Blackgate. I might pick up more of Carter's barbarian if I find the right deal or if I'm bored, but I wouldn't bet money on it. At least I can feel a little better about having a Thongor Frazetta painting in my sidebar for the last year now that I've covered one of his books. But let's be real- if you didn't already know that was Thongor and not Conan, would you have noticed? About a month ago, I wrote a post adding the first set of Titan Books' "Heroic Legends Series" of ebooks into Conan's life. I thought these were a decent curiosity at first, but I've come to really love them. Seeing as we don't have many options for new short fiction to be published in 2025, ebooks are a great place to do that. Plus, they're cheap. Also, Brian D. Anderson, one of the writers of those ebooks showed up in the comments! I think he's the fourth Conan creative I've had comment here (Jonas Prida, Geof Isherwood, John C. Hocking, and Brian D. Anderson). I recently read the rest of the Conan-related Heroic Legends titles, and they're below for chronologizing. I'll probably read the Belit ones eventually!  "Lethal Consignment" by Shaun Hamill "Lethal Consignment" is a quick little river-borne jaunt for Conan aboard a ship called the Fortune's Dawn. To quote author Shaun Hamill's Twitter (god, I've got to get off Twitter), "Some wild shit is afoot." "Lethal Consignment" is a pretty quick story, only 24 pages long. The thing that vexes me is what's on the first page! Similar to how "The Shadow of Vengeance" made explicit note that it took place three months after "The Devil in Iron," "Lethal Consignment" says that it is intended to take place before "The Tower of the Elephant." That's tough for us, chronologically-speaking. I know that basically no author is letting their story get dictated by the shaky, oft-debated, and meaningless chronology of Conan's life, but I don't think there's a ton of room prior to "Tower." You have the obvious beginning stories like "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," which almost can't be uncoupled from "Legions of the Dead" and "The Thing in the Crypt." Once Conan crosses south into Brythunia from Hyperborea in "Thing," it works really nicely that the thief stories begin with "The God in the Bowl." "Lethal Consignment" would pull him way over to the western sea in Kordava prior to that, which is a huge move across the map. The saving grace here is that Conan does end up heading kind of northeast at the end of it, which sends him in the right direction toward Numalia. I tried to reach out to Shaun on some of his social media, so we'll see if he responds and I can update this with his thoughts.  "Terror from the Abyss" by Henry Herz "Terror from the Abyss" takes place during Conan's time with Belit aboard the Tigress, in the middle of "Queen of the Black Coast." With Belit being such an iconic character and "Queen" being such a great story, this is an episode of Conan's life visited frequently. I really like that Herz adds some color to the costume worn by Conan in the original story. By the time the original picks up, Conan's been travelling the world for some time and has acquired quite the kit. Conan is described like this: "He saw a tall powerfully built figure in a black scale-mail hauberk, burnished greaves and a blue-steel helmet from which jutted bull's horns highly polished. From the mailed shoulders fell the scarlet cloak, blowing in the sea-wind. A broad shagreen belt with a golden buckle held the scabbard of the broadsword he bore. Under the horned helmet a square-cut black mane contrasted with smoldering blue eyes." Herz places each item from Conan's journey into cultural context: "A horned helmet from Nordheim crowned his head. Over a hauberk of Nemedian ring-mail, the battle-scarred warrior wore a finely crafted cuirass, gorget, and pauldrons from Koth. A great Aquilonian broadsword hung from a tooled leather belt." Now, the real trick would be placing this story amongst the many stories that take place during chapters 2 and 3 of "Queen of the Black Coast" from the Conan comics!  "The Halls of Immortal Darkness"
by Laird Barron We have arrived. I am not overselling it to tell you that this story fucks so hard. As far as I'm concerned, this is by far the best of the Heroic Legends series so far (with "The Shadow of Vengeance" as a second place finish). Barron's writing is so creative, really shining when Conan is bit by a desert asp and then writhes, hallucinating and having visions while his body fights the venom. It's incredibly engaging, and some of the tomb-raiding done at the end of the story feels very much like something out of "Black Colossus" or one of the better, original Howard Conans. It costs less than two bucks. What do you have to lose? Unlike the last two in the series, there is no page prior to chapter 1 which gives away the placement (yay for me, now I get to figure it out!). This is a very late story in the chronology. "Immortal Darkness" makes explicit reference to both the events of "A Witch Shall Be Born" and Valeria from "Red Nails," which places it either at the end of or after Conan's third pirate period for the Barachans. I sure hope Barron gets more chances to write Conan, because I'll be there faster than a Zamorian thief through an open window. There are two new Conan novels coming this year, but neither is from Barron.  Let's go back to 1995 for a moment. The OJ trial is on TV. Kurt has already killed himself. Bill Clinton has begun to at least wink at Monica Lewinsky when he thinks no one is looking, but the scandal has not yet come to light. Not everything is sunshine and roses, despite how my generation tends to romanticize the 90s. In the Conan world, things aren't looking much better. It doesn't look like Arnie's coming back; the original movie is 13 years old, the sequel is 11 years old with the consensus being that it was just okay, and the Red Sonja movie which pretty much everyone disliked is already turning 10. Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic ended two years ago. Savage Sword is cancelled this year. On the printed page, Tor Books has been churning out Conan books at a factory pace- two or three a year about- for the last decade and then some. With that kind of production level, some of them are good, some of them are schlock, and almost none of them have good titles. Can anyone give me a good reason why Conan the Magnificent is called that, specifically? All I'm trying to say is that we were at a bit of a low point for the Cimmerian. Then here comes John C. Hocking out of seeming nowhere- a dude who hadn't ever published anything that I can find, and crafts a pretty excellent Conan adventure. According to interviews with Hocking, he wasn't happy with the Conan stuff being released around that time (I suppose I can relate), so he wrote Conan and the Emerald Lotus over three years from 1993 to 1995. Happy with what he had written, he sent it off to L. Sprague de Camp, who also dug it and decided to publish it. This is not the first time I've read a story about how someone just cold-called L. Sprague de Camp into publishing their Conan work, but it tickles me every time.  Conan and the Emerald Lotus is a really fun pastiche. Hocking says that one of the things he felt was missing from late 80s / early 90s Conan was that "Weird Tales supernatural horror flavor," which he does a good job of recreating. His emerald lotus powder is clearly, horrifyingly addictive, yet also increases the power of sorcerers to an extent that you kind of hope that the story's magic users will continue to indulge. With it being written in the early 90s, I spent most of the novel thinking that this was Hocking's take on the crack epidemic in America, a Conan Says No to Drugs. But Hocking says it's really on the nature of power, which makes a lot more sense. We get to watch as a pair of sorcerers occasionally gulp down handfuls of emerald lotus powder between brutal periods of withdrawal. I feel a sort of kinship with Hocking, because he has said that one of the impetuses for Emerald Lotus was asking himself the question, "If I were to write a Conan novel, when would I set it?" and it seems as though he has a similarly obsessive (is obsessive too strong a word?) fan relationship with the big guy. Because Hocking knows his chronology well, he knew there was a solid place to set the book, and that's in Conan's second mercenary period following his pirate days with Belit in "Queen of the Black Coast." If we follow the chronologies that include L. Sprague de Camp's material, Conan spends some time in the southern kingdoms while working his way back north. And it's clear that Hocking was setting this story in a chronology that includes stuff beyond just Robert E. Howard's work. Hocking embeds some fun chronological stuff for demented completionists like myself to enjoy, like when Conan is first taken hostage by the lackey Gulbanda. The villain of the hour says that Conan was recognized as one who was once a great thief in the city of Shadizar (firmly placing this story after his earliest days). He says that Conan stole the Eye of Erlik (from Andrew Offutt's The Sword of Skelos), a Hesharkna Tiara, and even the Heart of the Elephant from Yara's tower in the city of thieves. Conan flatly replies, "That's a lie," which I love since it's true. He didn't steal it, technically, but he did help destroy it. Conan is also addressed as Amra, placing this story after his first pirate period. Right after "Queen of the Black Coast" in most chronologies, Conan operates as a mercenary for various entities like in stories "The Snout in the Dark" and "Black Colossus." At the start of "Hawks Over Shem," one of the Howard stories that L. Sprague de Camp wedged Conan into, Conan is mercing in Akkharia in southern Shem, which is where this story begins. It probably places this story right before "Hawks."  There's one last, unique aspect of this novel that I really enjoy and think sets it apart from most other Conan stories I've read. Very rare is the supporting cast the star of the story. There are a few where they're fun ("Shadows in the Dark"), and a few where they're truly excellent ("Beyond the Black River"), and quite a few where they're just kind of there (take your pick), but the supporting characters here like Neesa, Lady Zelandra, Heng Shih, and the evil Ethram-Fal are all way more compelling and memorable than many of their counterparts. I think this might be a drawback for some readers: Conan is along for the ride for the whole thing and is certainly at the center of action scenes, but doesn't necessarily drive most of the actual plot action in the story after he's linked up with Zelandra.
Conan and the Emerald Lotus is really fun pastiche that makes me hope we'll get more from Hocking, who seems like a cool guy from the interviews I've seen. I picked up the City of the Dead omnibus that also includes Conan and the Living Plague, so I'll probably read that soon. Additionally, he has a direct sequel called "Black Starlight" which only appears to be available in ebook format along with a few other short pastiches. I'm having trouble keeping up these days! ★★★★☆  When I was doing research on the novel Conan: The Road of Kings which I finished on New Year's Eve 2024, I went over to Gary Romeo's blog to see what he had to say about the book. I always like reading Gary's work- he's a clear writer with impeccably-done research who always sheds light on topics I'm interested in. While I was going through that blog post, a May 1977 letter from L. Sprague de Camp caught my eye. I'm not sure where Gary finds these letters all the time: I know that pretty much all of Robert E. Howard's personal correspondence is published, but Gary always seems to find little ephemera from de Camp and the likes that are so cool to see. In this letter, L. Sprague de Camp relates to literary agent Kirby McCauley the planned series of Conan stories that he and Lin Carter are either in the process of writing or are planning to write, and they contain some interesting Conan story ideas that the world never got to see. Many of these stories: Conan the Liberator, "The People of the Summit," "The Star of Khorala," etc. were finished and made it to the page (and have been read and reviewed and placed in chronological order on this blog), but a lot of them were names that never made it to the published page. Researching these stories caused me to go buy L. Sprague de Camp's The Spell of Conan too and to look through at some of his thoughts, which yielded some other interesting tidbits. It's all below in listicle format. 1. "Conan the Barbarian" Obviously, Conan the Barbarian is the title of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that more than likely introduced most people to Conan, and there is a novelization of that movie under the same title. There's even a novelization that was written by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and Catherine Crook de Camp that came out in 1982, but that novel is clearly not what's planned here. The movie goes far past Conan's adolescence and has him fight the Kull villain Thulsa Doom (though he's a lot more like Thoth-Amon than Thulsa Doom) and doesn't end with the fall of Venarium. The content described here actually sounds much closer to the novel Conan of Venarium, but that book wouldn't be published until 2003 and was written by Harry Turtledove, so it likely doesn't have anything to do with what Sprague planned here. Honestly, it's surprising to me that there isn't more stuff centering around the siege of Venarium since it's such a pivotal point in Conan's life. 2. "The King in the Dungeon" This story very clearly became "Shadows in the Dark" and was published in 1978, so it's really just a change of title. "The King in the Dungeon" might be a more generic fantasy title, but we have so many "shadows" in Conan titles that I think I might actually prefer it to the published name. 3. "The Eyes of Kali" This story sounds basically nothing like any published Conan story from de Camp or Carter. Conan did go to Vendhya in "The People of the Black Circle," but it takes place quite a bit after "A Witch Shall Be Born." Strangely, "Black Tears" is essentially an immediate sequel to "A Witch Shall Be Born," but that story had come out in 1968, so perhaps de Camp and Carter wanted to throw another story in between the two. This one sounds like it would be pretty fun and the name gives me Temple of Doom vibes, so I'm sad this one was left on the editing room floor, if it was ever written at all. Weirdly enough, in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan, at least three different sequels to "A Witch Shall Be Born" were written, all of which contradict each other. Who's to say which one is canon? 4. "The Oasis of Death" You know, I actually think this planned story would fill a hole in Conan's biography that needs filling as much as any other. At the end of "The Ivory Goddess," Conan is very far south on the Hyborian map and has been on the lamb, running from those he terrorized in "Jewels of Gwahlur." The next time we see him, he's halfway around the world and is well-established as a scout for Aquilonia. I'd love to see a narrative that fills in how he got there, and "The Oasis of Death" sounds pretty fun. There are a number of issues of Savage Sword with similar-sounding titles as this, so it's not an unfounded concept. 5. Two or more King Conan stories There are several stories of Conan as king of Aquilonia that take place before he's old and (relatively) gray, all of which had been published by Sprague's 1977 letter: "The Phoenix on the Sword," "The Scarlet Citadel," The Hour of the Dragon, and The Return of Conan. That chronological list also happens to double as a ranking of King Conan stories best-to-worst (I mean, they're all really good except the last one). And there are several late-life King Conan stories (that we'll actually hit more on in a minute) but L. Sprague de Camp is suggesting specifically Conan stories written in his very young kingship. "The Scarlet Citadel" happens about a year or two after Conan gains the crown and The Hour of the Dragon happens within five years of his kingship, so there are a few unexplored years that you could play with there. There's been some good, new King Conan stuff in the recent issues 5 and 6 of the 2024 Savage Sword, so you should check those out if you want more Conan of Aquilonia adventures. 6. "The Day of Wrath" This is the only story on the list that I'm really glad never got written. The tetralogy that make up most of Conan's late kingship: "The Witch of the Mists," "Black Sphinx of Nebthu," "Red Moon of Zembabwei," and "Shadows in the Skull" are mostly stinkers. But even so, they end on a fairly satisfying, triumphant note with Conan having defeated his greatest enemy on the very edge of the world. It's not a terrible way to go out with Conan, supported by his son Conn, heading back to the Aquilonian army to help them finish fighting the ancient serpent people (though victory is already assured). So to see Conan go back to Aquilonia and be the aggressor, "punishing" other nations for their treachery? It just sounds mean-spirited and unneeded. Yes, Conan is a badass and is even vengeful at times when he's been wronged, but to take his entire army to invade another kingdom sounds contrary to how Conan apparently governs, and it sounds really hard to root for. 7. "The Son of Conan" Another story that I'm not exactly sad we missed out on. Conan's son Conn is in his mid-teens when we see him last in "Shadows in the Skull" and then is an adult himself during the events of Conan of the Isles, but he's pretty much a non-character in that book. Conn isn't a super interesting character in the material that we have of him, and I don't usually love stories that focus on the offspring of characters we care about, but I could see this working. Jason Aaron's "The Ensorcelled" storyline in recent issues of Savage Sword was excellent, and it hints at some potentially cool Conn stuff. I think it would be fighting an uphill battle to write a series of Conn stories. Maybe it's just me, but a character who was born to a poor blacksmith and fought his way to greatness is inherently a more interesting character than a kid who was born as royalty. Now I'm trying to figure out what good "Son Of..." stories exist. John Carter's Children of Mars? Children of Dune? Son of Batman? Son of Frankenstein? The next three Avatar sequels? Son of Baconator? Other suggested stories In our May 1977 letter, L. Sprague de Camp is specifically responding to the literary agent of Karl Edward Wagner, who was hoping to write a novel about Conan becoming king of Aquilonia. He says that they're already working on that idea, but if Wagner would like, he can tackle a different area of Conan's life, one that sits in a narrative gap, and some of his suggestions are pretty cool. He suggests a story telling of Conan's adventures with the Aesir set between Conan's youngest days "Legions of the Dead," offering up the titles "Conan of the Northlands or "Red Swords of Asgard." I wonder if de Camp was aware that this area was explored to a small degree with some of Roy Thomas's earliest Conan the Barbarian comics in the earlier 70s. Sounds like a decent concept, but not one I'm jumping out of my seat for.  de Camp suggests "Conan of Hyrkania" or "Lord of the Black Throne," based on some ideas outlined in the Amra zine. I was totally unfamiliar with what he was talking about so I grabbed a used copy of The Spell of Conan, a book of essays and short stories edited by de Camp. In an essay by P. Schuyler Miller, they basically make the case that Erlik would have been a cool character to further develop in the Hyborian Age. Many people swear by the god of the underworld (who always struck me as a sort of evil St. Peter-type character who might collect you when you die) and there are some Conan pastiches like The Sword of Erlik. Miller outlines some real-world Turkic and Mongol mythology and how Erlik had a lot of very sword-and-sworcery-ready elements like his black throne. In some ways, they're right. There aren't that many stories that take place over in Turan that were written by Howard, though Roy Thomas has Conan spend lots of time around the Vilayet Sea in the Conan the Barbarian comic. Honestly, I'm with de Camp and Miller on this one- most of it sounds like these ideas would make for a righteous Conan story. Some similarly-titled Conan novels would eventually get published with the names "Lord of the Black River" and "Death Lord of Thanza," but they're not what de Camp or P. Schuyler Miller were writing. His final suggestion is for a Conan story set in the jungles of the south, during Conan's first pirate period alongside Belit. This makes a lot of sense to me, as the weakest part of "Queen of the Black Coast" to me is that it feels as though Conan and Belit don't quite have enough time together to warrant being so wildly in love (I think the anime crowd would call them each others' "OTPs"). Conan stories from The Spell of ConanThere are a few original fantasy stories of just a few pages each that were published alongside de Camp's essays in The Spell of Conan. I didn't expect any Hyborian Age-set fiction in it, let alone how cool these three short stories ended up being. They're not actually unpublished, but I've never seen them referenced since they were only put out in a fan magazine. 1. "The Testament of Snefru" by John Boardman This story is funny in a way I couldn't have predicted. Remember in The Hour of the Dragon when Conan infiltrates the Stygian port city of Khemi? There's a very minor character in this scene whom I had entirely forgotten. Conan steals the boat of a Stygian fisherman and uses it to get into Khemi. According to "The Testament of Snefru," that short episode completely fucks up the life of that fisherman, whose name is Snefru. This is hilariously humiliating for this poor fisherman. Conan and the Aquilonians arrive and steal the dude's boat (i.e. his livelihood) and even take his clothes. Snefru tells Conan what seems to be the Khemi gossip and is held hostage. When Conan comes back with the Heart of Ahriman, he instructs the crew to give the fisherman a helmet full of gold and to shove off back north. Even though Snefru is relieved to have escaped with his life, he's also made out pretty nicely since he gets all this money. As he tries to convert the money, he's arrested for having Aquilonian coins, convicted of treason for having "conspired" with Conan, and is sold into slavery. The story is being dictated while he lays on his deathbed in Zamboula, completely destitute and filled with rage at Conan. It's very entertaining. Author John Boardman, a physics professor, also at one point write a Conan parody called "Colon the Conqueror" so it makes sense that this story was pretty funny. 2. "The Lion's Bridge" by Ray Capella Ray Capella was more of a sword and sorcery illustrator than an author, but he did also contribute a story to a different anthology book edited by L. Sprague de Camp. In addition to Conan, it seems like Capella was mostly associated with pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow. This story takes place during the events of "The Scarlet Citadel." According to the characters, the "barbarian king of Aquilonia" has been defeated (we know he's really just briefly captured) and Tarantia is under siege by the Kothians. On the outskirts of Aquilonia, "The Lion's Bridge" tells the story of a mercenary named Berig and a mysterious stranger named Arquel the Argossean. There's some great scenery, some really cool magical elements, and some moral complexity to this one that was a lot of fun, so I read it twice in a row. 3. "When Set Fled" by Fritz Leiber This is by far the shortest of the three narratives, and also probably my least favorite of the bunch. Author Fritz Leiber was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard, HP Lovecraft, and Michael Moorcock as one of the landmark sword and sorcery writers. Dude had a pretty impressive resume, not to mention interesting WWII activities.
Like "Snefru," this one is darkly comic. A craftsman in Stygia gets his head lopped off by a barbarian warrior (Conan?) while pouring metal into a mold for a statue. This story is only about three pages, so there's not a ton to go off of and it's much harder to place in continuity. It's yet another look at a normal person in the Hyborian Age and how quickly things might change for them through violence.  The "Road of Kings" is an east-west highway in the fictional Hyborian Age, and to my knowledge is the only named trade route or thoroughfare in the entire epoch. It begins in the coastal Argossean capital of Messantia and runs north along the Alimane River to the prairies that surround Tarantia, the capital city of Aquilonia. From there, it stretches east through the city-states of the central Hyborian kingdoms through Shadizar the Wicked and across the Kezankian Mountains. From the Kezankians through the Zuagir desert is probably its most treacherous part before it ends in the carpeted capital of the Turanian Empire, Aghrapur, on the coast of the Vilayet Sea. But the novel Conan: The Road of Kings by Karl Edgar Wagner takes place almost entirely in Kordava, Zingara, which is not anywhere along the Road of Kings. If, like I did, you thought that this book might be an adventure along the physical road, you'd had to be forgiven. Instead, the "road of kings" explored here is an entirely metaphorical one. It examines the psychological road one might go on when becoming a king, contrasting the road that Conan the Cimmerian will eventually take. As much as I hate to invoke a cliché, it seems like a statement on the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The Conan of Road of Kings is a bit of an angrier Conan, one who is at times less heroic and more barbarous, along the lines of Robert E. Howard's original creation. It seems to me that Karl Edward Wagner really gets Howard's civilization vs. barbarism themes and builds on them with a story preoccupied with economic mobility. While the novel takes place almost entirely in Kordava, Zingara, the city is a pretty imaginative and interesting place. Through a cataclysmic earthquake some time ago, the original city of Kordava had been destroyed, leaving rubble throughout the area. Instead of clearing away the refuse and re-building, the people of Kordava literally just built on top of the ruins of the old city, leaving a subterranean slum underneath the city proper, known as "The Pit." The Pit is occupied by thieves, criminals, and all other manner of "undesirables" in Kordava, including the thieving guild "The White Rose." It's not hard to see the symbolism of a city literally propped up on the lowest of society. In some interesting imagery that I think amounts to a clever version of foreshadowing, the Pit is not completely cut off from the rest of the city. Some of the taller buildings within the Pit have staircases that lead up into the regular city. While social mobility is minimal, there is a way to "ascend," as some characters will try to do. Those characters tend to get caught up in maintaining their newfound power, ultimately to their detriment. Conan, of course, with his detachment from society and Cimmerian's code, is immune to the rat race. The last line of the book reminds me of classic pulp writing subtlety, basically telling us the theme of the narrative. As Conan denies the crown of Kordava being offered to him, he says he won't take power yet: "I will not change my mind," Conan repeated. "Not until I know whether it is the man who corrupts the power, or the power that corrupts the man."  This is the copy I own: the 1983 reprint. Chronologically speaking, I think this story should probably land a little bit later than other people seem to think that it should. Conan is still described as a "youth," but he has a couple of signifiers that I think mean that this story should go later in the timeline. The Miller / Clark / de Camp chronology puts this story right after "Hawks Over Shem" and right before "Black Colossus," firmly in Conan's military commander days. Robert Jordan places it a little earlier, during Conan's days wandering between being a Turanian mercenary and "Queen of the Black Coast." I'm much more inclined to agree with where William Galen Gray puts this story: further into Conan's days as a military commander, right after "Shadows in the Dark." A couple of things tell me this: Conan speaks Zamorian "pretty well," which means he's been to Zamora in his thieving days. The book even makes specific mention of scaling the elephant tower in Zamora. But he's also very comfortable on the ocean, he's a strong swimmer, and is clearly already a skilled military commander capable of whipping the dreck of Kordavan society into a fighting force, which makes me think it needs to go later. Conan: The Road of Kings is a pretty good Conan tale that's imaginative in its settings and has something to say that fits with there rest of the Conan stories, even Howard's. It doesn't feel much like other Conan books, which might be a gripe for some people. Over on Dark Worlds Quarterly, G.W. Thomas quotes Karl Edward Wagner about his philosophy on Conan writing: "I have written Howard pastiches myself, so I can speak both as a reader and an author: Every author leaves his personal mark on whatever he writes; the only man who could write a Robert E. Howard story was Robert E. Howard. Read Howard pastiches as you will — but don’t let anyone kid you that you’re reading Robert E. Howard. It is far more than a matter of imitating adjective usage or analyzing comma-splices. It is a matter of spirit." While Robert E. Howard was extremely economical with his prose, covering a lot of ground in few words, not that interested in developing supporting characters, that's what this book focuses on. After the exposition with Conan being threatened with hanging, we spend quite a bit of time in the Pit, just getting to know the city and the other characters, for which I think your mileage will vary. Might this story deserve more than three stars? If only I had a half-star icon! ★★★☆☆   It dawns on me that Catherine Crook de Camp may be the severely under-sung hero of Conan the Cimmerian. Catherine was a double-major at Barnard College, a school that is not considered an Ivy League institution by seeming technicality alone, from which she graduated magna cum laude. She was a teacher after that (big ups to a fellow educator) before she became a science fiction writer as well as a nonfiction writer whose main concern seemed to be writing about other genre fiction. She was also, as some have noted, married to L. Sprague de Camp, a person I have mentioned on this blog probably more times than anyone other than Robert Ervin Howard. Because we've got two de Camps in this story, I'm going to refer to everyone by their first names for once. Catherine's resume says to me that she was a very skilled writer whose credits have been frustratingly erased, so we can really only speculate as to how much she did. However, it seems like she might be the mastermind behind the great 1980 Conan pastiche novel, Conan and the Spider God. Catherine's husband Sprague (Lyon?) had begun working together with Lin Carter on Conan stories in the early 1950s, eventually producing a pretty sizable body of work- at least half of this blog has to be about their writing. Gary Romeo at Sprague de Camp Fan has an excellent, illuminating post about how the two writers worked together. Apparently, Sprague, being the writer with more experience, generally had Lin write the first draft and then he would iron out the second one. He claimed that this was because the more experienced writer would be more aware of things like errors, but I feel like it betrays something else about their partnership. "In collaboration with [Fletcher] Pratt and later with Carter, the collaborators found that it worked best if the younger writer (at least, younger in writing experience) did the rough draft and the older one the final. The younger writer is apt to have greater facility and be more fertile with ideas, while the older one is more alert for errors, infelicities, mistakes of grammar, inconsistencies, etc. With Pratt, he was the older; with Carter, he was the younger. In each case we got together and roughed out the plot first; then the junior author went home, wrote a synopsis or treatment (which he might or might not show the senior author) and then did the rough draft. The senior collaborator wrote the final draft and submitted it to the junior for minor changes before sending it out. We found out that when we reversed the procedure it didn’t work well."  I could be wrong here, but this seems to me like Sprague all but admitting that he wasn't a very skilled plotter of stories (or at the very least that he was a worse plotter), and maybe I only think that because it really squares with my perception of these writers. Lin's writing seems to be a little ham-fisted and wonky, as I noted of Lin's posthumous collaboration with Robert E. Howard on "The Hand of Nergal." Many of the Conan stories written by Sprague and Lin were rewrites of stories Lin had created for his character Thongor: "The Thing in the Crypt," "The Curse of the Monolith," "The Lair of the Ice-Worm," "The Gem in the Tower..." But it seems like Sprague might have been the more skilled wordsmith- Lin without Sprague reads a little worse. Therefore, it's my belief that Lin was the person who was probably the better plotter, and responsible for most of the story elements, with Sprague punching up Lin's prose. The two had a long and fruitful partnership, but it didn't last forever. In the 1970s, Lin Carter starts to drop off the map of the Hyborian Age a bit. There are rumblings online of Lin and Sprague having a falling out between them. Details are scant, but it seems widely accepted that something happened. Lin was also struggling with alcoholism, so that may have negatively affected his ability to work with Sprague. The 1972 novel Conan the Liberator saw Lin pretty much drop the ball and exit the novel's writing process barely a month in. "Carter started on his part but pooped out early in 1972. (We began on January 27.) After some months of fiddling around and trying to get him to work, Catherine and I gave up, and Catherine did the rest of the collaboration." Though the 1978 short story "The Ivory Goddess" is credited to both Lin and Sprague, Lin apparently didn't write a word of it (though he still got paid). Who picked up the slack on Lin's end? Well, apparently it was Catherine. The same thing happened on the group's novelization of the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: Lin sat it out, but got a writing credit and a paycheck, while Catherine collected neither byline nor bag. So how did Conan and the Spider God, a novel written without Lin Carter and credited to L. Sprague de Camp alone get to be so good? It's probably Catherine! Sprague did credit her as having provided "editorial assistance," and the Conan lay scholarship online seems to be in agreement that this novel was largely her work. Conan and the Spider God, published by Bantam Books in 1980, is definitely one of the better novel-length Conan adventures, and it's a really fun story overall. The story takes place as the endpiece to Conan's Turanian mercenary days- there's a misunderstanding that causes Conan to flee Aghrupur in Turan for the west, back toward Zamora where he spent some of his prior years. To my delight, the start of this story connects nicely to the prologue of "The Blood-Stained God," which de Camp had written about 25 years earlier. We finally get to know what that "unruly episode" was!  Conan gets blamed for the kidnapping of Jamilah, royalty of Turan, and eventually ends up at the Zamorian city of Yezud. Some of the events in the early part of the book feel a little random and like they're there to pad out the runtime, but it eventually settles in. Yezud is the home to the cult of Zath, gigantic spider god and all-around corrupt theocracy built up in Zath's temples. Conan takes an assumed identity (using his father's name, Nial) and works undercover as a blacksmith in the city for a while while getting closer to the people there. He is smitten with Rubadeh, a dancing girl and acolyte for Zath, who, unlike many women of Conan stories, has her own dreams, goals, and past, and isn't completely head-over-heels with our barbarian. Perhaps the deft hand of Catherine? Unlike many Conan novels, characters have time to become more fully-formed and we get more time to come to like friends like Captain Catigern, and loathe the villain Harpagus. It's paced well, albeit very differently than REH ever wrote. Instead of being a whiz-bang action story, it's more of a slow burn. Conan is surrounded by potential enemies: the empire of Turan is on his trail and wants him dead. The cult of Zath could find out at any moment who he really is. The high priest Harpagus probably already knows who he is but is eerily quiet about it. Conan is always in danger, well before the giant spider enters the story. The novel really begins to shine in the last 30 pages or so in which we get a daring rescue of Jamilah, a clever thievery scene that makes Conan infiltrate and work without his sword, and a truly horrifying episode in the tunnels beneath Yezud where lurks the giant spider Zath and the desiccated remains of her live meals.  This 1984 edition of the book has such a cool cover and I can't find the artist's name anywhere. Like many of the best Conan stories, Conan and the Spider God has some valuable commentary about the nature of power, especially power claiming moral authority. Perhaps the most important line in the novel is when a character points out that the priests of Zath love virtue, almost to the point of vice. Conan, and us by extension, is forced to wait and watch as a huge herd of sheep are driven in front of him to be slaughtered to the spider god, and while lambs to the slaughter isn't exactly the most original metaphor, it feels appropriate. After all, this book was published at the dawn of the Reagan administration in which the Gipper and the "moral majority" stripped away social programs and gutted services for things like education. During my masters degree, we had several courses on the history of education and it feels like three-quarters of our problems in public ed. began with Reagan. And now I'm sitting here reading this novel about a month away from the start of another criminal presidency, waiting for him to unleash his Children of Zath. I know the Conan fanbase skews conservative, so I probably just had quite a few people close the tab they were reading this on. Anyway, isn't this blog supposed to be about the chronology of Conan stories? Let's get to that. Spider God takes place at the end of Conan's Turanian mercenary period, right before "The Blood-Stained God." It says that he spent about two years with the Turanians, and now he's back in Zamora for a little more theiving before heading over to the Western Ocean for "Queen of the Black Coast." It's noted several times that the effigy of Zath in the temple is more than twice the size of the spider Conan fought in "The Tower of the Elephant," and even Zath's children are larger than that arachnid. Conan makes several comments about the barbarity of supposed civilization and is working on holding his tongue a little better, which he definitely grows at. "Guarding his tongue" and "weighing his words" are one of his biggest adjustments to civilization, he says. This is much scarier when you're hiding amongst your enemies. While researching this novel, I came across a pretty hilarious review of it which can only be accessed via the Wayback Machine. While I almost completely disagree with it, the writer had some pretty funny lines lampooning what he saw as an inexcusably bad novel. "I fear no commentary of mine will be half so successful in furnishing the rope to hang it by than the book’s own turgid prose." He says of Conan's rescue of a witch early in the book: "But before he gets to Yezud though he does interrupt his journey just long enough to save a witch called Nyssa from being burnt at the stake. Again no readily plausible explanation is forthcoming about why he should choose to do this apart from the rather limp contention that “the protection of women, regardless of age, form, or station, was one of the few imperatives of his barbarian code”. The most risible aspect of this sorry episode comes though when Conan struggles to outdistance the pursuing pack of pitchfork wielding yokels and has to be saved by the witch casting a glamour spell of illusion. Memories of “The Black Stranger” and of a limping Conan outrunning a Pictish war-party can seldom have seemed more remote." About a scene in which Conan orders a more upscale wine than he is prone to: "Hook Howard’s grave up to a generator and I reckon the dynamo revolutions produced by this particular passage could power a city block." As the reviewer careens toward a conclusion: "As is all too painfully apparent from the above, this is a quite appalling book. Literally jaw droppingly abject in actual fact. I’m quite at a loss to recall the last time I came across a novel anywhere near as incompetently conceived and executed as this one. The whole sloppy narrative is entirely driven by contrivance and coincidence from start to finish. It is utterly impoverished in imagination and displays not even the most meagre sense of any sort of enthusiasm whatsoever on the part of the author." Unfortunately, our reviewer is not all fun and games. "And then you ventured your suggestion that the book was actually written by de Camp’s wife, and in an instant the reason for every one of the novel’s abundance of faults became blindingly clear. Simply put, this is a woman’s book and its Conan is a woman’s concept of what makes an acceptable hero... You do sound irreparably chauvinist, bud. It's sad how many times I've come across the assertion that women can't write sword & sorcery because they're somehow allergic to badassery or secretly trying to castrate male heroes. The assertion that Catherine Crook de Camp must be responsible for this book because women are more afraid of spiders than men, judging by the highly scientific study of cartoons and sitcoms is especially funny. We agree that this book was probably mostly Catherine de Camp and less L. Sprague, but I've got to say that she's done an excellent job here to outpace her husband for one of the better Conan novels. ★★★★☆   Do you ever read something that hits you a little extra hard, not really through anything in the actual work, but rather because you're in the right frame of mind to accept it? I've been thinking about aging a lot recently. I'm a baseball fan, and recently a pretty good baseball player named Juan Soto signed an absolutely massive contract (it's actually the biggest contract in the history of sports) with the New York Mets for fifteen years. I did the math in my head and realize that I'll be almost fifty by the time that contract is up. My apologies to anyone who's fifty or over reading this, but that kind of hit me like a truck. I don't think it's necessarily the number itself; I know fifty isn't really even old. But what freaked me out is the fact that this is one event- Juan Soto's tenure with the Mets- that will end when I'm 48. I think it would have felt entirely different if it hadn't been framed as me being the length of essentially one baseball contract away from my fifties. So I was already kind of thinking about aging, but then this comes up in all my feeds on Reddit and Bluesky and such: James Mangold was a little hurt by audience reception to his Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny movie from last year. I thought Dial of Destiny was fine at best, but I was a little struck by his reasoning: "It hurt in the sense that I really love Harrison [Ford] and I wanted audiences to love him as he was and to accept that that’s part of what the movie has to say—that things come to an end, that’s part of life... You have a wonderful, brilliant actor who’s in his eighties. So I’m making a movie about this guy in his eighties, but his audience on one other level doesn’t want to confront their hero at that age. And I am like, I’m good with it. We made the movie. But the question is, how would anything have made the audience happy with that, other than having to start over again with a new guy?” This just got me thinking about where my sympathies lie. Mangold is absolutely right about accepting a person where they're at, that things end, and that maybe there's something to learn there. I'd certainly have a definitive ending that goes out on its own terms than endlessly recycling the old, which pop culture loves to do these days. That ghoulish CGI Ian Holm in Alien: Romulus. Shitass AI recreations of Chris Reeve and other actors in The Flash. Star Wars endlessly looping back on itself, only allowing things to happen because they happened in older, better movies.  Later printings of the book replaced the original cover art with this righteous painting by our buddy Boris Vallejo. I guess that brings me to Conan. Conan of the Isles, the sixth Lancer book written by the team of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (probably written by Carter and edited by de Camp?) picks up in about the twentieth year of King Conan's reign. Life has gotten immensely stale for the Cimmerian in more ways than one. Hot-blooded adventurers aren't cut out for litigating in a cushy kingship, but also I sense some reticence on the authors' part to make Conan anything but a Gary Stu king. His kingship is broadly popular. He's firm but fair. Nobody dares invade his boring, prosperous kingdom. Eventually, a mystic red shadow begins taking the lives of Aquilonian citizens both high and low. This, as it should, sends him out into the world for another adventure. For a moment, I thought this might mirror the beginning of Conan's life. The Cimmerian begins his career defending his homeland from a hostile colonizing force (remember how I said we're wondering where our sympathies lie?), I thought this might be an extended metaphor for colonizing forces defeating indigenous tribes through smallpox and the like. I was mostly wrong- it's not quite that interesting, but Conan of the Isles is still pretty decent and does indeed have something worthwhile to say. We follow Conan across the western ocean to what appears to be the islands that will one day dot the Gulf of Mexico (we were so close to being able to make "Conan retires to Florida" jokes!) judging by the Aztec- and Mayan-sounding names. I'm trying to not think too hard about the fact that the cultures in "Red Nails," over on the Hyborian continent, were also influenced by these same real-life cultures. As it ends, Conan still yearns for one last adventure or two and the book implies that he gets folded into the Quetzlcoatl myth in the New World. Much of the prose of this novel was really good. Especially in the beginning, it pounds away at this idea that Conan doesn't want to simply waste away in the tapestried halls of Tarantia. It does a great job setting up those themes. For a while, I was a freshman English major back in college reading "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" for the first time again. Conan pants, he aches, notes to himself that he used to be a little quicker. I'd imagine that it's really tough to see that you're not able to do things that used to come easy to you. Obviously, nobody is as physically capable as the superhero aptitude of Conan, but I suppose it's doubly hard for people who were once razor-sharp athletes. And whereas the two latter Indiana Jones movies are constantly winking at the audience and asking, "Isn't it hilarious that he's doing this now that he's old? Wasn't this a lot easier when Indy was in his prime?," Conan of the Isles is playing those questions straight. It is instead saying, "Wow, it sure seems like it must be hard to be past your prime."  We get a more introspective Conan here that makes this all possible, a little bit more like the one in "Queen of the Black Coast" or in Jim Zub's current Conan the Barbarian run for Titan. Conan is raging against the dying of the light, as are some of his comrades. One of the best scenes involves Sigurd Redbeard being marched toward an altar of human sacrifice. He's afraid at first, but then realizes that much like Conan, he and death are old shipmates, and Sigurd ends up laughing out loud.
At the end of the book, Conan sails off to a new continent that no Hyborian has explored. There's a whole section on this book's Wikipedia page about what happens after the events in of the Isles, but dude, listen to James Mangold up there at the top of this blog post. Let it go. Things come to an end, and that's part of life. For a definitive end to Conan's life, read "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian." I'm going to be over here working on being okay with aging. ★★★☆☆  I wasn't originally going to read Conan the Buccaneer for this chronology, but now that I have, I can't remember why I was so resistant to the idea. I was at a Christmas party in Fort Collins, Colorado this weekend and toward the back of the house was a small shelf that I looked up on to see a whole slew of the Lancer / Ace books. One of the guys who lives there turned out to be a huge Conan fan with several Frazetta prints around the place, and he leant me Conan the Buccaneer and Conan of the Isles since those are the only two of the lot that I haven't read (thanks, Austin!). Conan the Buccaneer, written by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter and published in 1971 as part of the Lancer series of Conan books, is a fun little pirate adventure that takes place during Conan's days with the Barachans on the western ocean. I actually really enjoyed reading this one, but I feel like it highlights the difference between the writing of Robert E. Howard and his standard-bearers, de Camp and Carter. Conan is captain of the Wastrel, getting wasted in Zingara as he is want to do at the beginning of the novel. We are treated to the return of the "Treasure of Tranicos" character Black Zarono, which was very welcome for me- he was excellent in that story (chronologically speaking, though, this is Zarono's first appearance since "Tranicos" will take place right before Conan's kingship). The two pirate crews of Zarono's Petrel and Conan's Wastrel are at odds with one another, chasing each other down the coast to a mysterious Nameless Isle in search of treasure. We get to explore an ancient temple on that island before heading over to Kush to be reunited with Juma, one of Conan's best companions from "The City of Skulls" and we get up to all sorts of shenanigans fighting amazons and sentient trees.  Chronologically, Conan the Buccaneer takes place after "The Pool of the Black One" and before "Red Nails." It says on page 58 that "less than a year had elapsed since, in this selfsame Wastrel, he had sailed with its former captain, the saturnine Zaporavo, to an unknown island in the west, where Zaporavo and several of the Zingaran crew had met their doom. Few things in Conan's adventurous life had been stranger or more sinister than the Pool of the Black One and its inhuman attendants." Additionally, the story place's itself in Conan's life by stating that Conan is now "over 35 and past the first flush of youth." There are two chronological curiosities for me in this narrative. One, Conan ends this story aboard the Wastrel headed south, which makes sense as he heads toward Xuchotl, but I feel like there's a slightly important episode that happens between the two that we're not privy to. Conan is well-outfitted, well-respected in Zingara now, and he has his full crew aboard his ship. When we see him next in "Red Nails" he's on land, shipless and crewless. Could be a good story there to fill in the gap. And two, Conan fights a sentient evil tree in Gamburu toward the end of the novel and remarks that it reminds him of his days fighting in an arena in Messantia, but I don't recall any adventures like that. Perhaps they're in something I somehow skipped over. This story's a good time. I don't mean to make it sound like this was one of the best Conan adventures by any means, but I was kind of surprised at how good it was because it was written right before the four "Old Man Conan" stories (which constantly reference Buccaneer) and all of those were absolute garbage. My main takeaway from Conan the Buccaneer, though, is how sharply it draws the difference between Howard's writing ability and the powers of de Camp & Carter. The lone review on its Wikipedia page agrees with me: "Reasonably good plot but substandard writing." Yeah, the plotting is good, but there's just something missing in the prose itself. Take this tomb description from Howard's "Black Colossus" as an example and let's compare it to a tomb description by de Camp and Carter. From "Black Colossus:" "Gingerly stepping over it, the thief thrust against the door, which this time slid aside, revealing the interior of the dome. Shevatas cried out; instead of utter darkness he had come into a crimson light that throbbed and pulsed almost beyond the endurance of mortal eyes. It came from a gigantic red jewel high up in the vaulted arch of the dome. Shevatas gaped, inured though he was to the sight of riches. The treasure was there, heaped in staggering profusion—piles of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, turquoises, opals, emeralds; zikkurats of jade, jet and lapis lazuli; pyramids of gold wedges; teocallis of silver ingots; jewel-hilted swords in cloth-of-gold sheaths; golden helmets with colored horsehair crests, or black and scarlet plumes; silver scaled corselets; gem-crusted harness worn by warrior-kings three thousand years in their tombs; goblets carven of single jewels; skulls plated with gold, with moonstones for eyes; necklaces of human teeth set with jewels. The ivory floor was covered inches deep with gold dust that sparkled and shimmered under the crimson glow with a million scintillant lights. The thief stood in a wonderland of magic and splendor, treading stars under his sandalled feet." And from Conan the Buccaneer: "The structure was of roughly cubical shape; but its surfaces, instead of being simple squares, were made up of a multitude of planes and curves of irregular form, oriented every which way. There was any symmetry to the structure. It was as if every part of the building had been designed by a different architect, or as if the building had been assembled from parts of a score of other structures chosen at random from many lands and eras... The temple looked wrong. The style was like nothing he had seen in his far voyaging. Even the ghoul-haunted tombs of Stygia were not so alien as this irregular block of black stone. It was as if the builders had followed some inhuman geometry of their own---some unearthly canon of proportion and design."  Both of these passages describe mysterious, legend-haunted, treasure-packed, ancient, dangerous crypts, but one of them is captivating, and the other is just... fine. It's hard to even describe the difference in prose, but Howard's just feels more immediate, more alive, and like he's describing the tomb as he's standing in it rather than a game master talking about a dungeon to their players over their DM screen. The actual, physical thing de Camp and Carter are describing is even actually a little more unique than the tomb in Kuthchemes that Howard is describing, at least in its basic construction, but there's a magic in Howard's writing that is absent in de Camp and Carter's.
Like many of de Camp and Carter's Conan forays, this story pulls from different parts of the Conan canon, bringing back characters and elements from previous stories, which, while something that Howard almost never did, is fun to see. Conan the Buccaneer was adapted in Savage Sword issues 40 through 43. I've now read the first 117 issues of Savage Sword and none of them have taken the opportunity to explore how Conan loses the wastrel and ends up near Xuchotl, but maybe one will soon... If you're interested at all in this book, you should check out the great video that Grammaticus Books did on it a few months back. Since I also borrowed Conan of the Isles, I suppose I'll read that one next!  Well, I ranked every Robert E. Howard Conan story, and those that originated with him and then were edited by others. But that was only about half of the stories I read for this chronology; excluding the Hyborian Age essay and the two poems, which I didn't assign star ratings to, I read 54 stories for this project, and I want to give my ranking for all of them. Because I don't want to subject you to quite that much torture (I'm not a Hyperborean, after all), I'm challenging myself to leave only a one-sentence review for each. It's not like you can't go read a post I made for each one if you want to really know my full thoughts. Here they are below! 55. "The Vale of Lost Women" - ☆☆☆☆☆Not only staggeringly racist, but also staggeringly forgettable. 54. "Shadows in Zamboula" (AKA "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula") - ★☆☆☆☆While it starts decently, was this written specifically for the pleasure of Nathan Bedford Forrest? 53. "Black Sphinx of Nebthu" - ★☆☆☆☆Even a sophomore creative writing major could have made huge improvements to this one by giving the manuscript a once-over. 52. "The Lair of the Ice Worm" - ★★☆☆☆This story reminds me (for no reason at all, I'm sure): did you know that "GNDN" is written on all the Jefferies Tubes in Star Trek, which stands for "Goes Nowhere - Does Nothing?" 51. "Wolves Beyond the Border" - ★★☆☆☆A Conan story without a Conan didn't turn out to be that great. 50. "Red Moon of Zembabwei" - ★★☆☆☆While it's got a few decent ideas at its core, this late-life tale doesn't ultimately amount to much other than a big battle. 49. "The Castle of Terror" - ★★☆☆☆Not the worst of the bunch, but absolutely one of the most forgettable fantasy stories I've ever read that doesn't feel very "Conany" at all. 48. "The Witch of the Mists" - ★★☆☆☆While there's some fun to be had in the first "Old Man Conan" tale, it doesn't bode super well for what was to come after. 47. Conan the Liberator - ★★☆☆☆You have the greatest, most physical adventurer in all of pulp fiction as your hero and you keep him confined to military tents to do extended politicking? 46. "Shadows in the Skull" - ★★☆☆☆While the final Conan story is a step up from those preceding it, it's only a shadow of his earlier, more glorious days. 45. "Iron Shadows in the Moon" (AKA "Shadows in the Moonlight") - ★★☆☆☆This one follows a common formula: lost city, damsel in distress, scary monster to fight, and it doesn't stand out doing any of it. 44. The Return of Conan - ★★☆☆☆Like a legacy band playing the hits long after they've stopped making them, this story doesn't land quite like all the better stories it calls back to. 43. "The City of Skulls" - ★★☆☆☆While Juma is a good one-off companion and there's some fun to be had (mostly involving cool settings), this one feels both inconsequential and behind the times. 42. "The Hand of Nergal" - ★★★☆☆The adventure to be had is all well and good, but Lin Carter really took a swing and a miss on some of his writing here. 41. "Drums of Tombalku" - ★★★☆☆Left unfinished by Howard and you can feel it. 40. "Xuthal of the Dusk" (AKA "The Slithering Shadow") - ★★★☆☆Like "Drums of Tombalku" if it had actually been finished, this one doesn't quite stick the landing despite introducing the Black Lotus powder and beating Conan up more than any other story. 39. "Moon of Blood" - ★★★☆☆Following "Beyond the Black River" with this is like when Green Day tried to follow up their beloved rock opera "American Idiot" with another rock opera in "21st Century Breakdown," and all you can think about when you listen to "21st Century Breakdown" is how good "American Idiot" is and how you'd rather be listening to that. 38. "The Ivory Goddess" - ★★★☆☆While it's small in scale, this is a fun one that works a little bit better in comic form. 37. "A Witch Shall Be Born" - ★★★☆☆A middling Conan story with one mind-blowingly good scene. 36. Conan of the Isles - ★★★☆☆This is the only elderly Conan story that really feels like it has anything to say or any new ground to tread. 35. "Jewels of Gwahlur" (AKA "The Servants of Bit-Yakin") - ★★★☆☆If this story ended as good as it started, it would have been one of the all-timers. 34. "The Gem in the Tower" - ★★★☆☆L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter are obviously working off ideas that have been time-worn, but putting Conan at the center still yields a decent pirate romp. 33. "Black Tears" - ★★★☆☆A pretty good premise that doesn't quite stick the landing still makes for a halfway decent story. 32. "Hawks Over Shem" - ★★★☆☆Not the most thrilling of Conan stories, but a serviceable mix of action and intrigue. 31. "The Pool of the Black One" - ★★★☆☆An alright story with the expected lost cities and creepy enemies that's buoyed by a really great ending. 30. "The Devil in Iron" - ★★★☆☆A fun time in a lost city on the Vilayet Sea that doesn't give me a ton to work with. 29. "The Curse of the Monolith" (AKA "Conan and the Cenotaph") - ★★★☆☆A story that takes us farther east than any other with a decent villain and a fun conceit of a gigantic, magnetic obelisk. 28. Conan the Buccaneer - ★★★☆☆A fun pirate adventure that is done no favors by its somewhat workmanlike prose. 27. "The Snout in the Dark" - ★★★☆☆A decent mix of politics, action, might, magic, and monsters. 26. Conan: The Road of Kings - ★★★☆☆Don't let this single city-set adventure fool you: it is imaginative and fun, even if it isn't written anything like how REH would have penned it. 25. "The God in the Bowl" - ★★★☆☆"Let's have Conan fight the cops and a serpent deity in a museum with a dead body on the floor and just see what happens." 24. "Legions of the Dead" - ★★★☆☆There should be more zombies in Conan stories. 23. "Shadows in the Dark" - ★★★★☆Like the best D&D session your party ever had, this is a funny and well-paced, if inconsequential, adventure. 22. Conan and the Emerald Lotus - ★★★★☆The rare Conan story in which the supporting cast are the real stars. 21. "The People of the Summit" - ★★★★☆A story that's creepy, exciting, and has a killer setting that makes for a pretty underrated story. 20. Conan and the Sorcerer - ★★★★☆A ton of fun that takes Conan all over the place with his very soul at stake. 19. Conan and the Spider God - ★★★★☆L. Sprague de Camp's only solo work on Conan proves that he can put together a really fun adventure novel by himself (or do I mean his wife can?). 18. "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - ★★★★☆An excellent opening and an excellent ending with a magically good time in the middle, representing the earliest story in our chronology. 17. "The Thing in the Crypt" - ★★★★☆Is this the scariest of all Conan stories? 16. "The Star of Khorala" - ★★★★☆The absolute best work of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter working without building off of the existing work of Howard. 15. The Hour of the Dragon - ★★★★☆A few minor flaws hold this totally epic adventure back from being one of the very best of the bunch. 14. The Flame Knife - ★★★★☆This novella that probably isn't quite as tight as it could be has a handful of excellent episodes and the return of one of Conan's all-time best villains. 13. "The Hall of the Dead" - ★★★★☆"The Thing in the Crypt" meets "The Tower of the Elephant" and the quality meets somewhere between the two. 12. "The Blood-Stained God" - ★★★★☆A tomb-plundering adventure that puts Conan in his most Indiana Jones-like position. 11. "The Road of the Eagles" (AKA "Conan, Man of Destiny") - ★★★★☆This thrilling adventure is by far the best of the Conanless stories that de Camp and Carter turned into Conan tales: its setting, villains, and fantasy creatures are all spot-on. 10. "The Phoenix on the Sword" - ★★★★☆The first-ever Conan story is paced well and so exciting even as it's confined mostly to the king's chambers that it makes me want to start a metal band and call it "Golamira." 9. "The Scarlet Citadel" - ★★★★★The best dungeon crawl that Howard ever put to paper. 8. "The Treasure of Tranicos" (AKA "The Black Stranger") - ★★★★★The most tightly-plotted Conan story that's full of double-crossing, a buccaneering good time, and swarthy dialogue. 7. "The People of the Black Circle" - ★★★★★I've read nothing else quite like this jam-packed adventure that goes from the gleaming cities of Vendhya to the highest peaks of the Hyborian world. 6. "Rogues in the House" - ★★★★★There's a reason why the fight with Thak in this story has yielded so much art: it's fucking awesome. 5. "Queen of the Black Coast" - ★★★★★As Conan burns with life, loves, and slays in this tale, we are all more than content. 4. "Red Nails" - ★★★★★Not only is this story exciting and imaginative, but philosophical to the point that I'd argue it counts as literature. 3. "Beyond the Black River" - ★★★★★On some days, I think this western-styled adventure may be the best Conan story ever. 2. "Black Colossus" - ★★★★★"Black Colossus" has an epic adventure, a ripping opening, a good villain, loving, and tomb-raiding all rendered beautifully in one compact package. 1. "The Tower of the Elephant" - ★★★★★What more could you ever ask for in an adventure story?   How does Conan of Cimmeria die? If you're an author envisioning the end, a better question might be: How do you kill Conan the fucking Barbarian? He's gone toe-to-toe with gods, wizards, monsters, the greatest warriors in all of history. He's been a thief, a reaver, a slayer, a pirate, an Avenger... How do you possibly tell a story of his death that is satisfying? Well, maybe you don't tell one. Lin Carter didn't, and I think it was the right move. The Hyborian world entered ours through a poem, describing Conan's homeland of Cimmeria, and our final work in that universe is a poem as well: "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian." "Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian" is a decently good narrative poem (though not as good as most of Robert E. Howard's poetry) and while I'm not about to put it up there with Hughes and Coleridge, it does a decent enough job in that it acts as a sort of retrospective and final act for Conan, while avoiding the problem of competing with his greatest stories for a satisfying ending. It was first published in 1972 in the zine The Howard Collector which was run by REH's publisher Glenn Lord. I first came across it in Savage Sword 1, which was printed in the Dark Horse omnis that I love so much. Throughout the poem, we get general references to the events of Conan's life. Since it was written in 1972 by one of the architects of the post-Howard Conan apparatus, I'm assuming that Carter considered all of the material he, L. Sprague de Camp, and Bjorn Nyberg had written to be canon, so I suppose it's looking back on all the Conan material up until that point, not just Howard's writing. The first two stanzas refer pretty generally to Conan's adventures and how he lived life to the fullest, unconcerned with the difficulties that would have ended another, weaker, man's adventures. It gets a little more specific in the third stanza, as Conan's youth is recounted: "A boy, from the savage north I came  Pretty much direct references to the first three chronological Conan stories that take place in the "savage north:" "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "Legions of the Dead," and "The Thing in the Crypt," as well as the poem "Cimmeria." The cities of "silk and sin" at the very least refer to Zamora's city of thieves in "The Tower of the Elephant," and probably places like Xuthal, Zamboula, Xuchotl, and Tarantia, seeing as he might mean silk and/or sin. Stanza four alludes to some supporting characters in the whole saga. "And there were foeman to fight and slay Foemen: Thoth-Amon, Olgerd Vladislav, Nahtohk, Xaltotun? Friends: Juma, Prospero, Jamal, Balthus, Nestor? Crowns: Aquilonia... that's it, right? Lips: Belit's, Zenobia's, Valeria's, Yasmela's? It does note in stanza five that many of the gems and gold crumble into "clods," which is a great inclusions seeing as many of the treasures Conan seeks either end up to be whole-cloth lies, Conan abandons them to accomplish another goal, or they literally crumble in his hands. Within the poem, I really appreciate that Conan's devil-may-care attitude to death is in tact: he knows that it is all part of life, and he has eaten, he has slain, he is content to go into that good night, albeit not gently. That brings me to the last line of the poem, which ends with an all-caps "The road which endeth HERE!" I really like that touch since it implies that Conan's going out with some fire. If something's taking him down, he's not going without a fight, whatever it may be. Having now read all the Conan material I set out to read (and a whole heck of a lot more that I didn't), I'm going to start processing my placements in the timeline and where everything sits in my mind.  |
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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