CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE

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.

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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.

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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. 

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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!

★★★★☆