CONAN: SONGS OF THE SLAIN

It's 97 degrees out, so I've driven five minutes to the nearest Barnes & Noble and I've already started sweating in the sun. Slipping into an air-conditioned book store and sitting around for an hour or two sampling books isn't a bad way to beat the heat, though. Nothing in this B&N seems to have been updated since 2002 except for the seating options, which are less comfortable than they used to be. So I sit in a wooden chair with the intention of reading the first few chapters of Conan: Songs of the Slain by Tim Lebbon, which came out about two weeks ago.

Across from my chair in this aisle is a shelf of Star Wars books, one of the many Star Wars shelves they have. And I see Tim Lebbon's name on the spine of one of the novels. 

Star Wars books get churned out like cans of Coors Light at a baseball game, always have. The first one even hit shelves a few months before the original film even came out, and it's been a steady pace ever since. They've released ten of them in 2025, and we've still got four months to go in the year. Whenever I see a fiction factory like that, I can't help but feel any kind of interest completely dry up. 

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One of the several Star Wars shelves at my local B&N, staring at me as I check out Songs of the Slain.

When that many books are coming out, they cease to register to me as any kind of lit or art or anything, and just feel to me like product. Books pitched by a boardroom, to fill a quota, to get something else on the shelf, written by hired guns. I've had students who devour Star Wars novels, and I'm always happy if something gets kids to read, but they're just not for me.

When you look at the authors' names on the spines, you notice a lot of repeats. There is a certain brand of author who seems to only write Star Wars books, which feels similar to the brand of author who only writes movie novelizations. I'm sure that's its own set of skills, like ghostwriting a book for a celebrity, but it's just not one I'm interested in. And to be clear, this is a company problem, not an author problem. I don't blame the writers.

Tim Lebbon, author of Conan: Songs of the Slain and a seeming nice dude, bills himself on his Twitter account as a "Horror author," but it seems to most people that he's "A guy who wrote a Star Wars novel" (the colon-abusing Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void in 2013). He's got original books as well, but quite a few tie-ins to existing franchises. I bring this up because I guess I'm always just a little less excited to read something when it feels like it came off a shrink-wrapped palette at the Novel Factory.

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Conan novels have suffered from that vibe before (the Tor Books, sometimes the Dark Horse comics), and seem to be just barely avoiding it in the current Titan era. We're moving at about the pace of two novels a year. Is that sustainable for quality? I don't know. My real conclusion about this current novel is that I think your mileage will vary, but it didn't really work for me.

Songs of the Slain is a very middle-of-the-road Conan novel featuring King Conan dusting off his sword to go fulfill a promise to someone he made forty years ago (based on a true story told to Lebbon by his grandfather!). King Conan stories are kind of interesting in one way: you always have to get Conan off the throne. He has to be at least a decently good king or the whole thing looks silly- you don't want Conan to be incompetent or vindictive in ruling Aquilonia. But by making him necessarily a good king, you've usually got to keep him out of his own castle to have a good adventure (except in "The Phoenix on the Sword"). 

At times, Songs of the Slain feels like a legacy sequel to "The Scarlet Citadel" and at other times feels like a riff on Unforgiven. But as other bloggers and reviewers have noted, it's perhaps time to leave the term "pastiche" behind, because most of these authors, especially Lebbon, aren't really trying to ape Howard's style anymore. I re-read "The Scarlet Citadel" to refresh myself on it, and it reads entirely differently. Lebbon's got a workmanlike prose that doesn't have much flash; entirely different than the unseen, but felt, shadows that creep at the edge of Howard's dungeon crawl. As other bloggers and reviewers have noted, sometimes the writing style here feels off. Characters swear in modern ways ("I don't give two shits") and there is indeed the very strange inclusion of "plastic tubes" at one point, after which Conan pulls up Google Maps on his iPhone to see the quickest way to Koth (kidding).

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This novel starts a little stronger than it ends, with a flashback to young Conan in Shadizar before moving forty years in the future. An exciting scene involving gem-hunters rappelling off a cliff introduces the villain of the piece, Grake (rhymes with "Jake"), who is essentially who Conan would be if he was more of a playground bully. This novel made me realize that one likeable thing about Conan is that he never really brags or displays explicit ambition- he doesn't say, "One day, everyone will know the name of Conan, who will be the greatest king in the world!" Instead, we get lines like this from "Red Nails:"

"I've never been king of an Hyborian kingdom," he grinned, taking an enormous mouthful of cactus. "But I've dreamed of being even that. I may be too, some day. Why shouldn't I?"

But Grake leans into being an ambitious, mean, more brutish version of Conan. He's not a bad villain, but Conan calling him "Grake the fake" at the end felt embarrassing. There's at least one really funny scene where Grake is dreaming of defeating Conan: Conan crumples before him, begs for mercy, and shits his pants. It's so ridiculous that I had to laugh. 

Genuinely, I don't want to be too negative here. There's a lot that works! A good cold open. Conan's old acquaintance Baht Taan is likeable. Lebbon includes quite a few women characters and writes them better than many other Conan authors. There's a fight scene with a zombie horde. Conan's old age has left him a little pudgy and he believably struggles. But most of the book fell flat for me. I just don't think the singing troupe The Last Song is a very strong central conceit, and Conan never really goes anywhere very interesting.

Chronologically speaking, this story goes well after the end of The Hour of the Dragon and The Return of Conan, but before the four "old man Conan" stories in L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter's Conan of Aquilonia collection. You can mostly tell this because of his son Conn- Conn has been born but (and is a completely unseen character) but is talked about like he's just a child.

Let me know if aspects of this novel worked more for you than they did for me- I wanted to like this one more than I did.

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★★☆☆​☆