Placing Conan's Heroic Legends series ebooks in chronology

I have come here to do two things:
1. Chronologize Titan's Heroic Legends series of e-books.
2. Announce that I recently learned that "chronologize" is actually word, and I'm stoked.

Since 2023, Titan Books has been putting out new Conan short stories (among other Howard characters) in the form of e-books, which seems to be the ideal distribution model for short stories in the 2020s, barring the resurrection of Weird Tales or waiting for a short story collection to be published. They're cheap too, which is really nice. You can't even get a Taco Bell burrito for what one of these costs. Since I've been reading them, I thought I'd try to place the Conan stories in chronology. I've read through the first four.

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"Lord of the Mount"
by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is an exciting new genre author. He's primarily a horror author and since I read this short story, picked up his book The Only Good Indians (it's really good!). Since Jones is a professor at CU Boulder, where I live and did my masters degree, I reached out to him about the book. He sent me a very funny reply in which he told me that he purposefully tries not to worry much about timelines and maps when "playing in someone else's world," which makes a lot of sense to me, so he specifically did not have a time period in mind when writing this book.

This one sets Conan near the remote village of Trinnecerl (which seems like it's in Hyperborea), waking up in a barn after being the only survivor of a battle. It seems like Conan is currently employed as a mercenary, but he's also more importantly very familiar with the black lotus powder, a variation of which plays a large role in this story. That places it definitively after "Xuthal of the Dusk." This story is difficult to really pin down because Conan being in Hyperborea is really far north. It's a place he doesn't go very often, and pretty much never goes to willingly (the other times he's been, he was sold into slavery and rescuing his son). If I had to put it somewhere, I suppose I'd place it after "The Ivory Goddess" before he enters into Aquilonia as a scout.

I've noticed that the purple lotus powder of this story is also mentioned in Savage Sword #201, but I would wager that wasn't intentional on Jones's part.

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"Black Starlight"
by John C. Hocking

Conan fans already know John C. Hocking, the author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus. That also makes placing this story in chronological order really easy. "Black Starlight" begins very shortly after the conclusion of Emerald Lotus, with Conan and crew revisiting one of the waypoints on their journey into Stygia from the middle of the novel. While there, they are accosted by all manner of creeps and Lady Zelandra is threatened by a sorcerer. Hocking's got a way with horror, including one scene in which he has a dark figure ominously walking toward the heroes, clashing two swords together over his head, which something inside me really bristled at. Like Emerald Lotus, I really enjoyed this one.

Like Professor Jones, I reached out to John Hocking to ask him a few questions about "Black Starlight" and he was very generous with his time! He let me know that he started writing "Black Starlight" when a reprint of Emerald Lotus was coming about and decided to just pen a true sequel to the book. It's lean and mean and really good.

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"The Child"
by Brian D. Anderson

Putting aside the mega-generic title for this one, we've got another winner. It's a solid entry in this series of e-books, buoyed strongly by one or two really good scenes. Conan is in Stygia, selling his sword to the highest bidder. He gets thrust into a lover's quarrel of sorts when he's tasked with bringing a man's wife back to her following her supposed kidnapping by a sorcerer.

I feel as though the Conan in this story is a little bit older: he comes across as rather bitter and a little cold. Seeing as Conan is in drastic need for money, I'm inclined to place this after "Drums of Tombalku." Conan's been through a lot in the previous adventures of "Xuthal of the Dusk" and "Tombalku." He says in the story that he's headed for Zamora, but doesn't actually get there in the text. He instead ends up heading toward the border of Shem, which is somewhat on the way to Zamora. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that after getting his shit completely rocked in "Xuthal" and "Tombalku" that he might want to bounce back a bit where he knows he can make some money before heading off to the Vilayet Sea in "The Devil in Iron."

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"The Shadow of Vengeance"
by Scott Oden

Okay, there's no actual mystery as to when this story takes place: it outright says it on the first page that it happens about three months after "The Devil in Iron." Not only is it the most obvious story to place, but it's the best of the bunch so far. Oden makes great use of a cast of Red Brotherhood pirates and the returning Octavia as the supporting players to an imaginative, excellent Conan story. My only gripe is that Conan states toward the beginning of the story that he has plans to sack the city of Khawarizm with the Red Brotherhood's help, and I would totally love to see that happen. Hey Titan folks, I know you're pretty active online... any chance we could get a "Shadow of Vengeance" sequel where you could pay Scott Oden a big pile of money to tell stories of Conan infiltrating cities?

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​I'll probably read the rest of the Conan-related books in this series and make another post placing those in chronology as well. It's great to have so many fun, new Conan stories to read in 2025!