THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON (A.K.A. "CONAN THE CONQUEROR")

When I set out to read every Conan story in timeline order, I thought it might vastly change the reader experience. I hope I'm not disappointing you when I say that it hasn't really changed that much. It's certainly enhanced the reading experience in some ways: I have much more context for each story, it makes them easier to remember because I can place them in order, and it's been interesting to see Conan grow from an northern yokel with a propensity for violence into a clever, powerful, no-less-violent ruler. However, other than that, it hasn't changed a ton. I mean, does it make a huge difference if you read "The Castle of Terror" before or after "The Devil in Iron?" Not one bit. 

I say all that to say this: reading everything in timeline order absolutely does impact how The Hour of the Dragon reads.

The Hour of the Dragon, when read at the end of Conan's life, feels like a victory lap. It really wasn't meant to be that as Howard was writing it.

In mid-1933, about a year into writing Conan stories, Howard was approached by a publishing agent in England about possibly putting out some of his work in the UK. Howard was always looking for how to earn more with his writing, so he sent off a package of 8 stories to the firm. There were 8 stories included, including two Conan bangers "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Scarlet Citadel." As Patrice Louinet notes in his essay "Hyborian Genesis," Weird Tales had first publication rights to his Conan serials, so Howard wasn't able to submit most of his Conan stuff for publication anywhere else.

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I love the details that Louinet includes about Howard's submissions. Whereas you and I would send a link to a Google Doc or a copy of a PDF, Howard actually had to re-type all of "The Scarlet Citadel," which he used as an opportunity to change a few things in the story, and then he actually sent ripped-out Weird Tales pages to provide "The Tower of the Elephant" for them.

A whopping seven months after submitting those eight stories, the publisher sent a letter rejecting all eight stories, but suggested that Howard try writing a novel instead.

"The difficulty that arises about publication in book form, is the prejudice that is very strong over here just now against collections of short stories, and I find myself very reluctantly forced to return the stories to you. With this suggestion, however, that any time you find yourself able to produce a full-length novel of about 70,000-75,000 words along the lines of the stories, my allied company, Pawling and Ness Ltd., who deal with the lending libraries, and are able to sell a first edition of 5,000 copies, will be very willing to publish it."

REH hadn't ever written a novel before, but he had just finished the comparatively long-as-shit "The People of the Black Circle," so he may have been feeling good about his ability to write something even longer.

Howard had a few false starts in getting his novel together. The draft he banged out of "Drums of Tombalku" was probably one abandoned attempt at a novel-length story. And while Howard frequently said (bragged?) that Conan stories just flowed out of him, unaided and in just a single draft or two The Hour of the Dragon was a drafty slog for him, evidently.

There are 620 existing draft pages for this story that runs about 170 pages in my copy of The Complete Chronicles of Conan, with Patrice Louinet estimating that hundreds more could have been lost over the decades. Howard rewrote it at least five times, making huge changes that were quite unlike him. 

Howard wrote The Hour of the Dragon over the course of two months: from March to May 1934, frequently writing 5000 words a day, every day of the week. After sending the manuscript to the publisher in the UK, Howard took a few days off.

The novel, though, never saw publication as he intended it. The publisher went out of business and the novel was returned. 

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With his English venture over, Howard packaged up the pages and sent them to good ol' Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, who bought them and scheduled them to published in a serial of five parts. "Mr. Wright says it's my best Conan story so far," Howard penned.

So clearly, The Hour of the Dragon is not a triumphant victory lap that looks back on all the fun times we've had with Conan.

Rather, the novel feels that way because Howard was tempted to cannibalize parts of other Conan stories that hadn't yet been published in England. He built out or re-used ideas, characters, and situations that he'd played with before in order to reach that 70,000-word length the publisher was asking for. In his essay "Robert E. Howard: Professional Writer," printed in the book The Dark Barbarian, Glenn Lord himself borrows Raymond Chandler's term "cannibalizing" to describe this practice: "a writer taking certain characters and elements from separate earlier works of his own and weaving them together in a single narrative." I can see why he would do it- I've done the same thing with musical ideas in bands I've played in.

Lord gives a few critical opinions on Howard cannibalizing other works to create The Hour of the Dragon.

​From Fred Blosser:

"['The Scarlet Citadel' bears such an] extensive resemblance to Conan the Conqueror... that it is possible that Howard first planned the novel as an elaboration on the earlier novelette... Perhaps Howard felt he could write a tigether, more powerful novel by constructing it on the foundation of... tried-and-true concepts. Or perhaps he felt he hadn't done the themes justice in the space limitations of the...earlier shorter works."

And from Karl Edward Wagner:

"The transformation is carried through extremely well. Characters and plot devices borrowed from other Conan tales are here presented more richly, developed with greater care... Considering the speed with which Howard wrote the novel (and he had other projects to complete in those same four months), The Hour of the Dragon is a remarkably polished work."

Honestly, I disagree with Wagner on this: I think "The Scarlet Citadel" is a lot stronger than the novel. The good news is that when you read this story in context of the rest of Conan's career, it doesn't feel like he's re-heating old story ideas in the microwave. Instead, The Hour of the Dragon feels like the most epic Conan story yet, at least in terms of its scope.

​There's a good deal of fun to be had on this adventure!

It opens with an excellent scene in which an evil cabal resurrects a 3000 year-old wizard from Acheron, the kingdom that once stretched over Aquilonia, Ophir, Brythunia, and Koth. It's atmospheric as hell.

We also get a fun, hair-raising romp through the undercroft of an ancient Stygian pyramid which was the height of the story for me. I loved that I didn't know what was beyond each corner and the vampire Akivasha was a great character. I'm always down for a vampire.

There's a good variety of questing to be done as Conan goes all over the map here- my next map tracking Conan's adventures is literally just this one story and it covers about as many locations as the 5-10 stories I usually do for each one of those. He goes from castles to deserts to rivers to prairies to pyramids; it helps move that he's never in one place for long.

Unfortunately for us, it does kind of feel that the novel was written quickly in order to make a pile of cash from a foreign publisher, because there's a lot that's holding this novel back from being on the top of the pile. The most obvious of these is its length. My copy of The Hour of the Dragon is about 170 pages, which isn't exactly Infinite Jest here, but I've noticed frequently that Conan works best when his stories are compact. The Flame Knife, while good, was a bit long in the tooth at 100 pages and it was astonishing to feel how much tighter and smoother "The People of the Black Circle" felt right afterword since that story is 30 pages leaner. The Hour of the Dragon is yet a full 70 pages longer than The Flame Knife, and it really suffers for it. The pacing is frequently off as you feel that Howard has never had to write a story of this length and doesn't quite know what to do with his runtime. If we had a little bit more quality time with some of the episodes, I think it could have come together much better.

Conan too-quickly dispatches a number of his foes, making quick work of this man-ape thing in a dungeon. Hilariously, the text makes a big deal about Conan running into a Nemedian Adventure, making him sound like he's part of the Seal Team Six of the Hyborian Age, only for Conan to end his life in the space of a short paragraph with one single stroke. Do you know about "the Worf Effect" from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Commander Worf is huge and tough, so if you want a bad guy to be really threatening, you have him beat up Worf. I can't help but wish something like that had happened here. Don't just tell me this guy's a tough customer! Have him delay Conan's escape a bit and rough him up, only for Conan to win in a dramatic fashion! Instead, Conan slices the dude up mid-sentence, without ever breaking a sweat.

Additionally, major characters disappear for huge sections of text, so much so that one night when I picked the story back up, it was a few chapters before Xaltotun reared his head again and I thought to myself, Oh yeah, he's the villain in this. I'd forgotten.

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Maybe the worst thing, though, is that Conan isn't even there at the final, climactic battle. Conan crosses almost an entire continent to find the Heart of Ahriman, which is a good McGuffin that fits with Conan's kingship. Xaltotun has hidden the Heart, not so that he can keep it, but so that nobody can use it against him. Xaltotun wants to rule by force, but Conan rules by winning people's trust and respect. Since the Heart of Ahriman is essentially a clump of pure goodness, it's very much thematically connected to Conan's reign. So when the Heart is finally presented to Xaltotun, smiting him with a blue lightning bolt and turning him back into his wretched mummified form... Conan's like a half-mile away, fighting normal guys. It's a little disappointing.

​Many of the elements of the novel have simply been done better in other Conan stories, most notably "The Scarlet Citadel." While Howard wasn't writing a grand finale for Conan's kingship, it at least feels like somewhat of a grand finale. There are a few callbacks to Conan's life that hit much harder since I'd just read through his entire life story in the last few months.

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"Pallantides knew that Conan had walked many strange roads in his wild, eventful life, and had been many things before a twist of Fate set him on the throne of Aquilonia.
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'I saw again the battlefield whereon I was born,' said Conan, resting his chin moodily on a massive fist. 'I saw myself in a pantherskin loin-cloth, throwing my spear at the mountain beasts. I was a mercenary swordsman again, a hetman of the kozaki who dwell along the Zaporoska River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan Isles, a chief of the Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, and of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passed like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the sounding dust."

That kind of rules.

Additionally, Conan sort of goes back through all the stages of his life in this story. He's a king in Aqilonia. He's a commander of groups of armed men. He disguises himself and stalks through streets like his thief days. He becomes a pirate again in a chapter literally titled "Return of the Corsair." I think Howard was content to play the hits.

The Hour of the Dragon adds a little bit to our ongoing conversation about civilization vs. barbarism and some of the ways that Conan's kingship is benefitted by his barbarism. As Conan's a man of the hills, it seems that his preference for the simple life and the most straightforward way of viewing things is continuing to help him. He- without really meaning to- increases religious freedom in Aquilonia by refusing to outlaw the worship of Asura.

"But Conan's was the broad tolerance of the barbarian, and he had refused to persecute the followers of Asura or to allow the people to do so on no better evidence than was presented against them, rumors and accusations that could not be proven. 'If they are black magicians,' he had said, 'how will they suffer you to harry them? If they are not, there is no evil in them. Crom's devils! Let men worship what gods they will.'"

Conan's not making speeches quoting Voltaire or anything, but the effect is the same.

I also really liked the part where Conan proudly eschews what "ought" to be done for what he knows he can, spitting back that he is nothing but a commoner, but still king.

"'The battle is lost! It were the part of majesty to yield with the dignity becoming one of royal blood!'
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'I have no royal blood,' ground Conan. 'I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith.'"

Fuck yes. Even as Conan is king, he still has no respect for royalty. Robert E. Howard has never felt like more of a Texan than right now.

I think Howard was going for the easy A with this story and ultimately earned a solid B. We revisited some of the greatest hits of Conan's life and had his biggest adventure ever. It feels like the end of things. 

Instead, we still have a few stories to go. The next time we see Conan, it'll be in Bjorn Nyberg's purposeless and mediocre The Return of Conan. Then, we'll have the largest time-skip between any two Conan stories ever- about 15 years. Conan's about his mid-forties in The Hour of the Dragon, and we'll next see him eligible for AARP / getting his free small coffee at McDonald's / putting a reverse mortgage on his house in "The Witch of the Mists," a de Camp / Carter joint that I know nothing about.

★★★☆☆

​Can I give this one three and a half stars? I don't have a half-star icon.