THE RETURN OF CONAN

I wasn't originally planning on reading this novel at all. Most sources online didn't like it, and I wasn't super eager to read Conan novels since I feel he works best in short story form (or "novelettes," as so many Howard-focused pages call them). But I had a snow day off of the school I teach at and I had nothing to do, so I found myself navigating to the copy of Conan the Avenger on the Internet Archive and reading the whole thing in one day.

That's not meant to sound like a brag or anything- this novel is lean. Outside of L. Sprague de Camp's lengthy intro and the pretty superfluous prologue and epilogue, this thing's crossing the finish line at barely 150 pages, and it's not exactly deep reading. I'm sad to report that those online sources who don't like this book are pretty much right. It's the worst of Bjorn Nyberg's work on the character, at least.

The Return of Conan is a 1957 novel written by Bjorn Nyberg, and from what I can tell, pretty heavily edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure this is the first wholly original Conan story to come out of the Conan bullpen of de Camp, Carter, and Nyberg as they continued Howard's work in the 50s through the 70s. I mean, pigeonholed Howard material was still coming out at this point: "The Black Stranger" and the original version of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" had been released four years earlier, with de Camp's edits of Howard stories like "Hawks Over Shem," "The Blood-Stained God," "The Road of the Eagles," and "The Flame Knife" had been released just two years before. "The Snout in the Dark" wouldn't even come out for another 12 years! It's just interesting to me at how early this is in our real-life timeline of Conan as a fiction product.

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Why do artists prior to the 70s never draw Conan with his long, "square-cut" black hair?

As far as the chronology of this story, there's no mystery, but there are some fun inclusions that spice up the runtime a bit. The Return of Conan happens explicitly one year after the conclusion of The Hour of the Dragon, during the coronation of Zenobia as Conan's queen.

Interestingly, this story places "The Scarlet Citadel" as five years prior to it, meaning "Citadel" is set four years prior to Dragon, so that helps build out the timeline a little bit. Conan goes to visit the wizard Pelias from his dungeon crawl in the citadel for help. There are quite a few other callbacks- throwaway mentions of Conan's adventures in the Himelian mountains and his time as a pirate.

Many of the early parts of this story that ring strangely hollow to me. They sort of make plot sense but don't feel emotionally true for Conan or the philosophy of these stories. Conan, for the first time we've ever seen on the page, actually prays to his Cimmerian god Crom. This unsettled me the moment it happened: Conan speaks of Crom as an indifferent god, one who will not lift a finger for his parishioners and Conan wouldn't usually have it any other way. But not only does Conan lift a prayer to his heretofore utterly silent god whose name he takes in vain all the time, but Crom immediately answers. This just seemed really off to me. Crom has always been described as being seated on a great mountain, far away from the reaches of anyone, even the Cimmerians, but here he is at Conan's beck and call. This strikes me as fundamentally opposed to Conan's ethos: sorcerers and weaker men ask to borrow the power of the gods. Specifically, they need to take someone else's. But Conan, throughout all of his adventures, takes it for himself. He doesn't need to wait until a god or magical item grants it to him- he'll do it himself.

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Additionally, Conan is cast as a sort of agent of civilization fighting against the "magic of darkness," which is antithetical to Conan's ethos.

"Some of the most evil spells would now hardly succeed at all in the Western realms. This resistance of civilization to the magic of darkness is concentrated in the barbarian king of Aquilonia. You have long been the center of mighty happenings, and the gods look favorably upon you. And so things will continue to change until, with another turn of the cosmic wheel, enlightenment shall perish and magic shall rise again to power in a new cycle."

This characterization of the civilization of the west being a light against the evils of the east rings hollow in Conan's constant "civilization vs. barbarism" theme. Keeping in mind that this novel was written during the Cold War and in the aftermath of World War II, was it influenced by that? Was Nyberg looking east of the US to the (real or perceived) threats of Russia, China, and Vietnam, writing them into a Conan story? I mean, Conan goes to Khitai (Howard's ancient ancestor to China) in this one, only the second time he's made that journey. Notably, he goes farther east into Khitai than ever before.

I haven't even gotten to the most literal, obvious deus ex machina I've ever seen in a fantasy book. It ends with a thud.

The above are really my biggest gripes with the story, but it's not a banger of an adventure, either. Like Hour of the Dragon, The Return of Conan is a romp back through the roles of Conan's younger days. Whereas the earlier novel shows Conan returning to being a thief, a corsair of the Black Coast, and commander of armies, Nyberg's novel looks to his more eastern adventures. This one returns Conan to the Zuagirs, the pirates of the Red Brotherhood, and the Afghuli hillmen. In fact, we get to visit Yasmina, the Devi of Vendhya 13 years on from "The People of the Black Circle" and some original characters like Rolf of Aesgard and Artus the pirate.

Seeing as de Camp and Carter frequently based their Conan pastiches on the alluded-to-but-not-shown portions of Conan's career, wrapping up hanging threads, I think it would be interesting to see someone tackle the same thing for Rolf and Artus, both of whom are said to have had fun-sounding adventures with Conan in the past. Heck, maybe someone has and I'm just not aware of it. 

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I reference musical moments quite a bit on this blog and I'm going to do it again. The Misfits were my first favorite band, and they had a few releases recorded live over the years with their original singer Glenn Danzig, like "Evilive." The Misfits changed singers a couple of times and in 2013 they released a new live album, clunkily titled "DeA.D. Alive," which featured absolutely none of their material from their first (and best-received) period as a band. That's a little bit about how The Return of Conan feels to me: I get the impulse to basically do The Hour of the Dragon again with different callbacks, but in much less-deft hands, it lands with a thud. If in this metaphor Robert E. Howard is Glenn Danzig and Bjorn Nyberg is Jerry Only, that feels a little bit mean. 

​Next time, we move into Conan's old age with "The Witch of the Mists."

★☆☆☆​☆