Conan the Barbarian. Practically a modern-day icon, alongside the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and Mickey Mouse, it's hard not to at least have heard the name. However, despite being a fan of fantasy fiction, I hadn't taken the time to really read any of the classic stories from the franchise, so I only knew what could be gathered through cultural osmosis: he's a barbarian, he doesn't wear a lot of clothes, and he's a good fighter.
Nevertheless, in my trips to various used book sales, I had picked up a handful of the Tor novels from the 80s. I figured they would be worth a read, but as I started looking things up on Wikipedia, I learned that there's a lot more to this character and world than I anticipated. I decided I didn't want to dive in the middle, but maybe look into reading some of older stuff in an effort to understand the timeline and where the books I had bought fit in. Of course, that's when I ran into the staggering list of books that fall into the franchise (to say nothing of the different chronologies some folks have put together in an attempt to have it all make sense). After some consideration, I've decided to focus on the classic Lancer/Ace series (those with the famous Frank Frazetta covers) as my main core, and then reading through the handful of books I have when they show up in the timeline, mainly looking at the William Galen Gray chronology from the above link as my guide.
For what it's worth, I am not planning on reading and reviewing all the Conan books, as there are dozens of them, and that would be just too dang much for me, especially as a series of review articles. At the moment, my plan consists of the 12 Lancer/Ace books, the 6 Robert Jordan books, and a few others that I've acquired or otherwise caught my interest (such as that new one by S.M. Sterling that came out at the end of last year!). I figure that should let me cover the classic stories while giving me a pretty good basis of the world and timeline, should I decide to read more.
In the beginning! Well, really just a collection of stories that happened first. It's hard to know how serious Robert E. Howard was about maintaining a continuity, but L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter certainly put in the work regardless. The result is essentially a collection of short stories and novellas that happen early in Conan's adventuring career. This will be format for most of the Lancer/Ace series, and it may be hard to say anything about these books that isn't just a rundown of their contents, story-by-story.
The version I had contained "Legions of the Dead" as the first story, though I understand this one was released much later in a different collection. While not an origin story, it does put Conan in place as a young teenage hero, and right away, we see our hero's penchant for getting in over his head, either for treasure or to rescue a damsel in distress, only to come through either by his wits or just plain sheer will. After leaving his homeland of Cimmeria, learning to hunt and fight from an Aesir tribe, and fighting off an undead king for an ancient broadsword, Conan makes his way to the Zamoran city of Shadizar. There he gets into all kinds of adventure (as we will later see in the later books), mostly trying to get treasure by stealing it from the rich or finding it in ruins. From there, he spends time further south-east around the bottom of the Vilayet Sea, getting caught up in various wars and battles that often leave him stranded in the wilderness or enslaved by strange people. Through it all, he runs into all kinds of monsters, demons, and even gods, only to pull through in the end, sometimes with the help of sudden events or characters showing up.
Right off, the pulpy nature of these stories comes across, as they tend to be light on description and heavy on moving the plot forward, making each story a pretty brisk read. Conan's single-minded goals and grim determination don't allow for much in the way of characterization or nuance, but it does help keep the stories focused on the current situation at hand. The immediacy of action can be jarring, especially as scenes jump from fight to fight, but it gives plenty of opportunities for the iconic barbarian to shine as he faces each challenge. I don't know if I've really picked up on any of the nuances of the authors involved, as they all try to emulate Howard's terse and action-driven style. Still, it's a decent collection of short stories from the main trio that set the tone for the adventures to come.
As it turns out, many of the novels take place in between the stories of the Lancer/Ace books, and four of the Robert Jorden novels take place within the first L/A collection! While Jordan was the first of many authors for the Tor Books run of novels, he didn't write his novels in chronological order. So while Magnificent is the fifth one published by the author, it comes first in the timeline, and that's why it's here.
Set during his time in Shadizar, Conan takes a job to steal a goblet from a rich man's home, only for the female thief Tamira to get there before him. Set on petty revenge, Conan tries to work out what her next target is so that he can steal it before she can. Getting help from some friends, he learns that she is after a set of rubies called the Eyes of Fire in the possession of a Zamoran noblewoman of Shadizar, the Lady Jondra. However, Jondra is one who likes to exercise her physical prowess, and soon both Conan and Tamira join one of the lady's hunting trips, this time after a massive lizard creature that seems capable of breathing fire. At the same time, a local hero named Eldran is set on defeating the beast himself, as many of his people have been burned and villages destroyed in its rampage, and he is given a magic sword that has slots for the Eyes of Fire. Also, there is a cult of religious zealots up in the mountains that have some control over the beast and see it as a sign of their righteous quest to crush anyone in their path. And the leader of the cult is also after the aforementioned rubies as it will help him control the lizard. Essentially, it's a let of set up for a perfect storm that allows Conan to fight a wingless dragon with a magic sword, and for what it's worth, it works.
Robert Jordan's writing is definitely quite different from the other authors I've read so far, as his descriptions are often dense and evocative. He really does a good job of breathing a lot of life into the world, giving it a stronger sense of place and culture that the older material rarely bothered with. Markets are a bouquet of smells, wildlands and mountains are full of tense anxiety, and battles are wrought with chaos and frenzy. Even the characters are given a decent rundown whenever they appear, though whenever a woman shows up, their arrival is often coupled with a sensual description of their physical assets. I get that there is a bit of logic to it, as Conan is a young and lusty man, but it comes up often and gets tiring pretty quickly.
Which is a good segue to the characters. While I wasn't expecting deep, Shakespearean-level character studies, many of the them, and especially the main handful, are pretty flat. Sometimes a writer can get away with it if there's an interesting enough story to follow, but once the pieces are together, the plot largely carries on because the head-strong women won't listen to what our wise hero advises, so Conan just sticks around so that he can later save them from their apparent hubris. Even the evil cult leader Basraken Ismalla barely feels more complex than a Scooby-Doo villain. I understand that Conan isn't really meant to be innovative in its storytelling or characterizations, but even within a formula, things can be done to at least imply there's more to the characters than their desire to either kill or sleep with Conan, depending on the gender. It's not like these problems are massive or take up a lot of space, so I could be just nitpicking, but they come up so often that they start to stack up over the course of the novel.
Still, I enjoyed the tale in its telling. This is my first time reading something by Robert Jordan, and I can tell just from this why he was a popular fantasy author. While I don't see myself picking up the Wheel of Time series anytime soon, I can't deny that he's got a good writing style, balancing description with action quite well. Overall, despite my gripes, it was a decent book, and leaves me excited to continue on to the next one, which is:
So the story goes that, when Tor Books had gotten the rights to Conan, they wanted to put out a novel as soon as possible. When they heard through the grapevine that Robert Jordan had written an entire 98,000 word novel in 13 days (which never did get published), they hunted him down to see if he would crank out some books, and he was willing to oblige, eventually writing seven Conan books in the space of three or so years. As such, this first Conan novel by Jordan does seem to have a bit of a rushed feel, as the pieces aren't quite as polished as they were with Magnificent.
Once again in Shadizar, we see Conan try to settle his debts with more thievery, only to get in over his head in a struggle between two necromancers, one that is faithful to the Black Order, while the other is rebelling against it. The faithful one comes to Conan, offering a ludicrous reward for stealing a set of five pendants. These pendants (along with five dancing girls) were part of a gift to help solidify a treaty between two kings. When Conan first tries to steal them, he ends up meeting one of the dancing girls, and after a bit of talk, he promises to free her from her slavery if she can bring the rest of the girls and their pendants together the next night. Unfortunately, the rebellious necromancer Amanar has his reptilian humanoid servants take them all, both pendants and girls, causing Conan to chase after him. However, he stumbles into rescuing the Red Hawk, an infamous female bandit leader who first tries to punish Conan for his intrusion on her life, until he is able to convince them to chase after the pendants as a group. And in the middle of it all, the Zamoran king who had originally received the gift sends out a group of his own cavalry to track down the pendants and the Red Hawk who he assumes has stolen them. Headed by Captain Haranides and accompanied by an annoying lieutenant who drops his daddy's name at every chance, the Zamoran cavalry get caught up in the adventure as well. Eventually, it all leads to the dark keep where Amanar uses his dark magics to feed an ancient and forgotten evil.
Just from that description, you can see that things get messy pretty quickly, and in all honesty, makes for a bit of a haphazard journey. Things seem to happen erratically, and while I suppose that does lend itself to a sense of surprise, it doesn't seem to flow together as well as it could. Again, the characters aren't the deepest, though I did like the Red Hawk's right hand man Hordo, a gruff one-eyed bandit with more to him than meets the eye (HAH!). Robert Jordan is still doing solid work, but I can tell that he hasn't quite ironed out some of kinks (and of course, there is plenty of opportunities taken to describe how little the dancing girls wear). I'm sure it's no easy feat to try and throw together a novel-length story in an established and beloved canon in such a short period of time, so perhaps these flaws are a little more forgivable. Also, the story does eventually come together in the end to a decent ending, with Conan bringing the house down.
Going from Jordan's first to his last is a bit strange, but that's how the chronology works. Right off, I can tell that Jordan's writing has matured quite a bit since the first one, as we get a pretty good story with some pretty decent characters.
This time, Conan has drifted east, finding work as a smuggler with his old friend Hordo in Sultanapur. While there are a few references made to the events in Invincible, Hordo mostly continues as Conan's sarcastic sidekick on another adventure, but he's still pretty fun. This time, Conan ends up killing some guards around the same time an important diplomat gets assassinated, and as rumors collide, Conan becomes a wanted man. While he tries to hide, he gets poisoned by one of Hordo's clients, and before long, Conan and his friends have to make their way to the distant land of Vendhya to get to the bottom of all this intrigue and find an antidote. And sure enough, another sorcerer, driven towards bending this part of the world to his will by making deals with demons, is the source of all the troubles.
Poisoning Conan actually ends up giving the book a bit of a different energy. While in other tales, it seems like Conan gets caught up in other people's situations (and that still happens here to some degree), stalling the poison long enough to find a cure does create an interesting sense of urgency that pushes the barbarian forward in a different way. The story doesn't feel particularly rushed through most of the adventure, at least until the end when it all suddenly comes together in a hurry. The last chapter had at least two major plot twists that felt like should have been a much bigger deal, but they just get introduced and taken as is without a whole lot of thought. And that final Deus ex Machina, while not completely out of nowhere, did feel a little cheap, as Conan is simply left to escape with two women on his shoulders. Still, the book does weave its handful of plots together pretty well, and the characters have more going on than just their stock roles. I think overall this is the best of the Jordan books I've read so far!
After his smuggling operations hit a snag in Sultananpur, he escapes to Agrahpur and attempts to reconnect with some old friends. However, his plans are upended when he becomes involved with The Cult of Doom, an austere group dedicated to chaos and lead by Jhandar, who seems to have the power to raise the dead to do his bidding, provided to him by some unknown, unexplained force.
This book takes on more of a mystical feel, as not only does Jhandar's powers seem alien in nature, but Conan himself works with a strange old astrologer named Shakar who joins him on the adventure. Along comes Akeba, a soldier who lost a daughter to the Cult, and a ragtag bunch of Hyrkanians, lead by Tamur, who have a history with Jhandar. When they go to Hyrkania on a weird digression, Conan gets mixed up with a shamaness named Samarra, with plenty of other ruffians and assassins along the way, making for quite a cast of characters to follow, even if they aren't particularly deep.
Unfortunately, this one seems to be as hap-hazard as Invincible, as Conan seems weirdly okay with following the premonitions of Shakar, despite being such an enemy to magic and sorcery. He also becomes strangely overprotective of a young princess named Yasbet who was caught up in the Cult of Doom, and even goes so far to teach her how to fight. Even the trip to Hyrkania seems excessive, taking up much of the book, only to feel mostly like padding than anything else. And the villain Jhandar doesn't seem to do much other than be ominous and mysterious, which is a shame because I felt like the Cult actually had some potential to be a genuine and interesting threat. Jhandar being backed by some nameless power (instead of an old god or demon) gave the impression that there would be more to discover there, only for it to fizzle in an unsatisfactory manner. In fact, the whole ending felt pretty cheap. Again, this might just be a consequence of the rushed production, but I'm starting to get the feeling that the later Jordan books are stronger as he got a better handle on the process.
When I started this series, I figured it would be better to break these up than try to pool them all together into a single, massive piece. It looks like I plan to read about 20 books, so maybe there will be four or five articles in total. Still, organizing these so that they make sense may be pretty difficult, but I'm hoping things won't be too hard to follow. I've also decided to keep these separate from my usual end-of-year book review articles, as I think I'll be moving through these pretty quickly. (And it will ensure that my blog isn't a dead zone between February and November!)
It's been fun, though, finally dipping my toes into this series of classical sword-and-sorcery tales. Based on the Robert Jordan novels, I'm definitely getting the sense that Conan is a kind of fantasy James Bond. He goes to exotic locals, gets in over his head against a ridiculous villain, and he seems to sleep with at least two women per book. It's certainly hard to recommend these, as I do think the reader does have to be in a certain mindset to really enjoy them, so your mileage may vary.
Nevertheless, I'm having quite a bit of fun diving into a new world full of cultures and cities, magic and monsters, and the ridiculously persistent hero at the center of it all. I don't have any planned schedule for these articles, mostly writing them as I finish each book.
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