It's taken a while, but I've finally got another chunk of Conan books to discuss. Things seem to be moving along pretty well as we get towards the end of Conan's renowned career. However, the stories remain consistently inconsistent in quality. I know that when you get to this much material, it's gonna be a mixed bag, but I think I'm getting used to it now. In fact, let's start on a rather positive note!
Well, talk about a fresh breath of salty air! After slowly making my way through the collections of short stories and novellas, I reach the first novel of the Lancer/Ace Series, and it turned out to be quite good! It's kind of surprising as I've been pretty feeling pretty lukewarm about the works of de Camp & Carter that I had read so far, so I'm glad to see this one stand out so much.
The king of Zingara is being manipulated by a Duke through a Stygian sorcerer, and when the princess develops a vague sense of dread about how her father has changed, she runs off, hoping to find refuge with her brother by jumping on a ship and sailing off, with the Duke's minions close behind. As for Conan, he's a pirate with a letter of marque from that same king, and when a potential treasure hunt gets disrupted by those same minions, Conan gets embroiled in the intrigue himself. Before long, they're sailing around the Western Sea, first to a hidden island that features a powerful artifact, then later to the Black Kingdoms where he meets and old friend and faces a nation of Amazon warriors, before coming storming back to Zingara to stop the conspiracy of replacing the king for a final climactic ending.
While it may feel like a stack of very typical Conan adventures, one after the other, this one does an excellent job of weaving them together for the sake of the larger narrative, and I felt engaged all the way through. The characters were strong (if maybe one-dimensional), and it rarely lacked in energy or urgency. Some of the writing could be a little stiff and clunky, and the pace is maybe a little too fast, but the narrative flowed quite well that I hardly found myself bothered by these minor flaws. An excellent adventure that easily compares well to the best of the Robert Jordan ones.
This is the new one! It's kind of fascinating how, despite all these decades of Conan stories, how little things change. I suppose when you have a character as iconic and straight-forward as Conan, that's to be expected. Nevertheless, after the rights got sorted out after a kerfuffle, Titan Books reached out to the alt history writer S. M. Sterling to take a shot at telling a new Conan story. While I haven't read any of Sterling's works before, this one turned out to be mostly just okay.
Conan finds himself in Stygia, working for a mercenary group for the time being, but wishing he was back on the seas again. The company picks up a woman warrior named Valeria, a former sailor and pirate, and certainly not a pushover. Their first duty together is an escort mission, taking a massive caravan of slaves to a gold mine, which turns into a revolt shortly after they get there. Then, as what remains of the caravan try to make their way back, one of the Stygian sorcerers, a priest dedicated to the god Set, has cursed their company, causing the various animals of the savannah to attack them violently. Once that is dealt with, Conan and his friends secretly recover some of the gold that was supposed to go with them, so they conspire to keep some for themselves. However, all of that gets thrown out the window when a Stygian noble tries to get to handsy with Valeria, only to wind up dead, allowing Conan to chase after her under the guise of bringing her back, but he really just wants to be with her so they can take the hidden gold and run off.
While it's not a bad tale, it does feel kind of episodic, where each stretch exists for its own sake rather than for any kind of overarching novel. Stirling's writing is also kind of odd. While he does provide some solid action scenes, especially when the animals go crazy, he provides a lot of description that doesn't seem to amount to much. It's like he wants to try and establish a lot of world-building and details, but it's hard to care about it when it's mostly about the daily lives of people who aren't really characters of the story or just descriptions of the local flora and fauna. As a consequence, I feel like there isn't enough story here, and what there is feels like a set of loosely related novellas rather than a cohesive novel. It also doesn't help that, in the end, the book doesn't stand alone, but serves as a very long prequel to one of Howard's stories "Red Nail," which is provided with the novel. While the various continuity nods are cute, it doesn't lend itself to being part of a bigger story very well so much as a handful of adventures that Conan happens to find himself in on the way to this particular story.
To be fair, I suppose that's been the standard for all these short stories and novella, so it fits in with those well enough, but when I get a novel, I usually expect something with a bit more meat in the story-telling. For all the flaws the Jordan novels had, they at least attempted to be something that could stand on its own. Still, Sterling's effort wasn't a bad read (though it did become a slog from time to time), and he isn't a bad author, especially when the action kicks in. I guess I just was expecting something more for being the first (mostly) original Conan story in nearly two decades.
And then we're back into the short stories, starting off with "Red Nails." It's a little weird that this book overlaps Sterling's in my read-through, as my reading was kind of colored by what Sterling had set up. Still, this collection turned out to to be pretty interesting, even if it does suddenly lurch to a different part of the continent half-way through.
As for "Red Nails" itself, the story does start with Conan and Valeria running into each other in the jungle, as if it's partway through a story, so I guess making a novel to set all that up makes some sense. Otherwise, it's a pretty grim tale that sees Conan and Valeria finding a closed city and getting caught up in the local blood feud. It's Howard's last Conan story before he died, and in reading the details behind, he definitely goes for some big ideas, largely related to how civilizations fall into decadence and then decay. Still, it has plenty of action and adventuring a Conan fan could want as they skulk around a dead city lit by glowing gems. Even though I was introduced to the character in Blood of the Serpent, Valeria stands well here at Conan's side, matching his brute force with her own sense of bravery and acrobatic fighting skills. (I also noted that Roland Green ended up writing a novel that follows this story particularly, so I may have to catch up with that one later.)
The other two stories are by Howard himself, the first being "The Jewels of Gwalhur," a decent tale of adventure and intrigue taking place in a valley nestled at the top of some high cliffs. Here, we see a bit of Conan's more devious side as he sets up plots of his own against his rivals. The second is "Beyond the Black River," which has Conan out in the west, dealing with the manic Picts lead by a sorcerer for the sake of Aqualonians living near the border of the titular river. Both are decent enough, with the second featuring the perspective of another character for most of the tale, though the endings are a little on the weak side.
My version also came with two other pieces by de Camp and Carter, the first being "The Ivory Goddess," which follows up on "The Jewels of Gwalhur," repeating some of the themes but also providing some closure to the original story. "Moon of Blood" is the other one, and follows up on "Beyond the Black River." The story is a little dry, as Conan tears up more Picts and sorcerers, but it has a decent ending. Continuity wise, it does have an odd jump going from the black kingdoms of the south to the western edge of the continent, but otherwise works as a pretty solid collection of stories. While most of these Lancer/Ace books have been a mixed bag, this one does alright.
Wrapping up this article is another collection of short stories, this time including the most significant change in Conan's career when he leads a rebellion and becomes the king of Aquilonia. Mostly comprised of Howard material, we get four novellas that initially place Conan along the Pictish wilderness which borders that kingdom before dealing with intrigues within it.
The first story has a bit of a strange history, though. While Howard initially wrote it as a Conan story called "The Black Stranger," it didn't get picked up, so he turned it into a standard pirate adventure tale called "Swords of the Red Brotherhood." de Camp then took that and turned it back into a Conan story called "The Treasure of Tranicos." In the end, it does feel like a bit of a hodge-podge, though it does feature an interesting story of Conan matching wits with a pirate captain, a buccaneer, and the self-exiled noble whose manor around which the story revolves. The second story, "Wolves Beyond the Border," is more of a fragment, focusing on characters on the fringe of Conan's rebellion, dealing with their own intrigues with the Picts. It starts off okay, but then suddenly rushes to an end, though I wonder if that isn't just a consequence of its fragmentary nature.
The next two are actually the first two stories Howard ever wrote for the character, taking place during Conan's reign of Aquilonia. The first is "The Phoenix on the Sword," which was originally a King Kull story. However, when it got rejected, Howard rewrote it with this new Conan character and from here built an entire franchise. While it's a bit wordy, with the action only picking up at the end, it does a lot to imply the much larger world that Conan inhabits. The follow up, "The Scarlet Citadel," does much of the same, but provides a great story involving Conan being betrayed and captured, then sent to a sorcerer's dungeon, where he has to carefully make his way with but a torch and a sword, even crawling at some points. This second tale (and the last one in the book) does a great job of setting up what a Conan adventure should be, including great fights, weird monsters, curious magic, epic battles, and dash of the uncanny.
While the first half of the book was mostly decent, if a bit messy, things clean up pretty well with this one. At this point, we definitely see the character settle somewhat into his new role as king, even if the tedium of governance causes him to pine for the younger days of action and adventure. It will be interesting to see how he goes from here as I pick up the next book, which is Howard's only Conan novel! (I'll get to that one in the next article.)
So, another chunk of Conan down. To be honest, I'm kind of excited to get to the end. When I first started, I figured I could get through these 21 books in this year, but as I got into it, I started to wonder if I could really finished before the end of the year. However, now that I'm getting back into the swing of things, I think I'll make it. It's definitely been a fun year, digging into all these tales, but I should probably save my summary remarks for later. Until then, I'll see if I can find something else to talk about on this site.
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