Feeling like a bit of a diversion, the hunt for the jewel becomes a full on quest, making up much of the story's bulk. In the course of the story Conan sets out to recover a mysterious magical jewel in order to vanquish the evil wizard and regain his throne, easily shedding his role as king for the familiar one of thief/pirate.
There are some large battle scenes not generally found in the shorter Conan stories, plus many of the usual elements including an evil wizard, necromancy, a sinister cult, treacherous nobles, an innocent young girl needing rescue and murderous giant snakes and gorillas. The plot in fact is essentially identical to the previously published The Scarlet Citadel. I didn't find it quite as compelling as some of his better shorter Conan stories, but still a fine tale brimming with his usual exuberance. The only full length Conan novel from Howard. And if you're a fantasy fan, who enjoys hack'n'slash adventuring, there's something here for you as well. On the whole, there are some nice details about mythology, ancient tribes, past strategical war practices, and other aspects that purposefully relate to our real world (Hyboria is supposed to be Earth anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago). By his own admission, he would occasionally turn in first drafts that then went to print.
For instance, in Conan's world of Hyboria, if you are tall, 9 times out of 10, you will also be gaunt. So some of the writing comes off as rushed. This was during the Great Depression and coming by cash was not always easy. Howard wrote just about as fast as he could. Conan is a king leading human hordes to battle in Medieval fashion and a few pages later Conan is trapped in a dungeon and has to fight his way through ghastly monsters to regain his freedom. However, here we have what feels like a collection of stories pressed together in order to fulfill a publisher's minimum word count for a novel. These shorts were commonly centered around a single conflict and portrayed Conan in just one phase of his colorful career.
Though later serialized, it was originally sold to a book publisher, rather than Howard's usual sales of short stories to the magazine Weird Tales, which were often no longer than 10-20k words. I think the reason for this is that, I believe, this was the only Conan story of novel-length Howard ever wrote. Ironically, that paradigm shifts somewhat in The Hour of the Dragon, which is a mishmash of, not so much the various Conans, but rather settings and, to steal a D&D term, encounters. Then you think of the screaming barbarian.įittingly, in reading Robert Howard's original Conan the Barbarian stories, what you soon realize is that Conan is a man of many faces: barbarian, lone wolf, war chief, king, pirate, thief. When you think of Conan you think of this.
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