Robert E. Howard
Gollancz
0-575-07766-2
These are the tales of Conan the Cimmerian, whose life of slaughter and thievery leads him from lost cities to decadent ones, from the deepest jungles to the dark heart of underground kingdoms, and pitted him against warriors, foul sorcerers, and supernatural horrors summoned from nightmarish realms. He is the quintessential barbarian, whose animal cunning and primitive strength of arms has carried him from humble beginnings amid the uncivilised tribes of the north to the throne of the greatest kingdom of the Hyborian Age and back to the gutter again.
Robert E. Howard’s stories of Conan, first published in pulp magazines over seventy years ago, are considered some of the most definitive works of fantasy ever written. Together with Tolkien, Zelany, Vance and a handful of other great names, Howard stands as the cornerstone upon which much of modern fantasy is based. But how well have his tales stood the test of time?
The Complete Chronicles contains twenty-seven stories, varying from a few pages to near two hundred, and Howard’s own invented history of the Hyborian Age. An afterword details Howard’s life and the development of Conan from pulp pages to comic book hero to Hollywood, while an appendix and a map detailing the various people and kingdoms of the Hyborian Age provide additional depth to Conan‘s world. But it is the stories themselves which are the core of this compilation, and Howard’s visceral, emotive storytelling makes for some powerful tales of adventure.
His hero is an old-fashioned one, straight-forward in both his desires and his approach to realising them. Quick to anger, larger than life, and a paragon of physical prowess, Conan is the very archetype of the barbarian warrior. However, in reading Howard’s stories together they all begin to blend into one. While Conan’s adventures take him to fantastic locations and pit him against terrible foes, little stands out but the Cimmerian himself. The women who stand at his side are invariably weak and timid stereotypes of the fainting heroine, unable to resist the barbarian‘s fierce passion. Only Bêlit, the eponymous co-heroine of ‘Queen of the Black Coast’, shows any real deviation from this pattern and even she can do nothing to resist Conan’s feral charms. The exotic locations Conan visits are wildly imaginative and richly painted, but serve only as a backdrop to the barbarian’s exploits and as such are given little depth in their own right. As for the villains of each piece, they range from ancient iron giants to monstrous snake-demons to greedy merchants. But the most common of Conan’s foes is the dark magician, whose sorcery calls upon creatures from beyond the pale… so many versions of the same character, with little difference between them but their names. Another, more uncomfortable trend is the common portrayal of black people as unsophisticated, brutish and bestial. While it might be understood as a result of the period in which the stories were written, this aspect of the tales is no less distasteful for it.
However, the main cause of the tales’ similarity is their sharing of the same basic narrative template. A woman is threatened by some dark beast or sorcerer, and Conan confronts the villain and defeats them through sheer force of arms. An effective story generally requires some sort of significant challenge, the possibility of the hero’s failure. But this is Conan, and there is no spell or supernatural horror that he can’t defeat through stubborn will and straightforward violence. Such a simplistic structure makes for unsatisfying conclusions, a trend not helped by the lack of any real resolution. Conan kills things and goes on his way, caring little for loose ends or the devastation he leaves in his wake. Each story ends in much the same place as it starts, but with a woman in Conan’s arms. By the time the next story begins, however, she has vanished as if she had never been. James Bond would be proud.
Howard’s stories of Conan are sexist, rife with unsettling hints of racism, and struggle to show any real depth. They do contain, however, what is without a doubt some of the most exciting and visceral fantasy ever written. This is a book to be dipped into rather than devoured whole, and in such small doses the tales’ flaws are concealed behind a fast-moving rush of action and adventure. As a result ‘The Complete Conan’ will find a place on my ‘all style no substance’ shelf, where I can get to it quick when I need an antidote for more complex tales.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
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