catra121's review
3.0
So...this was kind of a mixed bag and all in all it was just ok for me. Some stories were better than others but the in all honesty there weren't any that blew me away or really sucked me into the story. This is a big collection and listening to the audiobook helped me pass the time while cleaning the house today.
kingeditor's review
4.0
Conan the Barbarian isn’t really a barbarian— that’s an understatement.
He’s an animal.
A heroic, self-centered, kind-hearted, cruel, mirthful, melancholic animal. And so is everyone else. Don’t be fooled by the seeming distinction between civilization and barbarism; the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard, despite its shining kingdoms and jeweled thrones, is a vast, misty jungle, where under every veneer of humanity is the soul of a ruthless predator, and Conan— a black panther, bengal tiger, and silverback gorilla rolled into one— the most ferocious of them all.
To retreat slightly from this extravagant metaphor, Conan the human being is indeed animalistic. Like any wild beast, he has only one motivation: lust. Lust for blood. Lust for gold. Lust for women. Lust for life itself.
However, he is no dumb brute, and his author was not one either. While his critics have for decades ridiculed Howard’s stories as the fantasies of a timid weakling or the delusions of a psychotic mama’s boy, the real man behind them was a proud Texan and a salt of the Earth. He was the warrior-poet of Jazz Age America, boxing for sport and bar-fighting for fun, yet also writing little known verses of real merit, some of which appear in his fiction.
I think it was his self-training as a poet that made his prose what it was. The limitations of a poem are similar to those of a short story, in that a poet must conjure a complete image in just a few lines. Howard’s two-sentence setpieces, page-long battles, and close-up character sketches have been described as dream-like in their vividness, though I think that such a comparison does them a disservice. Most dreams are forgotten as soon as one wakes up; Howard’s have stayed with me for years.
I am not referring to his side characters, who are for the most part forgettable and interchangeable. Nor am I complimenting his plots, which, save for one or two exceptions, follow the same pattern of struggle, conquest, and triumph. I am alluding to the countless scenes that play and replay in my head with a color, clarity, and immediacy to put any blockbuster to shame— Conan cornered in a throne room by cloaked assassins, Conan reaping knight after knight off their horses with two-handed swings, Conan out-strangling a man as giant as he, Conan crucified and catching vultures in his jaw...
I stand by the opinion that Robert E. Howard was the greatest action writer of all time. Bar none. His secret is this: there is no such thing as an easy death. Conan, a slayer of hundreds, took every life he did out of pure, volcanic hatred. To kill them was not enough. They had to die screaming or choking, veins bulging, skin purpling, bones shattered, and body shredded.
Contrasting with the monstrous savagery of this protagonist is his massive animal magnetism. Conan stands at over six, maybe seven feet (Howard was always indefinite about his physique), and his charisma is twice as huge. It helps him even more than his vaunted strength, winning him both the love and fear of those around him. Conan’s charm comes from his devil-may-care attitude, embracing rather than defying the prospect of death, which is as enthralling to his followers as it is to the reader.
It is for this reason that Conan, immensely strong, lightning fast, and nigh-omnipotent as a main character, does not to me feel like a Mary Sue. The label implies an unlikability that is impossible for Conan to possess, for his personality is so larger-than-life that he becomes a being of flesh and blood, not pulp, and one that you’ll believe deserves to win no matter the odds. And what would be to him the ultimate victory— respect and acceptance from the civilized world— is unattainable.
Robert E. Howard, one of the “big three” of Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, was perhaps the least racist of the triumvirate (although that is a bar so low that a spineless contortionist couldn’t limbo under it), but his bigotry mars his stories in more than just a superficial way. The architecture of his Hyborian Age, awesome as it may be, is carved from an iceberg of racial ideology— usually subtle, with only the occasional canard or caricature in sight, but hiding below the water a worldview of apocalyptic racial conflict and eroding white supremacy.
Yet Howard was not blind, only dim. As he recognized the contradiction of glorifying a barbarian hero whilst denigrating other barbarians who were merely darker-skinned, and as he butted heads with the pathologically racist Lovecraft over a long correspondence, Howard’s prejudices softened. Though his work was never close to 21st century standards of tolerance, Howard’s later stories sometimes recognized the inherent dignity of non-white peoples, and there is nuance to be found even in his earlier work as its grim morality blends every skin color into the same shade of gray.
Given a few decades, I think that Howard could have evolved with the rest of his country. He could have witnessed the growth and maturity of the genre he birthed, and continued to play a role in charting its course. He and his black-haired, sullen-eyed counterpart could have gotten the recognition they were both denied.
Instead, on June 11th, 1936, after learning that his mother would never wake from her coma, Robert E. Howard walked outside, raised a gun to his head, and put a bullet in his brain.
Weird Tales and the pulp era did not outlive him. Lovecraft, shaken by the news, died a year later. Smith, equally devastated, scarcely penned another tale again. Howard, less ornate, less sophisticated, and less literary than his two peers, had been their idol. I think he’s my idol too, flaws and all, and the idol of every genre writer since, whether they know it or not.
He’s an animal.
A heroic, self-centered, kind-hearted, cruel, mirthful, melancholic animal. And so is everyone else. Don’t be fooled by the seeming distinction between civilization and barbarism; the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard, despite its shining kingdoms and jeweled thrones, is a vast, misty jungle, where under every veneer of humanity is the soul of a ruthless predator, and Conan— a black panther, bengal tiger, and silverback gorilla rolled into one— the most ferocious of them all.
To retreat slightly from this extravagant metaphor, Conan the human being is indeed animalistic. Like any wild beast, he has only one motivation: lust. Lust for blood. Lust for gold. Lust for women. Lust for life itself.
However, he is no dumb brute, and his author was not one either. While his critics have for decades ridiculed Howard’s stories as the fantasies of a timid weakling or the delusions of a psychotic mama’s boy, the real man behind them was a proud Texan and a salt of the Earth. He was the warrior-poet of Jazz Age America, boxing for sport and bar-fighting for fun, yet also writing little known verses of real merit, some of which appear in his fiction.
I think it was his self-training as a poet that made his prose what it was. The limitations of a poem are similar to those of a short story, in that a poet must conjure a complete image in just a few lines. Howard’s two-sentence setpieces, page-long battles, and close-up character sketches have been described as dream-like in their vividness, though I think that such a comparison does them a disservice. Most dreams are forgotten as soon as one wakes up; Howard’s have stayed with me for years.
I am not referring to his side characters, who are for the most part forgettable and interchangeable. Nor am I complimenting his plots, which, save for one or two exceptions, follow the same pattern of struggle, conquest, and triumph. I am alluding to the countless scenes that play and replay in my head with a color, clarity, and immediacy to put any blockbuster to shame— Conan cornered in a throne room by cloaked assassins, Conan reaping knight after knight off their horses with two-handed swings, Conan out-strangling a man as giant as he, Conan crucified and catching vultures in his jaw...
I stand by the opinion that Robert E. Howard was the greatest action writer of all time. Bar none. His secret is this: there is no such thing as an easy death. Conan, a slayer of hundreds, took every life he did out of pure, volcanic hatred. To kill them was not enough. They had to die screaming or choking, veins bulging, skin purpling, bones shattered, and body shredded.
Contrasting with the monstrous savagery of this protagonist is his massive animal magnetism. Conan stands at over six, maybe seven feet (Howard was always indefinite about his physique), and his charisma is twice as huge. It helps him even more than his vaunted strength, winning him both the love and fear of those around him. Conan’s charm comes from his devil-may-care attitude, embracing rather than defying the prospect of death, which is as enthralling to his followers as it is to the reader.
It is for this reason that Conan, immensely strong, lightning fast, and nigh-omnipotent as a main character, does not to me feel like a Mary Sue. The label implies an unlikability that is impossible for Conan to possess, for his personality is so larger-than-life that he becomes a being of flesh and blood, not pulp, and one that you’ll believe deserves to win no matter the odds. And what would be to him the ultimate victory— respect and acceptance from the civilized world— is unattainable.
Robert E. Howard, one of the “big three” of Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, was perhaps the least racist of the triumvirate (although that is a bar so low that a spineless contortionist couldn’t limbo under it), but his bigotry mars his stories in more than just a superficial way. The architecture of his Hyborian Age, awesome as it may be, is carved from an iceberg of racial ideology— usually subtle, with only the occasional canard or caricature in sight, but hiding below the water a worldview of apocalyptic racial conflict and eroding white supremacy.
Yet Howard was not blind, only dim. As he recognized the contradiction of glorifying a barbarian hero whilst denigrating other barbarians who were merely darker-skinned, and as he butted heads with the pathologically racist Lovecraft over a long correspondence, Howard’s prejudices softened. Though his work was never close to 21st century standards of tolerance, Howard’s later stories sometimes recognized the inherent dignity of non-white peoples, and there is nuance to be found even in his earlier work as its grim morality blends every skin color into the same shade of gray.
Given a few decades, I think that Howard could have evolved with the rest of his country. He could have witnessed the growth and maturity of the genre he birthed, and continued to play a role in charting its course. He and his black-haired, sullen-eyed counterpart could have gotten the recognition they were both denied.
Instead, on June 11th, 1936, after learning that his mother would never wake from her coma, Robert E. Howard walked outside, raised a gun to his head, and put a bullet in his brain.
Weird Tales and the pulp era did not outlive him. Lovecraft, shaken by the news, died a year later. Smith, equally devastated, scarcely penned another tale again. Howard, less ornate, less sophisticated, and less literary than his two peers, had been their idol. I think he’s my idol too, flaws and all, and the idol of every genre writer since, whether they know it or not.
thomas_wright's review
3.0
good barbarian fun not read any in months and i don't feel like keeping this on my list forever i have had my fill of this world in this book
llamasama's review
3.0
Repetitive writing over top-tier worldbuilding.
Hyboria is an amazing setting filled with incredible locations, interesting (albeit kinda racist) cultures, and badass characters. It's a shame Howard plays everything so safely. He quickly locks into a repeatable structure, and never gives it up.
His minority and female characters go from being capable, strong, and interesting in earlier stories, to being relegated to trope-y garbage by the end. He was writing for mainstream appeal and not feeding his inner-auteur and it shows.
There is so much unachieved potential here, and it's super depressing it was never fulfilled.
One of the best fictional universes ever created. Shit stories though.
Standouts include "The Hour of the Dragon" (best story), "Red Nails" (setting is too fucking cool. Definitely stealing for a DnD campaign. Could do without Conan being so rapey in this one. Also racism.), "The Tower of the Elephant" (Lovecraftian as fuck, probably the best overall, and first I'd recommend), and "The Slithering Shadow" (Drugged out city of sleeping sorcerers worshipping a timeless tentacle god? Coolest shit ever. Story? Pretty bad).
Hyboria is an amazing setting filled with incredible locations, interesting (albeit kinda racist) cultures, and badass characters. It's a shame Howard plays everything so safely. He quickly locks into a repeatable structure, and never gives it up.
His minority and female characters go from being capable, strong, and interesting in earlier stories, to being relegated to trope-y garbage by the end. He was writing for mainstream appeal and not feeding his inner-auteur and it shows.
There is so much unachieved potential here, and it's super depressing it was never fulfilled.
One of the best fictional universes ever created. Shit stories though.
Standouts include "The Hour of the Dragon" (best story), "Red Nails" (setting is too fucking cool. Definitely stealing for a DnD campaign. Could do without Conan being so rapey in this one. Also racism.), "The Tower of the Elephant" (Lovecraftian as fuck, probably the best overall, and first I'd recommend), and "The Slithering Shadow" (Drugged out city of sleeping sorcerers worshipping a timeless tentacle god? Coolest shit ever. Story? Pretty bad).
jplayjames's review
3.0
The perfect adventuring stories for white men who think that people who aren't white men can make good narrative props. The treatment of women definitely improves as the stories progress though - some of them even have motivations beyond just infatuation with Conan (although that is always there too). Black people are also at times used almost as animal threats rather than actual humans - cannibal motivations basically being a stand-in for the old 'sacrificing people to dragons' narrative, for example.
Despite that, this does have its moments and I'm glad to have read it for a sort of cultural awareness. It definitely had its moments - the penultimate tale, The Hour of the Dragon, being an expanded variant of the first Conan tale in this collection referring to many of the other stories in this collection in passing, really tied the narrative together.
One of the things I found most interesting was the variety in age and experience of the protagonist - in the first story he is an older king, and a later story has him as a very young thief, rather than just having the standard experienced barbarian gone a-plundering I associated with the character.
There were less Conan stories published in Howard's lifetime than I expected given his cultural impact, and yet there was more variety in setting and motivation than I thought there would be.
And as I say, the problems which I had early on definitely diminished over time.
I couldn't wholeheartedly recommend this, but it was probably worth reading for me at least.
Despite that, this does have its moments and I'm glad to have read it for a sort of cultural awareness. It definitely had its moments - the penultimate tale, The Hour of the Dragon, being an expanded variant of the first Conan tale in this collection referring to many of the other stories in this collection in passing, really tied the narrative together.
One of the things I found most interesting was the variety in age and experience of the protagonist - in the first story he is an older king, and a later story has him as a very young thief, rather than just having the standard experienced barbarian gone a-plundering I associated with the character.
There were less Conan stories published in Howard's lifetime than I expected given his cultural impact, and yet there was more variety in setting and motivation than I thought there would be.
And as I say, the problems which I had early on definitely diminished over time.
I couldn't wholeheartedly recommend this, but it was probably worth reading for me at least.
jameseckman's review
3.0
What can one say about the original Conan? It's spawned movies, tons of copycat books as well as 'official' stories written by various authors. Old school fantasy pulp at its possible best.
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