The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Hardcover)

"The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" is, I am embarrassed to say, my first foray into the original Conan tales. I looked around for these things for years, but always found the prices in the secondary market-usually for moth eaten copies of decades old versions-to much weight to place on my wallet. I did get a chance to read a few of Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories, several of his Cthulhu tales, and a couple of other great stories completely unrelated to Conan. Still, it's not the same. To know Howard is to read the Conan sagas. Included here are thirteen original stories, beginning with "The Phoenix on the Sword" and including such epics as "The Tower of the Elephant," "The Scarlet Citadel," "Queen of the Black Coast," and "Black Colossus." Lesser, but by no means uninteresting stories, include "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," "The God in the Bowl," "Iron Shadows in the Moon," "Rogues in the House," and "Xuthal of the Dusk." Included also is Howard's history of his Hyborian Age, a lengthy discussion of the various nations and peoples that form the backdrop of the Conan adventures. The author's love for setting stories in the historical past led him to create an alternate version of world history, one that resembled in many ways our own ancient times but allowed him to make up things as he went along. The history of the Hyborian Age alone is worth the price of the book.

It's impossible to adequately summarize every story, or even most of the stories, contained in the collection. A few worth noting include "The Phoenix on the Sword," where King Conan of Aquilonia thwarts a coup attempt with the help of a long dead sorcerer. Another winner is "The Tower of the Elephant," which finds Conan as a thief attempting to steal the wealth locked up in a malefic temple. "The Scarlet Citadel" and "Black Colossus" work so well because the two stories give Howard the opportunity to write extremely involved descriptions of huge battles against a background of magnificently executed scenes of phantasmagoric weirdness. Even the lesser tales contain enough flashes of brilliance and imagination to keep the reader riveted to the page. Conan battles giant apes, evil alien beings that turn humans into shrunken dolls in a magical pond, a vicious god preying on decadent citizens of an ancient city, and slays frost giants in pursuit of a goddess, all without batting an eye. Swords flash, armies clash, women fawn, sorcerers cast spells, and Conan wins the day in his inimitable taciturn style. All of the stories move at a lightening quick pace.

Sure, a few of the stories here follow a rather formulaic structure, but that doesn't make them any less entertaining. I think there's a tendency by some people to sneer at fantasy books and stories; they argue that the simplistic writing style and predictable plots do not inspire readers to peruse REAL literature, and to some extent that claim may contain grains of truth. But as Patrice Louinet makes clear in her introduction and analysis of Howard's Conan stories, this author was an extremely intelligent, well read individual who infused his stories with elements borrowed from Bulfinch's works on ancient and medieval history. As for simplistic writing style, you won't find much of that here. Howard routinely uses elevated prose in the construction of his stories, and while he's no Clark Ashton Smith or H.P. Lovecraft in terms of OED inspired vocabulary, his language still rises much higher than you would think.

The only problem I had with the book concerned Louinet's assessment of Howard's Conan canon. I haven't read much about the underpinnings of writers like Lovecraft, Howard, and the other fantasy writers in the 1930s, but I always suspected the success of these authors rested heavily on the Great Depression. Howard wrote about a warrior of great physical, mental, and moral strength, perhaps, because a man with such traits was necessary in a time of great social turmoil. American audiences yearned for stories that created worlds where bread lines, bank closings, and starvation didn't exist. Moreover, they longed for characters that could triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles with nothing more than their native abilities to fall back upon. Anyway, read these stories. All fans of fantasy/horror/science fiction should pick up a copy of this book immediately. I can't wait for the next volume.

Those not familiar with Howard's original stories should not expect the comic-bookishness of the later Marvel comics series, or the High-fantasy of Tolkien and others. This is heroic-fantasy. Among the best, the most relevant to the development of the genre of Heroic-fantasy.