During my teen years in the 1960's many of the pulp stories from the 20's thru the 40's were being reprinted. I read and enjoyed them. For example, I was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and there were many other science fiction stories from those decades that were republished and found a new audience. However, there were two of the popular pulp heroes that, for some reason, I did get into reading back then. One was Doc Savage. I may've read a few Doc Savage stories, since I had a friend who was collecting them. While I do have one book on my shelves from the other author, but it's not his most famous character. I have no recollection of reading it.
However, when a number of the booktubers I watch chose a book by this author to read and discuss, and the book is in the public domain these days, I decided to give it a read.
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your comments are always welcomed.
The Hour of the Dragon (aka Conan the Conqueror) by Robert E Howard CMy kingdom for a map!
This is a late in his career Conan story, and the only (authentic) novel length one. In this story Conan has settled down as the king of Aquilonia after his days of roving. As the story opens, the enemies of Aquilonia have resurrected a long dead sorcerer using a magical jewel, the Heart of Ahriman, and with his power and the jewel they defeat Conan's army of Aquilonia by rendering Conan temporarily paralyzed and leading the army into a trap. Conan is captured, imprisoned, and escapes death with the help of a young woman, Zenobia. The story then follows Conan as he is pursued by various enemies, his kingdom sacked and misruled. He escapes several traps, and learning about the importance of the Heart of Ahriman, he chases after the various people who have stolen it first from the sorcerer and then from each other. This takes him across all the lands of Howard's Hyborian Age, hence my cry for a map.
I'm sure I could've found a map of Howard's Hyborian Age if I Googled it, but I didn't care quite enough to bother. I think some books have one included.
As I said, this is my first Conan story. And likely my last. In my opinion, comparing apples to apples, pulp writer to pulp writer, any Edgar Rice Burrough's hero is a more fully drawn and interesting character than Conan. Conon is not the brightest blade on the wall, but not an idiot either. He's a mostly chivalrous barbarian, at least in this story. And while he can hack to pieces six fighting men, seven would defeat him, so he often has to be either saved with a arrival of unexpected help, or simply left for dead when knocked out. (This happens several times.) He knows fear and dread. All in all, he's no superman, and I must admit I found him more human than I expected. That said, Howard doesn't take a great deal of time or effort to give him any great depths. He uses him to drive the plot along, fighting and conquering.
The writing itself was a lot of "telling" as we say these days. The scenery is described. Characters give speeches to explain the story. We are given several different point of view characters to build the premise and story, when needed. Conan is also mostly described, we don't really get to know what he's thinking, though sometimes what he's feeling, usually fear, dread, or anger. As I said above, I think almost any of Burrough's books and heroes are superior to Howard's Conan in this novel. I have a feeling that the length of the story did Conan and Howard no favors. Both may shine better in short stories where less is expected.
There are many Conan and other Robert E Howard stories available for free on the Gutenberg project.
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