Roland Green (1)

This novel features Conan the Cimmerian twice removed from his literary origins. Author Roland Green doesn't give us Robert E. Howard's Conan, but rather Robert Jordan's version of Howard's hero. If it hadn't been obvious to me from the level of chatty banter and the excessive nudity and sex, Green makes his debt clear by repeatedly referring to Conan's former struggle against the "Cult of Doom," a feature of Jordan's Conan the Unconquered. The good news is that Green does Jordan's Conan at show more least as well as Jordan does, and furnishes supporting characters and intrigue slightly better.

The story bears an odd similarity to another Conan novel I read not long ago, John Hocking's Conan and the Emerald Lotus. In both books, Conan ends up allying himself to a sorceress, bedding her warrior-maid bodyguard, and journeying with them to confront an evil wizard who has designs on the sorceress. The basis of the magic in the two books is different (vegetable vs. mineral), but both are distinctively green.

Conan the Valiant takes place during Conan's Turanian soldiering period, and allows him some reflection on the maturity he is gaining even at this early stage in his career. It's adequate sword-and-sorcery junk food, but offers nothing much to distinguish itself from the great mass of Conan novels. show less

Conan and the Gods of the Mountain is a 1993 novel about Robert E. Howard's famous hero that chiefly distinguishes itself by serving as a tight sequel to "Red Nails," the last story of Conan to have been written by the original author. Howard himself called "Red Nails" the "grimmest, bloodiest, and most merciless" of his Conan tales, and its Weird Tales appearance in 1936 featured a cover illustration by Margaret Brundage, depicting the naked Valeria held on an altar by two women and menaced show more by the dagger-brandishing witch Tascela.

Writing more than half a century later, Roland Green picks up the narrative on the following day. His novel sees Conan and Valeria put the cursed city of Xuchotl behind them, but they don't fully escape its shadow, spending the whole book among the Black tribes who are near to the city and know of it. Geographic features in this southern jungle region include the Lake of Death and Thunder Mountain. The social context of the story involves a conflict between the Kwanyi and Ichiribu tribes, where the former are allied with the God-Men (i.e. priest-sorcerers) of Thunder Mountain, and the latter have among them a powerful shaman Spirit-Speaker.

Conan has his usual antipathy for the supernatural powers which he finds among his eventual allies and enemies, and an ancient monster supplies a third force in the developing conflict. Green's narrative gaze is often preoccupied with female nudity--that of Valeria and several of the tribal women as well. The relationship between Conan and Valeria does progress in terms of both comradeship and intimacy, but at the end of the book Conan is reflecting on its limits.

I have previously read two of Green's earlier Conan novels, Conan the Valiant and Conan the Guardian. I found these more dependent on the Conan stories of Robert Jordan than on the original Robert E. Howard material. While this one shifts to engage the content of the original pulp-era tales far more directly, the tone and style remain consistent with the other Jordan and Green texts. show less

This Conan novel by Roland Green is one of those following on the Conan books by Robert Jordan far more closely than the original stories by Robert E. Howard. It is set in the mercantile kingdom of Argos, where sorcery has been forbidden and neglected for centuries. There are two human villains in this story, a scheming nobleman and an ambitious sorcerer. Their activities in turn accidentally awaken a couple of dormant magical monsters to supply Conan with a stereotypical "boss battle" or show more two at the end of the book.

Although the plot of the novel is heavy on intrigue, there are no particularly surprising turns. The prose is clear enough, and the pace is definitely brisk. The plot indulges Conan in the sexual favor of every desirable woman whose path he crosses, and despite likely jealousies (and even possibilities regarding offspring), no one holds it against him.

For overall quality of story and storytelling, I'd say this one is firmly lodged in the mid-range of the overall spectrum of Conan pastiche. show less

Roland Green wrote this as a much younger writer than he matured into. The book reads very much like Paolini's Eragon. We have an infallible hero who has problems that really are not problems since everything thrown the way of the hero is simply and easily overcome.

We have villians who have no restrictions in the sense of time, where one page they can do something that would take weeks to do, in minutes, and then other things that would take minutes take weeks. After sometime you start show more skimming since you don't want to invest much into a book that the suspension of disbelief can't take place. And there is where our problems start truly.

In order to accept fantasy, you have to suspend your disbelief. Magic, and a world that is not our own takes some leap of faith. In those first pages, perhaps you will succeed, a pursued horseman has to part from his ride as it dies from exhaustion, but then noting that there are more pursuers then he could overcome, he heads to the forbidden hills.

Wandor of course survives what everyone else would never survive. He not only survives butis chosen of fate. He is not only chosen of fate here, but the reason he was pursued shows that he was chosen of fate by the land he lived in also. Then the land he goes to save, their heriditary boogie men also have Wandor as the chosen of fate too. How many times is he a savior?

Then we have the King and his son-in-law. The King knows the son-in-law is trying to get rid of him, his nobles know it, and his people know it. So we all know it. But here late in the game of manuevering, when the king is vastly outnumbered by those who would serve him, all hopes are going to be put on Wandor's shoulders.

When younger and writing plots such as this, it probably appeals to the teenage reader of Heroic Fantasy, and could indeed be plotted by a mind very close in age to that. Green got much better, The Great King's War is just one example, but Wandor falls short and certainly is never worth a reread. show less