Roland J. Green (1944–2021)

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

Janissaries: Clan and Crown is the second installment in Jerry Pournelle’s long-running Janissaries series. Jerry was solo author on the first one, but this volume was co-authored with Roland Green, who somehow didn’t rate a mention on the cover in 1982. Jerry made sure he was brought up in the afterword at least. Clan and Crown is an apt subtitle for this volume, as Rick Galloway and his CIA mercenaries turned planetary adventurers get deep into the politics of Tran.

My Ace SF paperback show more is a bit smaller than the Massively Illustrated! Janissaries, but it is still a pretty big edition. The interior art was done by Josep Maria Martin Sauri, which I find well done, but not as evocative as Bermejo’s work. There are a couple of other things of note about my edition. Mine is signed by Jerry Pournelle, although not inscribed to me, and when I bought this edition used in 2015, it contained one of Jerry Pournelle’s business cards. So even though the physical volume isn’t quite as nice as the first one, I do feel a special fondness for this one.

While Janissaries is often described as military science fiction, a big emphasis here is on political intrigue. When the book opens, we meet a pair of mercenaries who deserted with their weapons coming back into the fold. That means not only re-negotiating the relationship with their former commanding officer, Rick Galloway, but also inserting themselves into the status hierarchy of the kingdom of Drantos, where Rick has his power base.

There are questions of protocol, of precedence, of permission that must be successfully navigated. Only by mastering the local culture can the starmen truly be successful, no matter how powerful their weapons are. But of course, not everyone is pleased at the entry of the starmen into the game of thrones, leading to a multiplication of plots and conspiracies.

Much of this nest of vipers has been stirred up by Rick himself, who not only married into the nobility, but also introduced military innovations like pikes that reduced the utility of cavalry on the battlefield. Jerry is clearly playing with the idea that certain military technologies tend to produce forms of government. However, it is all happening on an accelerated timescale so we can see chivalry and feudalism giving way to a centralized monarchy.

There are of course some spectacular battles as well, with the Romans to the east and the Westmen to the west. The latter is most interesting to me, as Jerry and Roland setup a conflict with the bane of civilization, the steppe horse archer. These particular nomads seem largely inspired by the Plains Indians like the Sioux and Cheyenne, although they have the bows of the Mongols. Having recently read Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer, I can see that the battle at the end of the book is largely based on Little Big Horn, except that the cavalry has chainmail.

Jerry and Roland chose to name about half of the chapters in Clan and Crown after the traditional choirs of angels; and so religion continues to play an important role in Tran. Since Tran was peopled by abductees from Earth, all of the religions on Tran are historical ones, and so I find them more plausible than the typical invented ones in science fiction. Drantos exhibits a hearth and home polytheism very much like pre-Christian Rome, with Yatar (Jupiter) as chief deity, but Vothan One-Eyed (Odin) is widely respected, if not exactly loved by the warrior nobility. The actual Romans are from after the spread of Christianity, and so are simply Christians as the faith was practiced pre-1054.

The cult of Yatar in particular is important on Tran because of its role in preserving the legends of the Demon Star, the third sun in their system that periodically comes close enough to cause catastrophic climate changes, and also because of their custody of caves that can preserve food and offer shelter at the perihelion of the third sun. Providentially, the plant that preserves the temperature of the caves grows best as the Demon Sun approaches.

Like many Pournelle books, the cast of characters in Clan and Crown is large, which can be something of a challenge at times. Later editions included a list of Dramatis Personae, which helps. However, this means we get to see the radical changes sweeping Tran from many points-of-view, giving the book an epic scope. I feel that the book is an excellent sequel to Janissaries, and that the styles of Roland Green and Jerry Pournelle blended well here. Very much recommended. 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

I've read this a few times over the years. It has been one that I considered giving 4 and a half stars out of five, but now, I am down a bit on that. I purchased this and read it when it was first released, and the man I was at 23 to the man I am now at 50 sees things in a different way.

There is action, and there is warfare, but it is handled poorly. There is intrigue and there are politics, and the mistake that David Weber has begun to make, is foretold here.

First the action. We open with show more a secondary character, who is much more interesting than the hero of the piece, being set upon.

That is action (and this is a spoiler) He is set upon by children, barely teenagers. We are shown that this is because the armed men of the area have gone to the capitol for the king is dying and who shall succeed him is a question. That is the politics, that is good.

But the action ended quick. Then there is warfare. An enemy that often causes problems is coming, near the end of the book where the battles are rushed and the hero is not threatened or involved. His henchmen are, but not he. So why have a hero?

And more maps would have helped. There are two, but that is not enough for all that is shown to be happening.

So then where does the mistakes of Weber come about. Naming. We have a mythical, magical ancient arabic type of land, and these names become convoluted enough that they are confusing and slow the pace of the reading down. Give me one or two that I will learn to think of, but not so many that they stop me far too often.

From a four and half to a three and half I think as the years have passed. Further, this was to be a 3 book series, and the other 2 never came out. Green is still around and with the aid of the internet, surely he could wrap up the tale, yet I expect that the plot tied itself into knots, and the other faults in the story could not be undone.

There were even some gaffes of interpersonal, man to woman issues that took pages to smooth over that probably would not have come up at all in a world that had been crafted. The magic as well seems to be problematical as the enemy have it but we don't see our friends using it. I think that I have read it enough times now, that I shall never read it again unless those other two books appear. show less