Conan: Blood of the Serpent (2022)

Conan the barbarian back in his younger, sword-for-hire days meets blonde bombshell pirate lass Valeria for the first time and naturally wants to get into her pants. But Valeria is a strong, independent mercenary and don't need no man. So the pair of them embark on a never-ending and utterly stupid Benny Hill chase through the hinterlands where Conan has to fight a bunch of rabid animals and Valeria has to evade a magic-using bounty hunter. Crom, I've never prayed to you before, I have no tongue for it, but please don't let this author try to write another Conan tale...

One generally understands you shouldn't always judge a book by its cover, but given the utter bland, banal, generic, and cancel culture safe front cover adorning Blood of the Serpent, there's enough anecdotal evidence here to say the old, hackneyed cliche may be wrong. It's not that Blood of the Serpent is poorly written per se, it's just that nothing happens. Even the action scenes seem to have pregnant pauses built into the prose. How do you manage to make sword and sandal action boring? Instead of moving from story beat to story beat as pulp fantasy ought to, the author stops to give us languid descriptions of things, not in the Howardian sparkling purple prose manner, mind, but in the tedious and insipid stylings of cookie-cutter high fantasy novels.

The fact that this story is intended to take place in Conan's timeline directly before Robert E. Howard's Red Nails really made me understand just how low quality Blood of the Serpent actually is, because either the author, publisher, or both made the startling decision to include Red Nails within this tome. As soon as Blood of the Serpent ends, we segue directly into Red Nails. It's like going from a kid's first piano recital to Beethoven. One writer is clearly a neophyte and one is a master, and it's not hard to figure out which one is which.

I'll be honest, I don't know anything about author S.M. Stirling's writing pedigree coming into Blood of the Serpent and what exactly qualified him to be the next Conan continuation novel writer, but based on this book alone, I'd say he's an incredibly poor match for this series, unless the publisher's goal was indeed to make something bland, banal, generic, and cancel culture safe in a contemporary market that tries to punish anything that doesn't immediately adhere to 'The Message'. And given how much the character of Valeria is beefed up to be an undefeatable level 50 Girl-boss who is literally kicking men in the balls for leering at her wrong, I don't think I'm far off the mark here. Then we get to the book's afterword, where the author disgustingly 'apologizes' for Robert E. Howard being a hot-blooded man in the 1920's and 30's. Stirling doesn't explicitly say the hostage video line of "it was wrong then and it's wrong now", but he may as well have.

I spit on this sentiment. I wanted to read this novel in the hope that some new Conan - one of the staples of escapist fiction - would give me respite from the culture war. Instead, I find it meekly flying the banner of the enemy. By Crom, were he able to find life free from the page, Howard's Conan would take up the sword in his mighty thews and smote this vile pretender tome from existence and consign it to the blackest, everlasting depths of the stygian abyss. Avoid.

Greyhawk Adventures: Saga of Old City (1985)

The rapscallion known as Gord levels up his abilities as a thief during a series of quite random adventures across the lands of Oerth. Treasure. Betrayal. Mystery. Dexterity checks. Grab a can of Dr. Thunder and your dice bag, it's time to nerd out with another D&D novel, baby!

Despite being a massive geek for Dungeons & Dragons since around the age of seven and reading and then re-reading the original Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master Guide innumerable times, I'd never actually read a novel penned by Gary Gygax himself. I sought to rectify that by reaching for Saga of Old City, the first in a series of books featuring Gygax's own creation... Gord. Yes, Gord. Doesn't exactly have the same ring as a 'Conan' or 'Gray Mouser', but Gord is clearly Gygax's own attempt at creating an enduring fantasy pulp protagonist. Unfortunately, I don't think the esteemed godfather of D&D is able to stick the landing - at least not in this first offering.

The problems are evident right from the outset. The novel doesn't exactly open with anything grandiose or epic to get readers in the mood for dashing adventures. Instead, we're treated to our 'hero' being bullied and literally pissing himself in front of the other juveniles picking on him. Of course, Gord escapes and lives to fight another day, but doesn't exactly grow to be that much bigger in the intervening years that quickly pass by. I do find it slightly hilarious that instead of a muscle-bound hunk or a Merlin-esque wizard, Gygax went with a rascally manlet as his creation that would somehow make a stamp on the sword and sorcery genre.

Gord is framed as an underdog character we're meant to root for, but he's not exactly a Robin Hood type thief with a just cause that readers could easily rally behind, nor does he possess the unlimited vaults of charisma necessary to be a heel you can cheer for. Instead, Gord is a selfish jerk with a prevailing sense of avarice who participates in murders at various points in this novel and acts like a complete clown around women. Such was my disdain for Gord, I found myself actively rooting for his adversaries to kick his ass all over the pages of this book.

The other serious problem Saga of Old City suffers from is its structure. There is essentially no standard plot to this story other than 'Gord goes on a series of adventures'. This is written as a novel with standard chapter breaks, but it's really a collection of short stories cobbled together under the guise of a full-length novel. I don't have a problem with short stories, but the way Gygax has handled this is almost like a D&D campaign. You can clearly see where one adventure ends and another one abruptly begins, whisking Gord off in a completely different direction and ignoring any character development that may have occurred beforehand. A reader already attuned to tabletop role-playing games can also spot where Gord appears to 'level up', as his abilities and talents become more pronounced.

What does work here is Gygax's love for language and the flourishes of purple prose he employs from time to time, which fits in rather nicely for a pulp tale. Any author who can plausibly work the word 'lugubrious' into a sentence and still have it flow is a-okay in my book.

Still, I found Saga of Old City an absolute chore to finish, and I'm not exactly eager to take another trip with Gord on his adventures any time soon...

Dan the Destructor - Barbarians of the Storm - Book I (2022)

Dan - an unassuming pussy from the Kingdom of South Florida - is zapped through a portal to another world and must team up with barbarian badass Fenrik in order to save the world from an evil sorcerer and maybe, just maybe, find a means of getting himself back home.

Dan the Destructor is a book that does not fuck around. We get the briefest of set-ups and then it's immediately into the adventure. I admit to being slightly thrown off by the present-tense style author Rob Rimes opted for here, but that feeling only lasted a page or two. The present-tense prose actually works in the book's favor and helps the story maintain its no nonsense quick pace. What we are left with is the epitome of a page turner.

In recent years I've become a big fan of creators who can successfully combine a bit of fantasy with science-fiction and still make their story work, so something I immediately appreciated about the Barbarians of the Storm setting Rob Rimes has created is he has zero fear of genre-bending. Barbarians, magic, undead fiends... it all co-exists with big guns, time portals, and post-apocalyptic brio. I can also appreciate how inserting what are ostensibly a few contemporary Earth characters into the mix allows the occasional well-placed pop culture reference to slip into the dialogue, be it pro wrestling or Death Wish 3 (the superior brand of Death Wish, I might add). I was half-expecting a cameo from the Beastmaster or Yor at a few points during the story...

Humor is also prevalent throughout Dan the Destructor, but it never overstays its welcome. For every moment of near-slapstick, there's a brutal fight scene to temper the tone. I would be remiss to not mention an extra short story at the end of the book that serves as a backstory for a character introduced towards the end of the adventure. This story leans even heavier into the brutal side of the scale and certainly concludes things on a strangely satisfying bloodthirsty note.

Perhaps the only minor quibble I can find is this story definitely has a case of sequel-bait syndrome. Of course, it's literally advertised as book one in the title, so I can't complain too much, but Dan the Destructor is obviously the start of a greater narrative and won't exactly be good standalone reading. As I said, it's a minor quibble and if you're anything like me you'll already be ordering the rest of the series before you're even finished with Dan the Destructor.

Conan the Bold (1989)

Conan has a grudge to settle with a badass outlaw and his drugged out posse and follows them halfway across the world to solve it - blade to blade.

You know that old chestnut about not judging a book by its cover? It's definitely applicable here, because not once does anything close to the epic Manowar album cover style illustration that graces the front of this book happen. A damn shame, because who wouldn't want to see Conan duke it out with a mutated pterodactyl?

Regardless, I found Conan the Bold by John Maddox Roberts to be your standard Conan adventure affair with lots of men fighting and dying, wenches wenching, slavers.. um... enslaving? And a supply of magic steroids because why the hell not? There is a hint of otherworldly Lovecraftian influence throughout the novel, but it never takes center stage away from the basic revenge plot. This is more or less Death Wish with swords and throwing knives, and that sounds like a damn good time to me. However, there are a lot of cat and mouse moments between Conan and the main villain Taharka that may frustrate some readers. One almost expects the villain to bellow "I'll get you next time, Gadget!" after every near miss encounter.

I should state I have absolutely nothing against the Conan pastiche novels. Many Howard purists seem to despise them, but I find them to mostly be a good time if you can adjust your expectations. What I appreciate about a novel like Conan the Bold is that John Maddox Roberts is making zero attempt to emulate Robert E. Howard's prose. Most who try to emulate Howard end up with a mess of word salad and rehashed plots. Roberts is wisely his own man with Conan the Bold and the novel is all the better for it.

Mildly recommended.