Conan Series - Reviewing Appendix N
As I talked about in the first post in this series, I really want to read more books and stories. Specifically, I want to read books that inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragons - and luckily, there is a handy list of such books found in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979), for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in a section commonly called Appendix N… because, well, it’s found in Appendix… N.
This time we are looking at the Conan series written by Robert E. Howard, with the first short story penned for this series in 1932 with the release of The Phoenix on the Sword in the magazine Weird Tales. In fact, we are looking at Howard’s first five short stories that were published in the Conan series with The Phoenix on the Sword, The Scarlet Citadel, The Tower of the Elephant, Black Colossus, and The Slithering Shadow.
If you wish to take part in this journey, the book for next month will be the 1969 The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs.
Conan series by Robert E. Howard
This review is based on reading just the first five short stories I mentioned above. I have very little knowledge of Conan and Howard’s stories, I haven’t even seen the movies that have been made of Conan. Though I have seen gifs and pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s portrayal of Conan, so I had a bare and basic idea about Conan, I’ve just never seen the movies.
With that said, reading the five short stories doesn’t really fit in my mind what I thought Conan was about or the mechanics of barbarians in games like Dungeons & Dragons. For one thing, Conan is constantly wearing armor and clothes, and there is even a point where he wears plate armor. In addition, I never really felt like Conan ever ‘raged’ or had a moment where he broke through the pain and became even deadlier. In the short stories, he is always just murdering things with ease and I’m never really concerned for his safety. I suppose there is a part in The Slithering Shadows where he is fighting a horrific supernatural demon or godling thing and takes way more punishment than any other mortal would be able to endure, but like… he never really came across as a Dungeons & Dragons barbarian to me in the text. He just comes across as a skilled and powerful fighter who got straight 18s in Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution at character creation. But also… this came before the culture of Dungeons & Dragons.
Sword & Sorcery Genre
Before I give you my rating on the short stories I read, I’ll just share a bit of information on this genre. Robert E. Howard is considered the father of the sword and sorcery genre, and so I think we need a bit of understanding of this genre before I go over my review. Sword and sorcery adventures typically focus on a singular character and their individual battles. There are often elements of the supernatural and otherworldly, but rarely does the main character ever understand these elements or use them. In fact, they are often having to fight the supernatural and only evil people utilize the supernatural and magic.
In addition, sword and sorcery adventures are typically fast-paced, filled with excitement, and lots of violence. It’s kind of a detriment, in my opinion, that most situations are just resolved with Conan killing things, instead of any cunning or guile. In this genre, you are here to read adventures about a sword-swinging hero who is powerful and unstoppable. Rarely does your hero use magic, but rather they focus on their raw physical strength to win the day.
Review
Without forcing you to read another thousand words to get to what I think about these five short stories, let’s just go ahead and get it out of the way.
2/5
The short stories I read just didn’t do it for me. I have little interest in reading additional short stories, though I think it might be more my preconceived notions about Conan than the short stories themselves. I was expecting short stories about a lone warrior, someone who faces off against other equally powerful warriors and wins through their guile or by digging deep and overcoming the challenges.
And sure, Conan does face off against powerful creatures, but it’s all supernatural. Rarely does Conan have to fight other humans, and when he does, it’s a foregone conclusion that he will win the fight. I never feel as if Conan is in any danger. Even in The Scarlet Citadel, when he is trapped by his enemies and imprisoned, it never feels like he is in danger. The only things that ‘defeat’ Conan is magic, and even then, he overcomes - which I’m not saying is bad, he is the main character, and he has to win the day, but the short stories never make it a question as to if he will win, but rather how many people will he kill to win.
If you are interested in stories of a hero always winning, and you just want descriptions of creatures being cut down and hacked apart with ease, check out this series. If you want a book series that is focused on guile, cleverness, and tension, these stories just aren’t for you. You won’t ever feel as if your hero’s life is on the line, nor will you ever be blown away by Conan’s quick thinking or problem-solving skills. You won’t get much out of Conan because I can’t even say that much about the character. I never feel as if I learned anything about him or that I understood him as a character. These books are easy reads about a hero winning the day and being awesome at it, which makes them great if you are into that… but it’s just not for me.
What Is Conan
Conan is a series of short stories that take place during the Hyborian Age in a fantasy land that is pseudo-historical. There are magical creatures, but they are incredibly rare and often employed by evil wizards or are demons - at least in the five stories that I read. The stories follow the exploits of Conan, though the short stories are not released in any sort of order that I could tell. The first short story, The Phoenix on the Sword, already has Conan as the king of a nation that he took control of and there is a plot to overthrow him as the king. By the fifth short story I read, The Slithering Shadow, has him as a random sellsword that has nothing to his name but his loincloth, his dagger, and his sword.
None of these short stories feel connected to each other, and in fact, it kind of feels like they could be about five different heroes on five different quests. I get that they are short stories and that they were written years apart and in short story magazines so you can’t have a direct continuation of the series from one story to the next, but… like… there isn’t anything that connects them beyond the fact that the main character is named Conan.
The Phoenix on the Sword
Reading through this short story, I couldn’t help but try to put myself in the mindset of someone who had never heard of Conan and this is their first experience of Conan. To be frank… I was very confused. There are a ton of names just given to you, you aren’t really sure who is the ‘main character’, and even what genre you are reading besides pseudo-historical fantasy.
There are five ‘chapters’ in this short story that follows a group of people forming a conspiracy to overthrow Conan, who is the ruler of a kingdom. You learn that the leader of this conspiracy has a servant who he enslaved, but that slave once had a powerful magical ring that was stolen from him. Well, cue the next chapter that while the slave is guarding another of the co-conspirators, you find out that that person is who bought the magical ring from a thief (who originally stole it from the slave) - the slave takes the ring and summons a powerful ape-demon to kill his master and free him.
Conan, during this time, has a weird trippy dream where he is given a foretelling of the conspirators who wish to kill him in his sleep, and his weapon is enchanted. Conan wakes up, puts on his armor, and is able to fight most of his conspirators off, but is stabbed and weakened. Just before the last surviving conspirator would win, they are killed by the ape-demon as they are the slave’s master. Conan is then able to use his enchanted weapon to kill the ape-demon.
It’s a very weird first short story to bring us into Conan, and I can’t honestly say that it made me excited to read more in the series. It just made me really confused, but I think part of that is because I was expecting something more ‘barbarian’ instead of Conan being a king and surviving a coup. It also felt like I began my journey in the Conan series at like… the end of the series. Like, I was already supposed to know all these conspirators, I was supposed to already know about the slave and his magic ring, and who the being that saved Conan’s life was.
The Scarlet Citadel
In this short story, also separated into five chapters, we find King Conan providing aid to a neighboring kingdom, but it’s actually a trap. Two monarchs are working together along with a wizard who uses his magic to paralyze Conan and imprison him in a citadel filled with all manner of strange and supernatural creatures. Conan is able to break free of his restraints, survive ancient and supernatural creatures, and finds another wizard, Pelias, that was imprisoned by the evil wizard who eventually helps Conan escape the citadel.
At the very end, Conan makes it back to his kingdom, rally his troops (who were in the middle of a pseudo-civil war with the loss of their king), and have a gigantic battle where Conan is able to kill the rival monarchs that helped imprison him, and Pelias, the good wizard, kills the evil wizard.
This might be the best out of the five I read. It had the most intrigue, it hinted at a wider world worth learning more about, Pelias is an actually interesting character, and there is all manner of Lovecraftian monsters - which is kind of weird to me. I never knew Conan had so many monsters he fought that involved tentacles, things that the mind can’t understand, and unknown horrors. All in all, if you only read one of these short stories, this is the one that I’d recommend - but it doesn’t really feel ‘barbarian’ to me, which is kind of what I was hoping for when I read these books.
The Tower of the Elephant
This short story begins with a younger Conan who has not spent much time in the southern lands far and away from Cimmeria. In this story, he learns of a mysterious jewel known as the “Heart of the Elephant”, kept in “The Tower of the Elephant”. Many thieves have tried to steal it, but it is so well protected that none have succeeded and all that have tried, have died in the attempt. Conan apparently took levels in rogue, because he immediately states that he can steal it and will do so.
Venturing to the Tower, he, by random happenstance, finds the “Prince of Thieves” is also attempting to steal the jewel that same night. The two make their way past armed guards, a pride of lions that patrol the tower’s gardens, and climb to the very top of the tower (instead of going in through the front door). The thief prince enters the tower and immediately dies from a giant pseudo-spider monster, though Conan (obviously) survives and kills the spider by throwing a treasure chest at it.
Searching the Tower, he finds a strange, otherworldly creature with the body of a man and head of an elephant, who is a prisoner of the wizard who owns this tower. The creature, Yag-kosha, asks Conan to kill him, extract the creature’s heart, pour blood on the jewel Conan is looking for, and then give that jewel to Yara, the wizard who imprisoned him. Conan does so, delivers the jewel and the wizard is shrunk and drawn into the jewel where a ‘resurrected’ Yag-kosha inside the jewel begins hunting down Yara before the jewel disappears.
This is a weird story with traps, a dungeon delve, and stealing. It doesn’t really stick well in my head and is rather weak, but also… like, these stories just weren’t what I was expecting when I picked up the series. I thought Conan would be fighting more ‘natural’ monsters, taking on other powerful people. I knew there were sorcerers and they were ‘evil’ in Conan-land, but also, I didn’t realize the supernatural was such a heavy influence in this series.
The one thing I will say is that we do get an interesting insight into Conan’s mind with the following quote: “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” He then ends that thought by killing someone. I’m not so sure that I agree that we should just kill people we disagree with, but the 1930s were a different time I guess.
Black Colossus
This short story brings up something that I had noticed was missing in the previous three stories. There are no women in this world. Alright, that’s not really true, Conan does think about his harem when he is imprisoned, but the only women that are mentioned are in relation to Conan’s pleasure. That doesn’t really change in this story.
An ancient wizard awakes from their slumber when a thief unlocks his tomb, at which point, he begins assembling a great army to begin conquering nations. Fearing this invasion from the wizard, Yasmela, the princess of a nearby nation, beseeched Mitra, a god of her ancestors who is no longer actively worshiped. Mitra tells Yasmela to offer her kingdom’s army to the first man she meets on the street and they will keep her nation safe.
Well, Yasmela does so and turns out it is Conan… who immediately tries to grab her around the waist and wants to have sex with her. Like, his first thought is to pull off this woman’s veil and coat so that he can see how hot she is. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair, but he is not presented in a good light and Yasmela is even described as being very wary about what she says and how she acts towards his advances.
Anyway, Conan takes over the army, much to the dismay of the other nobles who were in charge, and he leads the army to victory. There is one noble who refuses to listen to him, and obviously that noble dies in a horrible way. During the battle between the wizard’s army and Conan’s/Yasmela’s army, Yasmela gets kidnapped by the wizard and Conan has to chase after them. Yasmela is stripped and laid out on a sacrifice table, but luckily Conan saves her just in time and the story fades out as the two cling to each other.
The Slithering Shadow
Our final short story ends our review with a pretty weak story, though it had such promise at the beginning! One thing I will say is that this is an easy story for me to recommend that you skip since I feel the need to share trigger warnings for racism and sexual assault. In addition, it is sexist, it is not well written, and feels pretty racist by describing everyone that Conan fights as ‘yellow skinned’ and ‘slant eyed’.
We find Conan with a woman, Natala, who are stumbling through a desert as the sole survivors of an army. Conan was a warrior and Natala was a slave, and… I think is supposed to be Conan’s slave or concubine or… something? Their relationship is never really clear, but Natala really likes Conan and her only reason for being in this story is so that she can be jealous of another woman showing interest in Conan and being ‘supple’ and ‘dainty’ and being the one that gets in danger.
Conan and Natala are lost in the desert, almost dying of thirst, but they spy on a distant city where they find sustenance. In this city, they find it pretty deserted but encounter people who first appear to be dead, but rouse from their slumber… though those people are soon consumed by a weird blob-shadow monsters who is a god that founded this city thousands of years ago.
Conan and Natala are approached by Thalis, a beautiful woman who is also ‘supple’ and quickly falls in love with Conan because he looks like a real man, unlike all the other men in the city who are too busy being addicted to drugs to have muscles or be manly. Here, they learn about the history of the city, and find out that the blob-monster-shadow-demon is Thog, and then Natala gets jealous because Conan likes all the attention he is getting from Thalis who is trying to get Conan to get rid of Natala and stay with her.
When that doesn’t work, Thalis kidnaps Natala in a desperate bid to sacrifice Natala to Thog, all the while also torturing and abusing her. Thog appears, devours Thalis, and just as it is about to eat Natala, Conan intervenes and saves her life. During the time that Natala was kidnapped, Conan has been having to kill a ton of people who have ‘woken’ up from their drug stupor and are trying to kill him. He runs through the city before randomly stumbling upon Natala about to be consumed by the demon and fights it, eventually defeating it. Natala and Conan then escape the city, with Natala blaming Conan for the entire event because he made Thalis lust after him, and Conan complains about jealous women being lustful of his muscled body.
The premise of the city is very interesting, but the rest of the story is just… not good. In addition, this is the worst written story that I read, with Howard using the word ‘dainty’ way too often to describe Natala, uses the word ‘supple’ to describe Thalis in every other sentence, and it has some pretty bad dialogue that is on the wrong side of campy. Out of all of them I read, this felt like a self-insert where the author wants to imagine what it’s like to have a bunch of beautiful women fighting over him, but also, from a literary standpoint, it just shows we can’t have the horror genre and Conan in the same room. Conan doesn’t run away from a fight and so he will kill any monster he faces, meaning there is no danger ever.
The Good
I don’t have a lot to put in this category. This genre just hasn’t done anything for me, which is probably why I haven’t liked any of these short stories. What I will say is that I like the ideas of a lot of these stories, just not their outcomes. If you aren’t sure what a good adventure or dungeon idea would be, check out one of these short stories for inspiration. There are a lot of hidden nuggets in here that mesh great with the heroic fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons. Evil wizards will end up being the main plot point a lot of times though.
The Bad
There is kind of a lot to put here, but I’m just going to talk about a few things. I think that Conan highlights just how you can’t have horror inside of a heroic fantasy/swords and sorcery game or book. These stories feature heroes, and heroes win. You don’t pick up a Conan short story because you want to read about the struggle of man or a deep story with moral gray areas. You pick it up because you want a fun and simple story about how a big muscle man punches and slashes his way through an army of soldiers without breaking a sweat.
When Howard tries to combine Lovecraftian monsters, there is no real threat to Conan because we all know he will win. Conan can’t lose because that isn’t the type of story that fits into the sword and sorcery genre, which means that I never feel like I’m on the edge of my seat, worried for the main character. In that sense, its a very stress-free read that you read just for fun and fantasy fulfillment.
Takeaways
I’m not really sure what to take away from this series. I don’t particularly like the main character, Conan, but that is partly because he just isn’t a very deep or interesting character. He’s just there, he is super strong, super fast, and super resilient. There are tons of descriptions about how a weaker man would have his bones break from monster attacks, and how Conan is just the best.
I think this series will take a bit of time before I understand what influence it has on me and my games. Conan, in the stories that I read, doesn’t come across as a barbarian but an armored fighter. I was hoping for more ‘barbarian’ but what I got was super-hero King Arthur fighting horror monsters.
Other Media
I don’t have a lot of things to compare this series to that I can share with you. If you want to run a pseudo-Conan world, check out the Dark Sun campaign setting. If you want more barbarian in your games, check out the 2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons book The Complete Barbarian’s Handbook. If you want fantasy books that deal with barbarian kind of ideas, sadly, I’m just not well-versed in this genre.
I’ll have to rectify that! If you have any suggestions, please let me know below in the comments!
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