Conan gladiator / Conan and the Mists of Doom

Adventures of Conan

by Roland J. Green

Conan the Cimmerian must venture into the nightmare world of the dead to retrieve the Silver Lotus, a powerful weapon that can undo the the dreaded incantation that holds the city of Queen Rufia under the spell of the undead witch Zeriti. Original.

Genres: Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1995

About the author

Roland James Green is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. He has written as Roland Green and Roland J. Green; and had 28 books in the Richard Blade series published under the pen name 'Jeffrey Lord'.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't one of the better Conan pastiches. Conan leads various groups who get ambushed and beaten a lot and one wonders why he doesn't go back to adventuring on his own; he was better off as the strong and silent guy. There's a powerful sorceress who commands a band of warrior maidens who are pretty. I kept wondering if Green chose to use the title from andrew j. offutt's Cormac novel (another Howard pastiche), or if someone at Tor assigned it to him. It's an okay adventure, but nothing really memorable.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Conan story but it still offers up quite a few rousing barbarian battles, mystical menaces and bloody fun you would expect.

[Stuart Dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conan is leading some Afghuli tribesmen across the Eastern steppes when a Turanian patrol traps them in a rocky place and a massive fight ensues. Conan is leading some Afghuli tribesmen across the Eastern steppes when some Gimbuli bandits trap them in a rocky place and a massive fight ensues. Conan is leading some Afghuli tribesmen into the Kezankian Mountains when some Khorajan soldiers trap them in a rocky place and a massive fight ensues. There is also a sorceress and a magical mist which are peripherally involved.

The battles are exciting and there are several of them. But they can be a bit confusing to follow. Several people come into Conan's group and go from deadly enemies to friends almost immediately. An old comrade of Conan's wants him to do a job for him and thinks the best way to convince Conan to work for him is to kill all his friends and beat him unconscious. The Mists of Doom and the sorceress are dangerous and scary and it takes forever to get anywhere close to them. Conan tells far too many jokes and continuously threatens to kill his closest friends. I gave this three stars when I started because the language and descriptions where well done but by the time I finished listing all the problems with the rest of it I had dropped it down to two stars.

[Robert D · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of my main problems with this book is that 50% of the story is about the antagonists and what is going on in their encampment. And even then the sudden shift in attitudes between the two leaders of the antagonist seems awkward. The sorceress and her elite female guards want little to do with men. Indeed there's a whole chapter on what happens when one of the men of the male captain is supposed to have even looked with longing at the elite and his tortured death. Then suddenly everything flips and the sorceress and the male captain are lovers, and later in the book it's hinted that since that change the male guards and the female elite guards are becoming intimate.

Conan is introduced leading a small band of loyal followers, fleeing across the desert. He and his men are eventually captured by a Turan captain, Khezal, that turns out to be a former comrade of Conan's. The captain wants his help in getting rid of a sorceress and her men that are capturing and enslaving people near his family lands.

There's a series of larger scale battles as Conan and Khezal lead the men back toward the Kezankian mountains. Because of dangers from native tribesmen the forces are slowly split and Conan and his original followers are on their own headed toward the sorceress base. But then more tribesmen attack and they gain an ally and her followers to help them. It seems rather forced. And the final confrontation was anticlimactic to the point where Conan really didn't even play a part.

[Lewis Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, another read I couldn't finish by Roland Green. I won't ramble on too much about this one, because I've already covered Green's flaws in detail in my previous reviews of his pastiches.

As usual, the basic outline and setting of the book promises a serviceable Conan story, with Conan riding alongside both Turanian soldiers and Afghuli tribesmen to take down a sorceress in the Kezankian mountains. But also usual for Green is the horribly messy and grating prose, the ludicrous overuse of clunky and childishly simple analogies, and a story that fails to deliver anything truly memorable or intriguing.

Not to mention, Green's obsession with sex once again rears its head. In this book, it's mentioned how a character from one of Green's previous pastiches literally died from having too much sex in one night. Yeah. It's just eye-rollingly sleazy, and it's as immature as Green's writing "skills" - or lack of.

That said, I was at least interested enough in this book to read more than half of it... but my patience waned with every chapter until I just got too annoyed and called it a day with 114 pages left unread.

2 stars from me, which is probably more than I'd be willing to give this if I'd struggled through to the end.

[Gary Romeo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not much to recommend here. Barely got through this one. I'd say this was the worst of the series. Conan is Conan but it is a slogging tale. I prefer Conan tales where he is working alone or with a limited few. Here he is the head of some bandits and also working with a Turanian Captain he met in a previous adventure. The novel alternates between Conan's story and the Lady of the Mist story. They meet up at the end in a "I didn't care" finale. Conan has competition for the female and loses out to his second in command. That is the only interesting twist in this book.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det är en trevlig liten bok, denna. Inte överdrivet intelligent eller komplicerad, men snabbfotad och med en direkt och underhållande dialog.

Detta sagt är det en väldigt derivativ form av fantasy; läs den om du uppskattar genren, för den är ett bra exempel på denna, men inte annars.