Conan i wrota demona / Conan at the Demon's Gate

Adventures of Conan

by Roland J. Green

No son of Cimmeria ever spent much time mourning what was gone forever, but Conan has never before lost a woman such as Belit, the fierce pirate queen. So great is his grief that the mighty barbarian disappears into the wild depths of the Black Coast. But his peaceful oblivion is shattered when he ventures into the Demon's Gate and is suddently transported to the distant Pictish Wilderness, where he must lead a fearsome band of warriors bent on revenge.

Genres: Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Historical, Fiction

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

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 3 out of 5]

This is a competent Conan pastiche. Conan is grieving the loss of his great love Belit when he is whisked away to a confrontation with savage Picts via a magic portal. There's an interesting bit of flashback/flashforward with his son being on the throne, and the discovery of a mysterious Conan statue. The portal/fantasy idea works surprisingly well, and the supporting characters are pretty well depicted. It's not Howard, but it is an interesting story, with a good helping of action and derring-do. I didn't care much the cover of this mass market edition, on which Conan looks like a Neanderthal instead of a Hyborian, but the story is worth a read for Conan fans.

[Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually, I read this book for the first time sometime in the late 90s; but at that time, I hadn't read any of Robert E. Howard's original Conan material. So, I wanted to re-read it now with an eye to making a more conscious comparison. (Besides, I'd forgotten many details of the plot; and I think my appreciation of the story benefited from the perspective that the intervening years have brought.)

For those readers who don't reject pastiches on principle, I'd say this one rates very well for faithfulness to the spirit of the original. Green is quite faithful to Howard's vision in his representation of the character of Conan, and his depiction of the Hyborian world. Likewise, the fast-paced plot, the violent action (lots of people die --not always very cleanly), and the mix of natural and magical dangers is typical of the original Conan canon. (The plotting is more complex than the highly simplified description above suggests.) Howard has been faulted by some modern critics for racial insensitivity, but that charge would not be justified here; the black characters are depicted with the same range of faults and virtues as any other race and even the Picts aren't demonized. (As in some of Howard's own fiction, they come across as resembling American Indians of the 18th-century frontier: they're dark-skinned warriors of the western forest, who wear moccasins and feathers, paint themselves for war, and fight incursions of lighter-skinned intruders; their weapons are usually stone-headed, and they aren't necessarily averse to savagely torturing captives.) While Green doesn't try to imitate Howard's purple prose, his own vivid narrative style reads well and draws the reader along. Like Howard, he avoids bad language and explicit sex. Also, I'd give him high marks for an effective use of the frame technique.

[Bill Riggs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more from this book. The storyline seemed like it had great potential but unfortunately it just seemed to drag on and on and I stopped caring about what was happening about half way through.

[Stuart Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the death of Belit Conan retreats into the jungle of the Black Kingdoms. He stumbles across a local tribe who try to kill him until he saves one of them from a hippopotamus. He finds that some kind of wizardry is happening in the area, with the strange appearance of animals not native to the jungle, including a polar bear. When a strange gateway appears a girl Conan has taken under his protection runs into it, and Conan along with a native hunting party follows her. Suddenly they are transported from the lush Black Kingdoms to the harsh and cold Pictish Wilderness.

Surrounded and immediately attacked by Picts, Conan and his group ally with a sorcerer and his daughter to stay alive until they can get home. The sorcerer is a questionable ally but he is better than the Picts. Here begins a long and slow period where the jungle people acclimate themselves to their new surroundings and Conan tries to snuff out the sorcerer's true intentions. The situation changes little until the climax, which is both exciting and somewhat muddled.

The storyline is rather slow in developing, and the actions of the sorcerer are confusing, though he is clearly mad. The reactions of jungle people transported to a northern clime are explored successfully, and best is Conan. We watch him deal with Belit's death, and how he maneuvers himself into the lead of the tribe. A sign of how mightily the loss of his true love affects Conan is that he beds only two women in the entire book. Not the best Conan adventure but as long as Conan acts like himself and not all weird I am satisfied.

[Gary Romeo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somebody at TOR or CPI must have thought Roland Green was a decent writer. His books probably sold as well as the others and I even read a few positive reviews of his Conan novels on Amazon. But I really don’t care for Roland Green.

There is an unneeded prologue that take place in the reign of Conn (aka Conan the Second). Conn’s army finds a statue of Conan in a Pictish cave. Big mystery, yeah, so now the reader knows this book is going to tell us the why of that.

Despite the prologue the story is almost interesting at first. Conan is trying to get over the death of Belit and is wandering around the Black Kingdoms. Conan has to battle a monster and save a woman and the Bamulas reluctantly accept him as an ally because of his fighting skill.

There is tension, and Green handles this well, it is not racial, although there is a bit of that, it is mainly macho alpha dog type tension. It starts making for an interesting story but Green blows it.

The Demon Gate appears and they are whisked off to Pictland. The guy giving Conan grief gets killed and the novel just drags on without pleasure after this.

There is an interlude about halfway that goes back to Conn’s reign and a new narrator takes over for no real good reason. Now in Pictland, Conan and the Bamulas meet a wizard and his daughter and get caught up in their plot and try to find their way home.

Needless to say it all works out. The mystery of the Conan statue is explained and the epilogue takes us back to Conn’s reign where we get a whiff of “wink at the camera” type magic from the Conan statue. Also there is a character who is Conan’s illegitimate son. As if any one who has read Roland Green’s Conan doesn’t know Conan can’t keep it in his pants.

[Clint · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the premise of this book. Conan is still reeling from the death of Belit. There is a setup in the prologue set in the future of Conan’s world, his son has taken over the throne. There is a gate that pulls “demons” from one place to another, leagues of distance.

None of it pays out.

I kept waiting for something monumental to happen. It never did.

I only did not DNF out of pure stubbornness.

[Lewis Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, a book I couldn't finish. As usual, Roland Green tries to tell a serviceable Conan story, but his poor writing skills cause it to fall flat. From his obsessive overuse of painfully clunky and simplistic analogies, to his messy and awkward prose, to his writing of Conan as far too soft and constantly trying to avoid conflict, I just couldn't force myself through this one.

This is a shame as most of the book takes place in the Pictish Wilderness - one of my favourite Hyborian Age locations, and the only Tor pastiche to utilise it. However, after suffering through over a hundred pages, I finally hit the wall after one particularly shoddy chapter - which speaks volumes, considering the chapter I gave up during is the first one to take place in the Pictish Wilderness, which I was so eager to get to.

Conan and a young comrade battle a group of six Picts, and Green repeatedly describes how the Picts "howl with fury" in multiple pages of noisy, chaotic bloodshed... yet moments later, Green says Conan and the boy killed them "so swiftly and silently" that it went entirely unheard by another band of nearby Picts. I'm sorry, but when Picts (the stealthiest warriors in the Hyborian Age) can't even detect a screeching battle within earshot in their own homeland, it becomes impossible to take the book seriously. This is also a clear example of Green's messy, contradictory, inconsistent, and amateurish writing, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

That said, I'm not completely done with Green (like I am with Leonard Carpenter). He has occasionally shown some competence, such as with the serviceable Conan the Guardian. However, one decent book out of a handful is hardly a strong track record... and with only two of his pastiches left, I'm going to approach them warily and with no willingness to commit if his usual flaws are too prevalent - which, at this point, I fear they likely will be.

I'll give this one 2 stars for what little it got right before I gave up on it, and that's me being generous.