Conan the Invincible

Robert Jordan's Conan Novels #1

by Robert Jordan

Conan is ensnared by the charms of the wily and beautiful Karela, who is secretly the Red Hawk, fearless leader of a crew of brigands. She leads Conan to face the awesome challenge of the serpentinely evil necromancer Amanar.

Robert Jordan was a pseudonym for James Oliver Rigney, Jr (1948-2007), who also published books under the names Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.

Genres: Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Fiction, Pulp, Audiobook, Novels, Adventure

284 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr., under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the names Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.

Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He served two tours in Vietnam (from 1968 to 1970) with the United States Army as a helicopter gunner. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with bronze oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and bronze oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm. After returning from Vietnam he attended The Citadel where he received an undergraduate degree in physics. After graduating he was employed by the United States Navy as a nuclear engineer. He began writing in 1977. He was a history buff and enjoyed hunting, fishing, sailing, poker, chess, pool, and pipe collecting.

He described himself as a "High Church" Episcopalian and received communion more than once a week. He lived with his wife Harriet McDougal, who works as a book editor (currently with Tor Books; she was also Jordan's editor) in a house built in 1797.

Responding to queries on the similarity of some of the concepts in his Wheel of Time books with Freemasonry concepts, Jordan admitted that he was a Freemason. However, "like his father and grandfather," he preferred not to advertise, possibly because of the negative propaganda against Freemasonry. In his own words, "no man in this country should feel in danger because of his beliefs."

On March 23, 2006, Jordan disclosed in a statement that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, and that with treatment, his median life expectancy was four years, though he said he intended to beat the statistics. He later posted on his Dragonmount blog to encourage his fans not to worry about him and that he intended to have a long and fully creative life.

He began chemotherapy treatment at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in early April 2006. Jordan was enrolled in a study using the drug Revlimid just approved for multiple myeloma but not yet tested on primary amyloidosis.

Jordan died at approximately 2:45 p.m. EDT on September 16, 2007, and a funeral service was held for him on Wednesday, September 19, 2007. Jordan was cremated and his ashes buried in the churchyard of St. James Church in Goose Creek, outside Charleston.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently read all the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories and novelettes, I was only slightly curious about the HUGE numbers of other writers that had tried their hands at the immensely popular Conan, including comic books, tons of stories, and a number of craptastic movies. Tv series. Cartoons. lol

I avoided them because they were very, very formulaic. Dumb barbarian get sexy woman and kill evil magician and get sexy woman.

The original stories weren't that.

Robert Jordan, of Wheel Of Time fame (and a wonderful series it is), also wrote in the Conan vein. That's this novel. And no matter how much I actually like Jordan's writing, he wrote for the "expected" Conan crowd. The myth references were super pedestrian. Conan's smarts were missing. It was basically an extension of the Arnold movies. And fun-ish for what it was.

But me? I'm not really a fan of pedestrian fantasy. Believe it or not. lol

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book in Tor's long-running series of Conan pastiches and was also the first book to appear under the Robert Jordan byline. It's a very good heroic fantasy adventure and, while notably different from Howard, is also a pretty good Conan novel. Wheel of Time and Tolkien fans might want to give it a try, too. The plot is a little more convoluted than Howard, the writing a little more descriptive and less action-oriented, but it's quite engaging, with a good sense of humor and interior consistency. Set with Conan approaching twenty, shortly after Tower of the Elephant, it's set in Shadizar, and has Conan encounter evil sorcery and beautiful women and just about everything else he needed for a rousing time. (Suggested soundtrack: Stop Dragon my Heart Around.)

[Rodrigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pues sigo pasándomelo bien con mi colega Conan, en este caso solo es una historia y se trata de la primera que escribió Robert Jordan, la cual nos transporta, a diferencia de las 6 anteriores que seguían un orden cronológico, a una edad mas joven de Conan cuando todavía tenía 19 primaveras y era un ladrón.
Sinopsis: Durante su juventud en Shadizar la Perversa, Conan ha llegado a adquirir cierta reputación como ladrón. Un mago estigio le ofrece diez monedas de oro si se hace con las joyas que el rey Yildiz de Turán ha regalado a Tirídates, monarca de Zamora. Pero cuando el joven bárbaro entra en palacio descubre que alguien se le ha adelantado. Las bailarinas portadoras de joyas han sido raptadas. Las pistas le conducen al desierto, a un encuentro con el Halcón Rojo, la bellísima jefa de un grupo de salteadores de caravanas, y con poderes nigromantes olvidados por el tiempo.
Valoración: 7/10

[Malum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like many pastiches, there are some good bits here and there, but it's certainly not perfect.

We have lizard men, evil sorcerers, and a couple of love interests (one of which is pretty bad ass in her own right) for our hero and his mighty thews to manhandle in various ways. I also liked how it takes place in and around Shadizar, which gave it a bit of a Middle-East/Arabian Nights feel. The epilogue was also really funny.

It got bogged down, however, by the fact that a large part of the book is basically a long journey where everyone is incessantly arguing with one another. It was like watching a family road trip unfold. The bad guy also acts like your typical moronic villain that would rather posture than kill anyone when he has the chance.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

To damn with faint praise: it's not that it's _bad_. It's just mediocre in that going-through-the-motions sense that makes you wonder if Conan ever sits back and asks himself, "Wait....Did I just experience something very similar to this adventure?"

The interesting ideas--one evil wizard hunting the other evil wizard, Conan is beaten to the theft but gets the blame--get snapped off after some good menace. The Plot MacGuffin does its MacGuffinry when the Plot Advancement Meter reaches the redline. The two love interests (I suppose you can call them that) have separate and varying outcomes based on the need to have both a bittersweet noble ending and a hard-bitten ironic one, and you can tell which one the sweet innocent woman gets and which the brash bandit queen gets.

It's verbose and predictable and while it goes for horror menace aspect the approach is ham-fisted and unoriginal. (Hey look the evil wizard is torturing women because evil wizard. And evil wizard wishes to reduce overhead costs by betraying his employees.) Howard would have taken a third of Jordan's dabblings and turned it into a really efficient novella.

The biggest crime is that Jordan introduces Karela as the Red Hawk, the bandit queen, and she displays absolutely no leadership quality that would justify the loyalty of her 'hounds'. While intended to be fiery and independent, the result is just petulance and emotionalism and careful coddling by the menfolk around her. There's nothing to distinguish her from the few other female warriors and supposed peers of Conan, and I'd be okay with her being a lousy fighter or being physically vulnerable as long as she showed some other quality: is she smarter than the men around her? Has she carefully invested their gains for their future? Can she, in fact, lead this band of idiots? There were early indications that she was able to shelter her band and hide in plain sight, but this capability vanished once the Plot Machine got going.

[Сибин Майналовски · Rating 5 out of 5]

Поредното много приятно парченце от огромната мозайка с лика на Конан. Симпатична загуба на време, не претендираща нито за епика, нито за сто хиляди незапомняеми герои, нито за каквото и да било от т.нар. „фентъзита“, дето заливат с помията си всичко от известно време насам. Просто класически Конан. И в това точно му е силата.

[Chip Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Jordan wrote this first Conan book in 1982, and it is a far cry from his later work on the Wheel of Time. That being said, I do think Jordan does a fair job of portraying the most famous sword and sorcery hero of all time. Conan represents an almost unstoppable force with a unique moral outlook, best described as an honorable thief. Jordan's battle scenes are bloody and quick, men are greedy and dirty, wizards are dark and sinister, and (best of all) women are sexy and usually naked.

'Conan the Invincible' tells of Conan accepting a job that turns out to be more than he expected. A strange wizard pays him to steal some jewels from the king of Zamora, but somebody beats him to it. As he tracks the thieves, he encounters a number of interesting characters that'll show up in following novels, including Kerala. Evil wizards and snake men pose quite a challenge to the young Conan, but nothing he can't handle.

Don't expect anything too deep or complicated here and you'll be pleased.

[Isen · Rating 1 out of 5]

What's that? Robert Jordan wrote a Conan? The guy most famous for a fourteen book series about women rolling their eyes and adjusting their petticoats? How on earth did that turn out?

Well, not great. We find our hero in Shadizar, some time after the Elephant Tower episode. Expect, it's not really our hero. A staple of Conan prose is the drawling descriptions of his rolling muscles, his panther-like gait, his cool and level-headed assessment of every situation. Corny, homoerotic, and absolutely indispensable. There is very little of that here. He may as well be some guy. A very chatty guy, who yells "No time!" as he chops up a group of bandits, to let them know that he has no time to chop them up. But more than enough time to play grabass with a fiery-tempered virago immediately after.

Which brings us to our next problem. Karela, the Red Hawk. Allegedly, a feared bandit captain and a great warrior. We get none of that; we get PMS. Conan's quest is about stealing some gems for some mage, except not because that mage tried to kill him, so he tries to save some slave girl instead or something, whatever. The author doesn't care, and neither should you. What the author cares about is putting Conan in the company of a woman who alternately wants to screw and skewer Conan, and whines about both in the interim. It's not clear why she's in the story at all. We have two magicians, a military captain, five slave girls, a serpent God-Demon, and Conan. Surely this is more than enough to spin a tale. But no, as soon as Conan leaves Shadizar on his quest, we are burdened with Karela and her band of minimum wage banditos, and have to put up with them until the very end. They don't add anything to the plot. They neither hinder nor aid Conan in any meaningful way. They sure as hell aren't fun to read about. But they're there.

Then, the denouement. A common trope of Conan is pitting a man armed with nothing than a biologically infeasible amount of muscles against some Lovecraftian monstrosity and seeing how he comes out in one piece. This allows us to see the multifaceted nature of the man; his cunning, as well as his brawn. Here he just sort of blunders in to Amanar's lair and hopes things turn out okay. They do.

Whoop. The only redeeming feature is the large amount of tits.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great action story and a marriage between two fantasy masters.

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Warrior of the Altaii I realized that it was time to investigate Robert Jordan's past before Wheel of Time. Of course, all his 7 Conan books that set him in the realm of fantasy play an important part in this past as they paved the way for the creation of his great work. The strange thing is that - as I was informed by the introduction of Warrior of the Altaii - at first the author refused to write a Conan book, as he had been asked to do before the film Conan the Barbarian was released but was eventually convinced to do so with great success.

In the first of these books the author does a great job of faithfully following the spirit of the previous books for this famous hero, with the raw writing, the fast-paced plot, the abundant supply of sex and violence and more generally with all the pros and with all the limitations that this entails, but that does not mean that we cannot find his own voice in all of this. It is, of course, a typical Conan story, who in search of personal gain he enters into an adventure and is called upon to fight against superior forces to defeat and to save a poor naked girl from their hands. However, things get more complicated when he meets on his way the beautiful Karela, leader of a band of robbers, who at the same time becomes his ally and his enemy. And I say complicated not only about the differentiation that creates in the plot but about the fact that she is a truly complete female character, something quite unusual for the genre. Of course, this is true for most of the characters that we get to know quite well, and all of these are part of the greater attention to detail which is, of course, one of the main features of the author. So in the end what we have is a characteristic Conan book, exciting and adventurous that has at the same time a noticeable differentiation and more maturity.

Αφού διάβασα το Warrior of the Altaii κατάλαβα ότι ήρθε η ώρα να ερευνήσω περισσότερο το παρελθόν του Robert Jordan πριν από το Wheel of Time. Σημαντικό ρόλο σε αυτό το παρελθόν παίζουν φυσικά και τα 7 βιβλία του με ιστορίες για τον Conan που τον καθιέρωσαν στο χώρο της φαντασίας και έτσι άνοιξαν το δρόμο για τη δημιουργία του μεγάλου του έργου. Το περίεργο είναι ότι - όπως πληροφορήθηκα στην εισαγωγή του Warrior of the Altaii - στην αρχή ο συγγραφέας αρνήθηκε να γράψει κάποιο βιβλίο για τον Conan, όπως του είχε ζητηθεί ενόψει της κυκλοφορίας της ταινίας Conan ο Βάρβαρος, αλλά τελικά πείστηκε να το κάνει με αρκετά μεγάλη επιτυχία.

Στο πρώτο από αυτά τα βιβλία ο συγγραφέας κάνει πολύ καλή δουλειά στο να ακολουθήσει πιστά το πνεύμα των προηγούμενων βιβλίων για αυτόν τον διάσημο ήρωα, με την ωμή γραφή, την γρήγορη πλοκή, την άφθονη προσφορά σεξ και βίας και γενικότερα με όλα τα θετικά αλλά και με όλους τους περιορισμούς που αυτό συνεπάγεται, χωρίς όμως, αυτό να σημαίνει ότι δεν μπορούμε να βρούμε και τη δική του φωνή μέσα σε όλα αυτά. Πρόκειται φυσικά για μία τυπική ιστορία του Conan, που αναζητώντας το προσωπικό κέρδος μπλέκει σε μία περιπέτεια και καλείται να παλέψει απέναντι σε ανώτερες δυνάμεις για να νικήσει και να σώσει ένα κακόμοιρο γυμνό κορίτσι από τα χέρια τους. Τα πράγματα, όμως, γίνονται περισσότερο περίπλοκα όταν συναντάει στο δρόμο του την πανέμορφη Karela, αρχηγού μιας ομάδας ληστών, που γίνεται ταυτόχρονα σύμμαχος αλλά και εχθρός του. Και λέω περίπλοκα όχι μόνο για τη διαφοροποίηση που προκύπτει στην πλοκή αλλά για το γεγονός ότι πρόκειται για έναν πραγματικά ολοκληρωμένο γυναικείο χαρακτήρα, κάτι αρκετά ασυνήθιστο για το είδος. Αυτό βέβαια ισχύει για τους περισσότερους χαρακτήρες που έχουμε την ευκαιρία να τους γνωρίσουμε αρκετά καλά και όλα αυτά εντάσσονται σε μία μεγαλύτερη προσοχή στη λεπτομέρεια που είναι φυσικά ένα από τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά του συγγραφέα. Οπότε στο τέλος αυτό που έχουμε είναι ένα χαρακτηριστικό βιβλίο για τον Conan, συναρπαστικό και περιπετειώδες που έχει ταυτόχρονα μία αισθητή διαφοροποίηση και περισσότερη ωριμότητα.

[Joshua Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty solid sword and sorcery fare. My first non-Robert E. Howard Conan story. While this does reach the heights of some of Howard's best, the was a pretty good story, and I felt Jordan captured the essence and tone that Howard employed, very well. A pretty quick read. 3.5/5

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a well-written novel that had a setting suited for fantasy, some fantastic grey-shaded characters, good action and a fitting ending.
But it made a travesty of Conan. The man portrayed here is neither a good thief, nor an agile warrior, nor owner of the grim humour that we have come to associate with him— on the basis of Howard's originals.
Above all, this novel seems to be strangely fixated with oaths. Also, it is rather tepid, despite insinuating lots of hot-blooded stuff. As a result, I am forced to consider this as a good work, but not great.

[itchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

he just left her to languish, the barbarian!
oh he is, isn't he?

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Conan pastiche, certainly not my last. Coming straight from REH, yeah this is certainly a step down but not bad, just not that good either.

[Gordia Leclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

An all around a solid Conan story. Jordan has a particular gift in writing action scenes and this story is far from short. Admittedly, the action scenes even feel repetitive after a while. Regardless has all the greatest hits - sorcerers, bandits, soldiers, lizard men, ritual sacrifice, and unspeakable gods from beyond the Universe.

[BooksTraveler · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Kevin Rubin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first time I've read a non-Howard Conan story in at least 10 years.

"Conan the Invincible" is a Conan novel by Robert Jordan, from before he started his own work with the Wheel of Time series, when he was still writing stories about Robert E. Howard's character. When it was first printed in the 80's the cover said "No one alive writes Conan better than Robert Jordan" but he's gone now, and the book certainly isn't any better...

In this we follow a less than 19 year old Conan, already a master thief, already letting most of his money slip through his fingers on wine and women, from the Desert district of Shadizar in Zamora on the trail of some gems and a slave girl he promised to free.

Along he way he twice saves the life of Karela, also known as the Red Falcon, the leader of the most feared bandits around Zamora, and then is captured by her band. As usual, he quickly goes from being captive to virtually a leader, but not quite in this case.

He shows some leadership and strategy skills by several times pitting enemies chasing the band against each other, with narrow escapes.

And a final confrontation with the evil sorcerer who uses the gems for magic protection and the slave girls as sacrifices...

Jordan's writing is pretty rotten and Conan didn't feel like Conan, not Robert E. Howard's Conan. In "The Invincible" Conan swears oaths to the gods and refuses to break them, even when he wishes he could to save Karela at the end, compared to Howard's Conan who wouldn't make oaths to the gods anyway, and if so, would still always do what he thinks is right anyway, gods be damned...

Jordan writes quite a bit, here and there, about the womens' breasts in it, whether it's Conan or the evil mage who's fondling or staring. Not that that's a bad thing, but it just makes the character not seem like Conan.

Overall, a mediocre fantasy book, that would work better by itself if he didn't bring down Conan.

[Doppelganger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a very refreshing read for me. It was a welcome throw back to the stripped down, raw style of fantasy that I haven't read in a while. Although I haven't read any other Conan books to date, Robert Jordan really seemed to nail the prominent barbarians character. The story is well written (of course, its Robert Jordan), fast paced and has an energy that will keep you turning pages, right up until the very end. There are other excellent characters in the book that I hope will make an appearance in his other Conan novels I will soon be reading; most notably Karela, the beautiful red haired brigand leader known as the Red Hawk, and Hordo, the one-eyed brigand who is Karela's right hand man.

If you've ever read any of Jordan's work or even if you haven't and just enjoy a quick read of some good, solid and raw fantasy, I would check out his Conan books. I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy every one in this series.

[Ronald Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in a series of novels about Conan that fill in gaps of the barbarian’s life between Howard’s original stories. Conan is but 18 years of age and still just a thief. He is hired by a sorcerer to steal five pendants given as a gift to a local king but the pendants are stolen by a group of pilgrims before Conan can retrieve them. He must follow and join forces with the Red Hawk and her band of marauders. Gods, demons, sorcerers, torture, serpents .... all the classic elements of Conan tales are here

[Bill Riggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caught between 2 warring sorcerers and an army of blood crazed lizard men Conan fights for his very soul, and treasure and women of course.

[Book Reading Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 / 5. I couldn’t help but try and read another book by Robert Jordan. It’s safe to say this book hasn’t aged well, in terms of modern fantasy and modern sensibilities.

I would estimate that the female characters in this book spend 90% of their time naked, which, I think I’m right in saying, isn’t an accurate reflection of how females spend most of their time in real life.

That said, if you can accept that this is a book of its time, that is no where near the standard of the wheel of time, then this is a quick heroic fantasy read

[Will Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Jordan did a great job understanding the character of Conan as I’ve seen in the past some authors don’t quite get what Robert Howard was going for. The story itself was fine. There were some painfully annoying characters such as “The Red Hawk” and the middle dragged a bit. It did have a great conclusion that wrapped everything up nicely .

[Ramón S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Penoso, parece escrito por Benny Hill.
Robert Jordan parece un adolescente desatado obsesionado con las mujeres ligeras de ropa .
Mejor ni empezar a leerlo. Decepcionante

[Jeremy Barnes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Robert Jordan good. Conan bad.

[Shivesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Jordan is best known for his Wheel of Time series, but recent bad press on that work plus his untimely death has cast a pall over that series for me. From what I understand it could have been a legendary fantasy epic, a Tolkien for our time (although there is no way he or anyone would be able to match Lord of the Rings). But I have heard much about Jordan's descriptive style and rhetoric. Plus I love Conan. Put 'em together and we have Jordan's first Conan novel from 1982, taking a tale from Conan's youth trade as a thief of Shadizar, a corrupt little city near Aquilonia, his future kingdom. This adventure begins when our young hero is hired by a disguised wizard to retrieve a treasure of jewels, which have been stolen from the King by a necromancer in the wilderness. Conan, fearing nothing, chases the treasure to the shadowed fortress of the evil sorcerer, which is guarded by thousands of reptile creatures 'from an age before Man.' On the way, our hero encounters plenty of naked women, an insecure bandit princess and her group of raiders, a Kingdom guard, primitive hillmen and foul sorcery.

This being Jordan's first Conan book you can tell he is gaining his feel for the character, who after all an icon in the fantasy genre. However, there is a huge difference in most Conan fare - this is the down and dirty fantastical, the so-called "sword & sorcery" epic. There are no elves or dwarves or magical beings to be seen. Mostly, the magic comes from evil sorcerors conducting terrifying spells using the blood of newborns and the horn of a unicorn, etc., so all things magical are to be distrusted. Indeed, it goes without saying that women are openly objectified in this genre: they are either seductresses or innocent waifs. There is no major complexity in the story or characters - they are archetypes of stuff told long before Howard conjured up Conan the Cimmerian. But these archetypes work well when the rules governing their world are obeyed and and stereotypes stay true to form. In fact it is quite entertaining.

The only real heroic power to be admired is the cold steel of the barbarian and his twisted sense of honor. In 'Conan the Invincible', our hero somehow sticks to his sense of honor throughout his adventures. Repeatedly, Jordan evokes Conan's various oaths and vows, and stays consistent in keeping them, to the very end of the book.

We know, of course, that Conan triumphs over all adversaries by the end of this story. His future is even hinted at by other characters, who remark that the barbarian will one day be a general, or 'mayhap a King'. Conan is nonplussed. He is a thief and will remain a thief, he says. But we all know better.

And thus, Jordan succeeds quite well in the bounds he has set for Conan. Following the tone and temper of Howard's original Conan opus, Jordan gives us another great story in a fantastical firmament already well populated by legends and stories. His writing is quite good here, filled with great imagery, description and savagery. However, he does stoop to telling, not showing. He frequently describes things as 'evil', instead of showing us why it is evil. For example, the necromancer's chamber 'permeates evil'. Well, okay. Not only that, some of the effects later on in the book regarding a god-demon and green smoke kind of reminds us of wacky and cheese-tastic '80s special effects... Hey, kind of like Arnold's movies! So this story fills the niche, and does it nicely.

We can only have so many expectations for a book that was undoubtedly dashed off quickly to the publisher in order to make the rent on time. In that spirit, this is truly a pulp fantasy novel of the best kind! For setting the right expectations and meeting them, Jordan gets 4 stars for his first Conan book.

If you are into high fantasy only, this may not be for you. If you like the Arnold movies, and cheesy sword tales, Jordan's book is great stuff. A light snack before plunging back into proper fantasy, 'Conan the Invincible' is still entertaining and well written.

Now I'll keep an eye out for Jordan's other Conan tales next time I am at the used bookshop.

[Scott Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not my first Conan, but it's my first Conan not in comics form. Howard created a fascinating character and world, and there have been numerous comics arcs over the years that I've really enjoyed, but I'd just never quite gotten into it enough to get around to the novels. Even at this point it was my completist streak as a collector that led to this novel as I'm a tremendous Wheel of Time/Robert Jordan fan and so I had to have everything he's written.

I enjoyed the novel. It's a fascinating world, Conan is well represented and avoids seeming like a the serious version of Gru the Wanderer that he reminds me of in the weaker stories I've read over the years. The handling of the character is realistic (within the world) and echoes of Howards own Barbarian Vs. Civilization theme resonates nicely under the service of a well-written adventure tale. I really enjoyed the book, and Jordan drew me in as I pressed on. He doesn't get a lot of credit as a writer, the way a Neil Gaiman does, or even Tad Williams and Patrick Rothfuss do. And He's not a writer in their league in the sense of his direct handling of the language. I think that's probably intentional, a conscious choice to be closer to Asimov's clarity or Orwell's clear pane of glass theory than the slightly more aesthetically wordy authors mentioned above. Still whether he's not quite as good at the sentence-by-sentence level as the best in the field, or whether it's a deliberate choice to chose clarity over extra beauty his tremendous skill as a story teller couples with a definitely more than adequate skill as a user of the English language. I don't think he gets the credit he deserves in part because he just isn't showy. Still there were lines here and there with a spare beauty that echoed the harsh, wild beauty of Howard's world and characters. I think what I liked best about the novel was discovering Jordan all over again in a new place with a new voice. I'll be reading more with anticipation now.

[Brandy Sharpe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Color me not impressed.

Things I liked: The Red Hawk, Karela
Some of it. I liked some of it.

Every single female character is generally naked. Unfortunately, Karela ends up naked, or half naked, for most of it. Kind of annoying. She has so much potential.

The story itself, so much potential.

Instead, you end up on page 250 with about 30 pages to go, feeling like you're reading some 1970's pocket calculator nerd's wet dream and wondering if you can have your time back.

At some point I was thinking, yeah, I'd like to read more Conan... And then realizing by the end of it, no, I don't want to read more Conan. Because it's all going to be a regurgitation of this.

A nerd boy's wet dream.

On the other hand, if we can have some actual character development, and I don't know, lack of objectification for characters like Karela. Hey, maybe.

[Brody Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really enjoying Robert Jordan's Conan stories. I've yet to read his adventures by other authors yet.

I enjoyed the back and forth banter between Conan and the Red Hawk's brigands as they searched for the Necromancer and the stolen slave girls and pendants.

Robert Jordan builds a great story and doesn't waste too much time being overly descriptive. In a way you can almost feel the urgency in Conan and his stress throughout the story. I could felt I could sense his irritation at the climatic battle between the Necromancer, Eater of Souls, and himself.

[Keith B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just 5 for nostalgia. One of the earliest Conan pastiches I read. This is Robert Jordan WAY before The Wheel of Time series!)
Don't last the first chapter sway you as it is a little over the top. t turns into a great Conan story and is one of the first to give Conan a little more realism. I think he portrayed him as a cocky 19 yr old because that pretty much describes most confidant 19 yr olds.

[Jeff Powers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true classic. This one felt nostalgic for me, and I am fairly certain I had read it as a youngling. If I hadn't, I would have loved it. Conan faces off against a foul necromancer and his vile reptilian army. I am a sucker for awesome lizardmen. A fun pulpy adventure with a heavier dash of fantasy than other Conan tales, right up my alley.