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Robert Jordan's Conan Novels #4,5,7 omnibus
The Further Chronicles of Conan
Long before Robert Jordan built his wildly successful Wheel of Time series (debuting with 1990's Eye of the World), the now-canonized writer cut his fantasy teeth borrowing time with Robert E. Howard's dark pulp-fiction hero, Conan of Cimmeria. Of the six novels Jordan contributed to the Conan series (well, seven, if you count the alt-history Conan the Destroyer), three have been assembled here for rerelease: 1983's Conan the Triumphant and 1984's Conan the Magnificent and Conan the Victorious. (The other three appear in Jordan's first collection, The Conan Chronicles.)
Anyone who writes Conan stories immediately draws the scrutiny of true believers--those of us who carted around tattered Carter and de Camp paperbacks in our book bags for years, drooling over the lusty Boris Vallejo covers (laughably tame compared to the Weird Tales covers from the '20s and '30s, where Conan first appeared). But Jordan gets it right, some argue better than anyone but REH himself, soundly grasping the first rule of Conan writing: the stories aren't about Conan; Conan is the story. A problematic hero, an almost elemental force, Conan exists beyond good and evil--the predictable wench-hoisting and head-cleaving of a good Conan tale are just a backdrop for the blue-eyed barbarian, which plays perfectly to Jordan's superlative descriptive skills.
This second Jordan collection is classic Conan: The Magnificent pits the Cimmerian against belligerent hill people, a golden-eyed fire beast, and bow-toting noble babe Jondra; in The Triumphant, Conan kicks butt on the evil god Al'Kiir and his sinister (and, of course, hot) servant Lady Synelle; The Victorioushas Conan wounded by a poisoned assassin's blade--and his search for an antidote leads him to Vendhya and a subterranean crypt guarded by the eight-armed beast Masrok and a host of demons. Crom and steel! --Paul Hughes
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
Robert Jordan
681 books17.2k followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 18, 2017
Jordan doesn’t really get Conan. But Jordan is a very fine storyteller. He stumbled in his first Conan book (Conan the Invincible) but his books got better as he went on. This omnibus is slightly better overall than the first.
Jordan may not quite get Conan, but his Conan is charismatic and clever, not just strong. The barbarian versus civilization theme is dropped entirely, even though Jordan’s Conan is young. I think I would probably have rather seen Jordan write an older Conan. Jordan’s Conan who doesn’t understand women is a little off. That was of course a theme Jordan would return to, and you see hints of several themes that Jordan would explore much more fully in his own epic fantasy: prophecy, the twisting of rumor, politics, a battle of the sexes.
Jordan writes Conan feminine foils with a lot of moxie, but superficial similarities notwithstanding, they are different in kind from Howard’s. Red Nails is the closest Howard story in structure to Jordan’s as far as the women go. There are usually at least two in Jordan’s stories, and at least one of those antagonistic to Conan throughout, even if she does succumb to her carnal attraction to him. The romance is very much in the vein of the bodice ripper. This sort of thing works much better in The Wheel of Time, where it is toned way down, there are (many, many) female POV characters, and the whole battle of the sexes thing is baked right into the worldbuilding.
Jordan isn’t the stylist Howard was, and he didn’t try to be. But his Conan books feature his finest prose, especially the books in this omnibus. He didn’t laden it with as much description as he later would. He gets a little overambitious with the vocabulary, but the results can be beautiful. Check out this description of Shadizar that was mistaken for a passage of Howard’s after I posted it to Twitter:
“Night caressed Shadizar, that city known as ‘the Wicked’ and veiled the happenings which justified that name a thousand times over. The darkness that brought respite to other cities drew out the worst in Shadizar of the Alabaster Towers, Shadizar of the Golden Domes, city of venality and debauchery.
“In a score of marble chambers silk-clad nobles coerced wives not theirs to their beds, and many-chinned merchants licked fat lips over the abductions of competitors’ nubile daughters. Perfumed wives, fanned by slaves wielding snowy ostrich plumes, plotted the cuckolding of husbands, sometimes their own, while hot-eyed young women of wealth or noble birth or both schemed at circumventing the guards placed on their supposed chastity. Nine women and thirty-one men, one a beggar and one a lord, died by murder. The gold of ten wealthy men was taken from iron vaults by thieves, and fifty others increased their wealth at the expense of the poor. In three brothels perversions never before contemplated by humankind were created. Doxies beyond number plied their ancient trade from the shadows, and twisted, ragged beggars preyed on the trulls’ wine-soaked patrons. No man walked the streets unarmed, but even in the best quarters of the city arms were often not enough to save one’s silver from cutpurses and footpads. Night in Shadizar was in full cry.”
Now that is how you introduce a city!
The Further Chronicles of Conan features Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Triumphant, and Conan the Victorious. It also includes a really beautiful map by Ellisa Mitchell based on Howard’s map. Mitchell also did the map for The Wheel of Time.
Conan the Magnificent
I saw Jordan’s widow and editor Harriet McDougal mention that in rereading Jordan’s Conan stories it was “very obvious to [her], looking back, that [Jordan] was brooding about the events in Afghanistan at that time.” This is the book that she was referring to, written in the middle of the Soviet-Afghan War (Leonard Carpenter’s Conan the Hero also shows the influence of that war).
An evil sorcerer is uniting the hillmen of the Kezankian Mountains. The influence of Aghan-style Islam is plain. Howard featured the “Afghuli” who lived in the “Himelian” mountains in The People of the Black Circle, but Jordan uses the Kezankian Mountains and its hillmen.
Conan the Magnificent also has an honest-to-God dragon, although Jordan uses the term “drake,” perhaps because Howard already used “dragon” to refer to a more dinosaur-like beast in Red Nails.
4 of 5 Stars.
Conan the Triumphant
Conan the Triumphant is almost a direct sequel to Conan the Defender, for all that Jordan wrote two other Conan books in the interim. It opens with Conan commanding the Free Company he formed in that book. Ianthe in Ophir is on the verge of collapse between a distracted, dying king and a scheming noblewoman sorceress. This might be my second least favorite of Jordan’s Conan books, although it is certainly better than Conan Invincible.
3.5 of 5 Stars.
Conan the Victorious
The plot of Conan the Victorious defies easy description. Conan kills a city guardsman in a dispute over a woman. Unfortunately, the guardsman was captain of the palace guard of a prince assassinated that night, and the twisting of rumor ties a “giant northlander” to that crime. He winds up fleeing Sultanapur and traveling to Vendhya, where he foils a wizard’s plotting. (It’s a lot more complicated than that.)
Conan the Victorious might be Jordan’s best Conan book. The plot is complex. The obligatory evil sorcerer is more fully fleshed out than per the usual, and without sacrificing precious pages of Conan. Jordan’s decadent, dangerous Vendhya is his best work of worldbuilding from his Conan books. It would presage his ability to both interweave Eastern elements into his worldbuilding in The Wheel of Time and to create the Seanchan and Shara Eastern-inspired empires. But he never wrote anything this dissolute in The Wheel of Time. It is unabashedly exotic, with shades of the old chinoiserie sub-genre.
4.5 of 5 Stars.
Jordan’s Conan books are fine to read in publication order, but according to his own chronology, the chronological order is: Conan the Destroyer, Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Invincible, Conan the Victorious, Conan the Unconquered, Conan the Defender, Conan the Triumphant.
Jordan may not quite get Conan, but his Conan is charismatic and clever, not just strong. The barbarian versus civilization theme is dropped entirely, even though Jordan’s Conan is young. I think I would probably have rather seen Jordan write an older Conan. Jordan’s Conan who doesn’t understand women is a little off. That was of course a theme Jordan would return to, and you see hints of several themes that Jordan would explore much more fully in his own epic fantasy: prophecy, the twisting of rumor, politics, a battle of the sexes.
Jordan writes Conan feminine foils with a lot of moxie, but superficial similarities notwithstanding, they are different in kind from Howard’s. Red Nails is the closest Howard story in structure to Jordan’s as far as the women go. There are usually at least two in Jordan’s stories, and at least one of those antagonistic to Conan throughout, even if she does succumb to her carnal attraction to him. The romance is very much in the vein of the bodice ripper. This sort of thing works much better in The Wheel of Time, where it is toned way down, there are (many, many) female POV characters, and the whole battle of the sexes thing is baked right into the worldbuilding.
Jordan isn’t the stylist Howard was, and he didn’t try to be. But his Conan books feature his finest prose, especially the books in this omnibus. He didn’t laden it with as much description as he later would. He gets a little overambitious with the vocabulary, but the results can be beautiful. Check out this description of Shadizar that was mistaken for a passage of Howard’s after I posted it to Twitter:
“Night caressed Shadizar, that city known as ‘the Wicked’ and veiled the happenings which justified that name a thousand times over. The darkness that brought respite to other cities drew out the worst in Shadizar of the Alabaster Towers, Shadizar of the Golden Domes, city of venality and debauchery.
“In a score of marble chambers silk-clad nobles coerced wives not theirs to their beds, and many-chinned merchants licked fat lips over the abductions of competitors’ nubile daughters. Perfumed wives, fanned by slaves wielding snowy ostrich plumes, plotted the cuckolding of husbands, sometimes their own, while hot-eyed young women of wealth or noble birth or both schemed at circumventing the guards placed on their supposed chastity. Nine women and thirty-one men, one a beggar and one a lord, died by murder. The gold of ten wealthy men was taken from iron vaults by thieves, and fifty others increased their wealth at the expense of the poor. In three brothels perversions never before contemplated by humankind were created. Doxies beyond number plied their ancient trade from the shadows, and twisted, ragged beggars preyed on the trulls’ wine-soaked patrons. No man walked the streets unarmed, but even in the best quarters of the city arms were often not enough to save one’s silver from cutpurses and footpads. Night in Shadizar was in full cry.”
Now that is how you introduce a city!
The Further Chronicles of Conan features Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Triumphant, and Conan the Victorious. It also includes a really beautiful map by Ellisa Mitchell based on Howard’s map. Mitchell also did the map for The Wheel of Time.
Conan the Magnificent
I saw Jordan’s widow and editor Harriet McDougal mention that in rereading Jordan’s Conan stories it was “very obvious to [her], looking back, that [Jordan] was brooding about the events in Afghanistan at that time.” This is the book that she was referring to, written in the middle of the Soviet-Afghan War (Leonard Carpenter’s Conan the Hero also shows the influence of that war).
An evil sorcerer is uniting the hillmen of the Kezankian Mountains. The influence of Aghan-style Islam is plain. Howard featured the “Afghuli” who lived in the “Himelian” mountains in The People of the Black Circle, but Jordan uses the Kezankian Mountains and its hillmen.
Conan the Magnificent also has an honest-to-God dragon, although Jordan uses the term “drake,” perhaps because Howard already used “dragon” to refer to a more dinosaur-like beast in Red Nails.
4 of 5 Stars.
Conan the Triumphant
Conan the Triumphant is almost a direct sequel to Conan the Defender, for all that Jordan wrote two other Conan books in the interim. It opens with Conan commanding the Free Company he formed in that book. Ianthe in Ophir is on the verge of collapse between a distracted, dying king and a scheming noblewoman sorceress. This might be my second least favorite of Jordan’s Conan books, although it is certainly better than Conan Invincible.
3.5 of 5 Stars.
Conan the Victorious
The plot of Conan the Victorious defies easy description. Conan kills a city guardsman in a dispute over a woman. Unfortunately, the guardsman was captain of the palace guard of a prince assassinated that night, and the twisting of rumor ties a “giant northlander” to that crime. He winds up fleeing Sultanapur and traveling to Vendhya, where he foils a wizard’s plotting. (It’s a lot more complicated than that.)
Conan the Victorious might be Jordan’s best Conan book. The plot is complex. The obligatory evil sorcerer is more fully fleshed out than per the usual, and without sacrificing precious pages of Conan. Jordan’s decadent, dangerous Vendhya is his best work of worldbuilding from his Conan books. It would presage his ability to both interweave Eastern elements into his worldbuilding in The Wheel of Time and to create the Seanchan and Shara Eastern-inspired empires. But he never wrote anything this dissolute in The Wheel of Time. It is unabashedly exotic, with shades of the old chinoiserie sub-genre.
4.5 of 5 Stars.
Jordan’s Conan books are fine to read in publication order, but according to his own chronology, the chronological order is: Conan the Destroyer, Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Invincible, Conan the Victorious, Conan the Unconquered, Conan the Defender, Conan the Triumphant.
July 13, 2021
Incomplete review (was tired write more on my thoughts later)
Jordan is the best in fantasy, other than Tolkien, whose prose descriptions of scenes are so detailed that you get sucked into world. He did this with the Wheel of Time, and again in the Conan Novels. Everything feels incredibly real moment to moment, like you're there amongst the characters sharing their adventures, to the point where you can get lost in it. I love all the little details that most authors wouldn't think to put in that make the world so much more rich.
However, the drawback to this when it is done awesomely, is when it becomes over description. And I felt more of this here than in the previous Conan book.
An example of this. Since every city, every palace is described in huge amounts of depth, you notice the descriptions start to repeat themselves.
Fluted spires, alabaster towers, golden domes, red tiled roofs, mosaics, hanging tapestry, bronze lamps or brazen lamps, zithars, flute music, tiny cymbals, diaphanous clothed women dancers, alleys smelling of offal, ec...
In the third story for instance Conan the Victorious, there are at least three major cities featured and they're all described like that for the most part. I swear I heard this description over and over again.
I wish those parts were as simple as the characters notice that the city B is city A only with large water pools running through it or some unique detail. And the story can move along.
Wheel of Time, which I love, suffered the same problem in the middle books once the action takes places in mostly in large cities and kingdoms. It's like the palaces of Caiherien and Camelyn. Unless they're significantly different from each other, like Legend of Zelda dungeons, I really don't want to slog through detailed descriptions of them.
Another example. The main antagonist uses these opal stones (forgot what they are called) placed in these tripod thingies where virgins bone dust, powders, potions are used to summon a demon. Could this not have been explained one time instead of every time the demon is summoned, we have to go through this ritual again?
Victorious was the weakest of the three. It feels like Robert Jordan got tired of writing Conan at this point and just wanted to get through it. It seems like a huge dip in quality from the other two stories, and the ending feels completely rushed, the villains just show up in the lost city, Conan and party track them through the huge temple. And how it ends, Conan pretty much didn't have to be there. The premise was a lot more interesting than what it ended up being.
That's the bad. But when its good, its really good. I prefer these to the few original ones I read from Howard (I know blasphemy), despite the tedious descriptions that happen from time to time. 'Further Chronicles...' has some great action, some laugh out loud moments between Conan particularly the women in his life. I love reading about the younger version of this character.
Magnificent is 3/5
Triumphant is a 5/5
Victorious is a 2/5
So a little more than 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Jordan is the best in fantasy, other than Tolkien, whose prose descriptions of scenes are so detailed that you get sucked into world. He did this with the Wheel of Time, and again in the Conan Novels. Everything feels incredibly real moment to moment, like you're there amongst the characters sharing their adventures, to the point where you can get lost in it. I love all the little details that most authors wouldn't think to put in that make the world so much more rich.
However, the drawback to this when it is done awesomely, is when it becomes over description. And I felt more of this here than in the previous Conan book.
An example of this. Since every city, every palace is described in huge amounts of depth, you notice the descriptions start to repeat themselves.
Fluted spires, alabaster towers, golden domes, red tiled roofs, mosaics, hanging tapestry, bronze lamps or brazen lamps, zithars, flute music, tiny cymbals, diaphanous clothed women dancers, alleys smelling of offal, ec...
In the third story for instance Conan the Victorious, there are at least three major cities featured and they're all described like that for the most part. I swear I heard this description over and over again.
I wish those parts were as simple as the characters notice that the city B is city A only with large water pools running through it or some unique detail. And the story can move along.
Wheel of Time, which I love, suffered the same problem in the middle books once the action takes places in mostly in large cities and kingdoms. It's like the palaces of Caiherien and Camelyn. Unless they're significantly different from each other, like Legend of Zelda dungeons, I really don't want to slog through detailed descriptions of them.
Another example. The main antagonist uses these opal stones (forgot what they are called) placed in these tripod thingies where virgins bone dust, powders, potions are used to summon a demon. Could this not have been explained one time instead of every time the demon is summoned, we have to go through this ritual again?
Victorious was the weakest of the three. It feels like Robert Jordan got tired of writing Conan at this point and just wanted to get through it. It seems like a huge dip in quality from the other two stories, and the ending feels completely rushed, the villains just show up in the lost city, Conan and party track them through the huge temple. And how it ends, Conan pretty much didn't have to be there. The premise was a lot more interesting than what it ended up being.
That's the bad. But when its good, its really good. I prefer these to the few original ones I read from Howard (I know blasphemy), despite the tedious descriptions that happen from time to time. 'Further Chronicles...' has some great action, some laugh out loud moments between Conan particularly the women in his life. I love reading about the younger version of this character.
Magnificent is 3/5
Triumphant is a 5/5
Victorious is a 2/5
So a little more than 3.5 out of 5 stars.
December 2, 2016
Finally complete! I read this book in its three separate installments, and let me say that I am 1) a Robert Jordan fan, and 2) a Conan fan, so this was a great synergy in my opinion. However, these are a far cry from the Wheel of Time, and if he had written these books in that style (or had been given the freedom to do so), I feel that this could have been a very different series. Maybe he wrote the WoT as a catharsis from this episodic sequence of mind-numbing stereotypes, but as a WoT fan first I read this series simply to get more of RJ. There's definitely some talent here, and I felt at times both a foreshadowing of the epicness of WoT as well as the authentic Conan flavor, but ultimately these were a little bit lackluster compared with modern epic fantasy. But for fans of Conan this is probably as good as it gets, unfortunately.
November 8, 2019
Delightful set of stories that I highly recommend for fans of 'sword and sandal' fantasies!
Jordon tells his tales with style, vividly describing the scenes and action with a graceful ease that leaves lesser writers (like myself) agog. The only weakness is in his characterazation. He portrays Conan as well as anybody, though nobody will ever perfectly duplicate Howard's original work. He does less well with the female characters, who are stereotyped and never wander far from their roles. That does not detract to any great extent from the stories, however, which focus on the conflict between Conan and whichever villian has the misfortune to get in his way.
A perfect vacation read!
Jordon tells his tales with style, vividly describing the scenes and action with a graceful ease that leaves lesser writers (like myself) agog. The only weakness is in his characterazation. He portrays Conan as well as anybody, though nobody will ever perfectly duplicate Howard's original work. He does less well with the female characters, who are stereotyped and never wander far from their roles. That does not detract to any great extent from the stories, however, which focus on the conflict between Conan and whichever villian has the misfortune to get in his way.
A perfect vacation read!
December 15, 2021
Robert Jordan's Conan is the first conan I've ever read and it is a great read.
You can tell he enjoys writing in that world and about these characters.
A must for any fan of the sword and sorcery genre.
You can tell he enjoys writing in that world and about these characters.
A must for any fan of the sword and sorcery genre.
June 10, 2022
Conan saved the world. Even if I know that I still wanted to finish the book and the story.
September 28, 2024
Robert Jordan leaves no bosom unheaved. Formulaic but fun.
October 19, 2014
This collection of tales was much better than the previous collection. Conan doesn't act like as terrible of a human being. Yes, he is still very much a chauvinist. Yes, he is still very much a man whore and womanizer. But in this collection of tales he comes off more like a James Bond and less like...well, his former self. I don't know how to explain this phenomenon, it just is...what it is.
Womanizing aside, Conan faced up against some really awesome villains in these three stories. Robert Jordan does such a great job of creating villains - his villains aren't placeholders, and they aren't cliche. They are unique and interesting, yet still fit perfectly into Conan's world.
My only real complaint with this collection is that as cool as the villains are, they are defeated relatively quickly. Usually within 1 or 2 chapters. Now I understand that these are short stories, and there is a need to keep things short - but for as much time as Jordan spends crafting these awesome villains - he spends very little time killing them off. It's almost underwhelming. This is a minor complaint and not enough of a complaint for me to remove a star. Maybe I am just too in love with the villains myself.....:)
Womanizing aside, Conan faced up against some really awesome villains in these three stories. Robert Jordan does such a great job of creating villains - his villains aren't placeholders, and they aren't cliche. They are unique and interesting, yet still fit perfectly into Conan's world.
My only real complaint with this collection is that as cool as the villains are, they are defeated relatively quickly. Usually within 1 or 2 chapters. Now I understand that these are short stories, and there is a need to keep things short - but for as much time as Jordan spends crafting these awesome villains - he spends very little time killing them off. It's almost underwhelming. This is a minor complaint and not enough of a complaint for me to remove a star. Maybe I am just too in love with the villains myself.....:)
October 8, 2009
The three stories are actually quite similar in the sense that the flow and the big picture are the same. There's the woman, there's the intermediate difficulty, and then there's the villain. On the whole, they're interesting enough short stories to stand on their own so, not too bad.
July 7, 2007
Not that great. I read it because it was written by Robert Jordan but it was not nearly as good as the wheel of time books.
March 19, 2008
Another Conan appetite pleaser...needs to be made into a movie like Lord of the Rings.
Read
August 23, 2008isbn,original
June 13, 2010
Not Jordan's best writing at all.
July 28, 2011
I love anything written by Robert Jordan - not the biggest Conan fan, but this book is worth reading for the fantasy and silliness! A good read so far!
June 26, 2012
Much better read than the Legends of Kern books that I had been reading. This author is a true master of Fantasy genre, and spun tales that were worthy of reading.
June 21, 2012
What can I say? Conan is Conan. I found that Robert Jordan did a good job in keeping with the style of the original Conan stories. I enjoyed all three stories.
June 12, 2012
Great sex scenes.
December 17, 2012
Very good interpretations of the Conan saga, though you still cannot beat the original Robert E. Howard stories.
February 20, 2015
Loved the Wheel of Time, Cheyenne Raiders and The Fallon Blood.
Didn't love Conan... I guess its just too much on the swords and sorcery side of the genre for me. Too many empty calories I guess.
Didn't love Conan... I guess its just too much on the swords and sorcery side of the genre for me. Too many empty calories I guess.
November 25, 2013
Very good pulp fiction stuff.
March 9, 2009
The best non Howard Conan stories.
February 15, 2014
Jordan is always a pleasure to read.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews