More Stupidity Involving Amazon

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It’s late, and frankly I’m tired and don’t feel like writing a long rant tonight.  It would probably be incoherent anyway.  Besides, I’m planning a long rant next week and don’t want to vent my spleen prematurely.

I did want to point out something to you, though.  Earlier today, Passive Guy posted a notice about a group of different nonprofits in California urging a boycott of Amazon.  They’re upset about taxes.  Seems Amazon, which is not based in California, refuses to pay California’s state sales tax.  Good for Amazon I say.  Anyway, these people say we should boycott Amazon until they do.  And did I mention that this is a group of nonprofits, who don’t pay taxes in the first place?

Yeah, like the title says, stupid.  Passive Guy, who is a lawyer by training, gives a good breakdown as to why this is a dumb argument from a legal perspective.  There are a number of insightful comments about how this strategy, if it were to succeed, would hurt they people it’s supposed to help. 

It’s an interesting post, to say the least.   Go read it.   In the meantime, I’m compiling a list of  things I’m going to buy from Amazon.

Blogging Conan: The Tower of the Elephant

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Of all the Conan stories, this one, “The Tower of the Elephant”, is arguably the best.  It’s one of the shortest, but it contains some of the strongest writing Howard ever did.  For example, from the opening paragraph, in which Howard describes the the Maul, the part of town smart people don’t go into after dark:  “Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring.  Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings.  Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.” 

That’s only three sentences.  Yet Howard managed to pack more description in those three sentences, more atmosphere and sense of place, than most writers do in three paragraphs.  He does more than paint a word picture.  He places the reader in the middle of the scene.

It’s into this scene that a young man named Conan comes. 

The plot is pretty straight forward.  Conan overhears a kidnapper bragging in a tavern.  The man mentions a tower known as the Elephant’s Tower.  He questions the man, who tells him that somewhere in the tower, guarded by more than human guards, is a priceless jewel known as the Elephant’s Heart.  The tower is the domain of the sorcerer Yara. 

When Conan says that courage is what is keeping the local thieves from stealing the jewel, the man attacks him.  Conan kills him, then decides to rob the tower himself.  While doing so, he encounters another thief named Taurus, who has been planning the heist for months.  They decide to team up. 

Taurus is killed by one of the guardians of the tower, and Conan proceeds alone.  Normally in these posts about Conan, I would have stopped summarizing by this point, but I’m going to make an exception here.  It’s what happens when Conan finds the jewel that makes “The Tower of the Elephant” stand out among Howard’s work and among works of twentieth-century fantasy.

Conan discovers the chamber containing the Elephant’s Heart is occupied by a creature with the body of a man, green in color, and the head of an elephant, with the head being disproportionately large for the body.  The creature is blind.  He’s also been tortured for centuries by Yara. 

At first Conan is horrified, then as he realizes the creature, who we learn is named Yogah or alternatively Yag-kosha, is no threat he feels a great sense of pity for him.  Yogah explains how he came to be trapped there (mentioning Valusia and Kull’s world, although not specifically naming Kull), then asks Conan to aid him in his revenge against Yara.  Conan does as he’s asks.  He kills Yogah, then squeezes his heart out on the jewel he’d come to steal.  The blood soaks into the jewel as if it were a sponge.  Conan takes the jewel to a lower level in the chamber, where Yara is in a trance.  He awakens Yara and gives him the jewel along with a verbal message from Yogah.  He then makes his escape from the tower.

What?  You think I’m going to tell you all the details of Yara’s demise?  You’ll have to read the story for that.  It’s short, and more than worth your time.

It’s Conan’s reaction to Yogah, even more than Howard’s prose, that lifts this story above most others.  Howard did a lot with the Conan stories to establish the trope of the thief stealing an ensorcelled item, yet in one of the earliest Conan stories he breaks the very stereotype he’s establishing by adding a layer of depth and feeling and having the thief willingly give up the item he’s come to steal. 

The popular misconception of Conan is that he’s a ruthless killer with little or no empathy for the pain of others.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Yes, there are stories in which Conan’s bloodthirsty streak is the characteristic that is displayed most prominently.  But Conan is a three dimensional character.  The compassion he shows here, while harsh, is still compassion.  He acts out of mercy, not bloodlust.  Only by killing Yogah can Conan free him from the torment he’s suffered and allow him to take revenge on Yara.  Conan genuinely feels compassion for Yogah.

It’s easy to see why “The Tower of the Elephant” is considered a masterpiece.  If you haven’t read it, or read it recently, you owe it to yourself to do so.  Then compare the storytelling you find here with what you’ll see in the movie when it comes out this week.  See if there’s a difference.  We’ll talk more about that when I review the move.

Finally, a Voice of Reason

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Lee Martindale has weighed in on the ratio of male/female writers in Year’s Best lists and anthologies.  I tried to post a reply, but wasn’t able to.  I don’t have a Livejournal account, and I couldn’t figure out how to log in from Google, so I’m replying here.  Finally, someone with credentials who speaks with a voice of reason.  If you read my interview with Lee, this shouldn’t surprise you.

Blogging Conan: The People of the Black Circle

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“The People of the Black Circle” is one of Robert E. Howard’s best Conan tales, a masterpiece of action, adventure, and all around creepiness.  It was one of only four Conan tales included in the two volume The Best of Robert E. Howard published a few years ago by Del Rey.  It appears in The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Crimson Shadowsalong with “Beyond the Black River”.  The other two stories, “The Tower of the Elephant” and “Red Nails” are in The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2: Grim Lands.  We’ll look at all of them before this series is over.

It’s one of the longer Conan tales.  The story opens, as do many of the best of Howard’s work featuring Conan, with characters other than the Cimmerian, something we’ve discussed in other posts in this series.  In this case it’s the king of Vendhya, who is dying from some sort of supernatural afflication.  At his side are various slave girls (who seem to serve no other function than to cringe), a priest, and his sister Yasmina.  Waiting in another part of the city for the king to die are the nobleman Kerim Shah, who is working for the king of Turan to destablize the country, and a man name Khemsa.  He’s an acolyte the Black Seers of Yimsha, who are behind the supernatural assault on the king.  Before he dies, the king manages to tell Yasmina who is responsible for his death.

Conan appears later, when Yasmina has assumed the throne and vowed vengeance on the Black Seers.

The scene now shifts to a citadel outside a town on the border where seven raiders are being held prisoner.  Their captain, a foreigner named Conan, has demanded their release.  The deadline he has given is the next morning.  The commander of the citadel is writing a letter to the queen, telling her of the situation, when he has an unexpected visitor, the Queen herself.  She’s arrived secretly with a plan to use the prisoners as leverage to force Conan to destroy the Black Seers.  She tells the commander all this and retires to her chambers for the night.  Shortly afterwards, Conan climbs through the window of the commander’s chamber and demands the release of the prisoners.  It’s something of a face-off until Yasmina walks in unexpectedly.  She had seen Kerim Shah in the city, and suspicious of his presence, wanted to warn the commander about him.  Instead, she’s taken hostage by Conan, who flees out the window and into the night with her.  His intention is to use her to force the release of his men

And that’s when things take off.  Conan flees with Yasmina.  Khemsa, who is in love with Yasmina’s maid, allows himself to be talked into betraying his masters, the Black Seers, and try to make a power grab himself.  To do this, they magically kill the prisoners Conan came to free.  And Kerim Shah strikes out on his own to accomplish his mission.  And this is where you have to go and read the story for yourself if you haven’t already.

There are some truly creepy passages when Conan is in the citadel of the Black Circle.  By this time, Yasmina is their prisoner, and he’s trying to get her back.  If snakes give you the creeps, then this portion of the story will make your skin crawl.  Some of Howard’s best writing, in any of his work, is here inside the citadel, where Conan and his companions fight the members of the Black Circle. 

In the end all of the political subplots are tied up nicely.  Conan wants Yasmina to go with him and share a life of robbery.  This in my opinion was one of the time Howard handled a female character with depth and subtly. 

Rusty Burke said the purpose of The Best of Robert E. Howard was to give readers, particularly readers who weren’t familiar with the breadth and depth of Howard’s work, a chance to see just how versatile a writer he was.  Because of that, there were limits on how many stories could feature series characters, such as Kull, Conan, and Solomon Kane.  It’s easy to see why “The People of the Black Circle” made the cut.

It’s Easier to Take a Crown Than Keep it

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The Crown of the Conqueror
Gav Thorpe
Angry Robot Books
432 pp., $7.99 paper, $5.99 ebook

If you haven’t read the first volume in this series, The Crown of the Blood, I’m giving you fair warning that I’m going to have at least one major spoiler in this review.

When I reviewed The Crown of the Blood, I really enjoyed it but had a few quibbles about a couple of things.  Overall, though, I thought it was a good book.  The Crown of the Conqueror, on the other hand is a very good book.  The  gripes I had about the first book, which I considered to be relatively minor, aren’t present in this one.  The pace moves at what feels like a breakneck speed, which is an impressive trick for Mr. Thorpe to pull off, considering 3 1/2 years pass from the first page to the last.

The first book ended with a real cliffhanger (this one does, too), and in the opening chapter things pick up right where they left off.  Here’s the spoiler, which is included in the sample at the end of the review.  At the end of The Crown of the Blood, when Ullsaard put the crown on his head, he hear a voice.  Askh, founder of the empire and dead for two centuries.  It seems that every king since Askh has really been…Askh.  When the new king puts on the crown, Askh takes over and the original inhabitant of the body ceases to be in control or even be aware of what’s happened.  By interrupting the line of succession, Ullsaard has messed up that process so that while he can hear Askh and carry on a conversation with him, he’s still in control.  Askh is along for the ride, experiencing everything Ullsaard does but unable to influence events.  This leads to some complications of Ullsaard’s love life. 

Ullsaard soon learns that taking the crown and wearing it are two different things, and one is much harder than the other.  He has to deal with fighting a war without a lot a support from the nobles unless they can gain a political or financial advantage.  He has to fight more than one war at once.  And he has to deal with betrayal and revenge.

The supporting characters that gave The Crown of the Blood so much of its depth are back, although some of them don’t survive until the end of the book.  In fact, that adds to the suspense.  Once I realized Thorpe would kill characters who were playing a major role in some of the subplots, the book became a lot less predictable.  To me this added to the realism, since most things in life are not resolved in a quick and easy manner.  They’re messy with lots of false starts and missed opportunities.  Something the landship owner Anglhan finds out.  The descent of his character, to me, was one of the most fascinating parts of the story.  Anglhan’s story is unresolved, something that aggravates me to no end.  That’s a compliment, not a criticism.  A good writer makes the reader want more, and I want to find out what happens to Anglhan.  Hopefully it will involve flaying and impaling.

One of the criticisms of second books in trilogies is that they are often fillers between the setup in the first book and the finale in the third.  Gav Thorpe avoids that here, something he writes about on his blog.  Others may disagree with me on this point (it’s a free country and they have a right to be wrong), but I think he succeeded admirably.  We learn more about the history of this world, and about the Brotherhood in particular.  We also learn about Askh and how he came to found the empire.  I was reminded of some of the themes of H. P. Lovecraft here, and that’s a good thing because this gives a whole new light on the events of the first two books.  I won’t spoil any of the details, but this part of the story should become more dominant in the next book, The Crown of the Usurper. 

Unfortunately that book isn’t due out for another year.  It’s going to be a long wait.  If you like stories of empire and conquest, particularly those modeled on the Roman Empire, then this series will probably be your cup of tea.

For your convenience, I’ve included the publisher’s sample below.  (With permission of course.)

A Review of the Warrior Women in Black Gate

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New Epoch Press, $18.95
I wrote a post about Bud Webster’s column on Tom Reamy a couple of days after receiving the magazine in the mail, but since then I’ve been busy with other projects to read much of the fiction in the current issue of Black Gate.  On the flights home from my meeting last week, I made sure to rectify that omission.  Since it looks as though Black Gate will be an annual publication now, I’ve decided rather than read it all at once, I’m going to ration it.  That way the wait for the next issue won’t be so interminable.
This issue has as its theme Warrior Women.  The stunning cover by Donato Giancola kinda makes the point.  Eight of the twenty-one stories (not counting the excerpt from The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones) are part of this theme and have their own separate table of contents.  They’re scattered throughout the volume rather than having their own section.  I’m not sure what I make of that editorial decision, considering most issues with special themes I’ve seen tend to group the themed stories together, although I have no problem with Mr. O’Neill arranging them this way.  He’s also taken a pretty broad definition of warrior woman, including stories with characters that don’t fit the image of the woman on the cover.  Let’s take a quick look at them, shall we?

First up is “The Shuttered Temple” by Jonathan L. Howard, featuring the return of his thief for hire, Kyth, who made her first appearance in “The Beautiful Corridor” in BG 13.  Of the two, I think I preferred the first story because it had more humor, but this is still a clever tale well worth your time, even if it is somewhat darker in tone.  In both stories Kyth is required to survive by her wits, rather than her brawn or skill with a sword.  I’m not sure I would consider her a warrior based on what I’ve seen of her so far, but I’m certainly open to having my mind changed by further adventures (that’s a hint Jonathan and John).  Mr. Howard has an inventive imagination, and I enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzle of the temple in this one.
Next is “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” by Sarah Avery.  This has a traditional warrior woman, who is leading an army in revolt against her former kingdom.  It’s part of a larger story arc, with a novel being shopped to publishers and a novella scheduled to appear in a future issue of Black Gate.  That may have been why I felt like I was missing something a few times.  Still Ms. Avery did a much better job than many writers would have done with this subject.  The heroine, Stisele, has to face her old mentor on the battlefield, making this a story of greater than expected emotional depth.  I look forward to Stisele’s further adventures.
Paula R. Stiles tells the tale of a sorceress who challenges the Queen of Hell for the soul of her husband in “Roundelay”.  It seems the woman’s son died of fever and her husband went in pursuit of the boy’s soul only to end up trapped himself.  The story takes place on a flying ship over an ocean.  There are a couple of supporting characters, and Ms. Stiles does a great job of fleshing them out so that they are more than just stock characters from central casting.
“The River People” by Emily Mah is the story of a young woman, Sora, and her blind mother who have fled their homeland and have been taken in by a tribe of the River People.  Of course they’re more tolerated than accepted (I had to wonder if Ms. Mah had ever moved to a small town, she captured the feeling of being an outsider in a closed community so well).  In order to survive, Sora attempts to enter the warrrior’s trial and become a warrior for the tribe.
Maria V. Snyder’s heroine, Nysa, in “Cursing the Weather” is probably as far from the sterotypical warrior woman as you can get.  She’s a young girl working in a tavern, trying to earn enough money to buy the medicine needed to keep her dying mother alive.  Then a weather wizard moves in across the street, and things begin to change.  Ms. Snyder has training in meteorology, and she puts it to good use here.  The fantastic is pretty minimal in this story, and the conflict, while deadly, in primarily nonviolent.  I wouldn’t have considered this one to really fit the theme of warrior woman.  In spite of that, I think I enjoyed it the most.  I’m going to be checking out more of Ms. Snyder’s work.
“The Laws of Chaos Left Us All in Disarray” by K. Hutson Blount is one of the darker, if not the darkest, of the warrior woman stories.  This one concerns a woman acting as a guide to some pilgrims on their way to a shrine.  Only for some reason they keep getting attacked by various unpleasant creatures.  Perhaps one (or more) of the group is hiding something?  The impact of this story comes in its final paragraph.
“World’s End” by Frederic S. Durbin pits two women, one a fighter and a killer, the other a princess on a quest, against each other in a confrontation that can only end with one of them dead.  While I was initially a little dissatisfied with the ending, upon further reflection I found the story to be a meditation on the conflicts each woman has to deal with in the different roles she plays in life.
The final story of the theme is “What Chains Bind Us” by Brian Dolton.  In this one a young conjuror fights a supernatural battle against a ghost and the conjuror who sumoned him.  This one reads like its part of a series.  If so, I would like to read some of the other entries.  The author keeps raising the stakes with each encounter with the ghost.  The character, Liang Zao, is different from your typical fantasy heroine.  I won’t say how because it will give away too much. 
So, to recap.  Some of the stories relating to the issue’s theme stretch the definition of warrior woman pretty far.  Still, it’s not often that I can find eight stories by eight different authors (four men and four women if anyone’s counting) in a single venue that I enjoyed this much.  Usually there’s at least one or two that don’t click with me.  Not here.  Every selection was a winner.  (So were the two stories I read that weren’t part of the theme.)  There are no chain mail bikinis or comic book bodies among these women.  Instead, they have brains, wit, courage, faith, and love.  If I had to choose, I’ll take those qualities over bouncing bosoms and ridiculous underwear any day.
If you haven’t picked up a copy of Black Gate, this issue is a good place to start.  I’ll have more to say in a future post about the rest of the stories.  The previous issue had three novellas, a length I greatly enjoy.  All the fiction seems to be short stories with one or two novellettes.  While I miss the novellas, if the rest of the fiction is as good as what I’ve read so far, I won’t make a fuss about it.

Blogging Conan: A Witch Shall be Born

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It’s been hectic the last few weeks.  I just finished two back to back conferences at which I made presentations and will fly home tomorrow.  As a result, I’ve not posted much other than a review at Futures Past and Present of a Jack Vance novel I read on the plane.  Things should start to pick back up.

“A Witch Shall be Born”, although not without flaws,  inspired the Margaret Brundage cover seen on the left.  This is one of my favorite Conan stories, even with the flaws.  Some of the strongest imagery in the whole series can be found in this story.  Also some of the most unbelievable protrayals of women.
The story opens as Taramis, the queen of the small city state Khauran, is awakened during the night.  She had a twin sister at birth, Salome, who was left to die in the desert.  A curse lies on the royal family of Khauran, so that every century a child is born with a cresecent shaped birthmark on her chest.  The child will become a witch and do much damage to the kingdom.  When Taramis and Salome were born, Salome had the mirthmark and was left in the desert to die.  Found by an eastern sorcerer returning home from a visit to Stygia, she was raised to become a powerful sorceress.  Now she’s come back to take what she claims is her birthright. 

How she can speak the language without any accent is never addressed, which was something of a stumbling block for me.
With Salome is a mercenary captain named Constantius.  He had entered the city a few days ahead of Salome and had publicly proposed marriage to Taramis.  She of course rejected his proposal.  Constantius joins Salome.  After a brief discussion, in which Salome reveals that she intends to take Taramis’ place, she goes to declare herself queen, leaving Taramis to be raped by Constantius.
She orders all the soldiers to assemble in the city’s central square unarmed.  They all do, except for the Queen’s guard, who are led by a certain Cimmerian.  They show up armed.  Conan doesn’t fall for the trap.  Instead he declares Salome an imposter.  The Queen’s guard are butchered, and Conan is crucified by Constantius outside the city gates.
One of the guard escapes, a young man named Valerius, whose devotion to the queen comes across as though he’s in love with her.  His lover Ivga tolerates this.  Why, I don’t know.  He clearly cares more for the queen than he does for her.  Ivga comes across as child-like, the way Muriela did in “The Servants of Bit-Yakin”.  This was the other portrayal I thought was unrealistic.
Still, this is a better than average story.  One of the things that Howard does is to tell the story from the viewpoints of Taramis, Salome, and Valerius as much as from Conan’s viewpoint, if not more.  In fact, we don’t actually get a passage from Conan’s viewpoint until the crucifixion scene.  A variation of this scene, by the way, was in Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  While this approach does lend itself to some infodumps, it has the advantage of defining Conan’s character through the eyes of others.  One thing I thought interesting was how Conan treated Taramis.  I’ll not elaborate on that, at least not in this post, since I’m trying not to give too many spoilers away.
There’s plenty of action and intrigue, with touches of the civilization vs. barbarism theme Howard included in many of the Conan works.  The crucifixions are especially well done, and the images I Howard’s words formed in my mind the first time I read this story are still with me, a quarter of a century later.  This one is worth checking out.

Blogging Conan: Jewels of Gwahlur/The Servants of Bit-Yakin

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This was one of the last Conan stories Howard wrote.  Only four more would follow, but those four contain two of his greatest masterpieces, “Beyond the Black River” and “Red Nails.”  Howard’s title was “The Servants of Bit-Yakin”, but Farnsworth Wright changed the title to “Jewels of Gwahlur” when he published it in Weird Tales.  That’s the title it was known by until the Wndering Star/Del Rey editions, which restored the original title.  However, there are some collections in print which are using the Weird Tales versions of Howard’s stories, so you might find it under either title.  Unlike some of Howard’s work, there’s no difference between his preferred version and the version that appeared in Weird Tales.

This isn’t one of the better Conan stories.  The plot requires swallowing a pretty large pill, namely that a treasure as valuable as the Teeth of Gwahlur (as they’re called in the story) could remain unmolested in a lost jungle city for so long.  Also, the heroine is way too hysterical.  She’s certainly no Belit.
The basic setup involves Conan working as a mercenary in the Black Kingdoms.  He’s there because he’s heard rumors of a great treasure in a lost city, Alkmeenon, and is waiting around to find out the details.  When an old enemy, the STygian Thutmekri, shows up and bribes some of the priests to take him to Alkmeenon, Conan is able to find out where it is.  Knowing Thutmekri is working for the kingdom of Zembabwei and the whole thing is a set-up for an invasion, Conan leaves ahead of them.
Alkmeenon is hidden in a natural amphitheater surrounded by sheer cliffs.  Not knowing the location of the secret entrance to the valley, Conan climbs the cliffs.  Near the top he encoutners a small cave in which he finds a mummy holding a tube containing a parchment.  Of course he takes it.  This was one of the more powerful images in the story for me.  Conan is hundreds of feet above the ground and comes face to face with a corpse.
I’m a sucker for lost city stories, particularly those that take place in jungles.  The thing that makes this one unique is that so much of it is set in a series of caves and underground passages beneath the city.  We know that Howard was inspired by a visit to Carlsbad Caverns when he wrote this one. 
Another powerful scene, occurring about halfway through the story, is when Conan is attempting to sneak up on one of the people who have not followed but preceded him to the valley.  Knowing the location of the secret entrance has its advantages.  It’s dusk, and Conan sees the white of his face contrasted against the darkness of the forest.  When he approaches the man, Conan discovers its only the man’s head he sees, tied to a branch by the hair.  The valley is supposed to be deserted…
“TheServants of Bit-Yakin” (or “Jewels of Gwahlur” if you prefer) isn’t the best Conan story, but it isn’t the worst either.  It’s simply an adventure story, and a better than average one at that.  While there are some problems with the characterization and some of the plot details, it still has its moments.  In my opinion, it’s worth reading.

Blogging Kull and Conan: Of Axes and Swords

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And so we reach the end of our look at the Kull stories (almost; I’ll have some general comments in a separate post) and the first of the Conan posts.  I’m looking at both of these because the first Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword”, is a rewrite of an unsold Kull story, “By This Axe I Rule!”.

“By This Axe” isn’t a bad story, but it isn’t a particularly good one, certainly not be the standards Howard had set in some of the other Kull installments.  There are two main aspects to the plot.  First, a group of dissatisfied men, two noblemen, a guard captain, and a poet, have recruited a former diplomat turned bandit, Ascalante, to help them overthrow Kull.  This portion of the story is the better half. 

The second portion of the plot concerns a young nobleman who wishes to marry a young slave girl who happens to be owned by one of the conspirators.  This type of situation seems to be a recurrent theme in the Kull series, mostly in stories not published in Howard’s lifetime.  Kull’s Councilor Tu insists that for a nobleman to marry a slave is simply not done; it would violate a centuries old law.

Kull sneaks out of the palace to wander the woods for a few hours.  He feels like a slave himself.  There’s a great deal of discussion on Kull’s part at various places in the story about how holding a throne is much more difficult than taking it.  During his walk in the woods, he encounters a young girl weeping.  Not recognizing him, she tells him that she’s a slave in love with a nobleman, who went to the king to request permission to marry.  Kull is sympathetic, but argues the king has to abide by the laws himself.

The rest of the story concerns the conspiracy attempting to assassinate Kull and failing.  In the end, he uses his axe to smash the stone tablet on which is written the law forbidding slaves and nobility to marry.  He declares that he is the law.

It’s easy to see why Farnsworth Wright rejected this story when Howard submitted it to Weird Tales.  The whole romance subplot basically ruins the story.  The slave girl comes across as both childish and childlike.  She speaks of being spanked as punishment by her master at one point.  She’s weepy and clingy.  And her dialogue reminds me of early Shirley Temple movies or child characters in Victorian novels, all sweetness and earnestness.  There’s was no way I was buying that this girl and the nobleman were madly in love.  That whole aspect of the story had an almost pedaeophilic tone to it.  I’m sure Howard didn’t intend anything of the sort.  It’s just a combination of his still developing skill as a writer and my twenty-first century cultural concerns coming together.  Still, the whole thing gave me the creeps.

One thing did make me wonder just what Howard was dealing with in his own life when he wrote this story. At one point the girl deeclares: “Why should laws not change? Time never stands still! Why should people today be shackled by laws which were made for our barbarian ancestors thousands of years ago-” It sounds like Howard may have been feeling a little bit shackled and enslaved by the culture he was living in. I know from first-hand experience that small towns in that part of Texas can be extremely conformist in their outlook, and in the 1920s I’m sure it was much worse. Howard was in his early 20s when he wrote this, and I suspect was still feeling some of the natural rebellion of youth that questions why things have to be the same as they were. This is entirely speculation on my part, but it fits with what I know about Howard and my experiences in similar environments.
 

“The Phoenix on the Sword”, while not one of Howard’s best stories, and certainly not the best of the Conan tales, is clearly the work of a more mature writer.  Howard drops the whole romance subplot, and instead introduces a villain whose hand would be felt in a couple of other stories, the Stygian sorceror Thoth-amon.  He’s a slave to the bandit as the tale opens, having lost a ring by which he maintains his power.  Of course he finds it, and uses it to wreack his revenge by sending a creature from the Outer Darkness against the bandit.  This is the only thing that saves Conan.  The creature attacks during the assassination attempt.  In the Kull story, it’s the nobleman who saves the day.
There’s also a new scene in which Conan in a cream meets a wise man who died fifteen hundred years earlier.  This man tells Conan that his fate and that of Aquilonia, the kingdom Conan rules, are entertwined.  He places a phoenix emblem on Conan’s sword, which is what allows Conan to kill the supernatural creature.
The scenes retained from “By This Axe”, portions of the conspiracy, Conan complaining about the duties of ruling, and the assassination scence are to a large extent unchanged except for some of the names.  Only when Howard made significant changes to the plot, such as the addition of the creature in the fianl fight, does he engage in any extensive rewriting.  Since the parts he retained were by far the better passages, this doesn’t hurt the story any.
Unlike the Kull series, the Conan stories weren’t written in any kind of chronological order, but jumpmed about throughout the character’s life.  Also, Kull has no interest in women.  Conan has plenty.  Even a casual reading of the two series will reveal that, while there are similarities, Kull isn’t simply Conan-lite.
So, we’ve looked at all the Kull stories mostly in the order they appear in the current edition from Del Rey.  I’ll be jumping around more with the Conan stories, looking at whichever one I’m in the mood to read at a given time.  I’ll also be giving fewer spoilers in the Conan posts.  With the movie less than a month away, I suspect I’ll pick up one or two new readers.  I don’t want to spoil any of the fun for those who haven’t read the originals.