Conan the Invincible, Defender, and Unconquered

Over his short life, Robert Ervin Howard (1906 – 1936) wrote pulp fiction in a wide variety of genres but is most well-known for creating the character Conan the Barbarian in the fantasy subgenre of sword and sorcery whose father Howard is regarded as.

Howard's Conan stories were almost entirely short-form, published mainly in the Weird Tales magazine. Even the sole novel-length Conan story, The Hour of the Dragon, was in Howard's lifetime published as a serial. And I think short form fits the genre, at least Howard's works. With extended length, the simple story starts to drag and action gets repetitive. As short stories and novellas, the pulp stays entertaining.

I'm pretty sure I have read all of Howard's Conan stuff but other authors have added to the mythos later. Those authors include another Robert (by pen name), The Wheel of Time creator Robert Jordan (1948 – 2007). When Tom Doherty, the founder of Tor Books, acquired the rights to Conan in the early 1980s, he needed a new novel quickly. Jordan's wife Harriet McDougal recommended him to Doherty and out came Conan the Invincible.

Jordan then agreed to write five more original novels and a book adaptation of the film Conan the Destroyer. Of these seven novels, the first three were translated into Finnish in the early 2000s. And those three I could find in the libraries here; the second and third book being Conan the Defender and Conan the Unconquered.

Conan the Invincible is by far the best of them. It is such a good pastiche that it felt like I had read it before. There's much of same structures and atmosphere from stories like Queen of the Black Coast and The Tower of the Elephant in the novel. (I love the names of Howard's works.)

Howard apparently never had a clear picture when each story was set in Conan's life and purposefully wrote them out of a chronological sequence. People have later proposed different chronologies. Jordan, too, compiled one as he threw his own novels into the mix.

At least in these three, Conan is still young, barely an adult, yet already an experienced warrior and thief. Invincible takes place in Zamora, Defender in Nemedia, and Unconquered is mainly set in Turan. Conan, hailing from the gray and grim lands of Cimmeria in the north west, with this towering build and blue eyes, stands out from the locals in Zamora and Turan which can be considered to be part of the Middle East of the Hyborian Age. Each book had a map included, which is always nice.

Jordan used few returning side characters, giving the books a sense of continuity. I read them in publication order but that doesn't seem to be the chronological one -- which is weird because I didn't feel like I had gone back in the timeline in Unconquered. In the latter two books, the novel-length felt padded. There's too much inaction and going in circles. Even the barbarian himself felt annoyed by it.

There's a slight lore inconsistency in Invincible when the necromancer Amanar uses golden lotus dust to paralyze Conan. I, at least, recall the juice of the golden lotus being a potent healing concoction, though who's to say if it's the same when dried. But it's purple lotus that should have the paralyzing effect. I don't remember if that detail is from a Howard story or some other source, however.

The Finnish translations by Ilkka Äärelä switched the Cs in Cimmeria and Crom to Ks. I don't know if the decision was by Äärelä but for Crom it's unnecessary and for Cimmeria questionable. The latter makes sense in the Greek origin of the name and "Kimmeria" does sound better than "Simmeria" in Finnish. However, I think in all English Conan works with speech, Cimmeria is pronounced with an S. I wonder how Howard intended it.