Book: 'The Conan Chronicles: Volume 1' by Robert E Howard (originally 1932-1934)

(Due to recent events, writing is not the easiest activity to perform. Please bear with me.)

This is a highly curious reading experience. Robert E Howard effectively invented a whole subgenre of fantasy with the 'Conan the Barbarian' stories, originally published between 1932 and 1934. It was called 'swords and sandals', and was highly pulpy magazine fiction. He wrote magnificently, and made a major success of his creation, over that very short period, and the originality shines through even now in 2017. The only problem is that in the 1930s, sexism was still highly dominant in magazines such as 'Weird Tales', in which most of the Conan stories were published. The result is that this first volume is by turns brilliant and uneasy. The women are all 'supple', and very often end up stripped naked and trapped, in danger of all kinds of terrible depredations. However, and this is where the uneasiness kicks in, the stories are set in an ancient age, a period of time lost to history, where physical might ruled. As a result, wouldn't women constantly be in a far more dangerous position in that reality? However, if you can put all these struggles aside, and embrace the other more positive aspects of the female characters, then you're in for a very good ride! On the other hand, the strongest female characters tend to be evil... Maybe we can make a misogyny charge after all...

In this first volume, presented in internal continuity order, we encounter rogues robbing a wizard's tower, metallic giants bringing long dead cities back to life via the arcane arts, witchy twins usurping their sisters' thrones, gigantic snakes galore, monstrous sorcerors, cannibals and crooks, and more gory battles and steely thews than you would find in any other set of stories in existence. Oh, and a thousand uses of the word 'supple'. Howard may have been obsessed with the word 'supple' or it may have been imposed by editorial policy! Conan is a great character, a noble barbarian who makes the moral choice more often than not, in stark contrast to his 'civilized' contemporaries. That is the real core of these stories, that deliberate spearing of the hypocrisies of what we call civilized society. Never does the barbarian do anything dishonest, not even with ladies who promptly end up relying on him for their safety.

It's a great set of stories, albeit with some of the problems of their period,  and covers the first part of Conan's history. Next time, he will eventually end up as the sovereign of Aquilonia...

O.