Conan is once again sent on a mission, by the master spy of Aghrapur, with a sorceress and her comely swordmistress, to find a powerful jewel and destroy its wielder, a mad and evil sorcerer.
The plot of all the Conan novels is pretty much the same, it’s the style and enthusiasm that really make the difference, and the familiarity and inventiveness used to tell the story.
Which is why this novel falls somewhere in the middle, entertaining enough, but giving us nothing to remember. Green’s narrative style is somewhat lacking, seemingly missing out words or passages that make certain paragraphs difficult to understand exactly what he’s getting at. But even that can’t ruin a Conan book.
Sword and sorcery at its best, Conan is the epic hero, a man of grim determination and a way with woman that all men aspire to. Conan is the ultimate man, a pre-history James Bond, a hero in the truest sense.
Whilst this novel doesn’t give us the best that Conan has to offer, John Maddox Roberts may be the only one at novel length to do this (so far on my journey through the entire TOR collection), only Howard manages to make the stories actually seem like real magic.
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