Netflix developing a CONAN THE BARBARIAN project

Netflix are developing a fresh TV version of Conan the Barbarian. Amazon were developing a project two years ago with Ryan Condal, but dropped it after greenlighting both Lord of the Rings: The Second Age and The Wheel of Time.

Frank Frazette's artwork for The Frost-Giant's Daughter, chronologically the earliest Conan tale.

The new project is much more nebulous than the Condal idea, which was to directly adapt Robert E. Howard's stories in chronological order. The three previous movies based on the character - Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the rebooted Conan the Barbarian (2011) starring Jason Momoa - and a short-lived 1997 live-action TV show used the character and took some inspiration from Howard's stories but created new situations and stories.

Netflix are developing a slate of science fiction and fantasy properties, including a live-action version of SF anime series Cowboy Bebop and a rebooted adaptation of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia books. They are also shooting a second season of The Witcher, based on Andrzej Sapkowski's books.

Conan the Barbarian has seen a renewed lease of life in the last few years, with successful board games, video games and new comic books based on the character being released to a mostly positive reception.

Ryan Condal and his team are no longer available to helm the series, as they are instead in charge of the greenlit Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon at HBO, which is currently deep in pre-production and casting.

Amazon CONAN THE BARBARIAN TV show will directly adapt the short stories

Whilst there's been lots of news and rumours about Amazon's two big epic fantasy TV series-in-the-planning, a Lord of the Rings prequel show and an adaptation of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, not much has been said about their announced Conan the Barbarian show, leading some to wonder if it had been put on the backburner. Not so, with the project stepping up active development.

Frank Frazetta's artwork depicting the events of The Frost-Giant's Daughter.

Colony co-creator Ryan Condal is working on the project as producer, writer and showrunner. With Colony recently cancelled after three seasons, Condal is now focusing his attention fully on Conan. Encouragingly, he has confirmed that the series will try the unusual tactic of actually adapting Robert E. Howard's short stories rather than simply putting Conan in a new situation, the tactic employed by all three of the feature films released about the character.

The show's pilot episode will adapt The Frost-Giant's Daughter, chronologically the earliest story of Conan's life. In this story, the teenage Conan, not long peacefully departed from his homeland of Cimmeria, is confronted by a spectral creature who lures him into an ambush.

The ambition of the series is to apparently adapt all of the Howard Conan stories, interspersed with new material forming a serial element to better connect the stories together (this will also be necessary as there are only 26 Howard short stories, and presumably the ambition will be for the show to last longer than 26 episodes). The ultimate goal is to cover all of Conan's life up to his reign as King of Aquilonia.

RIP Jan Kantůrek

Jan Kantůrek, a Czech translator of science fiction, fantasy and other genre novels and comics, has passed away at the age of 69.

Kantůrek began his publishing career in 1975, working for Artia Publishing in Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia. In 1990 he switched to working for Aventinum Publishing's marketing department, which involved him using his English language skills. In 1992 he became a full-time translator. He gained early acclaim for his work on the Conan the Barbarian books by Robert E. Howard (and other authors, such as L. Sprague de Camp).

However, Kantůrek gained his largest success in adapting Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels into Czech. Pratchett's novels, which feature puns, wordplay and historical references which may be obscure outside the UK and US, are notoriously had to translate and early on Pratchett saw his translators as collaborators, seeking out the best-recommended in each language who could not only literally translate the books, but also find alternative references and historical nods that would make sense to those audiences. This required an extraordinary level of trust by the author. Kantůrek gained Pratchett's approval early on, and was allowed to supplant Pratchett's footnotes with his own commenting on the action from a Czech perspective.

Pevnost magazine wrote the following: 

The following lines are very painful, but they must be heard. Jan Kantůrek, one of the best domestic translators he gave in Czech life Terry Pratchett's Discworld, and the second chairman of Jules Verne Club, died yesterday. My condolences to the family and all his loved ones. Thank you so much for the amazing work, Master, and we still believe that one day turtles will learn to fly :(❣️

Condolences to Mr. Kantůrek's family and friends. The work of translating SFF is an oft-overlooked but essential part of the process, bringing authors' work to a much larger audience across the world. But all accounts, Jan Kantůrek was one of the best.

Amazon options CONAN THE BARBARIAN TV show

Amazon has made the surprise announcement that it is developing a TV series based on Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian short stories.

The project appears to be in an advanced stage of planning: Ryan Condal (Colony) is writing and producing, whilst Miguel Sapochnik (Game of Thrones, Altered Carbon) will direct the first episode. He will also act as executive producer and may return to direct more episodes later on. Warren Littlefield (The Handmaid's Tale, Fargo) will act as executive producer and the main organisational force on the series.

Condal and Sapochnik are long-term Conan fans and have expressed an interest in returning the character to his literary roots, hewing closer to Robert E. Howard's books than the existing movies.

There are three films based on the books already: Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), the first of which was well-received but criticised by Conan fans for inventing a needlessly tragic backstory and not engaging much with the source material. Conan the Barbarian (2011), starring Jason Momoa, was praised for having a better and more faithful lead actor, but the movie was otherwise unremarkable.

There was also a short-lived, terrible 1990s action series, Conan the Adventurer, which history has mercifully mostly forgotten. Schwarzenegger has recently been saying that he may return for a new Conan movie set in the latter period of Conan's life as charted by Howard, when he rules the Kingdom of Aquilonia. What impact the Amazon TV deal has on that is unknown.

There has been renewed interest in the character recently, mainly down to the success of the Age of Conan MMORPG and a series of successful board games and comic books. Marvel recently reacquired the comic book rights, hoping to recapture the success of their 1970s and 1980s run when Conan was a surprisingly big success for them.

Amazon are also developing a Lord of the Rings prequel TV series. Acquiring Conan as well is a sign that they have a lot of faith in the fantasy market and that it may be able to sustain multiple fantasy properties from one studio (which begs the question if they would also considered triple-dipping with Wheel of Time or not).

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 1

Buzzfeed recently posted a "51 Best Fantasy Series Ever" list, which of course is nothing of the sort. Some very good books and a few nods at excellent-but-obscure stuff, but for the most part the list divides its time between the obvious and a lot of currently-trendy-but-incomplete stuff that we have no way of knowing will stand the test of time (putting such series at #1, #2 and #3 seems a bit optimistic, to me).

Rather than simply throw up my own list (although I may put together a Gratuitous List of such in the coming weeks), I thought it might be more interesting to look at epic fantasy, or at least the modern interpretation of the subgenre, through a chronological perspective. This has the benefit of allowing works to be listed without too much regard for whether they're any "good" or not, but more by their importance in the development of the field.

Pre-Modern Fantasy

Any discussion of the origin of epic fantasy can easily get diverted into discussions of older, mythological and pre-modern works. I've seen some discussions of the subgenre open with The Illiad and The Odyssey, in which case the history of epic fantasy can also be seen the history of literature as a whole. What we're more concerned with is epic fantasy in its current form and how it got there.

That said, there are some amusing parallels between modern publishing concerns and more ancient works of literature. Ovid's epic poem Metamorphoses (8 AD) can be seen as an attempt to order both Greek and Roman mythological traditions into one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end (the then-recent deification of Julius Caesar), a bit like Tolkien's Silmarillion but drawing on pre-existing actual legends. Similarly, Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur is a gathering together of various medieval and Dark Ages myths (particularly Geoffry of Monmouth's earlier work of three centuries prior) into a single coherent story. However most pre-modern fantasies can be seen as being more collections of fairy tales, folklore and religious legends rather than conscious works of "subcreation", to use a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Subcreation", in Tolkien's definition, means for a writer to create a world (fictional or a variation on our own) and populate it with detailed peoples, cultures, histories and traditions, to give the illusion (however deep) of reality. This differs sharply from other forms of fantasy in which the weird, the strange and the genuinely fantastical are not given any form of explanation. Critics of epic fantasy have suggested that this is a counter-intuitive approach to the genre of the fantastic, giving rationalisation to something that cannot be rationalised. West of the moon and east of the sun should not be mappable (to paraphrase Pratchett), and pausing a reading of the legend of King Arthur to reflect that Camelot does not have a sound economic foundation to survive a major military campaign is to miss the mystery and romance of the legend. However, "subcreation" has come to define modern epic fantasy, to the point of some authors revelling in the sheer joy of creating places, cultures and stories about them, although even Tolkien warned of the dangers of getting carried away with this instead of focusing on the story at hand.

This form of work can be seen at an early stage in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1725), in which his hero travels to various fictional islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These islands are described in some exacting and pedantic detail, as if Gulliver is making a report to the British Foreign Office, with their economies and politics discussed at length and maps of the islands included. Of course, this was part of Swift's satirical swipe at the then-modern (and, to his eyes, absurdist) politics of the British and French governments. But the idea of rationalising the irrational certainly took hold in the following generations.

Pre-Tolkien Fantasy
Tolkien is held to be the father of epic fantasy, but certainly books were published before him which could be seen to have some of the same hallmarks. George MacDonald's Phantastes (1858), sometimes held to be the first fantasy novel written exclusively for adults, has the protagonist journeying into a fictional world which even has a proto-"magic system", in its depiction of the rules governing the spirits of the trees. The Well at the World's End (1896) by William Morris features a fantastical quest through an imagined landscape. Frank L. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and numerous sequels depicted a fantasy world divided between various factions and races, all plotted on a handy map. Starting in 1905, Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (popularly, "Lord Dunsany") wrote a series of books and stories where gods living in a fictional realm called Pegana are shown to have influenced human life. In 1924 he published The King of Elfland's Daughter, a novel-length quest narrative. Slightly preceding it, E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922) is very much an epic fantasy in the traditional mould, complete with maps, military campaigns and a well-described background setting.

However, the most well-known writer of fantasy pre-Tolkien is Robert E. Howard. Born and raised in Texas, Howard started publishing short stories in a local high school newspaper in 1922, when he was just sixteen years old. Two years later his first story was published in Weird Tales and he became a regular in the magazine, selling stories about cavemen and reams of shorter works such as poems. In 1927 he created his first "hit" character, Kull the Conqueror, a warlord from Atlantis. This was swiftly followed by Solomon Kane, a puritanical warrior out to avenge his dead family. Both were moderately successful, although the rejection of several Kull stories discouraged Howard from using the character again. However, he cleverly rewrote one of the rejected stories, replacing the brooding Kull with a more outgoing, straightforward barbarian character: Conan of Cimmeria. The story, The Phoenix on the Sword, was published in December 1932 to a rapturous welcome.

Numerous Conan stories followed, with Conan's adventures attracting a dedicated fan following. After writing several stories, Howard paused to flesh out Conan's world - actually our own in a fictional epoch known as the Hyborian Age - and wrote a long essay about the world and its peoples, an early form of "worldbuilding". The essay was accompanied by maps of the Hyborian continent, which is recognisable Eurasia (and some parts of Africa) in a fictional, earlier form of development.

Conan was Howard's most successful creation, with numerous short stories being published in Weird Tales. After just a couple of years, Howard developed an interest in historical works and Westerns, and the Conan stories dwindled. Just as Howard was close to getting an actual book deal, which would have brought his work to a much wider audience, he suffered a depressive breakdown when his mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he committed suicide in June 1936.

However, the publication of the epic fantasy ur-work was imminent. By the time of Howard's death, an English academic had been gradually building up his own fictional legendarium for twenty years, and just a few months later published the first work set in that world: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Conan, the young son of the barbarian chieftain Corin, witnesses the destruction of his home village and the murder of his father by the warlord Khalar Zym. Years later, having grown into a skilled and resourceful warrior, thief and pirate, Conan bumps into one of Zym's minions and follows the trail back to Zym himself. Zym is trying to resurrect his dead wife and unleash a series of events that will turn him into a god, so Conan sets himself against Zym's plans, against overwhelming odds.


Robert E. Howard's signature character, Conan the Barbarian, is one of the most important and influential characters in modern fantasy fiction. A brooding warrior from the north, a barbarian of inventive cunning, Conan is the archetype for every big, burly warrior fantasy has produced since. Unfortunately, he's not been well-served by film adaptations. John Milius' 1982 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is admirable on many levels, but its depiction of Conan (particularly his tendency to look freaked out and bellow "Crom!" every time he encountered magic) was very much at odds with the original source material.

The latest take on the character was described during production as an attempt to get back to the Robert E. Howard short stories. In particular, actor Jason Momoa refused to watch the Schwarzenegger movies whilst binging on the Howard shorts. This was a laudable ambition, but unfortunately the movie as produced falls far short of being a fitting homage to the Howard Conan.

The film's first misstep is giving us - like the 1982 movie - some kind of tedious origin story for Conan in which his family is butchered by the main bad guy, whom Conan spends years searching for. The idea seems to be to give Conan a personal stake in defeating the enemy (whether James Earl Jones's Thulsa Doom in the original movie or Stephen Lang's Khalar Zym this time around), but this seems unnecessary. Simply having Conan bump into the bad guy's plan and oppose him for some less melodramatic reason (he's after Zym's gold, or finds his ambitions offensive, or simply has a whim to stop him) would be more in keeping with Howard, and would also have the benefit of being less cheesy and cliched.

This opening sequence of the film is pretty poor, with a badly-choreographed major battle sequence and rather feeble character development. The scene where the young Conan wipes out a band of marauders is pretty good, but everything else about this sequence disappoints. After this we get some scenes which are actually pretty decent. Jason Momoa is actually very good as the adult Conan, moving and looking much more like the Howard character than Schwarzenegger ever did. The film notes that Conan has a more varied CV than just 'brawling warrior' and shows his thievery skills and even his part-time job as a pirate in action. There's even a few shout-outs to Conan's literary adventures which are entertaining. This middle sequence of the film also features its stand-out action beat, a confrontation between Conan and Zym with sorcerous warriors made of sand joining the battle and is actually very entertaining.

Unfortunately, it's mostly downhill from there. The film's somewhat shaky grasp on plot logic begins to disappear in the second half and the fight choreography goes to hell, with poor editing making scenes comes across as nonsensical and random. A particularly promising fight with a giant squid monster is undermined by this problem, and the final confrontation between Zym and Conan is wrecked by it. The development of the characters also gets tossed aside. The revelation that Zym is motivated by the murder of his wife threatens to give depth to the villain until the writers also reveal that his wife was a deranged witch trying to destroy the world, which reduces Zym to simple 'evil madman' status. Rachel Nichols's Tamara initially appears to be an individual character with her own motivations and goals (noting that she is no man's plaything, not even Conan's), but this is chucked out ten minutes after she turns up, with her predictably falling in love with Conan and then becoming no more than window-dressing. Nonso Anozie's pirate captain Artus is a hugely enjoyable character who promptly disappears halfway through the movie for no real reason.

What makes Conan the Barbarian (**) all the more depressing is that the ingredients are sound. Stephen Lang can be a great villain, as we saw in Avatar, but is under-used here. Jason Momoa is a great Conan and emerges from the film with his go-to SF/fantasy warrior credentials (earned in Stargate: Atlantis and Game of Thrones) intact. Some of the action sequences are good and some of the ideas are okay. But the direction is pedestrian, dialogue is often risible, characterisation is almost non-existent and the editing totally inept at times. Not totally without merit, but mostly a failure. The film is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

Missing the Point

I was directed to this essay yesterday, entitled 'The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists', in which the state of 'nihilistic' modern fantasy is bemoaned and a call for a return to the non-profanity-strewn 'heroic' and 'mythic' fantasies of the past is made. I think the author is conflating two separate issues here, the nihilistic/gritty/realistic 'New Fantasy' of the last two decades or so (a sweeping generalisation), which isn't really that new, and the proliferation of overt sex/violence/swearing in recent fantasy books.


Dealing with the first issue, it's an odd point to make. The problem is that the author bemusingly names J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard as his preferred flavours of fantasy. Which makes very little sense, as few fantasy authors are more nihilistic than Tolkien and Howard.

In Tolkien, Middle-earth and the world of Arda are in a state of perpetual Fall, from the very moment it is sung into existence when Melkor/Morgoth starts trying to cast it into darkness. The Silmarillion is a nihilistic work: almost every character of note is slaughtered in its pages, armies of balrogs and orcs obliterate everything that is good and heroic in Beleriand, good men are corrupted and slain and victory comes only through a desperate gambit at the very end. Even that has its consequences: Beleriand is destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people are drowned and it is made clear that Morgoth's defeat is only temporary, as he is prophesied to return and his lieutenant, Sauron, remains behind to continue causing problems.

The Lord of the Rings is much-reduced or thinned re-enactment of this tale on a far smaller, less impressive scale, but even on its own terms is an inherently melancholy work: Middle-earth is saved and Sauron destroyed, but at the cost of more blood. Frodo is corrupted by the Ring and fails in his quest, and victory only comes through the unwitting intervention of Gollum (though the point is made that it was a single act of charity, Bilbo's decision to spare Gollum in The Hobbit, that ultimately saved the day). Boromir is corrupted by the Ring, though he has a redemptive moment. Frodo is emotionally wrecked by events and cannot enjoy the fruits of his struggle: eventually he must leave his home behind forever. Even the victory comes at the cost of myth itself: the elves depart Middle-earth, the hobbits are absorbed into the race of man, and magic vanishes from the world. After the events of Rings, the world becomes mundane and less heroic (in fact, it becomes our world). Tolkien even foresaw that after the events of Rings Gondor would become a divided nation of petty politics, and abandoned work on a projected sequel, The New Shadow, because he felt it undercut the victory of Rings.

Of course, there is heroism in Lord of the Rings, moments of triumph and light, and Middle-earth is saved from destruction or dominion. But it's not a happy ending, and Tolkien makes it clear that whilst the world survives, it is also much less than what it was before. The Silmarillion is even bleaker, with very few characters (perhaps only Tuor and Earendil) surviving unscathed or not having committed heinous acts of violence or, in one case, incest.

As for Howard, his worldview was inherently nihilistic: the natural state of the world is barbarism and anarchy, with civilisation only a passing fad which will soon destroy itself and restore things to the natural order. Conan gets involved in most of his adventures out of a desire for varying combinations of riches, sex or violence. He has his moments of true heroism, but the impression Howard gives is that Conan is an inherently violent character who cannot abide defeat and who is primarily motivated by his own desires. Conan is capable of heroism but his motives are rarely pure.

Of course, one brief look at the mythic inspirations for Howard and Tolkien, the great Norse sagas, the Arthur legends, Greek myths and so on, reveal stories far more tragic, blood-drenched and horrific than anything the likes of Abercrombie or Martin has ever come up with. This notion of pure black vs. white heroism ever being a dominant force in either mythology or fantasy literature seems to be illusory.

The other point, about fantasy being overloaded by graphic imagery and swearing, is better-taken. Sometimes the feeling in modern fantasy is that 'adult' has translated as 'shagging, crapping and disemboweling' in all their glory, which after a while can be tiresome. Brandon Sanderson has shown it's possible to write entertaining and somewhat original secondary world fantasy without resorting to these steps, whilst Patrick Rothfuss pushes the less-savoury aspects of his world (there is an intimation that Kvothe suffered sexual abuse whilst living rough on the streets of a city, but it isn't pushed into the reader's face) into the background.

But at the same time being able to address such issues freely is useful. I certainly don't doubt that Howard would have employed them if he hadn't been restricted by the publishing mores of the time, whilst Tolkien certainly wouldn't have, though he didn't skimp away from darker elements where necessary (particularly in his darkest story, that of of Turin). Amongst modern authors many still have their heroes, but are less interested in displaying them as unmotivated do-gooders. In A Song of Ice and Fire the single most heroic moment in the series is probably when a character jumps into a pit to fight a bear one-handed. The character doing that is someone who was previously presented as a heinous villain, but as we get into his story we learn that his motivations are understandable and he is the hero of his own story, though as events progress Martin doesn't let us or the character forget the darker things he has done. Outside of that, we have characters like Jon Snow who are more obviously heroic (though I suspect that his story will get more complex in the future).

It is interesting that the article roundly dismisses The Wheel of Time, a work that is more closely following in the tradition of Tolkien with more overt 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. Heroism, people putting their lives at risk to save people who frequently hate them (Perrin saving a Whitecloak army which has sworn to kill him), is found there in plenty.

The problem with the essay is that its author has fundamentally misread Tolkien and Howard. The age he bemoans the passing of, that of heroic and mythic fantasy entirely lacking in moral complexity or darker elements, has never existed in the form that is set out.

The Cimmerian refutes Epic Pooh

Many years ago Michael Moorcock wrote an essay called 'Epic Pooh', in which he attacked and blasted J.R.R. Tolkien's works at great length, often using terminology which suggested he hadn't actually read the books or, if he had, fundamentally misunderstood them. His suggestion that The Lord of the Rings ignores death is at odds with the very common reading that the book is about nothing but death, and his notion that Tolkien 'glorifies' war is bemusing, given Tolkien's horror at the thought of mass conflict (a result of serving on the Somme) and his musings on that in the book during the passage of the Dead Marshes, or the discussion on if the human soldiers in Sauron's armies were really evil or just swept along into the war without much choice and would rather have just stayed at home in peace.

The Cimmerian - a fine website dedicated to the works of fantasy in general and Robert E. Howard in particular - has published an article which is an interesting rebuttal of many of Moorcock's points, including his factually dubious ones. It is a very interesting read, although it's a shame one of the most interesting lines of enquiry - that Moorcock's dislike of Tolkien but lauding of Pullman can only be explained by his disagreement with the politics of the former and agreement with the politics of the latter - is curtailed and relegated to the footnotes. It's an interesting read that goes beyond the, "Oh yeah, and so is your mum!" responses I've seen the 'Epic Pooh' essay generate in other quarters over the years to tackle the substance of Moorcock's argument. Interesting fodder for debate there.

The Cimmerian on A Dance with Dragons

The award-nominated scholarly website 'The Cimmerian' has run an article on A Song of Ice and Fire and in particular analysed the current long wait for the fifth volume, A Dance with Dragons, here. The article is reasonably interesting, touching on the current flamewars sweeping various websites over the delays to the book and the shockwaves of fear sent through some of the more ill-informed corners of fandom by the death of Robert Jordan in late 2007. I was rather amused to seem them picking up on an Amazon post I made some considerable time ago about how J.R.R. Tolkien would have fared whilst working on Lord of the Rings in the Internet age. Others later pointed out many flaws in my comparison (not least that some of the target audience for the book would have been more worried about, for example, storming Monte Cassino than waiting for a sequel to a book they read as a kid ten years earlier) which led me to believe I should have cited The Silmarillion instead, but there you go. Anyway, I may have to start introducing myself as "A. Whitehead of the storied legionary city Colchester," were it not for reasons of brevity.


On a somewhat related note, the Winter is Coming blog has issued a general update on the status of production on the Game of Thrones TV series. Unfortunately, we are now in the doldrums of news with pre-production under way but no solid progress to report, since we are still many months from shooting and likely several months from casting even beginning. However, we can hopefully expect confirmation of a shooting and production location in the coming days or weeks.

The Conan Chronicles Volume I by Robert E. Howard

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of, when shining kings lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirths, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."

Conan the Barbarian is one of the iconic characters of fantasy. Almost eighty years ago, he walked onto the pages of Weird Tales magazine and undertook many adventures in the Hyborian Age, ten thousand or more years ago when the world looked very different. Dozens of tales followed before Robert E. Howard committed suicide at a tragically young age. In the following decades the Conan tales were re-edited, revamped and new stories were written by authors such as L. Sprague de Camp and Robert Jordan. After fading from view after the early-1980s Jordan stories and the Schwarzenegger movies, Conan came back into the public eye around the turn of the century with a series of new collected editions intent on restoring the text to Howard's original standards.

This first volume of Conan's adventures is arranged in chronological, not publishing, order and takes Conan from a teenager through a period of some years until he is an more experienced adventurer. Most of these tales take place in the south and east of the Thurian continent (prehistoric Eurasia), with Conan equally at home raiding exotic Arabic-esque temples for treasure as captaining a pirate warship or fighting as a mercenary alongside a mighty host. The stories have a somewhat familiar structure: Conan becomes embroiled in some nefarious activity, bulldozes his way through it with no regard for subtlety, and bursts out the other side, usually laden with gold and a willing young lady on his arm. You can certainly tell the ones that Howard wrote for money, whilst the highlights - 'Rogues in the House', 'The Tower of the Elephant' and the story that gives the first volume its subtitle, 'The People of the Black Circle' - are altogether more interesting, with a bit more depth or humour to them.

For stories written the better part of a century ago, these tales are fiendishly readable and feel much more readable and recent than, say, the work of Tolkien, although they lack JRRT's much greater resonance and depth. There's still a fresh vitality to these tales that makes them compelling. However, in other areas they are very much of their time: female characters are generally walking plot coupons for Conan to rescue or fall in love with. There are a couple of exceptions, but some readers may find it a problem. Another issue is that whilst there are some outstanding stories here, there are a few more that are formulaic, and a couple that are incomplete. That feeling of familiarity can be off-putting, and makes it hard to read the book in one go. I've been toing and froing between other books and these stories for the better part of two years. Like a rich chocolate cake, dipping into it occasionally may be healthier than trying to digest the whole thing at once. Still, it is hard to argue with any character who has a theme tune as badass as this one.

The Conan Chronicles Volume I: The People of the Black Circle (****) introduces us to one of fantasy's most famous and notable characters. The range of defiantly non-PC stories on display here may not be huge, but they are certainly a lot of fun to read. The book is available in the UK from Gollancz as part of the Fantasy Masterworks range, in a new edition and also as part of the complete Conan Chronicles volume. In the USA Del Rey currently prints Howard's original stories in three volumes, The Coming of Conan, The Bloody Crown of Conan and The Conquering Sword of Conan.