Conan the Conqueror / The Sword of Rhiannon

by Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."

He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

—Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this old Ace Double edition a -long-time ago, and don't really remember the stories from that time (I believe I was nine), though I revisited both in later years. The Brackett novel is okay, but I didn't enjoy it as much as her other work. It's not poorly written (if just a bit too florid), and the plot is entertaining (though some of characters tend to pop in and out and caused me to loose track a little), and her descriptions of modern and ancient Mars are very evocative. The biggest stumbling block for me, I think, were the Celtic sounding names, for which no explanation is offered. Too short to be a full novel and too long to fit Brackett's best length, and it doesn't fit comfortably with her Eric John Stark stories. (Or maybe I'm still tending to compare it to Conan.) Conan the Conqueror was Howard's only novel-length Conan story, and was originally (and subsequently) published under the title The Hour of the Dragon. It's one of the best heroic adventure sword & sorcery stories of all time, not just from the pulp magazines (it was originally serialized in five or six installments in Weird Tales magazine.) Conan finds a kingdom and a queen (Zenobia was the only one of his companions he never had to rescue; she saved him!), and defeats all manner of evil along the way, both supernatural and not. It shows Conan growing to a responsible position of command, not just a solitary thief or mercenary. I do vividly remember being thrilled, and anxiously diving into my father's bookshelf looking for more stories like it. The cover by Norman Saunders is notable for depicting Conan dressed as a polished Roman centurion, a far cry from the barbarian renderings of Frazetta that became so popular a decade or so later.

[Philip Athans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conan the Conqueror is actually the Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon, which I read in the SFBC edition when I was in high school--and LOVED, by the way. I read it again hoping I would still love it and I do--I still love it. And what's not to love? This is pure pulp sword & sorcery genius.

I didn't quite connect as much with The Sword of Rhiannon, which shares that pulp sensibility, this time more in the line of sword & planet. I was surprised at how amateurish the writing was, and the hero seems to be swept along by events… Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either.