Conan: Caravan of the Damned

CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED is the second Conan novel by veteran author Chuck Dixon, based solely on the stories by Robert E. Howard that appeared in the pulp WEIRD TALES. I’m not going to get into the convoluted legal and copyright issues surrounding the character. Those are for somebody else to figure it out. My interest is in whether or not this is a good Conan yarn, and the answer (with a minor reservation or two) is a resounding yes.

This tale takes place during the time of Conan’s life when he’s leading a band of desert bandits and raiders. They attack a caravan and discover that its camels are carrying not only a small fortune in gold and gems but also a beautiful young woman, one of the daughters of Turan’s King Yildiz, who is promised in marriage to the son of a neighboring king. The girl and her escort were supposed to rendezvous with a party sent out by her future father-in-law.

Of course, Conan realizes he now has a hostage who may be worth a considerable amount of ransom, but only if he can get away from the rest of the girl’s escort, which was trailing behind the caravan. And so the chase is on through the desert. Not surprisingly, it will wind up in some strange and dangerous places.

Dixon does a lot of things right in this novel. It’s relatively short, which means the prose is stripped down and fast-paced, as it would have been if the story had been done as a three-part serial for WEIRD TALES. The characterization is good throughout, from Conan’s allies and enemies to the young hostage everybody is after. The desert setting is superb. There’s plenty of action, and it’s handled well for the most part. I like the cover and the interior illustrations, too. (More books, especially adventure novels, need interior illustrations.)

That brings us to those minor reservations mentioned above. The opening chapter of his novel is extremely violent, more Piccadilly Cowboys than WEIRD TALES, and some of Conan’s actions, even though they’re not out of character, are presented in a pretty brutal fashion. This isn’t a major complaint, just something I noticed, and at least Conan doesn’t come across as mean and petty, as he did in one of the other pastiches I read recently.

My other quibble is that I would have liked to know more about the supernatural menace that crops up late in the book. A lot of back-story would have bogged down the flow of this yarn, and I don’t want that, but a few more lines about the danger facing Conan and his companions might have worked well.

Overall, though, I had a really good time reading CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED. Clearly, Dixon has a very good grasp of the character and can write Howardian action scenes with the best of them. Both of his Conan novels so far have been great fun and get a high recommendation from me as long as you’re not opposed to the idea of pastiches. You can get a trade paperback/e-book combo directly from the publisher.

It’s funny, I went for a long time without reading any Robert E. Howard pastiches, and now suddenly it seems like I’m reading a bunch of them, both comics and prose. I’m enjoying them, too, and I look forward to seeing what turns up next.