Bêlit: Shipwrecked - V. Castro

BÊLIT: SHIPWRECKED is the latest entry in the series of Robert E. Howard pastiches published as e-books by Titan Books. Not surprisingly, it’s a prequel to Howard’s story “Queen on the Black Coast” and takes place before Conan meets the pirate Bêlit and becomes part of her crew sailing on the ship Tigress. In SHIPWRECKED, Bêlit is already a fierce, well-known pirate, but not even she can turn aside a terrible storm that damages her ship and casts it, her, and her crew ashore on what appears at first to be a rather idyllic island.

But of course, dangers lurk in the jungles and behind the waterfalls of this scenic location, and not everyone will get off the island alive.

I’d never heard of the author of this story, who’s credited as V. Castro, but according to the note at the end, she’s written several well-regarded horror novels. SHIPWRECKED has some strong horror overtones as well. The writing is good all the way through this story, and Bêlit is a strong protagonist, but for some reason this tale never really connected with me. Bêlit is a little too unsympathetic for my taste. I kept reminding myself that she’s a pirate; she’s not necessarily supposed to be sympathetic. But it didn’t quite work, and neither did the somewhat graphic sex, which seemed out of place in a Howard pastiche. Howard’s stories sometimes had plenty of sex implied in them, but when you were writing for the pulp market, most such things had to be implied and there was a limit to what you could put on the page. I realize this isn’t the pulp era anymore, but my approach to pastiches is that they should be written as if you writing for the same markets as the original author. Does that make sense?

But as always, that’s just me. Despite my complaints, I found SHIPWRECKED to be entertaining for the most part and I’m glad Titan is doing this series even though some of the stories don’t quite hit the mark for me.

Conan: Black Starlight

Having read John C. Hocking’s two Conan novels, CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE (both of which are soon to be published in an omnibus volume, by the way), I expected to like his novella BLACK STARLIGHT, the second in Titan Books’ new series of short fiction based on Robert E. Howard’s characters. I was not disappointed in the least.

BLACK STARLIGHT is a sequel to CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and finds Conan traveling with three companions: a powerful sorceress, her mute Khitan bodyguard/lover, and a beautiful, knife-throwing scribe. They arrived at a bordertown on the river Styx, intending to cross from Stygia to Shem, but the place turns out to be a ghost town full of dangers, and to survive they have to penetrate a powerful enemy’s stronghold on some cliffs overlooking the Styx.

Hocking’s Conan yarns always feature numerous supernatural menaces, and that’s certainly true in BLACK STARLIGHT. Several different kinds of evil, necromantic creatures threaten the Cimmerian and his friends, and the action scenes as Conan battles to survive are excellent. The sorcerous stuff is genuinely creepy, as well, providing a blend of adventure and horror that works really well. I raced through this novella and really enjoyed it.

BLACK STARLIGHT was serialized previously in one of the Conan comic book series, but since I wasn’t keeping up with the comics at that time, I vaguely knew of its existence but never read it. I’m glad Titan Books has brought it back and published it in stand-alone form. Not surprisingly, it’s one of the best Conan pastiches I’ve read. Available now and highly recommended.

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.

Conan: Lord of the Mount - Stephen Graham Jones

CONAN: LORD OF THE MOUNT by Stephen Graham Jones is the first in a new series of short stories and novellas based on characters created by Robert E. Howard, written by various hands and published by Titan Books. I avoided reading any reviews of it after it was published earlier this week until I’d had a chance to read it myself, but I couldn’t help but be aware that the reaction to it has been somewhat mixed.

The story starts out with Conan waking up after a battle, apparently the only survivor from the force he was aligned with, falling in with a lotus addict who’s driving a small group of cows to market, getting sidetracked to a deserted castle where a man-eating beast supposedly lives, and battling said beast. That’s the extent of the plot.

I had never read anything by Stephen Graham Jones and was only vaguely familiar with his name, knowing him to be an author of horror novels. Not necessarily somebody I’d think of as writing a Conan pastiche. I don’t doubt that he likes the character and is a fan of Robert E. Howard’s work, but to be honest, for a couple of reasons I think he misses the mark in LORD OF THE MOUNT.

The first reason is the pacing. The story is slow to develop with the first half just meandering along, not much happening except that Jones does lay the groundwork for some plot developments that come along later. He does so without any of the characters actually doing anything other than talking, though. Howard didn’t always start his stories with action, but there’s always something happening in an REH yarn, some sense of movement and suspense. I didn’t find any of that in the opening scenes of LORD OF THE MOUNT.

The other problem I have with this story is that I think Jones doesn’t quite have Conan’s character down. I can’t provide specifics without getting into spoiler territory, but during the battle with the monster there’s one moment when Conan does something that seems totally out of character for him, and in the end of the story he comes across to me as wantonly, unnecessarily cruel. Not that he wouldn’t have gotten his revenge on someone who wronged him, but the way he goes about it doesn’t ring true to me.

Now that I think about it, I believe the nature of the threat Conan faces could have been developed a bit more, too.

All that said, the battle is quite good for the most part, and except for those two moments that jumped out at me, Conan’s dialogue works fairly well. Jones’s description of the abandoned castle is excellent, and the pace does pick up nicely in the second half of the story. LORD OF THE MOUNT isn’t terrible, by any means, but it’s not really to my taste, either. If you want to check it out and form your own opinion—and if you’re a Howard fan, you probably should—it’s available as an e-book on Amazon.

Overall, I’m pleased that Titan Books is launching this series of new stories based on Howard’s characters. I’m an REH purist in that I think his original work should be available and not tampered with by modern-day editing. When I first became involved in Howard fandom nearly thirty years ago, very little of Howard’s work was in print, and none of his Conan stories were available in new editions. In fact, they were being suppressed by various corporate entities. This has changed over the years, of course. Just about everything Howard wrote can be found now in textually accurate editions. I have no objection to pastiches in general. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to take that stance, considering how many millions of words I’ve written using characters, settings, and situations created by other authors. So I’m fine with Howard pastiches and will continue to read the ones that interest me.