Review Archive – Conan: City of the Dead by John C. Hocking
This review originally appeared at Grimdark Magazine on August 12, 2024.
Conan: City of the Dead
By John C. Hocking – Titan Books – June 18, 2024
Review by Robin Marx
Conan: City of the Dead is a deluxe omnibus packaging of two pastiche novels by sword & sorcery veteran John C. Hocking: the fan favorite Conan and the Emerald Lotus and its long-awaited sequel Conan and the Living Plague. Conan and the Emerald Lotus was originally published by Tor Books in 1995 and has been out of print for roughly two decades. While Conan and the Living Plague was penned soon after the release of Emerald Lotus, a chain of unfortunate complications at the publishing end prevented the novel from receiving an official release until now, nearly 30 years after its creation.
Fans of Robert E. Howard’s enduring Conan the Barbarian character have long had a fraught relationship with the pastiche novels written by non-Howard authors. While there were occasional attempts to revive the stories in their original form as published in Weird Tales magazine—perhaps most notably by horror legend Karl Edward Wagner—in the decades following Howard’s death in 1936, the most ubiquitous editions of the stories were those produced under the stewardship of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. In addition to reprinting Howard’s work, de Camp and Carter took it upon themselves to complete Howard’s unfinished stories, rewrite stories featuring Howard’s other pulp heroes into Conan adventures, and even write wholly original tales starring the barbarian. As the Conan paperback series shifted to different publishers, other authors including Robert Jordan, Poul Anderson, and Harry Turtledove joined de Camp and Carter in contributing their own novel-length Conan adventures, to the extent that by the Tor Books era (1982-2004) pastiche works by other hands were much more readily available than the Howard stories that inspired them. Publishers Wandering Star and Del Rey upended all this beginning in 2003, collecting and releasing the Howard texts free of the modifications and embellishments of subsequent authors. For many Conan fans, this was their first opportunity to read the unadulterated texts, and it inspired a mini backlash against the pastiche novels, many of which diverged widely from Howard’s tone and characterization of Conan. Twenty years have passed, however, and it seems that Conan fans have begun to reevaluate the role and value of pastiche. While some pastiche novels are widely considered better left forgotten, others have become much sought after. Alongside installments by Karl Edward Wagner and John Maddox Roberts, Hocking’s Conan and the Emerald Lotus has become a lucky find for secondhand bookstore shoppers. The collected Conan: City of the Dead release by Titan Books makes Emerald Lotus and its long-lost sequel available to the general public at last.
Conan and the Emerald Lotus finds the titular barbarian coerced into working as an assassin for a twisted wizard hoping to eliminate a rival sorceress and steal her cache of emerald lotus powder, an addictive herbal substance that amplifies magical power while extracting a terrible physical cost from its users. Conan switches allegiances as soon as he manages to extricate himself from his employer’s curse, however. He sets out with the sorceress Lady Zelandra and her colorful retinue—tempestuous knife-throwing young maiden Neesa and a rotund, mute bodyguard named Heng Shih—escorting them into the forbidden deserts of Stygia in search of the source of the emerald lotus and the shadowy manipulator that controls its supply. Conan and the Emerald Lotus deals extensively with the price of power and the extreme lengths to which sorcerers will go to further their mastery of world-warping magic. While Lady Zelandra is a sympathetic character and an ally to Conan, Hocking makes it clear that her lust for power and dependency on the emerald lotus put her on the same grim path as her warped competitors, just not quite as far along.
Conan and the Living Plague is another dark adventure set into motion by evil sorcery. Now serving in a mercenary army, Conan and his comrade-in-arms Shemtare (a character briefly featured in Conan and the Emerald Lotus) are hired to pilfer riches from the vault of Dulcine, a city-state both ravaged by a lethal contagion and besieged by an invading army from without. The resulting adventure is a covert heist, with Conan and a handful of companions of varying levels of competency and trustworthiness venturing into territory in which a single misstep means instant death. Along the way Conan discovers that the epidemic is no natural malady, but instead an intelligent and malignant entity with a yearning for conquest.
Conan: City of the Dead delivers the sort of blood and thunder that sword & sorcery readers expect. Both collected books share relentless pacing, frequent and savage combat, and plentiful horrific elements. Where Conan and the Emerald Lotus features significant moments of cosmic horror—fans of the Cthulhu Mythos will recognize references in the mystical language intoned by the book’s sorcerers—Conan and the Living Plague leans especially hard on the otherworldly terror. The Living Plague is rendered in an intensely creepy and alien manner, and—as Conan is dismayed to learn—it’s not the worst thing lurking beyond the stars.
According to interviews, Hocking wrote Conan and the Emerald Lotus to address some of the flaws common in latter day pastiche and recapture some of the magic of the original Howard, and by that standard Conan: City of the Dead is a tremendous success. While other authors (e.g., Scott Oden) may more faithfully evoke Howard’s prose style, Hocking demonstrates a deep understanding of Conan as a character. He captures Conan’s explosive physicality, emphasizing his pantherish reflexes over sheer strength. And where lesser authors depict Conan as blithely fearless, through both novels Hocking shows Conan as experiencing fear, but not allowing himself to succumb to it. The ability to power through that fear and do what must be done is what separates Conan from his compatriots.
Readers who enjoy Conan: City of the Dead are strongly encouraged to seek out Hocking’s novella “Black Starlight.” Originally serialized in issues of Marvel Comics’ Conan the Barbarian from 2019-2020, the story was collected and re-released in 2023 as part of Titan Books’ ongoing Heroic Legends series of digital shorts. “Black Starlight” begins immediately after the conclusion of Conan and the Emerald Lotus, chronicling a further adventure of Conan with Lady Zelandra, Neesa, and Heng Shih in the wilds of Stygia. Not including “Black Starlight” as part of the Conan: City of the Dead package seems like a missed opportunity on Titan Books’ part but given the fact that they rescued it from falling into obscurity with their ebook release it seems uncharitable to grumble too much.
As a long-time fan of the character, it’s exciting to see Titan Books release both new novels starring Conan (e.g., Conan – Blood of the Serpent) alongside long out-of-print treasures like Conan and the Emerald Lotus. The inclusion of the never-before-seen Conan and the Living Plague sweetens the deal, making Conan: City of the Dead a must-buy even for those lucky readers who already own the original Emerald Lotus paperback. Newcomers to Conan are still advised to start with the original Robert E. Howard tales, but if you’ve devoured those and yearn for more, Conan: City of the Dead is the cream of the pastiche crop.
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