The Further Chronicles of Conan: Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Triumphant, and Conan the Victorious

Take note that this book contains three Conan novels and this is just a review of the single story I have read to date: Conan the Victorious.This is a story from Conan’s young adulthood which follows on after Howard’s Rogues in the House. Here he has graduated from thief to smuggler on the Vilayet Sea.While set early in Conan’s life this is the last of the seven Conan novels that Robert Jordan’s wrote. As such I was expecting a better effort than the only other of his Conan novels I have read (Conan the Invincible) which as it happens was the first Conan novel he wrote.Unfortunately “Victorious” was a bit of a let down for me. Jordan has many players, most of them with evil designs to either be on the Throne, or be the Power Behind the Throne of Vendhya. Jordan lays the groundwork for a fairly intricate web of intrigues and spying & counter spying, but at only 178 pages there simply isn’t enough room for all these subplots to bloom. Just when things were starting to take shape Jordan has all the players just meet up at the ruins of a lost Vendhian city where everything is hashed out in the last 21 pages -to include not one, not two, but three reveals of actual identities and motives.Pros:*Jordan has a firm handle on the Hyborian Age and is good with the action scenes.Cons:*Truncated feel to the overall story. Supporting characters that are interchangeable and not memorable (which was a strong point for Jordan in “Invincible”).In the end this was a passable story coming in for me at 2 ½ stars – I’ve rounded up to 3 solely due to the goodwill Jordan generated with me in “Invincible”.

At first I was all about the original Robert E. Howard stories (and they are still the best stories) for a good number of years but after practically memorizing the original short stories, I wanted more even if it meant inferior quality. And yes, a lot of the stories don't hold a candle to the best of Howard's but some of them feel just fit right in with the whole lore of Conan and I was pleasantly surprised.

Good stories, good binding, well put together.

Another Outstanding trio of savage Conan stories by the master Robert Jordan.Arguably the best Conan writer after the great Robert E Howard.The collection of stories really captures the nature of the barbarian warrior as he battlessorcerers ,evil rulers,etc, spending his illgotten gains obtained from fat greedy merchants on loose women and drinkA feast for red blooded men

even though robert jordan first captured me with the wheel of time series after book 6 it just all went downhill from there BIGTIME...BUT i must give him his due he sure can write some conan novels!!. jordan is at his best here all of his conan books made me roar with laughter and made me hunt for more... kudos jordan come back to writing conan and forget the WOT series.

CONAN!

not the most complex of plots but it is fun if you like the Arnold movies style then this should fit your expectations .

Jordan doesn’t really get Conan. But Jordan is a very fine storyteller. He stumbled in his first Conan book (Conan the Invincible) but his books got better as he went on. This omnibus is slightly better overall than the first.Jordan may not quite get Conan, but his Conan is charismatic and clever, not just strong. The barbarian versus civilization theme is dropped entirely, even though Jordan’s Conan is young. I think I would probably have rather seen Jordan write an older Conan. Jordan’s Conan who doesn’t understand women is a little off. That was of course a theme Jordan would return to, and you see hints of several themes that Jordan would explore much more fully in his own epic fantasy: prophecy, the twisting of rumor, politics, a battle of the sexes.Jordan writes Conan feminine foils with a lot of moxie, but superficial similarities notwithstanding, they are different in kind from Howard’s. Red Nails is the closest Howard story in structure to Jordan’s as far as the women go. There are usually at least two in Jordan’s stories, and at least one of those antagonistic to Conan throughout, even if she does succumb to her carnal attraction to him. The romance is very much in the vein of the bodice ripper. This sort of thing works much better in The Wheel of Time, where it is toned way down, there are (many, many) female POV characters, and the whole battle of the sexes thing is baked right into the worldbuilding.Jordan isn’t the stylist Howard was, and he didn’t try to be. But his Conan books feature his finest prose, especially the books in this omnibus. He didn’t laden it with as much description as he later would. He gets a little overambitious with the vocabulary, but the results can be beautiful. Check out this description of Shadizar that was mistaken for a passage of Howard’s after I posted it to Twitter:“Night caressed Shadizar, that city known as ‘the Wicked’ and veiled the happenings which justified that name a thousand times over. The darkness that brought respite to other cities drew out the worst in Shadizar of the Alabaster Towers, Shadizar of the Golden Domes, city of venality and debauchery.“In a score of marble chambers silk-clad nobles coerced wives not theirs to their beds, and many-chinned merchants licked fat lips over the abductions of competitors’ nubile daughters. Perfumed wives, fanned by slaves wielding snowy ostrich plumes, plotted the cuckolding of husbands, sometimes their own, while hot-eyed young women of wealth or noble birth or both schemed at circumventing the guards placed on their supposed chastity. Nine women and thirty-one men, one a beggar and one a lord, died by murder. The gold of ten wealthy men was taken from iron vaults by thieves, and fifty others increased their wealth at the expense of the poor. In three brothels perversions never before contemplated by humankind were created. Doxies beyond number plied their ancient trade from the shadows, and twisted, ragged beggars preyed on the trulls’ wine-soaked patrons. No man walked the streets unarmed, but even in the best quarters of the city arms were often not enough to save one’s silver from cutpurses and footpads. Night in Shadizar was in full cry.”Now that is how you introduce a city!The Further Chronicles of Conan features Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Triumphant, and Conan the Victorious. It also includes a really beautiful map by Ellisa Mitchell based on Howard’s map. Mitchell also did the map for The Wheel of Time.Conan the MagnificentI saw Jordan’s widow and editor Harriet McDougal mention that in rereading Jordan’s Conan stories it was “very obvious to [her], looking back, that [Jordan] was brooding about the events in Afghanistan at that time.” This is the book that she was referring to, written in the middle of the Soviet-Afghan War (Leonard Carpenter’s Conan the Hero also shows the influence of that war).An evil sorcerer is uniting the hillmen of the Kezankian Mountains. The influence of Aghan-style Islam is plain. Howard featured the “Afghuli” who lived in the “Himelian” mountains in The People of the Black Circle, but Jordan uses the Kezankian Mountains and its hillmen.Conan the Magnificent also has an honest-to-God dragon, although Jordan uses the term “drake,” perhaps because Howard already used “dragon” to refer to a more dinosaur-like beast in Red Nails.4 of 5 Stars.Conan the TriumphantConan the Triumphant is almost a direct sequel to Conan the Defender, for all that Jordan wrote two other Conan books in the interim. It opens with Conan commanding the Free Company he formed in that book. Ianthe in Ophir is on the verge of collapse between a distracted, dying king and a scheming noblewoman sorceress. This might be my second least favorite of Jordan’s Conan books, although it is certainly better than Conan Invincible.3.5 of 5 Stars.Conan the VictoriousThe plot of Conan the Victorious defies easy description. Conan kills a city guardsman in a dispute over a woman. Unfortunately, the guardsman was captain of the palace guard of a prince assassinated that night, and the twisting of rumor ties a “giant northlander” to that crime. He winds up fleeing Sultanapur and traveling to Vendhya, where he foils a wizard’s plotting. (It’s a lot more complicated than that.)Conan the Victorious might be Jordan’s best Conan book. The plot is complex. The obligatory evil sorcerer is more fully fleshed out than per the usual, and without sacrificing precious pages of Conan. Jordan’s decadent, dangerous Vendhya is his best work of worldbuilding from his Conan books. It would presage his ability to both interweave Eastern elements into his worldbuilding in The Wheel of Time and to create the Seanchan and Shara Eastern-inspired empires. But he never wrote anything this dissolute in The Wheel of Time. It is unabashedly exotic, with shades of the old chinoiserie sub-genre.4.5 of 5 Stars.Jordan’s Conan books are fine to read in publication order, but according to his own chronology, the chronological order is: Conan the Destroyer, Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Invincible, Conan the Victorious, Conan the Unconquered, Conan the Defender, Conan the Triumphant.

Read the original Chronicles of Conan that Robert Jordan wrote before this one and I really like it. This one was just as solid. And would recommend it to Conan fans or R.J. fans.

Classis Jordan, classic Conan. Violence, basic Sword and Sorcery storyline. What's not to love???