Customer Reviews

Conan The Free Lance

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4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is not really a Conan tale. The character in no way resembles that of Robert E. Howard or some of the better authors in the series. Perry completely fails to capture the personality, mannerisms, speech and logic of Conan. The movie version of Conan was better than Perry's Conan, to put it bluntly. Perry's story is more like a cheesey 80s space story about a solitary human thrust into a conflict among two different species of aliens. The Pili and Selkie races are basically Saturday morning cartoon characters, only even less dimensional. There is no precedent for such characters in any previous Conan stories that I can find. They don't belong in the cast of characters that populate Hyborea. Perry's use of language lacks style and originality, not to mention this book could have used quite a bit more editing. I would characterize this book as juvenile literature if it weren't for the sexual aggressiveness of one of the characters. Perry also made an attempt at humor, but his jokes and puns are bland and obvious. This just isn't Conan as any real fan would know him.

All right, so let's get some lizard people, some shark people, a wizard who randomly becomes incorporeal, superpowerful electric eels, a city built on a sargasso reef (!), a nearly indescribable monster (apparently Perry found it so), a Conan who's apparently below the australopithecus on the intelligence level, and some hippy tree people. Mix all this with an incomprehensible plot and a lizard woman who screws anything male and two-legged, and you have this book. It's every bit as bad as it sounds.

I love my Conan books, but this one is horrible.

First, it's just plain cheesy. The writing - descriptions, point of view, etc. - is elementary. The descriptions are pathetic and vague: "The Kralix was one of a kind... It most resembled a thing that might have been born of wolf, bear, and toad, had the three somehow mated together..." (p. 124) The plot is predictable. There's no suspense, nor are the characters materially different. The point of view is ineffective, given that everyone thinks the exact same things. The repetition is almost unbearable.

Even a marginal editor could have reduced it by a third by tightening the grammar, eliminating repetition, and rewording the descriptions to be more descriptive and precise.

Oh, and despite having to read about it a few times, you never do get an image of a wolf/bear/toad.

Steve Perry writes another fast pace Conan adventure. Perry has injected some humor again into the Conan series. But it is not the barbarian that is funny, but the circumstances he and his companions are put in. But there is still plenty of action to go around. Perry story is a quick read, that doesn't leave one bored, but it does start to stretch out at the end. A good ending for the post part, but the killing of the wizard was predicable along with the toad creature. The book was a like a summer block buster, quick, a lot a bang for the buck, but a little short on characterization.-ERIC

"What is good in life?"
Laughter!

Author Steve Perry attempts to bring humor to the grim world of the bronzed Cimmerian and succeeds well!

Though be it known, this is not a parody. Perry stays true to Howards creation. No changes were made to the charactor, Conan for the sake of comedy. Reading through the pages you can smell the dust on the road, feel the ringing of steel against your forarm, and the hairs on your neck prickle sharply at the intrusion of wretched sorcery in an honest thief's life.

Several times Steve Perry's book had to be put down to allow arms to grip ribs in side splitting laughter.

This story and other Conan tales by Perry have the same wit and style. If you share the appreciation of films like "Evil Dead" then this work should not be missed.