Customer Reviews

Conan of Venarium (Tor Fantasy)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This is by far the worst Conan book that I have read, no contest; it's so bad it's laughable.
The author must have been sitting at home, eating popcorn watching Mel Gibson in Bravehart, and thought, "This would make a great Conan Story, sure changes some stuff so as to not have to pay royalties to the producers, but why not!"

Why is it so bad?
1. Conan and his people are barbarians (think early Viking, Visigoths, Huns, etc.), but the Author has them living in a village straight out of the late middle ages, they have streets, they have multi room houses (many frontier American log cabins as well as most European peasants had single room homes well into the 19th century), they have a black smith with a bellows forge (middle ages tech), and their homes are thatched roofed, (yes, thatched, not animal skin, sod, or timber, but thatch, wrong climate and tech for barbarians). "Say, Conan, could you shovel the two tons of snow out of the living room--- again".
2. The Barbarians, have a tight laced Victorian morals (no really, you didn't know that well---) It seems that a people who have a life expectancy of no more than 30 years, were most girls would be married and have kids by their mid teens, well these Barbarians get all up tight about a 14 year old girl and a Count, (The author brings this up again and again, it's a central plot element).
3. Conan, the hard fighting, hard drinking, hard whenching Barbarian hero, in this book is so shy he's afraid to talk to the village girl he's sweet on. (No stop laughing, it gets even weirder). Conan's character it seems is the creepy Bates guy straight out the movie Psycho, "Yes, Mother. Can I get you anything Mother? Let me do that for you MOTHER!" can we say obsequious!
4. It seems that people while engaged in melee combat have the time, (and breath) to engage in long polite discussions with their opponents and friends, the battle scenes are the worst and least credible I have read, period. (Perhaps, the author should have been watching Russell Crow, in Gladiator, would have helped him more than Mel did.)
5. Conan's mother is dieing from a lung illness, (sounds like tuberculosis), she's been dieing for years we are told, she's in the end stage of the disease, she goes though another sub artic winter, and another, and another and just lives on!!!! (A person with TB confined to an early 20th century sanitarium with the best treatment would probably have had a life expectancy of only a few weeks given her symptoms, what an amazing miracle!)
6. The dialog doesn't flow all that well, and there are just soooooo many other logic and technical problems in this book, that its really just that bad!

This has to be the worst Conan book ever written. After reading the book, I have to wonder if Mr. Turtledove ever actually read a Conan book. He totally messes up on the entire idea of Cimmerians, having them live in towns!!!! Any one with any idea of the Conan mythos knows that the Cimmerians were a semi nomadic people. He also goes against the set ideas of Conan's parents, making his father a (blacksmith the only right part) natural part of the tribe (more like city) and his mother a practical sick invalid. Also, to make matters even worse, in what I feel is the biggest insult to Robert Howard and the countless other writers who have painstakingly developed the Conan series to what it is today, he makes the Cimmerians live under occupation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No Cimmerian would ever live under any type of yoke. Conan also forsakes Crom in the story and uses poisoned weapons another huge mistake turtledove incorporates into HIS Conan, and I say HIS for any true Conan fan would know that this is not the real Conan being depicted. On top of all the insulting depictions of Conan, the book is poorly written, with battle scenes being quick, tepid, and not at all detailed. Do yourself a favor and pick up any of TOR's other Conan books and stay away from this piece of garbage unless you want to make yourself purposely mad.

The book states that harry is a lifelong Conan fan. Well, it must be Conan O'Brian because it certainlt isn't Conan the Barbarian. How could anyone who ever READ and any of Robert E. Howard's works ever come up with such a mess as this. I was quite excited about it as the Sack of Vanarium is the first significant event that Robert E. Howard ever mentions about the 16 year old Conan but never put it into story. I would have preferred that it wasn't now. Of course this concerns Aquilonia, the most powerful kingdom of the Hyborian world, expanding its borders deep into the northen lands and into Conan's home of Cimmeria, and of the subsequent destruction of Venarium outpost by the Cimmerians.

Poorly developed characters including Conan's mother not to mention most of the Cimmerians who come off as more like brutish stupid Picts than the powerful, yet clever warriors they were. And since when do Cimmerians live in towns??? There were tribesman. Nomadic Tribesman who lived more along the lines of native Americans in animal skinned or wood huts or even caves...but not in structures that Turtledove describes.

The action scenes are poorly paced and boring, the characters are boring, and Conan comes off in his youth as a sniveling momma's boy. Turtledove makes Roland Green look like Tolkien by comparison. Just Awful!

I personally love the Conan series of books and this is the first one that completely left me without a sense of wonder and awe. The only "good" part of the book was when Conan magically found a lost city. Other than that I was bored and really glad it was a short novel. Mr. Turtledove is an accomplished writer and has some very interesting takes on alternate histories, but he needs to leave Conan to those who understand him and what makes the stories vivid and unreal at the same time.

Don't waste your time on this book while there are now collected volumes of Robert E. Howard's work along with some new artists. Reread the good stuff instead of swallowing the poorly written tale of Conan's early years. Formulaic and tedious, I still don't know why I bothered to finish it.

I don't even know where to begin... wait, yes I do... deplorable for a tale of Cimmeria and passable as generic fantasy.
I waited for months to get my hands on this novel and had a copy in hardcover as soon as it hit the shelves. Within thirty minutes of settling into the couch and cracking the book my sigh of satisfaction had turned to a moan of dispair... didn't they give Mr. Turtledove any background information at all? Did he even have the opportunity to read any of the 42 previous Tor Conan novels? Why did I wait so long to review this? The memory was to lucid and painful to discuss until now.
After reading this cover to cover I felt like crying. Turtledove is a fine author, but obviously was working under an incredible deadline when he rendered this. There are not 13 lapses, as a previous review indicated but at least 22 ( I have read all of the Tor, Ace, Bantam and Lancer Conan pieces and know my Hyborea )... the banner of the Lion reference was simply absurd, the chronology is faulty and the lifestyle of a Cimmerian as represented in this book was laughable... think Scotland around 50 AD and you might have a clearer picture of what Howard had intended.
Sure it's a fantasy novel.
Yep, it's make-believe.
But this book is like reading a Superman comic in which Clark Kent answers the Batphone, flys an invisible jet and wears a green power ring from which his power flows... jumbled and confusing if you know anything about the history of the character and world.

I dont know what Harry Turtledive was thinking when he wrote this book but this is definately not Conan. He should be forced to remove the Conan name from his book. If you want to write a fantasy novel about a wimp turned hero don't use Conan's name to sell your book. Why not call the character Turtledove of midevil suberbia. Stick with the character of Conan if you write a Conan book. The character in this book is no Conan!!!!!
Quit ruining a great character!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't even put into words the disgust I feel for this piece of [...]. I have been waiting YEARS for a new conan book, and what comes along? Harry Turtledove's gargantuan pile of poo. This book is so inconsistent, poorly developed, and poorly written it makes my stomach roil. I am about 2/3 of the way done, and I don't think I can bring myself to read the rest of this [...]. Think I might start on another book by a REAL author, David Gemmell. The story is literally conan acting like a little turd the WHOLE book. Talk about a whiny turd, damn. The book is about as eventful as a retirement home disco. Honestly, just read it for yourself. Damn, I will just stop right now...[...]. TOR better find a better author.

It states on the back cover that Turtledove is a "lifelong Conan fan". This just goes to show you that being a big fan doesn't mean you can recreate the object of your admiration. Harry Turtledove RUINED this book. For starters; where are all the woman-warriors? The fierce Cimmerian females? Every woman in here is a sleazy hussy, a stupid twit, or a shrewish fishwife. Half the reason I got the darned thing was because Conan's mother was mentioned in the first chapter I glanced at, and I was like "Oh, good!" But is she the brave warrior of the comics, the books, the movies? No. She's "Verina". She has tuberculosis. She reclines in bed and coughs and snaps at everyone. The only strong female character in here is the giant snake! The male characters aren't much better or easier to like. As Meave is replaced by Verina, so Nial is replaced by ineffective and plodding Mordec, who beats Conan senseless to "teach him a lesson". Balarg is annoying and unnecessary and Count Stercus, the foreign commander, the villainous invader who's supposed to be so horrible? The only horrible characteristic Turtledove could conjure was to make him a lecher of nubile girls. Hello? These characters are set roughly 10,000 years ago. 17 years old would be considered quite marriageable and matronly. All that aside, Stercus has got to be the stupidest villain alive. He gets banished from his cushy outpost to the wilds for his lecherous behavior (still not buying that, btw) and when he gets to Cimmeria what does he do? Seduce more girls! Ah, the dastardly rogue! And when his eye finally lights on a maiden in Conan's village, does he quietly spirit her away? Bribe her father? Lure her with gold and jewels? No. He courts her publicly for months, then throws her over his horse in broad daylight and drags her away kicking and screaming. As he's racing out of the village on his steed, he beheads a couple of kids. How brilliant. Conan's love interest (Tarla) is a weak, twittery git who flirts with sleazy foreign commanders, but later, after Conan rescues her, she says "it was all to make you jealous Conan!" The only good aspect to this book is that you can safely let your ten-year-old read it. Argh.

Life-long Conan fan that he is, Turtledove uses the Lion emblem on the Aquilonian flag/banner... this is the emblem Conan uses when he becomes king of Aquilonia about 30-40 years after the events of this tale. The pennant ought to have shown a dragon which any one who has read a Conan story in which Aquilonia is mentioned, even in passing, would know.
There are at least 13 more inconsistencies (some of them glaring) in the remainder of the work. Turledove does himself and the Hyborian age a great injury by allowing this to have been published, anyone who has read any of the pre-1990 Conan stories would do better to invest their money in an ant-farm than purchase this book.

This is the book that has finally made me give up on trying to read Turtledove. I loved his World War books (although they lasted longer than I cared for) and I kept hoping that he would write some comparable fantasy.

I tried some of his older fantasy works and found them a bit dry. I tried reading his latest fantasy novels but I can't stand the mixing of fantasy with science. Then I saw that he was going to do a Conan novel.

I love Conan stories and was excited to see such a well-regarded writer trying his hand at one. I was disappointed to say the least. While the writing is decent from a technical standpoint, I found that it was totally lacking in the flavor that I had come to expect from a Conan novel.

Some story elements were very cliched. Other things, such as Conan's encounter in a abandoned temple, seemed totally out of place in the story as a whole. I also thought that several things in the novel conflicted with what has already been written by Howard about Conan's teen years.

If you love Robert E. Howard's writing, don't waste your time with this book. On the other hand, if you don't know who that is, you might find this a passable read.