'The God in the Bowl' – Robert E. Howard


So there I am, banging on about which 'Conan' comics you should and shouldn't be reading, and it occurred to me that I haven't actually covered any of Howard's original tales (not here, anyway). Yesterday evening then, saw me pick a 'Conan' tale more or less at random (the one criteria being that it needed to be short enough for me to read before I fell asleep...) and that tale was 'The God in the Bowl'. An interesting fact before I talk about the content of the story itself... 'The God in the Bowl' was actually rejected by 'Weird Tales' and not actually published until long after Robert E. Howard's death; in September 1952's edition of 'Space Science Fiction' as it happens. So there you go, now on with the story.

In the Nemedian city of Numalia, a night watchman enters the great museum to find the strangled corpse of the owner and curator. Above the corpse stands none other Conan of Cimmeria...
The Watch are called and Conan interrogated but he swears his innocence, in the case of the murder at least. If Conan didn't do it though... who, or what, did?

'The God in the Bowl' is essentially a detective story where Conan is framed as the villain in order to give Howard a little extra time to set up and then present the monster right at the end. It's a read then that comes across as feeling slightly stilted, possibly because the nature of the initial confrontation means that, for the greater part of the tale, Conan is constantly on the edge of bursting into action but never quite manages it. It's also a story that almost sidelines Conan in his own adventure, concentrating instead on the investigation of the magistrate Demetrio that determines Conan's innocence. We all know that Conan is innocent though so it feels like a bit of a waste of time setting that revelation up so slowly when we know that the real action is to be had elsewhere.

When it all finally kicks off though... The creeping menance of the monster is overshadowed by the appearance of the nobleman who sent Conan into the museum in the first place. So that's another small hurdle to jump before we can see what we actually came for. The ensuing fight is written with as much vigour as ever but... where's the monster?
There's a genuinely unsettling moment where a guard sees the monster but doesn't realise what it is. The actual showdown itself gives us a beast that, in the tradition of Howard's monsters, hints at a dark past even older than the kingdoms that Conan travels through. I love peeling back the layers of history in Howard's 'Conan' tales. The monster is dispatched very easily though and although Conan's subsequent flight shows us how horrifying the monster was, it all feels more than a little anti-climactic.

'The God in the Bowl' has some moments where the potential in the story shines through but these aren't enough, on their own, to ultimately carry the story to a better place than where it ends up. The worst of Howard's tales can still offer a lot to the reader but not this one and certainly not to me. Not the best tale to 'kind of randomly' pick then. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘Day of Ascension’ – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Black Library)

Image
Page Count – 196 Pages There isn’t a lot that’s good about moving house (especially when it slowly dawns on you just how much the new place is going to cost to run, I need to get another job…) but there are some good bits if you look for them. For me, it was mostly around getting all my books unpacked and back on shelves around me again, not stuffed up in the loft where I couldn’t see them. Old favourites were back within easy reach, along with a whole load of new books that I really should have read ages ago. You can probably guess what my main New Year’s resolution will be… ;o) ‘Day of Ascension’ was one of those new books and I figured it was as good a place as any to start over in making a dent in the ol’ TBR Pile. And I’m really glad I did. On the forge world of Morod, the machines never stop and the work never ends. The population toils in the mines and factoria to protect humanity from the monsters in the void, while the Adeptus Mechanicus enjoy lives of palatial comfort. Gene
Read more

‘Worms of the Earth’ – Robert E. Howard.

Image
Page Count: 27 Pages I have a copy of this on my shelf and the plan was to pick it up for a read on the way into work this morning. Well, that was the plan but I was half asleep, leaving the house, and totally forgot… No matter though, that’s what the Kindle app is for (although if I’d been a little more awake, I’d have read it off Project Gutenberg instead, you can find ‘Worms of the Earth’ Here ). 99p later and my ‘commute reading’ was secured 😉 I always seem to fall into the trap of just reading ‘Conan’ stuff whenever I fancy reading a little Howard. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that there’s a lot of his other stories out there that are more than worth your time when you come across them. ‘Worms of the Earth’ is very much one of those tales but you knew that already, didn’t you? You didn’t? You should do something about that, take it from me… After witnessing one of his subjects die at the hands of Roman governor Titus Sulla, Bran Mak Morn vows vengeance on Sulla but at w
Read more

‘Deathworlder’ – Victoria Hayward (Black Library)

Image
Before I get into the review proper, thank you Black Library for sending me a copy of ‘Deathworlder’ in return for a fair and honest review. Talking of ‘fair and honest’… There will be loads of the latter but I enjoyed the hell out of ‘Deathworlder’ so… We’ll see how being fair goes ;o) That’s your only warning, lets talk ‘Deathworlder’… Lazulai is a world beyond the brink, its battle against the tyranids all but lost. Once-magnificent cities lie in ruin. The seas boil. The skies crack. Horrific alien bioforms devour. In mere days the planet will be consumed. The 903rd Catachan ‘Night Shrikes’ defend one of the last fortresses still standing. Led by Major Wulf Khan, to die fighting is all that is expected of them… until she is given one last mission: to lead a squad through the apocalypse and recover a piece of archeotech that may doom or deliver the entire Lazulai System. Facing insurmountable odds and zero hope for aid, the major must hold her squad together as they pick their way
Read more