'Conan the Barbarian' – Michael A. Stackpole (Berkley)


I've got a real soft spot for movie novelisations, a throwback to days where if you didn't have a video player, the 'book of the film' was all you had to keep you going until the film made it onto the TV (usually at Christmas). I've also got a bit of a soft spot for Conan, and his sword and sorcery tales of high adventure, so it wasn't much of a leap to put the two together and end up with this post. Ideally, it would have been about the novelisation of the 1982 film but I had a quick look on eBay, said a quick 'nope!' and decided to go with the 2011 film novelisation instead (which luckily, was sat on one of my bookshelves, just waiting to be picked up). I finished 'Conan the Barbarian' late last night, the final book I managed to read from April's TBR pile, so let me tell you all about it...

Born in the fires of battle, Conan of Cimmeria was raised to face the cold, merciless world with every ounce of strength and courage he possessed. And when the cruel warlord Khalar Zym slaughtered his father and his village, he was cast out into that world - alone. Wandering the land, Conan is forged into a peerless warrior by hardship and bloodshed. Years later, he crosses paths again with Zym and his armies. But before Conan can exact vengeance, he must contend with the warlord's daughter - the seductive witch Marique - and a host of monstrous creatures.

I do enjoy reading 'Conan' books, whether they're by Howard himself (and these are of course, the best ones) or by anyone else. This 'book of the film' doesn't get anywhere near those hallowed heights but to be fair, I don't think it was ever meant to. What we have here is a solid retelling of the movie with a few extra bits thrown in to flesh things out a bit. This is a book that has one job to do and does it very well, along with some extra little bits that answered some of the issues that I had with the movie.

While I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I did on first viewing, I still had issues around how the film chose to approach Conan's backstory, pinching most of it from the original Schwarzenegger movie with a little bit of Howard on the side. Stackpole stays true to this approach (if it's in the movie, then it's in the book) but also adds a few little bits of his own to pull everything together and form a more cohesive tale. If only the movie had done that... We get more of a look at Conan's childhood as well as what happened in the aftermath of the attack on his village. If that wasn't enough, we find out that Conan's quest to find Khalar Zym picks up again by lucky chance and in the weeks following the death of Belit. Now that is how you tell a Conan story, place it in actual context with a major event in his life, see how he handles it and how this influences and drives his relationship with Tamara. It's subtly done as well, not laid on thick at all. Stackpole shows us Conan in action but he also shows us Conan at his most thoughtful and that's the barbarian I know. The rest of it is basically retelling the events of the film, I can't say much else than that, and Stackpole gives these events the same energy that they had in the film, the fights are a joy to read.

The end result is a tale that does what it needs to, retell the events of the film, but still has the capacity to surprise (just a little, but that's enough). You think you know what you're getting and then you realise you're reading an actual story, not just a summary of events on the screen. If you weren't keen on the film then Stackpole's approach to fleshing the story out probably won't win you round. It's a well told tale but ultimately, a good 95% of it is what happened in the movie. I enjoyed the movie so the book worked for me; if you felt the same way (or if you just like a well told 'Conan' tale) then I reckon you'll have fun with this read as well.

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