‘Conan: The Road of Kings’ - Karl Edward Wagner

I'll be honest... Whenever you come across this post, today, the odds are that I'm going to be nursing a large hangover. What? It's been a long week and I dragged it out a little further by spending a little too much time in the pub. Easily done and all that ;o) On the off chance that I wake up unscathed, the plan is to try and finish at least one of the books that I've got on the go. 

With all that in mind then, I'm giving myself a break from blogging, today, and recycling an old post from an old blog, like I do ;o) I try not to do it too often but when I do, I always try and pick a half decent post for you so today, we're taking a quick look at an author who tackled 'Conan', back in the day, and wasn't named Lin Carter or L. Sprague de Camp. Wagner has great form for Sword & Sorcery and while I can't help but think that he works better with his own characters, 'The Road of Kings' is still a decent read. If you want the full review, that can be found over Here but you're only really missing out on an introduction that made more sense back in 2013 ;o) Lets go...

Conan is about to find himself at the wrong end of the hangman’s rope but the daring rescue of a fellow prisoner catapults him into the murky Zingaran world of organised crime and revolutionary politics. Sedition is brewing in Zingara and Conan is about to play a crucial role in the overthrow of a corrupt King. But what happens next when the new ruler is not only prey to the corruption of power but is backed by an army of stone warriors that even Conan’s sword arm cannot prevail against…?

Well, it’s Conan that we’re talking about here so we know how things will end up, how things have to end in fact. Wagner spins a pretty good tale though, keeping certain secrets hidden until the last minute so the reader has to find out how things tie together. That part of things is done pretty well by the way, we’re given a reasoned theory that is tested to completion rather than a ‘sudden reveal’ which just magically sorts everything out. I was more than happy with another level of uncertainty which moved the plot forward nicely at a critical moment.

Other than that though… Being as short as it is, ‘The Road of Kings’ is an entertaining read but also a read where the plot is forced into a straight line by page constraints. Working within those constraints, Wagner actually does a very good job of giving the city of Kordava (and ‘The Pit’ beneath) enough depth for it to be more than just a backdrop. I already knew that Wagner could write a mean fight scene but he proves it here all over again with enough swordplay and viscera to keep people like me happy. Wagner also has a pretty good idea of what Conan is all about, giving us the viewpoint of a barbarian constantly bemused (and contemptuous) by the eccentricities of southern ‘civilisation’, eager though to make his mark where the situation demands. To be fair, Robert E. Howard laid those guidelines pretty darn clearly, in the original tales, but Wagner makes Conan stand out on the page in just the way that he was always meant to. You can’t ask for much more than that really.

Or can you? Like I said, the plot starts at point A and moves through all the points, in order, ending at point Z. Conan is not as simplistic a character as people might think and I couldn’t help but think that he deserved a plot that would test the limits of his character, not just his sword arm. It was a nice move by Wagner, forcing Conan to confront indestructible stone warriors, and looking for alternative means to defeat them, but I wonder if there was room for more along those lines. I guess there’s only so much you can fit into so many pages but even so…
I couldn’t complain too much though when all the ingredients of a classic Conan tale are present, in ‘The Road of Kings’, and delivered with gusto. A nice little slice of old school sword and sorcery that made me forget about the perils of the commute; if I could have more of that in my reading I’d be a happy man :o)