Pastiche: 1 recommendation - 2 warnings

[René]

Recently I read three pastiches from John Maddox Roberts:

Conan - The Marauder
Conan and the Manhunters
Conan - The Champion

Marauder is very good and indeed the best pastiche I read so far - it tries to stay Conanesque successfully.

The other two are a complete waste of money: D&D-like tales with magic as a casual thing, awfully constructed plots, unbelievable characters without motivation, even an expedition into the faerie-land (complete with elves, dwarves etc.)!
It hard to believe that the same author should have written Marauder and this crap!

 

[quigs]

Good to know! Thanks

 

[Valaryc]

thanks !

hope we read more reviews of conan pastiches !!!!

so the poor guys like me don't waste their money on kothic bullshit :wink:

 

[quigs]

My warning about Conan the Warlord sticks as well! Avoid at all costs!

 

[DaveNC]

I've been reading a lot of my old Conan pastiche lately also. The two most recent that I've read are by Leonard Carpenter called "Conan of the Red Brotherhood" and "Conan, Scourge of the Bloody Coast". I'm a sucker for all things Conan and pirates, what can I say?

Neither book is very good, but still they are fun reads and do tie in togther and feature a lot of the same characters. The stories have Conan building a Pirate empire with the Red Brotherhood on the Vilayet Sea. At the end of the second book, Conan is still a Pirate King of Djafur, so I wonder if there is a third book that wraps up the whole storyline. Like I said, the books aren't that great, but do have some cool ideas that I may incorporate into my Conan rpg. Things like Hyborian age seafaring technology and weapons, an lost underwater (and thankfully, uninhabited) city, using large inverted domes lowered into the water to trap air to help divers go down deeper, and some good nautical battle descriptions and information.

 

[Strom]

For those who don't know, there are a number of reviews for Conan pastiches at the Library of Epemitreus on the Official REH Forum:

Library of Epemitreus

8)

 

[slaughterj]

For those who don't know, there are a number of reviews for Conan pastiches at the Library of Epemitreus on the Official REH Forum:

Library of Epemitreus

8)

I'd like to see a site with paragraph summaries of each Conan story/novel, with mentions of main characters, events, etc. included therein, much as the D&D Lankhmar book had for the Fafhrd / Grey Mouser stories.

 

[Strom]

I'd like to see a site with paragraph summaries of each Conan story/novel, with mentions of main characters, events, etc. included therein, much as the D&D Lankhmar book had for the Fafhrd / Grey Mouser stories.

That's a great idea, slaughterj. One member, grim cimmerian is compiling a list and review of all Conan stories in print, each with a synopsis. It's very involved and contains a lot of detail:

Grim Cimmerian's Cogitatings on Conan, a review of all of the tales in the Conan Saga ]

I'll ask him if he wants to compile a more user friendly thread with just a synopsis for each story. Thanks slaughterj! 8)

 

[slaughterj]

That's some good stuff!

 

[toothill man]

thank you for the links 8)