One of the things that stood out to me as being odd about some of the Conan books are the weird attempts at being very precise about large numbers. In spots a book might say Country X has access to 29732 archers or whatever. Same thing goes for geographical numbers. I was re-reading the section on Asgard in ROK today, and I noticed that it said that there is an estimated 5,439,550 people living there. These people live in 10,900 villages and 67 towns. My question is where in Asgard do you fit 10,900 villages? Using the inside cover map as a guide Asgard appears to be approximately 700 miles by 900 miles. Much of it is taken up by Snow Devil Glacier. If you spaced villages evenly 10 miles apart from each other in perfect rows you could only fit 6300, and it doesn't make sense to me that that could be nearly that densely packed.
Anyone agree with this? I want to believe that these numbers have some real thought behind them, but they just don't make sense to me at this point.
Anyone agree with this? I want to believe that these numbers have some real thought behind them, but they just don't make sense to me at this point.