The best Non-Howard Conan works?

I recently read Conan the swordsman; the book is only composed of short stories from de Camp, Carter and Nyberg. As a whole it can be recommanded because the authors can't do much mistakes (each story is 20-40 pages short) and possess thus quite the ambience of Howard's stories (for those who like the work and the stories edited by de Camp).
Paradoxically, I found out there were many more ideas of adventures to be taken from these stories as from a 250+ pages novel.

For those who are pleased with the divine intervention on the mortal world, I recommand the "Ivory Goddess". For my part I say it could have been exceptional if de Camp hadn't made the mistake of his (usual) deus ex machina.
 
I enjoyed "Conan the Swordsman." I like the short story format and wish the new AOC novels were collections of short stories instead of mostly padded trilogies.
 
I'm dubious about the pastiches I've read so far. Before recently I had mostly read the original REH stuff and the one or two that I'd read outside that had kind of disappointed me. (one was "The Treasure of Tranicos", and Conan the Buccaneer which I found okay but didn't enjoy as much as the original stuff as I said.

Recently I was reading Robert Jordan's Conan series as recommended to me in the thread I posted about Shadizar. They were kind of fun to read and I got some ideas for npcs for running Shadizar from them. However I began to find the female characters very annoying. I think the only one I kind of liked was Velita, the slave girl in Conan the Invincible who ironically is one of the few of them who is genuinely a person of character in spite of her circumstances. Karela the Hawk, Lady Jondra and Tamira are all characters that SHOULD be resourceful but aren't at all. While it is typical in a way for Conan female sidekicks to be sexy and need rescuing for the most part in the original stories they are captured noblewomen, slave girls, pampered princesses and so on, whereas the few women that are depicted as being adventuresses in one form or another are depicted in a way that is consistent with that. (Belit or Valeria for instance) It is therefore annoying when a woman is say described as a bandit leader and yet has no apparent command abilities or judgement.

Probably Conan the Invincible is the better of the two books. The sorceror and his group of lizard creatures are actually rather creepy and the story has a nicely twisted plot of concerns for royal jewels, wizard's intrigues and the like. Some of the characters are better drawn in it--the Zamoran captain is a good example.
 
according to robert jorden, when women see conan they all turn into lovestruck 15 yr-olds. i also found the invincible to be pretty damn stupid especially the ending where he's all like " oh well i swore an oath i wont rescue her" where we all know Howard's Conan would have his sword out by now and wrecking havoc upon those slave merchants.
 
Exactly--REH's Conan would either have just been bluntly amused and said, "that'll teach you, girl," or else would have damned well gotten her out of that slave coffle.
 
although they arent actual conan tales ...the brak tales by john jakes are very good indeed and essentially or very nearly the same as conan......biggest difference is Brak has blond hair. Jakes is good! To bad he didnt stay in fantasy
 
I have truly been suprised by how much I have been enjoying the new Age of Conan novels. Richard Knaak's is especially good about an Aquilonian soldier loyal to Conan during the reign of said-barbarian. But the one by Loren Coleman about a Cimmerian outcast is absolutely incredible. Coleman writes like a young Louis Lamour. Knaak cut his teeth in the Dragonlance series. The others authors present good game material and can be entertaining but Knaak and Coleman write well.
 
I haven' read any of those. I guess I'll give them a try, although I'm inclined to be leery of reading anything written by a DrgaonLance author.

The most recent non-Howard Conan I've read Conan of Vanarium by Harry Turtledove, which was finishable, but no better than that.

The single best non-Howard book featuring a Howard hero, in my opinion, is Sword of the Gael, a Cormac Mac Art novel, by Offutt.
 
I have one thing to say to you: "Might for right! Might for might! Right for might! Fight fight fight!"

Seriously...I'll have to check that one out. I got turned off of Offut (no pun intended) after reading a piece of crap called "King Dragon". Bleah.
 
I've often felt that any prospective contributor to the Conan series should be asked to complete one of Howard's original drafts or synopsis, such as Halls of the Dead or Snout in the Dark. Any such submission could then be evaluated. After all, virtually all of Howard's stories were short ones, whereas all the later additions are novels.
At least a few of the later authors are famous in their own right, with some great work behind them. I'm thinking of Karl Edward Wagner and Poul Anderson in particular.
Myself, I'm just getting back into Conan, and will soon be running an adventure or two, so am re-reading the original stories to remind myself of the correct mood I want to evoke.
I quite like the idea (though I'm yet to read them) of the Age of Conan books set in the Hyborean world, but not from Conan's perspective. At least these will not suffer from negative comparisons with Howards own portrayal of his character, though of course their writing style, and everything else, is open to debate.
 
i recently read a bunch of pastiche books i borrowed off a friend and got some good ideas for scenarios and such but also a bad taste in my mouth from a couple of them. jordan and maddox are both pretty good but with a couple of flaws that can be overlooked, however i found offut and anderson to be pretty lame. overall i found alot of them could have ended the story after 30-40 pages instead of the 200 or so they wrote.

one of the reasons i like the 1-2 sentence long adventure hooks you can find in a bunch of the source books is that they come across more for the short story type of adventure that will finish in 1-2 sessions of play which is what this genre is all about.
 
Not sure if it "counts", but the comics are quite good, especially those based on REH works, but others too. Just love the works(the art) of Buscema and Chan... Quite keen on the newer works too.
 
In my opinion Sign of the Moonbow by andrew j offutt is excellent.......its basically a sequel to Sword of the Gael.......really the two should be read together with Gael first but Moonbow is much superior.........that one is a near classic....Thulsa Doom plays a huge role and his part is well written.......Mists of Doom...the first Mac Art from a chronological perspective is very interesting also...........The only non cormac mac art thing ive read by offut was Conan the Mercenary....it was pretty good but very short....

I definitely liked the Conan and the Emerald Lotus book! I thought it was pretty close to the howard conan....Hocking writes good stuff
 
"Conan and the Spider God" is probably one of the better pastiches that I've read. I had more of a sense of the REH Hyboria in that than in all of Jordan's stuff put together. I particularly liked the courage and integrity of the heroine and the sense of mystery in it--there is a lot of magic in that book and yet it is never casually done. What I always liked about REH was the sense of mystery mingled with adventure.

I also quite enjoyed "Moon of Blood" in the Conan the Swordsman collection. It is a good follow up to "Beyond the Black River" which is one of my favourite Conan stories.
 
Defining Pastiche as anything beyond Howard and DeCamp's revision of Howards work (I'm sorry Vincent D.), the HANDS DOWN are worst are by Roland 'We don't need no stinking plot' Green and Tim ' I love deedle-dee dwarfs, giants, and magic' Perry. Steer clear of those and most pastiche is actually not bad at all. I think I chimed in here, earlier that that one of my favorite's is John Maddox Robert's "Conan the Valorous" and one book that is really far and away above many other's is "Conan the Rogue"

Rogue is really good because JMR essentially made it into a great reworking of the classic detective thriller "the Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett.

Leonard Carpenter was damned solid as well, great reads, nothing inspiring though.

The JMR stuff is probably the most re-read of the pastiches.
Robert Jordan was pretty good as well, although his plots were a little more simplistic than JMR's. I think he tried to compensate that by writing the Wheel of Time Saga, which by definition is the worlds most eco-unfriendly book and it does not seem to end. Too many good trees have been slaughtered for this book.


JMR has successfully written a lot of great books on the roman empire, mystery novels, with a roman detective:
SPQR series Mystery series set in Ancient Rome

SPQR (1990)
The Catiline Conspiracy (1991)
The Sacrilege (1992)
The Temple Of The Muses (1999)
Saturnalia (1999)
Nobody Loves A Centurion (2001)
The Tribune's Curse (2003)
The River God's Vengeance (2004)
The Princess and the Pirates (2005)
A Point of Law (2006)
Under Vesuvius (2001)
Oracle of Death(2005)


I've read SPQR about a month ago and cant wait to get my hands on the rest.
The complex plot structure is where JMR shines. Great for Conan (think Rogues in the House, Red Nails, or Hawks over Shem) and great for ancient Rome.

Just my 2 denarii.
 
I've just finished reading the original REH Conan tales from the centenery collection. I'd read most of them (or at least their De Camp editied versions) in younger days, along with plenty of pastiche tales, not realising at the time the difference between them. My aim was to immerse myself in the genre, as a fancy had taken of me to run a Conan rpg session or two.
With enthusiastic zeal, I hastily ordered a few pastiche books, and blew the dust off some of my old collection at my parent's house, hoping to sample the offerings of alternative authors, seeking further inspiration. One of the recommendations came from this thread - Hocking's Green Lotus book.

I started reading a bit of De Camp and Carter's stuff, some Robert Jordan, Poul Anderson, Andrew J Offut and Hocking's offering to boot.

I've surprised myself how totally underwhelmed I am. Poul writes good prose (I love Broken Sword), but when would Set ever appear himself, as proof of a Gods existence, in a Howard story? Hocking's Conan declines to behead a minion who insults him. Jordan overwhelms the tale early on with some unatmospheric and over-the-top magic. Anderson's Conan enters the tale carousing feebly, in a pointless debate about his age, where Howard always introduced his character in a welter of blood. De Camp and Carter appear to have chopped and changed whole tales only to their detriment, and their own characterisations do not ring true.
I'm afraid all the stuff is so non-Conan, I cannot force myself to read beyond a chapter or two.

Now I'm holding out for Karl Edward Wagner, who is through his Kane tales one of my favourite authors. The book should arrive this weekend. I have fond memories of it as a callow youth. I've also unearthed all the Howard stuff I didn't read as a teenager - Kull, Gordon, Bran, Solomon Kane et al.

Forget pastiche!
 
Overall I'd agree. When you say "Forget Pastiche" I would say that a person wanting to get into the atmosphere of the setting could enjoy Conan the Swordsman as well but really the others strike me as...fluff.

You notice even Carter and deCamp seem to screw it up in Conan the Buccaneer which was in the ACE series I originally got. I remember thinking midway through "What the hell is this story ABOUT?"

BTW this is not quite on the level with pastiche but now and then I kind of shake my head at the Frazetta and Boris covers for some of these. It's really good art and often very visually appealing either for the sense of carnage or frankly the curves but now and then I wish people would illustrate Conan wearing the stuff he wears in the stories. Howard is often describing him wearing a hauberk or some form of local native dress--he almost never seems to walk around wearing just a loincloth and big furry boots. You notice though that Robert Jordan a few times describes him wearing that which I found funny actually.

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