Conan the Victorious

Conan the Victorious
cover of Conan the Victorious
Author(s)	Robert Jordan
Cover artist	Boris Vallejo
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Conan the Barbarian
Genre(s)	Sword and sorcery Fantasy
Publisher	Tor Books
Publication date	1984
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	280 pp
ISBN	0-812-54240-1

Conan the Victorious is a fantasy novel written by Robert Jordan featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1984; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in December 1985, and was reprinted in March 1991 and August 2010. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in April 1987. The novel was later gathered together with Conan the Magnificent and Conan the Triumphant into the hardcover omnibus collection The Further Chronicles of Conan (Tor Books, October 1999).^[1]

Contents

• Conan the Victorious (novel) (Robert Jordan)
• Conan the Indestructible (chronological essay) (L. Sprague de Camp)

Plot

Naipal, court wizard to King Bandharkar of Ayodha in Vendyha, prepares to bargain with the demon Masrock to win control of Vendhya and revenge himself on his rivals, the Black Seets of Mt. Yimsha. Meanwhile, in the Turanian city of Sultanapoor, a Vendhyan-instigated plot has resulted in the assassination of a prince. Conan, employed in guarding a smugglers' ship, is rumored to have been hired to commit the crime. Turanian spymaster Lord Khalid sends his apprentice Jelal the merchant to Vendhya find out if Conan was truly involved.

Learning he has been framed, Conan decides to skip town and takes ship south with the smugglers to the Zaporaska River. While helping load the chests forming cargo he is attacked with a dagger by a Vendhyan hiding in one of them, who then commits suicide after Conan overpowers him. The Cimmerian's wound proves to be poisoned; a herbalist called in is able to mitigate but not counteract it, declaring that only the leeches of Vendyha can cure him. At the mouth of the Zaporaska, the smugglers rendezvous with the Vendhyans who are to receive the cargo. These, finding the chests have been tampered with, attack, and the ship is burnt. The stranded smugglers strike inland, eventually encountering a large caravan. A Khitan merchant in the caravan hires them as guards.

In Vendhya, Naipal discovers Conan has become embroiled in his schemes; believing the involvement purposeful, he determines to kill the Cimmerian and his companions. After the wizard's agents in the caravan attempt without success to slay Conan, Naipal lays a trap for him in the great city of Gwandikian. Conan takes the bait. Lured to a tower, he is again set upon, but escapes. Afterward he seeks the antidote for his poisoned wound in a nearby forest, where he has been told it can be found. There he discovers the herbalist who originally treated him and learns he was in fact cured by that first treatment; the man had lied about it then to secure the Cimmerian's aid. He, it seems, it Naipal's true adversary. A final conflict between the two sorcerers ensues, in which both end up dead at the hands of the demon each tried to control, and the demon itself is destroyed by the spells they had lain on it.

Conan, surviving, decides to return home. On the way, he encounters Lord Khalid's agent Jelal. The spy has completed his investigations and cleared the Cimmerian of complicity in the Vendhyan plot against Turan. He gives Conan a parchment and instructs him to present it at the headquarters of the Turanian army on his return to Sultanpoor.

Reception

Comparing the book to two of Jordan's other Conan novels (Conan the Magnificent and Conan the Invincible), reviewer Lagomorph Rex rates it "certainly the best of the three," writing that "[w]hile it did begin to drag after [the protagonists] left Sultanpoor, and didn't really pick up again until they got to Vendhya, it wasn't completely pointless like the others. It had a real reason for Conan to travel that far." Nevertheless, he criticizes "the long travel sequence in which very little happens," stating that "Jordan's strength seems to be in doing scenes, but moving between the scenes is his weakness." He observes that this tendency carries over into Jordan's later "Wheel of Time" series, which also reuses various bits of description from the book. In regard to L. Sprague de Camp's "Conan the Indestructible" essay, the reviewer's primary observation is to approve how it "explain[s] away the continuity problems presented by the two movie novelizations."^[2]

References

1. ^ Conan the Victorious publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
2. ^ Lagomorph Rex. "Hyborean Apocrphya: Conan the Victorious" (Review), May 19, 2011.

• Fantastic Fiction entry for Conan the Victorious