I have a brain injury that flares up from time to time. It causes me no great concern as I began life as an idiot and will possibly end it so. It does encourage me to write as much as possible until I meet that nurse with the jar of baby food. Glenn, Vance, I know I have not made out a will, but if I have a stroke and end up institutionalized I don’t want a nurse, but a grossly incompetent stripper in a nurse's outfit to see me to death’s door. Vance you pick her out. Glenn you make sure she gets paid…
In any case, yesterday I was too damned sick to write a thing, so selected an audio book I have been saving, The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard’s only Conan novel. Literary people regard it as schlock, as a hack job Howard did to make money from a viable British publisher. I say litter the Road of Kings with their heaped heads! The Hour of the Dragon is almost as good as People of the Black Circle ‘Keep Your Bounty For Your City-Bred Dogs’ which is one of the best novellas ever written. When it comes to horror/fantasy/adventure a novel will never be as good as a short. So The Hour of the Dragon cannot compare to the Tower of the Elephant ‘Morning-Crowned And Shinning’, but it is better than almost any other novel written, so you should check it out.
As in his first Conan story, Phoenix on the Sword, Howard once again places his barbarian protagonist in the unsettling role of king, which he hates, chaffing at the bit of office. Fortunately for Conan he is betrayed and dethroned and gets to have a great adventure as a man-cleaving lowlife once again. The reading of this audiobook is very well done. The horrific atmospherics start from the beginning, and along the way you get to listen to Conan adventuring through a darkly shrouded world.
By the midpoint of the novel Howard has sketched the same conclusion that occupies him in his other novel Almuric 'To The World Which Disowned Him', that a free and potent soul is not combatable with civilized life. Both of these novels were written near the end of his brief life.
At the point where Conan crosses the river to Zingara armed as a poor mercenary the vigilante spirit in Howard rises like a tide and sweeps the reader along.
The Hour of the Dragon is fun all the way. Howard uses his best monster, that has appeared in Rogues in the House and Iron Shadows in the Moon.
My four favorite quotes are:
"From what hell have you crawled you nighted dog?" asked Conan of the mesmerist Xaltotun
"It is less fatiguing to destroy a walled city than it is to form my thoughts into words a brainless barbarian would understand." answered Xaltotun
"This is your palace now white dog-king." said the black jailer to Conan
And for the best line by the bravest female character in fiction, Zenobia, "I'm only a girl of the King's seraglio. He has never glanced at me and probably never will. I am less than one of the dogs that gnaw the bones in his banquet hall. But I am no painted toy. I am flesh and blood. I live and breathe, fear, rejoice and love."
And Conan still threatens to killer her.
If you are a Tolkien fan, keep in mind that this was written before The Lord of the Rings, and listen to the passage that begins at about 2:28:00. It makes the reader wonder if the old mythologist had read The Hour of The Dragon.
