The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian

By: Robert E. Howard

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities...there was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.... Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand...to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under his sandalled feet.

In a meteoric career that spanned a mere 12 years before his tragic suicide, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword-and-sorcery. Collected in this volume are Howard's first 13 Conan stories in their original versions and in the order Howard wrote them. Included are classics of dark fantasy like "The Tower of the Elephant" and swashbuckling adventure like "Queen of the Black Coast."

Here are timeless tales featuring Conan the raw and dangerous youth, Conan the daring thief, Conan the swashbuckling pirate, and Conan the commander of armies. Here, too, is an unparalleled glimpse into the mind of a genius whose bold storytelling style has been imitated by many yet equaled by none.

©2002 Conan Properties International, LLC. (P)2009 Tantor

A masterpiece brought to audible!!!!

A masterpiece brought to audible. I've read the stories before and was glad that the narration lived up to the hardcopy version. Long live Conan. "Crom and Steel!!!!

Gotta love REH, even read like this

Would you consider the audio edition of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian to be better than the print version?

No.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Conan . . . because Crom gifted him with all he needs.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

I have read Conan books for countless hours, but never did I imagine him having an Irish or Scottish sounding accent. Some of the pronunciations drove me batty. If I heard demonic pronounced "de-moan'-ee-ak" one more time, I would have screamed. Not a huge fan of his female renditions either, but I realize that's a tough call. Good pacing, and good range of intensity, and I like his voice for the most part.

Dreck, but classic dreck

For some time I had been wanting to read the original Conan stories, but soon after I began listening to the audio version I nearly gave up on it. "Overwrought" is understatement. Howard never met an adjective he didn't love. So much so that he turns them into verbs on a regular basis and sometimes adds a syllable or two, presumably to give them greater impact. In addition, the narrator, evidently caught up in the purple prose, allowed it to propel him into paroxysms of hyper expression. (If I never hear the word "slavering" again, pronounced with gusto and a long "a," it will be a mercy.) The total effect was pretty hard to take.

In the end, I hung in there, and the writing and reading both improved as they went along (though the slavering persisted to the end). There is nothing here which would make it past an editor's first glance in today's market, but it is fun to give yourself up to it for a while. I ended up listening to one story each time I finished another book, and the break between allowed me to enjoy them.

If nothing else, Howard definitely has a marvelous imagination. His plotting is inventive and sometimes quite satisfying. If you can forgive his mangling the language (and he really does) there is some fun to be had in these stories. This must be especially true if one is returning to Conan as a revisit to a childhood delight. I enjoy "Tarzan of the Apes" in much the same way, though I have to say that I reread a passage from that book just as a check on my own memory and found the writing vastly superior to what Howard manages even in his much improved later efforts.

First part of the book is missing

When I tried downloading my purchase to listen on my computer, roughly the first four hours are missing of the book and it starts in the middle of The Scarlet Citadel. All the chapters have the wrong locations for the stories in the Audible app. I tried a couple of hours to get it to work, download again, etc, to no avail. I was hoping that I could listen to this at work since I am not allowed to stream there, but now I have given up. I know the book and the narration is really good, but I can't see paying good money for part of the book that is missing and/or signing up for a service I cannot use. If you just stream the book from your app, then I would recommend, but if you want to download so you can avoid the cloud, I say just stick libravox recordings. Waste of $30.

Last 2-3 stories are at the beginning

The audiobook begins with 2-3 stories at the beginning of the audiobook. At first I thought it was intentional until I got to the end of the audiobook and realized it was exactly the same stories. Otherwise the anthology was enjoyable.