Conan and the Amazon

Conan and the Amazon

cover of Conan and the Amazon
Author John Maddox Roberts
Cover artist Ken Kelly
Country United States
Language English
Series Conan the Barbarian
Genre Sword and sorcery Fantasy
Publisher Tor Books
Publication date
1995
Media type Print (Paperback)
Pages 276 pp
ISBN 0-8125-2493-4

Conan and the Amazon is a fantasy novel written by John Maddox Roberts featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1995. It was reprinted by Tor in April 1999.[1]

Plot

Fresh from a failed rebellion in Brythunia, in which he served as a mercenary on the losing side, Conan joins forces with the band of Achilea, deposed queen of the Amazons. They wend their way through Zamora and Koth into the deserts to the southeast. They eventually reach the lost city of Jangar, cursed by the gods after an ancient battle. Jangar's people, loathing the sun, live in a subterranean city beneath the ruins of the old one. Conan and his allies are trapped in a gladitorial combat with a ferocious giant crocodile as city approaches its foreordained doom.

Reception

Don D'Ammassa, writing of Roberts' Conan novels, noted that "[a]lthough Roberts did not recreate Howard's character exactly, making him more intellectual and less inclined to solve every problem by hitting it with a sword, his evocation of the barbaric setting is superior to that of most of the other writers contributing to the series."[2]

Reviewer Ryan Harvey considered Roberts "the most consistently entertaining" of the Tor Conan authors, showing "deft ability with storytelling and action scenes, and a thankful tendency not to overplay his hand and try to ape Robert E. Howard’s style. ... However, Roberts had his down moments, and alas he stumbled at the finish line. Conan and the Amazon is the last of Roberts’s Conan novels. It’s also his poorest." He rates it "above average for the Tor novels, [but] a disappointment for its author. It moves too slowly, and the action is jumbled into a hasty mess at the conclusion."[3] In another place he notes that he "would hate to judge John Maddox Roberts based on Conan and the Amazon ... [a] poor work... from [an] otherwise skilled pastiche writer..."[4]

Notes

References

Preceded by
Conan the Gladiator
Tor Conan series
(publication order)
Succeeded by
Conan and the Mists of Doom
Preceded by
Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza
Complete Conan Saga
(William Galen Gray chronology)
Succeeded by
"The Devil in Iron"
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